Books of the Week

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein

Recommended By Cyrus Ghaffarpour

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein are, on the surface, an unusual duo. Thaler is an economist who has since won the Nobel Prize, whilst Sunstein is a Harvard Law Professor and served in the Obama administration. Together, the two of them produce a unique mix of scholarly rigour, combined with a genuine interest in why we ordinary people make the choices we do, and it is this that makes Nudge read more like a conversation you didn’t realise you needed to be having, rather than a dry textbook.

Books of the Week

Today's books of the week have been suggested by 4EN.G and 4EN.J.  

Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge by John Gimlette 

Recommended by Enzo Daoud

Wild Coast is a travel book about the author's journey through Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. It explores isolated areas and shows the lives of its inhabitants. Gimlette’s vivid descriptions of the environment are central in making the book an engaging read. He writes about thick rainforests, gushing rivers, and remote areas, which helps the reader imagine the setting. His journey feels exciting with a hint of danger.

Books of the Week

Today's recommendations are all non-fiction books, and they've been suggested by 5EN.A.

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
Recommended by Siddarth Raj Krishnamurthy

This is an autobiography, written in the form of diary entries, about Adam Kay's time as a junior doctor. It is insightful about his work, and how important the NHS is as well as why it is under so much strain. The structure of the diary entries makes the book seem more immediate and personal, making it easier to understand the author's experiences. Although it is humorous at the start, there is a more serious tone in the middle and at the end of the book as he explains how his job had a significant impact on his life. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in medicine or hoping to become a doctor.

Book of the Week

Thérèse Desqueyroux by François Mauriac

Recommended by Olly Zage

'People who don’t know this forsaken region don’t know what silence is. It surrounds the house like a solid thing born out of the thick mass of forest where nothing lives, only the occasional hooting owl–at night, we think we can hear the sobs we stifle.'

Neither heroine nor anti-heroine are appropriate words to describe the position assumed by the titular character  in François Mauriac’s 1927 novel. As much as anything, this ambiguity reflects Thérèse’s own sense of moral and spiritual untethering, and the brilliance of description and characterisation by which Mauriac is able to convey and instil a similar malaise in the reader.

Books of the Week

Today's post offers some non-fiction reading suggestions from 4D.

Night by Elie Wiesel
Recommended by Neel Achar

I chose this because I wanted to gain some historical knowledge on the Holocaust. I was also interested in the father-son bond involved in this book. The book is an autobiography which explores the teenage years of the author in his journey to survive the concentration camps. The soul-crushing, depressing tone gives the book a distinctive flavour, although the constant melancholy was sometimes overwhelming, making the book unbearable to read. The author's style is extremely realistic, describing the situation from their point of view as it goes from hopeful to a dire, desperate scenario of survival. I recommend it because it educates us all on the horrors of the Holocaust, providing us with useful historical knowledge. Secondly, it explores the belief in 'God' and how an omni-benevolent being would allow such suffering to his people.

Amadeus

Director's Notes on Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Mr Anthony

During her eleven-year tenure as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher attended only one production at Britain’s National Theatre: a performance of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. 

Poster for the original RNT production of Amadeus in 1979, designed by Richard Bird and Michael Mayhew

She described it as a 'filthy play' and upbraided director Peter Hall for depicting Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. When Hall pointed out that Mozart’s correspondence was laced with lavatorial flourishes (a missive to his cousin, Marianne, is touchingly signed off: 'by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin'), Thatcher held her ground: 'It is not possible,' she insisted, 'not from someone who could create works of such beauty. It cannot be so.'

Simon Callow as Mozart in the original RNT production

World Book Day

It's World Book Day! And LGBTQ+ History Month!! And International Women's Day (on Sunday)!!! To quote Lorelei Lee in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, 'things keep on happening all the time'. We can't keep up.  

We've got a couple of recommendations for LGBTQ+ History month in a moment, but first, a reminder to check out the Kayton Library's celebration of reading for World Book Day (and International Year of Reading).  You can't have missed the magnificent Bookflix posters all around the school, blazoned with reading suggestions from teachers, prefects, Polecon, the Boat Club. If you want something a bit more targeted, try the librarians' 'Round the World in 80 Days' challenge. With just under 80 days left in the school year, can you read a book from every continent? You can pick up a booklet with suggestions for each location from the library: stickers and Haribo for every continent you tick off.  

And if you fancy something more substantial (and possibly even healthier) than inter-continental Haribos, you can win Nando's vouchers in the library's annual 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?' quiz. Outside the library, there's a table laid for several mystery, literary guests: can you work out who they are? If you want some tips, have a look at last year's quiz (and the answers) here: have fun!  

Meanwhile, some suggestions for LGBTQ+ History Month.  

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse

Recommended by Mr Gardner

This prize-winning collection of poetry, published in 2021, presents an extraordinary and at times quite explicit poetic exploration of the bodily. Whilst the collection is most striking for its focus on visceral suffering, anguish and persecution, there is also joy—or at least the tantalising promise of it—in the poetry’s projection of a transfigured ideal of beauty and desire.

If you would like to read a sample of greathouse’s poetry, a poem from her most recent publication Deed is linked here.