Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Submarine, June 2012


Open publication - Free publishing - More fiction
The latest edition of our Library magazine, The Submarine, is hot off the presses, and here it is in e-form via Issuu (click once for a closer view, once more for full screen, and use the arrows to scroll).


Librarian and Editor Tom McConville's introductions are always thoughtful and interesting. This time he challenges the notion that "the library must necessarily cease to be a place of silence, thought and reflection and instead become a kind of feisty information stock exchange" and passionately defends the value of silence: "It encourages a calmness and thoughtfulness that is vital to the absorption of knowledge. It is a calming energy which does not exist in a computer room or Chapel or in any other part of a school - they have their own, equally valid, energies - and it is also good for the soul." Much of this echoes the Sub-Warden's ideas in his recent Chapel talk on the value of reading, the text of which opens the edition (see below for the full talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which prompted that piece).


Elsewhere in the magazine are Sadhbh Sheeran's 'Solstice' from her senior poetry prize-winning portfolio, junior poems by Mark Russell, Thomas Lyster and Hollie Canning, a lively report by Oyinda Onabanjo on the Inter-Schools' Library team quiz, the ever-entertaining 'What's Reading Me' feature, a review by former English teacher Morgan Dockrell of the book Southern Ireland and the Liberation of France by Gerald Morgan and Gavin Hughes (particularly pertinent given this very recent news), Jack Dunne's review of Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design and Mr Morris's of Jo Nesbo's thriller The Leopard, junior pupils' quick reviews of Quick Reads, a report on World Book Day 2012, and news of one of this year's innovations, the Library Committee.


Finally, on the back page in the 'Shoot the Messenger' slot, V former Niamh Faulkner gives her scathing angle on sharing on social networks (an essay prompted in English class by this original article in the Guardian, 'Sharing Can Make You Happy'. Niamh doesn't agree).

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