Map Addict

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Map Addict by Mike Parker
Book of the Week: 12 July 2015
Map Addict

Geography students, those returning from Duke of Edinburgh expeditions whose maps might have got a bit soggy during the last week, and anyone who is planning a trip this summer – try Map Addict by Mike Parker. The final book choice of the academic year is non-fiction and the publisher’s description says:

Have you ever got through an entire day without referring to some kind of navigational aide, be it checking the A-Z, touring the globe on Google Earth, planning a walk or navigating a shopping centre? Maps are everywhere and they are, according to self proclaimed map-addict Mike Parker, the unsung heroes of life. Here he sings their song, celebrating everything cartographic.

With a mix of wry observation and hard fact, the offbeat and the completely pedantic, Parker wages a one-man war against the moronic blandishments of the Sat Nav age. He combines cartographic history and trivia with memoir and oblique observation to create a highly readable exposé of the world of maps. Only here can you find out which area has officially been named by the OS as the most boring square kilometre in the land and whether Milton Keynes was really built to pagan alignment.

Confessing that his own impressive map collection was founded on a virulent teenage shoplifting habit Parker ponders how a good leftie can be so gung-ho about British cartographic imperialism and establishes himself as defender and saviour of British cartography in the internet age.

I would have written my own review but couldn’t persuade my husband, a geography graduate, to put it down long enough.

Summer reading

Those on the judging team for November’s Warwickshire Year 9 Book Award will be reading some or all of these shortlisted books. I have read We Are All Made of Molecules which reminded me slightly of Wonder by R.J. Palacio and The Dogs by Allan Stratton which was wonderfully creepy. I am looking forward to the other two.

CHSZvBaWgAAXfWHA few books have been published just a little too late to be added to stock now, but look out for them next term or borrow them from your local public library.

There is a lot of media coverage of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman which is to be published on July 14th. It is a long-lost companion volume to To Kill a Mockingbird.

On July 16th Ernest Cline brings out Armada which sounds slightly similar in plot to Ready Player One and Joe Abercrombie completes his Shattered Sea trilogy with Half a War.Cline_Covers

For younger readers, the mighty Patrick Ness has The Rest of Us Just Live Here due on August 27, a story about not being a hero with superpowers.Rest of Us

September promises a new Derek Landy that has nothing to do with Skulduggery Pleasant. Demon Road is the first in a trilogy and has vampires, killer cars and demons. Then there is another installment of the Lorien Legacies with The Fate of Ten plus the third in the Paladin Prophecy series by Mark Frost, entitled Rogue. Lots to look forward to.

Happy reading!

Mrs Watts

Othello

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Othello by William Shakespeare

Book of the Week: 5 July 2015

STC 22305 copy 1, title page

 

It’s Activities Week when Year 7 will be working on a production of Othello, so Book of the Week has temporarily become ‘Play of the Week’.

A popular soldier and a newly married man, Othello seems to be in an enviable position. And yet, when his supposed friend sows doubts in his mind about his wife’s fidelity, he is gradually consumed by suspicion. In this powerful tragedy, innocence is corrupted and trust is eroded as every relationship is drawn into a tangled web of jealousies.

Quotation from the blurb of: Shakespeare, W. (2005) Othello. Edited with a commentary by Kenneth Muir. London: Penguin.

Picture of first quarto title page of Othello. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Othello_title_page.jpg (Accessed: 5 July 2015)