“so you’ll go to the wedding in her car …”

“I tried to get something that hadn’t been tested on animals …”

“and he said if I take 500, would that be alright…”

“I fancy doing that…”

“just a couple of night’s bed and breakfast, that’s all …”

“huhuhuhuhuhushluhuhuhuhuhuhu…”

“her name’s Dionne and she’s got an adopted son at work…”

“it could get quite wet and you’ve got your best shoes on …”

“you don’t know, there could be any sort of crocodile in there …”

“he didn’t have his pyjamas on and so …”

“the driving wasn’t the problem …”

“if she chooses to be that way, then that’s up to her…”

“where are we going to wash our hands?” “I know, I was just thinking that”.

Libraries: quiet, calm and relaxing? My earliest memory is of a library that was dramatic, daunting and dangerous. Daughter of an academic, I was a regular visitor to the library at the University of Essex. How I dreaded our library visits, anxious at the very thought of what lay inside. I did however love visiting other parts of the University; being of the plate-glass variety, the campus was a four-year old’s delight. I was young enough to skillfully perform various acrobatics in public (spinning and cartwheels mostly) whilst staring at my wonderful reflection in the huge glass-walled buildings, blissfully unaware of anyone but myself. Then, there was the fountain! Even at at the age of four, the physics of this huge contraption fascinated me: a large metal box at the top of the fountain (somehow) filled with water and then tipped its contents below, filling a range of smaller boxes, creating a cacophony of resounding splashes. How the top box filled with water, again and again, I still haven’t resolved (but I’m pretty sure that my four year old mind has distorted the image and there is a perfectly rational explanation for this seeming freak of physics). Memories of that fountain have persisted; when reading the opening scenes of The Duchess of Malfi, years later, my mental picture of Webster’s fountain was not early sixteenth century Italianate but, somewhat annoyingly, a1960s metal construction. As a child, however, I distinctly remember that the excitement of seeing (and hearing) the fountain made up for the dread of the library visits….

My experiences at the University of Essex did put me off visiting libraries for quite a few years (hence my intimate knowledge of second-hand bookshops in the various locations I have lived). I do, however, have very fond memories of a bitter-sweet experience in the library at Gospel Oak, London. This visit was with my two year old son. About twenty young children were sat neatly on the mottled carpet of the children’s section; a (what I presumed to be) teacher was sat in the middle, wedged between two fantastically high columns of books. As we approached, my son’s eyes lit-up and he ran over to the imperious woman in the centre of the circle, jumped on her lap and waited patiently for the story to begin. Bemused (but not letting this interfere with her tight-lipped demeanour) the woman sat and stared straight ahead, obviously waiting for someone to come and remove the offending object. I took my time: partly because I did not view my son’s enthusiasm as offensive but mainly because my legs were severely crossed. Once my laughter was under control I went and retrieved my son and apologised but did not get a response. What a pity that a woman surrounded by books and young children (and sat on by one enthusiast) could not humour herself : a word, a smile would have sufficed.

It was during my years as a secondary school teacher that I was more acutely reminded of my early fear of libraries. I would often take groups to the school library and noted on several occasions the frighteningly high percentage of children who were ill at ease in this situation. Choosing a book was a pressure not a joy. One girl, I remember, spent twenty minutes pacing up and down, looking at the shelves with panic in her eyes. I offered help several times but she refused. She eventually chose a book and sat down with it, looked at the cover for two minutes and then put it back and started the next round of pacing the shelves. This, unfortunately, was not an uncommon occurrence.

Books, however, were not what had scared me in my earliest experience of a library. What had scared me? It was the huge, rotating metal contraption at the back of the building. The fear would set in from the moment I stepped through the glass doors at the front of the library. Row upon row of books were daunting but exciting to my four year old self; it wasn’t the towers of books that made me quake in my little shoes. It was the lift up to the first floor (and we always had to go to the first floor). The lift that involved taking a leap of faith to get on and off it. I have since found out that these lifts are known as paternosters: moving lifts on a loop with open compartments that you have to jump on to when the bottom of the lift meets the floor of the building. A wrong move or a misjudged floor level could result in horrible injury and disfigurement (I had a lively imagination). What happened if you stayed on the lift and didn’t manage to jump off before the lift rotated at the top of the loop? This was my main concern. Fortunately I never found out but Wikipedia reliably informs that five people were killed in paternosters between 1970 and 1993; perhaps my childhood fears were well grounded (sorry about the pun).

I am pleased to say that this early associative fear didn’t result in a life-long phobia of books. In fact, I am currently running GIR groups in two Devon libraries for people living with dementia and their carers. Several attending these sessions claimed early on not to be “poem people” and their initial apprehension immediately reminded me of my early fear of libraries. These same people are now eagerly coming each week because, as one woman said,

“I’ve never read poetry before, this has made me think differently”

and another replied,

“me too but I actually really like this”.

For many people, picking up a book or coming to a GIR session has certainly been a leap of faith. Working in libraries is now the high point of my week (something I never thought I would say); although I would like to point out that there is not a paternoster in sight, just lively, interesting people and rows and rows of beautiful books.

We’ve joined forces with Liverpool’s favourite eatery, The Quarter (on Faulkner Street, Liverpool), to celebrate the launch of The Quarter Library – a new space dedicated to kicking back with a book, and sharing books and food with friends.

To launch its brand new Library area in fitting fashion, we’re hosting a ‘Food for Thought’ event, running shared reading groups with extracts from A Little, Aloud over some light bites and coffee courtesy of The Quarter. And what’s more, it’s free!

We’d like to invite readeronline readers along to this small, relaxing and delicious event but places are limited and there are only a few places left. Please send us an email or give us a call (0151 794 2830) and get your place reserved before someone else beats you to the antipasto…

Jemma Foster‘s collection of twelve short story books are not available on Kindle or iPad, nor do they appear in hardback or paperback, but are instead handmade from recycled cardboard, bought from Buenos Aires’ cardboard pickers who make a living collecting it from the streets and are painted by hand, making each one entirely unique.

Inspired by these cardboard books, Jemma put together a collection of stories, with the theme of the human senses not only binding the tales together as a body of work, but also acting as an umbrella over the ideas and philosophical concepts that have niggled, fascinated and haunted Jemma for some time.

For every book sold in the UK, a book is donated to Abuelas Cuentacuentos – Storytelling Grandmothers - charity that invites elderly volunteers to read to children in the poorest parts of Argentina. All other profits will go towards providing them with a ‘grannymobil’ library bus.

The project is a collaborative effort and a number of artists and designers, all close friends of the author, have donated their talents to illustrate the stories.

The books are available to buy online and from independent bookshops such as Notting Hill’s Travel Bookshop, Brick Lane’s Eastside Books and Hackney’s Broadway Bookshop.

• Dementia is significantly affecting every health and social care system in the world.
• Dementia care costs around 1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
• If dementia care were a country, it would be the world’s 18th largest economy (ranking between Turkey and Indonesia).
• By 2030, worldwide societal costs will increase by 85 percent (a very conservative estimate considering only increases in the number of people with dementia).

You can read a summary of the report here: http://www.alz.org/documents/national/World_Alzheimer_Report_2010_Summary(1).pdf

ADI are calling for global action to address what the authors, Professor Anders Wimo and Professor Martin Prince are calling ‘the most significant health crises of the 21^st century’. Professor Prince urged nations to develop better plans for caring for the millions who have the disease. “The care of people with dementia is not just a health issue – it is a massive social issue,” he said.

Actress Lynda Bellingham has been speaking out about her family’s experience of the disease. Five years ago she lost her adoptive mother, Ruth, to Alzheimer’s disease; only a year later she learnt that her birth mother, Marjorie, also has the condition. She has spoken about the way in which she noticed, following Ruth’s diagnosis in the late 90’s that no one talked about the Alzheimer’s.

 People are scared to death of even hearing the word dementia, but someone is diagnosed with it in the UK every three minutes…It affects at least 750,000 people and costs the economy £23 billion a year, twice the cost of cancer, three times the cost of heart disease. Yet in 2007-08, cancer research received £248.2 million, while dementia research received just £32.34 million. As a subject it’s just not sexy.

But surely with these latest findings things must change. It shouldn’t just be on one day a year that the news headlines draw attention to the millions living with this disease. If it is to be dealt with, there needs to be action. More money needs to be committed to research, to supporting carers who look after loved ones and to improving the quality of care that people living with Alzheimer’s receive.

At The Reader Organisation we are passionate about the positive effects that shared reading can have for those living with dementia. Over the last four years delivering Get Into Reading in dementia care homes we have seen firsthand the impact it has, with outcomes including improved communication skills, improved concentration and the ability to be calm in difficult situations. One care worker recently commented

I have seen the effect that it has on people; people that I didn’t think had that in them. It was a shock for me, I hadn’t heard them talking like that before, but the poems brought something out of them and you could see they were enjoying it, and they were all talking together and listening to one another. You don’t usually get that here.

Even more encouraging is the feedback we have had from residents themselves who talk about how poetry has had a positive effect on their mood or state of mind:

I like this…I like it because sometimes when I’m a bit lost I can’t think about it, but this helps me to go through and see it there and think.

Reading group member, Redholme Memory Care Home

In light of these outcomes, we have established a research partnership with the University of Liverpool and we are working to secure funding to further explore the benefits of reading to people living with dementia.

We are also delivering training for care home staff so that they can deliver GIR groups and one to one reading sessions with the people they work with and incorporate them into their practice, creating a sustainable model.

At the end of this month, our first book A Little, Aloud: An anthology of poetry and prose for reading aloud to someone you care for is being published. This is a selection of the very best prose and poetry chosen especially for reading aloud, all tried and tested by us and with lively reading notes and ideas based on actual discussions from our ‘Get Into Reading’ groups. Fiona Phillips, who has spoken out about caring for her parents, who both developed dementia, has commended the book saying

Reading aloud brings health and happiness: guaranteed! I urge you to buy this book, read the wonderful (and funny, surprising, thought-provoking) pieces collected here to someone you care for and see the results for yourself.

It is our hope that this book will provide inspiration for family members, friends and care staff to share some time reading aloud with someone they care for and talking together about what they read. It is a small but significant way in which we can all take action and brighten the day of someone living with dementia. It would be a wonderful thing, if by World Alzheimer’s Day 2011 we could see the positive impact being had in care homes across the country through shared reading.

To find out more/order your copy of A Little, Aloud click here...

All royalties in full go to The Reader Organisation.

In the heated theological debate about whether a miracle is a temporary suspension of natural law, or whether Some Higher Power works within nature to create what we perceive as a miracle, The Reader Organisation takes no part. We’re too busy trying to get people reading. But today, during the making of lunch, the matter was unavoidably thrust upon us. Take a look at the picture above. Particularly at the strange, miniature-basketball-like object poised above the latest edition of The Reader magazine. 

Is it a sign? Very possibly. A symbol? Almost certainly. An egg? Oh yes. And it’s spherical. Perfectly spherical.

All good revolutions need their own mythology. The first Reader miracle has, Dickens knows, taken a while to arrive. Now it has, the hermeneutics can begin. Several things, however, are certain: Sonja Sohn’s visit will be an astounding success; England will win the World Cup; and all the peoples of the Earth will put their differences aside and work together to create a better, gentler, more spherical world.

Or we could eat it…

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.

To see the planet desecrated is to behold the undoing of God’s creation.

The above subject was discussed on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day, presented by Bishop James Jones of the Diocese of Liverpool.

In his discussion, Bishop James made reference to the poem Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins; in which Hopkins expresses his outrage at the felling in 1879 of an avenue of grand poplar trees, which once ran along the side of the river Thames between Oxford and the village of Binsey.

In the poem, Hopkins mourns the loss of his ‘dear aspens’, and condemns man’s unecessary interference with the power and beauty of nature; regretfully noting that ‘Even where we mean / To mend her we end her’. You’ll find Binsey Poplars below, where Hopkins’ fury, sadness, and indignation at man’s arrogance in robbing future generations of the chance to ever know this ‘beauty-been’ is evident.

Binsey Poplars, Felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, are all felled;

Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do

When we delve or hew—

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch, her being so slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean

To mend her we end her,

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc unselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1879

Anyone catch Thought for the Day, or have any thoughts on today’s subject?

If you missed it, Thought for the Day will be available on the iplayer shortly.

To see the planet desecrated is to behold the undoing of God’s creation.

The above subject was discussed on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day, presented by Bishop James Jones of the Diocese of Liverpool.

In his discussion, Bishop James made reference to the poem Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins; in which Hopkins expresses his outrage at the felling in 1879 of an avenue of grand poplar trees, which once ran along the side of the river Thames between Oxford and the village of Binsey.

In the poem, Hopkins mourns the loss of his ‘dear aspens’, and condemns man’s unecessary interference with the power and beauty of nature; regretfully noting that ‘Even where we mean / To mend her we end her’. You’ll find Binsey Poplars below, where Hopkins’ fury, sadness, and indignation at man’s arrogance in robbing future generations of the chance to ever know this ‘beauty-been’ is evident.

Binsey Poplars, Felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, are all felled;

Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do

When we delve or hew—

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch, her being so slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean

To mend her we end her,

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc unselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1879

Anyone catch Thought for the Day, or have any thoughts on today’s subject?

If you missed it, Thought for the Day will be available on the iplayer shortly.

Renée Hemmings and Sophie Povey reflect–well, maybe enthuse is a better word–on Shipping Lines, the first Liverpool Literary Festival.

Seven days, fifty events, over thirty writers and two thousand literature lovers! The Liverpool Literary Festival has been marked as a great literary event for the Capital of Culture year.

We’ve had many emails already and here are some of the wonderful comments we’ve received:

“It was a memorable event and I am glad I didn’t miss it.”

“My 15 year old niece travelled up here for a weekend of Shipping Lines, missing school on Friday because “it’s educational and my English teacher is going to be SO jealous.”

“Congratulations … for a wonderful weekend. It was a real privilege to attend the literary events and listen to such encouraging and stimulating discussion about books and writing.”

There were many highlights over the week and the busy weekend, including the wonderful workshops and children’s events by Walker Books. The weekend part of the weekend was launched by Philip Pullman on the evening of Friday 7th November, to a packed out audience. The book signing queue at the end of the event took 45 minutes to clear, and Pullman took the time to chat to everyone which endeared him to all. Carol Ann Duffy was also very popular, and the audience was moved by her inspirational reading. And another long book signing queue!

There was something for everyone, whether it was a poetry reading, discussion or panel group.

It was a long road in the preparation of the festival, but the measure of sucess is that everyone had a brilliant time working on it, participating in it and watching it.

Thanks to all that was involved, and if you managed to get to see an event, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did.

[Renée, Project Manager for the Liverpool Literary Festival]

The Shipping Lines Festival has come to an end, and oh what an outstanding success it has been! Thanks to the huge amounts of support and effort from everybody at The Reader Organisation and beyond, the week flew past without any hitches, leaving audiences, writers, staff and volunteers feeling fantastic! I was based at the Bluecoat for the majority of the week, and with the welcoming support of Francisco and the rest of the team there, all events ran smoothly. The ‘Scary Scribes’ workshop, led by children’s author Tommy Donbavand, saw over 120 primary school children piling into the performance space for a gory session involving witches blood, a werewolf’s finger and other ‘relics’ too gruesome to mention, but it was a brilliant day and everybody left excited about returning to school to write their own spooky stories.

The highlight of my week has to be Simon Armitage’s poetry reading on Saturday, the second sold out event that day after Roger McGough in the morning. He was very pleased to be at the festival, and thrilled the audience with incredibly moving readings – most notably ‘You’re Beautiful’ and ‘Causeway’. All the events were incredible though, and just skimming over some of the evaluation forms, it is clear that this opinion was shared by all. So well done everybody! Muffins all round!

[Sophie, Event co-ordinator for the Liverpool Literary Festival]