Keen Readers should tune into Radio 4 next week, as Stop What You’re Doing and Read This! has been chosen as Book of the Week.

This new collection of essays from Vintage Books is a funny and inspiring mission statement about the transformative power of reading; the tangible impact it can have on our wellbeing and its importance as a fundamental part of our existence.

Five of the ten essays have been adapted for the radio, including those by Michael Rosen, Jeanette Winterson, and Mark Haddon. The book itself contains a contribution by The Reader Organisation’s Jane Davis, sharing her passionate belief in improving lives through literature and spreading the message of the Reading Revolution.

Don’t forget to join the conversation on the Stop blog where you can share reading recommendations, discuss the future of the book, and much more. Jane herself has just posted a piece: ‘To Go Forward, Go Back’.

Already Number 1 on the Guardian Bookshop’s bestseller list, you can read her full contribution by buying your own copy here.

Book of the Week: Stop What You’re Doing and Read This!

Radio 4, 9^th-13^th Jan, 9:45am and 00:30am.

Along with special guests including Charles Dance and Rachel Rose Reid, Ian McMillan celebrates the art of reading Dickens aloud in the run-up to his bicentenary. As fans of the Reader Organisation will be well aware, Dickens regularly performed his work to audiences of 2000 people (including here in our very own St George’s Hall). Malcolm Andrews, editor of the Dickensian Magazine, will be analysing why Dickens’ language works so well in performance, something ably demonstrated by David Morrissey and Phil Davis at our very own event on Sunday night.

Tune in live tonight, or listen again here if you miss it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017t37w.

You can listen to the show here.

Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me by Bobby Baker
Grace Williams Says it out Loud by Emma Henderson
The Woman who Thought too Much by Joanne Limburg
The Gossamer Thread: My Life as a Psychotherapist by John Marzillier
What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness by Candia McWilliam
Teach us to Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing by Tim Parks
Broken Places by Wendy Perriam
This Party’s Got to Stop by Rupert Thomson

The list above features a mix of novels, art and memoirs, with many coming from writers who suffer from mental health difficulties themselves, or have worked with patients as medical staff.

Brief synopses are available on the Mind website, along with plenty of interesting information and advice from the charity about mental health. With this prize in its 30th year it is clear that this is nothing particularly new, but The Reader Organisation has brought mental health and literature together for some time now,  with our involvement with Mersey Care and other organisations, providing reading groups in areas including acute psychiatric wards and alcohol/drugs detox. The books we read with service users tend to be works of great literature/poetry, but do not always relate directly to mental health. For example, Project Worker Eleanor McCann has recently been reading with her group the cult sci-fi favourite The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

The acknowledgment of works that articulate the experience of undergoing mental health problems is highly commendable, and demonstrates that literature can have the power to help people understand something that may be fairly alien to them. Unfortunately mental illness is a topic that is still associated with numerous stereotypes, and hopefully these books can assist in educating people about psychiatric issues and challenging incorrect pre-conceptions about some of these conditions.

Amongst the books are stories (fictional and factual) of ‘life and love in a mental hospital’; ‘the courage of the human spirit in the face of mental illness’; a memoir of  ‘three brothers [who] take their dad’s old pills and tear the house apart in their bid to confront his sudden death, as well as each other.’ You really need to read about all eight of these books (click on the link above), as each one sounds captivating in its own right.

Maybe you’ve read one or more of the shortlisted books, if so, what did you make of it? What books about mental health have you read and appreciated? Have Mind missed something out? Let us know with a comment below.

Also, Jane Davis will be talking on Radio Scotland’s Book Cafe today (listen again here) about the relationship between reading and mental health.

Oatley worked in a small research group, examining how fiction might be good for wellbeing. Oatley and his colleagues looked at how the amount of fiction people read was related to levels of empathy and social understanding, concluding that there was a positive correlation between the amount of fiction people read and their social abilities.

Oatley discussed how this contradicted notions of ‘bookworms’ locking themselves away for hours whilst reading and not making any time for friends. In fact, reading has the ability to help people deal with the social world that surrounds them.

Oatley said fiction was comparable to a ‘flight simulator’, because the immersion of the individual into another world and experiencing characters’ emotional and social encounters can help them understand their own lives. In Oatley’s newly published book, Such Stuff as Dreams, he describes how fiction can engage our minds in thoughts not only about those around us, but ourselves.

This offers further support to The Reader Organisation’s ethos and ongoing projects, providing shared reading groups and reading events utilising novels, short stories, poetry and plays, benefiting the wellbeing of those we reach. Our evaluations prove that we are helping people and research from the likes of Prof. Keith Oatley provide further evidence of the intrinsic link between fiction and wellbeing.

‘Local libraries are gateways, not only to other libraries, but to other lives’.

As many public libraries wait anxiously to discover how their services will be impacted by the local government spending cuts, award-winning author Zadie Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty) has spoken out in support of the public library service.

In a speech broadcast during the the March 30th edition of the Today programme on Radio 4, Smith discussed the vital role played by literature and libraries during her early life and education and suggests that

“I know I would never have seen a single university carrel if I had not grown up living 100 yards from the library in Willesden Green.”

Her story is a rousing endorsement of the value of public libraries: in addition to helping her mother to simultaneously raise a family and complete a degree course, Smith’s local library functioned as a community hub, a meeting place for young people and a ‘monumental and sacred’ space for study and concentration, in which Smith worked through the education that has lead her to a career as a best-selling author and professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

Smith makes a powerful argument for the protection of local libraries, calling for those in positions of power and influence, who may have little personal need for access to a public library, to remember how significant the service can be for so many different sections of society. She states:

“My own family put a very high value on education, on bookishness, like many people without money we relied on our public services, not as a frippery, not as a pointless addition, not as an excuse for personal stagnation, but as a necessary gateway to better opportunities.

Once you’ve benefitted from the use of shared institutions you know that to abandon them when they’re no longer of personal necessity is like Wile E Coyote laying down a rope bridge between two precipices only to blow it up once he’s reached the other side, so that no one might follow.”

Zadie Smith’s speech can be heard in full on the BBC website.

“Being read to is the beguiling beginning of learning to love reading – it opens the door to absolutely everything and anything we might want to do in life.”
Joanna Trollope

Listen to Midweek here.

This Thursday 26^th August at 7.30pm, around 300 people will walk into Croxteth Fire Station to watch the community-led production of the greatest love story ever told, directed by Neil Caple (RSC, Brookside).

Join us for free food and drink, to spot the film stars of the future and, most importantly, for an absolutely fantastic show. In case you just can’t wait until Thursday, here’s a little preview:

Catch the Bard in Croxteth while you can!

Extra Shakespeare News:

On Sunday 22nd  August at 16.30, BBC Radio 4 broadcast ‘The Bards of Somalia’ http://www.poetrytranslation.org/news/116/’The_Bards_of_Somalia’_

The programme featured interviews with translator Martin Orwin, who outlined the remarkable tradition of poetry in Somali, and with PTC Director, Sarah Maguire, who discussed the importance of translating Somali poetry into English. Poet W N Herbert, who co-translated Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaarriye’ with Martin Orwin for the PTC, talked about the complexities and delights of the translation process, and the impact it’s had on his own writing.

The programme will be repeated on Saturday 28th at 23.30 and you can also catch it on the BBC iPlayer for seven days following the second broadcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tf9nw/The_Bards_of_Somalia/

You can listen again here.

Out of interest, do you have a favourite sidekick? Mine’s Robin, The Boy Wonder. Where would that big black bat be without him? (I’ve also just found out that you can create your own Batman and Robin comic here.)