Editor Frances Macmillan discusses how the book came into being – as well as giving Jane a mention.  Michael Rosen, whose essay about his childhood experience of reading Great Expectations with his father is included in the book, and Mark Haddon also feature.

You can take a listen to the podcast on the Vintage website.

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

 “She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all.”

When trying to recommend Chandler it feels like your own words will never do him justice, you have no choice but to quote some of the slick, sublime descriptions. Evidently as a female character in the world of private detective Philip Marlowe you can go one of two ways, but women often end up being the key to the story – not in the typical damsel in distress way, more the conniving vixen out to destroy everyone around her.

I was drawn to this as the second Marlowe novel, and I had read the supremely cool The Big Sleep at A-Level, where I have to say, my teacher read it brilliantly. I was engrossed by the seedy, dark, corrupt, mysterious worlds Marlowe operated in, and the ending was captivating to the point that despite being regarded as a classic, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall could not do it justice in the film adaptation.

I’d argue Marlowe is the greatest literary detective, and yes, I’m including Sherlock Holmes in that one. Marlowe operates as a lone wolf, is a womaniser and in Farewell, My Lovely he takes on jobs for the sheer thrill of the ride.

The story of Farewell, My Lovely is thrown at the reader from the start; Marlowe observes Moose Malloy, a physically intriguing character, he has – oh what’s the point? I’ll quote Chandler again:

“He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck…Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of angel food.”

Malloy is out of prison after a stitch-up and is on the lookout for Velma, his former fiancée. Marlowe tries to find Velma, and uncover the framing of Malloy, but to say he gets more than he bargained for doesn’t really cut it. Marlowe witnesses robberies, murders and is on the receiving end of some tough treatment himself.

Marlowe as a detective is completely relentless, and there is a perpetual sense of peril that his intrigue will be his downfall, and that’s what makes this so exciting. There are so many threads of the plot, and you know that they will come together at the end, but the endless contemplation of how that will happen is a real treat.

If you’re a fan of The Great Gatsby read Farewell, My Lovely or The Big Sleep. In my opinion you will soon realise that when it comes down to it, the supposed literary king of American cool does not hold up to the descriptive delights of Raymond Chandler.

Oh, go on then, have another quote:

 “You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at politicians, but there are a lot of nice people just the same. Take the guy that left that half bottle of whisky there. He had a heart as big as one of Mae West’s hips.”

Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler, Penguin (1940/2005)

When my friend passed this 624-page novel to me, starting it honestly felt like a bit of an epic endeavour: I am, admittedly, a very slow reader. It also didn’t help that it was set in, and describes, a period of political history in a country that I at that point had never visited and knew nothing about: 1970s India. However, I was also incredibly curious because the aforesaid friend had been reading the book for the past three weeks of our travels together, and I had been forced to sit next to her on trains, planes, buses and boats as she gasped with horror, laughed out loud and, eventually, finished the book with her hand clasped against her mouth with tears running down her face. Sworn to secrecy so as not to spoil it for me, she hadn’t breathed a word about the plot: but had thoroughly convinced me that this was a book I needed to read. Also, when she finally passed it to me, we were 2 hours into a 42-hour bus ride in Africa. So time was something I wasn’t short of…

I can honestly say that reading this novel was one of the most intense experiences I have had with a book. You are literally tossed between extremes of emotion, thrown back and forward through time, and transported into new worlds: both bewitching and unspeakably cruel. The story centres around four unlikely characters who are thrown together as a result of the tumultuous political and social circumstances in the present-day of the novel. However, as Mistry skilfully reveals the very different, and often very sad, back-stories that have led each of the characters to where they are now, the relationships formed between the four become all the more moving…

And yes, at the end, I cried. (It took me somewhat longer than the 42 hours of the bus journey…not least because the bus had no lights, and my head torch had packed-up). But the tears weren’t just because of the events that take place at the book’s conclusion. They were because suddenly, at that final moment, the whole of the book was brought crashing back into my head all at once: I remembered all of the terrible things that meant, it couldn’t have ended any other way; I remembered the parts that made me smile and laugh and forget about all the enormous, ugly, impossible things the characters are pitted against. It was overwhelming, to say the least…. my friend had to hold my hand.

If you have ever wanted to know anything about India, or contemporary history, or raw human survival and connection: READ THIS. I dare you.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry, Faber and Faber (2010)

We celebrated both Dickens’ bicentenary, and the expansion of our Get Into Reading groups across the capital, with a truly magical line-up of readers, comedy, and music which had the audiences in stitches one minute, and tearful the next. The British Library provided a suitably literary venue and Vintage gave everyone a free Dickens novel to take home with them. No wonder the public tickets sold out in a day!

Charles Dickens casts a critical eye over proceedings

Whilst a portrait of the great man himself looked down on us, his actual DNA appeared on stage in the form of Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, his great-great-great granddaughter, who apologised for reading A Tale of Two Cities from a well-loved paperback rather than a precious family heirloom. This made no difference to the quality of her performance, however; all of our readers left the audience in spellbound silence. 

The wonderful AS Byatt read the opening to Great Expectations, reminiscing about the effect it had on her as a child and delivering Magwitch’s threats with relish. It might be January, but our own Phil Davis’ portrayal of the loving Cratchitt family in A Christmas Carol  still kindled a warm and fuzzy feeling, whilst  Angela Macmillan movingly recreated Peggotty’s loyalty and devotion to the young David Copperfield, leaving one audience member ‘weeping like a burst water pipe’.

Ida Barr does her thing

TRO's Director Jane Davis and Tweedy the Clown

 Judging by the enthusiastic response from the audience and the reaction on Twitter, the event was an enormous success:

“I didn’t know I could be entertained like that”

“Clowns, cowbells, magicians and AS Byatt should be mixed more often!”

“Pure joy”

Dickens himself was a consummate entertainer and would surely have approved of the eclectic line-up, a perfect mix of comedy and pathos, just like the novels we were there to celebrate.

A big thank you to everyone who was involved and made it such a special event. If you came along, we’d love to hear your thoughts so please leave a comment below.

Don’t worry if you didn’t make it this time around – we will be back in Liverpool as usual in December and fingers crossed our London escapades will be the first of many!

The latest instalment comes from one of our Hope Readers Dave Cookson, who is exploring Nigeria… (if you want to catch up on any of our previous Readers of the World posts, you can take yourself on a mini round the world trip right here)

Nigeria has the 7th largest population in the world, and English is its official language, often used in educational settings and is used by many as a second language.

The diversity of Nigeria means there is a wide range of literature in a variety of languages. Yoruba is spoken by 20 million, with the first novel in this language (The Forest of a Thousand Demons by D.A. Fagunwa) published relatively recently in 1938. Hausa is spoken by 25 million and the language’s first novel emerged from a competition ran by Northern Nigeria’s Translation Bureau. The winner was Muhammadu Bello’s 1933 work Gandoki. Igbo is a language spoken by some 20 million Nigerians, and The Proverbs of Omenuko by Pita Nwana was the language’s first novel, published in 1933, when another famous Igbo person was just three years old: Chinua Achebe.

Despite his Igbo background Achebe wrote in English, producing one of the most highly-acclaimed and widely read African books in history: Things Fall Apart. The novel is fiercely anti-colonial whilst acknowledging the flaws of pre-colonial society, following the deeply-flawed protagonist Okonkwo as he tries to dominate the village of Umuofia and then prevent it succumbing to the English colonialists. Things Fall Apart clearly drew on the proverbial influence of the Igbo culture demonstrated in the very first Igbo novel and throughout its rich history of story-telling.

Achebe’s novels are examples of the power of good story-telling, but his own experiences of storytelling and its benefits are not limited to politically-tinged novels. In the essay ‘My Daughters’ he tells of a time when his two-and-a-half year old daughter, Nwando, would cry on the way to her new American nursery school, not speak to anyone once she was there and on the way back would seem ‘desolate’. What happened next was beautiful:

“In the end we struck a bargain that solved the problem. I had to tell her a story all the way to school if she promised not to cry when I dropped her off. Very soon she added another story all the way back. The agreement, needless to say, taxed my repertory of known and fudged stories to the utmost. But it worked. Nwando was no longer crying. By the year’s end she had become such a success in her school that many of her little American schoolmates had begun to call their school Nwando-haven instead of its proper name, Wonderhaven.”

Despite being a country with such a short history involving the English language Nigeria has consistently produced brilliant writers including poets Christopher Okigbo and Wole Soyinka; author of The Voice, Gabriel Okara; Booker Prize winning author of The Famished Road, Ben Okri and author of Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The frustrating thing about Nigeria and its rich literary history is that reports claim around half the country suffers with literacy problems. In a bid to combat this, President Goodluck Jonathan introduced the ‘Bring Back the Book’ initiative in December 2010. This was a national pledge to protect libraries, conduct readings of the country’s literature in educational institutions, research issues relating to reading and support organisations conducting reading-related activity. The ultimate aim of the initiative is to revitalise a reading culture in Nigeria.

BBB has incorporated numerous events into the initiative, with authors nominated for the Nigeria Prize for Literature being paired with children to read. However, the event took a surprising turn when an argument about witches erupted between a high school pupil and one of the nominees! At the same event a cultural activist claimed foreign cartoons were killing the folk tale tradition of Nigeria, and cartoons did no good to a child’s moral upbringing.

To take a nationalistic view of the merits of writing, particularly in English, Nigeria is a literary giant. If you’ve never read anything by one of Achebe, Okigbo or Soyinka then it’s about time you right that wrong.

Two nights ago I woke up after having a terrifying dream. I was sitting down in a hall surrounded by large open fields, the hall looked like an old school hall, and there were a panel of people sitting down some distance from myself. I knew these people were there to judge my sanity in some way but felt powerless to have any input on how they judged or viewed me. I just had to sit and wait and in the process felt extremely vulnerable and frightened. As you would expect,  I woke up feeling rather disorientated but also found myself recalling the name of Randle McMurphy, one of the central protagonists from Ken Kesey’s classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel which I had only just finished reading for the first time a few days before.

My memory of McMurphy’s highly disturbing experience of a psychiatric institution during the 1960s and his relentless commitment to challenging the ‘all-powerful Combine’ in which he finds himself trapped no doubt had contributed to my nightmare but also helped me to refocus and get up out of bed that day. 

I don’t know why remembering McMurphy’s experience should have helped to steady my nerves that morning.  The book is a terrifying read and McMurphy both undergoes and witnesses some horrendous treatment while he is at the asylum. McMurphy is also a morally dubious character himself, having supposedly faked insanity to escape serving time in a state penitentiary for being convicted on a charge of rape. I think however McMurphy comes to encapsulate a massive challenge to the system during the novel and champions the cause of many of the vulnerable men also staying on the ward and I think this is why I found myself trying to remember his name after the dream and, shortly after his, the name of Chief Bromden, the narrator of the story who rediscovers his voice quite literally through his relationship with McMurphy. The book taps into that deep-seated fear which I’m assuming lurks within many a soul at any one point in their lives – the fear of losing one’s sanity in life, and in that sense the book, however harrowing, provides a language and a narrative through this darkness. The reader sees McMurphy not only challenge the psychiatric system, but also help to reawaken the hearts and minds of the other male inmates – most of whom, he discovers to his shock, are voluntary patients of the hospital, frightened to live in the world outside.

So if you can withstand and get through some of the more harrowing passages in the book, it is certainly worth reading. Reading this book will take courage, but the experience will stay with you forever and as well as remembering the pain in the novel, you will never be able to forget how McMurphy makes men laugh again, men who for a long time have been too frightened to laugh. The novel is about therefore the possibility of reawakening back into life as much as it also follows the tragic loss of life.  It is a shame Kesey didn’t write some more.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , Ken Kesey, Penguin Classics (1962)

It’s official: bookshelves are sexy (perhaps our own Reader library needs some photographic attention…).

Fulfil your desires…: Bookshelf Porn

As if to answer our pleas, along comes Anobii. Established in 2006 but revamped and relaunched in December, Anobii is a social network and ‘book discovery platform’ for readers the whole world over. It works very much like an endless virtual bookshelf and a huge online reading group combined, allowing users to compile and keep track of what they’ve read in the past or are reading now with a few clicks.

A major feature of the site is its focus on allowing users to discover a new book and find reading inspiration from others; having books recommended by a personal seal of approval and word-of-mouth (or should that be: word-of-mouse) rather than by computer-generated suggestions. Users can follow readers who have similar literary tastes to their own, browse topic lists of books for their next read – amongst those currently featured are ‘Books for the commute’; ‘Books That Are Better Than The Film’ and - rather intriguingly - ’Guilty Pleasures’ – or create their own lists. It may feature technology that is the latest in-thing (you’re also able to access Anobii through iPhone and Android apps) but its methods are all about getting back to basics – connecting people with books and with one another on a really quite personal level, which is something we’re always keen to advocate.

By the way, if the name has left you scratching your head (as it did with me), then you should know that ‘anobii’ is Latin for ‘bookworm’ – another tip of the hat to something altogether traditional.

Over the Christmas break, I read William Trevor’s Two Lives. It was a Christmas gift from my mother, who told me as I opened it that it had been the mutual love of its first story, Reading Turgenev, that had cemented her friendship with her closest friend, Ian; ‘It’s just beautiful Soph’. I’d read ‘An Idyll in Winter’ in the short story collection recently given away by the Guardian and loved it, so Two Lives immediately went to the top of the pile.

It is beautiful. Trevor is deeply concerned by the disparity that can develop between the life that you’ve imagined for yourself and the reality that you find yourself in, a situation that many of us will certainly have known at some point in our lives. In Reading Turgenev, the gentle, young Mary Louise aspires to work in the local town and to become self-sufficient, which leads her to marry the local draper, Elmer Quarry. The marriage soon beings to deteriorate, with the constant presence of his overbearing sisters and Elmer’s developing alcoholism creating a distance within a relationship that had never been close to begin with. Mary Louise finds herself inhabiting an unbearable, lonely reality that only her secret, unspoken worlds can attempt to liberate, and she falls deeper and deeper into these fantasies as the years pass. It is a very powerful story, one that forced me to think deeply about how vital it is that you try to deal with your problems as they appear through sharing them with others.

It may sound rather bleak in its overview, but I found Trevor’s poignant account of Mary Louise’s love for her late cousin and its ability to redeem this ‘wasted’ life the most striking element of the story, restoring her despite his absence. It was a great read, and definitely a book that I shall return to.

 Two Lives, William Trevor, Penguin (2010)

Novelist and flash fiction writer David Gaffney, author of Sawn-Off Tales (2006) and Aromabingo (2007), will be appearing at Spellow Library on Monday 30th January, 6pm-7:30pm. David will be discussing his recent book, The Half Life of Songs.

Then, on Wednesday 1st February, 6pm-7:30pm, Childwall Library will play host to Gladys Mary Coles. Best known as a poet, with publications including The Song of the Butcher Bird (2006) and The Echoing Green (2002), Gladys will discuss her body of work and her debut novel, Clay.

Entrance for both events is free and seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Copies of the authors’ books will be on sale.

For more information about the David Gaffney event, please contact Spellow Library, County Road, L4 3QF; 0151 293 8365.

For more information about the Gladys Mary Coles event, please contact Childwall Library, Fiveways Centre, L15 6UT; 0151 233 2746.

For more information on Liverpool Libraries see www.liverpool.gov.uk.

For more information on regional events, reading groups and suggestions for further reading, see www.time-to-read.co.uk.

Editor: Please not that there was an error in the date of the Childwall event. This event will actually be taking place on Wednesday 1st February.