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.'


Dr Weller recommended two vintage classics: Poul Anderson's Tau Zero - the story of a doomed voyage to colonise a new world, and, according to fans,  'the very definition of big idea science fiction' -

and Len Deighton's 1962 classic Cold War thriller, The Ipcress File - the first in his series featuring British spy Harry Palmer, a gritty, low-key alternative to the glitz and glamour of the decade's other British secret agent, James Bond. 

Ms Loosemore's book of the year is David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks.

'Just finished this and loved it.  Six chapters spanning six decades of Holly Sykes's life, from growing up in Gravesend, Essex, to old age in Sheep's Head, Country Cork - via a Swiss ski resort, marriage and motherhood with a war zone reporter, life as a best-selling author ... so far, so (relatively) normal.  But scattered through the day to day is a succession of encounters with various Atemporals, as the war between the Horologists and the Anchorites swirls around Holly, her family and friends.  With a very real portrayal of how daily life could be altered by climate change in the next few decades, and a cast of characters glimpsed to a greater or lesser extent in David Mitchell's other novels, this is an intriguing read!

Dr Jacoby recommends a non-fiction book - Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli.

'It's a fantastic non-mathematical insight into how we understand the universe by a leading expert on Quantum Loop Gravity. Short, almost poetic chapters from Einstein and beyond.'

Dr Lowes's book of the year is Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson:

'An exciting thriller but also full of realistic details that help to describe both the harshness of area (Siberia) and the difficulty of the task facing the hero – an unusual character himself. As with many things in life, the journey is at least as interesting as the destination, if not more!'

Another Physics teacher recommends The City and The City by China Miéville.

'The combination of an  old-school detective story, a bizarre East European country and a bifurcated city which is nothing like any other gripped me throughout, and the beautiful prose made me savour every page. It’s the first of his books I’ve read and I’ll be working my work through the rest.'

Mr Cairns has several suggestions for his book of the year: 'two of the best books of this year are in fact books I have reread.  The name of the town Parramatta stuck in my mind ever since I first read Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, probably in 1997. 

After a visit there at Easter this year, I reread the book with even greater pleasure.   It is set in the Victorian era, tells the story of two odd-bods, Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier (who spent her youth in Parramatta) and involves the transportation of a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, up the New South Wales coast.  Carey’s imagination is breath-taking – I find myself asking again and again, ‘How on earth did he think of that idea?’   It is also funny and contains this marvellous exchange (from memory):  "Jealousy killed the cat."  "Surely it’s curiosity?"  "Curiosity to start with, you’ll find, but jealousy in the end."

'The other novel I’ve reread is Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932). 

I have no idea what Welwyn Garden City (where he wrote the novel) is like, but I marvel that he can conjure up the luminous fields and the cycle of seasons (both literal and spiritual) in north-eastern Scotland from a town 19 miles from King’s Cross station.  It’s a beautiful but also a darkly violent tale. I cannot read the final pages without feeling deeply moved (though I remain to be convinced that the music printed there is actually ‘The flowers of the forest’, that great lament for the fallen at the battle of Flodden in 1513).

'The best new book I’ve read is without a doubt Iain Banks’ The Crow Road.   It has a great opening line, too: "It was the day my grandmother exploded”.

Sinister, amusing and lyrical by turns - a page-turner, at least for me.  The author’s ear for dialogue in the west of Scotland is amazingly accurate.  It’s the real thing, exactly how they talk there.'

Mr Deakin's book of the year is London: the Information Capital by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti.

'Probably one of the most interesting books I’ve read recently. London is one of the most heavily information-centred cities in the world; everything from minicab routes, to house-prices via supermarket density to dating websites. This book skilfully maps out such information with great clarity, showing the popularity of the St Paul’s towpath for runners, and the most popular destinations for Boris Bike dockings. One of those books you can dip in and out of at leisure, and you can always find out more.'

Dr Smith nominated Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. 

'Tetlock is famous for his twenty-year study into expert political judgement, the results of which were published a few years ago: he found that most “expert” political commentators were as accurate at predicting the future as a “dart-throwing chimp”.  In the aftermath of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, the US intelligence Community ran a forecasting tournament to find out if it was possible to use freely-available information to make better predictions about the future than they had done in suggesting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  Tetlock assembled a team of amateurs that soundly beat all the competition – including national intelligence agencies – and the book is about how these superforecasters avoid the biases and errors in judgement that cost the world so dearly.  The book draws on many intellectual fields, and throws up examples of how our everyday thinking goes wrong: recognisably human, but susceptible to improvement. For anyone with an interest in politics, prediction, history, psychology or statistics.'

Miss McLaren's book of the year is Filmish: a Graphic Journey Through Film by Edward Ross.

 'Ross is an Edinburgh-based cartoonist, whose self-published (ok, self-photocopied) four-page comics about film and film theory used to be sold at Edinburgh's art cinema, the Filmhouse on Lothian Road.  Now he's expanded them into one volume and added colour: the result is a fascinating exploration of ideas about cinema, brilliantly illustrated with visual quotes from a wide range of movies, often very wittily juxtaposed with the ideas he's discussing.'