A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

I studied this book for my English Literature exams at school. I loved it. It has a romantic hero with whom I could identify! The story is set at the time of the French Revolution and oscillates between London and Paris. Englishman Sydney Carton is instrumental in the acquittal of alleged French spy Charles Darnay. Both are in love with Lucie Manette but it is Charles who marries her. After the French Revolution, Charles is sentenced to death by guillotine. Does Sydney seize his chance? You’ll have to read the book to find out. It was written in weekly installments for a magazine so each chapter ends with a cliff-hanger. In other words, it’s a bit like a soap opera – but with far better characterisation. One of the highlights of my life was striding across the old Place de la Guillotine in Paris saying “It is a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done”. Read it to find out why!

Borrow it from the school library and read it. I dare you.

The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll

This week the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN in Geneva has been turned on again. It has been upgraded to work at even higher energies. This book is an explanation of its famous discovery of 3 years ago – the Higgs Boson. If you ever wondered what the fuss was about, you could try this book. It’s accessible in places and might sound like Double Dutch in other parts. I’ve been reading it to Mrs B, who is not a physicist, at a page a day! I can tell she’s been listening when she shouts “that’s impossible!” at me. The book is like that!

The Geek Manifesto by Mark Henderson

Here is a book to follow on from the election. It is written by a science journalist and administrator who has become disillusioned at the way politicians of all persuasions try to claim that their policies are evidence-based. He works for a medical charity at the moment and so is very well aware of the need for “double blind” trials. He is very critical of the methods used in government that fall short of these high standards. This book is partisan – it is a passionate defence of the role of science in our society. If that’s not your thing, you might consider it to be a polemic. But do try the book. You don’t have to read it all to get the flavour. He covers many different policy areas.

 

Borrow it from the school library and read it. I dare you.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

This is fiction but it is based around a true event. In 1974, a tightrope walked set up a line and walked between the Twin Towers in New York, the buildings that were destroyed on 9/11. The book is written in the “point of view” style where each chapter is written from the view of a particular character. Witnessing the tightrope walking event is the thing they all have in common. The characters from very different backgrounds. There is a judge and a prostitue whom he has to try. There is a radical priest working to improve the lives of prostitutes in a poor area. There is a group of mothers whose sons have died in the Vietnam war. The tightrope acts as a metaphor for their lives. This is well-written and interesting. It’s particularly useful if you dream of being a writer.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

I thought Robert Louis Stevenson was a writer of children’s books, but having discovered that he has a reputation as one of the first travel writers, I decided to have a look. I enjoyed this book a lot. Yes, there is a lot of travel. The hero, David Balfour, is kidnapped and put onto a boat to America in 1752. He is shipwrecked on the west coast of Scotland and walks back through the mountains to Edinburgh, getting accused of a political assassination along the way. There was still a civil war going on in northern Scotland in those days. David is naturally a supporter of King George but befriends one of the rebel fighters and they become best friends. It is these characters who are the strength of the book. Stevenson shows that it is possible to build bonds across a political divide. The two challenge each other and change each other by being people rather than caricatures.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

This book changed my life.

I read this book in 1980 when I was in Year 9 (go on, do the maths). It is about the experiences of a young woman from quite a privileged background in 1914 and beyond, so it’s a good year to read the book. She had struggled against the Edwardian idea that women should not study and should stay at home. She battled for a place at Oxford University and had just achieved that aim when war broke out. Her brother went to fight, along with his friend. Vera had fallen in love with his friend. This is their story. It tells of how she gave up her university education to volunteer as a nurse on the Western Front. Her experiences turned her into a pacifist. I found it inspiring that someone could be so passionate about ideals that she could let them change her destiny. The book challenged me to study harder and to become more aware of what was happening in the world. It gave me my Higher Education and my politics. Perhaps this book won’t have such a strong effect on you, but is there a book that changed your life?

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

It’s been many, many years since I read this book. I have forgotten the story but I still have a vivid picture of what it felt and looked like. Researching the book to write this, it turns out that my reaction is apparently correct. She was writing in what they call the “stream of consciousness” style. She was trying to give a sense of the flow of random thoughts and information from the senses that go through your mind. So that’s what I was supposed to get out of reading it! The story is set just over 100 years ago. A well-off family have a big holiday on the Scottish islands: Queen Victoria had made Scottish holidays very popular. Then 10 years go by in which several characters die. It finishes when the rest of the family meet up on the island again to fulfil a promise to visit the lighthouse. I think about it every time I see a lighthouse when I visit Scotland. It came back to me recently when I discovered that the father is based on Virginia Woolf’s own father, Leslie Stephen, who was a professor at Cambridge University as well as being one of England’s best ever mountaineers.