Why Writers Should See Reading as Research by Kathryn Evans

As part of Book Trust's Time to Read campaign, I've been looking out old photographs. So many of them feature members of my family and friends reading to my children.  I  clearly felt like these were important images to capture - intimate times,  moments to treasure.

Concept, concept, concept – A publisher’s dream, a writer’s minefield

by Jo Wyton 

Over the weekend, I wrote and posted a piece on my own blog about High Concept books from a reader’s perspective.

But I’m not just a reader, I’m also a writer, so of course I spent the rest of the weekend tormented, sleepless and getting through an enormous amount of cake as a result. 

The Textonym for 'BOOK' is 'COOL'

I learned the word 'textonym' for the first time last night on the Radio 4 programme, Front Row.

There was an interview with David Wark of Chambers Dictionary who has actually written a programme to uncover textonyms in the dictionary. Wark explains on his blog:

Some of the these are happily serendipitous, others potentially disastrous, and some yield connections that would probably never otherwise be made.

Employers, be careful if you choose to text your candidates the outcome of their interviews - selection and rejection may be semantically distant, but they are perilously close together in the world of predictive text (keys 735328466). A night out can quickly turn from merriness to messiness, but thankfully it's easy to adjust your message accordingly (637746377). Read more

I'd always found it amusing that texting 'Mum' on predictive text often turned up 'Nun' . On his Facebook profile, my friend, Daoud, now calls himself 'Fante', which comes up when his name is entered in predictive text . My Filipino maiden name 'Quimpo', rather cryptically emerges as 'Ruins'.

But isn't it cool that the textonym for 'Book' is 'Cool'?

A propos all cool things, a panel of teenagers have been picked to shadow the judges of the Orange Prize for women's fiction.

How refreshing in an age where its customary for the older generation to bash young people for being into technologies that the oldies themselves are resisting.

Go, young people!

Thrilling to What Kids Read in 2008

I took this survey of what the kids in my orbit were reading in 2008. What did I discover? They were all reading, they loved what they were reading and they loved talking about the books they read. Hooray! Reading is not dead after all!

If you can't see the video, view it here

John Green on Reading Ambition

Yes, I am not dead. I've just been busy.

But not too busy to share this wonderful speech by John Green (Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska) delivered during his recent book tour, about literacy, teachers and our role as writers in nurturing the future lives of teenagers:

This is the business, right? It is not just reading for the sake of reading. Literacy is important. Literacy is vital, but literacy is not the finish line. Literature is not just in the business of See Jane Run. Literature is in the business of helping us to imagine ourselves and others more complexly, of connecting us to the ancient conversation about how to live as a person in a world full of other people. Read it all

My friend Felix (age 15) from across the road, spent this evening appearing and disappearing every thirty minutes, first to microwave some batter in my microwave; then, to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow on my daughter's ukulele and finally, to taste test the prawns, courgettes and egg rice that I'd made for dinner.

As he left the first time, he suddenly asked, "You got anything good to read?"

I wracked my brains. I had just finished Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness - but the news had spread quickly amongst the kids I knew that (Spoiler! Spoiler!) the best character in the book was going to die. Resistance to heartbreak had already gathered apace.

Luckily, that very afternoon, trying to inspire some humour into my own writing, I had dipped into Henry Tumour by Anthony McGowan. "How about a talking tumour?" I asked. Felix didn't look very excited. In fact he started examining the contents of my fridge. I try a bit of hard sell. "The tumour tells the kid what to do. There's a lot of swearing." Felix wanders away, obviously bored.

When Felix suddenly remembers that his mum might want him back across the road for supper, he rushes off. As he leaves, he yells over his shoulder. "I'm gonna read it!" "Read what?" "The Henry book!" I was so thrilled I had to encourage him with discouragement. "There's a lot of SWEARING. You've got to cover one eye!"

Which makes me like one of the people John Green talks about:

Too many times, we say to our young people, “Hey, read this. It’s a fun read. Not too serious, you know. None of that English stuff.” As if there is some kind of dichotomy between good and fun. As if Gatsby is oatmeal and vampires are Lucky Charms. Vampires, of course, ARE Lucky Charms—they are magical and delicious and just dangerous enough to excite me. I love vampires, and I love vampire books. And please know that I would never argue against putting books kids want to read in their hands. But I am arguing that we need to make space in our classes—no matter how advanced or remedial the students—for ambitious novels. Because good is not the opposite of fun. Smart is not the opposite of fun. Boring is the opposite of fun, and when we create the smart/fun dichotomy, what we end up implying is that Gatsby is boring.

But Gatsby is not boring. And Henry Tumour is really a lot more than a bit of swearing as Felix is soon going to find out. But I'm confident he won't put the book down once he's realised that it's not just a book with swearing in it. He won't put the book down because it's a good book.

Maybe I should have had more faith and recommended something even more taxing. Says John Green:

The best books are rarely easy, but teenagers love fun things that aren’t easy.

Yup. That's what makes teenagers so cool. And lucky that they've got all those brilliant books still to discover.

Writers: Thou shalt Not Be Boring

So today's Guardian G2 cover story was about Reader's Block. Oh I know that one. Had it bad in my pregnancy years - a book seems like too much of a long term investment when your main priority is to spot the sick dribbling down the back of your shirt before someone else does (or becoming an expert at fashion camouflage, as comic Victoria Wood once suggested, finding clothes the colour of poo).

Apparently, though we Brits trump other Europeans in buying books, we are not very good at reading what we buy. Writes Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian:

It is often said that everybody has a novel in them. The current problem is that so many of us bring that novel out of ourselves and get it published. It would help cure reader's block if lots of people resolved not to. But that is not what is happening. Instead, we are made so anxious by the accelerating onrush of books, especially novels, that we say: "Enough! I can't - I won't - read the winner of the Orange prize, whatever Mariella Frostrup says."

This is not a time to blame the attractions of other media even though other media do play a part:

According to Teletext's 2007 study of 4,000 Britons' reading habits, the top reasons for not reading are: too tired (48%); watch TV instead (46%); play computer games (26%); work late (21%).

TV, the internet, computer games are all worthy competitors and the onus is on us writers (especially in the children's book world) to keep our readers reading.

My advice to younger readers has always been: if you're getting bored, skip paragraphs until you get to something that interests you. Serves the author right for being boring.

It's the perfect time to revisit the tenth commandment of crimewriter Elmore Leonard's classic Ten Rules on Writing:

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

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The article had a sidebar 'The Author's View in which they asked authors like Lionel Shriver, Alain de Botton and Germain Greer three questions: Have you experienced reader's block? How do you overcome it? Could you recommed a book to get people reading again?

I was very happy to see Joanne Harris (now officially one of us since the publcation of her children's fantasy Runemarks) say that she overcame reader's block by reading graphic novels. That, and the fact that Ray Bradbury is one of her heroes makes her a really cool author in my book.

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Hey Star Wars fans, today's Eoin Colfer vlog, some Lucasfilm people attend his show and take him back to Lucasfilms for an exclusive tour that has him playing with Darth Vader's sword (oh and stealing the Artemis Fowl bus while the driver was off on a break and trying to flip it over).

Eoin as he drives away with the bus: "When the driver went off for a cup of coffee, I hit him on the head with my boot and stole his bus."

I wonder if they're planning to make a film about his travels.

The Age Ranging Debate

My grandmother was not allowed to go to school beyond a certain age because she was a girl. She was desperate to improve herself and read voraciously, usually romances and serials.

When I was six, I opened one of her favourite book series, a 1930s serial about a character called Beverly Gray, and realised that I could read. I remember it to this day, that lightbulb going off in my head as I discovered that words together formed sentences and sentences formed paragraphs formed chapters.

I couldn't stop reading after that. I read the whole of the Beverly Gray series that long hot summer.

When I went back to school (age seven), I headed straight for the library in search of more books to read.

When I presented my stack of chapter books to the librarian she said, no, you're not allowed to borrow those books. The books were classified according to age.

I must have looked miserable because she sighed and said, all right, read this one aloud and prove that you can read. She made me read a paragraph from one book. And then another. And then another. And then she compromised and allowed me to borrow one of the books if I took one title from the younger reader section.

The majority of book publishers have just backed plans to print age guidance on their books.

In a Guardian piece titled Don't tell me how to buy books , Jack Hope denounces the idea as cynical:

The proposed move fundamentally misunderstands the egalitarian nature of reading - the idea that any reader can choose to read any book - and the choices all readers employ at times to challenge or soothe themselves. It also fails to understand the complex process of choosing the right books for the right child.

It does make me wonder. What will the kids make of it? Will the slow readers skulk around pretending that they are looking at picture books for phantom baby brothers? Will those kids who've had the reading lightbulb go off in their heads find themselves banished to the early reader department?

Here we go again.