Which book would you take on a desert island ?

[pattricia 575]

Im quite undecided about this.Would it be an encyclopedia or a very thick novel like War & Peace.? You wouldnt want anything youd read before,it would have to be interesting and last a long time.Any ideas ?

[redrobbo 10]

This post was posted by me on another thread earlier this year before Sue Lawley left the programme .....

 

It's long overdue - and to be honest, there's very little time left now following the recent announcement that Sue Lawley is leaving the programme! Although I am still debating what my 8 records will be, when she does eventually find the time to ring me, I do know what book I want to read on my desert island!

 

Back in 1963, it was a difficult book to read, especially for a lad of 14. I'd had a rudimentary secondary school education, and was about to leave school with no academic qualifications. I wasn't a member of the village library - that building was not somewhere my parents ever thought to encourage me to visit or join. No, it was a book I found in the school library. It wasn't even fiction. Maybe that's why I found it hard to read. But I persevered. I finished reading the book, and just after my 15th. birthday, I also finished my schooling, and started work in a dead end job.

 

When the first general election of 1964 was declared, my old Sunday school teacher encouraged me to go to the old school hall and listen to the hustings, where I heard this man speak. His name was Trevor Park. He was the Labour candidate for South-East Derbyshire, my home area. He talked about his vision of a society where we continued learning long after our formal schooling. He spoke of a society which cherished reading and the acquisition of knowledge. He talked of a generation of post-war children who were being consigned to marginal employment due to a lack of educational qualifications. Trevor, I realised, was speaking about me.

 

I was both enthused and confused. I was one of the village thickies. I'd failed my 11+. I hadn't gone to grammar school. My Dad had told me he wasn't letting me go down the pit as he'd done when he'd left school, and so I'd got a clerical job, and my parents were proud of me. But, there was this nagging doubt. After all, I'd read this book. I'd read this book and I'd understood it. It was all about pollution, and how small particles of poison get washed into the sea, and how fish eat these minute particles, and store them in their bodies. Then how men catch the fish, eat them, and become ill. It had big words in it, but I had understood it. Was I that thick after all? There was only one way to find out. I enrolled for night school GCEs.

 

I cycled the 7 miles straight from work to college a couple of nights a week, where I was introduced to a world of Dickens, Bronte, Shakespeare and even poetry for a year. I started visiting theatres in Nottingham and Derby and saw plays. I even joined the village library. I got my first GCE after a year of studying, and at 16, I joined the Labour Party.

 

Five years later, I'd accumulated enough 'O' & 'A' levels from night school classes to go to college full time. Later still I undertook a mature training course and qualified as a social worker.

 

Trevor died a few years ago. I came across his obituary in The Guardian. He was my inspiration. He had galvanised me to achieve better things for myself. But a book had first helped me to understand the world a little better, and to help me realise that I was capable of learning and advancing myself. So when Ms Lawley finally makes that telephone call, I'm going to be ship-wrecked with "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson.

 

I eventually became a social work manager, though no longer working due to ill health problems. I'm now 58, and in the last 3 years I've twice been elected to the city council. No guesses for which political party, but I like to think that Trevor would have been proud of redrobbo.

 

Got to go now folks as the phone is ringing. You never know......it could be Sue!

[redrobbo 10]

Here too is a similar thread about favourite books .....

 

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=50835&highlight=Carson

[pattricia 575]

Never knew you where that age, Redrobbo. You always sound much younger on your threads. Youve done very well from the sound of it,and not wasted your time like some people do today. Well done.

[upinwath 10]

Anything By Archer.

 

Give me something I could burn without regret if I got cold but better than this it would give me a great reason to get away from the island and leave it behind.

[KJ_VENOM 10]

I robot by Isaac asimov a collection of stories i can read over and over again the will smith film was just an extended version of one of these stories called originally little lost robot

[pattricia 575]

I robot by Isaac asimov a collection of stories i can read over and over again the will smith film was just an extended version of one of these stories called originally little lost robot

Are they Sci-Fi stories ?

[KJ_VENOM 10]

Are they Sci-Fi stories ?

 

they are but they follow the life of a woman called susan calvin she was only a small part of the will smith film its more than SCI-FI it looks at human emotions through the eyes of a 'robopsycologist'

[pattricia 575]

they are but they follow the life of a woman called susan calvin she was only a small part of the will smith film its more than SCI-FI it looks at human emotions through the eyes of a 'robopsycologist'

Oh, that does sound interesting. Is she like a female "Cracker" ?

[Jabberwocky 46]

I would take "How to survive on a desert island" or a similarly titled book.

 

Or H.G Wells War of the worlds. Thats my all time favourite book and since i first read it as an 8 year old, Ive re-read it hundreds of times. It has a certain summery feel to it.

[hacker 10]

I've got a book called The Compendium of English Literature (Vol 2) that's about 2,000 pages with leaves like tissue. I used to bring it with me when I went travelling. 36-hour train journeys and the like.

That'd keep me going.

 

My (current) favourite is Pale Fire by Nabakov though. Wouldn't want to be without that either. Oh, and Portrait of an Artist.....

[aligel 10]

Hello!

 

My first time to this group - I don't write fiction, but I'm a proofreader and editor, if anyone ever needs help with anything.

 

I would probably take a big fat English dictionary to a desert island, or a book of Hemingway short stories, or my favourite novel is 'Crime and Punishment' by Dostoyevsky....so indecisive - good thing it's very unlikely to happen!

 

Alison