Pandemonium: December 2015 issue out now

The December 2015 issue of Pandemonium has now been published. You can read it online, or pick up a paper copy from the Atrium on Tuesday or Wednesday. Thanks to all those who have contributed or helped to edit this issue.

Books of the Year

Looking for something interesting to read over the Christmas holidays? We asked the SPS teachers  to nominate the books they'd most enjoyed this year: many thanks to all those who contributed, and Merry Christmas from the bookblog!

Dr Perkins's book of the year is Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver.

'It's an epic which involves many of the key science characters of the seventeenth century and weaves a story involving science, politics, plague and finance to illuminate events of the period.  Part of the System of the World trilogy - a doorstop, but well worth the effort.'

Book of the Week

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Recommended by Alex Aslett

The Rest of Us Just Live Here is a dystopian adventure which tells two parallel stories . As one band of teenagers – special ‘indie kids’– battle to save the world from the Immortals, the main plot of the novel concerns another group of young people.

Mikey is getting through his teenage years with the help of his friends and by focusing on graduating and leaving home. He also wants to declare his love for his friend Henna. The indie kids’ story is told entirely in chapter head summaries, whereas real drama is Mikey’s. The two stories converge at the end.

Reviewed in The Guardian here and in the New York Times here.

Book of the Week

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Recommended by Daniel Whiley

Brighton Rock, published in 1938, is a murder thriller novel based in the 1930s around the life of a young gang leader, Pinkie, in Brighton. In the novel, Greene portrays parts of the story through a variety of different viewpoints causing the third-person narrative to take on a wide diversity of various biases from each major character.

The book follows the short life of Pinkie after the previous gang leader, Kite, who had been like a father to Pinkie, has his throat slit in St Pancras. Throughout the book, Pinkie is filled with hatred, anger and disgust. His perverted views of love, religion and sin clash with the naivety, gentleness and trust of the waitress, Rose, who unwittingly has the ability to destroy Pinkie’s alibi for the murder of Fred Hale who caused Kite to be killed. This leads to the abnormal marriage of Pinkie and Rose, both who have different motivations for the marriage. During the course of the book, Ida Arnold, an easy-going, life loving woman is driven to pursue the murder of Hale by her own conscience, later leading her to try to save Rose from Pinkie.

During the book, Greene looks at the gangs of Brighton as well as Roman Catholic views on sin and morality, picking up on sex, murder and suicide. As Greene himself was a Catholic, he can relate to both the characters of Rose and Pinkie who are Catholics too. 

Overall, this book gives us an understanding of the views from the time, both religiously and politically. The book itself is definitely not an easy read, taking little time to get to the action and covering a wide range of difficult topics; however, it is definitely worth it.

Movember

Pandemonium: Call for submissions!

Pandemonium: See your creative writing in print

A draft of Angela Carter's Wise Children

Pandemonium, the SPS lower-school creative writing magazine, will be published in the final week of term. It showcases creative writing from boys in the 4th, 5th and 6th forms.

Submissions in any genre are invited. Please send your work to acs@stpaulsschool.org.uk by Tuesday 9 December.

A draft of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles

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Book of the Week

Fugue for a Darkening Island by Christopher Priest
Recommended by Daniel Illis

As thousands of migrants pour into Europe from the Middle East, one is often left wondering just what to think. Should you support the helpless migrants, displaced from their homes, or side with an apathetic population bearing the brunt of economic crisis, not able to cope with such an influx?

Fugue for a Darkening Island, written in the 1970s by Christopher Priest is a novel which poses the latter question to the reader. The plot goes something like this: a continent-wide crisis in Africa causes a tidal wave of refugees to flood into Britain, where a newly-elected government struggles to cope with the cascade. Chaos soon breaks out and leads to a civil-war, in which the whole population is engulfed.

Throughout the novel, Priest purposefully villainises the migrants and the British population in the narrative, creating a sense of uneasiness in oneself. The 'playing-off' also challenges the reader's own morals, making him re-think his attitude towards today’s crisis.

Also significant is Priest's use of an anti-hero. Alan Whitman, a university lecturer living in a faltering marriage is our spineless, unfaithful and lazy protagonist. It is interesting to see the events from such a deeply flawed character’s perspective, rather than the persecuted heroic figure or all-guns-blazing military figure more usually seen in dystopias.

So if you are looking for a novel with a gripping narrative, interwoven with timely and important themes (as well as death and explosions), read Fugue for a Darkening Island.

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Light into Darkness

By Alex Aslett

The library has two new book displays this week.

On display in the library are books linked to Remembrance Day. 

This includes war related books written by Old Pauline authors, as well as books about Old Pauline War Artists Eric Kennington and Paul Nash, including one from the Rare Books Room. There are also poems by Old Pauline poets Ewart Alan Macintosh, who died in World War One, and Laurence Binyon, who wrote the famous lines They shall grow not old. 

In the display cabinet near the Montgomery Room are books relating to the International Year of Light - books about light, or which have the word light in the title.

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Prizes Prizes Prizes

by Alex Aslett

October has seen the award of two of the literary world's most coveted prizes: the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Man Booker Prize.  The Nobel Prize went to the Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexeivich:

You can find out more about her and her work here:http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-svetlana-alexievich-winner-of-the-nobel-prize-in-literature

The librarians have also put together a display of books written by or about Nobel prize-winners - not just those in the field of literature - which can be seen in the cabinet by the Montgomery Room.  Figures represented include Nelson Mandela, Seamus Heaney, Aung San Suu Kyi , Milton Freeman, Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King and Malala Yousafzai.  There's also a list of the rest of the 2015 Nobel prize-winners.

The Man Booker Prize this year went to A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James.  Set in Jamaica and the US, the book focuses on the events surrounding the shooting of singer Bob Marley at his Kingston home in 1976. 

It is told in the voices of an eclectic cast of characters - gangsters, politicians, hitmen, groupies and CIA agents - some of whom are dead.  In exploring the aftermath of the shooting, the novel also charts the rise of the crack cocaine epidemic in the US in the 1980s. 

You can find an article by Marlon James and the other five Booker-shortlisted writers, exploring the genesis of their novels, here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/10/man-booker-prize-2015-shortlist-novels

Book of the Week

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Recommended by Alessandro Comoli

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic novel written from a unique perspective. It is based on a true story concerning Satrapi’s childhood and upbringing during the turbulent time of the Iraqi-Iranian war and the aftermath in Iran and Austria.

The book commences in Iran, before the aforementioned war. The protagonist was brought up by radical Marxists who supported the Islamic revolution and overthrowing of the Shah. The war occurred largely because after various negotiations relating to the resources of the country, with the UK and the U.S., the Iranian people saw the Shah as a puppet and rebelled until they felt justice had been done.

National Poetry Day

Yes, today is John Colet Day. But it's also National Poetry Day -

- and this year is the 21st anniversary of the UK's annual celebration of poetry, and all things poetical.

The day is a chance to break with the tyranny of prose for 24 hours by sharing poetry in every conceivable way. Every year has a different theme: this year's theme is light.

You can follow events on Twitter, via the hashtags #nationalpoetryday and #thinkofapoem. The most creative of the day's tweets will be added to the Blackpool Illuminations.

Poems on the Underground will be broadcasting live at Covent Garden and Oval tube stations throughout the day, and the BBC will be launching 'Contains Strong Language', a season dedicated to the disruptive power of poetry: for more details, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/27wq69x1zsvNcPbcJmFrJfF/about-the-season

Book of the Week

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Recommended by Robert Daniel

The Talented Mr Ripley is a very good book which explores the inner turmoils of a charming, yet tortured murderer set against the backdrop of some of the most beautiful places in Europe (the Amalfi coast, Venice, Paris, Rome and the Cote d'Azur).

The story is gripping as Ripley impersonates Dickie Greenleaf, the young man whom he murdered and whose identity he stole. It is fascinating to see Ripley adapt his speech, looks and lifestyle to become Dickie, but the image soon begins to crumble and Ripley must adapt and improvise to survive. The way by which Highsmith explores this change is masterful and is what the book is really about. Ripley himself blows any other characters out of the water, making them seem boring and forgettable compared to him, and his inner dialogue is brilliant. I especially loved the scene where he plans, with a chilling logic and calm, how he will murder Dickie the following day. Of course, the locations are also incredible, especially as Highsmith uses different writing styles and description to give a sense of the atmosphere of each place, but this is really in the background compared to Ripley's brilliant character.

In conclusion, The Talented Mr Ripley is an excellent crime thriller written from an unusual perspective which I would recommend highly.

Book of the Week

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, reviewed by Hasan Imam-Sadeque

The Man in the High Castle is set in an alternate dystopian future where the axis powers won the Second World War and took over the world, changing the course of history forever. In it the world is split between the Nazi empire and the Imperial Japanese empire. The Nazis control Europe, Africa, Arabia and small parts of the Americas, eradicating all ethnicities deemed ‘unfit’, manipulating puppet governments, draining the Mediterranean Sea to increase its land mass and even effectively taking over its old ally, the Italian empire. the IJE, on the other hand, controls most of the rest of the world but is not as harsh as its Nazi counterpart and is much more liberal. In between these two hulking empires is the last remnant of free USA, called the Rocky Mountain Buffer. Here, the citizens are told that if the allies had won, communism would have taken over the world, and - not knowing any better - they believe all of the propaganda they are fed.

The novel is written from the perspective of different characters situated in both Japanese and Nazi occupied America, during which the Fuhrer dies and a Nazi power struggle erupts. Many of the characters read from a fictional novel (within the novel) about what would have happened if the Allies had emerged victories in WW2 - the book is outright banned in the Nazi Empire but published in the more liberal IJE, as well as other remaining countries.

Book of the week

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch, reviewed by Alex Haydn-Williams



Foxglove Summer is the fifth book in Aaronovitch’s bestselling Rivers of London series, which follows Peter Grant, an apprentice in the magical division of the Met Police, The Folly, as he balances his life between learning spells, upholding the rule of law in the worlds of fairies and demi-gods sustaining a less-than-professional relationship with one of the aforementioned gods and trying to understand how this whole “magic” thing works.

What I read this summer ...

by Mr O'Keeffe

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Were it not for a seven hour TGV train journey through France I doubt I would have got round to tackling this. Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t think it’s at least 300 pages too long ? My theory is that editors were clearly too scared to tell Ms Tartt that she needed to cut it and that bits of it don’t work, and that all those who had spent so many hours ploughing through the 900 pages were clearly reluctant to admit that it might not have been time well spent. I blame the TGV.

Book of the Week

Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts

Recommended by George Farago

Napoleon the Great is a new, controversial biography of one of history's greatest figures, that goes against the traditional viewpoint taken by historians to put him in a very different light.  Roberts uncovers a side of Napoleon hidden from us by years of propaganda and shows us that Napoleon was more than just a great general, he was a great statesman, politician, activist and a striver whose achievements easily could rival those of Caesar, Alexander the Great, Washington and Genghis Khan.  He wasn't an egomaniac who wanted to take over the world.  He was, without doubt, ambitious, but he was also a great leader who wanted what was best for France, its people and all the other people in his empire.