Greatest non-fiction books

There is an interesting discussion going on this week over on the Guardian Books website.
They have compiled a list they are calling The 100 greatest non-fiction books. Obviously lists such as these are always biased to the interests and knowledge of the people compiling them, hence the greatest number of titles appear in History, Memoir, Philosophy and Politics while sections on Music, Maths, Environment and Religion are alarmingly short.

Also noticeable is the great age of many of the chosen books, which makes it a difficult list for public libraries to promote, though many of the titles will still be in print in new editions. The most recent title I spotted is Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (2008) on the social media revolution.

There are already lots of comments about the list over on the Guardian site, most of them bemoaning the lack of individual people's personal favourites. More interesting to me are all the comments about the lack of readability of many of the titles which seem to have been picked because they are "classic" but not necessarily because they are an enjoyable good read.

So there is work to be done- can we flag up alternative titles in libraries? Titles which still inform and educate and which more people might actually finish reading; titles which complement this very worthy list. If there are any public libraries which take on this task please let me know here.

Women Write

Last night I attended City Library, Manchester for the launch of an anthology “Life, Death… The Whole Damn Thing”, featuring short stories from members of the award-winning writing group at Commonword in Manchester. The room was packed with writers, their friends and family members as well as some of us there as supporters and admirers.

The womanswrite group has existed for decades, encouraging many women to find their writing voices and in some cases develop their writing careers. Cathy Bolton, now Director of Manchester Literature Festival, kicked off the proceedings with some of her award-winning poetry. Novelist Cath Staincliffe rounded the event off by acknowledging the importance of womanswrite to her own successful career.What came through strongly throughout the event was the value of this supportive network in helping numerous writers to improve their work and gain in confidence.

In between Cathy and Cath, 7 members of the group read extracts from the stories appearing in the anthology. There was great variety in the work, some being very real, others rooted in fantasy or fairytale. In a way though, what was read, although enjoyable, wasn't really the essence of this event. What mattered was the sense of achievement and the pride everyone , from publisher, editor to all the writers felt in having published.

While most of the work of a librarian is dealing with published work, it was great that this event celebrating creative writing happened in a library. Without the valuable work going on in writing groups, workshops and masterclasses all over the country, sometimes in libraries, many successful writers might not come to light. Writers need to read. Many writers need to test their work in friendly and supportive groups. Writers need to promote their early work when it is published. Libraries can and do support the creative act of writing. With all the cutbacks and change currently happening to libraries in many parts of the UK, I hope this important function won't be lost.

Reading & Travel

Funny how here in NW Libraries we have just launched Reading Places, a promotion of travel writing and in the same week The Independent published in its "i" paper (Thurs p 35) a top ten list of travel books:
Arabian Sands – William Thesiger
Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell
Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
Journey to Portugal – Jose Saramago
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck
A Wounded Civilization – V S Naipaul
The Great Railway Bazaar – Paul Theroux
The Road to Oxiana – Robert Byron
The Journals of Captain Cook – James Cook

This is a mixed selection of good writing and includes some classics and older titles as well as contemporary ones and I had selected a number of these myself to feature in our own list, but where are the women? I find it a bit remiss of the Indie not to have included even one woman.

I must admit that a lack of female writers to choose from struck me too while I was looking for titles to promote on our own site. There are obvious reasons why women found it harder to travel in the past and I LOVE this qoutation from George Eliot Daniel Deronda, Book II, Chapter 13, p135 (Penguin).
We women can't go in search of adventure - to find out the North-West Passage or the source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we grow, or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining. That is my notion about the plants: they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them have got poisonous.

Times have most definitely changed and a moment's research soon comes up with plenty of female travel writers . The easiest possible hunt on Amazon today displays 2,829 results for Women Travellers in a list that includes lots of handbooks and guides for independent women, especially those travelling alone. There are collections of comic writing, descriptions by fearless adventurers and cautionary tales for the inexperienced and unwary.

Wonderful Virago published a collection in the early 1990s edited by Mary Morris, surveying 300 years of travel writing in which women are observers of the world in which they wander; their prose rich in description, remarkable in detail. This is now on my "books to read soon" list.

What also strikes me about the Indie's list is that several of the writers included are known as novelists as well- George Orwell, Jose Saramago, Joseph Steinbeck, VS Naipaul. Is this something that men find easier than women- moving seemlessly between different sorts of writing? I wonder. There are probably lots of female novelists who have also published memoirs and travel descriptions- but who are they? I can think of Kate Grenville who wrote the highly recommended novel about early settlers in Australia The Secret River, and then followed up with a memoir Searching For the Secret River, about her family and the inspiration for the novel. Are there other examples like this?


It would be good to be able to add to the short list of Women travel writers on this website, so do get in touch with your own ideas.

In the meantime I hope you will discover one or two titles to read on our site- we have given you a lot more than 10 to select from. And please send us a photo of yourself reading on your travels, whether that's to somewhere exotic or just as far as your back garden.

Reading Places

This time last week I was in New York, and find I am still recovering from what was a very hectic trip. Apparently there are 5 time zones between here and there and consequently it will take me 5 days to feel normal (!) again.

On our trip we did squeeze in a couple of bookshops as well as the very grand New York Public Library building, which somehow felt strangely familiar. The Strand Bookshop off Union Square boasts 18 miles of books. It was certainly densely packed and I was able to spot lots of titles by American authors I now want to read. This store has a great website too with lots of book choice information.

All of which is preamble to telling you more about Reading Places which launches on Monday. If you revisit this website on Monday 9th May you should spot a new banner and link to our new promotion. If you follow through, you will have approximately 100 books promoted to you, all linked to the theme of travel. I have tried to match Fiction & Non- Fiction titles, so for example if you are planning a trip to Easter Island you will be able to find both a novel and a factual account flagged up for you. We can add more titles through the year so please get in touch if you read a particularly evocative novel while on your travels.

We also want people to send us photos from their travels, pictures of books or people reading in unusual places. These will go up on our Facebook site, NOW that's what I call READING.

More next week

Are writers born or made?

I attended a riveting event at City Library Manchester last night which was part book launch and part debate about the value of creative writing MAs. The room was packed, not sure who by, but I guess lots of people either already on, or who may be had considered and rejected going on, a Creative Writing course.

First-time novelist Rachel Genn, a recent participant on the Novel Writing MA at Sheffield Hallam University was launching her novel The Cure. Also launching her most recent novel The Testament of Jessie Lamb, was her former tutor at Sheffield Hallam, Jane Rogers.

Both writers read from their books. The Cure is set on and around building sites in Shoreditch but is really about loss, isolation and displacement.
...Jessie Lamb is set just in the future- 6 months on from where any reader starts- and is told through the voice of a 16 year old girl. Is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead? This was the issue Jane most wanted to address in this book.

After the readings, chair Sherry Ashworth, herself a writer and creative writing teacher at MMU, led the duo through a series of probing questions, asking them to address the value of Creative Writing courses and the perennial issue of whether or not a writer can be "created" through teaching.

The exchange was fascinating to me, as someone who feels instinctively that writers are born. Jane seemed to back my instinct by saying that writers can be helped and improved, for example with how to build characters or how to structure a plot, but need to arrive with an innate feeling for language and a vision for what they want to communicate. Rachel agreed that she was someone who definitely needed support with how to control and shape her words, but the strong drive to write was what drew her to a course

Questions from the audience quickly drew out some strong feelings, particularly around the question of whether it is now almost essential for a new writer to attend a creative writing course, if they want to be "discovered" by an agent. Jane tried to allay fears on that score but I'm not sure everyone was convinced. Agents do, it seems, visit Creative Writing schools to make new contacts with aspiring writers.

The overall impression from the evening was that writing is b.....y hard work! Students on creative writing courses need to work hard, take criticism and persevere. Tutors must work hard at being even-handed and supportive, while giving criticism where its needed. We readers are indeed the lucky ones, enjoying the fruits of all that effort.

Reading Places

After much angst and changes of direction, Time To Read has now decided on its focus for activity for this year. Reading Places will promote all sorts of travel writing, in the broadest sense. We will promote books which support travel to far flung parts of the world, but we also promote books to the armchair traveler: those books which transport you to other countries, real and imaginary from the comfort of your own front room, or, let's hope, the garden deckchair.
I am currently spending much time researching fiction set in other countries to pair up with the more self-evident travel guides and directories. So yes, I am still searching for a, so far elusive, novel set in Fiji. Any ideas anyone?
In the meantime I have just finished reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen which I have been waiting to do since its release last autumn. I loved it. Like The Corrections its an absorbing read about the complex relationships between people in an introspective middle-class American family. So much is familiar and at the same time I wanted to scream at them for not communicating better with each other. The bits that really grabbed me though were set in a lakeside summer-house which, both Patty and Walter at various times retreat to. This seems to be a recurring motif in American Literature, from Thoreau's Walden to the most recent novels I have read. In both Freedom and the very bleak Caribou Island (David Vann), the need for a lakeside retreat is obsessive. And yet in neither of these is "retreat" really possible. The outside world really can't be avoided.

World Book Night Successes

Everyone who took part in WBN seems to be rating it as a success. Although it will be impossible to know how many of the books given away on Saturday are read, certainly the spirit in which they were given and received seems to have been very positive.
I was at a charity for homeless people , where, not only were they eager to receive books, but also wanted to know about them and were keeen to find out more about what was being given away. Picture shows giver David with some of the "receivers".

Warrington Libraries had 2 success stories, not only getting books given away at a Wolves RUFC match but also inspiring comedian Sarah Millican to announce WBN and encourage people to pick up books from library staff at the interval. Janet said The books went so fast we couldn't believe it!

Sarah from Salford took books and staff to The Lowry and said Just wish I'd had more books! They all went in about an hour! Five hundred!

I was in a meeting in London yesterday with some publisher representatives. The feeling at that was also that it had been successful in creating a buzz about books. I suppose they will be eagerly looking for an upsurge in sales now. We need to feedback our thoughts on the whole scheme which was hugely ambitious. Some of the glitches were probably inevitable in a project of this size. It will be important to hang on to the core purpose which was to get books into the hands of more people and enthuse them about reading.