BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH

So is this the best book from my August selections, or the best book I've read this month?

If it's the best book I've read this month then it's The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.  And that is because it's so bloody long, it was the only book I read this month. 

As for best book from my August selections... Duh, Wolf Hall obviously. 

BEST BACK TO SCHOOL BOOK

It’s been a very long time since I was last in school (1981 according to the damning photographic evidence posted earlier this month), but as a child and a teenager I loved reading books which were set in schools. And they were even better if they were set in boarding schools. It seemed worlds away from my village primary school and the terrifyingly large comprehensive school I attended.

From Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers and St Clare’s series of books set in a girls’ boarding school in England, to The Chalet School, which was unbelievably exotic being set in places like Switzerland or Austria, I devoured these books.

And I didn’t just stick to girls’ schools. Anthony Buckridge’s Jennings books are about two English grammar school boys and their classmates. These were written and set in the 1940s, and while the language might be dated (fossilized fish-hooks!), these stories of teenage boys doing what teenage boys do best (i.e. causing mayhem with the best of intentions), are delightful.

For instance, Jennings and his best friend Darbishire (this is 1940s England, surnames only please) decide to publish a school magazine and have a couple of competitions. One of their friends submits a poem called 'Break Break Break' (you may have heard of it). Jennings reads it and says, "I don't suppose Wordsworth and Tennyson and all that lot would think much of it, but it's not bad for a chap of twelve". After much confusion and accusations of plagiarism, it turns out that their friend had actually entered the handwriting competition and not the poetry competition.

And then there’s Molesworth. Another candidate for the ‘best pairing of words and pictures’ challenge, these books by Geoffrey Willans, and illustrated by Ronald Searle are hilarious (as any fule kno).

WAS TOTALLY WORTH THE HYPE

Wolf Hall. Seriously people. How many times do I have to tell you? READ THIS BOOK!

MOST TIMELESS CONTEMPORARY BOOK

 I think today's theme was the most slippery. What exactly is contemporary? And if it is contemporary, how do we know it's going to be timeless?

 Therefore I've come up with my own definition of contemporary and that is anything written after 1980, which means I can give a book that made yesterday's shortlist a reprieve. 
 

After dithering for ages yesterday about what to choose as a classic most relevant to now, I eventually rejected The Handmaid's Tale in favour of Fahrenheit 451. 

As I said in the July challenge when I chose this book as the one I wished I'd written, the events in this book really could happen, and in fact, some of the things in this book have happened and are still happening to women around the world. It is timeless and relevant. 

CLASSIC MOST RELEVANT TO NOW

“It was a pleasure to burn”

I remember being given a passage of literature to read for a comprehension exercise at school when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I had no idea what book it came from or who wrote it. But I found it very weird and disturbing. 

A few years later, I picked up Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and realised where the anonymous piece of writing had come from. And I found it even more disturbing.

A faster pace of life has led to people having shorter attention spans. Books are abridged and bowdlerized because of their controversial content, and eventually they are banned altogether and burned. Instead of reading, people’s leisure time now consists of watching sport or mindless soap operas on huge flat-screen TVs which take up the whole wall.

Yep, written in 1953, I would say this is pretty damn relevant.