LIBRARY NEWSLETTER

No. 3 June 22nd

Dear students, staff & parents

Welcome to the last newsletter before the summer break. We bring you tea, a podcast, Shakespeare and the chance to travel without leaving your living room.

The Library was slightly less just a room full of books last week as the J-Bugs began to

return and this week should add sightings of 4th and L6 formers. We look forward to seeing everyone back in the building in September – fingers crossed.

LIBRARY CLICK & COLLECT

Browsing Library shelves isn’t really possible at the moment, but we don’t want you to be without books over the long summer break.

So, make the most of the time until the end of term to stock up by browsing the Library catalogue and reserving books you’d like to borrow from the shelves.

Go to the Library catalogue via trinityschoollibrary.cirqahosting.com and log in using your 4-digit Trinity ID as both your reader code and your pin.

Doing a Guided Search is probably the easiest way to find what you want. Then just click on the Reserve button.

We will find the books on the shelves, issue them with a September return date, package them, let you know they’re ready, and leave them on the shelves outside the Library for you to collect.

To return something, just drop it into the large blue book return box by the Library doors – you really can’t miss it. We’ll do the rest.

You can collect and drop off items between 12.30pm and 4pm any day from Tuesday 23 June to Thursday 2 July. To keep everyone safe, please enter the Library via the fire escape doors by the Dell.

WHO SAID THIS? The Answers

Just ONE person was responsible for the introduction of these everyday words and expressions (and many, many more): Shakespeare.

In terms of his influence of the English language, Shakespeare and the King James Bible lead the field. But whereas Shakespeare introduced only about 100 phrases that are in everyday usage compared to the Bible's 257, he added around 1,000 new words versus just 40 from the KJB.

(Source: Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, David Crystal, 2010)

More sinned against than sinning King Lear

Dead as a doornail Henry VI, Part II

Mind’s eye

Hamlet

Eaten out of house and home Henry IV, Part II

Neither here nor there Othello

Good riddance

Troilus and Cressida

Puking As You Like It

Knock knock! Who's there?

Macbeth

Mum's the word Henry VI, Part II

Zany Love’s Labour’s Lost

If you’re at a loose end over the summer, why not see if you can weave a whole conversation from Shakespeare? A quick web search will bring up the full list. If you do, be sure to send it through to us at the library. Praise, commendations and possibly chocolate will follow.

I wait with bated breathe (The Merchant of Venice) … see what I did there?

MICHAEL ROSEN – TWEETING AGAIN

Who doesn’t love Michael Rosen – former Children’s Laureate, poet, author (Going on a Bear Hunt and Michael Rosen’s Sad Book), broadcaster and inveterate Tweeter?

Coronavirus silenced him in March after he tweeted “Can’t stop my thermostat from crashing: icy hands, hot head. Freezing cold sweats. Under the covers for bed-breaking shakes. Image of war hero biting on a hankie, while best mate plunges live charcoal into the wound to cauterise it,” and spent 47 days in intensive care. But now he’s out of hospital: alive and tweeting @MichaelRosenYes

Young or old, share the joy!

AND THE WINNER IS …

This year’s Carnegie award was announced last week. From the eight books shortlisted, the judges chose Anthony McGowan’s Lark, calling it “an extraordinary book exploring survival and our relationship with nature”. I’m so glad it won. I loved it.

LARK - 2020 CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER

HOW DO LIKE YOUR TEA, SIR/MADAM?

One friend gave me a teapot for my birthday. Another, a tea cosy with the following rules for making

tea. I’m not sure what it says about me – drinks too much tea/needs to drink more tea? – but the

rules are interesting, if only in showing how things have changed since the 1940s.

GEORGE ORWELL’S RULES FOR DRINKING TEA Abridged from George Orwell, A Nice Cup of Tea, Evening Standard (12 January 1946)

• One should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues but there is not much stimulation

in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used

that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea.

• Tea should be made in small quantities – that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always

tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot

should be made of china or earthenware.

• The pot should be warmed beforehand.

• The tea should be strong. I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak

ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong but like it a little stronger with each year

that passes — a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.

• The tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to

imprison the tea. If the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.

• One should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be

actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame

while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly

brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference

• After making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterward allowing

the leaves to settle

• One should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat,

shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one’s tea is always half

cold before one has well started on it.

• One should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always

gives tea a sickly taste

• One should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all. I

maintain that my own argument is unanswerable: by putting the tea in first and stirring as one

pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much

milk if one does it the other way round

• Tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. How can

you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it?

For a more recent, science-based approach, try the Royal Society of Chemistry on How to Make a

Perfect Cup of Tea. academiaobscura.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/RSC-tea-guidelines.pdf

I’m afraid the teabag still doesn’t get the thumbs up and it reignites the milk-first-or-milk-last

debate, but the recommendation on personal chemistry for the tea drinker is great: “to gain

optimum ambience for enjoyment of tea aim to achieve a seated drinking position in a favoured

home spot where quietness and calm will elevate the moment to a special dimension.”

THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT HAS A LONG SHELF.LIFE

I’ve just spent a surreal but gripping 50 minutes listening to Matthew Ryan and Ben Goode talking to each other with great passion about Samuel Beckett, cricket and a giant wrestler; and Camilla Parkinson putting a psychological spin on graphic novels, in particular Art Spiegelman’s Maus. All thanks to the English Department’s podcast SHELF.LIFE. trinity.fireflycloud.net/english/shelf-life-podcast

It’s a new venture but is already a pleasingly eclectic selection: Virginia Woolf, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Shakespeare, T S Eliot, Kafka and Maggie Nelson.

If hearing the podcasts makes you want to know more about these writers, visit us in the Library and we'll point you in the right direction.

LET A BOOK TRANSPORT YOU IN LOCKDOWN

Whether you are able to get to that long-booked holiday destination or are stuck at home and dreaming of where you’d like to be, we have books to transport you to your favourite place, both fiction and non-fiction. Here’s a tiny selection of reading for popular holiday destinations. If you would like more suggestions – wherever you’re going - simply email lxn@trinity.sch.uk.

Anthony Doerr All the Light We Cannot See

Joanne Harris Chocolat

Victor Hugo Les Misérables

Peter Mayle A Year in Provence

Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

E M Forster A Farewell to Arms

Robert Harris Pompeii

Sally Vickers Miss Garnett’s Angel

Laura Esquival Like Water for Chocolate

Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises

Carlos Ruiz Zafon The Shadow of the Wind

C J Sansom Winter in Madrid

Louis de Bernières Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Gerald Durrell My Family & Other Animals

John Fowles The Magus

Victoria Hislop The Island

Truman Capote In Cold Blood

John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany

Ann Tyler The Accidental Tourist

Alice Walker The Color Purple

William Dalrymple The Last Mughal

Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things

Salman Rushdie The Moor’s Last Sigh

Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy

J M Coetzee Disgrace

Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom

Michael Morpurgo The Butterfly Lion

Alan Paton Cry, The Beloved Country

Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda

Jane Harper The Dry

Kate Morton the Forgotten Garden

Christian Tsiolkas The Slap

With best wishes, Ms Parlain and Ms Nixon

The Library’s just a room full of books without you