Twilight- a gateway book

This blog is going to read heavily of my blowing my own trumpet, but it's feeling like a pretty big bloody trumpet so I wanted to blow it quite loudly, and the Internet is looking like it would appreciate some sweet trumpet based sounds today...

In November, I started a reading challenge at work, which I'm not going to talk about, needless to say one of the girl's on it joined saying she would read four books as it was a good excuse to read the Twilight Saga. Inwardly, I groaned a bit, I'm going to be honest, but hell it's reading for pleasure, right, onwards and upwards.

So yeah, she read Twilight, and Eclipse. And then we didn't have New Moon in, but she wanted to read something else...

...so I recommended The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I'd read a couple of summers ago and enjoyed. I knew the film was out, and was planning on going to see it, and she was going with her mum so it all worked out pretty well.

She LOVED it, and it made her cry. We had this really long chat about the themes within it, which was fascinating as we came from totally different walks of life and she got a totally different aspect on it to me. She wanted to read 'something like it, really sad', and I recommended My Sister's Keeper, again because I know she'd seen the film, and she was keen.

She loved that as well, but said 'it wasn't as good to read as The Help'. She was appreciating the way that the language use was different, that the structure and the pace of The Help was more satisfying to read. So I had a little think and gave her Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Toni Morrison has won a Pulitzer Prize. And a Nobel Prize. Beloved was the New York Times Book Review best book of the past twenty five years. And this girl loved it. Loved it. Came in demanding more books like it. Because the story was really sad, and relatable, and she understood it.

So I lent her Push by Sapphire, more commonly known as Precious, the film that made everyone weep in 2009 and won a bunch of Oscars.

I've just had a twenty minute conversation was a sixteen year old about lyrical writing, and how emotion can be conveyed though descriptive prose. She doesn't have a GCSE in English and Twilight was the first book she'd ever read all the way through on her own bat.

And this is why having a library in a school, staffed by someone who knows about books, who cares about books and is confident in recommending books, also know as a librarian, is so incredibly important. How many children are there not reading who haven't ever had a conversation with an adult about books? How many more times must we say this! The reason that the literacy levels in this country are so shocking is because people do not have the skills to pass down to promote reading and a love of reading to their children, and people who do love reading are not given the opportunity to talk to children about this unless they are terrifyingly middle class.

If every single secondary school had a decent library staffed by someone who knew what they were doing then at least these students would have to opportunity to talk about books, to know that it was OK to talk about books with adults, that it didn't make you sad, or a geek. Imagine what that would do for young people, and for their reading.

This girl has gone from a non-reader to an avid one in four months because she finally goes to a place that has a library in it and for that alone I'm thankful. When are at least one of the main political parties going to wake up to what school libraries can do and support them in their manifestos?

Is Literacy a Necessity?

Today is World Book Day. Children up and down the land are dressing up as their favourite characters; the second thing down on Google is 'World Book Day Costumes' leading to visions of frantic parents recycling Shepard's costumes from the nativity whilst their Yummy Mummy counterparts order Matilda costumes for forty quid of the t'internets...
I went on Cif and asked if the Graun could do a piece on World Book Day and literacy and someone responded asking the very interesting question 'what do we use literacy for?' This person is apparently a reader and would feel adrift without books, but questions the relevance of literacy for everyone.

Here is my answer

Every single time you read a road sign, think about the people who can't. Every time you need to find a number, think about the 5 MILLION adults in this country who cannot use a phone book. Every time you flick through a newspaper, think about the fact that there are no left wing publications in this country that cater for a reading level below Level 3. This means that a THIRD of people in this country cannot read information that is not right wing is bias, owned and produced by rich people with an agenda. One in six people, one in six people, do not have a functional level of literacy. That means a sixth of the adults in this country do not have the skills to have a life that they are supposed to aspire to.

Almost half of people in prison have a reading of Level 1 or below (D at GCSE). Children are leaving school not being able to read and 1/20 of those children go home to a house with no books in it. A tenth of children have never owned their own book.

We NEED literacy because we live in a world that has grown to rely on it. Six hundred years after the birth of printing, the Information Society is firmly established. Without the means of effective participation then how does someone know if they need literacy or not?

Happy World Book Day, enjoy your books, and feel thankful that you are one of the so few who can read them.

BookElf xxx

Leeds Playlist!

Very rarely do I do the plug thing...but

LeedsPlaylist

...is such a great idea - run by a book club member no less (waves to @Wandapops) - how could I resist!

 - From the blog...

This is how we do it
To take part in Leeds Playlist you must be in Leeds and on Twitter. It is important to me that it is local and social   

• Make a 10 track playlist based on the current set theme, a freestyle theme of your choice or your take on a previous freestyle theme.

• You can only submit 1 playlist of 10 tracks per theme. It’s hard I know!

• Email me your tracklistings  – if it’s for the set theme it must be sent by the deadline given. Freestyle themes can be sent at any time. ( See contact page for details).

• Include an intro paragraph about why you chose the theme/the songs.

• Send me a link to the playlist on Spotify, YouTube or as a mix on Mixcloudor Soundcloud – or ALL! (Providing more than one way to listen makes it more accessible to everyone)

• Please include your Twitter name and the name of the playlist theme in the title.

• I also need an image to go with the blog post. Bonus points for creating your own.

• Chat about the playlists via Twitter using #LeedsPlaylist and comments on the blog.

• Please have fun with it - variety and personality are encouraged!

• Share, share, share!

I will publish as soon as I can – depending on the amount of playlists received and how often I decide to post in the future (there may be a limit on future submissions for this reason). If you have any questions, please ask!
Please note: As it’s all new, the rules may change as we go along so please check back here before submitting future playlists!

We were delighted to see our playlist up over the weekend (Alice in Wonderland).


If you fancy joining in, drop a line to @LeedsPlaylist


Don't forget to tweet using the following! #LeedsPlaylist 

Guest Blog - Dead Like Me by Adam Troy Castro

Mark Swain is a friend of Leeds Book Club and writes short fiction here! A huge fan of the horror genera, this is the first time he's reviewed for us - hopefully the first of many!
You can also drop him a line on twitter as @DemonHeadClash

* * * * * HERE BE SPOILERS * * * * *

In this story the author deals with his protagonist surviving a zombie outbreak by acting like one of the undead. Although it slightly reads as a list of instructions in how to act and, more importantly, how not to react, the writing style is never done in a matter of fact manner and therefore the reader connects with the protagonist.

Whilst this might sound a difficult style to follow - given the author is the narrator but also story teller - it works well here and allows the writer to give us an insight into what is going on around the protagonist and also his back story.

Clearly given the main character is acting like a zombie in order to 'fit in' and survive then this story does have it's fair share of visceral imagery but none of it which I would say is over the top and actually adds to helping us paint a picture of this person’s desperate situation. Anyone who doesn’t get a slight pain in their legs when reading the line about rotted away tendons isn’t human!

Having read the story I can see a great deal of themes emerge which are the staples of zombie fiction - loneliness; dealing with loss and facing death to name but three. However this story deals with other issues which are unique to this tale.

I certainly got the feeling that the author was trying to convey a warning regarding how changing yourself for others can force you in difficult positions. Obviously in this piece the character wanders from horrible situation to horrible situation but the
same message could be applied to our modern, faceless society.

The other aspect is the character's approach to the zombies. He has clearly been through, and seen, a lot since he discovered he can pretend to a zombie and in doing so seems to identify with them, a sort of Stockholm Syndrome if you will. In the beginning of the tale the character points out that the zombies are never referred to as zombies simply as 'those Bastards'. However half way through the story having described a particularly nasty bus explosion he states 'you’d feel that the Living were silly bastards’ which seems to indicate the character feels the same about the zombies as he does about the living, we see another indicator towards this mind set when the character states later on that he might eat rat poison by mistake one day and he might
not even notice his own death or ‘maybe it has already happened’. However close to the end the author again refers to the zombies as 'Bastards' indicating there is a battle going on within this person; the part of him which is prepared to do anything to
survive and the part which wants to admit his own humanity.

The brilliance of this story is that it deals with a lot of the themes that we see in zombie fiction without pushing any of them too much and allow the reader to not only enjoy the story but also have an insight into this person's psyche.

The story makes the point that, put under pressure, we are prepared to do anything to survive and after a while that behaviour becomes normal and acceptable. And that is the real horror.


Dead Like Me is available for free online here and is part of 'The Living Dead' anthology as edited by John Joseph Adams.

* * * * *

@DemonheadClash

Read more of Mark Swain's writings here!

Review 06 - The People of Sand and Slag
Review 05 - Under St Peter's
Review 04 - Death and Suffrage - Dale Bailey

Review 03 - Some Zombie Contingency Plans - Kelly Link

Review 02 - Sparks Fly Upwards - Lisa Morton

Review 01 - Dead Like Me - Adam Troy Castro

* * * * *

Table of Contents - Guest Stars

Mount TBR 1# The Shadow of the Moon by M.M.Kaye

So I know having my first TBR challenge post at the end of February is pretty poor showing on my part, but I have many and numerous excuses for this, mostly along the lines of a)a lot of shit went down for me in the first two months of 2012, most of it for the positive and b)it's not like I haven't read anything, I just haven't read anything I already owned. YOU try working in three libraries and having as many booky friends as I do, and then having a birthday and be given shed loads of Amazon vouchers (thank you) and then reading books you already owned! It's blumming hard, I tell thee!

But what a start to the challenge this was. I gushed heavily over M. M. Kaye's epic doorstopper romance The Far Pavilions, that I found in PovAid for 50p back in 2010, and I've been wanting to read more of her stuff ever since. I found The Shadow of the Moon, her 1958 romance reprinted on the back of The Far Pavilions success in the late 70s in PovAid last summer and once again snapped it up. However, it was, again, epically long, so sat on my shelf looking pretty for months. This February I've been in desperate need of cheap romance novels, however, and after binging on Cooper this tome was calling out to me.

Set for the most part during the 1857 (I think) Indian Mutiny and the months preceding it, this book is beautifully written, gripping from the off and that great mix of romance and terror that made The Far Pavilions so readable.

Winter de Ballesteros (best name ever. Fact) is the orphan heiress who is abandoned by her stuffy English aristocratic family to a arranged marriage with a gold digging bigot when she is 11. Travelling to India to be with her husband as a beautiful seventeen year old, she is placed under the care of dashing Captain Alex Randell. Alex is seemingly the only British officer to notice, or care, that the rule of the East India Company is failing and that the people of the Kingdoms of Hind are spoiling for a fight. Winter, obviously, falls for Alex and together they must survive the bloody fallout of years of incompetent and disrespectful colonialist rule.

Alex is my favourite part of the book. One of those heroes it's impossible not to fall a little bit in love with (which I have done, massively), he's such a good, well-rounded character that he lifts the lesser parts of the book-including the slightly 2D portrayals of the Indian characters-up to soaring heights. Constantly banging his head on a brick wall over the behaviour of his bigoted, ridiculous superiors including the horror that is Conway Barton, Winter's husband, Alex is conflicted within himself to the point of almost changing sides. He doesn't believe in Britain's Divine right to rule, but seeing as they are there believes it must be down to the best of their ability. Like Ashton in The Far Pavilions, Alex uses the disguise of a native Indian, gets to know the local people and their customs and has many varied adventures throughout the book. He is honorable and well mannered and in real life it would be hard not to just launch myself at him.

The romance side of the book is subtly done. We see both Winter and Alex's point of view and what I loved was how instinctive their feelings towards each other were. Alex doesn't moon over his love, he has far bigger things on his mind, but when he collapses in her arms it's real and you can feel the passion there. Winter is a wonderful heroine, though a little bit Stock Feisty for my tastes, and her back story, which takes up the first 200 pages or so, is fascinating.

Writing wise, I couldn't fault this book. Her use of colour, of smell, the way she brings the world around her to life, it's so sumptuous. She makes it seem so easy, parts you can feel her pen gliding over the page. The book is about racists, and includes a long of language that made me wince, so that combined with a slightly rushed and clunky ending (she could have easily stretched the last fifty pages of 200 or so and it wouldn't have felt like too much, that's how stunning the writing is) takes this down to a four, rather than the five stars it otherwise thoroughly deserves.

Any romance fans out there, get into M.M. Kaye! As far as I can figure out, she's out of print, which is a huge shame. With a bit of an edit (some of the turns of phrase are very very 50s) this could be a best seller now. Beautiful book and I'm really really glad I've finally read it.

Purchased PovAid, Summer 2011

* * * * *

Ongoing Challenges Table of Contents 

* * * * *

Full Table of Contents