Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week: 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'


This week we don't have a Book of the Week, but a Poem of the Week, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's masterpiece 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

It is being showcased as part of a Big Read organised by Philip Hoare, who was previously responsible for the Moby Dick Big Read and the author of the wonderful non-fiction study of whales Leviathan.

The Ancient Mariner Big Read is available here: https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com

Today marks day 11 of the Big Read.  It has taken three years to organise, although the lockdown timing of it might make you think that it was something conceived of more recently, perhaps in the style of the ill-fated 'Imagine' tribute by Gal Godot.  Thankfully, this has been more thoroughly thought-through, and it is well worth your time.  Jeremy Irons began it, and it has contributors as diverse as Iggy Pop, Hilary Mantel, Tilda Swinton and the winner of the Foyle young poets award 2020.

Each reading is accompanied by contemporary artwork.  More details are available in Philip Hoare's article for the Guardian.

If you are minded to, you should certainly check out Leviathan itself, and there's always Moby Dick to return to, or to read for the first time, if you are ever in need of being in the company of greatness.

Fist of Five: Islands ...

Today's post was triggered by the National Theatre's excellent adaptation of Treasure Island, which has recently been available for streaming, as well as a post on the language of keeping a distance (including 'isolation' and 'quarantine') on the Merriam Webster blog. As John Donne observed, no man is an island. Although a famous New Yorker cartoon disagrees -

- plenty of fictional characters inhabit islands, and here are five of the most interesting.

Book of the Week

The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
Conor Sinnott

J. D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye had sat in the periphery of my awareness for about two years and I had heard a smattering of details along the way: a sardonic adolescent plays hooky and kills time hanging around Manhattan.

I figured that I already knew so many teenagers who thought their wit was acerbic enough to land them an editor’s position at Private Eye that reading this novel that’s usually taught to fourteen year olds in the US would be a touch jejune. However, with my eighteenth birthday fast approaching, and the disarming reality of adulthood on its heels, I thought I might as well read it, if only for some puerile entertainment.

Further suggestions for lockdown reading ...

This time they come from the 6th form and the U8th, with (as usual) a pithy, three-word recommendation attached.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy: 'portal to adventure'

The Trial by Franz Kafka: 'dystopian, confusing, Kafka-esque'

Book of the Week

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

Recommended by Mr Hager

A hard-hitting and very readable novel from the creator of the well-regarded Juniper Song detective series, this recent work from Steph Cha explores the repercussions from the LA race riots of 1991 by focusing on two families who are drawn together in very unexpected ways.

The novel is set mostly in 2019, with flashbacks to 1991, and is particularly interested in family ties, how they continue and how they are dissolved, and how the past becomes lost through acts of conscious and unconscious revision or obfuscation.  It asks important questions about our relationship with ourselves, our families and the wider community, whilst the shocking event at the centre of the novel asks important moral and ethical questions of the reader and of the characters themselves.  All of this is done within a ‘thriller’ framework, making the novel something of an addictive reading experience whilst challenging us to think more deeply about important and polarising issues.

The novel created something of a Twitter storm before its UK publication, and is well worth a read.  It also allows you to think about the great literary difficulty that is ‘ending a novel well’.  Critical opinion on the final sections of this novel has been divided.  See what you think, and let the blog know!

More details are available here from the publisher, Faber & Faber.

If you want more details about the Juniper Song series, click here.

This is not my hat ...

Today's post is the book blog's first EVER video post - even lockdown has a silver lining.  Many thanks to Dr Gaydon, who has generously shared with us his review of Jon Klassens's brilliant, award-winning picture book This Is Not My Hat. You can find it via the link here. 

If you're intrigued by Dr Gaydon's analysis, and you'd like to take a look at the story yourself but you don't have a copy of the book to hand, you can find a version of it read aloud on Youtube here.  And if you'd like to read another post that celebrates the subtle philosophical undertones of writing for children, take a look at former member of the English Dept Bernard O'Keeffe's deconstruction of David McKee's Not Now, Bernard, which you can find here.  Thanks once again to Dr Gaydon for pioneering the video book blog post - the first, but hopefully not the last!

Book Recommendations from the 5th Form

In today's post, we have some more lockdown reading suggestions, this week from the 5th form, each with three words to recommend each of them:

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin: 'great story-line', according to one Pauline; 'expansive, inventive, character-driven' according to another. They're both right.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon: 'emotional, curious, weird'

Fist of Five: Servants ...

The National Theatre’s amazing response to the closure of all theatres has been to make some of its most celebrated plays available for streaming on Youtube. Tonight sees the first of these, Richard Bean’s smash-hit adaptation of Goldoni’s comedy about the servant with two masters, One Man, Two Guvnors.

In line with the theme, today’s blog post, one of our occasional 'fist of five' series, looks at five memorable servants in literature.