Books of the Year

It's our final post of the year, and as always, we've asked staff and students to recommend the books they've most enjoyed reading in 2023 ... 

Dr Harrison's suggestions take us from the 1890s to the 2020s ...
'Not new this year, but Robert Harris’ An Officer and a Spy really brings turn of the 20th century Paris to life with a fictionalised account of the Dreyfus affair from the inside, a look at French army life highlighting the politics of any large organisation interspersed with the effects of thoughtless casual racism.

Leaver's Post

As you may know, Mrs Jones is retiring at the end of this term, after ten years in the Kayton Library patiently helping Paulines find, read (and return!) their books.  We're all very sad to see her go - but we were delighted that she kindly agreed to answer the book blog's Leaver's Questionnaire before departing,

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

I loved Agatha Christie. My favourites were Death on the Nile and Cat among the Pigeons. 

I also loved Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I was given The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which I treasured.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Recommended by Tiger Wang

Project Hail Mary is a science fiction book about humanity’s last ditch attempt to save itself, and if it fails, humanity will perish. The book starts with our narrator (Ryland Grace) waking up on a hospital bed to a computer asking him basic maths questions. He then realises that he has no idea who he is and cannot recall any memories of his life. Throughout the story, flashes of recollection slowly come back to him and he gradually begins to piece together that he is the last surviving person on a three person mission aboard the rocket ship Hail Mary, sent many light years away from Earth to a different solar system. The Earth described in the story is set in around the 2020s, and has discovered that the Sun is shrinking due to a unicellular organism known as 'Astrophage', which is taking energy from the Sun at an exponential rate. Grace has to puzzle out how to destroy Astrophage, and he has to do it alone. Or does he?