World Book Day Quiz

 This week it's World Book Day!!!! (on Thursday) - so that means it's time for the Book Blog's annual World Book Day Quiz.  

This year's questions have been devised by Mr Harris, Mr Kemp, Miss McLaren, Mr Dormandy, Mr Gardner, Miss Muir, Mr Green and Dr McDonnell: huge thanks to all of them for contributing. So - time to test your literary knowledge, with questions on book covers, theatre slang, scifi, clifi, nature and animals, literary chronology, a cryptic Shakespeare crossword and a splendour of literary moustaches.  There's a link to the quiz here - it's open until 9.00 am next Monday, so feel free to submit your entry at any time before then.  The answers, and the winner, will be revealed in our post in the final week of term. 

And if one quiz isn't enough for you, the Kayton Library is running another one later this week. Mrs Cummings writes: 

'You’re invited to Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner – outside the Kayton Library on World Book Day Thursday 4th March and Friday 5th March. 

Can you guess who the guests are from the clues we’ve put at the table? Extra points given for the author and book title we are thinking of. Two Nando’s vouchers for the two best entries.'

With a fabulous prize like that, how can you resist??? Happy World Book Day, and happy quizzing!  

 

Book of the Week

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre 
Recommended by David Brown
 
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre is now almost 85 years old and yet its themes remain relevant to this day. This philosophical fiction takes the form of a diary by protagonist Roquentin, a 30 year old author of  historical fiction who inhabits a small hotel room in the French town of Bouville (which translates to mud town), and as the novel progresses the extent of his isolation becomes increasingly evident. 
 

The novel is defined by the motif Sartre presents throughout: the occasional awareness of one's cognition, presented as moments in which the character is literally enveloped by these intrusive thoughts, or 'Nausea'. These moments act as an important character study for Roquentin, as having moments to peer into his unprocessed mental state allows for a commentary on the epidemic that is Nausea and the type of people it might affect. I found that these were the moments when the greatest insights into Sartre’s philosophy were revealed, as well as some of the most satisfying moments within the novel because the events preceding them built up tension within the mind of the character and reader before erupting into grand frenzies of thought. 

This week on the blog, we're featuring extracts from the creative work produced by 8th form students for their extended projects. Today's post is part of a collection of interlinked short stories, introduced by its author, Thomas Lamont.

For my EPQ I wrote a collection of fantasy short stories, Old Stories in Dark Places, based on the styles of authors such as Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett. This story, 'Three Magic Lizards', was the first story in the collection and served as a creation myth to the world I tried to develop for the stories.

Old Stories in Dark Places

    Orion sat at the bar, nursing his Souten. It sat in a hard earthen mug, the gray liquid a sweet fruity smell atop the worn wood of the bar. It was his third drink of the night, and he was getting ready to tell a story. The inn was in that ever so common midpoint of the evening where the musicians were taking a break and the customers were eating the last of their meals. Soon a silence would fill the taproom. Not a silence with no noise, but a silence of nothing important. A silence of mindless chatter without laughter, music without emotion, and the silence that is brought with the absence of a story.

    So, Orion had decided to tell a story. He knew a lot of stories and told a lot of stories, but this crowd was a hard one to tell a story too. You see, a story must satisfy everyone that listens, and in a busy inn in a busy city in a busy region such as this, almost no story will satisfy everyone’s tastes.

This week, we're publishing creative work produced by 8th form students for their extended projects. Today's extract is introduced by its author, Tom Salter. 

For my EPQ I planned out a plot of a historical novel, Scorched Grass, and wrote three distinct (non-consecutive) chapters. This excerpt is taken from the second chapter which would have been located towards the middle of the novel’s storyline, where my main character is journeying alone through a 12th century English countryside decimated by civil war. 

—For a while, I wandered across the countryside. If you could call it that. There was nothing at all which distinguished it from a barren desert. No Oxen and no Ploughman tilling the fields. Just the bare earth in the bare field, frozen solid from the winter chill.

As I crossed through, I came across a plough leaning against a hedgerow. The limbs of a hawthorn wrapped around the faded machinery, entwining it in its very own embrace. Stubbled branches stripped of their clothing encircled it, a slow process of deconstruction, the onset of a generation’s work. 

Tentacles hung from the plough, but now they were beginning to crumble as the strength of the sun began to take over. Having paused for a moment, I continued on my way to the end of the field.