Reading suggestions: Reading around the curriculum (Seniors)

Fiction or non-fiction

You can develop your knowledge of a variety of subjects by reading fiction as well as non-fiction. Which will you choose (or will you read both?). If you just want non-fiction then your best bet is to use the non-fiction map to find the area of shelves where books on your subject are located and have a browse. If you want fiction, however, you will need to search the catalogue (remember non-fiction is arranged by subjeec and fiction by author's name).

For example:

• You might want to read historical novels about a particular time period. Try searching on Oliver for "historical fiction" (make sure you include the quotes to force it to search for both words together).

• You might be interested in stars, the universe, space or space-time. In which case you could try searching for Astrophysics, Cosmology or Relativity

E-books and Audiobooks

Have a look at the page Alternatives to print books to see how you can easily access other formats. These can be super ways to broaden your understanding of a tricky subject. The Time and Space of Uncle Albert is a brilliant introduction to Special Relativity (the weird things that happen to space and time when you go really fast) for example - memories of reading this book as a teenager helped me when I studied Special Relativity at University! We have this (and others in the series) as print books in the Senior Library, but it is also available on YouTube as an audiobook.

What subjects can these help me with?

We have back copies of The Week Science and Nature available to borrow from the Senior Library, and a variety of History magazines and a Philosophy magazine that you can read in the Library but not take away. You are also welcome to back copies of newspapers (which may touch on a wide range of subjects.

On the Guille-Allès Library online sites (Libby and PressReader) you can read newspapers and magazines from around the world. Why not try a young children's magazine in French? Or a sport magazine? Or a nature magazine? With thousands of titles to choose from, it is unlikely that any classroom subject is not covered in some way.

Have a look at the Alternatives to print sources page of this guide to see how to access newspapers and magazines online.

While we have many excellent Subscription Databases for inquiry, browsing around on them (or on the general internet) can be really distracting and disjointed so I would not recommend them for a reading challenge. Two that might work, however, are:

• The Day, which is essentially a newspaper written for schools that can be filtered by subject and the reading level can be adjusted (see guide). Note that this also publishes articles translated into French, German, Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish (with an English version too) so it can be a good way to test your language skills.
• Britannica, which provides full length encyclopaedia articles (see guide)

The non-fiction map tells you where you can find books related to each of your academic subjects.