Great American Novels

Yesterday in my reading group we were talking about Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. A lively group of 15 people all seemed to have enjoyed the characters, the wit and the important and perennial themes it tackles. Linda, a fairly new member of the group who has lived half her life in the US, felt it highlighted the fundamental pragmatism of American people. Lots of people commented on the river as metaphor for constant movement and freedom.

Of course we also talked about the racism it highlights and attitudes between white and black people which remain as a subject matter for modern writing, as well as the now shocking un-pc language it is written in. We had read The Help by Kathryn Stockett earlier in the year and there was much to be said about how black people can still be treated by land-owning whites. Clare, as she often does, compared it with her favorite William Faulkner and found it wanting.

What puzzled me as the discussion went on was why I hadn't read it earlier. I had ostensibly studied American literature at University (along with English) but had managed to avoid both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberry Finn, both widely regarded as seminal works, not only of anti-slavery literature, but also of American Literature in its entirety. Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut pictured here, stands directly next door to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe and now I understand what an influence she must have had on his thinking and writing. I haven't thought about my university days for many years but this really made me wonder if we weren't pointed at these books because of some politically correct anxiety about the content or language. If that was the case, it was a pity and an omission.

But perhaps it was just me. Perhaps we were given options which I have now forgotten. All I remember is that for a very long time I immersed myself in Moby Dick and for decades have enthused about that as greatest ever American novel. In recent years its status in my eyes was challenged by Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, but I still think I would take MD to my desert island. But now that certainty has been shaken. Once again a reading group discussion has caused me to question what I thought I knew, admire other people's perception and judgement, bemoan my own ignorance. I know it has all been said before in other places, but when they work well, reading groups really can be an amazing source of inspiration and learning. And if you think Huckleberry Finn is a children's book you are in for a surprise.

Event fatigue? I hope not.

As someone involved in helping to make "live literature " events happen, from time to time I take an interest in audience numbers at book and reading events. Perhaps its because I work within local government which is currently having to justify every penny of expenditure more than ever before, but am I alone in detecting a worrying trend? Are fewer people attending literature events? Perhaps fewer people are attending events in general? Is everyone so concerned about their security & their finances that they aren't going out as much. Or is it just that we have had a wet and disappointing summer?

Last week I was in Fife, not too far from Edinburgh and managed to squeeze in a visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival on its last day. The site was looking a bit bedraggled and muddy, but there seemed to be a healthy number of people there and the bookshop was busy. But I read in the press that 10,000 fewer people had attended in total this year (n.b. total was a healthy sounding 190,000) when compared with last, even though record numbers attended the Fringe. Was this all to do with rain?

Closer to home, a reading this week in a large and busy town centre library with a good track record of hosting successful activity, only attracted 5 people. And a forthcoming event which I would have expected to be almost sold out by now, has only attracted a quarter of its target audience so far.

Is this all coincidence, or is it a trend? It would be good to hear some other recent experiences.

Manchester Literature Festival is only a month way. I really hope people locally will be excited enough by the programme to come along to as many events as possible. View the programme here. For those who are part of a reading group or want to arrange a night out with a group of book-loving friends, there is a special Reading Group Ticket Offer.

The Offer: Book for 4 or more people and get all your tickets at the concessionary rate. The offer is available on the following events and can be booked via the website or by phoning our Box Office on 0843 208 0500 and quoting MLF Reading Group offer at the time of booking.

Manchester Sermon – Manchester Cathedral, Tuesday 11th October, 7pm
Michael Frayn – Manchester Town Hall, Thursday 13th October, 5pm
Roma Tearne – International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Friday 14th October, 6pm
Emma Jane Unsworth & John Niven – Waterstone’s Deansgate, Saturday 15th October, 6pm
Sacred Hearts – Manchester Cathedral, Sunday 16th October, 7.30pm
Navtej Sarna & Shrabani Basu – Waterstone’s Deansgate, Monday 17th October, 6pm
Mimi Khalvati & Carola Luther – International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Thursday 20th October, 6pm
David Lodge – Whitworth Art Gallery, Friday 21st October, 7.30pm
The Devil’s Garden – Manchester Museum, Saturday 22nd October, 1pm
Catherine O’Flynn – Waterstone’s Deasngate, Saturday 22nd October, 6pm

Love Libraries Day

Saturday 4th February 2012 will be a national day of celebration of local libraries, preceeded by a week of activity in schools and colleges. Library campaigner Alan Gibbons says " it will be a celebration of libraries and librarians... a day when families and communities flock to their local library to use it, join it, love it."

This could be a really exciting opportunity for lots of reading -related events, which could include readings, story-telling and family centred fun and games, but could also be really imaginative.

A large number of organisations have already pledged support including The Bookseller, National Federation of Women's Institutes, National Literacy Trust, The Reading Agency, Society of Authors, Unison, Voices for the Library. A national website is planned for September.

Time To Read would love to try and help co-ordinate some innovative activity across North West Libraries and would like to hear from anyone with interesting ideas to offer. Time To Read has some funds to support activity but is short of time, so ideas must be easy to understand & organise, with plenty of publicity potential as well as impact.

Please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

Wherever the plot takes you

Where does time go? More than 3 weeks already since I last wrote anything here. That's not because, regrettably that I've been on holiday, but there has been so much going on and so much news to keep up with, that its tricky getting time to reflect. Every day at the moment , or so it seems, there is news of library closure decisions being reversed or delayed, judicial reviews and new authors joining campaigns. Its really encouraging that there seems to be so much support for library services and so many writers who realise the important role libraries play in giving access to books to people of all ages.

To our own activity here in the NW: reading The Observer yesterday I was pleased to find a double-page spread about books to read in top holiday destinations. This fits perfectly with our own Reading Places promotion. 10 writers have picked 10 top holiday destinations and recommended some relevant reading. You can see the whole list and additional reader comments here.

I note in the comments, Claire Armitstead of The Guardian says:
Please do ask everyone you know to contribute to this list of suggestions. If we get enough we'll make a dinky little map with all your recommended reads on it next week, which would be a great resource for all those holiday-bound readers over the next few weeks. I'm off to Germany - just north of Nuremberg. Any suggestions welcome. Preferably not involving rallies, of any sort!

From a Reader Development point of view, the recommendations given are varied, with most of the writers choosing something classic alongside a fiction & non-fiction title, offering a range of substantial reads. Even if, like me, you aren't heading off abroad this year, this list can help take you to some favourite destinations, in your imagination.

Elsewhere library staff in the region are starting to organise Reading Places events. Keep an eye on the listings for news of these.

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.