What Pupils and Teachers Are Reading This Summer: 5

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

James Burkinshaw (JEB)

I usually have a few books to read over the summer, but this year it is just the one: Marcel Proust’s seven-volume A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (translated as: In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past).

It is seen by many as the greatest novel ever written, but, at 1.5 million words/3,300 pages, it has been more admired than read. Proust's brother, Robert, lamented, "The sad thing is that people have to be very ill or have broken a leg, in order to have the opportunity to read it" (appropriately enough, Marcel wrote much of it while confined to his own bed). My opportunity arose while cooped up during the second lockdown. I managed to get through the first two volumes, so my plan for this summer is to read the next two. Then, this winter, a final, three-volume assault on the summit.

"Why bother?" you might (not unreasonably) ask.

"Because it's there", as George Mallory is supposed to have said when asked "Why climb Everest?". Proust's mountainous novel towers over the twentieth century, having influenced some of its greatest writers: Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov. Proust himself knew he was writing something significant - and spent the last three years of his life in a desperate race against time to finish his novel. He died aged only 52. 

Part of A La Recherche's power comes from this urgent attempt to capture the transient nature of consciousness itself - the protean interfusion of sensory impression, perception, reflection, emotion and memory - while always aware that our only means of doing so - language - is equally slippery and elusive. In our own era of information overload and sensory saturation, Proust's work - fascinated and frustrated, as it is, by life's semiotic surface - seems more timely than ever.  

Alice Ren

I have heard numerous different opinions on Robert Greene’s controversial book ‘48 Laws of Power’, and I look forward to finding out why it has been banned in some prisons and is considered evil and manipulative by some. Then, I plan on reading “The Eighth Day of Creation” by Horace Freeland Judson, which provides thorough details about the history of molecular biology and the stories of key discoveries in the scientific field. 

"The Seven Daughters of Eve" by Brian Sykes is also high up on my reading list, as it explores the journey of a gene that has passed from generation to generation through the maternal line, which allows researchers to track our genetic ancestors and what their lives were like. 

Ruth Richmond (RJIR)

Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher is a book that took the western world by surprise in 2020; surprise in the sense that a book written for ‘Christian dissidents in a post-Christian age’ would go to Number 1 in the best sellers list in America!

Knowing that what happens in America is very likely to come here, this is a book at the top of my summer reading list. Essentially, the book already confirmed to me what I already feared was happening: that Christianity is under attack and that unless action is taken soon then we ought not to be surprised to see Christianity completed sidelined in all areas of life.

The term ‘Live not by lies’ was composed by Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who refused to affirm anything he knew to be untrue, even at the price. Inspired by Solzhenitsyn, Rod Dreher, an Eastern Orthodox Christian journalist, talks about the rise of ‘soft totalitarianism’ in America and beyond - identity politics is beginning to encroach on every aspect of life, progressives attempt to marginalise conservatives, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Corporations, and many universities, now censor opinions with which they disagree. Technology is inching towards a surveillance state, and consumerism has made us willing to accept a secularism imposed not by gulags but by ‘softer’ means. 

Despite these warning signs, many American Christians fail to recognise the dangers and even fewer know what to do to resist. Meanwhile, the men and women who survived communist oppression have been sounding the alarm that their souls and their liberties are already at stake; the book documents their stories too.

You might be wondering why I am reading something so serious during the summer. My answer is, if it is important, then the summer holiday gives you a decent chunk of time to read and digest it.