Bonnie Greer

The acclaimed writer reveals a small but intriguing selection of the books she is currently reading, although as she observes, a compulsion to read can be hazardous: “I think that’s actually a tragedy in a way, because I don’t know when to stop reading.  I usually have books around our bed; I trip over them when I get up.  I have one in the bath.  I have one at the breakfast table.  I sit in front of the TV with a book.  I’m always reading. “

Life According To Maas Roy by Yvonne Archer and Stanley Roy Archer
“This is actually a book for young people, but what’s wonderful about it is that it also can speak to adults; it’s got a lovely lyrical tone. And it’s about Mr Archer.  He came here from Jamaica in the ‘50s, as many black British people and ancestors did, and he got his National Service, went to Cyprus, came out, started driving the buses, and met a beautiful bus conductress. It’s just beautiful, funny, rich, human, full of anecdotes about his life, about what life was like in the ‘50s and early ‘60s for black people.”
Stanley ‘Maas Roy’ Archer left Jamaica in 1954 for England en route to Canada to get rich quick. After living in London for a little under two years, he was drafted by the National Service and sent to Cyprus as part of a peace-keeping battalion in the civil war between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Cyprus then being a British colony.
After many heroic trips on the ‘Murder Mile’ as a driver and collector of dead bodies and body parts, he returned to London to continue his dream. His 1969 marriage to Hortense Wright failed, and he was left alone to raise his daughter, Yvonne. He visited Jamaica in 1972, 18 years after he left. His father had died by then. Another marriage in 1982 failed, but life went on. His mother died in 1984 while he was visiting. In 1989, he relocated to Jeffrey Town, St Mary, Jamaica, where he was born. But it was not to a life of retirement and getting ready to meet his maker. As it turned out, he was to transform Jeffrey Town in ways previously thought unimaginable. Now, he's a hero once again, this time in his own corner of the universe.

Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Symmetry by Marcus Du Sautoy
“I love this book because when I was a kid I was obsessed with mathematics. Marcus does everything he can to kind of take very complex mathematical problems and concepts and make them accessible for dunderheads like me. It’s about symmetry, it’s about passion, it’s about pursuit.  It’s just really a delicious, tasty book that, that’ll really make you smile and laugh, which is what maths should do.”
This new book from the author of The Music of the Primes combines a personal insight into the mind of a working mathematician with the story of one of the biggest adventures in mathematics: the search for symmetry. This is the story of how humankind has come to its understanding of the bizarre world of symmetry -- a subject of fundamental significance to the way we interpret the world around us. Our eyes and minds are drawn to symmetrical objects, from the sphere to the swastika, the pyramid to the pentagon. Symmetry indicates a dynamic relationship or connection between objects, and it is all-pervasive: in chemistry and physics the concept of symmetry explains the structure of crystals or the theory of fundamental particles; in evolutionary biology, the natural world exploits symmetry in the fight for survival; symmetry and the breaking of symmetry are central to ideas in art, architecture and music; the mathematics of symmetry is even exploited in industry, for example to find efficient ways to store more music on a CD or to keep your mobile phone conversation from cracking up through interference. Marcus du Sautoy constantly strives to push his own boundaries to find ways in which to share the excitement of mathematics with a broader audience; this book charts his own personal quest to master one of the most innate and intangible concepts, and to demonstrate the intricacy and beauty of the world around us.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
“The more that I read Dorian Gray I come to see how heroic Oscar Wilde was.  He was a foreigner, an outsider like me in many ways, and, unlike me who doesn’t have his courage or his artistry or his genius, he was able to step back outside the society that he loved and longed to be a part of and see its dark side, its hypocrisy, its banality. And so this book in a way opens up a whole treasure chest of the ways and the means of what it means to be English and it deservedly is a masterpiece.”
A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife", Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden." As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy."