What Pupils and Staff Are Reading This Summer: 7

As we approach the end of the summer term, PGS pupils and staff reveal what they are planning to read over this summer holiday. 

Louisa Burton

 I have always had good intentions to read “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall, but as of yet it is still in the ever-growing “new book” pile! Alec Bradpiece in Year 10 raved about it on the way back from the Geography fieldtrip and I knew that this had to be the one book that I successful read from start to finish over the summer. Part of my reason for having not started it yet is that I feared it would be fairly textbook in style, but the reviews (including that from Alec) suggest that it is very readable. A must for anyone interested in geopolitics, is what I have heard!

Wayne Doidge

This summer I plan to once again read The Wheel Of Time series, starting with book one The Eye Of The World.  I doubt I will complete all 15 volumes over the summer but it is amazing and has been prompted by the news that Amazon will be releasing a series on Prime later this year which I can’t wait to watch and I hope they do the series justice in the making.  The series details the exploits of 5 young adults who are catapulted through a series of events that they have little control over and change the entire world.  The premise is that the three boys are chosen by the tapestry of life to influence and weave those around them in a way that corrects errors caused by the dark one to the life threads of those living through ages. 

The world is set with female Aes Sedai controlling magic with any males destined for madness and the world was broken by powerful men going mad because the dark one tainted the male half of the source of magic.  There are literally thousands of characters who are woven throughout the series and the interactions with the three boys cause them to be where they need to be at the right time.  Initially, my favourite character was Perrin Aybara, who learned he could speak with wolves but later I loved the character of Matrim Cauthon who was a rogue.  He tried his best throughout the series to defy the pattern but always ended up inadvertently doing what needed to be done.

If anyone has the time to read the series, after a slow start it really immerses the reader in an amazing world.

I have included an infographic and link for anyone interested…

https://observer.com/2018/10/amazon-wheel-of-time-lord-of-the-rings-hbo-game-of-thrones/

Simon Lemieux (SL)

‘For my summer reading I am going to stray into something both familiar yet also unfamiliar. I shall be reading ‘The Long Take’ by Robin Robertson. Familiar because the subject matter is a Canadian D-Day veteran with PTSD, so it is set in the aftermath of the Second World War, a familiar habit of the historian. Unfamiliar because it is written in a poetic rather than prose format, and the last time I read any poetry was…... The blurb on the inside front cover offers the prospect of it being both remarkable yet unclassifiable book, which pretty much sums up the last 16 months or more. So, a new genre if well-trodden terrain.’

Martin Smith (MJS)

“Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well,/My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell.”

So wrote Karl Marx a decade before his Communist Manifesto. The Satanic influence on Marx is a lesser-known aspect of the influences upon his life. Whether or not he was a pawn in a diabolically supernatural plan that dwarfed him, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration by Paul Kengor is on my list for summer reading as I seek to make sense of the genesis of a movement which led to not only the murder of millions, the enslavement of many more and the destruction, in the 20th Century, of entire cultures, but also to help better understand the modern day resurgence of Marxism under the guise of a radical individualism which has taken its aim once again at culture, this time seeking to re-make it by first destroying the scientifically, socially and morally axiomatic understandings of gender, marriage and the family. The book promises much; reviewers say it is as scholarly as it is depressing.