dovegreyreader scribbles

and the World Book Night winners are...

What an amazing book-laden weekend the UK has just had, booktalk everywhere including my little corner of  the sopranos where we talked about our favourite reads, rather than fret as we usually do about not being the one to mess up the five beat rest (or is it seven?) in All That Jazz. We had a wonderful World Book Night singing at our long pre-arranged concert in aid of Cornish-based charity Shelterbox and Vocal Harem was in fine voice.

The last 'set' of the concert, before we sang our final song which was the Howard Goodall arrangement of The Lord is My Shepherd, saw the Sultans (about a dozen partners of Harem members including Bookhound in the basses) singing a brilliant and very funny rendition of There is Nothing Like a Dame, Vocal Harem replying with gusto with one of our favourites Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair, then we all sang Some Enchanted Evening, and afterwards my lovely World Book Night copies of The World's Wife went around the choir in a flash. It was such a lovely feeling to be giving that many books away when I usually manage it in ones or twos to friends, or to some of you by post, or when we meet, or twenty bags full to the charity shop.

And what fun we have had reading your suggestions for more invisible wives, thank you so much for entering into the spirit of the moment and with so much imagination. It's only when you really think about it that you realise quite how clever Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife is...  such an original idea.

So WBN editions of this wonderful collection will be going to  ::

m - Mrs James Watt

Trish - Mrs Earnshaw

Jenny Ryan - Mrs Churchill

Tracey - Mrs Picasso

Maggie Wallace - Lizzie Siddal

Bet - Mrs Peter the Apostle

If you can e mail addresses to me at dovegreyreader at gmail dot com and put something like WBN- TWW WINNER in the subject line which will help the clerical department no end, and we will get the books in the post. If you live in far flung lands just to remind you that they will be coming surface mail so may take several weeks to arrive.

World Book Night :: The World's Wife ~ Carol Ann Duffy

World Book Night is here at last and my choice of a book to give and made after a great deal of deliberation, The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy. I've bought enough copies of this one over the years for friends so I'm quite pleased to now have forty eight to give away. I've collected my box of books and was mightily relieved to find them safe and sensibly sealed in plastic inside the box, so any left out to the mercy of the weather around the country should be fine.

Thank you for all your kind words about the radio programme and forgive any repetition but I did want to record my thoughts on The World's Wife for posterity here too because my mind was teeming with them.

As I know I've mentioned here before, I'm back with poetry big-time again now after a few years of a bit of an indifferent slouchy sloth-like approach induced by too much in-depth study. Whilst the studying revealed many poets to me in a new and enlightened way and I felt sure I would come to love them one day, all that sitting on the edge of my chair at 2am trying to write an essay, frantically searching out meaning and metaphor, rhyme, half rhyme etc, and knowing I had to be up early for work the next day, was all the kiss of death for poetry pleasure for me. But there were exceptions and The World's Wife was a notable one.

If, as Seamus Heaney suggests, poetry is about glimpses of the alternatives and re-dressing the balance then I can think of no better assessment of The World's Wife, because over the years I have come to appreciate the nuances of each poem in this little book since I first bought it in 1999. It is the invisible woman made visible, history told through the eyes of the women who were most certainly looking on, and how many times have I wandered around an art gallery taking in those great big murals of significant historical events and wondered how a woman artist may have painted them differently? Of course they were busy painting flowers, a historical narrative painting considered far too difficult and demanding, but in a way to read this collection is to partially assuage that need. And how much I am enjoying Carol Ann Duffy's tenure as our first female Laureate in 314 years already; knowing that whilst she won't be feeling compelled to write to order but as the spirit moves her, but that when it does we will get a woman's point of view, witness David Beckham's achilles injury... we should probably be thankful it wasn't his metatarsal again... Carol Ann Duffy wouldn't have baulked at the obvious rhymes there I'll bet.

The poems here are fearlessly wry and witty, playfully subversive, deeply intelligent, emotional and so much more. Ostensibly this is the arc of women's lives told using fairy tale, myth, biblical allusions, literature and film, and as Tom Watt said on the programme (I wanted to hug him at this point but microphones in the way) it is much more than feminism or a diatribe against men, it is, as Carol Ann Duffy says, about ways of being human. These are poems about jealousy, joy, grief and loss,(Mrs Lazarus) love that heals (Delilah) love that transcends all barriers ( Mrs Tiresias) about abuse and boredom (Mrs Aesop) about falling in love with the wrong person, about protecting our children,(Queen Herod) about being careful what you wish for,(Mrs Midas)  ageing,(Mrs Rip Van Winkle) or creativity (Penelope).

Reading The World's Wife again in readiness for the programme I was struck by the gift that poetry has now become for me, how much I enjoy fewer words telling me more... and telling me even more every time I revisit them, and what a great choice this was for me to be giving on World Book Night. There is an element of The Gift involved in this whole scheme and whilst the plan is also for the receivers to pass the book on, I'm hoping that this will be a book people will want to keep a copy of and perhaps buy copies for friends, because I know it has taken me years to unwrap it all and there are still a few poems here that I have yet to really appreciate fully. I think it might also be an age thing, these poems say different things to me at different times in my life and clearly Carol Ann Duffy sees them as a personal progression reflecting her own life path too.

There is a really excellent transcript of a conversation with Carol Ann Duffy here which has offered me welcome insights into the poems including that sense of a notorious event seeping into childhood consciousness and somehow betraying the innocence that once was. Reading The Devil's Wife in that light, and knowing that it is a sequence of poems about the Moors Murders and quite how Myra Hindley became possessed by Ian Brady, makes for very salutory reading indeed. 

But as I said on the programme, for all that I love the poems like Elvis's Sister ...did you know Elvis was one of twins boys, the other, Jessie, died at birth, but Carol Ann Duffy reinvents that twin as a sister, now a nun living in a 'Graceland' of her own ...or The Kray Sisters busy patrolling their manor and keeping things in nice order until finally it's time for Sinatra to sing for them...except don't expect it to be Frank singing My Way...no indeed Nancy had a song much better suited to the sisters....

....for all that I love those, I still love to turn the final page of this book and read Demeter , the poem I was fortunate enough to be able to read out on the programme. So much mythology and poetic depth to interpret here, this poem could go in as many directions as there are readers but isn't that the joy of poetry?

I read it and am always reminded of that moment when I too looked down on my newborn daughter's 'small shy mouth of a new moon'.

Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart –
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon
with the small shy mouth of a new moon

Please scroll down for World Book Night gifts... as if I'd forget all of you on such a special day of bookish celebration.

World Book Night Competition :: The World's Wife ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Happy World Book Night and as if I'd forget all of you.

I have kept back six copies of The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, in this lovely special edition and each with it's own unique number which you can enter, Bookcrossing style, on the World Book Night website if you so choose. Thus the book's journey can be tracked and I will happily send these worldwide, though the far flung ones may have to go surface mail, but that's all to the good, something to look forward to in April. But read on because you have work to do in order to enter.

If you'd like to be in with a chance of winning a gift of poetry to treasure that I hope will make you laugh, reflect and wonder, then here's the deal, please do leave your name in comments but I've added a little degree of difficulty...

Imagine if you would for a moment that the Poet Laureate has asked for our help (!) and wants ideas for The World's Wife Volume Two... and to be honest who else should she sensibly turn to but us.

So can you suggest some more wives?

Who else would you like to see in receipt of the Carol Ann Duffy treatment?

Of which man in history would you most like to hear the point of view of the more silent woman alongside and why?

Me, I'd quite like to know what Mrs Nelson really thought of Admiral Horatio when he bunked off with Emma Hamilton... and what poor Fanny made of the black lace Horatio and Emma chose as a placatory gift for her after their very public romantic sojourn in Naples. Estranged and then shunned by the lovestruck Horatio, yet still devoted to him, I wonder if it might all have been bitter and barbed... she'd gone through all that losing the arm stuff with him after all and that's the thanks she gets, or else terribly sad as Fanny realised her place had been usurped by the beautiful and beguiling Emma. Goodness me, how emotional and, having just read back over the posts I wrote in 2006 after reading Kate Williams's brilliant book England's Mistress, I'm almost thinking I'll have a stab at writing the poem myself if Carol Ann doesn't fancy it.

So over to you, name those wives and why.

You have a little time to think about it too, we'll do a completely subjective choosing of the six winners (based on the ones that delight us the most) tomorrow night when recovered from this evening's Vocal Harem choir concert and the giving of my World Book Night books.

I've had far too much excitement for one week, please don't expect high calibre content for Team Tolstoy this coming Wednesday will you.... just be ready to bail me out with your thoughts in comments.

 

A Good Read - World Book Night :: Agent Zigzag ~ Ben McIntyre

Phew, well that's over and is there anything worse than hearing your own voice played back to you?? Yes very probably but that's enough to be going on with.

So many fantastic books in progress and so many waiting for me to pick up, but I had to put everything on hold in order to read some of the World Book Night titles for that edition of A Good Read which all left me  looking a little wistfully at my neglected book pile.

So the books that were dragging me away had better be good ones was all I could say, except I knew that two of them were...one my book giver's choice The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy and the other one Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Safe territory, a second read of one has been nothing but pleasure and the other a book I have to hand and pick up frequently anyway because you don't really read poetry in that way, the third a first time read for me of Agent Zigzag by Ben McIntyre. Having read it, and now talked about it I didn't want to miss recording those thoughts here either, so this may or may not feel like a reprise of the radio programme...

When this book first arrived back in 2007 I passed it straight onto the Tinker for the war-veteran's scrutiny. It's handy having a primary source for WWII at your behest and I do like to see if a book will get through his radar first. In which case he'll be looking for some veracity and a bit of excitement too because when the Tinker joined the Royal Marines as a boy bugler in May 1939 at the age of fourteen (sorry for the repetition, I know you all know that) is was a bit like a Boy's Own adventure until it dawned that the country was at war and they were going to be sent to the battleships. It was the gradual realisation as friends started to die that this might be a little more serious than first thought.

Well Agent ZigZag passed the Tinker Test with flying colours and I didn't see the book for months as it made its way around all his octogenarian friends who had also 'been there'. Here's something I wrote earlier about their thoughts at the time, Nov 2007, to be precise and bear in mind the Tinker will be 86 in a few week's time ...

Occasionally a book arrives for review and I send it off to The Tinker for a first read because it's right up his street. As the world now knows, he's 82, going on 83 and a very discerning and avid reader so the book will either receive a resounding seal of approval and make its way off around the octogenarian circuit, or be handed back to me with the whataloadofoldcodswallop epithet.

Does anyone ever ask octogenarians to review books?

Are they an audience who are consulted and considered regularly by publishers?

I suspect not but they are here. Think of the lifetime of reading and experience they bring to a book and let me tell you they have no truck with political correctness either.If these books make it through the fiery furnace of the Octos then they are truly worth reading.

Agent ZigZag, The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy by Ben Macintyre and published by Bloomsbury came back basking in not stellar but galactic praise and The Tinker was mightily impressed with it.Thought it was going to be as dry and dust but couldn't put it down by page ten. One of those where you just have to know what happens next and I suspect one of those that would be loved by all fans of dangerous books for boys.
I haven't read the book but I gather Eddie Chapman, World War Two espionage maestro, might have been working for both the Germans and the British at the same time and was therefore a man of many contradictions.

"Inside the traitor lay a patriot, inside the villain a man of conscience. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters and his many lovers was to know where one ended and the other began."

By all accounts Eddie struck The Tinker as a likeable villain, no ethics, no morals, would steal from his own mother and yet there was an honesty and faithfulness to a friend or a cause even while he was double crossing them. The Tinker was intrigued, was Eddie's criss-crossing one side to the other about courage or a desire for adventure and a bit of complexity to his life?
He certainly received no financial reward and clearly the Germans valued him more than the British, they awarded Eddie the Iron Cross, the British didn't see fit to offer anything. Eddie a spy until his final days and this book apparently very moving in the last pages when he finally meets up again with his German spy master.

A gripping and fascinating account of a very complex man and with it came the realisation for me that WWII didn't only need the likes of men in power, or the brilliant cryptographers like Dilwyn Knox or the upper class Oxbridge strategists, they absolutely needed men who could practice the art of deception and who could steal, because what is spying but theft of information. Eddie Chapman so practiced that he couldn't be in a room without casing the joint or the talk for useful items no matter which side he was working for and which he then squirreled away in what must have been one of the most prodigious memories known to mankind.

So I am delighted that the fear of broadcasting my thoughts on Agent Zigzag to the nation was all the prompt I needed, with just a week's notice, to settle down and read it for myself and goodness me, if you stand a chance of getting this one from a World Book Night 'giver' push your way to the front of the queue, or reserve it at the library, or even buy one because it really is an excellent read.

 

An interesting week ahead...

Today, February 27th 2011, would have been my brother Malcolm's 60th birthday, and somehow I couldn't let the day pass without remembering it here, and true to form there's me not wasting the opportunity to sit down and read a book.

Malcolm was diagnosed with leukaemia three weeks after his wedding in 1973 and he died eighteen months later, March 15th 1975, just two weeks after his twenty fourth birthday...  forever young in my mind and his loss frequently ambushing me unexpectedly ever since. Why him out of the two of us not me is an inevitable question I have asked myself many times, and of course there's so much I'd love to ask him now about our shared childhood... I'm sure I didn't really cry every time he won at Monopoly ... but alright, I suppose I might have done.

We have a manic whirlwind cool, calm and collected week ahead here chez dovegrey.

Offspringette is back home with all her worldly goods and getting packed up ready to embark on a year in New Zealand. Lots of challenges and things to look forward to, plus a Masters degree to complete, but of course hearts and minds are very much with the people of Christchurch at the moment. Offspringette is heading for North Island but having landed in the USA for a year just weeks before 9/11 she is well versed on the impact a huge disaster can have on a country.

Whilst he was in New Zealand last year, the Kayaker stayed with some friends in Christchurch who he had met whilst working in Canada (these paddlers get around, make lifelong friendships and stay in touch ) and we have been very relieved to hear that they are all safe, though sadly their house is uninhabitable. B's account which the Kayaker shared with us, was incredibly moving, here's just a snippet...

Anyhow, here we are four days (Saturday 11am as I write) after the quake and life has been turned upside down, end over end and any other which way you want to put it. It's as if what happened before Tuesday is a distant memory and almost of little significance when we consider the events our city and the people of this tight knit community have gone through the past 72 hours.

I had just left a meeting and was sitting in my car in the CBD listening to phone messages and taking notes when all of a sudden there was rumbling and loud cracking noises swiftly followed by continuous violent shaking of the ground and subsequently everything around. I had a million and one thoughts rolling through my head, I could see buildings collapsing nearby, dust was billowing from the fallen rubble, the glass windows of the building next to me blew out, people came rushing out of surrounding buildings onto the street, a lady riding her scooter on the street was brought to a halt and fell from her bike but was thankfully uninjured, there were enormously loud bangs, crashes and deafening screams and all the while I was thinking of S and L and if they were OK....

There have been many acts of heroism from the moment the quake struck and that continues locally, nationally and internationally with help continually being offered and accepted.
I feel somewhat helpless at present and very much unsure of what lies ahead. What I do know is that we will find a way through this and whatever that path is we are eternally grateful that we are able to be on the journey because unfortunately some journeys have come to an end.

 

I can't even begin to imagine the devastation so our thoughts are very much with B and his family right now.

Bookhound is doing the airport run with Offspringette while I stay home and bottom the house. I know it sounds like a very strange thing to be doing but it is the total immersion method I have for 'letting go' and dealing with my nearest and dearest disappearing off for a year. Of course I will miss her hugely, Offspringette's visits home are a leavening presence in this house full of men, but she is going to be my literary eyes and ears around New Zealand in contrast to the Kayaker who kept us appraised of the rivers, the mountains, the killer whales, road trips and the bars, and she has promised to write us a blog post now and again... and who knows, perhaps this time I'll visit.

And talking of New Zealand and literature how can I not add Janet Frame in the same breath. Coming up very soon a series of dovegreyreader asks...Janet Frame. I put the questions to Janet's neice Pamela Gordon and she has answered them in light of the Janet that she knew and loved and they make for some incredible reading.

But isn't this funny?

Does it happen in your house?

You think they've left home, and they think they've left home, so they accumulate a load of stuff and then decide to upsticks to another country and back it all comes again. We have been looking a bit like a sale room here and with endless trips to charity shops alternating with regular ascents into the loft, which was getting a little bit emptier but has now filled up again, so we've given up. If it brings the ceiling down, well... Bookhound will fix.

Then Vocal Harem & the Sultans have a concert on Saturday so plenty of singing practice to come.

World Book Night on the same evening so I have to collect my books from the local bookshop ready to give out to the choir after the concert, and I am praying they haven't done what I have heard one disaffected bookseller has done and left the boxes of books out on the pavement in the rain...eek.

Then it's the annual World Book Day quiz at the library and of course the Endsleigh Salon team will be turning out again ( Rebecca, even if your arm is still in plaster and wired and pinned with enough metal to receive digital radio and excruciatingly painful, I'm sorry that's really no excuse... I will personally come and fetch you and your Shakespeare-Film- and-Everything-Else brain!)

And as if that wasn't enough in my diary for the week, it's me and that World Book Night edition of A Good Read on Radio 4 this Tuesday at 4.30pm. Who can know what I said, I certainly can't remember, and spot the dovergreyreader typo on the website which I have tried to get corrected but haven't had much luck yet... never mind. I'm sure the Cinque ports are as nice as the Tamar Valley.

 

The day after the day before...

My sincere thanks to all those who offered good wishes and helpful suggestions about staying calm in a radio studio....it seemed to work. My contribution to Radio 4's A Good Read World Book Night special is done and my thanks to the BBC for the invitation. It was all very enjoyable from where I was sitting, great books and some fascinating debate with my fellow guest (Tom Watt...better known to me as Lofty from Eastenders and now a journalist and broadcaster ) and the presenter ( Harriett Gilbert from BBC World Service.) I won't spill any beans because the book reveal is all part of the interest of the programme, and of course I had rattled on for ages before I was reminded that I hadn't actually said what my book choice was but hey-ho, I'm sure it will all translate and edit down into a coherent radio programme somehow. The programme is usually broadcast at 4.30pm on a Tuesday and think it might be the World Book Night week edition (? March 1st?)  but I'll share the timing details when I have them.

It was a relief to fall into the embrace of Villandray in Gt Portland Street afterwards and meet up with Amanda Craig and, as luck would have it, just as I was leaving for the station word came through that John Self had been let out of his Asylum for a day and happened to be in London too. He was meeting up with Linda Grant in the afternoon so we all joined forces and had a grand chat. It's always a treat to meet Amanda and Linda (who was dashing off to get her press pass for London Fashion Week) and it was also lovely to meet Mr Self for the first time and reminisce about our first joint Bookerthon back in 2007 when, struggling to get hold of the books, we posted them back and forth to each other.

Thank you too for the e mails alerting me to the fact that we are mentioned in dispatches in today's edition of The Times... the Web Search item on The Daily Register page and a lovely picture of my very muddy shoes. If anyone has found their way here via that link you are very welcome... please do make yourselves at home. Normal book service will be resumed next week and sometime over this weekend I will recount my discovery of the very latest thing that annoys me on a train journey. I actually moved seats very politely but it was out of the frying pan into the ...well the footballers actually. Details to follow.

 

World Book Night update...

Well things are really hotting up now and I'm starting to get very excited about World Book Night. I've been asked to do a few interesting things as well as getting myself into some vexed and very tangled discussions with a few people who are very agin World Book Night for reasons various, all of which I respect.

I've had to take an executive decision about my stance on this, because whilst I can try to understand all points of view and acknowledge the anxieties and threats perceived from those within the book trade, some of whom see it as another nail in the coffin for their shops and publishing, I am first and foremost a reader and book lover with no loyalties elsewhere. I hope the booksellers won't hold it against those of us who, as well as spending an inordinate of money with them over the years, do our very best to support them and are also approaching this whole event with some much needed unbridled enthusiasm for their product, especially given the daily dose of February misery that equals watching the news these days. To balance that I am also thankfully hearing about bookshops with some great events and initiatives for the day and it's a book lover's paradise on TV and radio too.

So World Book Night Saturday March 5th, whilst Sunday March 6th happens to be the dovegreyreader scribbles 5th birthday, so I'm sure to be sick with all the excitement that weekend especially as Vocal Harem, the lovely women's community choir that I sing with, have a concert (booked eighteen months ago) on the Saturday evening too, and that is when I will be giving out my choice of book, The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy to choir members after the concert.

As well as all this I'm doing 'something' with the BBC, more of which when it's 'a wrap' or 'in the can' or whatever I'm supposed to say, and you will be the first to know about broadcast dates so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a bit sparse around these parts next week. I won't be ignoring you, I'll be frantically reading books and then going to London to record.

Are there any other givers out there?

Any bookshops with events?

Please do let me know and I'll try and do a few round up blog posts to include them all and if you have photos of the day I'll include those afterwards... and I must mention one work colleague who will be giving her books away outside a football ground on the Saturday afternoon, there's brave for you.

One other point I do want to highlight though... if you are a book giver I think it would be wise to check with the collection point that you have chosen to ensure that they have actually agreed to take the books in. It was an opt-out rather than an opt-in venture and I hear some haven't done so. Whilst I don't want to spread panic and alarm nor can I bear the thought of people being disappointed... not all book sellers are happy about this initiative and I have heard that some will turn parcels away if people haven't been in to ask permission to collect their books from them. Which all made me slightly queasy at the thought of some disappointed givers who may have set up special events... so best to double check.

 

Last call for World Book Night Givers...

You know how annoying it is when you seem to have spent days and days at home, then on the spur of the moment you go out and the DHL van chooses that moment to try and deliver a parcel.

So we'd gone out on December 15th and there was the note when we arrived home and then it snowed, and snowed and then Christmas, but what a lovely surprise when the box finally did arrive on December 30th... one of each World Book Night title.

The books will be published in unique World Book Night editions but it was quite special to see them like this and realise that some great titles are going to be handed out.

If you are in the UK and haven't signed up to be a Book Giver yet, it's not too late, applications close tomorrow.

World Book Night launches today...

... and the fruits of my trip to the editorial meeting in London a few weeks ago can now be revealed. I have included some extracts from the press release for you and of course the all important list of books that will be given away on 5th March  2011.

From today, 2 December 2010, members of the public are invited to apply to be one of the 20,000 givers of 48 copies of their favourite book chosen from a carefully selected list of 25 titles. Most givers are expected to be passionate readers who will take pleasure in recommending a book they love to other readers. However, World Book Night will also encourage givers to pass the books on to others who either may be reluctant readers or who are part of communities with less access to books, bookshops and libraries. 960,000 books will be distributed by givers and a further 40,000 will be distributed by WBN to people who might not otherwise be able to participate.

The World Book Night website www.worldbooknight.org will serve as the primary means through which members of the public can apply to be a giver. People will be asked to say in up to 100 words why they want to give away a book chosen from the list and the sort of people they would like to give it to. Information about World Book Night will also be available via libraries and bookshops across the UK and Ireland. The closing date for entries is 4 January 2011.

The 25 titles selected for the inaugural World Book Night are:

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories (Black Swan)

Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin (Virago)

Alan Bennett - A Life Like Other People’s (Faber/Profile)

John Le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (Penguin)

Lee Child - Killing Floor (Bantam)

Carol Ann Duffy - The World’s Wife (Picador)

Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage)

Seamus Heaney - Selected Poems (Faber)

Marian Keyes - Rachel’s Holiday (Penguin)

Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Penguin)

Ben Macintyre - Agent Zigzag (Bloomsbury)

Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera (Penguin)

Yann Martel - Life of Pi (Canongate)

Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards (Fourth Estate)

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance (Faber)

David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas (Sceptre)

Toni Morrison - Beloved (Vintage)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate)

David Nicholls - One Day (Hachette/Hodder)

Philip Pullman - Northern Lights (Scholastic)

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage)

C.J. Sansom - Dissolution (Pan)

Nigel Slater - Toast (Fourth Estate)

Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin)

Sarah Waters - Fingersmith (Virago)

Alan Yentob Creative Director, BBC and member of the World Book Night editorial committee says:

“BBC Two will host World Book Night from its inception on December 2 through to the event itself on 5 March. Whether as a giver, recipient or viewer, we hope that BBC audiences will be inspired to get involved with this groundbreaking project.”

Author John le Carré says:

“No writer can ask more than this: that his book should be handed in thousands to people who might otherwise never get to read it, and who will in turn hand it to thousands more. That his book should also pass from one generation to another as a story to challenge and excite each reader in his time -that is beyond his most ambitious dreams.”

 Author Margaret Atwood adds:

 “When Jamie Byng told me about World Book Night, I was amazed not only by its magnitude but by its simplicity. The love of writing, the love of reading – these are huge gifts. To be able give someone else a book you treasure widens the gift circle. I was thrilled to be asked to support World Book Night, and doubly thrilled that The Blind Assassin was chosen to help launch it. Long may its voyage be!”

 

 

 

 

World Book Night update...

Bless the weather for not raining on Monday, frosty cold and crisp for my crack of dawn journey up to London on what felt like the milk train, but was actually the 7.44am, so not that bad and England was looking particularly beautiful as it sped past.



I was in London for the World Book Night editorial meeting and what an experience that was.

Just to recap, this is another event that will be linked to World Book Day 2011 when on Saturday March 5th (we can but hope it doesn't clash with the Royal Wedding) a million books will be given away by 20,000 passionate book lovers who can choose how they want to do that, and the hope is that some of the giving venues will be really innovative in order to reach a broad spectrum of people.

Chaired by James Naughtie who at times had to put on his sternest, most head masterly countenance to maintain order amongst the twenty-five book-loving people present, (only occasionally holding his head in his hands and threatening that we'd still be there at midnight if we didn't get a move on) ) the meeting was fascinating. Everyone waving their lists of suggestions all plucked from the longer lists submitted by booksellers and libraries around the country, but everyone had the chance to talk to their favourites, so really James Naughtie could probably now step up and keep the House of Commons in shape.

It took me days and days to come up with my list and then I had to whittle my forty-six wild cards down to two, these could be books not on any list but that we felt passionately about. It really was quite a task but after four hours and some intense deliberations we emerged with a very exciting list of titles that holds something for everyone, some fantastic reads like.... and.... and ... plus a few surprises and then there's .... you'll love that one and how could we leave out.... or ..... or.... and the one that squeaked in at the end and replaced.... and you'll be surprised about that one...

Of course I can't possibly breath a word or I'd have to kill you all.

Parts of the meeting were filmed for The Culture Show to be broadcast on BBC 2 on the evening of  December 2nd, the day the titles will be announced and the search for the 20,000 book givers begins. I was sitting next but one to Amanda Ross and opposite the BBC's Alan Yentob so if you catch a glimpse, that's me in my lucky turquoise scarf,  the one most likely to be gawping open-mouthed in the background for which I hope you will forgive me.

It was lovely to meet Professor John Carey again having shared a platform with him at the Oxford Literary Festival a few years ago, and even lovelier that he remembered me and has since sent me a copy of his recent biography of William Golding for which I am so grateful. I've been swithering around for a new (to me) author to explore and having only read Lord of the Flies at school I'm looking forward to some more Golding. John has suggested where I make a start so more on that soon.

The meeting was held at Foyles in Tottenham Court Road. In the Gallery on the third floor in fact, and in the midst of an exhibition about fonts and Simon Garfield's book Just My Type, so plenty to gaze at while deliberations progressed. I think you can already predict my happy dilemma, because that's a lot of bookshop to walk through before you get back out onto the road and a lot of books to idle past and browse.

Heck Foyles really is amazing, I wish they'd open one in Tavistock, a rural branch, we'd love it. More buying temptation than can be good for anyone but I had already decided that I would buy a book and come home with a souvenir of my day.
I knew exactly the book I wanted but wavered over the decision because I also wanted this

and my attention was very seriously diverted by sight of this...



But in the end this won.

A turn up for the books...

Bit of excitement here.
I had been keeping half an eye on proceedings with regard to World Book Night to be held on 5th March 2011, (two days after World Book Day,) when it is planned that a million books will be given away across the UK by an army of 20,000 passionate readers.
If you fancy being one of those givers you can get involved here.
The book give away will comprise of 40,000 copies of 25 selected titles.
Keeping half an eye because there seemed to be a lot of vociferous rumbling around the social media about what a pointless and terrible idea it was and how dreadful this would be for the book trade.
All that seemed to be drowning out any suggestions about how fantastic it might be for the givers and the recipients of the books, to say nothing of the media focus scheduled for that evening... in living memory I don't recall the BBC turning over a night of TV coverage to book-related programming, but that's the plan.
For us readers what's not to love, for the chosen authors what's not to love and for booksellers for all the enthusiasm that could be generated for books and reading.
So what's the excitement here then?
Well I have been asked to be on the World Book Night Editorial Commitee to be chaired by James Naughtie and convening in London very soon to select the 25 titles which are to be announced on December 2nd 2010.
So not only is that a turn up for the books, but I will be turning up for the books and very delighted I am to have been asked.
I'm sure there will be some virtual 'brickbats' flying around from the disgruntled, but equally I hope the occasional virtual 'bouquet' because I have been giving it all a great deal of thought since I was asked and before I agreed.
I can't help it, I'm a book Tigger who would press that book on you in the street if we met, and as you know living in the middle of nowhere...not a street in sight, so I've been doing it in that virtual way here at dovegreyreader for the last four and a half years.
What could be more exciting than to actually place a much-loved and recommended book into someone else's hands and say 'I would really love you to read this...' so I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to be involved with the real thing.