For my final assignment on my current OU module,I have to choose the best novel of the Twentieth Century from a shortlist of four plus one not studied. Picking which midule text to cover is always difficult enough, but picking my own – impossible!
There are far too many amazing novels I could use. Just scribbling down ideas off the top of my head yielded two sides of A4 paper. I’m trying to think logically, finding a novel to fit with the argument I’m 
making and one which I can find an abundance of critical resources on, but my heart is getting in the way of my head. Just for a change. Writing the essay will be a piece of cake after the hell that is making my choices.
In other reading news, I have been on a bit of a Joyce Carol Oates binge, reading ‘The Accursed’, ‘The Gravediggers daughter’ and currently ‘The Tattooed Girl’. I love and am in complete awe of her writing style.
In kind-of-reading-related-news I have discovered 
audio books. I’ve never really got on with them, my mind has a tendency to
wander and listening isn’t the same as reading. But, I have been listening to books as I clean or walk to work and it does make it more enjoyable. I have just finished listening to Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘Blonde’ a fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe which I absolutely loved.
I have also been reading Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ for an assignment which I am enjoying a lot more than I imagined I would.
What is your favourite Twentieth Century novel? What have you been reading?
Emma Kerry's Notebook 