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.

Our Northern Ireland project worker Patricia Canning fills us in the ongoing progress of Get Into Reading Northern Ireland, highlighting the powerful impact words and literature have amongst a wide range of people:

Every Wednesday afternoon I read with a group of women who tell me that being a part of this Get Into Reading group makes them feel relaxed, ‘chilled’, less stressed, and on the whole, liberated. The irony is, that this GIR group is in Hydebank Prison, Belfast. Reading an extract from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol a few weeks back, the women talked about how his depiction of the biting cold had made them all feel very chilly: ‘he really knows how to describes things, doesn’t he? I’m freezing here!’

Being able to ‘feel’ what the writer is describing – even if it is the cold – is a testament to the power of words, and of the benefits of reading good literature. These women, like everyone else who benefits from attending Get Into Reading groups across the mainland, enjoy that liberating feeling of being able to identify with other characters, with events and with feelings and emotions that they might otherwise struggle to understand, articulate, or even acknowledge. Words can do that – as Ferdinand Pessoa puts it:

To express something is to conserve its virtue and take away its terror. Fields are greener in their description than in their actual greenness. Flowers, if described with phrases that define them in the air of the imagination, will have colours with a durability not found in cellular life.

Reading a difficult Shakespearean sonnet recently, one of the women read the line, ‘I all alone beweep my outcast state’, and proclaimed, ‘it’s about depression, isn’t it?’ In our group, Shakespeare has helped us understand that depression is a timeless phenomenon and can chance upon the best of us.

Thankfully, these benefits are reaching further afield because people are attending to the positive effects of shared reading here, as Health In Mind’s recent poetry and prose event at Coleraine library so wonderfully demonstrated. We now have a fantastic Get Into Reading group in Queen’s University, Belfast, every Thursday afternoon, which is well attended by a spirited bunch of people who read, chat, drink tea, chat, read, and marvel at the ways in which reading together enriches both the reading experience and our day in equal measure.

The Reading Revolution has begun in Northern Ireland, but we need passionate people who believe in the power of reading to help take it even further. We are hosting an open Read To Lead training course at Holywood Library over three weeks: Friday 3rd, 10th and 17th February 2012. If you want to share the joys of shared reading in your community, there are a few places left on the course. For further details and to book your place, please contact Jessica Reeves for more information: jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk

Alongside Dr. Josie Billington, Research Associate at the School of English, University of Liverpool and Deputy Director of our research partner Centre for Research Into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems (CRILS), Jane will be leading an interactive workshop on Reading For Wellbeing at the event; one of several which will provide the opportunity for participants to learn about ongoing arts and wellbeing projects – such as Get Into Reading – from leading arts for health practitioners.

The conference will give those involved in public health, the arts and community development the chance to reflect upon the achievements of arts and health collaborations to date, examine the growing evidence-base for the value of creative activity within the areas of health and wellbeing in the UK and internationally and look forward to future opportunities and challenges.

The event is sold out  but for more information about the Royal Society of Public Health and for other upcoming events, please visit the RSPH website.

I’ve been running a group for two years at the Plymouth MIND drop-in centre. One of the core group of committed regulars, M, had a social phobia and would never have dreamt of reading in front of others. She is now one of our best readers:

 ”I have come to learn the power of words in our lives…the group has become the highlight of my week and I clear the calendar to ensure I can make the sessions.”

I love both the variety and stimulation the weekly groups provide.

Plymouth City Council are funding Get Into Reading for community-building and recovery at Plymstock Library. It is an open group which also invites GP referrals.

In the isolated village of Newton Ferrers, I’ve begun a community group in an Edwardian ‘Fisherman’s Reading Room’. It was an all-male snooker club until TRO entered the premises! This is the first step in a big South West project to restore old reading rooms in hard to reach places to their original purpose. The aim is to get reading happening again, training up local people to take over and help spread the Reading Revolution across the village.

Have you thought of becoming a shared reading facilitator?
The next South West 3-day Read to Lead open training course is at Dartington, Monday 23rd January – Wednesday 25th January 2012, 9.30am -5.30am. For more information, ring Sarah Hopkins (SW) on 01364 653994 or Casi Dylan on 0151 207 7207/e-mail casidylan@thereader.org.uk .

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.

I currently run Library Memory Groups in Exeter Central and Tiverton. These groups are for people living with dementia and their carers. A range of different materials are read together, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge to Trebetherick by Betjeman. Bonds have formed quickly; several members now see each other socially outside of the group at other times during the week. Lots of them report gains that go beyond the reading sessions:

“We talk to everyone about it! Friends, family and other carers.” – Exeter carer.

“It’s really stirred up my memory.” – Exeter participant

“I’ve never read poetry before because I’ve never understood it. I like the poetry but we also come because it’s a positive group and we can chat and be social as a couple. You can’t always do that.” – Tiverton carer

The new groups running at Russell Clinic and Exeter Library are a pilot for a recovery model that TRO South West wishes to develop, in order to bridge the transition from treatment to independence.

Do you live in Devon or the South West and have an interest in helping to develop the Reading Revolution?
The next South West 3-day Read to Lead open training course is at Dartington, Monday 23rd January – Wednesday 25th January 2012, 9.30am -5.30am. For more information, ring Sarah Hopkins (SW) on 01364 653994 or Casi Dylan on 0151 207 7207/e-mail casidylan@thereader.org.uk .

I facilitate a group in a primary care mental health setting attended by men and women aged 45 to 80. Personal relationships and trust have developed quickly within the group – one man came to the group three days after the death of his wife and took great comfort and support from the other members.

The Memory Cafe group in the village of Lostwithiel is for people with memory loss and their carers. Following Moniza Alvi’s I Would Like To Be a Dot in a Painting by Miro, one member said:

 ”That poem describes me in my dementia. My poetry folder has pride of place at home.”

I love the groups I run; the time spent reading together each week acts as rejuvenation for us all.

Have you thought of becoming a shared reading facilitator?
The next South West 3-day Read to Lead open training course is at Dartington, Monday 23rd January - Wednesday 25th January 2012, 9.30am -5.30pm. Ring Sarah Hopkins (SW) on 01364 653994 or Casi Dylan on 0151 207 7207/e-mail casidylan@thereader.org.uk for more information.

The South West office has been operating for ten months with a relatively small but passionate and dedicated team working across the peninsular. Get Into Reading in the South West focuses on adult mental health and reducing social isolation in rural areas. There are currently 13 groups running across Cornwall, Devon, Plymouth, Dorset and Somerset – with more in the pipeline.

A primary aim of our work is to help people overcome various social difficulties – such as loneliness, boredom and exclusion. Members experience highly personal benefits as a result of attending; Plymouth MIND and Yeovil Community Reading Group being amongst those taking something extremely positive away from sessions:

“It’s an effort to get motivated but once in the group, my spirits are lifted”

“I could not read very well. I have been reading out loud.”

“I think sessions may offer more choice and control in my life, but more notable is a sense of achievement and worth.”

Library Memory Groups for people with dementia and their carers have been set up as a direct response to the high proportion of over 50’s in the region. Groups run in Somerset, Dorset, Exeter and North Devon, with more being requested. The Exeter group is proving particularly successful and is overloaded with 14 participants. Many people have reported positive effects that extend beyond groups:

“We talk to everyone about it! Friends, family and other carers” – Exeter carer

“It’s really stirred up my memory” – Exeter participant

“I’ve never read poetry before because I’ve never understood it. I like the poetry but we also come because it’s a positive group and we can chat and be social as a couple. You can’t always do that” – Tiverton carer

“My husband has been reading poetry at home all week; he loves this group. He always gets the folder of poems out to show his sitter” – Tiverton carer

One particularly noticeable benefit the Library Memory Groups has is upon members who have withdrawn from speech; reading aloud can significantly help with fluency. Professionals who have observed at selected sessions have witnessed the remarkable effects of the Reading Revolution in action.

Other sessions take place in medical settings, in GPs surgeries – with a 100% attendance of 8 people over 10 weeks; The Haldon Clinic for Young People with Eating Disorders, a hospital day centre in Dorset; and Russell Clinic for Rehabilitation at the Wonford Hospital, Exeter.

“Two of those who are very withdrawn and find it hard to trust people and engage with them would, previously, find any activity that could lead to any kind of intimacy, a total no-no. At the final session the worst of these spoke fluently and for several minutes about how important the sessions had been to her and how she had been enabled by them to begin a journey of trusting others. She now takes that confidence to another group she attends.”- Co-ordinator of Kingscare, Devon

An important local initiative is to research and open up disused nineteenth century Reading Rooms, which will be taken over by community volunteers trained and supported by us. The first, a Fisherman’s Reading Room in the remote and library-less village of Newton Ferrers, opened in May.

There is no shortage of people wanting to Get Into Reading in the South West. What is needed is the help of philanthropists and corporate sponsors to join as partners, as well as people with a passion for reading who want to become trained shared reading facilitators, to ensure that the net can be spread as wide as possible.

TRO South West is holding its next 3-day Read To Lead Core Training Open Course at Dartington, Monday 23rd January – Wednesday 25th January 2012, 9.30am -5.30pm. Interested? Ring Sarah Hopkins on 01364 653994 or Casi Dylan on 0151 207 7207/e-mail casidylan@thereader.org.uk .

Some of the Get Into Reading groups we run in Liverpool are funded by Liverpool Primary Care Trust.  As part of this Liverpool PCT project we have been asked to engage with GPs and get them referring patients to our groups; a bit like having reading groups on prescription. This had been proving very challenging as GPs are often very busy and can be difficult to get hold of.

To let them know that we understand how busy they are (and that their tea gets cold), AND as a quirky little incentive to get them referring patients, we would like to send each GP a Reader ‘Mug Cosy’:

This is where we need your help.  Whether you are an experienced knitter, or this will be your first foray into the clickety-clackety world of needles and yarn, we would like to encourage you to pick up those pins and have a go at creating a unique and funky mug cosy of your own. Initially we need 150, so the more people involved, the better! And it doesn’t matter if you’re in Liverpool, London or Lebanon – you can send us your cosies from wherever you are.

Depending upon the thickness of the wool you choose, a mug cosy should take between ½ an hour and 2 hours to complete – perfect as a Christmas project! It needn’t cost you anything but your time – leftover scraps of wool are ideal for this project.

You can get full instructions by viewing (or downloading) this document, and more information contact Eleanor Stanton: eleanorstanton@thereader.org.uk.

We look forward to seeing all of your fabulous cosies…

You can listen to the show here.