An Ode to Our Childhood

This blog has so far focused on "intellectual" books, books that universities love, books that require pages to be read- and then read again, to grasp their meaning and many of them are beautiful novels. But I'm using this post to pay homage to books that don't need our entire focus when we read them, books that can be read again and again, books that you can finish in a day and be satisfied. And whilst there are many books that fulfil these criteria, Harry Potter being the first that comes to mind, instead I am going to talk about the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz. Yes, I know, they're children’s books, and the librarian was quite entertained when I took out both Agnes Grey (Anne Bronte) and Scorpia Rising (the latest Horowitz) in one go. But I have grown up with these books, I was pretty convinced that Alex was the love of my life; a small part of me still thinks he is, and today I finished the last one. To be honest with you, I feel entirely bereaved. With each series that comes to an end I feel like my childhood is ending, I know that may seem dramatic to some of you, but I was one of those kids who, given the choice, would read all day every day.

Scorpia Rising is by no means the most well written novel I have ever read, nor does it have one of the most logical plot lines (I am not convinced that you could turn you iPhone into a latex printer) but that doesn't matter. Because the beauty of children’s books is that the author is not trying to bowl you over with their intellect and metaphorical social commentary, I certainly have not learnt any 'Words of the Day' from reading it, but they are trying to create a world which children (and seventeen year olds) can escape into. Anthony Horowitz has taken every school child’s fantasy of becoming a spy and created a believable and loveable hero for us all to blithely follow across the world from the Alps to Australia to Egypt.

So I raise my imaginary glass to Alex Rider's last foray into the treacherous world of espionage and humbly beg Anthony Horowitz to change his mind and write another nine books for me to devour in a matter of hours. I know this may seem blasphemous to many readers and other English students but give me Alex Rider over War and Peace any day.

By Talia