Final Post ...

Sadly, this term we say goodbye to Miss Good, Dr Hudson and Mr Young - but they very kindly agreed to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire before departing.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Miss Good:To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Dr Hudson: Aged 13 and 14, mostly Marvel comics. I collected them and had complete sets of all the major titles. I have just depressed myself by checking how valuable one of the comics I then owned would now be: Amazing Fantasy No.15, the first appearance of Spider Man, apparently sold seven years ago at auction for $1.1! I bought it for half a crown (12½ p) – that price including a few others – at a second-hand bookshop in Aldershot in 1969.

I also had a copy of each of the original Incredible Hulk series, which ran to only six issues. I sold the lot when I was 15 in order to buy a guitar amp. And I started reading proper books, too, beginning – as I recall – with Great Expectations. Moral of the story? If you want to be rich, kids, keep away from Rock and Roll and Dickens.
 Mr Young: Well, I have to admit that I tended to prioritise playing sport of any kind during my teenage years but did get stuck into a few books by the saints – St Basil's On the Making of Man, St Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey into God, etc.

I also loved the Chronicles of Narnia and then later on moved onto reading arguments for and against God - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens, The Rage against God by Peter Hitchens, Straw Dogs by John Gray, There is a God by Anthony Flew.

The Women's Prize for Fiction: some summer reading suggestions

Miss McLaughlin

Early in June, Kamila Shamsie was announced as the winner of the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her seventh novel Home Fire.

Of the shortlist, the 2018 Chair of Judges Sarah Sands, said: “This was a dazzling shortlist, it had depth and richness and variety. We were forcibly struck by the quality of the prose. Each book had its champions. We loved the originality of mermaids and courtesans, we were awed by the lyrical truth of an American road trip which serves as a commentary of the history of race in America, we discussed into the night the fine and dignified treatment of a woman’s domestic abuse, we laughed over a student’s rite of passage and we experienced the truth of losing a parent and loving a child. In the end we chose the book which we felt spoke for our times. Home Fire is about identity, conflicting loyalties, love and politics. And it sustains mastery of its themes and its form. It is a remarkable book which we passionately recommend.”

In the half term, I read one of the shortlisted works. Imogen Hermes Gower’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is set in Georgian London and presents a transactional world where everything from wonders and women’s affections are monetised and mythicised. Mr Hancock is a Merchant who, after finding his ship exchanged for a curiosity, is swept into the world of up-scale brothels full of high class men, showmanship and gaudy extravagance. As the novel moves into magic realism and weaves a plot around Angelica Neal – a beautiful, vain and immoral courtesan - and Jonah Hancock, the reader is led through parlours, brothels, coffee shops and dockyards and comes face-to-face with marvels. Imogen Hermes Gower’s prose shimmers (forgive me), mermaid-like and is, in fact, so subtle and engaging that, by the time we are faced with one, we too believe in the strange rolling mermaid held in a salt-water tank.

Imogen Hermes Gower studied Archaeology, Anthropology, and Art History and went on to work in museums. She gained plaudits for her short stories based on the artefacts she worked with and this, her debut novel, also based on an object, is the product of her work begun whilst completing an MA in Creative Writing.

Hers was one of six books on the short list for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, announced in April, the full short list being:

Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
Jessie Greengrass, Sight
Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

You can read an interview with Imogen Hermes Gower here and an extract from her novel here.  

You can find out more about the prize here, and website has usefully created a page full of suggestions for your next read.

This year's judges:

Imogen Stubbs, Katy Brand, Catherine Mayer, Sarah Sands and Anita Anand. 

Pandaemonium 2018

This term's issue of Pandaemonium, the SPS creative writing magazine featuring stories and screenplays by a range of current Pauline writers will be published on Friday: click here for a preview.

The magazine will be distributed during afternoon tutors.  If you'd like to get involved with the magazine, or submit any writing or art-work for the next issue, just e-mail Mr Gardner at mtg@stpaulsschool.org.uk

Book of the Week

1984 by George Orwell
Recommended by Kiyo Brandreth-Stroud

'Ignorance is strength' is the last line of the motto in the novel 1984, a dystopian novel written in 1949 by the author George Orwell, famous for his book, Animal Farm. This book is famous for its many underlying messages and is interesting on many levels.

The book was written just a few years after the horrors of World War Two and only twenty five years after the Russian revolution. The Labour party is in power and Orwell is in despair, driving him to write this book reflecting his inside emotions.

An Extract from 'Cheating Death'

Today's post is introduced by its author, Charlie de Waal:

'This extract is the opening chapter of a novel I planned and developed extracts from for my EPQ. It emulates some of the style of Sir Terry Pratchett, who is undeniably my favorite author (if you look back in book blog history you’ll see me defending him against J.K Rowling) and who has significantly influenced my writing style to be what it is today.

My EPQ centred around developing character building, in particular exploring and expanding upon Pratchett’s take on the Grim Reaper, Death. This story depicts the process my character of Death goes through to collect someone’s soul. I hope you enjoy it, and I thoroughly recommend any and all of Terry Pratchett’s books.'

Book of the Week

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Recommended by Claudius Wheeler

This novel is based around early 20^th century Alabama, in Maycomb county. It was written by an author famous for this single novel called Harper Lee and is narrated by a girl named Scout, whose experiences relate to Lee’s childhood, having been brought up around this area at the same time the novel is set in. The title is taken from the wise words of her father, Atticus Finch: 'mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy… it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

The plot of the novel is Scout and her brother Jem living their everyday life in Maycomb county, while their father, who is a lawyer, ends up early in the novel defending a black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a woman, in a court appeal.  As the word of this spreads across the racist county, Jem and Scout become subject to names at school that they can’t quite grasp but understand they are insults to their father.  Despite the pressure, they must restrain themselves from violence to these other children and people, although this is not always kept. The novel generally focuses on Scout, the younger sibling, through whom Lee portrays a vision of youth and humour in her actions as a six-year-old girl, but also keeps in the background the story of racial injustice. Scout has a childish perspective of this that can be ironic, which shows how such a serious matter is viewed through the eyes of an immature child, which also expresses the humour of Scout’s character as well.