It's that time of year again

I have The Mathematician to thank for many things. He's taught me to appreciate curry and a good wine, but most importantly he's introduced me to the game of cricket.

So it's cricket that brings me to Tyldesley on a sunny bank holiday afternoon to watch my son in his first trial for the under 11 Lancashire county team. With a good viewpoint on the boundary, a picnic and a book of Elizabeth Taylor's short stories, life couldn't be better.

World Book Night

This was my first year as a World Book Night giver. I can certainly recommend the experience. Of the twenty titles available I chose Victoria Hislop's The Island. A young woman discovers the secret history of her great-grandmother Eleni, and her connection to the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga, Greece's former leper colony. It's a book I enjoyed several years ago, partly for the moving story and also for its sense of place. I gave my copies away in the playground of my son's primary school, some to people I knew and others to complete strangers. It was wonderful to be able to give away something that has given me pleasure and also to enjoy the bookish conversations it provoked. I hope the recipients will enjoy the book as much as I did and pass it on to friends and family.

Whilst I was sitting in Nero's doing battle with an essay on Plutarch and Antony and Cleopatra, a stranger came up to me and offered me a book too. Philippa Gregory's The White Queen tells the story of Elizabeth Woodville, mother of the Princes in the Tower. I've been told it's very good.

When a third of households in the UK don't have books in them and 16% of adults struggle with literacy, World Book Night is a wonderful idea.

You can find this year's list of books here. Which book would you have chosen?

Book group envy

When The Mathematician told me he was joining a book group I'm ashamed to say I was not entirely encouraging. I'd always thought of book groups as quite feminine affairs. (I realise at this point I risk losing any male readers I might have had). I do apologise for this blatant sexism, but my mental image of bookgroups was a gaggle of middle-aged ladies sipping wine and interspersing book talk with updates on school holidays and living with teenagers. I know - I'm old enough to know better.

Of course, rationally I do realise that book groups come in all shapes and sizes. There's no reason why a glass of shiraz can't be swapped for a pint of real ale or a cup of tea for that matter. Nor is there any reason why family talk can't be replaced by thoughts on the Manchester derby. And now, I must confess, I find myself suffering from book group envy.

Since its inception, the all-male Second Monday Book Group have read the following:

The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson
From Russia with Love - Ian Fleming
The Outsider - Camus
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

So why am I envious? Partly for their choice of books. Well, the Camus and Solzhenitsyn at any rate. There's something about the broader canvas - whether political or philsophical - that appeals. It's the pleasure of a conversation that begins with the book itself but then roams far and wide. I'd also like to escape from what seems to have become a comfortable rut of 'women's writing'.Then there's the muscularity of the debate. Only once have the Lancashire Ladies derided someone's book choice, and that was only by accident. The SMBG, by contrast, have no such qualms and tables have been thumped on several occasions.

I'm in a belligerent mood for book group this evening. Lancashire Ladies be warned!

Unreliable Reader

Thanks to a review by Tales from the Reading Room, I've started reading Nick Hornby's collection of essays entitled The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. Whilst I've enjoyed Hornby's novels, it's his essays that really strike a chord with me. He seems to be my kind of reader. I find myself in agreement with so much of what he says. Not, you understand, in that smug self-satisfied way but rather in agreement with a man who expresses so engagingly many of the thoughts I would have developed if I hadn't been browsing Pinterest or playing that maddeningly addictive Candy Crush. This is the fourth time I've deleted this utterly pointless game from my phone. Let's hope it's the last.

But back to Hornby. The Spree is a collection of pieces he wrote for the Believer magazine. It's quite a refreshing read, not over worthy or too serious, it's 'simply' an account of his reading month by month. One thing reassures me - his lists of 'Books bought' and 'Books read'. It's good to see that I'm not the only one who buys books in a flurry of excitement and then takes months to get round to reading them. Even more reassuring is his second monthly piece which records the month's reading 'unfinished, abandoned, abandoned, unfinished'. I'm glad I'm not the only one who fails to come up with a satisfactory report. This is my long winded way of owning up to my own rather desultory reading over the last few months.

I'm not sure if it is due to a genuine lack of free time or - more likely - that I've been too much of a fidget to apply myself to 'serious' reading. Either way, after such a promising start Les Miserables is back on the shelf where books are seen rather than read. I have redeemed myself slightly by reading Hangover Square from my classics list. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but in the end I was glad I'd read it. I'll post a proper review when I have more time.

Having enjoyed Helen Dunmore's The Siege several years ago, I thought I'd give 'Zennor in Darkness' a go. Set in Cornwall during the First World War, it tells the story of a young woman Clare, her cousin who comes home on leave and their friendship with D H Lawrence and his German wife Frieda. As with The Siege this was very readable and perceptive too.

I'm currently reading The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen. I can't say I'm enjoying this one yet. The prose is dense, with every statement and every observation seeming to be qualified. I am enjoying the descriptions of war-time London - it's more of a subtle sense of things than anything concrete - and I hope the effort of reading it will prove worthwhile in the end.

Our book group choice is Joanna Trollope's The Soldier's Wife. I've never read any Trollope, but for some reason I have this irrational feeling I'm not going to like it. Are there any books or authors that make you feel that way?

After the Easter break I'm back to my normal working hours and a more ordered house so I hope I'll be able to get down to some proper reviews.

In the meantime, what have you been reading?

Shakespeare and performance

I can't explain why I'm addicted to studying. It's certainly not because I have an excess of free time. Nor is it because I have any grand plans for my career. In fact, asking the question 'so what are you actually going to do with your qualification?' is guaranteed to make my blood boil. It must just be for the thrill of it, for those wonderful 'lightbulb' moments when the pieces suddenly fall into place. Of course, you don't need to commit to formal study in order to learn, but there's something about those relentless assignment deadlines and formal exams that motivate in a way that nothing else can.

If I thought that I'd satisfied my desire to study when I graduated last year, I was wrong. I've toyed with Italian and photography, but without a trip to Italy to put both into practice, my enthusisasm soon waned. So here I am again, this time in the thick of an Open University course entitled 'Shakespeare and performance'. I'd looked at this course a few years ago, but did I really want to spend a whole year studying nothing but Shakespeare?

So far so good. There's something quite satisfying about immersing yourself in a particular writer. Then there's the historical context, the performance history and the joy of being able to watch DVDs and swan off to the theatre and call it 'study'. When I was much younger and studying Shakespeare, watching film adaptations always seemed to be cheating - a soft option for those who hadn't actually read the play in the first place. This course positively embraces the performance aspects. I'm sure my sixth form teacher told me there was no 'definitive' way to read a play, but it was only when I saw David Suchet play Iago in the RSC's production of Othello that I truly understood what she meant.

If there is a disadvantage to studying, it's that leisure reading gets pushed to the edges of my days. Consequently, Les Miserables hasn't been opened for a month and even Hangover Square is proceeding at a snail's pace. Still, with an essay to write on Polanski's portrayal of evil in Macbeth, I have other things to keep me happy.



3000 pages of bedtime reading!

On local history

Now I am a great believer in keeping busy, but you can have too much of a good thing.

It was the Castle Park Stories project that blew my schedule, but what an adventure it has been! I'm no historian, but as an experience of bringing history to life it was remarkable. Understanding the involvement of one individual in the transatlantic slave trade and their legacy has made history immediate and compelling in a way that I didn't think possible. I've been inspired by the enthusiasm of other researchers too and I can't wait to see what they've come up with when the exhibition opens next week.

There seems to be a huge amount of interest in local history. I've joined a fantastic Facebook group called Lancaster Past and Present where people share their photos, memories and stories of the local area. It's a great way to preserve the history of ordinary people and a great source of story ideas. The challenges of my Castle Park research have made me realise the importance of recording our history. What might seem mundane now could well be fascinating fifty or a hundred years hence.

That's enough on history for now, I have a Shakespeare assignment to do. But more on that next time.

Castle Park Stories

The streets of Lancaster are full of stories. From the first Roman settlement, the founding of the castle in the eleventh century, the city's brief boom as a trading port to the vibrant community today, if walls could speak they'd have so much to tell.

Castle Park, the small area surrounding the castle and Priory, is one of my favourite parts of town. With its steep cobbled streets, fine houses and a quayside lined with converted warehouses, all in the shadow of the castle itself, it doesn't take a giant leap to imagine the folk living there two hundred or even five hundred years ago. So when Litfest put out a call for local residents interested in history, photography or writing to participate in a lottery funded writing project, I didn't take much persuading.

You can find out more about the project here, but essentially we have six weeks to put together an exhibition about the area.

There's so much scope in such a small area that it's hard to know where to start. Around fifty people want to be involved with interests as diverse as slavery, the Quakers, maritime and family history. Already we've heard some marvellous stories such as the banter between the prisoners held in the castle and the factory girls passing by. So the story goes, the young women would take great delight in giving the male prisoners a glimpse of the delights they were missing. Brazen hussies! We heard too of the grammar school boys who were allowed to go on the roof of the church before prayers to get a better view of the castle hangings. Let that be a lesson to you all boys!

I have my first Open University tutor to thank for the particular piece of history I'm hoping to explore. She's an expert in Lancaster's connections with the slave trade, back in Georgian times when Lancaster was one of England's major ports. She took us on a walking tour of the city and in passing pointed out a rather fine house just next to the castle. Built in 1720, it was once home to a successful merchant involved in the slave trade. He had a black female servant, brought to England from the West Indies. I've always wondered how this woman came to be in Lancaster and how it must have felt to live under grey Lancashire skies so far from home.

I've only just started my research, but already I've uncovered the most macabre tale. Truly, truth is stranger than fiction.

I wonder what other stories this fine house has to tell?

20 Castle Park, Lancaster

Coffee shop post

We are becoming creatures of habit. There was a bite in the air on our canal walk this morning but no sign of snow yet. On the hill opposite a flock of geese were resting. I wish I knew more about where they'd come from or where they're heading.

The reward was great - a window seat in our favourite cafe. It's market day so there's plenty to see and so many photo opportunities Lancaster's a relatively small place so it doesn't take long to spot people you know wandering past.

The Mathematician is rereading Camus' The Outsider for Monday's book group and I'm mulling over my many projects for this year. More on those another time.

For now I'll spend a little longer people watching.

Wise words from Rilke

Weekends are taking on a familiar pattern. They begin with a briskish walk along the canal side, through Fairfield community orchard and home again via a hot chocolate and a book in Caffe Nero.

Since Les Miserables is rather bulky to carry, I'm taking Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet' instead. It's a slim book with ten letters from Rilke to an aspiring young poet. The writing strikes a chord, and I expect it's a book to which I'll return many times. Rilke advises

'be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.'

Wise words, I think.

2012 in first lines

Thank you to Simon at Stuck in a Book for this idea, summing up last year in a selection of blog post first lines. So here goes...

January

"What will you do now
with the gift
of your left life?"

February

It's minus two outside and the Lakeland hills are dusted with snow.

March

Have you ever read the same book, years apart, and reacted to it in very different ways?  Are some books better read in the innocence of youth?  Do others need age and experience to be appreciated?

April

'Only six more years,' my son tells me with great authority, 'and you will be an old person.'

May

In 1953 Henry Molaison had part of his brain removed in an attempt to cure his epilepsy.  

June

With two days to go to my exam, my head is more tightly packed than a teenage girl's suitcase.

July

Should really be enjoying this...

August

After a week of prevaricating, I was starting to feel like a character in a Nick Hornby novel. So here, at last, is my list of classic books.

September

'The North is the dark place...

October

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. Three hundred and forty one graduands. And Brian Cox.

November

Dickens visited Lancaster in 1857 on his way back from a walking holiday in the Lake District with his friend Wilkie Collins.

December

With the reading room nearing completion, the thought of settling down with a book on a winter's evening has never been so appealing.

I've enjoyed trawling back through my posts and reminding myself of some of the highs and lows of the year. I have one more retrospective in mind and then it's time to say goodbye to 2012 for once and for all.

After all, there are many more books on the shelf...
 

Intimidating books

My plans to start the new year with a flurry of exercise and administrative efficiency have been hampered somewhat by a stinking cold. I thought I'd done well to avoid it as my family fell one by one but, just as I was congratulating myself on my immunity, I too have succumbed.

But it could be worse. I have a huge stock of reading material to keep me occupied. You might remember that I was hankering after a fine cloth bound edition of Les Miserables. Well, I was not disappointed on that or many other counts. My intention was to read it before watching the film that is to released mid January. Now I have the book in my hands I realise the flaw in my thinking. With 1232 pages of tiny print it is, quite frankly, massive.

Now I'm not easily intimidated by a book, but weighty tomes like this do fill me with a certain sense of dread. Yet with the inclement weather and another week off work, I have girded my loins and taken the plunge. And what a treat it is too! Clearly my year of studying the nineteenth century novel has paid dividends. What does it matter that it has taken the first seventy pages to establish that the Bishop of Digne is both generous and open minded? And then, just when I thought we had an inciting incident in the arrival of the ex-convict Jean Valjean, we have another diversion into his backstory and the injustices of French society. Perhaps it's just the luxury of sustained spells of reading, but I am really having a ball.

It might even be the time to tackle my other bête noire - Mary Warnock's Existentialism. I find this combination of big ideas and academic writing quite intimidating. My husband's gift of 'The Existentialist's Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness' might be more accessible. Certainly it started well over a hot chocolate in Caffe Nero, but then I started scratching my head over the distinction between 'being-for-itself' and 'being-of-itself'. Perhaps that's one to pursue another day.