Today, we had a very special guest to lunch: Dame Lorna Muirhead, Lord Lieutenant of Merseyside (who, we discovered, loves poetry – she calls it her “oxygen”).

From left to right: (Lady) Jen, (Duchess) Jane, (actually a) Dame Lorna, (Sir) Mark, (Lord) Lee

Chris, our Business Manager, had to be sent a way from lunch this week – Dame Lorna’s a retired midwife, previously the President of the Royal College of Midwives – and we felt him too young and innocent to be able to deal with such things.

The rest of us had a fantastic time with Dame Lorna, she’s full of energy and told us all about the wonderful and inspiring aspects her job entails. One of these is that she is the Colonel of her own regiment (the boys are queueing up to carry her sword)! The boys who were present coped well, although they did seem to be left a little stunned by the end…

Uhhh... errmmm...

Ben & Jerry’s is considering launching a library-themed ice-cream flavour, after a campaign started by Burlington county librarian, Andy Woodworth. There are already more than 4,400 people signed up to a Facebook group supporting his plan, which he hopes will raise awareness of libraries “in the face of stagnant or slashed state, county, and municipal budgets”.

Other suggestions are ‘Gooey Decimal System’ and ‘Malt Whitman’.

As long as I can eat it straight from the tub, curled up with a book, I’m in…

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

The full programme of talks, workshops, debates, and other events is led by fifteen expert speakers – including our very own Casi Dylan (Read to Lead Training Manager) -  who not only share a passion for reading, but the desire to bring its benefits to the community. Groups with a reading list or project to share are invited to bring these to the attention of the meeting. For more details, please click here.

The event is to be held at Jesus College, Oxford, on Saturday 4th April 2009. Entry is £20, and includes lunch, refreshments, and access to the full programme.

Tickets can be obtained from the Oxford Playhouse Box Office on 01865 305 305 or www.oxfordtickets.com/ticketsoxford.

Award-winning writers Clare Allan and Mark Haddon join us for this year’s ‘Book at Breakfast’ events – reading and discussion with coffee and croissants – to which you are welcome to come!

1. Book at Breakfast with Clare Allan:

Saturday 1st November 10.00am – 11.30am
at BBC Radio Merseyside, Hanover Street, L69 1ZJ
Clare Allan in conversation with Jane Davis

Join us for coffee and croissants in the company of Clare Allan, winner of the first Orange/Harpers Bazaar Short Story Competition and author of Poppy Shakespeare for a talk about her work (an extract from the novel will be sent to read in advance). Clare Allan was the winner of the first Orange/Harpers short story prize.

‘Poppy Shakespeare has that rare quality: the feel of a book that needed to be written … It is bitterly, brutally funny and extraordinarily moving.’ Telegraph

‘Catch-22 meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest … an electrifying debut … surreal, raucous, infuriating and very funny.’ Guardian

2. Book at Breakfast with Mark Haddon

Sunday 2nd November 10.00am – 11.30am
at BBC Radio Merseyside , Hanover Street, L69 1ZJ
Mark Haddon in conversation with Jane Davis

Join us for coffee and croissants in the company of the multi-award winning writer Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  (winning many prestigious awards, including the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year) and A Spot of Bother, for a talk about his latest work, a chapter of which, ‘The Island’, will be sent out to read in advance.

‘Haddon’s style is a reader’s bliss. He writes seamless prose. The words are melted into meaning… Haddon’s gift is to make us look at ourselves when we think we’re looking away, being entertained’. Tom Adair Scotsman

‘Haddon’s last, spectacularly successful novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, found a brilliant way to make the mundane strange and the strange mundane, choosing a narrator for whom the world is so perpetually strange that it can never be truly surprising’. Telegraph

Tickets for these Book at Breakfast events are limited and going fast. If you would like to attend either (or both) events please email info@thereader.org.uk or call 0151 794 2830 and we will send you a ticket and the extract for reading.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

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I have just come back from one of our much loved Food for Thought events and have enjoyed privilege of yet another stimulating couple of hours of lively debate and discussion! Today’s selected short story was Tobias Wolff’s ‘Powder’, which was read along side Elizabeth Jennings‘ moving poem ‘Father to Son’ and Vernon Scannell’s challenging piece ‘Incendiary’.

What I found most impressive about ‘Powder’ was its creation of a new found movement of discovery within such a short space of time; that is, a short space of time not only within the form of the story, but rather the actual narrative moment of one morning in the life of a somewhat estranged son and his father on Christmas Eve. The son thinks that he knows all there is to know about his father, and appears wearied and tired by what he does know: his is a father who, for all his good intentions, seems to be unable to stop himself from getting caught up in his own enthusiasm for reckless adventure often at the expense of his other commitments which have to do with the ordinary responsibilities and routines of everyday life for parents, children, and the family. Although what is really wonderful about the story is that the son, when compelled to follow his father in a hazardous drive through snow and blizzard, comes to realise a much needed sense of fun and adventure in himself as he rediscovers his father as someone who he can look up to and admire because, rather than in spite of, his “rumpled” nature. The best bit of the day for me was when a lady on my table said that the story had given her hope that relationships between father and son, when strained and paralysed by those awful and seemingly impenetrable silences, do not have to stay that way and can, actually, change.
By Clare Williams

Tobias Wolff, author of ‘Powder’, the story that formed part of today’s reading for Food for Thought, is one of the world’s finest contemporary short fiction writers. From his collection The Night in Question, it tells the tale of a boy’s perception of his father and the changing dynamic of their relationship, or at least the son’s change of attitude. In only five pages and in what is essentially only a ‘drive home’, Wolff portrays an essentially irresponsible and arrogant man, whose incautious behaviour means that he and his son nearly miss making it home for Christmas. Yet as the story progresses, the son begins to accept his father’s behaviour , “I stopped moping and began to enjoy myself”, realising that accepting the circumstance and his father for who he is leads him to acknowledge, “I actually trusted him.” It was remarkable how may different feelings this story prompted in the readers that were sat at the table with me: some believed there was an impending disaster as the father and son drove through the dense snow; some drew on resonances with Wolff’s own memoirs; others were quick to highlight aspects of the relationship between father and son in relation to their own experiences, as parent or as child.

The blankets of white snow and the portrayal of silent moments in the story were echoed in Elizabeth Jenning’s poem ‘Father to Son’, “I know/ Nothing of him”. This poem, which speaks of the lack of understanding between parent and child, identifies how you can yearn to feel a connection to someone but lack the understanding to be able to, “We each put out an empty hand,/ Longing for something to forgive”. Vernon Scannell’s ‘Incendiary’ seemed antithetical in tone to the other texts as it was provocative and volatile, “that one small boy should set/ The sky on fire and choke the stars”. However there is a presiding sense of poignancy towards the poem’s end, “would have been content with one warm kiss/ Had there been anyone to offer this”, that puts the onus on each one of us to ensure that children do not grow up without being shown love. Each of the texts provided a different attitude towards relationships and each person around the table had their own unique insights: it is at events like this that words on the page really do come to life, bringing our own experiences and thoughts to what’s written in front of us and willing to share them with others.
By Jen Tomkins

We sat down to sandwiches, large slices of cake and three pieces of work for discussion: ‘Powder’, a short story by the American writer Tobias Wolff that describes a father and son relationship in which the boy has taken on the role of adult as if to protect himself from his father’s irresponsibility and chaotic lifestyle. ‘Father to Son’, a poem by Elizabeth Jennings which explores a situation in which there is no understanding, or common ground, between father and son and another poem ‘Incendiary’ by Vernon Scannell in which a small boy with no parental love or authority causes massive damage to property.

We began, spontaneously with Elizabeth Jennings’ poem. Everyone found it bleak but knew it to be possible and real:

We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.

It was the sheer distance between the two with ‘no sign’ of ever being able to close that made it so sad and the incomprehensibilty of how this most fundamental relationship could become so sterile. We spent at least twenty five minutes exploring the complextity of the situation of the poem which ends without resolution:

We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.

Turning to ‘Powder’, we all felt we needed to look for something positive in what seemed to be another broken down relationship between father and son. It is a great and brilliantly written account of a brief moment when, against all odds, the son is able to let go of built up fear and resentment and allow himself to feel pride, trust and love for his Dad.

My father was driving. My father in his forty-eighth year, rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honour, flushed with certainty. He was a great driver. All persuasion and no coercion. Such subtlety at the wheel, such tactful pedalwork. I actually trusted him.

The story is only five pages long, but packed with thought and feeling. Much food for thought and discussion. Unfortunately, after this, we didn’t have room for ‘Incendiary’ and left the table feeling fuller than sandwiches and cake alone could account for.
By Angela Macmillan

We spent much of our discussion time thinking about the relationship between the father and son in the short story ‘Powder’. We were all interested in their individual characters, which caused us to sympathise with both of them at different moments in the story. We talked a lot about the apparent ‘distance’ between the them, how the fact that they are very different personalities effects their relationship as much as the damage that has been done through the lack of trust the boy has in his father and the broken promises he remembers. This idea is echoed in the Elizabeth Jennings poem, ‘Father to Son’ where the two “speak like strangers” yet appear to be separated through their difference from each other, “what he loves I cannot share”, rather than a specific, identifiable disagreement. This problem seems much deeper and less temporary somehow, as the aching “Longing for something to forgive” in the final line crushes the hope that talks of “shaping from sorrow a new love” in the previous stanza.
By Katie Peters

Visiting Literature For All Of Us was a terrific experience. I had breakfast with Karen Thomson (Executive Director) in a studenty café – sorry I didn’t get the name – in Evanston. (Karen had a poached egg and wholewheat toast, I had steelmilled pinhead oatmeal with cinnamon apples–probably one of the best things I’ve eaten on this whole trip). We sat in a booth and exchanged working life histories and compared the growth, successes and problems of our two organisations. It was fascinating to see our Reader story almost completely replicated but translated, as it were, into American… Later Karen drove me to the LFAOU offices via the Lakefront Park on the north shore–Lake Michigan like a calm sea, unimaginably big,and bright with autumn sunshine.

I talked to all the project workers and the rest of the team and we compared notes about books, and funding and–believe me–administrative procedures! Then I was taken through into Karen’s office for a celebratory lunch, complete with balloons and champagne and cake. These girls know how to throw an office lunch.

Here are some pictures. First the LFAOU team and then A picture of me with Rebecca and La Coya:

Posted by Jane Davis

Not Large’s – Sarges!

Enid took us to her home ground, down on the lower east side where Sarges is her home deli – corned beef hash with eggs over was attempted by the Stube, a ridiculous no-contest. Have you seen her? She’s a sparrow! Yet see how she wields that lint-roller!

Phil ordered chopped liver and pastrami on rye – it came, he saw and conquered. The pickles were another story – that follows later.

Jane had hot brisket and onions – feh! Vegetarians beware.