Final post of term ...

Sadly, Mr Shouler is leaving St Paul's - but he very kindly paused in the middle of packing up all his books to answer the book blog's questions:

Q: What were you reading when you were a teenager?
A: In my early teens, not much. Doing Tess of the d'Urbervilles for GCSE made me want to do English A-level, and then I didn't look back. An unhealthy cocktail of DH Lawrence, EE Cummings and Martin Amis when I was about 16 or 17.

Books of the Year

Looking for something to read over the holidays? Then you've come to the right place - it's our annual 'book of the year' post.  We asked people to nominate the books they'd most enjoyed this year, fiction or non-fiction, and here are the results: many thanks to all those who contributed, and Merry Christmas from the book blog!

Miss Douglass's book of the year is The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson:

'This book had a very funny, but incredibly complex plot. I loved how it cleverly came together towards the end and the characters were so well written.'

Poem of the Day

Keats, 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'

John Keats wrote the following poem after an evening devouring George Chapman's translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Keats develops the idea of the reader as voyager or astrologer, discovering new worlds through his encounter with the literature of the past. The importance and immediacy of a personal experience is stressed - the speaker of the poem 'had [...] been told' about Homer, but the first hand experience of his work is revelatory.

Much have I travel'd in the realms of Gold,
And many goodly States and Kingdoms seen;
Round many western Islands have I been,
Which Bards in fealty to Apollo hold;
But of one wide expanse had I been told,
That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne;
Yet could I never judge what men could mean,
Till I heard CHAPMAN speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout CORTEZ, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific, — and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

This month marks the 200th anniversary of the poem's publication in December 1816, and 2016 is also the quartercentenary of the publication of Chapman's full translation of Homer, the first to appear in English, in 1616.

Book of the Week

The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
Reviewed by Ollie Moore

The Lord of the Rings series was written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, more commonly referred to as J.R.R. Tolkien. An English writer, poet, philologist and university professor, he is known for the works of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. His works tend to fall into the high-fantasy genre.

The Lord of the Rings is set in Middle Earth, a fictional world created by Tolkien. ‘Middle Earth’ is inhabited by mystical creatures such as hobbits, orcs, trolls, ents, elves, wizards, dragons, dwarves and men.

AVARICE

by Alex Jacob

The following is a story I wrote as part of a collection of seven, each depicting one of the seven deadly sins. It's the pithy tale of a man so consumed by his greed for money that he neglects his family, his wife, and ultimately, his own sense of moral integrity, only to fail at the last minute to fulfil his desires.

Avarice

“Ninety five,” shouted out Mr Nelson. 

“One hundred!” came the expected reply from the other side of the room. It was like an infuriating echo thought Mr Nelson to himself. From his place in the crowd, Mr Nelson could not source the face belonging to the voice, but he could make out chubby fingers waving frantically in the air. He could not help but feel personally insulted that the man had chosen to bid specifically against him.

His wife placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Mr Nelson snapped round.

“Get your hands off me!” he bellowed, with unexpected violence. He hadn’t meant to shout, but his anger at losing several bids in a row had culminated in an unexpected surge of aggression; unfortunately his wife was the only person there to receive it. He turned back round quickly so as to avoid the questioning looks from the crowd around him. 

Mr Nelson made his living by buying cheap antiques from auctions such as these, and selling them off at far higher prices. He fixed his eyes on a variety of items on the stage. Several items in particular piqued his interest. Years of gathering antiques had meant that Mr Nelson had an eye for fine furniture, priding himself on an ability to identify rare antiques merely by their design.