
Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail
Book
Day One, and already she was lying in her journal. It was 1993, Suzanne Roberts had just finished...

Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory
Book
In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both...

Conversations: Volume 1
Jorge Luis Borges, Jason Wilson and Osvaldo Ferrari
Book
Buddhism, love, Henry James, and the tango are just a few of the topics Jorge Luis Borges,...

On Silbury Hill
Book
Silbury Hill in Wiltshire has inspired and perplexed people for generations. Artists and poets have...

Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up
Book
Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her....

ClareR (5885 KP) rated One of Them in Books
May 12, 2021
Well. I would say that I’m firmly in the anti- public/ private school camp, but I can’t find any fault in Musa’s education. He seems to have really enjoyed his time at Eton. He received a well-rounded education, and it comes across, largely speaking, as a caring institution. He does have some trouble with other boys: racist comments for example. He doesn’t seem to register these instances, and only finds out through another ex-student once he has left.
I liked how Musa looks at the reasons behind Brexit, about our continuing culture of the ‘Haves’ and “Have Nots’, and how if those who went to institutions such as Eton were less self-serving, just how much good they could contribute to this country. Instead, their attitudes seem to have contributed to the rise of the far right.
It’s a really interesting, if short, book, and well worth a read.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, Unbound and to Musa for reading along.

Game Face: A Lifetime of Hard-Earned Lessons on and off the Basketball Court
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NBA Hall of Famer Bernard King is one of the most dynamic scorers in basketball history. King was...

Gardens of Stone: My Boyhood in the French Resistance
Michael Wright and Stephen Grady
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An extraordinary wartime memoir, combining the best kind of adventure story with a coming of age...

Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey
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'Life for De Quincey was either angels ascending on vaults of cloud or vagrants shivering on the...

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life
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In The Happiness Project, she worked out general theories of happiness. Here she goes deeper on...