Tanya Bailey’s Desert Island Books
Name: Tanya Bailey
Job role: HCA
About: Band 3 HCA on a COTE ward. EOL link person, Well-being champion. Loves reading, travel, good food and continuing to expand my cultural knowledge.
Book 1: The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The hobbit was read to me as child and I grew up believing the Shires were real and not just in my imagination.
The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy story about Frodo Baggins, a small hobbit who must destroy a powerful, evil ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron.
Book 2: A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley
I wanted to be Penelope and it fed my love of history that has continued today.
Penelope lives in the 20th Century, and it is only when she visits Thackers, a remote, ancient farmhouse, that she finds herself travelling back in time to join the lives of the Babington family, and watching helplessly as tragic events bring danger to her friends and the downfall of their heroine Mary, Queen of Scots, whom they are seeking to rescue.
Book 3: The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
Reading it as a teenager, I never believed that such places could exist in society. Now, I see aspects coming to life.
Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.
Book 4: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Dystopian view of the future that, at the time was pure science fiction. But now…
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.
You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.
Book 5: Animal Farm by George Orwell
Classic fiction with its parody on how a political state can become as corrupt as its replacement. As a child you see it one way and as an adult you read it another.
Book 6: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Bittersweet and thought provoking of one mans journey into the afterlife that questions your own existence.
Luxury item
A desalination water device.