But let’s be honest: we’re readers, not runners; and as past blog posts have proven, we LOVE cake. I’m not talking about low-fat-skinny-marge cake, I’m talking big-large-creamy or chocolate-y cake.

How disgustingly gluttonous is that cake? Keep us away from it by donating now!

So out of sympathy for the health of our staff, we ask you to support our Reader Runners to help us raise money for our extremely valuable work with looked-after children. You can do this by visiting our charitygiving page.

This year we want to get more people involved including fellow readers, volunteers and GIR group members so if you feel that you would like to run and raise money fo The Reader Organisation’s work with looked-after children, please e-mail niallgibney@thereader.org.uk for more information.

Here are a few pictures from the afternoon (c. Katie Clark at TRO):

And here’s some of the fantastic feedback we’ve received:

“I enjoyed being able to meet new people and go home with new friends.”
“Terrific testimonials and readings.”
“Lovely to meet all the people involved. Amazing!”

If you were there, we hope you enjoyed yourself!

Two highlights include An Evening with Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, and a Family Fun Day which features circus skills, rapping and a chance to hear from Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Millions and Cosmic.

Tickets are now available from Wirral branch libraries.

For more information about the Bookfest call 07788 916 871, or visit their website to view the full programme.

Having experienced my first ever Friday Lunch at the Reader one week ago today, featuring a veritable cornucopia of edible delights (especially in the muffin department), I must have had food on the brain, as reports of a cake-based tribute to Agatha Christie jumped out at me.

To celebrate the author’s 120^th birthday, Jane Asher has used a passage in Christie’s A Murder is Announced to create her own version of the Delicious Death cake described. An incredible, indeed deadly, concoction of “chocolate and much butter, and sugar and raisins”, its fictional cook declares that “these English people with their cakes that tastes of sand, never, never will they have tasted such a cake”.  Brave readers can judge this for themselves by attempting the recipe: http://www.agathachristie.com/agatha-christie-120-years/delicious-death/

Food plays a big role in literature, with evocative descriptions making a particular impression on childhood minds. Enid Blyton’s picnics of ginger beer, potted meats and milk drunk straight from the cow always sounded slightly strange to my thoroughly modern sensibilities, but, much like the characters themselves, undeniably wholesome and just plain ‘good’. Roald Dahl also provides numerous unforgettable food-related incidents, such as Bruce Bogtrotter’s cake victory over Miss Trunchbull, or the disgusting eating habits of the Twits. Need I even mention Willy Wonka’s factory?

The uses and abuses of food by characters convey much deeper moral messages; the hero Charlie Bucket’s grandparents have to scrimp and save to buy him a single chocolate bar, which he reverently savours. This is in comparison to the other four ticket winners who gorge themselves and come to the inevitable sticky end.

It is no different in adult literature; the confectionery choices made by the customers of Vianne Rocher’s chocolaterie in Joanne Harris’ Chocolat reveal far more about the state of their private lives and true feelings than their words ever do. Similarly, Hilary Mantel’s deployment of culinary detail in Wolf Hall is crucial to her utterly believable recreation of the sixteenth century world.  The characters use food as a tool to be manipulated in the cut-throat environment of courtly politics, as well as a source of pleasure and comfort, while the author uses it to aid the setting and atmosphere.

What are your most memorable food moments in literature? Have you ever attempted to recreate a favourite meal? We’d love to hear from you – maybe your suggestions will inspire a future Friday Lunch here at the Reader!

This exciting event is a rare opportunity to visit the historic gardens of Clarence House, Lancaster House and Marlborough House to help celebrate and promote sustainable living. The twelve day garden party, in the heart of London, will be a vibrant blend of exhibitions, interactive displays, fun activities and live performances from comedians, musicians and speakers.

You’ll have the chance to get involved in debates chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Clive Anderson, or learn how to jazz up your old threads with fashion workshops curated by Dame Vivienne Westwood. If that’s not enough for you, Alan Tichmarsh has been hard at work pulling together a selection of gardening workshops and displays, whilst Kate Humble concentrates on the food! Jools Holland is in charge of music, while Hugh Dennis and Marcus Brigstocke take care of the comedy.

Make sure to visit the Practical Action stand to discover how you can ‘Start’ their energy campaign.

Start will take place around the gardens of Clarence House, London

The garden party runs from 8th – 19th September 2010, 10am – 6pm daily (excluding the last Sunday where opening hours are 12 noon – 6pm)

For further details and to buy tickets to the event visit the Start Garden Party website.

Ella Jolly, Fundraising Research Officer for Practical Action and friend of The Reader Organisation, will be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in aid of Practical Action on 10/10/10! Please sponor her here: http://www.justgiving.com/george-ella

Jane, on a recent trip to Baltimore, chats to  Sonja Sohn from The Wire about books and, of course, cake.

At The Reading Cure event in the beautiful surroundings of the Royal Institute of British Architects in London yesterday more than 70 people from health and mental health services, libraries,homelessness organisations and publishing companies, as well as interested writers, journalists, counsellors and an architect joined us to hear about the power of reading groups, and eat cup cakes.

Andrew McCulloch and Jane Davis

Jane Davis (Director, TRO) read ‘Crossing The Bar’ by Tennyson, showed photos demonstrating the huge range of people coming to reading groups, and shared some experiences of the impact of reading on children, vulnerable adults and firefighters; Lindsey Dyer (Director, Service Users and Carers, Mersey Care NHS Trust) talked about the learning and understanding she’s gained from books (particularly Laurie Lee) and why she commissioned Get Into Reading at Mersey Care; Dr David Fearnley (Medical Director, Mersey Care NHS Trust) told us about his group in a secure psychiatric unit at Mersey Care and their enjoyment of stories by Anton Chekov, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie.  Andrew McCulloch (Chief Executive, Mental Health Foundation) worked hard to keep the speakers to time, allowing the audience to get involved and ask questions, and at the end lots of people stayed around to ask more questions, share their enthusiasm and desire to get reading groups happening in their organisation.  Get Into Reading London has truly arrived!

It is a free two day festival of sport, music, art and education which works to encourage racial harmony and better community relations. There will be workshops promoting social and life skills, football tournaments, art workshops, music and dance performances, plus much more!

For more information on the Festival, please visit the Anthony Walker Foundation Website, where you can also view the Festival brochure.

If you would like tickets for the AWF Carnival at Alma De Cuba, please email: info@anthonywalkerfoundation.com

We’re now more than 100 pages in, and around about Week 3 one or two people wondered if we were doing the right thing…

We knew who the Oblonskys were, but then there’s Levin, the Scherbatskys, Levin’s brothers, different strands and more tongue tripping names!

We carried on, and this week were very glad that we had. ‘It’s always like this when we start a big book,’ said one reader who felt less than happy with the book a couple of weeks ago, ‘then somehow you get into it and then everything starts to fall into place. I’m really enjoying it now.’

For this week’s section we read from Chapter 29 – Anna’s train journey back to Petersburg – up to the end of Part One and were able to reflect on how Levin, Vronsky and Anna had all been affected by their time in Moscow and how their attitude to home changes – or doesn’t – as a result.

We found Tolstoy’s description of Anna’s mental state on her train journey fascinating: it’s dark and the snow is whirling outside the window, she’s sleepy and affected by the train’s movement and, because of the inefficient heating system, it’s alternately very hot or very cold in the carriage. As well as that, Anna is reading a novel, and her attention is slipping in and out of her book whilst she struggles with vaguely guilty feelings about what has happened with Vronsky in Moscow, but can’t pin down the cause of them with the rational part of her mind – she seems to end up in a half-waking dream. One group member, who has bi-polar disorder, instantly said that it reminded her of times when she’d been psychotic and this produced a general discussion on altered states of mind and consciousness and how varied they can be whether you’ve had a diagnosis of mental illness or not.

In the next chapter, Anna gets off the train to get some fresh air and who should be on it but Vronsky? Some readers wondered if he were really there or if Anna was imagining him, she’s so subconsciously bound up with him at this time, and someone pointed out that, at one stage, Vronsky’s speech almost exactly echoes Anna’s thought which gives a strange dreamlike feeling to it all. We talked about how it’s possible to hold two contrary views with different parts of the mind – heart? soul? – at the same time, when one reader was struck by Anna’s response to Vronsky’s open declaration that he is following her because he’s desperate to be with her:

The awfulness of the storm appeared still more beautiful to her now. He had just said what her soul desired but her reason dreaded.

We tried to examine just what Anna is feeling here: is there a part of her that just can’t help it? Is she not responsible then? Which should she listen to?

We also met Karenin for the first time and his ‘gristly ears’ caused a lot of amusement! Her feelings for Vronsky suddenly make Anna realise that her relationship with her husband has been an act:

An unpleasant feeling weighed on her heart when she felt his fixed and weary gaze, as if she had expected to find him different. She was particularly struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself which she experienced when she met him. It was that ordinary well known feeling, as if she were dissembling, which she experienced in regard to her husband; but formerly she had not noticed it, while now she was clearly and painfully conscious of it.

Several people were struck by the reality of this, of how Anna could have been dissembling in her behaviour with her husband before and that this was ‘ordinary’ and ‘well known’, but not actually notice with her conscious mind that she’d been doing it until now when her interactions with Vronsky throw those with her husband into high relief. One reader spoke of how she had gone through this experience herself and how appalling it feels.

Karenin’s ironic, coldly bantering, tone of voice with Anna rubbed most of us up the wrong way until the end of Chapter 33 when he comes close to saying something real to his wife about how much he has missed her, but cuts himself off. ‘He really loves her,’ one reader sympathetically commented, as we wondered just what he was going to say, and we realised that we weren’t going to be free simply to scorn him – even though afterwards we had a good laugh and squirmed with some revulsion at the point where Karenin, ever organised and timetabled, even when it comes to having sex, comes to Anna at midnight:

…she heard the measured tread of slippered feet, and Karenin entered, freshly washed, his hair brushed and a book under his arm.

‘It’s time! It’s time!’ said he with a peculiar smile, going into their bedroom.

We discussed why this is so awful and imagined his white feet in his slippers and his horrible preparedness!

At the end of the session, we read a wonderful e e cummings’ poem to help us think about the passion and spontaneity of Vronsky and why this can seem real and true and the scheduled anticipation of Karenin – and to consider the pressure Anna is under:

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

Karenin, so far, certainly seemed to us to be a man who ‘pays attention to the syntax of things’ and we talked about how you’d feel if you wanted to kiss someone and they said ‘just let me finish drying these dishes’! The poem is very persuasive.

At times during these chapters, Anna wonders about telling her husband, but has she actually done anything wrong yet, anything she should blame herself for? The only man present that day said no, some people weren’t sure, but others disagreed. ‘It’s chemistry and she can’t help it – you can’t help who you fall in love with,’ one woman said. Some people felt she wasn’t guiltless though – even though she’s done nothing wrong externally, there’s some internal movement – but nobody thought she should tell her husband. I asked the group if they wanted Anna and Vronsky to be together and they were momentarily struck dumb! The session finished with the ball in the air…which I hope is how Tolstoy would have wanted it.

Missed the first instalment of To Russia – With Love? Here’s a link back to it.

with Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organisation

25th August, Liverpool

19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7ZG

What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope?  

 

If Wordsworth were to be reborn as a twentieth century American, Gilead is the book he would write. Human, humane, real, devout, and connecting the inner spiritual with the outer public life, this moving novel was mentioned by Barack Obama as a favourite.

While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been.

 

Jane Davis is Founder and Director of The Reader Organisation, a charity on a mission to bring about a reading revolution, making the content of great books available to all. Jane’s talent, energy, and belief in the value of reading are an inspiration to all who meet her: don’t miss this chance to experience the power of the reading revolution for yourself!

For more information please contact Casi Dylan, Training Manager, on casidylan@thereader.org.uk or 0151 794 2830.

You can download a booking form here: PDF/ Word.