Today is our final post of the year: sadly Mr Parris, Mrs Mackenzie, Mrs Graham, Dr Ruddick, Mr Barile, Miss Leconte and Mr Yao are among those leaving SPS at the end of this term. But they very kindly paused in the middle of their packing up to answer the blog's Leavers' Questionnaire ...
What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Mr Parris: Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory, Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting
The first book I remember reading that wasn’t a bodice ripper or a spy novel was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It rocked my world and changed my reading habits.
Mrs Graham:I read mainly history, novels and plays. I remember some reading habits for example, Wuthering Heights was perfect for very cold weekend days.
Our school curriculum was very ‘undiverse’ so I filled in the gaps with slave narratives, and African American biographies, history and literature. I loved reading plays. I liked the classical Greeks but also Ionesco and many others but my favourite playwright was Eugene O’Neill.
Dr Ruddick: A lot of fantasy fiction, especially anything Arthurian – Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Arthurian stories were a particular favourite, and in my early teens I loved Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence; in fact, I still re-read Book 2 every midwinter.
I also read a lot of Agatha Christie, which I still enjoy, along with classics like Little Women. I can remember my teachers trying to push me to read more ‘challenging’ texts, so I read Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I was 13 but didn’t have much clue what was going on; likewise with Brave New World. By the time I did my A Levels I was going through a mildly ‘Goth’/Romantic phase and loved the melodrama of Daphne du Maurier and Emily Bronte, although I also appreciated the mock-Gothic irony of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
And I was slightly in love with Gabriel Oak from Far from the Madding Crowd.
Mr Barile: I found myself enthralled by stories of perseverance. Whether I was reading Louis Zamperini's story of survival in Unbroken or a tale of a Mt. Everest disaster Into Thin Air, nonfiction works of perilous conditions people endured always made the turmoil of being a teenager seem manageable.
Miss Leconte: Very unoriginal but I was obsessed with the Twilight series for a while… I cannot deny I still love them despite being fully aware of the terrible quality of the writing.
Thankfully I did French and English literature for A-Level so I also had to read a lot of better written books and classics, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice which I absolutely loved and contributed to my obsession for English for sure. Another random book that I love from and that I remember reading in just a few days despite it being quite thick is The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Swiss author Joël Dicker. I would definitely recommend reading it if you like thrillers!
Mr Yao: I was reading the Financial Times rather than any books. I came to the UK when I was 16 and catching up with my English was always a priority. My school had 2 prep periods a day. I would finish all my homework in one prep and dedicated the other prep to reading the FT. Even then I could barely finish the cover page. I had a green highlighter which I would use to highlight any words that I didn't know. After I finished with the front page, the yellow newspaper would often become entirely green.
What are you planning to read this holiday?
Mr Parris: The Etymologicon – Mark Forsyth
Mrs Mackenzie: I’ve got some exciting reading lined up! I’m currently reading The Georgians by Penny Corfield. It’s wonderful. And I’m slowly reading Hidden Hands by Mary Wellesley which is about the people (including women) who made and kept manuscripts.
Lined up, I’ve got the newly published Vic Gatrell Conspiracy on Cato Street that I’m really looking forward to starting, and Robert Graves’ Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth that I’ve been meaning to read for a while. When Dr Beesley died his wife, Lizzy, invited us all to take a book from his office. I’ve got his copy of Ronald Hutton’s The Witch that I really want to read, but at the moment I’m still a bit too sad to be able to open it.
History tells such fabulous stories: spies, murder, mayhem, beauty and endeavour. It’s an exciting summer of reading ahead.
Mrs Graham:The novel will be Fox by Anthony Gardner. A deadly disease spread by foxes has forced the reintroduction fox hunts including in London and upended politics.
Apparently, there are also government plots against privacy and foreign intrigue. Sounds fun. (It was written in 2016.) For non-fiction, I have set myself the task of learning Uzbek.
Dr Ruddick: As I will be teaching Russian history in my new job, I shall be immersing myself in some Russian history and fiction – top of my list is Orlando Figes: A People’s Tragedy on the Russian Revolution and Natasha’s Dance on Russian cultural history. I think it’s also finally time to bite the bullet and read Tolstoy’s War and Peace!
I have my eye on R F Kuang’s Babel for some new fantasy reading and Amy Jeffs’ Storyland on medieval British mythology. I’m interested in the new Laura Bates book, Fix the System Not the Women, but I fear it might make me cross, so I’ll need to decompress afterwards by revisiting an old favourite – maybe Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.
Mr Barile: In preparation for medical school interviews, I have thrown myself into stories of sickness. Why We Get Sick by Randolph M. Nesse is an old (1994 published) account of Darwinian medicine; an attempt to describe illness through the lens of evolution.
Miss Leconte: I am currently reading Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised so I need to finish this and then I am planning on reading A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as it is one of many classics I have not read yet.
I also plan on reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara at some point in the near future as I have heard about it many many times, but I need to prepare as I have heard it can be quite intense.
Mr Yao: I plan to read Robert Rubin's The Yellow Pad: Making Better Decisions in an Uncertain World
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It was reading Rubin's first book, In an Uncertain World, that made me go into bond trading and joining Goldman Sachs after university. The idea the world is not deterministic but stochastic (full of chance/luck) was eye opening for me. After that, I know while I need to try my best, I also need to let go the result as it is not always (if ever) within my control.
What/who is your all-time favourite book/writer?
Mr Parris: Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Mrs Mackenzie: My all-time favourite book is Pride and Prejudice. I just love the writing, the characterisation and the story. Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost runs a close second.
It’s a historical crime novel set during the restoration of the monarchy in 1663 with many real characters and plots woven into the narrative. The story of a murder is told from four different perspectives, and only as the novel progresses does the reader begin to understand what’s going on. It’s a must read.
Mrs Graham: My all-time favourite writer is Edith Wharton. My all-time favourite book is Lord of Rings which I discovered browsing the university library when I was a student in Turkey. I had never heard of it and liked the title.
Later, I purchased a copy while working in the Middle East and it became an indispensable companion during my work travels which involved 8 hour to 3 day long transfers between destinations by plane, ship and helicopter. In gratitude for its service in my youth I own several copies in both English and French.
Dr Ruddick: So many to choose from! Few days go by when I don’t spend some time reading my slightly-falling-apart Bible – it’s foundational to my life as a practising Christian. My go-to comfort reads are Brat Farrar or The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (golden age detective fiction with a twist) and anything by Barbara Pym (a sort of Jane Austen for the 1950s, but funnier).
Two other books that I have re-read multiple times are Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (a historical crime novel with a fabulously unreliable narrator – IMHO, far better than The Handmaid’s Tale) and Possession by A S Byatt (a great parody of academia as well as a fun pastiche of Victorian romance, with a genuinely moving plot). I also love Helen Dunmore’s writing – she was a published poet before she was a novelist and I think it really shows in her beautiful prose; her novel The Siege on the siege of Leningrad during WWII will stay with me a long time.
Marilynne Robinson is another writer whose prose you want to savour and read slowly for its hauntingly beautiful qualities – especially her debut novel Housekeeping. If I had to pick one all-time favourite, though, it would be George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I read it for the first time about ten years ago and was blown away by it – Eliot’s writing is so psychologically insightful about human nature in all its frailty and flaws.
It’s also very funny at times. By the end, the characters felt like old friends and I return to it on a regular basis, sometimes just to re-read little scenes that I like. I still find the ending slightly disappointing, though – (spoiler alert) I think Dorothea makes the same mistake twice.
Mr Barile: While I'd love to name a more intellectual novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has always been my most enjoyable reread.
Miss Leconte: It’s a very tricky question but I would say that my favourite book is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
I also really like the contemporary French author David Foenkinos for light, easy reads. He wrote the famous Delicacy, but my favourite is Vers la beauté.
Mr Yao: George Orwell. When I read Animal Farm or 1984, intially I thought he was very good as he captured my life growing in China very well.
Who’s your favourite fictional character?
Mr Parris: The Man in Black – The Princess Bride by William Goldman
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| Cary Elwes as The Man in Black in the film version of The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1997) |
Mrs Mackenzie: Hornblower! If you haven’t read this series by C S Forester you’ve got a treat in store.
Mrs Graham: Odysseus
Mr Barile: Once again, I cannot escape my love for Harry Potter. I've always admired Hermione Granger.
Miss Leconte: It has to be Elizabeth Bennet…
Mr Yao: Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimove's Foundation.
He designed an entire system which through not central command but individual's free will, the best outcome was achieved for the society. This is an economist's ultimate dream.
Do you have a favourite word/favourite line from a book?
Mr Parris: 'Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.' (The Princess Bride)
Mrs Mackenzie: It’s a long line, but how’s this for a sentence that encapsulates anger, frustration, humiliation, as well as 19th century social mores: 'You are mistaken, Mr Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.' Isn’t that a fabulous line!
Mrs Graham: Yes! My favourite line is what Red Queen tells Alice in Through the Looking Glass.
'Now here you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place' which beautifully sums up most of my working life.
Dr Ruddick: LOTR is eminently quotable but if I had to pick just one extract, it would be Sam Gamgee’s moment of hope in The Return of the King, when he and Frodo are trapped in the darkness of Mordor: 'There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.' It’s such a beautiful picture of the power of love, perseverance and hope in the midst of darkness.
Mr Barile: I fear I'd mention Harry Potter again, so I will abstain.
Miss Leconte: 'Le vertige, c’est autre chose que la peur de tomber. C’est la voix du vide au-dessous de nous qui nous attire et nous envoûte, le désir de chute dont nous nous défendons ensuite avec effroi. Avoir le vertige c’est être ivre de sa propre faiblesse. On a conscience de sa faiblesse et on ne veut pas lui résister, mais s’y abandonner.' (Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
Mr Yao: 'All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.' (George Orwell, Animal Farm)
If you had to recommend one book that everyone should read, what would it be?
Mr Parris: The Princess Bride – William Goldman
Mrs Mackenzie: Primo Levi If This is a Man. Man’s inhumanity to man is legion. Read this and understand the fragility of rights and freedoms, and why they should be cherished and protected.
Mrs Graham: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years by Taylor Branch. A fascinating recounting of a turbulent era.
It weaves the entire universe of leaders (including but not exclusively King), individuals (black and white), communities, organisations and movements into a coherent narrative that often reads like a thriller. A nuanced and comprehensive study of a society changing.
Dr Ruddick: Read something that will expand or change the way you view the world. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been recommending Tom Holland’s Dominion a lot, which is a sweeping and often surprising history of the impact of Christianity on western society and ideas, including in supposedly ‘secular’ areas such as science and human rights.
For those with less time on their hands, read a compilation of Gary Larson’s The Far Side comics – just for fun!
Mr Barile: Chasing my Cure, the autobiographical story of a young medical student who discovered a cure for his rare and deadly disease.
An amazing tale of what is possible with belief.
Miss Leconte: I recently finished The Ice People by René Barjavel and really enjoyed it.
The plot is very original (it’s a romantic science fiction!) yet it allows the author to tackle timeless issues by looking at mankind’s repeated mistakes.
This is his reflection after observing the lives of his high achieving Harvard and Oxford classmates going down the opposite direction of what they intended. This is a problem many of our students might run into later due to the high achieving nature of our school.
Many thanks to Mr Parris, Mrs Mackenzie, Mrs Graham, Dr Ruddick, Mr Barile, Miss Leconte and Mr Yao for generously taking the time to answer the book blog's questions: we hope they've given you some ideas for what to read next, and we wish them all the best with life beyond SPS. Have a fabulous holiday, and happy reading!!!
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