Desert Island Books

Desert Island Books

Our castaways for this issue of NB are three more members of our Heritage Collections team.

This team take care of our most precious and rare items. Some of the members of this team also curate the wonderful exhibitions that run throughout the year on the third floor. As usual each castaway has been given a virtual copy of the SAS Survival Guide and asked to choose just five books to keep them company.

Julian Smith – Rare Books Librarian

Barry Crump – The Odd Spot of Bother
There would have to be one by Barry Crump, for the raw old-school Kiwi humour. Of several candidates for his funniest, I would perhaps choose The odd spot of bother, notably for the farcical scene in which the lottery-winning protagonist struggles to convince the locals at a yokel pub that his cheque signature is authentic.

Tootles the Taxi and Other Rhymes
Having worked a number of years in Children’s librarianship there has to be one children’s book. Amongst many candidates, this ancient Ladybird book still resonates, partly for the verse, but mostly for the memorable style of illustration.

The Adventures of Roderick Random. Tobias Smollett
This 1748 picaresque novel was the unlikely spark for my youthful interest in English (or Scottish) literature. Full of grotesque rogues, bawdy misadventures, and the flying contents of chamber-pots, it was a tale of ultimate redemption which struck a chord at the time.

Barnaby Rudge. Charles Dickens
For those of a Dickensian bent, numerous titles are considered of higher literary merit, but Barnaby Rudge, Dickens’ most Smollett-like novel, remains an under-rated read, memorable for its riotous scenes and brutish and oddball characters, not all of them human.

A.H. Reed – An Autobiography
I have long admired that most steadfast of characters, the publisher, educationalist, writer, long-distance walker and book collector A.H. Reed. He also lived frugally and was long-lived, qualities to inspire during an extended desert island sojourn.

Malcolm Deans – Senior Library Assistant

Germinal. Emile Zola
An epic tale of class struggle in the coalfields of northern France in the 19th century.

Dead Souls. Nikolai Gogol
Another 19th century novel, this follows the exploits of Chichikov, a collector of ‘dead souls’, i.e. serfs that are no longer living but that exist on paper. Prior to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 landowners could buy, sell and mortgage them. The novel is a fantastic satire of a decaying Russian social system.

Death on the Instalment Plan (or Death on Credit). Louis Ferdinand Celine
The sequel to Journey to the End of the Night - blacker and funnier.

Under the Volcano. Malcolm Lowry
Follows the hallucinatory adventures of alcoholic British consul Geoffrey Firmin in a small Mexican town on the Day of the Dead.

The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann
Set in a Swiss sanatorium in the years before the First World War, The Magic Mountain is a tour de force, examining European humanism, the decay of bourgeois society and the idea of modernity. The forthcoming war is always lying in the background.

Alyce Stock – Library Assistant

The Year of the Flood. Margaret Atwood 

I have chosen this one because I'm halfway through reading it at the moment and would like to finish it. It is the second installment in Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy and a compelling work of dystopian speculative fiction.

Maddaddam. Margaret Atwood

This concludes Atwood's trilogy so I will bring this for closure. There's nothing worse than getting deep into the world of a story then never finding out what happens at the story's end.

Moominland Midwinter. Tove Jannsen

This is one of my favourite childhood books and is sure to cheer me up. Moomintroll wakes up while the rest of his family are hibernating and ventures outside to find that the world is very different in winter. Like many children's books, Moominland Midwinter really is for adults too. It is insightful, poetic, and uplifting with just a touch of darkness. I love the illustrations as well.

The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: a Calvin and Hobbes Treasury. Bill Watterson

If I'm going to be stuck on a desert island I imagine I will be in need of a laugh.

Simply Living: A Gatherer's Guide to New Zealand's Fields, Forests and Shores. Gwen Skinner

Er, if we conveniently imagine that said desert island has similar flora to New Zealand (native and otherwise) then I believe this book would supplement the SAS survival guide quite nicely. It includes some natural concoctions that the SAS may not have thought of, such as chickweed tea and "ragoo" of sorrel.