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.

Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When I was in Year 9 my favourite band were a “progressive metal” band from Canada called Rush. My favourite song was called Xanadu. I found out that it was a reworking of a poem by an English poet called Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Even better, he was mates with William Wordsworth, lived in the Lake District and lived like a rock star. The poem on which the song Xanadu is based is called Kubla Khan. It’s my favourite of his poems, obviously. It was written in, shall we say, circumstances that might not be unknown to some modern rock stars. Words from the poem Frost at Midnight are carved into the steps where you hire rowing boats at Keswick. Read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner if you’ve got lots of time. (Iron Maiden did a song based on that!) Coleridge turned me into a Romantic (as opposed to romantic – there is a difference). And he’s my hero because he’s the first person recorded as descending Broad Stand on Scafell. He fell down it and lived to tell the tale.

INTRODUCING PHILOSOPHY: A Graphic Guide

I love this series of books. They use graphic art (a sort of comic book look) to break up the text. I can assure you that the ideas have not been dumbed down but they are easier to digest, especially if visual layout helps you to think more clearly.

Philosophy is important. It asks questions like “how can we know anything?” Like “what does it mean to exist?” Like “what does it mean to be good?”

These questions and more are covered along with the important thinkers who attempted to answer the questions.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

 

 

 

Read this book if you like a mystery.

 

 

Fancy being called Piscine Molitor Patel all the way through school! So he shortens his name to Pi. His parents run the local zoo in the French bit of India. They decide to sell up and move to Canada. The animals are loaded onto a boat (Noah’s Ark metaphor??). The boat sinks in a storm and Pi ends up in a lifeboat with a tiger. You know all that because you saw the film trailers. But what’s really going on? Is the story literal reality? Has he lied to cover up a horror? Is it that the trauma of bereavement and loneliness has messed with his mind? Is this really a book about religion? Is Pi a hero or a villain? The reason I loved it was because there are lots of questions! Please let me know if you understand it because my household wants answers...

 

 

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

 

 

New Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney

 

Seamus Heaney was a great poet from Ireland who died this year. What I like about this book of his early poems is that he wrote several poems about the Bog People. These are bodies from thousands of years ago that have been preserved in the peat. When I was 7 years old we never went abroad on holiday but rather randomly we went to Denmark. I was taken to see Tollund Man in the town of Aarhus. They think that his throat was slit in a ritual sacrifice and that he was thrown into a bog. The same year that I went to Denmark, Seamus Heaney was writing a poem about Tollund Man. It's on page 31 of the book. As a scientist, I'd be radio-carbon dating the man. I'd study him objectively. What I love about poetry is that it offers an emotional response. I look for objective facts. He tells me what Tollund Man means to him subjectively. It's just a different way of studying life. Seamus Heaney was from a part of Ireland that cut peat for fuel. He uses the poem to draw parallel with the peat areas of Jutland in Denmark. He then seems to me to reflect on the violence in Ireland at that time. Borrow the book. Read that poem and other ones about the bogs eg Grauballe Man on page 69.