“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.”

Many people will remember spending time as a child sat in front of the TV watching the Looney Tunes cartoons, particularly Wile E. Coyote’s hilarious but futile attempts to lure the Road Runner into a trap so he could eat him. Some may be surprised that in an essay on libraries in which she refers to how many books were present in her home growing up, Smith uses a cartoon character rather than a literary equivalent to illustrate her point. However, the creator of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner drew inspiration from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn author Mark Twain.

In a 1989 interview with The New York Times, Chuck Jones revealed that the coyote was based on Twain’s description of the animal in his 1872 semi-autobiographical work Roughing It:

“The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton…with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless.”

Zadie Smith may be unaware of the link between the cartoon villain and Mark Twain’s book, but it remains yet another example of how literature can be a source of inspiration to so many people.

We were also joined by a number of media folk and there’s also some footage to see on:

• BBC North West (we’re from 20 minutes in for two minutes);
• Granada Reports (14 minutes in – and I think, for one day only!);
• Guardian Books Podcast (25 minutes in)
• BBC Radio Merseyside Breakfast Show (2 hours 28 minutes in) and the Sean Styles Show (10 minutes in)
• Liverpool Echo video
• Wirral News

And here’s some pics, (c) Liverpool Daily Post and Echo:

And here are some of ours (c) Charlotte Weber at TRO (and a few others!):

In the First Class Virgin Trains Lounge

The 'man who can' from Virgin Trains, Gary Iddon

Wirral Councillors Sheila Clarke and Don McCubbin

Our Read's First Class Carriage!

Frank and Jane at the Children's Library in Idea Store Whitechapel, London

That’s just the start of it! More to follow over the weekend and next week…

What was the best television programme ever made?
Is this a trick question? There has never been any dispute about what was the best TV programme. It’s Top Cat. Pure and simple.

Read the interview in full here.

Jane Davis and Sonja Sohn

The event was sold out and Sonja proved to be a very special guest indeed. Not only was she engaging, witty and sensitive, she took total control of the stage, gauging the audience’s enthusiasm for her words: “nah guys, let’s not stop for a break, shall we just carry on talking?!”, “Yes!” was the overriding response. She told us about how she got into acting through performance poetry, what her audition for The Wire was like, what it was like to be on set with ‘all those guys’ and how she’s now gone back to Baltimore to set up ReWired for Change, helping at-risk young people to build on their courage and success and improve their standard of life.

Sonja Sohn

It felt like the conversation could have gone on all night (the audience asking her to continue talking rather than using the time for signings!), so I’m sure she’ll be back…

Here’s what some of our guests thought:

What really struck me about Sonia was the fluency and honesty with which she talked about her work with ReWired for Change. It wasn’t rehearsed or worthy – not just another platform for an actress to promote herself – but the voice of someone who had found what she was good for, where she could do good. It was really inspiring to listen to a woman who in herself and in her actions is the hope that breaks the circularity of the life presented to us so powerfully in The Wire.

We already know what an impact reading can have, I found it inspiring to hear how much good can be triggered by a television programme!

Jane’s thoughtful questions and Sonja’s warm, ample responses thrilled the audience.  It was as if we were part of the strong, sincere friendship which links these two women and their organisations and which brought Sonja to Liverpool.  The link between Rewired for Change and The Reader Oganisation was epitomised by this honest, wide-ranging conversation.  Moments relived, insights shared, own motives analysed – these are the stuff of Get Into Reading: We were charmed by Sonja’s openness and generosity.  A force for good.

I really enjoyed last night- Sonja was inspirational. I was really moved by the emphasis that she put on the need for hope in Baltimore. The possibility of change is something that many of the young people we work with need and may find in Get Into Reading groups, so it felt like she was really confirming the importance of what we are doing in our community.

Her philosophy, and what she says has led to her eventual success, is to ‘try anything once and to listen to the little voice in your head if it’s telling you to do something’. [You can read the full review, from which this is taken, on  'Feeling Listless'.]

You can see more photos from the event here.

ReWired and Reading: Sonja Sohn in Conversation
7.30pm, Tuesday 22nd June
at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (Rodewald Suite)

Actor Sonja Sohn played Detective Kima Greggs in every series of The Wire. She talks with Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organisation, about her life, being a punk poet, getting into acting and The Wire, and her decision to put her professional life on hold for a while in order to set up a not-for-profit company, ReWired For Change.

Sonja says:

I am absolutely thrilled to meet the people of Liverpool and the fans of not only The Wire, but The Reader Organisation as well. When I met Jane we spent hours getting to know one another and swapping stories of our experiences working in deprived communities.

I was impressed by Jane’s passion and level of commitment to those The Reader Organisation serves and am delighted to participate in an event which supports such important work.

This is a charitable fundraising event for The Reader Organisation.

Tickets cost £10 and are available from the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall’s box office: 0151 709 3789 & online.

The documentary, about the incredible power that reading unlocks in the brain,  also features Philip Davis, editor of The Reader magazine, investigating the ‘Shakespeared Brain’ – how the shapes of Shakespeare’s lines and sentences effect our minds:

I admit to being fascinated with diaries as a form for a number of reasons. The diaries of famous historical and literary figures are rewarding on many levels; they quench voyeuristic thirsts, reveal the first sparks of creative inspiration and open up veritable time portals into the public and private past. While the aspect of immortality – and thus leaving an indelible ink stain on the world – that comes from keeping a diary is appealing to anyone’s sense of vanity, I believe the most worth anyone can get from maintaining their own journal comes via its offering of entirely personal, won’t-cost-you-a-penny therapy. Where else can you be as brutally honest as you dare or come across as self-absorbed without having to worry about being seen as utterly egotistical? Venting using the tools of pad and paper is not only socially preferable to smashing your fist against the nearest inanimate object and/or bursting into uncontrollable tears, it’s pretty damn good for your soul. As a therapeutic tool diaries can be especially useful, being ongoing and allowing us to retrace our steps when needs be. In short, they enable us to look back at segments of our lives and learn more about ourselves through ourselves (even if it is only to realise how utterly misguided and completely cringey you sounded as a teenager).

I’ve chosen this particular poem by Thomas Hardy as I think it relates well to the subject – a diary can be very much like a mirror, reflecting us and perhaps reflecting back more than we realise if we care to revisit. In times afterwards, they do produce ‘moments of vision’, letting us in on secrets about ourselves that at the time we might not have consciously considered. It really does make us transparent. The most interesting question is once it has caught all of our thoughts, onto what else will the ‘mirror’ be reflected?

Moments of Vision

That mirror
Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
Of you and me?

That mirror
Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
until we start?

That mirror
Works well in these night hours of ache;
Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
When the world is awake?

That mirror
Can test each mortal when unaware;
Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
Glassing it — where?

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Last Summer poetry was all the rage. Carol Anne Duffy was seen swishing about on every stage, boys in skinny jeans were secretly scribbling away and the BBC released a series of programmes dedicated to the poetry greats.

The aim was to place poetry back into the hands of readers. But did they succeed?

Unable to agree on the matter two English students from York University decided to argue it out in an article for their student website. Read the article here.

I do wish that it could be brought back in the form that it used to be, with someone sitting one-to-one with a camera. It’s like you are talking to your children at bedtime, they look at you and don’t see anything else – they don’t see flashing lights and CGI and all the rest of it.

This clip is from an episode called ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (other episodes have such titles as ‘One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue’, ‘The Backbone of Night’ and ‘The Edge of Forever’) which looks at intelligence and the evolution of the brain. Luckily, some kind soul had posted it on YouTube. I apologise for the quality – but only of the picture!