THE SO SPEEDY READER by Penny Dolan

                                   
 

 A day or so ago, as I scrolled through book-related social media, my mind seized on a question shouting from the screen.  

“How many books do you read in a month?”

How many books can I read in a month? I thought, the question already squatting on my worry list. 

Oh help!

The night before, at my monthly book group, I was handed the single library copy of next month’s title, Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick, to read pretty nippily and pass to others. I am interested in this historical novel - about Queen Matilda - but the need to speed-read 500 pages as soon as possible feels a very mixed blessing, as well the rush being slightly disrespectful of the author’s work. So, with my own worry in my head, I studied the question again.

                                        

The writer, in a particular group, was worried she might be falling behind in her reading. Surely the more books she read, the better, she seemed to feel? So, being nosy, I scrolled down through the group’s comments and could hardly believe the replies.

The number of ‘books read per month’ for some members rose into the teens, and even into the mid-twenties. Could these unknown bookworms really be reading a new novel every two or three days? Honestly, the rate seemed hardly credible.

What was it with these twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-five books?

How did these particular readers even find the time?

And what was the reading culture that lay behind the pattern?

Then I realised that these enthusiastic over-readers could well be what keen teen readers become as they grow older. Some of them might even be teens still, and in school or college? How on earth did this frantic ‘more, more, more’ mood relate to children’s books and the practice of reading?

Several thoughts started going round in my old, trying-to-be-curious-and-please-not-too-judgmental mind. 

Now I confess I am a greedy reader myself; starting as an early reader, I have always sped through pages too quickly, driven to know the plot. I do wish that I could read more slowly and enjoy the moment and the text better, as well as remembering more about the book when I’d got to the end. I know, myself, that faster reading is not, of itself, a good or admirable skill, no matter what merit it once had in school.

Was the reader's anxiety about the quantity of titles read the consequence of her education? Were her habits the result of years of those school reading schemes where answering chapter-questions indicates progress and approval, and got you the next tick, star and book in your book bag? Did this quick, credit-based system, which can now be done by children online from home, mould their reading experiences? Next, next, on to the next!

Then I wondered about the kinds of books that the grown-up speedy readers chose. They often seemed to be from a single known genre (such as contemporary psychological thrillers) rather than complex or different novels. There seemed to be an enthusiasm within the group for binge-reading series written by a favourite, familiar voice, which I can totally understand, as well as praise for certain authors who seemed to produce several novels a year.  

Who? What? Where? How? Whatever? This bit of book world puzzlement is still to be solved!                                                                                           

Besides, it seemed that long and complex novels were not really their thing. Is ‘shorter and thinner’ where books are now, even for grown-up readers? I can’t remember names like Kate Atkinson or Hilary Mantel being suggested, or any older novelists. Maybe those older novels simply take too long to read and so lower the book score? Although not everyone has plenty of time, surely anyone naming twenty book titles a month might be interested in trying them out?

Gradually, I realised the group seemed to have a trans Atlantic audience, reminding me of question UK writers, for young or adult, often face: Will it sell in America? Or should that now be Is it short enough for the American market? I don’t know.

                                    

Thinking of length, I’ve noticed, on various books & education threads, that teachers often ask for class ‘read-aloud’ novels (often based on a school topic) but they mostly wanting titles that can be read within a half-term. Ah well. Maybe the WIP will need more editing than I imagined? So do watch your word count, especially if you want your book to be read for any of the children’s choice book awards.

Back to another super-reader factor: many seemed to download their titles. They were reading on screens, phones and kindles rather than through real-world books. Once a book was done, it was done and on one went to the next new title and the next new writer. This was not a market, perhaps, where a publisher’s spray-edged, special-gift-edition of a prized title would mean much. Reading, for this group, was the consumption of an experience, without any ownership of an object.

Besides, within the current housing and rental market, is there any space for filled bookshelves or a personal library, whether for the adults, or for children? Surely, this absence must make teachers demonstrating the valuing of books even more essential, culturally, along with the need for good, well-managed public libraries?

                                          

I noted, also, that while many in the group got their books from charity shops, some stated that they never paid for books, even though they rarely mentioned library or use of an e-library. 

They always got their books for free, they said, and only ever read free books. How? Were these titles promotional give-ways, delivered so the chosen reader would recommend that authors’ work? Or were they, I asked myself darkly, downloading free titles from the various pirate book sites? Harumph!

As I muttered on to myself, another point struck me. Perhaps these super-readers included ‘listening’ to books rather than reading from books with pages? The quantity suddenly suggested that this could be their form of reading. 

Now the act of reading, to me (and especially reading with children) includes the visual pattern of print on the page, but many teachers and librarians also seem to say that listening is reading. The listeners hears the story, voice and vocabulary of the book just as validly as if they read the pages in a traditional way.

However, if these readers are ear-reading rather than eye-reading, what else they are doing at the same time, other than concentrating on their novel? Were they, despite having to accept the speed of the story, actually skim-listening or skim-reading? Who knows? 

And there is that other small problem with the attention. I know that, although I have enjoyed many great ‘listens’ on audio-books, keeping your mind on the story is not always easy, especially when you are involved in another task or a busy activity. That's when I remember that turning back though pages feels a lot easier than rewinding and trying to find your place.

Besides, if you are in a comfy chair or bed, audio-voice makes it so easy to drop off to sleep . . .  As you may be by now, after listening to all my questions, queries, suppositions and suggestions. Thank you for your patience.

                        

But, honestly, reading twenty-five books in a month? That one historic tome may well be enough for me, and I am looking forward to it. 

Have a great July - and please read as much or as little as you want.

Penny Dolan

The Process

 This is very definitely me working on a first draft. 

So many questions. 

So many possibilities.

But then, when all that's over and the storyline makes sense, that's when the enjoyment starts. 

That's when it's fun to get up in the morning and get down to work.

That's when the words flow.

  

(And then, of course, off it goes to be read!)

On Not Writing by Claire Fayers

 If you're going to fall over, try not to land on concrete, that's my advice for the month.

I've probably just taken my longest time off work after tripping and landing on my elbow. Nothing broken, thankfully, but I'm only just getting back to typing two-handed. 

It's actually been nice to slow down for a few weeks and not feel guilty about it. I've taken time out to read, to go for walks, to sit in the garden and daydream. I'm behind on publicity for my new book, and fifteen thousand words behind where I'd like to be in my work in progress. I'd usually be a ball of self-blaming anxiety by now, but I'm feeling pretty calm about it. And my to-read pile is down to a reasonable height.

Maybe I should fall over more often. 

Welsh Giants, Ghosts and Goblins by Claire Fayers is out on August 1st. 

www.clairefayers.com

Great Minds, written by Joan Haig and Joan Lennon and illustrated by Andre Ducci - reviewed by Sue Purkiss

 

Many, many years ago, when I arrived at Durham University, myself and all the other students of English were gathered together by our professor for an introductory talk. The only thing I remember about it is a piece of advice he gave us about the choosing the subsidiary subject which we would study for two years. "Many people have in the past chosen philosophy," he said. "I would caution you against this. People think that philosophy is easy. It is not. It is very, very hard."

I think he was probably right. It would have been hard. But if we'd been given this book as an introduction, it would have made it a whole lot easier.

In 73 pages, the two Joans, ably abetted by illustrator Andre Ducci, take us on a journey through the history of philosophy, starting with Confucius (551-479 BCE) and finishing with Kimberle Williams Crenshaw (1959-) Each vividly illustrated chapter covers a different thinker. It sets him/her in the context of the time and place in which they lived; explains the questions with which they grappled; discusses the ideas which they developed; and makes links with past and subsequent thinkers. The writers explain all this clearly and concisely, and the design of the book aids this by a creative use of colour and text boxes - it's lively, but not distracting. For example, look at this page.

The artist uses imagery relating to the culture of the thinker who is the subject of a particular spread: for example, see this spread on the Maoris.

The thinkers covered come from a wide range of cultures and countries. Many of them I'd heard of, but actually knew little about: some of them, particularly the more recent ones, I hadn't heard of at all. I was fascinated to read about Mary Midgley, whose interest was in how we view the rights of animals in relation to ourselves; her friend Philippa Foot (they were both at Somerville College, Oxford, after the war), who was interested in how we judge whether an action is morally good or not; and Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995), who seems to have almost single-handedly established African Philosophy as a thing.

I realised, as I became more and more engrossed, that while I'd started reading it as a history of philosophy (incidentally, it's apparently aimed at upper primary/lower secondary), as I read on I was becoming drawn into thinking about the questions the philosophers posed - questions about what it means to be human, how we should live, how to think logically, how we relate to each other and to the world around us.

And those are all questions which matter so much - I'm tempted to say more than they ever have, but I think that probably isn't true: they have always mattered.

Definitely, a book which every school should have in its library.

The Twirly Wiggly Dance, written by Farrah Riaz, illustrated by Naya Raja, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

This is, ultimately, a joyful picture book. It's about that very relatable feeling doubt and inadequacy, of horrible dread that we are going to spoil something special ... and then the release of realising that we are fine just as we are. 

Intisar loves to dance, and is delighted at the prospect of dancing in the Walima for her Auntie Maria's wedding. But she can't get her body to do the dance routine properly. She tangles and trips, twirling and wiggling, and making up her own moves. But big cousin Isla says she has to do the proper dance moves. Oh dear. The moment to perform is looming, and Intisar now doesn't want to even attempt the dance. But when the music starts she can't resist. Soon she, and everyone, are doing their individual dances. Intisar does her twirly wiggly dance, and 'everyone whooped and clapped ... even Isla.'

I wish there was a QR code in the book to summon up the music so that we could all join in! 

A little Harpo wisdom - Joan Lennon

Harpo Marx Family Rules
1Life has been created for you to enjoy, but you won't enjoy it unless you pay for it with some good, hard work. This is one price that will never be marked down.
2You can work at whatever you want to as long as you do it as well as you can and clean up afterwards and you're at the table at mealtime and in bed at bedtime.
3Respect what the others do. Respect Dad's harp, Mom's paints, Billy's piano, Alex's set of tools, Jimmy's designs, and Minnie's menagerie.
4If anything makes you sore, come out with it. Maybe the rest of us are itching for a fight, too.
5If anything strikes you as funny, out with that, too. Let's all the rest of us have a laugh.
6If you have an impulse to do something that you're not sure is right, go ahead and do it. Take a chance. Chances are, if you don't you'll regret it - unless you break the rules about mealtime and bedtime, in which case you'll sure as hell regret it.
7If it's a question of whether to do what's fun or what is supposed to be good for you, and nobody is hurt whichever you do, always do what's fun.
8If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it.
9Don't worry about what other people think. The only person in the world important enough to conform to is yourself.
10Anybody who mistreats a pet or breaks a pool cue is docked a months pay.

(HarposPlace. com)

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

Starting a writer dynasty - by Lu Hersey

 Googling famous writer dynasties, I can't help noticing they generally start with one privileged man (who has money or class, generally both, and of course a wife to do the childcare). He writes a critically acclaimed literary novel. His progeny then follow in his footsteps.

I don't fit into any of the right categories to start a dynasty, being neither male, classy nor rich - in fact as a single parent with four children and very little money, I was probably closer to trailer trash. Despite this, amazingly, I seem to have started a writer dynasty. 

Admittedly our dynasty isn't in quite the same league as Dickens, Amis, Stephen King, or the Waughs (yet). But my daughter and I are both now published authors (it may not be literary fiction, but the books are very readable) - and I reckon that's something to be proud of. 

Olivia (writing as O R Sorrel) writes brilliantly funny YA - which fortunately is exactly what people want to read. Guppy Books published her first novel Apocalypse Cow this month, just before her 30th birthday - and I've been far too busy helping her celebrate this to write anything new myself. 

I can't recommend her book highly enough, and I'm not even slightly biased. (Also, it has the best cover ever.)

Here's to nepotism. And cakes.

Lu Hersey

Writing the Magic

X: LuWrites

Threads: luwrites

Dogs chase their tales, too – by Rowena House

Turns out, on reading back over the past year of ABBA blogs, I’ve said what I was going to say this month many times before.

The happy-clappy gist of which is: these posts are great self-help tools. By making me write something worth other people's time to read, they have built into a craft library of experiments and techniques that have got me (very slowly) about half-way through the seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress.

What is scary, though, is how much I forget what’s come before. How I repeat myself. Somewhere on ABBA, I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned that private creative journalling never appealed, a preference I put down to being an ex-journalist and liking deadlines. So what? It’s a brag, isn’t it? A way of reminding myself I used to be a professional writer. Look! I got paid once and everything.

These blogs are also lengthy self-justifications for procrastination. E.g., this is from a year ago:

“For plot purposes, in Act 2, Tom must go off on his own to investigate the evidence which led to the executions of eleven convicted witches. In the latest iteration of his motivation for this action, he doesn’t understand his own behaviour. It is his subconscious which manipulates his desire to defend his ‘tribe’ from accusations of corruption and rationalises his atypical action – going off alone.”

It’s all gone. Tom doesn’t go off alone. He doesn’t investigate anything. He makes stuff up. He’s a writer, not a do-er. So what was that all about, then?

If anything, she says, as the June rain settles into a steady drizzle outside the kitchen window, these posts read like a chronicle of someone rushing around, with tail-wagging enthusiasm, vanishing down yet another hole.

For a while this morning, re-reading these posts did feel like hands stretching out over time, passing along the message, Stop with the self-sabotage, woman! Yeah, sure, they said, writing fiction might be a self-indulgent time suck with opportunity costs strewn along the way and a bitter fight for publication at the end, with all its nonsense about money and marketing, but a work-in-progress is not just about the ‘book’. It’s about the journey.

Writing fiction is an opportunity to set aside time to study people – Others and Self – with the explicit intention of unearthing something original to say about them, based, however tangentially, on one’s own experiences. Writing fiction is about the chance to craft something dramatic, entertaining, and honest.

And maybe there is some truth in that. I dunno.

I think what’s going on here is the (navel-gazing) repercussions of news yesterday that a school which had been loyal to The Goose Road, my WW1 debut, as their summer read emailed to explain why they are dropping it. 

Apparently, they have a policy of building up their pupils’ personal and physical libraries; now they cannot find a supplier to fill a bulk order, that is the end of that. Eighty odd copies which would otherwise have been sold every year now won’t ever be sold again. Eighty young people who would have cried for Amandine and be glad for Angelique and Napoleon won’t ever know they ‘exist’.

Six years after publication, and ten years after I began researching that story, I hadn’t expected to care so much. But I did. I felt gutted. Silly, huh? It’s only a book. I was lucky it got published.

Before that email, I’d booked onto another online Arvon masterclass for today, the first in over a year. And you know what? It was fun, thanks to Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s passion for the subject of writing about fictional families, and the ‘deliciously chewy’ nature of relationships where love and antagonism reside side by side.

Did I waste two hours of my life sitting in front of the computer, imagining Beth’s family? Am I wasting time writing this now? I don’t think so. But then, I can’t help remembering what ‘they’ say about the ‘hero’ story we tell ourselves: how, really, we are in control of the events of our lives; how it all makes sense when we think about it...

A decent hero story, apparently, can stop us from going mad about the purposelessness of it all.

So, happy, heroic writing, everyone. Chin up. It’ll be worth it in the end. 

THE GOOSE ROAD, STILL AVAILABLE ON KINDLE (so there).

Talking to the Author by Lynne Benton

 Recently I attended various sessions in the annual two-week Bath Literary Festival.  I always enjoy choosing which sessions to go to, particularly as the festival often includes some of my favourite authors – those whose books I most enjoy reading.

This year I went to hear seven authors talk about their books, which was great.   I was also able to buy copies of their latest books and queue up to talk to them and ask them to sign my copy.  It is always interesting, and in some cases a real joy, to have a chance to actually speak to a favourite author and tell them how much you enjoy their books.  Some of those I met, I found, were very happy to chat to me too, which was even nicer, and I came away on a high.

I hope they were pleased to find so many people keen to buy their latest book.  As a writer myself, I know how good it feels when someone tells me how much they’ve enjoyed one of my books.  Especially if it’s someone I don’t know.

Of course, this is why School visits are so important if you write for children.  When I was a child, way back in the fifties, I don’t remember ever meeting a writer face to face, though as an avid reader I would have been in seventh heaven if one had come to my school.  Maybe it didn’t occur to anyone in those distant days that this might be an option – or that children needed encouragement to read!  (I certainly didn’t!)  I suppose at that time the one writer who would have guaranteed to set all hearts racing would have been Enid Blyton, before the powers-that-be decided her books might corrupt young minds.  (Not that children agreed!  Whenever I went to the library as a child there were always several children waiting by the B section for the Enid Blytons to be returned so they could take them out.)  So I can just imagine the reaction of the entire school if the great lady had actually come to visit our school and talk to us!

And how wonderful it would have been if your parents had been able to afford to buy one of her books!  That would mean you might actually get to speak to her and ask her to sign it for you!  I’m afraid the cost of a new book would have been beyond most of our parents at the time, so I bore this in mind when I did my last school visit a few years ago.  Before going I had a load of bookmarks printed (with pictures of my books on), which I gave out to all the children.  This meant that as well as signing any books they bought, I could also sign bookmarks, so that every child would have a chance to come and speak to me if they wanted to, if only to tell me their name. They all seemed happy to queue for that too, which was lovely.  Clearly there’s nothing like the personal contact!

These days I suppose the only author who would guarantee the sort of hero-worship Blyton received back then would be JK Rowling, though children nowadays are much more used to reading lots of different books by different authors, and to having them visit their school.  Though I suspect that many of us who do, or have done, author visits to schools will probably have been asked if we know JK Rowling.  Children also, of course, accept that we must be very rich: at that same school visit one child asked me in awed tones, “Are you a multi-millionaire?”  Because of course, as everyone knows, all children’s authors are multi-millionaires, aren’t they? 

However, although that is, unsurprisingly, far from the case, I appreciate that these days when I go to a Literary Festival I can buy a book from a favourite author, and meet her (or him) face to face.  And talk to them.  It is still a great joy.

website: lynnebenton.com

Going Into Double Figures by Sheena Wilkinson

My tenth book is going to be published on 23rd September 2024. Yay! It's special to be going into double figures. I feel like a Big Girl.

Of course, when the time comes I will let the book slip out quietly into the world without fuss. I won't acknowledge that it's a significant achievement or do anything likely to draw attention to it or me. 

Only joking! 

I'm planning a BIG PARTY not only to launch that book but to celebrate having got to Book Ten and still being here, still writing, still brimming with hope and ideas and enthusiasm. 

Every book deserves to be celebrated, because every book marks the culmination of hard work -- often in the writing, and even more, for me at any rate (or for my long-suffering agent!) in the selling. And I do think a tenth book is worthy of an extra fanfare. And if I don't do it, who will? 

Some people will think I am having Notions. That is OK. They don't have to join in. But there will be cake and champagne and speeches and obviously you are all invited. 

The book isn't announced yet... but here is a clue:

I plan to tell you ALL about it next month!

Wake up, Mr Kean by Bridget Crowley review by Lynda Waterhouse

 

Wake up, Mr Kean by Bridget Crowley review by Lynda Waterhouse

Wake Up Mr Kean is a funny and exciting time slip story with a Cornish setting.

Charlie and his Mum have recently moved to Penzance from Newlyn on the Cornish Coast to start a new life following an incident in which Charlie’s fisherman father was lost at sea.  Charlie is adjusting to his new life when he  meets Mr Clemo who runs a second-hand book shop and is a former actor, ‘Once an actaw , always an actaw, I daresay.’

Clemo is a leading light in the Pam Drams – The Penzance Amateur Dramatic Society. They are trying to raise funds to save The Old Theatre that stands in the yard out of the back of the Hope and Glory pub. Charlie is drawn to the Old Theatre and encounters a man there with wild eyes and black curls and his rendition of Shakespeare holds him spellbound. After this encounter Charlie is determined to save the Old Theatre. He also meets a lad, Davey, who is struggling to ‘manage’ the old actor so that he can give one of his electrifying performances. They connect through time.

The story is beautifully written and has a strong sense of place. It shows the lives of local people. Many landmarks are featured: Penlee Park, Morrab Library, and the Promenade, and events such as Mazey Day feature in the storyline. The time slip element is inspired by a performance given by Edmund Kean, the great nineteenth century actor at the Old Theatre. It is refreshing to read a story set in a seaside town that is solely about the locals and their lives.

Sparkling dialogue is one of the strongest elements of this story; establishing character, showing not telling, and moving the plot along. The lively dialogue is peppered with Cornish. The story is filled with a variety of colourful characters, quite literally in the case of Jowan Spargo and her changing hair colour.

Despite its particular setting the themes explored are universal. The issues of creating homes for local people in rural areas and not only providing profit for property developers, versus the need to maintain the heritage and recognise the magical history of a place is relevant in many places.

Throughout the course of the novel Charlie discovers that not everyone has good intentions and that people, even his mother, can have mixed feelings. As Charlie witnesses the growing friendship between Tom, the pub landlord, and his mother it makes him uneasy but it helps him to understand and connect with Tom’s challenging daughter, Bel.

People are not perfect. Even Edmund Kean had his struggles. As Charlie says to Bel, ‘Perhaps what we want isn’t always the best thing. Maybe the best thing takes some getting used to.’

For many years Bridget has inspired and supported me to design and deliver creative writing workshops in art galleries and museums. She has an innate connection with children and a wicked sense of humour. Check out her website at bridgetcrowley.co.uk to hear more about her fascinating life.

Here’s hoping her magical writing can be ‘rediscovered’ and her latest novel is enjoyed by a flotilla of new readers as it deserves to be. You can also buy the book in audio, read by Bridget.

ISBN 978-1-917022-32-3

Jelly Bean Books

www.candyjarbooks.co.uk

Resilience for writers by Keren David

 For months now I have failed to keep my monthly appointment with this blog. The month turns and I think -  I must remember, I should write it now, and then the days go by and the 7th dawns and  -  I must write it, I must write it -  and then it's somehow magically mid-afternoon on the 8th of the month and I realise that once again I forgot. Dang! 

But it wasn't just that I forgot, if I am completely honest. There was also a feeling of having nothing much to say, and having to be very careful about what I did say. That  - as a Jewish writer who wants nothing more than peace in the Middle East, but wants that peace to include Israel, the world's only Jewish country  - my voice was somehow not one that people in the book world would want to hear. That the subjects close to my heart  -  say, the huge increase in antisemitic incidents in British schools -  would be judged as somehow unworthy, not important. So, month by month, I cancel myself.

 I am not alone in this feeling, it is discussed all the time by British Jewish writers (and in other countries too). That feeling has increased with the recent row over the funding of literary festivals. Is there a place for our voices in British publishing? We're not sure.  And I feel rather daunted about posting this, worrying about aggressive and offensive comments. 

This week, for my day job,  I went to a conference for Jewish professionals , and the theme was resilience. How do we build it in ourselves, our organisations, how do we nurture it in our colleagues? 

 It made me think about how important resilience -  the ability to cope with bad things as well as good times -  is for writers. So often things don't go to plan. That wonderful book, which you worked so hard to perfect, is rejected. Or it's published but fails to make a splash. Or a critic misunderstands it. Our editor leaves, our publisher goes out of business. We don't get short-listed, we make no money, we feel like failures.  We need strategies to deal with all of this. This is what I've learned.


1) Talk and listen. Find good listeners -  but also be a good listener in your turn. Try not to isolate yourself. You are not alone, even if you feel you are.  I have wonderful writer friends, who I can turn to with any kind of  question or concern. We support each other -  but also, just having these people in my life makes my writing career worthwhile, they are a reward in themselves.

2) Curate the noise  We are overloaded right now with information -  in publishing it tends to be about what sells, what doesn't, what wins prizes, what doesn't. A lot of this is just unhelpful. Limit your exposure to much of it. Just pick out, as best you can, things that are inspiring, illuminating, trustworthy. The sources may surprise you. 

3) Make cakes  One of the best things I did last year for my colleagues was set up a Bake Off competition, raising money for a good cause. We cooked, we ate, we donated, we felt good and we forgot our own worries for a while. We had an action plan. It doesn't have to be cakes, but any kind of volunteering or fund-raising is a great way to put your own troubles into perspective.  And making things -  cakes, crafts, art, gardening - is also stress busting and creativity boosting. 

4)  You're the boss of you  How many writers feel they have to please their agent, their publisher, their readers? And how many find that helpful? Yes, you're professional, you have a business relationship with publishing professionals, but you get to say what sort of writer you are. No one else decides that for you. 

5) Take notes Everything might seem terrible, but those events and feelings are what great books are made of. Just write it all down.  Hopefully you can make sense of it later.

5) Remember to laugh  The best aid to resilience is a sense of humour. And when it's incredibly hard to laugh, when everything seems dark and hopeless, that's when we need to remind ourselves that we can and must laugh at the absurdities of life. That's when we need to read funny books, watch comedies and smile at strangers. If I can do it now, so can you. 

Keeping Grief Away by Paul May

I read a lot of fiction. SF, thrillers, detective fiction, literary fiction, all kinds of stuff. In none of it do I find rape, murder, genocide and war occurring so regularly as in the Carnegie Medal winners I've been reading in the last few months. This month I've read Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman, 2015 winner (rape, lynching, murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, American Civil War, Indian Wars) and Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, 2017 winner (rape, murder, ethnic cleansing, maritime disaster with thousands of deaths, WW2). Did I enjoy them? Not really. Is enjoyment even an appropriate response to these novels? Well, probably not. Are they children's books? No. So why, then, are they not adult books? (Not that that is even a category). The subject matter is at least as extreme as most adult fiction that I read. I'm beginning to suspect that an important distinguishing feature of YA fiction is that it lacks complexity. I know that's a ridiculous over-simplification, but it does relate to Mal Peet's comment that he didn't like YA because he thought it was 'condescending'. And by complexity I mean complexity of meaning, of ideas, and not simply a complicated plot.

Both these books are the result of extensive research and Tanya Landman has been very clear in interviews about the danger of allowing the research to show through in a novel like this. I'm not sure she entirely succeeds in stopping that happening, but young readers would learn a lot from this book, and indeed many reviews say just that: I learned a lot. The quality of the writing will no doubt pull readers through to the end, although the plot devices which link the whole, slightly rambling story together do feel a bit clunky. But then, I recently re-read Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens and the plot of that well-respected novel creaks even more. But Dickens is a writer who uses symbolism and metaphor to deepen the effect of his stories. In Our Mutual Friend the River Thames runs through the book both concealing and revealing the dead and the living. There are people who seem to be dead but are alive, people who are alive but pretend to be dead. There is layer upon layer of meaning, whereas Buffalo Soldier is essentially a simple, linear story whose theme is freedom. Simplicity is not necessarily a bad thing, and complexity is to be found even in picture books for the very youngest children, but I'm just trying to figure out why books with such adult subject matter, books about adults who aren't even all that young, end up being marketed to a specific age range rather than to all adults. 

My greater difficulty with the book, however, was with Landman's decision to tell the whole story in the first person in the voice of Charley O'Hara, a newly-freed slave girl. That bothered me, not because of cultural appropriation but because it undermined my trust and made me question the character's authenticity. I think I might have been OK with it if this had been a third-person narrative. Then the author wouldn't have been pretending to be the character, there would have been opportunities for other points of view and there could have been a certain authorial distance. I have no problem with authors writing about characters with different race, ethnicity or gender from themselves, but the first-person narrative here made the novel less effective than it might have been.

While I was reading about white people writing black characters the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris came to mind. I fished out my 1883 copy of this book and then started reading about Harris on the Internet before realising that a) Harris is a controversial figure (I think I already knew that) and b) Harris's Uncle Remus stories have been incredibly influential both on children's fiction and on the wider literary world. They are also a perfect focus for discussions about cultural appropriation. Alice Walker, for example, wrote a piece called Uncle Remus, No Friend Of Mine. She grew up in the same town as Harris and said, 'he stole a good part of my heritage.' All this is too much for this post, but I'll return to the subject once I'm done with the Carnegie.

My reservations about Salt to the Sea were similar in some ways to those about Buffalo Soldier I can only admire the vast amount of research that went into this book, and its intent to inform readers about the 'worst disaster in maritime history' in which about 9,000 people died when torpedoes from a Soviet submarine sank an overloaded passenger vessel carrying refugees from Eastern Europe away from the advancing Soviet troops. I was also very grateful for the maps on the endpapers. But I found the narrative structure of the book incredibly irritating. We have four parallel first-person narratives. One character tells a tiny part of their story, usually in just a few pages, then the next character takes over, then the next and the next, then back to the first character again. This never varies and it wore me out. 

As for the characters and the plot, well, there was good and very bad. Alfred, a German sailor, is an almost complete caricature whose dreadful skin condition mirrors his corrupt and revolting soul. And there is a slightly Dan Brown-ish plot strand about the fabled 'Amber Room.' The two female characters, Emila and Joana, are more rounded and convincing, and all the characters are linked by the idea that each of them has a secret. I can see that when you're telling a story where every reader knows that the characters are going to get on a boat and the boat is going to sink, you're going to have to do something to preserve the narrative tension, so we have those secrets and the 'Amber Room' and of course we have a love story. But really, that love story is a bit of a damp squib. It is certainly not Leo and Kate on the Titanic.

If you want a book about war and genocide in the 20th century I recommend reading Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. It has stuck in my mind  for over 30 years since I first read it, but while I remembered vividly the book's extraordinary climax I had completely forgotten that one of the major characters was a writer of Young Adult fiction. She's called Circe Berman and writes Judy Blume-like books under the pseudonym Polly Madison. Her books are good, by the way. Paul Slazinger, a literary novelist and friend of the narrator thinks they are 'the greatest works of literature since Don Quixote'. Others aren't quite so sure. Librarians, teachers and the grandparents of teenagers suggest that they are 'Useful, frank and intelligent, but as literature hardly more than workmanlike.' Kurt Vonnegut's view on the matter remains a mystery. 

Bluebeard is a very funny and complex book about grief and how we deal with it, and it served to remind me that there has been a certain earnestness and lack of humour in many of these grim Carnegie winners I've been reading, so it is with considerable relief that I turn to One by Sarah Crossan, which won the Carnegie in 2016.

This novel about conjoined twins is funny, moving and startlingly unsentimental. This is another first-person narrative (I read somewhere not so long ago that this is one of the identifying features of YA literature) but in this case I wasn't at all bothered by a young Irish writer imagining herself into the body of Grace, one half of the pair of twins. I wondered why this was and I think the answer is twofold. First, Grace does not speak with any kind of an accent. She is simply herself, articulate and vivid. 

'We take the train home/ with Jon/ and pretend we can't hear all the words around us/ like little wasps stings.'

Jon says he can't imagine what it's like for them.

'"It's like that,"' Tippi tells him/ and points at / a woman across the aisle with a phone/ aimed at us like a sniper rifle.'

I should have mentioned that this novel is written in a kind of blank verse. I had my doubts about this, since at first glance it did at times seem more like prose written out in a different way, but the technique quickly grew on me especially because it gave the writer so much scope for different kinds of emphasis. It was beautifully easy to read. And actually, now I think of it, it's reminiscent of Vonnegut's style, splitting the narrative into very short sections. It also leaves space for the reader's imagination to fill, literal space on the page, but also space in your head.  The book has 430 pages but barely 30,000 words of text, which is very short for a YA novel these days. 

So, why was I never for a moment worried that this was a book based on research by an author writing about a situation of which she had no direct knowledge. Well, it's because Sarah Crossan makes her characters live. Or rather, her characters in this book live for me in a way that the characters in the books I discussed earlier didn't, for me. There's just as much research gone into One as into Buffalo Soldier or Salt to the Sea, but the book isn't only about the ethical dilemmas confronting conjoined twins and their parents and medical practitioners when they have to consider separating the twins. This story is about Grace and Tippi, about who they are, about how they deal with life and death, about how they relate to the people around them. In Buffalo Soldier and in Salt to the Sea I felt I was being educated about the American West, about WW2. I always felt the characters were secondary to the mission. One is a remarkable feat of imagination from Sarah Crossan. I loved it, and have no intention of spoiling your enjoyment by telling you any more about it. Just read it, if you haven't already.

But to return to WW2, as the list of Carnegie winners has so frequently done. J G Ballard reviewed Bluebeard when it was first published and said this about Kurt Vonnegut:

'For Vonnegut, the most significant events in his life seem to have been his experiences as a captured American soldier during the Second World War, which formed the core of Slaughterhouse 5, and some moment, presumably during the 1960s, when he realised that the next generation had learned nothing from the tragedies of the war, and had even begun to lose all sense of its own past, that great casualty of American culture.' (The Guardian 22nd April 1988)

We're a few more generations down the line from the 1960s now and there's no sign of humanity learning any lessons. If Buffalo Soldier and Salt to the Sea help to remind this generation that we need to do things differently they will indeed have been useful. I don't think Vonnegut would have been optimistic about the prospect of that happening. His (fictional) solution to the problem of how to make human beings behave better was to have us evolve, a million years into the future, into furry seal-like creatures with flippers and small brains who can't do much harm to anyone or anything. That's in his 1985 novel, Galapagos.

In the mean time Vonnegut has some things to say about 'keeping grief away'. Here is Circe Berman, the YA author whose husband has recently died and who has been keeping Rabo Karabekian company over the summer, but is now returning home:

'I asked her if she would write. I meant letters to me, but she thought I meant books. "That's all I do—that and dancing," she said. "As long as I keep that up, I keep grief away." All summer long she had made it easy to forget that she had recently lost a husband who was evidently brilliant and funny and adorable.

"One other thing helps a little bit," she said. "It works for me. It probably wouldn't work for you. That's talking loud and brassy, and telling everyone when they're right and wrong, giving orders to everybody: Wake up! Cheer up! Get to work!"'

Pau May's blog/book pages are here. 

RESEARCH JEWELS - Jack the Giant Killer

JACK THE GIANT KILLER

Growing up as part of a large Cornish family, evidence of giants, fairies and mermaids was part of my everyday life. I knew giants existed because I'd touched the giant's heart stone on St Michaels Mount many times. 

Recent research of traditional local legends and myths has thrown up a massive treasure trove of wonderful stories so, I thought I'd do a condensed version of some of them here. Jack and the Giant Killer is one of the better known...

In the days when giants roamed the moors and beaches of Cornwall, there lived a boy named Jack. Jack could swim and wrestle better than any other boy for miles around.

At the same time, on a small island called St Michaels Mount, lived an evil giant called Cormoran. He was twenty feet high and as wide as three men. 

The people were terrified when he waded over to their village looking for food, they ran and hid in their houses. Cormoran laughed as he stole their cattle and sheep and wrecked anything in his path. 

    But Jack was as brave as he was strong. And when the giant destroyed his parents farm and stole his pet pig, Pinkie, he knew it was time to free the villagers of this menace. One moonless night, he swam to the giant's island. The waves were high and the water icy cold, but Jack swam on. 

He heard the giant snoring in his cave, so just outside, Jack dug a pit. He worked all night and dug it deep and wide. Then he covered it with branches and stones. As the sun rose over the sea, Jack took his horn and gave one long, loud, blast.

    An angry Cormoran stumbled from his cave and saw Jack. 'You disturbed my sleep, boy. I'll boil you for my breakfast.'

    'You'll have to catch me first,' Jack said, and he ran and hid behind the rocks and watched.

    In a rage, the giant lumbered after him, but as soon as he stepped onto the branches of the pit - he fell through and was killed. Jack rescued Pinkie, his pig, and swam back to shore.

    He was now a hero. The villagers celebrated and gave him a belt with letters of gold saying: Here's the brave Cornishman, who slew the giant Cormoran.

Jack went on to have more adventures, slaying more giants in the most gruesome of ways - but I'll leave that for another time. 😊

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The strange things we say By Steve Way

 

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to learn a language using the ‘Michel Thomas Method’ – I’ve found it very useful – and one interesting comment he makes is that by learning another language you often learn more about your own. That also applies to teaching your own language. I’ve had the pleasure of teaching several Spanish and Latin American students English online for a few years now and it’s taught me things about my native language that I’d never considered – or been taught – before.

A few aspects of the language have always puzzled me, however. Even from a relatively young age it struck me as odd, when learning history to encounter statements such as, “Henry VIII built… such a such a place.” I couldn’t help imagining a portly bloke, wearing a round hat and a burgundy dress, shoving a wheelbarrow around a construction site. How absurd to say he built the darn place, lots of other folks did the hard graft. It always struck me as unfair that these workers didn’t get a mention. Actually, calling on my sketchy knowledge, (I was probably too busy imagining King H laying bricks than paying attention) I believe he demolished as many places as he built. (Though it wasn’t him doing the demolishing of course.)

Inevitably idioms are some of the particularly quirky aspects of any language. For a nation of animal lovers, we seem to have adopted some pretty gruesome examples, such as ‘flogging a dead horse’ and ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’*. However, what about some of the everyday phrases we take for granted?

“Do you need a lift? I could drop you off at the bridge…” (“Aaagh!” Splash!)

“I’m just off to pick up the kids…” (They get heavier every day.)

“Make yourself at home. Pull up a chair…” (Wouldn’t it be better to pull along a chair? I’ve already got my arms full, with all these kids of mine I’ve picked up…)

Maybe it’s because I attended a humble comprehensive** that I don’t particularly remember studying the use in English of the passive voice and conditionals. However, it seems most English language courses for students from abroad are obsessed by them. They often have to learn seemingly endless conjugations and tenses of the passive voice – frankly most of my students know these far better than I do, though it seems to me that the sentences they have then learned to construct through hours of arduous study are only likely to be used by the average person once a millennium.

They also expend a lot of mental effort grappling with the various permutations of the conditional form. In my ignorance I had no idea that sentences I used unthinkingly had terms attached to them, such as the First conditional for a likely event (“If it rains, you will get wet”) through to the Third conditional for a now impossible outcome (“If I’d actually done some work at university, I would have got a decent job afterwards”).

What I find most amusing about these terms for the conditionals is the existence of the so called Zero conditional, the statement of plain facts (“If you heat water, it will boil”). I can’t help imagining that at some time in the past at Make Up the Grammar Rules HQ someone dashed into the boardroom screaming hysterically, “They’ve discovered a conditional that’s simpler than the First Conditional… What are we going to do?” After the initial panic had subsided, interspersed perhaps with comments such as “Oh no!”, “This is awful” and perhaps appropriately, “If we don’t find a solution to this quandary, we will look foolish” and “If we had thought of this before, we wouldn’t have this problem now” perhaps they reluctantly had to name it the Zero conditional, relieved at least that no one managed to form an even simpler conditional form that would have had to be called the Minus One conditional.***

Another idiosyncrasy of language courses for those leaning English seems to be that certain words are – presumably inadvertently – not used. I often use articles from other sources and was – appropriately – astonished when it transpired that none of my otherwise highly advanced students had come across this word. Likewise with terms such as having flair or being gifted to describe someone showing talent, along with expressions such as “run of the mill” and “creating a stir”.

One concept many of my Spanish speaking students find difficult to comprehend is the idea and apparent attraction of spelling competitions. For Spanish speakers this would be a nonsense, like a football team playing against no opponents. This is because, unlike in English, each letter is only associated with one phoneme and each letter is sounded. (There are some exceptions of course but they are so few they would be soon learned.)

As you can imagine they are befuddled by words such as comfortable and favourable containing two adjacent silent letters. It’s been through working with my students that it’s dawned on me that you can only hear half of the letters in the word ‘height’ and since the second e in heightened is only lightly sounded (I believe the technical term is ‘Schwa”) that means only 55% of the word is expressed. The word acknowledged is an interesting oddity, given that the k in know is silent… but the c is sounded as a k!

Just one last little addition of which I am modestly proud. As is often the case my students (as well as previously GSCE students in the UK) ask me for guidance in correctly making a distinction when speaking between can and can’t. I don’t know if it’s help but I came up with this little ditty. “I can do the Can-Can but my aunt can’t”.

 

*Though presumably not the same cat.

**To be specific Dorcan Comprehensive in Swindon, which I was proud to attend and wish I could thank the largely excellent staff there for all gained from doing so.

***A good friend of ours, Seán Heaver, a former physics teacher told me when we were discussing this notion that a similar zero law of thermodynamics had to be devised when it was realised that a simpler law than those already assigned numbers existed.

THE VIEW FROM THE WALLPAPER TABLE by Penny Dolan

                                                     

It is June 2024.The wallpaper table has been slid from under the sofa and set up on its spindly legs along the hall. A tall bar stool, tucked in below, strengthens the weak hinges. I have to tell you that this frail table has never indicated that decorating is taking place. It is a signal that a serious sorting-out task is underway in the house.

Over the years, the table has been used for all sorts of practical purposes: assembling packs of quiz questions; counting out colouring sheets; organising muddled pens, pencils and art materials; collecting book donations on their way to Oxfam, and even for checking name badges for children’s book celebrations.

However, right now, the wallpaper table has been set up to help with the Big Cull. I have decided that it is time to discard lots of the ‘work stuff’ that gathered in my work room before the current paper-free era arrived.

I am spreading out stuff, box by box, and in true Mari-Kondo style, looking for the items that ‘spark joy’, those that needs to be discarded and those that items that have simply been hanging around too long. Try to think of my project as the Art of Swedish Death Cleaning crossed with Stacey Solomon Sorts Your Life Out, but taking place in my hall, with a wallpaper table instead of a vast warehouse.

Crates full of pre-digital packs hold all the stages of the book in process: there are scribbled drafts, submitted m/s, paper roughs, colour roughs, completed cover work, all leading up to the rough proofs, final proofs and then. at last, the book arriving - fingers crossed - as an object of success and delight.

My culling method is to go slow, to allow for the extra emotion and to almost pretend it isn’t happening. I might let one pack go, then another, and, maybe, a day later another. I am hanging on to the packs of my best-loved projects, but once I’ve done a due amount of shrugging and sighing, some of them might go. After all, I do have the books themselves, don’t I? And that’s all that matters?

I found it easy to discarding the box of official slips, automatically sent with my ten free ‘on publication’ copies. These marked the time when school visits could mean book sales, rather than merely accompanying Book Fairs. Mixing up ‘free’ copies with one’s own bought-in book-stock was an accounting peril and I have now escaped. As I cast the slips into a large rubbish bin, I wonder if, somewhere, I still have a tiny tin of 1p coins, ready to give out as change for that awkward £+ 99p pricing.

Oh dear. Table or no table, there will be some days of chaos ahead. Bags and bundles sit under the wallpaper table or beside it, until each one’s contents are spread out across the top of the table and along the wooden box opposite it in the hall. I do not want any visitors arriving during my very Big Cull.

The most poignant are the mementos from school and library visits. I feel sad about casting out samples of children’s writing, their letters, pictures, class anthologies, as well as art work, photos of wall displays, and more. 

I ponder over sentimental items: a rosette from a book festival in Delhi, a booking for an author trip to schools in Menton, ticket stubs for flights to Cyprus, and more. I sigh nostalgically over the sets of stories collected for certain historic sites, remembering events at Souter Lighthouse, Cherryburn Farm, East Riddlesden Hall, Fountains Abbey and several book festivals. The reverie ends when I come across my possibly last-ever booking form, and shrug.

I don’t think I am that sort of Visiting Author any longer: I have stepped away from dawn starts, endless rush hour driving and five or six session days. Though, there are 'virtual school visit' options now, the face might not work so well at a projected size. I’m happy enough to be doing Story-times at the local library, ten minutes walk from my home.

But back to the work on that wobbly table! I will deal with the simplest categories first, and allow myself time for coping with the harder stuff. In any case, listening to favourite music, especially the more cheerful kind, makes the work of the Great Discarding that much easier. Who else will ever want this stuff, Penny? Or have room for it? Be practical here!

Over the days, some old written work has risen to the surface: various scribbles, drafts, re-workings, as well as odd poems and wodges of novels or ideas I was in love with for a while. Maybe the space appearing on the shelves will allow me the mental room to create once more? Who knows? I hesitate over the half-made manuscripts, just in case the words might still have life in them and put them aside for later. I think about the one currently resting, and whether it is worth, now, finishing.

Then comes a bright moment. As I stand in the hall, clearing away the clutter around the wall-paper table, I start thinking about and silently thanking all those people who have helped me in my writing life.

All those signatures that once mattered: all those commissioning editors, editors, illustrators, designers, publicity people, agents, agencies and all the other contacts. I remember all those who helped with the visits too: the people working in the bookshops, the libraries, for literacy initiatives, book organisations and as festival organisers, as well as all the school staff who arranged my visits on top of their own daily work.

Though I have often felt alone as an author, there is, in truth, a whole network of people around you out there in the world of books. And, in particular, I’d think of the support and generosity of so many in our strange tribe, and the gifts that are one’s own writing friends. 

Oh well, back to that wallpaper table, and onwards. Have a very good June!

                                                        

Penny Dolan