Echo Boy

Echo Boy by Matt Haig

Book of the Week: 28 June 2015

Echo Boy

Many books tell a story using two different characters as narrators but how many of them describe the action from the point of view of a robot? The Echo boy of the title is called Daniel, an Enhanced Computerised Humanoid Organism. He is employed by Alex Castle, the hugely rich and powerful owner of Castle Industries, a kind of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates character, who takes in his niece Audrey after the death of her parents. Audrey has a deep fear of Echos, with good reason because her parents were murdered by a rogue humanoid called Alissa who worked for her family. Her father had been a well-known campaigner against society’s over-reliance on technology and artificial intelligence. He encouraged Audrey to read old books and wanted her to be taught by humans rather than androids. This was no easy task because the future where the book is set is one devastated by climate change and shortages. Technology seems to be the only tool that will provide a comfortable life. Following her parents’ deaths Audrey goes to live with her uncle, his brattish son Iago and a house-full of Echoes, but she never feels at ease. Is Uncle Alex as well-meaning as he appears and why does she feel there is something strange and compelling about one of the Echoes?

Echo Boy is a thoughtful look at what it means to be human as well as being a gripping science fiction thriller.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua

Book of the Week: 21 June 2015

Thrilling adventures

 

This is the first time that a Book of the Week may not be borrowed (at least not for a week) although everyone is welcome to read it in the Library. Years 7 and 8 will be researching famous mathematicians in the Library this week and this book should prove very useful.

The cover says it is the (mostly true) story of the first computer. This is because it is a mix of fascinating historical facts, mathematics and comic strip storytelling. Here is the description from Sydney Padua’s website – available here:

Meet two of Victorian London’s greatest geniuses… Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron: mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. And  Charles Babbage, eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it.

But what if things had been different? The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a delightful alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and use it to create runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wider realms of mathematics and, of course, fight crime. Complete with historical curiosities, extensive footnotes and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.

Whether you enjoy a good graphic novel, or are interested in maths and computing, this original book is a fun read.

Joe All Alone

Joe All Alone by Joanna Nadin

Book of the Week: 14 June 2015

Joe All Alone

A quick glance at the cover would make you think this was a funny story about getting by without your parents, a bit like the film Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin. It looks like a quick read for younger readers. It turns out to be a realistic story about coping alone in difficult conditions whilst managing to be tense, funny and sad.

Joe’s Mum and her unpleasant boyfriend Dean go on holiday to Spain, telling Joe to stay out of sight at all costs. At first, Joe is relieved to be out of the way of Perry Fletcher, the school bully, and Bradley his ex-best-friend. He spends his time playing games and watching tv and gets to know a sassy girl called Asha who is staying with her grandfather in a nearby flat. But then Joe’s countdown to his mum’s return becomes a tally of how many days late she is. She and Dean fail to come back on the promised day and Joe struggles to find food and, with no money for electricity, spends his time in the dark. There is also the matter of a secret parcel that Dean has hidden in the flat and which may belong to someone else.

Despite the bleakness of Joe’s situation, this is an uplifting and hopeful story. Joe is quirky and sympathetic and Asha and her grandfather Otis are warm and likeable. The convincing and realistic atmosphere extends to the ending of the book too.

If you enjoyed previous Books of the Week such as Smart by Kim Slater or I Predict a Riot by Catherine Brunton, this story has similar themes.

The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Book of the Week: 7 June 2015

The War of the Worlds

” No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s … Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

You may have heard about the famous 1938 radio broadcast of this story by Orson Welles, when some listeners believed that what they were hearing was a news item announcing the arrival of Martians. You may have seen the 2005 Stephen Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise, or have listened to Jeff Wayne’s musical version from 1978. But have you read the original book? It first appeared as a magazine serial in 1897 and has never been out of print since. It tells the story of an invasion of Earth by Martians from the point of view of an un-named journalist and is a classic science fiction story of suspense and horror.