Welcome to Charterhouse Reading@Home. As reading for pleasure is something we are passionate about at Charterhouse, we wanted to share a few of our favourite reads with you in this booklet. We hope that you will enjoy browsing this great list of recommendations, and be inspired to take part in our new challenge! Reading challenge Our reading list on the following pages has ten recommended titles in each category. Read one book for a Commendation, 3 for an Academic Distinction and 5+ for a reward voucher. Truly impress by reading one book from each category! Email your Housemaster or tell them what you’ve read at your weekly Zoom. Books labelled (YA) can be read by all and are particularly suitable for Under School. Reasons to read for pleasure 1. Reading boosts empathy Reading allows you to step into someone else’s shoes and experience their life. And because empathising with others can change what we do and how we act, it is key to Charterhouse’s core values: 2. You'll get better grades And not just in English! Research has shown that children who read for pleasure make greater progress in Maths than their peers who don’t.1 3. You'll develop an impressive vocabulary Researchers estimate pupils learn one new word of vocabulary for every thousand words read.2 So consider this: between the ages of 5 and 18 pupils with an average daily reading time of 30+ minutes are projected to encounter 13.7 million words. Their peers who average less than 15 minutes of reading per day are likely to be exposed to only 1.5 million words. The difference is more than 12 million words! 4. Reading lowers stress and anxiety, boosting your wellbeing Pupils who enjoy reading and writing and do it regularly outside school are three times more likely to have high levels of mental wellbeing and report greater levels of happiness than those who don’t.3 5. It will help you to grow your imagination and critical thinking skills You can visit places you've never been, and imagine worlds that don’t even exist. You can question, anticipate plot twists, and work things out. Einstein famously said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."4 1 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2020/may/how-longitudinal-data-reveals-benefits-reading-pleasure-rftrw-s01e02 2 https://www.renaissance.com/2018/01/23/blog-magic-15-minutes-reading-practice-reading-growth/ 3 https://literacytrust.org.uk/news/children-who-enjoy-reading-and-writing-have-significantly-better-mental-wellbeing-their- peers/ 4 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/01/einstein-imagination/ ebooks and Audiobooks Pupils can access our online reading platform, ePlatform, to discover over 2000 ebooks and audiobooks. ePlatform is available across multiple devices as both an app and website, and titles can be read or listened to both on and offline. Many of the titles in this reading list are available on ePlatform. The app can be downloaded from the AppStore or PlayStore. Once installed, search for ‘Charterhouse’ then login using your usual school 365 account. To access online, go to https://charterhouse.wheelers.co/ and click ‘Sign in’ from the top right corner. Enter your school 365 login details when prompted. Audiobooks - all available via ePlatform Mythos: A retelling of the myths of Ancient Greece, written and read by Stephen Fry In Stephen Fry's vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus, and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. We shiver in fear when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments and watch with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds. Mythos captures these extraordinary myths for our modern age - in all their dazzling and deeply human relevance. When breath becomes air, written by Paul Kalanithi, narrated by Cassandra Campbell and Sunil Malhotra At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? The kite runner, written and narrated by Khaled Hosseini (YA) Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption. Why we sleep, written by Matthew Walker, narrated by John Sackville Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. Professor Matthew Walker explores twenty years of cutting-edge research to solve the mystery of why sleep matters. Looking at creatures from across the animal kingdom as well as major human studies, he examines everything from what really happens during REM sleep to the effect of caffeine and alcohol, and why our sleep patterns change across a lifetime. Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything, written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, narrated by Stephen Dubner Freakonomics is at the heart of everything we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us daily: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. Asking provocative and profound questions about human motivation and contemporary living and reaching some astonishing conclusions, Freakonomics will make you see the familiar world through a completely original lens. Wonder, written by R.J. Palacio, narrated by Diana Steele, Nick Podehl and Kate Rudd (YA) 'My name is August. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.' Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things - eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside. But ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren't stared at wherever they go. All Auggie wants is to be accepted - but can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all? The Odyssey, written by Homer, narrated by Anton Lesser Arguably the first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage, family and identity; and about travellers, hospitality and the changing meanings of home in a strange world. 1984, written by George Orwell, narrated by Patrick Troughton Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal. I know why the caged bird sings, written by Maya Angelou, multiple narrators (BBC) 'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it's like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again' Maya Angelou. In this first volume of her autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. Ready player one, written by Ernest Cline, narrated by Wil Wheaton (YA) It's the year 2044 and the real world has become an ugly place. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia when you can be anything you want to be. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this alternate reality: OASIS founder James Halliday has promised that control of the OASIS - and his massive fortune - to the person who can solve the riddles he has left scattered throughout his creation. For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize. And then Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle. Verse novels Booked by Kwame Alexander (YA) Twelve-year-old Nick is a football-mad boy who absolutely hates books. In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel The Crossover, football, family, love, and friendship take centre stage as Nick tries to figure out how to navigate his parents’ break-up, stand up to bullies, and impress the girl of his dreams.