Boris Johnson’s press conference in a school library has been triumphed by a librarian’s clever placement of dystopian books behind him.
Librarians have been typecast as old, boring, cranky, and even bitter, but one secret they’ll never tell is their uncanny ability to select the right books for the right time.
This week, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, gave an address to the nation’s students from Castle Rock School in Coalville, Leicestershire, regarding the recent UK exam fiasco. He explained, “I’m afraid your grades were almost derailed by a mutant algorithm and I know how stressful that must’ve been for pupils up and down the country.”
Yet Johnson’s address was overshadowed by the incredibly clever books set up behind him.
Twitter was quick to point out each text: The Subtle Knife, Fahrenheit 451, Betrayed, The Resistance, Exodus, The Toll, Crisis Point, Glass Houses, and The Twits.
Can anyone identify the fifth book along on the top shelf? Because apart from that one, top shelf from left to right goes: The Subtle Knife, Fahrenheit 451, Betrayed, The Resistance, The Toll, Crisis Point, Glass Houses, and The Twits. Supreme trolling from the school librarian. pic.twitter.com/z0I2vJValB
— Nicholas Pegg (@NicholasPegg) August 26, 2020
@DerekHotchkiss1 another example of why school librarians are so important
— David Hotchkiss (@David_Hotchkiss) August 26, 2020
Game of Thrones there too. A story about the terrible lengths that people go to while trying to gain and hold onto power. Whilst ignoring the real threats to the country.
— Mark Said On (@seddonism) August 26, 2020
Looks like there were more.. We neeeeed to know!!! pic.twitter.com/Tb0rc6wylC
— Dr Tess Machling (@Tess_Machling) August 26, 2020
Every book has a different theme for its audience, and together, they offer the perfect message about the state of our society. The most notable texts are Fahrenheit 451, The Resistance, and Exodus. For starters, they’re all dystopian novels about a corrupt government with secret political agendas.
Fahrenheit 451 centres on a government that outlawed books and ensured they were all burnt to smithereens to prevent unwanted information being communicated (it’s likely Johnson also wants to burn the messages they made behind his head) and Exodus is set in a future where global warming has lead to a world enveloped by rising oceans, whose characters are migrants seeking refuge by boat.
They’re spectacularly apt messages for our governments and if this isn’t a sign you should be reading more books and treating your librarians with a kind of reverent respect, then I don’t know what is.
