Book of the Week

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

Recommended by Cillian Bramham

The first thing about The Wheel Of Time that strikes many readers is the length of the series as a whole. Even if you do not count the prequel, New Spring or the cut chapters of River of Souls and A Fire Within the Ways, the 14 main novels come to around 15,000 pages in total. 

This means that the books can and will take up a significant portion of your time. It also leads to pacing issues throughout the novels. Whilst none of the books can be explicitly called boring, there is a section, dubbed affectionately by the community as 'the slog', between books 7-10 where nothing really happens as most of the time and events are being devoted to preparing for the novel's conclusion and wrapping up story lines. Fundamentally this series represents a commitment and whilst the payoff for this commitment is high, it nonetheless requires a great deal of time and effort to get to.

Play of the Week

The RNT's recent production of Hamlet will be streaming in cinemas across the country from tomorrow onwards. For anyone planning to watch it, here are some thoughts from Theo Katzenellenbogen, who played Claudius in the recent SPS production of Shakespeare's tragedy.  

Book of the Week

Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Perez Galdos
Recommended by Mr Hager

Set in late 19th Century Madrid, this 1887 novel follows the lives of two extraordinary women of different classes, both linked by their love for the same man, the spoiled and self-indulgent Juanito Santa Cruz.

Jacinta is Juanito’s husband (and cousin) and their seemingly idealistic marriage is soon complicated by Jacinta’s discovery that Juanito had a pre-marital dalliance with the impossibly beautiful Fortunata, before growing bored of her, leaving her pregnant and destitute.  The shadow of Fortunata looms over Jacinta as she becomes increasingly desperate for a child herself, prompting her to take drastic action that will see her becoming involved with the poorer echelons of Madrilenian society, thrusting her into Jacinta’s orbit.

The life of mercantile Madrid is wryly catalogued in this realist novel which is regarded as Galdos’ masterpiece, and which rivals War and Peace in length.  He is spoken of in the same breath as Dickens (whose Pickwick Papers he translated in 1868), Balzac and Tolstoy.  If you enjoy novels that range across the social spectrum and which consider the lives of an enormous and memorable cast of characters, then this is the book for you.

Book of the Week

Welcome back, and Happy New Year! We hope you've all enjoyed a relaxing Christmas break, with plenty of reading. New Year is often a time for resolutions, and today's book of the week is sometimes viewed as a classic of the self-help genre.  But does its reputation do it justice? Read on and find out.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Recommended by Mr Preece-Smith

This book has been around for generations — it was already well-established when I was at school — but for years I avoided it. The title suggested something slightly sinister, as if it were a handbook in social manipulation. Who would want to be spotted reading what looked like 'The Beginner’s Guide to Gaslighting'?