Christmas Holiday Reading recommendations – Staff picks from 2014

Books of the Year 2014 and holiday recommendations

I’ve been canvassing opinion for some of the favourite books read or published this year. Here is the eclectic mix of choices from some of our teachers and the Library staff.

I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban –  Malala Yousafzai

Ms Atherton The things they carried – Tim O’Brien. This book was recommended to me some years ago and I finally read it over the summer. It is an incredible book – both a novel and collection of inter-linked stories of the men in a platoon in the Vietnam War. It is a fictional account but the  author based it on his own experiences of the Vietnam War. The detail and experiences of the soldiers feel so real and the book has become a powerful anti-war classic.

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

We were liars – E. Lockhart

Dr Williams recommends the crime fiction of Canadian writer Louise Penny

Lewis Dartnell has written a book this year entitled The Knowledge: How to rebuild our world from scratch

It has been described  by The Guardian as “A terrifically engrossing History of Science and Technology” and by Nature journal as “The Ultimate do-it-yourself guide to ‘rebooting’ human civilisation”

What Milo Saw – Virginia Macgregor

Mr Hendrick – Stoner by John Williams, Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Mr Atherton (Maths) Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre – The fascinating true spy story that changed the course of World War II

Dr Rosen (Biology) told us that he is working his way through  the free classics on his Kindle! One he found amazing was The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. An epic exploration of the human psyche.

Ms Wright(Library Assistant) Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys This proved a hugely popular book when it was on the Carnegie Shortlist in 2012. It is a moving account of a Lithuanian family’s arrest and deportation to Siberia following the Russian occupation of their country during World War II. See a pupil’s review here

Mrs Wayman – A Tale for the Time being by Ruth Ozeki and  The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Man Booker Prize Winner 2014)