shewhomust | Desrt Island Books

Thursday being World Book Day, the Lit & Phil invited ten guests to choose a desert island book, and speak about it for eight minutes. Terms were deliberately left undefined, so that speakers had the choice of how to interpret their task: a Great Book, or simply one that is long enough to sustain you through years of isolation? Challenging literature, a comfort read or a physical object which has been treasured so long it's practically a family pet? My only regret is that people were neither introduced nor obliged to introduce themselves: some of them are friends, and some familiar faces, but some of them were completely unknown to me, and their choices made me want to know more.

Pauline Plummer chose the collected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Ye Min chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Carlotta Johnson chose Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa.

Stevie Ronnie had the most obscure choice, Kabloona by Gontran De Poncins, a Readers' Union edition which had been passed around his family until it was as battered as a favourite soft toy: but still sound inside, with all its pages, and the author's line drawings of the Inuit people whose lives it described. I'm slightly worried by the ease with which I noted down the title at first hearing: is it possible that somewhere in the slush piles there is a copy of this? If so, I'd love to find it...

ETA: Found it!

Joanna Boulter chose L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables; it was clear from the affection with which she spoke of it, that the childhood contained between those familiar green covers (she brought the same edition as I used to own, until my sister was car-sick over it) was as much her own as Anne Shirley's.

Valerie Laws brought Patrick O' Brian's Master and Commander, though this single book was clearly standing in for the whole Aubrey / Maturin cycle. I wish I could post a video of her eight minute commercial for the books: it was passionate, witty, persuasive.

Max Hammerton chose the Oxford Book of English Verse, and constructed his talk as a choice between the two editions he owned: although he reached no conclusion, we suspected he thought the later Christopher Ricks edition was superior (it certainly looked larger) but couldn't quite bring himself to abandon the original Quiller-Couch selection.

In contrast, Peter Adegbie produced his Bible with no discussion of edition or translation at all. After a brief introduction, he devoted most of his slot to a reading of Saint Paul's letter to the Romans, in which Saint Paul sounded uncomfortably like Tony Blair.

Anne Fine praised Philip Larkin, both for refusing the pressure to become a public persona, and for writing such wonderful poetry: she read two poems, The Trees and the magnificent, dreadful Next, Please.

And