The Reader Online

There are some things in life that you can rely on, events and objects that stand as steadfast institutions, time honoured traditions that are passed from generation to generation. In the world of literature, it is those books that are collectively dubbed the ‘classics’ that have remained reliable for many a reader. No matter how many new books are written, printed and published every year, there will always be a classic upon the shelves to be unearthed or rediscovered. However some alarming new research has suggested that, like such icons of British culture as the Routemaster bus or red telephone box, the classics may become endangered species.

A survey conducted by the supermarket chain Asda has indicated that the younger generation in particular are turning away from classic literature, with modern novels taking precedence in their reading habits. What is perhaps more worrying is the lack of knowledge a number of children have about the classics – 60% of the children surveyed had not heard of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and a combined 80% believed that the title character of Moby Dick was either a pop star or an explorer, whereas nearly half could correctly give the name of David Beckham’s autobiography. It would seem that celebrity culture is king, giving the potential for the future to be less about Jane Eyre and more about celebrity airheads who put their names to ghost-written novels.

However it’s not all bad news – the research clearly shows young people do have a definite taste for literature and reading, with the Harry Potter and Twilight series proving especially popular. That young readers connect so closely to these books is encouraging, and they can be a stepping stone to the classics; the stories of modern novels can be traced back to their predecessors, be they love stories complete with dark and brooding heroes and heroines or those all about the fantastical, supernatural and mystical. If a girl is in love with Twilight, it’s just as likely she’ll love Wuthering Heights if it’s given a chance. Those of us at The Reader Organisation who work closely with young people can testify that not all of the younger generations are losing interest in classic literature.

Perhaps the most obvious reason for the classics’ lack of appeal is the perception a number of young and older people alike have of them somehow being ‘stuffy’ and meant only for certain types of people. To attempt to help dismiss this myth, Asda launched their Big Read campaign at the end of January which offered a range of classic novels, as well as newer books for both children and adults, at a snip for a mere £3 each or a ‘mix and match’ 2 for £5 offer, meaning that customers could pick up books and put them in their shopping baskets along with their groceries and essentials. Dewi Williams, Papershop Category Marketing Manager at Asda said about the campaign:

“Asda’s Big Read campaign is reducing the cost of these classic books to encourage children big and small to indulge in classic literature before it literally dies out. But it’s not just kids these books will appeal to but adults too after all, you’re never too old to enjoy Dickens or Bronte.”

By making a large number of classic books available for the first time in the supermarket, there is little doubt that The Big Read will go some way to help reclassify the classics for modern readers, namely by removing the ‘class’ aspect in terms of making them affordable and readily available to all.

The Big Read promotion has recently come to a close in Asda stores, yet the fact that it garnered high-profile support from Carol Vorderman, as well as a range of stores holding special in-store storytelling sessions to highlight the joys of reading, indicates that the campaign had a positive outcome. The cause is also set to continue as six stores are introducing what they are terming ‘learning bays’ on a trial basis until May. If deemed a success, there is a possibility that they could be in every store nationwide – and as the initial signs are reported to be ‘promising’ by Asda book buyer Steph Bateson, things are certainly looking good for the promotion of literature in the down-to-earth environment of supermarkets.

Bernard Cribbins has said that the BBC should restore the central role of storytelling in children’s television by returning Jackanory to its original format. In their recent revival of the show the BBC dropped the traditional format of a narrator reading from a book, favouring episodes that featured CGI graphics. Cribbins, one of the shows original narrators, commented:

I do wish that it could be brought back in the form that it used to be, with someone sitting one-to-one with a camera. It’s like you are talking to your children at bedtime, they look at you and don’t see anything else – they don’t see flashing lights and CGI and all the rest of it.

An adaptation of Framed by local author, screenwriter, and friend of The Reader Organisation Frank Cottrell Boyce will be shown on BBC 1 on Sunday 30th August.

Set almost entirely in Wales, the drama tells the story of 10-year-old Dylan Hughes and his family’s small petrol station; when his father leaves the family, it coincides with the arrival of a contingent from the National Portrait Gallery in London, who have brought paintings to Wales for safe-keeping after the gallery was flooded. The novel was inspired by the real-life practice during the Second World War of keeping paintings in Welsh mines.

(www.thebookseller.com)

Framed was directed by Andy De Emmony, and stars Trevor Eve and Eve Myles.

ONFICTION, Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction, recently published an article explaining how, when we read, we create a “mental stimulation of the events in the story.” The study, undertaken by Professor Jeffrey Zacks, Associate Director of Dynamic Cognition Laboratory at the University of Washington, St. Louis, and three of his colleagues, set out to determine “the brain processes of study participants with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans”, when reading. As detailed in this Live Science article by Andrea Thompson, the researchers took the following approach with their study:

The 28 study participants […] spent about 10 minutes reading four narratives, each less than 1,500 words, taken from the book “One Boy’s Day.” The words from the book were flashed onto a screen that the participants could read on a mirror in front of their faces.

[…]The researchers coded the four narratives for six types of changes “that people might be monitoring while they’re comprehending” — changes they would notice both in everyday life and possibly in reading, Zacks said. These changes included: spatial changes (when a location changed); object changes (when a character picked up a ball, say); character changes; causal changes (when an activity occurs that wasn’t directly caused by the activity in a previous clause); and goal changes (when a character begins an action with a new goal).

Monitoring such changes in the environment is adaptive, because it likely helped our ancestors to predict what might happen next: where prey might dart to next or what a predator might do. Similarly, today it helps us predict what might happen next in a story.

In other words, “reading a simple verb such as “run” or “kick” activates some of the same regions of the brain that would be activated when we actually go running or kick a ball.”

The Guardian published a related article back in January, which you can read by following this link.

Booker prize-winning author Margaret Atwood will be appearing at Manchester Literature Festival to launch her new novel The Year of the Flood.

Set in the same dystopian world as her previous novel Oryx and Crake, it tells the story of God’s Gardeners – a religion devoted to the preservation of all species. The Gardeners have long predicted the Waterless Flood, which arrives in the form of a global pandemic obliterating most of human life. The survivors are left to battle over an existence amongst themselves and the other gene-spliced life forms now running amok – will the human race make it, and more to the point, should it?

The event, a unique literary performance with music, is part of a selective UK tour to support the work of the RSPB & BirdLife International, and to raise awareness of species decline.

The event will take place at Manchester Cathedral on Tuesday 1st September at 7.30pm. Tickets priced £8/£6 concessions are now on sale and can be booked through the box office on 0870 428 0785 or online, following this link.

War and Peace: an Anthology of Somali Literature is a unique and rare collection of classic Somali poems and stories exploring matters of conflict and its mediation. The work has been collected by Ismaaciil Aw Aadan and Axmed Aw Geeddi: poets who have an enormous understanding of Somali classical poets, their poetry, and the historical context of their literature which spans over 200 years.

The collection explains how pastoral nomadic communities were brought into conflict, and explores the role which literature can play in matters of peace-keeping: providing both Somali and non-Somali readers with a fascinating insight into the history of a creative community which may have otherwise been lost.

The anthology will be launched at the Mooge Festival and Hargeysa International Book Fair, and can now be ordered from Red Sea Online.

Children’s writer and illustrator Anthony Browne has been made the sixth Children’s Laureate, taking over the role from Michael Rosen. Browne is the second illustrator to take on the role since Quentin Blake, who held the title when it was first launched ten years ago.

Browne states that one of his main aims as Children’s Laureate will be:

to raise the profile of, and respect and enthusiasm for, picture books

Browne has written and illustrated almost forty titles and, of these, it is The Shape Game that will be central to his campaign promoting picture books: a story based on a childhood game involving drawing.

Marilynne Robinson’s third novel Home has been awaded the Orange Prize for Fiction, beating favourite to win Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman. Home retells the story of Robinson’s second novel, Gilead, from a different perspective, giving readers a closer look at the other great character: Jack Broughton, who returns home in order to make peace with his dying father. In Robinson’s own words:

I didn’t want to make Jack a good man in a conventional sense, I wanted to make him a person of value in terms of the whole complexity of his life.

On the decision to award Robinson the prize, Fi Glover, Chairman of the judging panel says:

We were unanimously agreed – it is a profound work of art

See which other novels were short-listed here.

The Reader No.32 featured an extract from Home, and you can find details on how to get hold of a copy here.

‘Seriously addictive’. ‘Once you’ve started it’s hard to stop’.

The above are slogans that are to be used in the latest campaign for the promotion of reading, though you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The initiative, which to begin with will target existing book buyers, has been deemed ‘edgy [...] clever, fun, flexible, memorable’ and ‘a PR catapult’. Such praise of the campaign is hardly surprising, when you consider that it comes from Damian Horner, the man responsible for creating the concept: “Bookaholism”. The project was first initiated by Publisher’s Association CEO Simon Juden and carried through at the Book Industry Conference in order to kick-start the PR stunt and encourage people to buy more books.

Though the campaign will firstly be aimed at those who already purchase books, its creator believes it will also be effective if targeted at those less enthusiastic readers who ‘Quick Reads’ are currently aimed at, with the long term objective being to ‘build (the campaign) into a holistic concept’. Though the overall purpose is obviously to promote books, we’re wondering if it can be right to promote them with the negative associations that inevitably come with addiction. Horner’s slogans of ‘Class A Reading Material’ and ‘Get Hooked on a Book’ certainly make an impact, but is it in the right way? Is this idea of Bookaholism and addiction the only way to inspire and encourage people to pick up a book? Or, as Damian Horner says, will people be just as open to professing themselves ‘Bookaholics’ as they will ’shopaholics and chocaholics’?

We can only wait and see as to what Horner will be promoting as his ‘Class A Reading Material’…

The shortlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction has been announced today. The books that are in the running for the  £30,000 prize (and a limited edition bronze figurine called the ‘Bessie’ – both anonymously endowed) are:

Scottsboro
Ellen Feldman

The Wilderness
Samantha Harvey

The Invention of Everything Else
Samantha Hunt

Molly Fox’s Birthday
Deirdre Madden

Home
Marilynne Robinson

Burnt Shadows
Kamila Shamsie

In issue 32 of The Reader magazine we published an exclusive extract from Marilynne Robinson’s Home (if you haven’t read the whole novel yet, why not buy a copy of the magazine for a taster?), so we’re delighted to see that it’s been nominated for this award. Perhaps it will follow in the path of Liverpool Reads‘ book 2007, Small Island , which won the award in 2004.

Have you read any of this years shortlisted books? Are you going to? If so, we’d love to hear from you: send in your reviews (no more than 100 words, please) to info@thereader.org.uk and we’ll post them on this blog. Keep on the look out for thoughts from our staff on the shortlisted books too.