Book of the Week

The War of the Worlds by HG Wells 
Recommended by Jasper Parish

HG Wells’ thriller, The War of the Worlds, follows the desperate survival of a single unnamed protagonist throughout an unprecedented martian invasion. The novel explores everything, from the sighting of activity on Mars to the effect of earth’s hostile conditions on extra-terrestrials.

Wells’ style of writing appealed to me because he leaves out no details and describes everything as if he were truly setting eyes on it. He is very careful to make every nook and cranny believable. This really adds a huge amount to the already good plot because without these realistic descriptions, the novel would be almost unreadable. So, with solid descriptions, Wells’ thriller becomes a very interesting read.

Book of the Week

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Recommended by Jonah Boothe

The Day of the Triffids is a dystopian novel written in 1951 by English science fiction writer John Wyndham. The book is set around the time of the cold war, as is shown by the fact that the triffids are suggested to be a soviet experiment gone wrong.

The Wind in the Willows

Director's Notes by Mr Anthony

The Wind in the Willows, written by Kenneth Grahame in 1908, is one of those literary classics (like The Wizard of Oz, Alice or, now, The Lord of the Rings) for which the aesthetic potency of illustration and adaptation has somewhat eclipsed the musty old book-bound words themselves – which is why many more people claim to have read these novels than actually have.

I have never read The Wind in the Willows but, as long as I can remember, I have got the gist. A combination of the 1996 Pythonesque film adaptation directed by Terry Jones (starring Jones as Mr. Toad, Eric Idle as Rat, and a lovely turn from Victoria Wood as, of course, The Tea Lady), the charming illustrations of E. H. Shepard (an addition to the 1933 reprint, from the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh, which have become the blueprint for stage and film designers for nearly a century) and this, Bennett’s masterful 1990 stage adaptation for the National Theatre, have meant that one is so familiar with these anthropomorphized riverbank capers that one can blithely lie about having read the original with no qualms whatsoever (something, incidentally, that the recent BBC adaptation has finally allowed me to do about War and Peace).

Book of the Week

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Recommended by Nicholas Stanger

The novel follows the story of Wall Street banker Sherman McCoy (known to himself as a 'Master of the Universe') and his lover Maria with whom he is having an affair.

American Dreams ...

As David Garrow's new biography of Barack Obama ('impressive but gratuitously snarly': New York Times) hits the bookstores,  Amartya Varma considers the former president's own account of his early days, Dreams from my Father.

Everybody has origins - the more obscure, the harder it impacts you. Floundering rootless in a predominantly white society, Obama is compelled to look back to where he came from after hearing about the death of his estranged father who abandoned him as a child.

Book of the Week

The Breaks Are Off by Graeme Swann
Recommended by Zack McGuire

For any cricket fan, this is a great book, as it gives an insight into what it is like to be a professional cricketer, as well as talking about many of the struggles that Graeme Swann went through in his journey to the top, be it fallouts with coaches or problems with terrorism.

English Society hits the road ...

Sebastian Kobler writes: The first meeting of the rebooted English Society will be today at 12:45 in E1. We will be discussing On The Road, Jack Kerouac’s seminal 1957 novel based on his own travels around the United States.

We follow Sal Paradise and his friend Dean Moriarty as they hit the road, travelling across late 1940s America, indulging in the jazz-influenced underground culture. The novel is considered a classic of the Beat literary movement, which was closely intertwined with the cultural revolution of post-war America and influenced, among others, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Come along this lunchtime to find out more about On The Road and discuss a few passages.

If you'd like to know a little more about Kerouac and his novel, here's a piece by Mr O'Keeffe reflecting on the significance of cars and journeys in On The Road, and in twentieth-century American literature in general.

Book of the Week

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Recommended by Ollie Moore

The Man in the High Castle was written by Philip K. Dick. An American writer, Dick mainly published works in the science fiction genre, exploring philosophical, sociological and political themes in novels with plots involving authoritarian governments.

The book is set in roughly the 1962 period and depicts an alternative world where the Nazis and Imperial Japanese won World War II. There are three main plots in the book: the spy plot, the arts and crafts plot and the spy and art plot. These are told through seven different points-of-view, which all intertwine eventually. The I Ching, a series of ancient Chinese books, provides a link between the plots throughout the book as it is used by different characters to predict their future.