Book of the Week

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Recommended by George Davies

24 years after its publication, Jared Diamond’s seminal account of human history as we know it remains unrivalled in its impressively broad and interdisciplinary approach to the fundamentals of human development and inequality. You can find it on Geography, Politics, Anthropology, and International Relations lists anywhere you look, and it retains a strong hold on the 'Popular Science' section of your local Waterstones - at the very least, it is deemed worthy of enthusiastic endorsement by our own school’s Geography department. So what’s all the hype really about?

To re-make or not re-make? That is the question ...

Today's post is one of our occasional series, 'What I don't get ...', in which a brave member of the SPS community sticks their neck out and explains exactly what they think is wrong with a particular writer, book, or literary issue.  Here, Kiyo Brandreth-Stroud looks at the pros and cons - well, mostly the cons - of updating Shakespeare's plays to contemporary settings. Over to you, Kiyo ...

I want to start off by saying that this is very much an opinion piece and if you are someone who delights in bad movies, painful acting and bad scriptwriting then this article may not be for you.

All that glitters is not gold and that is certainly true when it comes to film adaptations of Shakespeare. It seems every few years a new Shakespeare inspired film arrives in the cinemas with a flashy trailer and the novel idea to set it in the modern-day. 

Funnily enough, they all seem to be about gangsters, guns and drugs which speaks volumes about the originality of such works. There is a reason that of the ten worst-rated Shakespeare adaptations (IMDB), nine of them are set in the modern-day. It is clear that there is something about these films that sets your teeth on edge and makes you wince with each painfully delivered line of Shakespeare’s finest poetry and prose.

Book of the Week

It's World Bee Day on Thursday (see here for more info) - and appropriately enough, our book of the week is A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney, recommended by Eddie Atkinson

First performed in 1958, A Taste of Honey was written by 19 year old Shelagh Delaney and adapted for film in 1961, as well as inspiring a jazz standard since recorded by the Beatles, Barbara Streisand and, inexplicably, Billy Dee Williams (a discovery that allowed me to become one of the privileged 2,000 or so people to have listened to a fairly large chunk of Lando Calrissian’s discography yet left him still only the second most musically successful actor to have played the character).

Book(s) of the Week

5EN.F are back with some book recommendations.  Oliver Burt recommends The Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a series of poems derived from tablets made in Ancient Mesopotamia, roughly 3500-4000 years ago. It portrays the journeys and hardships of King Gilgamesh and has many morals and lessons in it. 

It is likely fiction, but it is unknown what elements are and are not true. The genre is epic poetry and I would say the book is for anyone who is interested in ancient mythology and history. I liked it because it was drastically different to what I usually read, as I have never read an epic in its entirety before. The fact that it was so hard to understand at times only added to the feeling of awe at just how long it has survived for. The translation was very well done and managed to convey the flow of the poetry that would have been originally intended by the creator. The beauty of epics like this and other well-known ones such as the epic of Beowulf is that they are incomplete, and so it really feels like the reader is experiencing history as it is created. 

The Rider by Tim Krabbé

Recommended by Mr Harris

As Tim Krabbé approaches the start line of the Tour de Mont Aigoual, a gruelling four hour road race that stretches over 137 km and 3 mountain climbs, he surveys the smattering of spectators that are sitting in the roadside cafés. 'Non-racers', he thinks to himself, 'The emptiness of those lives shocks me.'