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Tomorrow is World Book Day and at the school where I work everyone is coming in fancy dress as a literary character. I really support the aims of world book day, but I do hate dressing up so much!
Now, given that I hope not to have to put much effort into this, I have two options … a) go as a Hogwarts pupil using my O.H.’s Oxford gown and the Gryffindor scarf I knitted for my daughter for precisely this reason the other year, or b) I do have a pair of surgical scrubs I could wear but can’t think of a character that would wear them that’s suitable for a primary school! …
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A while ago I reviewed The Death of Grass
What would you do if you were the families in the novel, or if you were the government who knew that everyone could die if you didn’t do something?
Most of us felt that if we had a potential safe place to go to like the Custances did, we’d have gone earlier and avoided the race against time and killing along the way – we wouldn’t have waited to find out what the government were planning. One of our group already knows someone with a flu-haven.
What we’d do if we were the government was a different kettle of fish though, we tended to go for the easy option of hiding essential staff and stores in bunkers, letting everyone left outside get on with killing each other and starving before emerging, having crossed our fingers that potato blight hadn’t wiped out the humble spud that would have replaced grasses as our main crop.
It was a brilliant book group choice. Next month though we’re being quite radical and exploring celebrity autobiographies with Frankie Boyle’s My S**t Life So Far
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Finally as always, a few of the new additions to the TBR mountains at Gaskell towers …
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
by Patricia Duncker. What a title! I couldn’t resist, and the description as a metaphysical mystery and romance has me dying to read it soon.- 36 Arguments for the Existence of God
by Rebecca Goldstein is another one with a fantastic title and is a satire on science and religion. I don’t know much about it but it has a join the dots on the front cover and that appealed …
- White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
by Owen Sheers. This is the first in a new series of retellings of stories from the Welsh Mabinogion, the collection of medieval tales which include the first written references to King Arthur. There are two published, and more planned. Brilliant!
You’ll just have to go as a Hogwort’s pupil (I’m not too keen on dressing-up either)!
All three of your new additions sound interesting – I wouldn’t know which one to read first.
I agree – Hogwarts it is! Unless I decide to be a Muggle and not bother at all …
It is so difficult to choose what to read next after the ones I’ve committed to read isn’t it… the pile of must-reads is getting out of hand, but out of those 3 I’d start with the Patricia Duncker.