Desert Island Books

Desert Island Books

Our castaways for this issue of NB are three staff members who you may meet working on desks in various parts of the City library.

As avid readers these three have had a difficult time choosing just five books. 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. Here are their choices:

Jackie McMillan - Collection Specialist (Childrens)

Anne of Green Gables.  L. M. Montgomery
Being stuck on an island will be a perfect time to re-read this classic children’s novel and a personal childhood favourite. Anne is a tenacious character with a wonderful imagination and she also lives on an island. Her imagination has helped her survive awful situations as well as causing her to have more than a few mishaps. Reading this will remind me to use my imagination to while away the tedium of island life.

Jane Eyre.Charlotte Brontë
Jane is another strong female character with an equally strong moral compass. She models how to adapt to new surroundings and survive isolation. I had to read this in the fourth form (year 10) and again at university, so I know that this novel can bear re-reading and that I will get something fresh from it each time.

Great Expectations. Charles Dickens
Another 19th Century classic: great major and minor characters populate this novel. Many moral lessons are to be found within its pages regarding trust, grace, loyalty, love, pride, regret and living within your means. It will also serve to remind me that things are often not as they appear: “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.”

1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. Edited by Julia Eccleshare
This book will give me a taster of the children’s classics I missed as a child, and I will reminisce on all those that I have read. It will inspire me to keep going, knowing that when I return to civilisation I can seek out my missed childhood classics at Dunedin Public Library.

War and Peace. Leo Tolstoy
There will be time to read (this yet unread by me) fat Russian novel and work out who all the characters are and how they interrelate. The characters will help populate my deserted island.

Shirley Jones - Senior Library Assistant

The Poisonwood Bible. Barbara Kingsolver
This is a book you can get your teeth into (over 500 pages). It is totally absorbing with gorgeous writing, memorable characters and an amazing sense of place. Africa is brought to life vividly, as is the life of a missionary family in remote Belgian Congo in the 1950’s and onward. It is suspenseful, tragic and thought-provoking.

Life After Life. Kate Atkinson
This book moves back and forward in time and recreates a woman’s life at the same time. Each reading would reveal more and more of the people, the place and the time. The author has such wit and love of language, every word is a gem. Her descriptions of the bombing of London in WW2 are visceral!

The Shipping News. Annie Proulx
A raw, gripping and unusual book set on the Newfoundland coast. It is a real saga of redemption with great characters and huge forces of nature. An excellent way to get out of the heat of a desert island!

The Blind Assassin. Margaret Atwood
This multi-layered book is intelligent, entertaining and has a huge emotional impact. You have to keep your mind active on a desert island!

Persuasion.Jane Austen
I would have to have a classic with a happy ending and beautiful witty writing. It would transport me to another time and place, and I could dip into it at any time to delight in the language and the exploits of her fabulous characters.

Charlotte Steele - Library Assistant

My Family and Other Animals. Gerald Durrell
A glorious book that celebrates the quirks of people and animals alike, as seen through the eyes of a young Gerald Durrell setting out to explore the Greek island of Corfu in all its shimmering, Ceylon-blue, gossamer glory.

The Beach. Alex Garland
How could you be stranded on a desert island without a sinister thriller set in the tropics? Garland's debut novel followed a twisting plot deeper and deeper into depravity on a remote island in Thailand - sharks, drugs, and paranoia galore.

The 10pm Question.  Kate di Goldi
By a local author, The 10pm Question is a tender, vulnerable, heart-warming novel about a fragile family and the process of growing up and coping with the world. A fantastic book for children and adults alike.

Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton
The ultimate modern sci-fi thriller, Jurassic Park was the novel that spawned the dinosaur-based franchise. A dynamic, fast-paced, and extremely engaging novel, which is notable for its attempts to intertwine science and entertainment. Although the science is of course not wholly accurate, the book definitely brought the miraculous possibilities of science to the forefront of the public consciousness.

All Creatures Great and Small. James Herriot
A wonderfully matter-of-fact book shot through with a gentle humour, All Creatures Great and Small describes Herriot's years as a young veterinary surgeon in the Yorkshire Dales. This novel was released to stellar reviews and will not fail to improve the reader's mood - pretty useful for a castaway!