What PGS Teachers Will Be Reading this Summer: II

The summer holidays are the perfect time to catch up on some reading. 

Here, Mrs Bell, Mrs Burkinshaw and Mrs Kirby reveal what books they are looking forward to this July and August. 


Mrs Bell

I really enjoyed reading Reservoir 13 in the Library bookclub, so I have ordered some more books by Jon McGregor: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin: he is a really remarkable writer. 

For light relief, I shall be reading some of my late dad’s Dorothy L. Sayers: exquisitely written and humorous detective thrillers starring Lord Peter Wimsey. 

Non-fiction reading will include Mary Beard’s Women and Power and an interesting text called Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. Plenty to chew on there!

Mrs Burkinshaw

I love Caitlin Moran's writing, which is always engaging, lively and humorous. I am looking forward to reading her new novel, How to Be Famous. Set in the 1990s, at the height of 'Britpop', it is about a young woman trying to make her way in a pre-#MeToo, male-dominated world. 

I am also going to be reading This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay. The author is a former doctor, now turned comedian. I am fascinated by the world of medicine and, like many people, concerned about the stress that so many NHS staff are being placed under in this, the seventieth year of the NHS. Kay's book has been described as harrowing, hilarious and humane. 

Mrs Kirby

Sarah Schmidt ‘s See What I Have Done tells the story of a real-life nineteenth-century American murder, told from multiple perspectives. Historically, the eldest daughter of the respectable household was put on trial for killing her father and step-mother, but was eventually acquitted due to public outcry. Schmidt is less interested in trying to uncover if the daughter was in fact guilty or, if she wasn’t, who else the culprit might have been, than plunging the reader into the suffocating and complex dynamic of a seemingly reputable but highly dysfunctional family. Both compelling and unsettling, I highly recommend this novel.