Bookblog for Bookworms

National Book Swap keeps books in the public eye

2011-09-24T13:16:00.000+01:00

The Guardian and Observer Book Swap

Choose a book you enjoyed reading (or even one you didn't enjoy reading - reading is subjective after all) and leave it somewhere, anywhere for someone else to pick up and read - a park bench, the steps of a public building, the back seat of a bus or a restaurant loo will do fine. Be inventive.

The Guardian is urging us to do just that in a national Book Swap giveaway of 15,000 books. There's no charge for them and the campaign runs until the end of October. You can get a free bookplate sticker from The Guardian and The Observer on Saturday and Sunday or download one online from www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2011/sep/15/guardian-and-observer-book-swap-sticker. Insert a sticker in your giveaway book and write a message for the finder, then drop the book wherever you choose to leave it. If you happen to pick up a book someone else has left, leave it for another finder and upload the details of where you left it at www.guardian.co.uk/bookswap or on Twitter (#guardianbookswap). You also have to upload a photo of the book where you found it and to read and review it on www.guardian.co.uk/bookswap. If you don't have a spare book, you can get loads from local charity shops.

Origins of Book Crossing

Seems like fun but book swapping is nothing new. The idea, known as Book Crossing was dreamed up by Ron Hornbaker in 2001. His website, http://www.bookcrossing.com/ has spread its message to more than 113,000 people worldwide. If you want to 'release' books into the 'wild' you have to register on the website and you can go hunting for books listed and their whereabouts. Official BookCrossing Zones can be found in coffee shops, cafes and restaurants and other places. An annual convention in April attracts BookCrossers to literary events where they can release books. In 2012, Ireland will host it in Dublin. London took its turn in 2008.

Bookswap at Endcliffe Park for Open College of the Arts

Here is a copy of One Day by David Nicholls left on the wall of Endlciffe Park in Sheffield. Inside is the message left on the sticker by Elizabeth Underwood from OCA. 'I've chosen the place because lots of people climb over the wall into the park,' she says.

Short stories in peril campaign

2011-09-23T12:22:00.001+01:00

Many writers, like Ian Rankin for example, began their careers with short stories on BBC Radio 4 and now it looks like the opportunities for short story writers are in jeopardy. The Beeb has reduced its short story quota on Radio 4 from five a few years ago to three and now to one a week.

The Society of Authors has taken up the cudgel and launched a petition on the National Short Story Week website and anyone who wants to sign it should log on to (www.ipetitions.com/petition/noshortstorycuts) At the last count it had attracted over 6,500 signatures, so let's keep it going.

Author Sarah Dunant was hoping they would reconsider. She says: 'When it comes to fiction radio excites and exercises the imagination in a way no other medium can manage. Nowhere is that more perfectly illustrated than the short story where, within 15 short minutes, one can be transported into a different world. It is a cheap yet invaluable example of radio at its best. It feels both mad - and sad - to think that Radio 4 would somehow be better without it.'

Sarah Dunant

BBC Controller Gwyneth Williams said the number of short stories on Radio 4 would be diminished from 150 to 100 from April 2012, some of them would premiere on Radio 4 Extra and that she hoped to broadcast short stories more on Radio 4 Extra.

Society of Authors' Short Story Tweetathon

To back up their campaign, and to celebrate the short story, The Society has launched a Short Story Tweethathon (#soatale) on Twitter for five consecutive weeks, beginning last week with Ian Rankin. Five first line contributions will be tweeted by Simon Brett, Neil Gaiman, Joanne Harris and Sarah Waters. Tweeters can complete the next four sentences, to produce a short story in 670 characters. Every hour, the best lines will be selected and the resulting short stories will be published on the Society's website where rules and stories can be viewed (www.societyofauthors.org/soa-short-story-tweetathon-soatale) The BBC are currently showcasing shortlisted entries for their own short story competition.

In addition to the cultural and creative impact of the BBC short story cuts, the Society of Authors is concerned that the new scheduling will restrict linked themes and creative programming and that the proposed time slots will limit the audience. BBC Director General Mark Thompson and Chair of the BBC Trust Lord Patten are reviewing the proposed cuts but more signatures are needed.
Log onto Twitter every Wednesday at 11am if you would like to take part in the Tweetathon. Retweet via http://bit.ly/SoAtale

Litfests for Manchester & Sheffield

2011-09-22T19:55:00.002+01:00

Two Literature Festivals about to launch in October – 'Off the Shelf', Sheffield’s Festival of Words and Manchester Literature Festival.

Carol Ann Duffy

Sheffield 'Off The Shelf'

Sheffield celebrates its 20th year, with Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and ‘The Bees’, a new collection of poems; fun with a Bookswap; Fiona MacCarthy talking about ‘The Last Pre-Raphaelite – Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination’; a debate on ‘The Future of the Book’ with Noel Williams from Sheffield Hallam University and Lesley Gunter from Sheffield Libraries for new technology and Richard Welsh from Sheffield’s children’s book shop ‘Rhyme and Reason’ with novelist Rachel Genn supporting the book. That’s just for starters and among the big names are Will Self, Jeremy Paxman, Sir Michael Parkinson, Claire Tomalin, Rob Brydon, Joe Dunthorne, Jeanette Winterson, Polly Toynbee and many more.

Jeannette Winterson

The Festival runs from 8-29 October 2011 – further info http://www.offtheshelf.org.uk/

tel: 0114 273 4400.

Manchester Literature Festival

Manchester’s Litfest runs from 10-23 October 2011 with an international cast of authors. A lineup of guests includes Sarah Dunant, Tahmima Anam, Jeffrey Eugenides, Antonia Fraser, Michael Frayn, Alan Hollinghurst, David Lodge, Sue MacGregor, Colm Toibin and again Claire Tomalin.

The second Manchester Sermon delivered by Andrew Motion will be a highlight, together with poems by Jean Sprackland responding to the Ford Madox Brown exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, a rugby-themed event with Tom Palmer at Media City and the launch of the Midland Future Manchester creative writing competition.

Everything from Nordic crime fiction to dub poetry takes place here – details from 0161 236 5555, http://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/

Writers' Workshop hosts Festival

2011-09-22T15:46:00.000+01:00

The Getting Published Event

Literary agents receive about 50 unsolicited manuscripts a week and of those, very few are found to be of a publishable standard. If you've written a book and you're looking for an agent or an expert to tell you how to strengthen it, you have a chance to get your manuscript looked at during the Writer's Workshop Festival of Writing in London.

Leading agents, publishers and book doctors will be on hand to give you a short, expert and truthful introduction to all you need to know about what to do next. And, if your writing is good enough, it may be presented to agents.

Keynote speaker is Caroline Dawnay of United Agents. David Headley of DHH Literary Agency, Penny Holroyde of Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency and Juliet Mushens of PFD will also be on hand. The 'Slushpile Live' event sounds informative - when agents and publishers talk about how they view your work. And for a 15 minute session with a Book Doctor, you have to send your work in advance.

The Festival is run by author Harry Bingham. Harry has written five novels, two non-fiction books and The Writers' & Artists' Guide to Getting Published. The event takes place on Saturday 15 October 2011 and tickets cost £185.

You can log on to the website at http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/ for more information and booking forms.

New scriptwriting course for Open College of the Arts

2011-09-22T15:06:00.000+01:00

Open College of the Arts

I haven't abandoned the blog altogether, just bending to the demands of an overloaded work schedule and didn't realise I'd been away for so long.

In the meantime, the Open College of the Arts (OCA) have launched a new scriptwriting course called Narrative and Dialogue, on which I'll be tutoring. I'm really pleased about this as I've been tutoring on the Writers' News scriptwriting course for about ten years and it's something I enjoy.

Search for screenwriting mentor

At the same time, I've been looking for an experienced screenwriter to mentor me through the development of a screenwriting project, something I haven't tackled before. The one I thought I had fell through when her workload increased and I can't get started until I get some direction with the plot and structure. Please get in touch if you have this kind of experience or know of someone who might be interested.

Narrative and Dialogue

Narrative and Dialogue is a Level 1 course and a core requirement for the OCA's BA Hons Creative Writing degree. It's an introductiory course that focuses on scriptwriting to help students learn to write in any form that requires plot, structure, dialogue and character and that can 'tell a story'. It's equally valid for scriptwriters as it is for writers whose primary interest is the novel, short story or narrative poetry.

You can find out more from the OCA at enquiries@oca-uk.com or phone 01226 730495. Their website is at http://www.oca-uk.com/ and you can read their blog at http://www.weareoca.com/

Gruesome murder mystery for DI Whicher

2011-08-18T11:46:00.001+01:00

I was rivetted by the dramatised version, starring Paddy Considine and Peter Capaldi and decided to try Kate Summerscale's novel of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House. Both were fascinating and, while the amount of research carried out by the author added to the intrigue of the book and gave an insight into social conditions and sleuthing in the mid 19th century, the ITV dramatisation concentrated on the story itself and graphically brought it and the characters to life in the way a book couldn't, illustrating the old chestnut 'show, don't tell' at its best.

Little Saville Kent, aged 3 is murdered in his sleep during the night on 30 June, 1860 at Road Hill House in Wiltshire where he lives with his parents, Samuel Kent, a sub-inspector of factories and his second wife, Mary. Samuel and Mary live in the elegant mansion with the four children of Samuel's first marriage and three from their own. Mary, originally Mary Pratt, used to be the nursemaid when Samuel was married to Mary Ann, his first wife and it is conjectured that 16-year-old Constance, one of the original brood, is the culprit to this foul deed, aided and abetted by her younger brother, William.

As the door to the outside world was locked on the inside, it is assumed that someone in the house has killed Saville and it takes a while before they locate his body. The police seem to be making a hash of things and Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher is called in for his expert opinion. Whicher points a finger at Constance, whose mother is alleged to have had mental health issues, on the grounds of jealousy and retribution and the poor man virtually wrecks his career on the strength of his convictions. As this is based on a true story, poor little Saville suffers a tragic fate as indeed does Whicher. A pall of sadness hangs over the narrative throughout and I was glad to see Whicher exonerated and reviving his good work by the end.

Kate's book was published in 2008 by Bloomsbury. She won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction for it. A special edition is available with an eight-page gatefold section of contemporary documents from the investigation. It includes letters, police reports and Mr Whicher's case notes.

You can learn more about The Suspicions of Mr Whichever on a special website: http://www.mrwhicher.com/

A good guide to Coeliac Disease

2011-08-16T15:15:00.001+01:00

Gluten free goodies

Most decent restaurants and cafes seem to be genned up on alternative eating these days. Chefs actually know about Coeliac Disease and the importance of providing gluten free food for the 1 in 100 people who suffer from this auto immune complaint, not to mention the dangers of cross contamination in the kitchen. His and Her toasters are a must if you are one of them.

I'm always delighted to find gluten free alternatives in places where I've never found them before. Now I can pop in to John Lewis's cafe in Cheadle for a Genius bread sandwich or even Starbucks at Manchester's Piccadilly Station. Fortunately, they're all wrapped so no danger of cross contamination. But wandering round my local park I stopped for a cuppa at the little cafe in the grounds and was delighted to find gluten free coconut cakes on offer; not so delighted when the serving person picked up my cake with the same tongs she'd just used to pick up my companion's chocolate cake. Fortunately, I haven't had a reaction - yet.

Coeliac Disease: The Essential Guide

Writer Kate Coxon has produced this informative book from Need2Know Books giving the basic lowdown on Coeliac Disease, its diagnosis, treatment and symptoms. She goes into the best diet for people with gluten intolerance or coeliac disease, how to shop, cook and eat at home, information about getting NHS prescriptions for food and how to overcome the difficulties on finding gluten free food on holiday or while travelling.

Coeliac Disease is quite hard to diagnose. The symptoms are similar to other complaints, like IBS or wheat intolerance and many people in the process of becoming coeliac are often incorrectly diagnosed. It can take an average of 13 years to diagnose. Meanwhile, sufferers could be developing related health conditions like diabetes, anaemia or low thyroid without the link being discovered. Tests bring false negatives and false positives. My own biopsy produced a negative and it was a long time afterwards, when I knew more about the condition, that I realised I had been on one of my frequent yo-yo exclusion diets and hadn't been eating any gluten for a while before the biopsy took place; nobody had even told me I was having one.And I woke up in the middle of it - v-e-r-y painful; I don't recommend it.

So what is Coeliac Disease? Coeliac Disease is actually an auto-immune disease, when the body attacks self. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. It's that sticky stuff that gives bread its light, fluffy feel, so good for comfort eating. Some sufferers cannot tolerate oats, although the gluten in oats is not the same and most people can tolerate it. Oats are often produced in the same environment as gluten grains and become cross contaminated anyway. Nowadays, gluten-free oats are available and I can recommend Nairn's wonderful gluten-free porridge and oatcakes.

Gluten is the trigger and it creates an immune reaction that affects the gut lining and stops it from absorbing nutrients efficiently. It produces a wide range of symptoms, such as persistent diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, pain, headaches, tiredness and much more; it varies from person to person. Some suffer from endless viruses and infections because of the impaired immune system.

Coeliac Disease is neither treatable nor curable. The only way to keep it under control and stop attacks is to avoid gluten for good. Nowadays, gluten-free foods are freely available in supermarkets, health food shops, internet shopping and other outlets. The labelling is now clearer so shoppers can see which foods are out of bounds to them. Fosters fish and chippy in Didsbury, Manchester and Alderley Edge, Cheshire have gluten free Sundays to which I hie down for my weekly treat and my own great niece's husband in Southport has a chippy that does the same.

The UK Coeliac Society is a great support organisation and its members receive a Food and Drink Directory telling them what gluten-free foods are available and where and they produce a magazine called Crossed Grain.

If you think you might have Coeliac Disease, you can have a blood test to begin with but make sure you are eating foods containing gluten before doing so. If the antibodies are there, the next step is a biopsy. Reading Coeliac Disease: The Essential Guide is a good starting point. Personally, just finding out what the ghastly symptoms were that had been ruining my life for so many years, filled me with happiness and being able to stop them, or most of them, has done wonders for my morale and self-confidence.

Kate has included a Help List of useful organisations and a relevant Book List. The book can be obtained in bookshops, from http://www.amazon.co.uk/ or from the publisher, Need2Know Books at http://www.need2knowbooks.co.uk/

Where were you on 11 September 2001?

2011-08-13T14:47:00.000+01:00

That Day in September

This is a curious little book. You can read it in one sitting it's so short - just 87 pages long. That's because it's a personal eyewitness account of the tragedy that hit New York and the rest of the world on 9/11. Author Artie Van Why had to get it off his chest and writing things down is a great way to ease internal pain. He's also talked about it on stage in LA and New York

Artie takes an emotionally charged trip back to the time he heard a loud boom and the building shuddered. He was working at a word processing centre across from the World Trade Center. After the initial disquiet, all hell broke loose. That was just after the first plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers.

Artie lived in New York City for 26 years and his writing covers the event, its aftermath and how badly he was affected afterwards. His experience is to be featured on the BBC's website to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the event. Tom Geoghegan from the Washington DC Bureau of the BBC was set to interview him last week.

'All along the endeavor has been a way of processing my experience and, more importantly, it is my contribution to assuring we never forget. That Day In September is my personal tribute to honor those who died,' he says.

Artie's book is available on http://www.amazon.co.uk/ http://www.goodreads.com/ and he has versions in PDF, Word, Mobi and ePub. His Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/ThatDayInSeptember

New Writer prose and poetry prizes

2011-08-13T14:08:00.002+01:00

If you enjoy writing, now's your chance to try for The New Writer's Prose and Poetry competition. This year's closing date is 30 November, so it's time to get to work. This is the 15th annual international competition for short stories, microfiction, single poems, poetry collections, essays and articles. Not only could you win money but you could see your work published in The Collection, a special edition of The New Writer magazine, which comes out the following July.

Last year's winners are featured in the current issue of the annual Collection. You can buy copies at www.thenewwriter.com/prizes.htm and read the guidelines and entry fees.

Alone in Berlin a revelation

2011-07-26T16:40:00.001+01:00

I abandoned the blog recently to work on the second edition of my book about Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. At night, I read Michael Hofmann's translation from the German of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, not knowing what to expect except another book about the Nazis. It was a revelation.

Alone in Berlin

The author Primo Levi declared it 'the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis'. I'm tired of the out-of-context extracts quoted about books we find plastered all over the covers and endpapers. 'The most hilarious book ever written' rarely has me falling off my seat and '...it scared me half out of my wits' leaves me looking for the missing pages they must have had that I didn't. I wish publishers would stop it. It's so misleading.

Levi was right though. I haven't read all the books ever written about German resistance to the Nazis, so I'm not in a position to comment but it was certainly the best of its kind that I've read, despite its tendency to slip in and out of past and present tense in the same paragraph. Whether that was the author's intention or something to do with the translation, I have no idea but it was very irritating.

For someone with a plethora of distant cousins and great aunts and uncles who were murdered by the Nazis in Austria and Lithuania, German equates with Nazi; it's hard to separate the two. Just changing planes at Dusseldorf was repugnant in 1959. It never occurred to me that there were German people who resisted the Nazi regime, probably because I was in denial from years of absorbing Nazi horror stories from a different perspective and the discovery of a Daily Mail picture book called Lest We Forget that I found on my parents' bookshelf when I was six. I never forgot.

So for the first time, I discovered what fear does to people, how the tyrant and bully controls the masses, with hypnotic rhetoric, threats, physical violence and murder. It could happen any time, any place, one madman gains control and you have mass cowardice that has neighbour spying on neighbour in an effort to please the gangs of vicious thugs that follow the psychotic leader and save their own skins.

There were those though who followed their personal convictions, who were not Nazi sympathisers, who were committed to helping those in need, who didn't consider that they were acting heroically, who saw Jews as people in need of help rather than as Jews, and who often acted spontaneously to help them. Yad Vashem, the Jewish holocaust remembrance organisation calls them the Righteous Gentiles and gave over 21 thousand of them official recognition after the war. Most of them were Polish, the rest eastern European. Germans were a bit thin on the ground.

True story

There was resistance to the Nazis at all levels of society but to no effect. Alone in Berlin is based on the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel and this story was taken from information in their files. They were Hitler's followers until 1940 and they dropped postcards to warn the Germans against the Fuhrer and his regime. In Fallada's story, they are represented by the fictional Otto and Anna Quangel. When their only son is killed fighting during the French invasion, they turn against the regime. Otto writes and drops his propaganda postcards in buildings in and around Berlin, aided and abetted by his wife. But people are too afraid to read them or to be found with one in case they are arrested for originating them, so they hand them in to the police immediately. The Quangels are caught in the end and sadly, their arrest results in a ripple of interest in others associated with them, however innocent they may be, including their late son's girlfriend, who commits suicide in prison.

The book is peopled with fascinating characters from drunken Hitler supporters to down and out ne'er-do'wells, all bent on self-preservation, no matter what the cost to others. Even the police inspector's life depends on him bringing someone, anyone, to justice. The Quangels stand out among them as two sober individuals among an ocean of drunks, seeing clearly where others peer through the mist.

This is one of the most fascinating books I've read for a while and, although it has a sad ending and contains material that doesn't always digest well, it's a brilliant historical document, a rivetting read, full of action and incident and - a revelation.

It's published by Penguin and translated from the original German novel, Every Man Dies Alone. You can read about the author, Hans Fallada on http://www.hansfallada.com/

Dark tale from Joanne Harris

2011-06-25T16:09:00.000+01:00

blueeyedboy

Gloria Winter (nee Green) lives in the Yorkshire village of Malbry. Once married to a friend of her father's who ran a fish and chip shop, Gloria meets Peter Winter at a Christmas party. He's the local car dealer with a BMW and a bit of flash and he becomes her second husband until the car dealership goes and Peter goes with it. To care for her three sons, Nigel, Brendan and Ben Gloria takes in mending and ironing and becomes a cleaner.

Black, Brown and Blue are the names of her children because of the colours in which Gloria dresses them. Black for Nigel, the eldest, 'moody and aggressive'. Nigel is killed in a car crash. Brown, for Brendan, 'timid and dull' and Blue for the youngest, most doted on son Ben. Ben is a murderer.

This is a dark book for one such as Joanne Harris and although it's beautifully written and the words flow onto the pages at a rivetting pace, it left me with more questions than answers. I usually discard books I can't get into but I read blueeyedboy to the end because of the author's ability with language. It was the plot that confused, twisted and turned until I had no idea what was going on. It had no discernible structure and read as though it hadn't been plotted first.

blueeyedboy is a nickname for the man who writes about his mother's love for him over his two brothers and his hatred of her. Halfway through, having been led to believe Ben is the author of the webjournal badguysrock@webjournal.com and whose creepy postings steadily reveal a tale of hatred, revenge and child abuse, murder even, the roles are switched and it appears to be Brendan, not dead after all, who is the blue eyed boy doing the writing. Is it fiction -- fic as the author BB calls it in his web journal -- or is Ben/Brendan revealing a true life situation? And it is Ben who is dead. Whoever it is, he's 42 and still living with mama. And this is his social life.

Ben has synaesthesia. He sees things as colours and smells words. He was half of a set of twins and claims to have eaten his brother in utero. I know. It was hard to root for him, or any of them for that matter and I didn't really care what happened to them. Once Brendan becomes the blue eyed boy, the synaesthesia goes too and I found him even less interesting. Nigel's girlfriend, Albertine and her neighbour Emily, or is that Beth, plays a key part in the fabrication of this complex story.

So, come back Vianne Rocher with some chocolate truffles. BEB wasn't to my taste.

Blueeyedboy is published by Black Swan and you can log onto Joanne Harris's website at http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/

The Novel in the Viola - Natasha Solomons does it again

2011-06-13T15:12:00.000+01:00

If you like an Upstairs/Downstairs story, try The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons. Natasha won acclaim for her first novel, Mr Rosenblum's List and this is her second. It's equally as appealing, though not in the same genre. It has an evocative pre-war appeal and covers a familiar theme about people who don't fit in - the outsiders. Natasha bases her characters and plots on her relations, her grandfather for Mr Rosenblum and this time the honour goes to her great aunt Gabi Landau, who escaped the Holocaust by applying for a job here as a domestic servant.

The Novel in the Viola is an enchanting love story and it will warm the cockles of your heart. It's 1938 in Vienna and Elise Rosa Landau puts an ad in The Times offering her services as a domestic servant. She 'speaks fluid English' and she's offered a position as house parlour maid at Tyneford House in Dorset, home of widow Mr Rivers and his son Kit. Why does she do such a thing?

Her mother, Anna is an operatic heroine star in Vienna and her father, Julian an avant-garde novelist. Her older sister, Margot is a professional viola player and is married to Robert, an astronomer. Natasha builds up a rich picture of their affluent middle class life in Vienna, where glamorous and talented people's lives are about to be shattered. The girls' parents plan to flee to New York but can't get a visa for Elise, aged 19. Operatic luminaries offer Anna jobs to get her out of Austria but the authorities are making things more and more difficult for Jewish people to move around freely, let alone leave the country.

Elise never sees her parents again but Margot and Robert make it to San Francisco where they eventually become Americanised. Elise becomes Mr Rivers's servant but doesn't fit in with the below stairs bunch. They know she's really a lady. Neither is she accepted by the upper crust young men and women in Kit's circle. They know she's a Jewish refugee. Fortunately, the Rivers' do accept her and even try to help bring her parents over to England. But the extent of the class system is highlighted for there is social order below as well as above stairs and some nastiness from the upper crust. Meanwhile, Elise sets her cap at Kit, who sets his at her.

Some of it felt like Daphne du Maurier in tone and elsewhere it smacked of Jane Eyre. But it was an unputdownable read for me and I enjoyed the meticulous research into pre-war life in Vienna, the Master/Servant relationship and the life and times of the upper classes in war torn Britain. And I had fallen in love with Mr Rivers as soon as he arrived on the page.

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons is published by Sceptre. Natasha lives in Dorset and she and her husband have written the screenplay for Mr Rosenblum's List for Film 4/Cowboy Films. Log on to her website at http://www.natashasolomons.com/

Edgar Allan Poe Awards and The Next Big Author

2011-06-01T23:16:00.003+01:00

How's this for coincidence? A few postings down, I wrote about the Next Big Author Competition and my Mills and Boon quick entry, which morphed into an Edgar Allan Poe, when my third cousin from Chicago (our Lithuanian grandmothers were sisters) goes and wins the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Creepy or what?

The Edgar Allan Poe Award

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards are presented every spring by the Mystery Writers of America in New York City and this year was the 202nd anniversary of Poe's birth. The best writers of mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2010 received their awards at a banquet at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

Edgar Allan Poe winner Sam Bobrick

Sam Bobrick won his award for the best theatre script - The Psychic. Sam has written and co-written over 30 plays, 20 of them published by Samuel French, mostly comedies. 'There is nothing more satisfying to me than to sit in an audience and listen to people laugh...My main goal has always been to entertain...Life is tough enough. Why send an audience home suicidal? It only cuts into future ticket sales.' I won't argue with that.

Sam, who has written extensively for TV and stage, has also written songs for Elvis Presley, Brian Ferry and Los Lobos. And he has written several plays with his wife, writer Julie Stein.

Sam's website is at http://www.sambobrick.com/

The Next Big Author competition

And as for that Next Big Author competition, my ratings are at 3.4 out of a possible 5 at the moment, so I've a long way to go. What's so fascinating about this 'peer review' system is how varied the reviews are. Someone says the dialogue isn't realistic, someone else says the thing they love most is the realistic dialogue. Each reader comes up with a different set of parameters as to how stories 'should be' written.

Reading is, after all, subjective and maybe your literary knowledge depends on which writing courses you've been on and which 'how to...' books you've read. But it's useful criticism in one sense (as long as you act on it with caution), because writers are too close to their own work to see what others see and they don't. But, in all honesty, if you had to choose between a review from a professional writer, publisher or editorial consultant and one from an unpublished, hobby writer, which would you choose?

http://www.thenextbigauthor.com/ and http://www.youwriteon.com/ are the sites to log on to if you want to upload your opening chapters. Dream on...

Cat poems raise money for care of strays in Fuerteventura

2011-06-01T12:34:00.000+01:00

This is Tunachunks. Tunachunks lives at a hotel in the Canary Islands, where the editor of this wonderful anthology of cat poems, writer Alison Chisholm stays on holiday. 'She moves in with us for treats and titbits but disappears the moment the cases appear and we start to pack,' says Alison. At that point, the hotel entertainer takes over her welfare. Tunachunks is an El Capitan cat, so she enjoys veterinary care and will always be looked after.

Cat Lines has been compiled to raise funds for El Capitan, the charity that funds the care of Fuerteventura's stray and feral cats and there are lots of them. So if you're over there and you spot a cat with a slightly trimmed left ear, you will know it's being cared for by El Capitan and that their cat-loving volunteers are keeping an eye out for it. The charity makes sure the cats are neutered, has set up Cat Feeding Stations, encourages the adoption of cats and tries to create a better understanding of their plight among the residents.

The poems, all 52 of them, including two of Alison's, have been dedicated to the memory of Orlando, described as 'A Cat with Attitude'. And if you're a cat lover, how could you resist such titles as, Fried Mouse Anyone? Break a Paw Darling, Fat Cat, A Cat Called Audrey, A Kitten for Christmas or The Cat in the Wardrobe. I love the Shape poem, If You Were Mine, written in the shape of a cat - very clever.

As they're all copyright of the individual poets, who donated their work to the charity, the only one I can reproduce here is, yes you've guessed it, my own. I don't usually write poetry, so was delighted when Alison included What Creeps in the Night? And followers may recognise Harry the Cat, who is currently turning round in circles on the patio, (only he knows why) and Black Bertha, aka Spawn of the Devil, who inhabits my filing tray and steals his food.

What Creeps in the Night?

Black Bertha creeps up to the window
Peers into the house, is he there?
Harry watches from the top of the stairs
Not today lady, not today he swears.

Today he is king of his corner,
His green grape eyes flash, she waits poised
Big Bertha's mane gleams silk in the sunlight
A movement with his paw, whoosh she takes flight.

Licks her shirtfront, black like a mineshaft
Unsure of strategy, action
Watches the house from the dense hawthorn hedge
Sleep little one on your carpeted ledge.

The moon laughs, gleams goodbye to the sun
Black Bertha prowls on silent paws
To the window, she heaves at the catdoor
A leap and feet skid on the marbled floor.

Harry the Cat snores soundly, roundly
The black furball, low to the ground
Slithers to the richness, smell of the sea
'So sorry my dear, this is meant for me'.

So if that hasn't put you off and you'd like to support El Capitan and the sterling work they are doing for the island's cats, you can buy a copy of Cat Lines in the UK from 53 Richmond Road, Birkdale, Southport, Merseyside PR8 4SB, price £4.50 plus p/p £1, plus an extra 30p p/p for each additional copy. Cheques should be made payable to Alison Chisholm. Copies can also be bought in Fuerteventura, in hotels, bars and a craft stall in Caleta de Fuste, and some in Germany, suggested minimum donation 5 Euros.

El Capitan animal project can be contacted at Lichtenbroicher Weg 8a, 40472 Dusseldorf. www.animal-project.de/ email: info@animal-project.de

Can you help with facts about ADHD?

2011-05-24T10:29:00.001+01:00

ADHD:The Essential Guide Update

Developments move so fast in the health world and three years have flown since my guide on ADHD was published. Since then, new facts have come to light and synchronicity keeps throwing me in the direction of people involved in this area, so my file is constantly growing. So much so, that I think it's time to revise and update, so whatever else is out there that my research hasn't turned up, I'd like to know about it.

Talking of synchronicity, last year I was visiting some friends who live in a country park near Manchester and was suddenly attacked by the symptoms of a debilitating virus. My friends run a B&B business, letting out beautiful black and white timbered cottages in the grounds. Staying there at the time just happened to be a homeopath, who not only helped to get me on my feet again but turned out to be a representative of The Handle Institute, an American organisation that stands for Holistic Approach to NeuroDevelopment and Learning Efficiency. In fact, there was a whole bunch of them from all over the world attending a conference.

The Handle Institute

HANDLE's practitioners use a holistic non-drug approach to help people with ADD, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, Tourette's Syndrome and many more. Their work will, of course, be featured in the new edition of my book and they do have representatives in the UK.

How you can help

So, if you know of new research or developments in ADHD, would like to get a mention for your work in this field or have your case history included in the next edition, I'd love to hear from you. Or maybe you have tips that work for you and you'd like to share them with ADHD sufferers and their carers/families or even teachers. If so, please contact me NOW at diane@keywordeditorial.com

Contacts

For more details about The Handle Institute, log on to http://www.handle.org/ or email support@handle.org/ And if you're visiting Manchester and would like to drop out of the rat race and immerse yourself in nature in a picturesque olde-worlde enclave two minutes from civilisation, contact me and I'll put you in touch.

How to obtain ADHD:The Essential Guide

ADHD:The Essential Guide can be obtained from bookstores, Amazon or direct from the publisher, Need2Know Books at http://www.need2knowbooks.co.uk/, tel: 01733 898103.

Write a book in record time and be the Next Big Author

2011-05-17T14:48:00.001+01:00

I intended to have a go at this but things got in the way and although I churned out two chapters in the time it took to change a duvet cover (which is quite a long time here) the story began to morph from Mills & Boon into Edgar Allan Poe before I knew it. That's what happens if you let your characters take you over. However, all may not be lost and although the Next Big Author closing date is 31 May, here are a few examples of famous authors who penned books in a hurry and became Big Authors.

Big Authors

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange: “The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence.”

Mickey Spillane: His most famous Mike Hammer Novel, I, the Jury, was written in nine days. It sold seven million copies in three years.

From The Guardian: “Alexander Dumas had a 100-louis bet (a decent sum in 1845) that he could write the first volume of Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge in just three days. Powered by a steady supply of coffee (his manuscripts are splattered with it), he pulled it off within six hours to spare with scarcely a crossing out .."

In 1941, Jack Kerouac dashed off 200 short stories in eight weeks, thanks to a regime of benzedrene pellets.

Stephen King took just three nights to finish The Running Man while hooked up to a Budweiser drip.

Noel Coward wrote Private Lives in four days...J B Priestley wrote An Inspector Calls in ten days - 'all plays should be written in a burst of explosive energy.' Neil Simon wrote Come Blow Your Horn in three weeks.

So Edgar Allan Poe it is.

How to Enter

You only have to write the opening chapters. The competition is supported by publishers Bloomsbury, Random House, Orion, Little Brown and Hodder and Stoughton.

Log onto www.thenextbigauthor.com for details of how to enter via the competition rules on the left hand side of the site’s homepage.

Complementary Therapy practical guide

2011-05-10T15:30:00.000+01:00

Need2Know Books has carved quite a niche in the health and education field with its Essential Guide series. A new wave of Lifestyle titles includes everything from Gardening to Gap Years and Walking to Weight Loss.

Complementary Therapies

A recent title covers the basic field of complementary therapies, authored by freelance health writer Antonia Chitty and hypnotherapist, life coach and Reiki Master, Victoria Dawson.

As more and more people are turning to complementary therapies and natural health clinics are springing up all over the UK, anyone who finds the range of therapies a bit baffling can find out about the more well-known ones in Complementary Therapies: The Essential Guide.

Therapies covered

Among those covered are:

Acupuncture
Aromatherapy
Chiropractic
Herbal Medicine
Homeopathy
Hypnotherapy
Massage
Osteopathy
Reiki and
Reflexology

Chapter content

Each chapter gives the basic facts, together with research, advice from the experts and case histories from clients. The authors cover each therapy's history, which is enlightening. Who knew that massage was used during the first World War to help shell shock victims, or that homeopathy has been used in the UK for the last 200 years. I remember when there were only two practising in Manchester. They've multiplied since then and there are schools and training courses for them.

You can learn what the treatment entails and the types of complaints each therapy is used for and what the contraindications may be. So if you have a serious heart condition, you're not going to have hypnotherapy. The various uses for children, older people and pregnant women are outlined.

Anything missing?

Masses of complementary therapies abound and I could think of one or two main ones that were missing, such as nutritional therapy, which is important when so many people are becoming intolerant to so much of the food we eat, such as wheat or gluten generally and the additives and colourings used by food manufacturers. IBS and coeliac disease appear to be on the increase, so we need to find out what we can do to regulate our diets and eat more healthily. Other therapies, Reiki for example is only one of many 'touch' therapies available and Shiatsu, Bowen, Feldenkrais, Rosen and Rolfing are types of massage from dozens in existence that are popular today. But perhaps they are a subject for a different book.

Ordering

To order a copy you can call 01733 898103 or email sales@n2kbooks.com. To see the full range, visit the website on http://www.need2knowbooks.co.uk/ Antonia's website is http://www.antoniachitty.co.uk/ and Victoria's is http://www.vadconsultancy.co.uk/

Zafon's first novel for young readers

2011-05-05T15:58:00.001+01:00

The Prince of Mist

Shadow of the Wind author, Carlos Ruiz Zafon launched his writing career in 1992 with a novel for young readers. The Prince of Mist has been translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves and it's a young person's twist to selling one's soul to the devil and reaping the consequences.

Books for young adults

Zafon's first four novels were aimed at young adults and in an attempt to reach readers of all ages - 'storytelling transcends age limitations' - Phoenix Paperbacks have produced this edition. It is basically a young reader's book all the same and, having enjoyed Shadow of the Wind so much, I'd mistakenly bought it as Waterstones displayed it among the latest adult releases. If you don't care for books about magic, ghosts and teenage adventures, then beware that you don't make the same mistake.

It's an easy read that can be read in one sitting and it concerns the adventures of three teenagers. A fourth lands in hospital in a coma quite early on and plays no further part in the story, which made me wonder why she'd been included in the first place other than to get the parents out of the way. While they're at the hospital, 13-year-old Max Carver and his 15-year-old sister Alicia become friends with the lighthousekeeper's grandson, Roland whose gramps has a creepy story to tell. But can they believe him?

Creepy clown

The Carvers have moved to the coast where their father reckons they'll be safer as it's 1943. Nothing could be further from the truth as Max begins to have odd dreams and stumbles on a walled garden containing statues of a circus troupe, a sinister stone clown and a star engraving, which pops up in various situations he encounters later on. The lighthousekeeper tells them about Cain, the wicked magician who is seeking his revenge and I couldn't help but think how much more vibrant these passages would have been if they'd been shown actually happening.

An exciting read

I didn't find it scary as other reviewers say they did but then I'm a cynical old bat who spends her working life appraising other people's writing and can't get out of the habit of suggesting areas for improvement. However, it was an exciting read and I didn't have too much trouble whizzing through its pages, even though I haven't been a teenager for a very long time.

You can learn more about Carlos Ruiz Zafon's writing on his website: http://www.carlosruizzafon.co.uk/
His next book in the young readers series, The Midnight Palace will be released on 2 June 2011 and it's set in Calcutta in the 1930s.

Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen

2011-05-04T17:36:00.000+01:00

I borrowed this book from the local library in an effort to support the service, along with Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, which I gave up on quite early. The librarian said her husband said it all came together towards the end. Unfortunately I didn't get that far and if a book doesn't hook me at the beginning, I'll never know how great it turned out to be.

Three-tiered plot

I persevered with Madame Proust's 1890s unpublished diary and learnt a lot about son Marcel in the process - her smothering love for him and his repressed homosexuality, his asthma attacks, (the physical reaction to his repression no doubt) and the louche lifestyle to which he was attracted. Author Kate Taylor recreates the times well through narrator Marie Prevost, who lives in Canada and carries out her research in Paris. But I found the backtracking and timeline switches hard to follow and became confused with the various characters in a three-tiered plot that didn't work. The constant time changes prevented the plot from moving forwards and this interfered with the flow for me.

Meanwhile, Sarah Bensimon, who lives in Toronto with foster parents, returns to her birth family's apartment in Paris after the war to search for them. People are reluctant to talk but she finds a witness to their murder in Auschwitz. In Toronto, she develops an ultra kosher kitchen and cooks kosher versions of French cuisine. I couldn't figure out what this had to do with the story although the title is ambiguous as it implies that Madame Proust kept a kosher kitchen. She was also Jewish though, which makes Marcel so and Sarah's son Max, like Marcel, is stringing along an adoring young woman called Marie. Both Maries are thwarted when they learn the truth. I'm not sure why the men needed to be Jewish as the story would have stood as well had they been Catholic or Hindu but I was hoping to learn more about the French collaboration to transport their Jewish population to Drancy, transit camp to Auschwitz during the war and this wasn't forthcoming.

I'm not sure what the kosher kitchen had to do with anything or other authorial discussions about language for example or the Dreyfus affair. I think it was about different types of love - unrequited, motherly and gay. However, it was well written and researched and I enjoyed the author's take on Madame Proust's unpublished letters.

Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen is by Kate Taylor and published by Chatto & Windus, 2003.

Diving at Sharm El Sheikh

2011-04-19T15:19:00.000+01:00

Whether you're a diver or you just want to know more about scuba diving, a new e-book written by diving instructor John Kean may interest you.

John is a former client of my editorial consultancy and I found his book, Lost Wife, Saw Barracuda both amusing and informative. In it, he explains how he came to make the transition from stockbroker in the UK rat race to a life in the sun of Sharm El Sheikh where he became a dive instructor.

The book begins with John's experience during the terrorist attack on the resort in 2005, when many people were killed or injured and his part in helping them when he was first to arrive on the scene. In addition to that, he's been chased by sharks, had a 737 airliner drop out of the sky into his dive site, broken four bones, been arrested three times and experienced an earthquake.

The book is full of tips and advice on diving and contains humorous and some serious anecdotes about his diving adventures, the sort of incidents that can happen on diving courses and the various people he's trained as diving instructors.

John's first book was a diving guide to the wreck SS Thistlegorm, which is mentioned in Lost Wife... He also writes articles for several diving magazines.

Lost Wife, Saw Barracuda: True Stories of a Sharm El Sheikh Scuba Diving Instructor is available in Kindle Edition and can be obtained from Amazon Media EU S.a r.l.

Indian women's stories

2011-04-05T12:40:00.000+01:00

Six years ago I received a signed copy of a book of short stories from a former writing pupil. Aruna Nambiar was living then in Bangalore and I'd tutored her by correspondence. I remember her as a dedicated student, determined to pursue her freelance writing career alongside engineering management and retail banking. She has written for a variety of Indian newspapers and edited a travel anthology called The Itinerant Indian, which she also sent me and which I am ashamed to say still lies unread on the mounting pile by my bed.

Curtains

Curtains is an anthology of short stories contributed by Aruna and eight other Indian women of differing cultural backgrounds, communities, religions and ages; their jobs range from journalism to college professors, engineers to homemakers and they are spread over different parts of India and the world. They have one thing in common and that is their love of the written word. Their stories cover a wide range of emotions and themes, many based on true life experiences or people they have known but certainly using their cultural backgrounds to write about their world.

If sometimes real life stories don't translate well to fiction, structure doesn't hold up well or anecdote or incident has been mistaken for plot, this is one occasion where it can be overlooked because the enjoyment for me came from learning about the richness of the culture, whether village life and customs or descriptions of Indian food and spices or middle-class traditions. Learning about arranged marriages, so alien to the western world, yet so acceptable to those Indian girls whose fathers or brothers find their husbands for them, makes fascinating reading. How lucky we are to have the freedom to make choices, even though they may not turn out to be the best for us and how protective Indian parents have been to ensure their daughters marry someone known to them.

Two stories

Two stories stood out for me, the first by Andaleeb Wajid, which gives the book its title - Curtains. Andaleeb, a technical author for a documentation company, comes from Vellore and her stories are based on this town. Her characters are taken from people she has met. Her story, Rendezvous at Tea won her a prize in the Kathalok Short Story Writing Competition. 'Winning it changed the way I wrote fiction, as it reinforced my belief that I was in the right direction. More so, because I had attempted something different and winning it greatly increased my confidence,' she says.

In Curtains, the fluttering light blue curtains provide a marker for Farida as she remembers them on specific occasions. They are in the house of her husband's boyhood, where she has lived since her marriage. The curtains reassure her that life goes on, whatever happens. She used to watch them being washed regularly under her mother-in-law's supervision. But they hang limp and unwashed four years after her mother-in-law's death and water is in short supply. Should she buy new ones?

Farida is lonely with an unattentive husband. She has lost her self-esteem and has let the house go. She takes down the curtains and sees outside three young men smoking. She thinks the ugliest one has leered at her as she hangs up sheets in place of the curtains. She asks her husband for new curtains. '...if they're dirty it's because you haven't washed them,' he says. '...you haven't washed them even once...They could well last another ten years...' Farida pays the servant to wash them for her. She hangs up the clean curtains - the young man is there alone and he acknowledges her. She waves back. She has found a way to be noticed and acknowledged that she doesn't have in her life. Guess who is going to have the cleanest curtains in the street? And although this is really an incident rather more than a plot and it's quite a drawn out story, it carries a very strong message, particularly for women who spend their day alone with only the household chores to fill their time. We all need to be valued and acknowledged; if we are valued we value ourselves.

Rani

The story that made me laugh the most was Rani, written by Sarita Mandanna from Coorg. Sarita has an MBA from Wharton Business School and she works in New York. Written in first person, Rani grows up in a culture of superstition where horoscopes are cast to ensure a prospective husband is a good match for a girl. 'Never defy God. Or argue with the fates.' Rani studies medicine and her family find a good match in her second cousin, Venu, also a medic. 'The elders decided, and we trusted their judgment,' she says. Inevitably, she falls in love with a Captain called Banesh and she wants to marry him. The outcome is ironic but it offers great insights.

Curtains is published by Unisun Publications, www.unisun4writers.com/ email info@unisun4writers.com

Witness launch for Cath Staincliffe

2011-03-23T15:08:00.001Z

If you're in Manchester on Thursday, 28 April, pop in to Waterstone's on Deansgate around 6.30pm for the launch of crime writer Cath Staincliffe's new novel, Witness.

Gothic Scheherazade from Joanne Harris

2011-03-18T11:39:00.001Z

Sleep, Pale Sister

Drugs, sex and -- only the rock 'n' roll is missing from Joanne Harris's novel, Sleep, Pale Sister (Black Swan). And it isn't the first time that great literature has been influenced by The Arabian Nights, for wasn't it Mary Shelley who used some of its elements for her own Gothic Frankenstein horror story?

Sleep, Pale Sister was one of the two novels written before the author hit the jackpot with Chocolat and since its debut in 1994, it's been revised and republished by demand. I think it's a great story in the Harris tradition, pacey, full of action, twists and dark surprises; it's about love and hate, revenge and treachery. Apart from the parallels to Scherherazade's escape from male domination with her storytelling techniques, I was minded of Wilkie Collins, Wilde, the Brontes, the pre-Raphaelites and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in turn. That's a lot to be reminded of. It's a dark novel with a tragic ending, splashed with visions of a netherworld and the murky side of life in the back streets of London, brothels and graveyards.

Dark Plot

Henry Paul Chester is a painter who has twice exhibited his work at the Royal Academy. But he's an odd bod with emotional scars from a childhood influenced by his minister father, whose home is steeped in religious paraphernalia and maternal neglect from his beautiful mother whom he rarely sees. On trying to gain her love, he succeeds only in gathering massive guilt, which mars his ability to show his true emotions. Svengali also comes to mind when he marries his main model, the 'stunner' who sits to him for his allegorical portraits reflecting young women.

Effie Shelbeck is only 10 when she first sits to Henry and, at 17 she becomes the 40-year-old artist's wife. (Interesting that John Ruskin married a teenage bride called Effie Gray.) Henry keeps her in check with regular doses of laudanum, which she promptly pours into the plants, a quite natural reaction for a spirited young woman you might say. Quietly, she makes a life of her own in another world, in the rather dubious company of Mose Harper, poet and philanderer and his friend brothel keeper Fanny Miller, whose little daughter Marta was murdered by 'a client'. Effie is a bit of a witch -- Harris seems to specialise in these -- and has out-of-body experiences where she identifies the murderer and takes over Marta's identity. Need I say more?

Manipulation

Both Henry and Mose are fundamentally flawed, there is no Mr D'Arcy for poor Effie and she must suffer her fate a la Juliet. The novel is full of Gothic Victorian allusions, so much so that I felt that I'd already read the section on Henry's disillusionment with married life somewhere before but couldn't put my finger on it. He seemed a familiar character somehow. Perhaps he is typical of Victorian men. He requires perfection and wants to put Effie on a pedastal to adore from a distance. She is his muse, he has moulded her but Effie is human and has needs of her own. Mose, on the other hand, is a cad and womaniser who wants Effie solely for lust, to destroy her and he has no morals. Effie is neither of the women they want her to be and both men are using one another -- Henry is after Mose's connections in the art world and Mose wants access to his wife. Fanny wants her daughter back and poor Effie just wants To Be.

'God made women weak and perverse and full of treachery', says Henry. And what about men? What are they full of?

If you enjoy Joanne's books, why not log onto her website at http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/

Found cat alert. Is this intruder yours?

2011-03-13T12:23:00.000Z

Grumpy Old Cat stages a sit-in

It's very tiring being a cat. Fortunately, my job involves a great deal of sleep, so I have no time any more to write blogs. But it enables Her to get on with the important things, like cleaning my litter tray, filling up my various food bowls and changing my water, regular trips to the vet and bank, as she makes out my vet's fees and food bills are exorbitant. I'm only a cat, for heaven's sake. How much can it cost to keep one lousy cat?

Of course, if she didn't fall for the spare cat's theatrical act of bursting open my private door and pleading poverty and starvation every day, she'd only have one cat to pay for. I've heard her groan when she picks him up. There's obviously something heavy inside (like a free range chicken) and he plays on her sympathy by occupying her filing tray, fooling her into believing he's doing something useful.

Cry for help

So if anyone out there misses their cat for great lengths of time and recognises this intruder, or Spawn of the Devil as she calls him, please come and get him. It's gone beyond a joke.

Spawn of the Devil pretending to be useful

Lady cat column

And while I'm on the subject of superfluous devil-cats, have you noticed that The Lady magazine, not content with a tedious dog's column, (the idea of a dog being able to write is so ridiculous) have launched a cat's column too. Whatever next? Gertie the Goldfish blogs swimming tips? Soon there will be no space left for humans, or huwomens either for that matter.

Yours cattily
Harry the Cat, aged 21 this year
Presents gratefully received (especially food parcels)

Next Big Author competition

2011-03-08T14:45:00.001Z

There's a novel inside everyone! It's an old cliche and I don't believe it. Novels aren't inside us; they are between covers on bookshelves. Our life experiences might contribute to a novel but we don't all have the gift of turning them into a good read.

How to Enter

If you want to find out if you have that gift, five major publishers have joined forces with organisers youwriteon.com and The Next Big Author event to award one critique each to the top five entrants.

All you have to do is write the opening chapter (5,000-7,000 words) of a novel, any genre and upload them onto the http://www.youwriteon.com/ site between 17 and 31 May. You will find directions on there on how to do this. In June, you have to exchange reviews by reviewing and rating other entrants' opening chapters on the site. Every time you review a chapter, your chapter will be passed on for review in return. The minimum is four reviews. The five highest rated chapters will be announced on 1 July.

More details from http://www.thenextbigauthor.com/ and www.youwriteon.com/ The competition is funded by the Arts Council. The five publishers involved are Random House, Bloomsbury, Orion, Little,Brown and Hodder & Stoughton. Good luck!

Joanne's Lollipop Shoes - great fun and welcome change!

2011-03-03T14:41:00.001Z

Keep starting books and abandoning them, so no point in blogging them. One was such a tale of disaster and misery, I couldn't bear to read further than Chapter 7. Another - authored by a major prizewinner - was the second book I'd given up by the same writer, whose style obviously doesn't appeal to me. Confusion over who was speaking, including the merging of some dialogue into the prose sentences with no speech marks, made it impossible to follow. Lots of brilliant research shone from the pages but out of character dialogue and tone put an end to it by Chapter 5.

I needed to be cheered up, so I turned to Joanne Harris and entered a world of witches and finger spells, magic and chocolates, suspended my disbelief for a few days and had a great time. The Lollipop Shoes (Black Swan) is a 2008 edition that I found in the library - thought I would support my local before the council added it to its list of closures. Kids ran around screaming and shouting, so I didn't stay long, popped into Cafe Rouge for a quiet drink and a read but kids were running around screaming there too. What is going on out there? Shades of Lord of the Flies?

Witchcraft in the chocolaterie

I come from a chocoholic family, famous in the area for its chocolate shop. So another chocolaterie story, especially in Paris, had more appeal than misery and confusion. Chocolat heroine, Yanne Charbonneau (aka Vianne Rocher) takes over an old cafe in Montmartre and turns it into the chocolaterie, continuing to run it after the owner, Marie-Louise Poussin has died. Her 11-year-old daughter Annie (aka Anouk) is being bullied at school and 4-year-old Rosette can't speak and is learning to sign. Business isn't so good. They are all a little witchy.

The status quo is shaken when witch's daughter with a past, Zozie de l'Alba (not her real name) with the pink-streaked hair and red shoes gradually ingratiates herself with Annie and from there to Yanne. This is all calculated to wreak havoc for them under the guise of friendship. Yanne absorbs Zozie into their lives and into the shop, where she becomes indispensable. Zozie makes finger spells and changes people, some for the better, winning everyone's confidence. Annie, with Zozie's support makes some finger signs of her own, beats the bullies and the shop prospers.

Landlord, prosperous snob Thierry le Tresset wants to marry Yanne but the sudden re-appearance of Roux, Yanne's former lover from Chocolat in Lanquesnet throws her into such confusion that at first she doesn't notice what is going on under her nose with Zozie taking over her children. Thierry is viciously jealous of him and Roux has no idea he has fathered Rosette. The story is told from three different viewpoints - Yanne, Zozie and Annie - which gives it an added dimension.

This is a fairy tale for adults and fairy tales can be scary, even though they may have happy endings. Just the thought of rum truffles and three layer chocolate cake was enough to glue me to the page, together with the evocative descriptions of the Montmartre I once knew and traipsed around; the characters looking artistically pretentious in corners of cafes in the Place du Tertre brought it all back. I remember one who always dressed in a cloak and a pseud artist's hat like Aristide Bruant in Lautrec's painting and the stylish transvestites reeking of Chanel No 5 were easily mistaken for models until the sound of a baritone voice hit the air as they passed. I won't go on. The Lollipop Shoes was great fun, a welcome change and took my mind off other things.

Latest news

Joanne is just putting the finishing touches to her latest book, Runelight and this should be out around October this year. And Vianne Rocher might just be on her way back to Lanquesnet... Joanne is working on a screenplay adaptation of Lollipop Shoes to offer for production. She is a great champion of the continuation of libraries so how apt that I should borrow Lollipop Shoes from one. You can log on to her website at: http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/

Poetry news

2011-02-21T17:13:00.000Z

I don't often write about poetry but then I don't write poetry either. I like the war poems of Sassoon and Owen, I enjoy Eliot, Stevie Smith and Robert Frost but I'm not a connoisseur of the great and the good. I spent a few of my teenage years writing suicide poetry in the bedroom but then didn't we all? 'The tumbrils of my mind roll on...' and all that! I soon grew out of it when the Beatles kicked in. But kind people have passed on these snippets of poetic news, so I'm including them.

National Poetry Competition 2011

The winner of the 2010 National Poetry Competition will be made public in March and after that, the 2011 competition will be launched. The competition for the best single poem submitted was set up in 1978 and since then has given career boosts to such poets as the current Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy and T S Eliot prizewinner, Philip Gross. Helen Dunmore won with her poem, The Malarky in 2009. http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/ will give you more details and the prize is big.

National Poetry Day 2011

This year's theme for National Poetry Day 2011 is 'Games'. It will be held on Thursday 6 October. Live events and web-based activities have been a feature since 1994 and this year promises to be no exception. You can find out more about it from http://www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk/

Book A Poet

This brings me to an exciting venture recently launched by a team of writers and editors with a passion for poetry. www.bookapoet.co.uk/ They've opened an agency to take bookings for poetry readings and these range from festivals to workshops and residencies to readings. In fact, anyone who wishes to book a poet can find one here. Examples of poets' work are featured on the site together with a gallery, so you can see who they are.

And if you send me your poetry news, I might do a regular poetry blog.

Is Amy Chua, Tiger Mother perfectly right or horribly wrong?

2011-02-16T16:43:00.002Z

Yale Law School's John M Duff Professor of Law, Amy Chua has caused quite a stir on the parenting front with her new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin) and whatever else it achieves, it's destined to sell books, so her parents will be delighted she's succeeded at that.

Not read the book but...

I haven't read the book, nor do I intend to unless sent a review copy (large hint) but I've read the articles and seen the interviews, particularly this morning's with Vanessa on Channel 5 (whatever is that chap doing there?). I get the gist of it though and decided to throw in my two penn'orth because a third of my piano students are Chinese and boy have I noticed the difference in cultures between east and west? And that's just it. Why should we be so outraged by attitudes of other cultures because they aren't like ours? How arrogant are we to say another approach is 'wrong' and ours is 'right'? There is no right or wrong, just differences and some may work and some may not in both cultures.

UK piano students

Now for the empirical take. To generalise (which I know I shouldn't) some of my British parents are great lead swingers; they cancel lessons at the drop of a hat - amazing how many cars break down so often and how grandpas have a habit of re-dying (Tip 1: if you're going to tell a little white one, make sure you remember what it was.) Kids tend to be hawked round from football to dancing, from Brownies to swimming and on to guitar and/or piano lessons, not to ensure they excel at all these activities, because they don't, but (just my opinion this) it enables the parent(s) to drop into Tescos and leave them with the musical childminder for half an hour while they do the shopping. This seems to have come to an abrupt halt since I made it clear they were to be picked up at the end of the lesson and not 15 minutes later while I'm teaching someone else. 'She'll be here soon, she's just gone shopping', has lain dormant for a while.

What happens with these kids is that they are doing so much stuff that they have no time to practise any of it, so they are mediocre at all of them. I could weep over those who begin with a genuine talent, only to fade into oblivion on the keys as they spread their time between multifarious activities. Then there's the X boxes and social networking which ensure they don't go to bed (or to sleep) until the small hours and take up far too much of their childhood. And nobody seems to care; except me perhaps. I sit by them as they yawn and stretch, sneeze and cough ('oh, has he got a cold?'-surprised parent) after a late night sleepover and a heavy day at school. What chance does a struggling piano teacher have trying to motivate them? How can that be 'right' eh?

Chinese piano students

The Chinese parents, on the other hand, have strict ideas about what they expect from their children, discipline for a start (remember that if you were born before 1960?). 'How is that 'wrong'? In the last lot of exams, the two distinctions went to two Chinese girls and the rest got high merits (including a Chinese boy whose standard slipped because his parents were being too Western to notice).

I once had a pupil whose Chinese mother berated her at every slip of a key leaving the child a quivering wreck in floods of tears. Once I'd convinced the child that it was OK to make mistakes and told the mother that she was the cause of the child's problems and it couldn't continue, it stopped, we became great friends and the pupil achieved what her mother had wanted in the first place. I think it's about compromise. Practising is a problem for all children and most of my Chinese parents are willing to compromise, especially those born here or who are in mixed marriages, which provides a better balance. And they do seem to have an innate talent for playing the piano. I have an adult Chinese student who applies herself to practising diligently and is happily playing Clementi and Beethoven after only 12 months.

What now?

Amy Chua

My greatest test is about to come. During a recent trial lesson, I asked a young Chinese boy why he wanted to learn the piano? 'I don't,' he said. 'My father wants me to.' Pretty honest considering dad was sitting by his side at the time, looking thunderous. It isn't unknown for them to have had three or four piano tutors before they get here, probably nothing much wrong with any of them, but if a pupil doesn't want to learn, they're unlikely to pull it off with any of us. Maybe I'll turn out to be Little Miss Perfect.

PS: Harry the Cat

And now, I must go and kill that cat for he's been whining all day, despite four different bowls of food, none of which meet his expectations and he's standing on the stairs above my office, deaf as a post and shouting his head off.

Read Benioff's City of Thieves - great book!

2011-02-15T14:57:00.001Z

David Benioff's City of Thieves (Sceptre) gives a fascinating insight into the deprivations of war during the German invasion of Russia in 1941. Its darkness is only lightened by the humour and Benioff successfully mixes the two to present a well-researched version of his grandfather Lev's harrowing experiences in the coldest environment recorded; when ordinary citizens were dying on the streets from cold and hunger and some had even turned to cannibalism.

Benioff is a Hollywood screenwriter and author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over. He lives in Los Angeles and New York City. After taping his grandfather's memoirs of his boyhood experiences during the Second World War when Leningrad was under nightly attack from Nazi bombers, Benioff wrote this exceptional novel. It's a novel of great breadth and originality, based on Lev's life when, aged 17, the Germans invaded Vyazina where his mother and sister had fled to safety. He never heard from them again. His father, a famous poet, had already been murdered by the Nazis and Lev is suddenly alone.

When he's arrested for looting a dead German paratrooper, he finds himself sharing a cell in the notorious Crosses prison with a student accused of deserting his regiment. Will they be executed? Not if they complete a task in one week for the deadly NKVD Colonel who wants a special wedding present for his beautiful daughter. But finding a dozen eggs among a starving populace isn't that easy and the two men bond as they experience cannibals selling ground human sausage links, dogs used as bombs, frozen soldiers, no food and little energy to propel them forwards.

Killing becomes a matter of survival during war but for the Nazis it's a sport and a call for bloodlust. Benioff has turned to Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt for his information about their anti-partisan actions. The pleasures and brutality of their murders are sickening but compelling reading. It's important to know about it and to be aware how easy it is for people to degenerate into a sub-human primitive state and one wonders how those who survived and returned to their homeland managed to live with themselves afterwards.

Beautifully crafted, totally believable, wonderful characters and truth. Read it.

For more about the book and author, use this link:
http://www.hodder.co.uk/authors/author.aspx?AuthorID=2248

Rose Tremain's Trespass a great read...

2011-02-14T11:54:00.000Z

Melodie Hartmann, aged 10 has moved from an exciting cosmopolitan lifestyle in Paris to a village in rural Cevennes where the most excitement so far has been a school outing and picnic in an area once famous for its thriving silk worm industry. Viewed as snobby and superior by her village peers, she is bullied and runs off, straight into more excitement than she's had in her young life.

Her experience opens up a can of worms, silk or otherwise but it certainly kicks off Rose Tremain's Trespass with a bang and pulled me into it. I read it in two sessions owing to its unputdownable qualities - superbly written, fast-paced and full of drama and conflict. It's always a joy to read plots that are new and original and this is one of them and the flavour of France is an extra bonus for me. The spattering of ellipses all over the place was the only irritating thing I could find to moan about.

The action switches from London, where Anthony Verey, famed antique dealer has his shop in Chelsea to his older sister Veronica, a garden designer who lives with her lover Kitty, a wannabe watercolourist in Les Glaniques, a village in the Gard. Poor Anthony's brown furniture has fallen out of fashion and he's minded to sell up and move nearer to Veronica, much to Kitty's disgust.

Brothers, sisters, love, hate and change are ongoing themes in this book. Contrasting with Veronica's fierce loyalty towards her younger brother, we find a whirlpool of emotions running through the hatred between Audrun Lunel and her older brother Aramon who delighted in telling her in their younger days how she was really the daughter of a village woman and her Nazi lover during the war. Now neighbours on land they have inherited in La Callune, a village in Cevennes, Aramon wants to sell up to foreigners and can't because of Audrun's unsightly home marring his view.

Their lives become entwined with the Vereys when Anthony decides to view Aramon's farm. The story flows like a Grecian tide, carrying fascinating and bitter flotsam in its wake. Things will never be the same again for any of the characters by the end of Trespass.

Last Train from Liguria

2011-02-04T17:52:00.000Z

Christine Dwyer Hickey's Last Train from Liguria covers the period between the wars leading up to World War II when Mussolini was instituting Hitler's recommendations for ridding Italian society of Jews and other foreigners who had contributed so much to their financial and cultural prosperity - something of an own goal for them both as it transpired. But we hear the rumbling sounds of war threatening to overthrow the status quo and Hitler holding rallies in Germany. This aspect was convincingly described but I found this an altogether curious novel with its irritating aspects outweighing its positive ones to the point of spoiling what could have been a very good read. If we're going to break the rules, we have to know why.

Absence of verbs

The author's descriptive ability has to be acknowledged. She produced some superb passages of high-quality prose, which were marred, for me at any rate, by 'sentences' containing no verbs. Many were short, sharp fragments, firing out like bullets from a gun, such as 'Time'. 'But'. 'One. Word.' Others were simply subordinate clauses, which made no sense without verbs or an attachment to sentences which they should have qualified, for example 'Since breaking up with Hugh, and even more again since leaving my job a fortnight ago.' How is that a sentence? And should it be the ending of the previous sentence or the beginning of the one that followed it?

Deliberate mistakes?

At first I imagined it to be the work of someone who was an inexperienced writer and whose publisher's editing needed an overhaul but this persistent style, which slowed down my reading, finally led me to the conclusion that it was simply a contrived style adopted by the author to show that she was prepared to break the rules, rather like Gertrude Stein viewed punctuation. I don't know which is true but the book was also full of literals, so perhaps Atlantic Books need to take more care with their editing and proofreading. In any event, it all spoilt my enjoyment of what could have been a good read and although reviews have been mixed, some of the ravers worry me. (Example: '...like someone who's just crossed the dessert.') Writing in present tense is another style I love to hate, although it was well sustained without dropping into other tenses, as so often happens. I find it mildly pretentious and too much like reading stage directions or having a camera following the action with a running commentary. But that's me and perhaps some people don't mind it.

Slow plot

The action in Bordighera, where our heroine, Bella has gone to look after a small boy belonging to a Jewish woman in the late 1930s is punctuated by fast forwards to 60 years later in London where she lies dying, tended by her 'granddaughter'. In this way, we learn more about what happened to her attempts to smuggle the child, Alex and his baby sister out of Italy to safety in England.

It's a slowly unfolding plot, long-winded and drawn out in parts, covering strands of information that don't appear to be particularly relevant to the actual plot at the time but that are, in fact, important to later events. It took quite a long time for our Bella to get to Italy and we had to follow her tedious journey and the family events at her London home that brought about her departure. This may have been deliberate as it leads up to and culminates in a faster paced crisis and climax. It left me with more questions than answers though, particularly, what happens to the baby when she grows up? And although the story begins with the reasons for Alex's piano teacher, Edward leaving Dublin and his journey to Italy in 1924, which gives it the dramatic start that we understand all good books need, giving the initial impression he was the protagonist, he then disappears from view until later in the story and never quite comes to life as a fully-rounded character.

Apart from that, the type was too small for me to read with ease.

Donate a book to Glowinski's Library in Poland

2011-01-25T12:29:00.001Z

Meet an extraordinary man. Tadeusz Glowinski, or Teddy to his friends, lives in Poland in a pretty little town called Olesnica. Behind him, on his apartment wall, you can see a colourful map of the world. It's there because there isn't enough space for it in his library. On it, you will see all the places from which kind people have donated books for The Foreign Language Social Library section of Glowinski's Library; and illustrations (digitals and pictures) for its Gallery of World's Illustrations. Not only illustrators and writers are keen to send Teddy their work but librarians, publishers and kind-hearted folk around the world have contributed too. He's always looking for donations to help boost the library's shelves (especially if they're signed or dedicated).

Glowinski's Library

Teddy (67) began his library in 2000. Since then donors from 83 countries have sent him books as a result of masses of emails that he whizzes around the world, persuading people in the book world to send him their books. He's a visionary and single-minded. And he's dedicated to books and to the growth of his amazing library, ironically at a time when our libraries are closing down or morphing into coffee shops with books on the side.

A graduate in speciality librarianship and information science from the University of Wroclaw, Teddy worked as a teacher for many years before embarking on his life's project. He works in his library as an unpaid volunteer and the books are lent free of charge.

I would like to encourage those of you with a big heart to listen to his call and send what you can. Log on to the Glowinski Library website at http://glowinski.olesnica.pl/ and if you'd like to contact Teddy, his email is teddy@box43.pl or teddy@olesnica.pl

Gluten-free bread is good! Check out your fingerprints!

2011-01-23T12:58:00.003Z

Artisan's gluten-free Quinoa bread

As a postscript to my gluten-free cookbook post, the Artisan bread arrived in a neatly-packed box and well within the use by date; sliced them and put them in the freezer ready for toasting. Can recommend the quinoa as it's soft and springy and the pea and alpine herb bread tastes like, er pea and alpine herbs.

Good customer relations

The thing I really appreciated about Artisan was that at the end of their phone sits a human being, ready to answer questions and chat about their products, so that I didn't have to waste valuable time pressing buttons, being cut off and running up a phone bill in line with my blood pressure; no recorded messages that brought me round to the place I first started, or that produced a human robot who read to me from a script. Big business hasn't got around to listening to public opinion yet and instead of dispensing with these ridiculous, time-wasting technologies, they seem to be on the increase. So, top marks to Artisan and firms like them who've understood that keeping the customers happy is the key to keeping customers.

And another thing...most firms who send goods via snail mail don't give them another thought once they've taken the money and sent them off. Artisan ask where to deliver the goods if you're out when they arrive and they're plastered with labels warning posties of the perishable goods inside that need to be handled with care and delivered fast. I realise this is beginning to sound like an advert for Artisan Bread Organic (ABO) but I think with today's attitudes in the marketplace, any company that shows care and respect for their customers deserves a public acknowledgment.

ABO's Real Bread award

Fingerprint clue to gluten intolerance

Ingrid Eissfeldt, director of ABO says: 'We care about what happens in your body after you have eaten our bread - we don't stop at "mouthfeel"'. Their products have been influenced by the work of naturopathic physician Dr Peter D'Adamo, noted for his Blood Type Diet. So their breads are labelled with the different blood types and genotype compatability. 'Did you know that you can tell the digestive power of your guts by looking at your fingers?' asks Ingrid. She tells me that if I can see my fingerprints I'm OK. I can't, of course. They're covered by little lines going this way and that. Gripped by fear, I learn more. 'If the lines are worn and hard to see you are probably gluten intolerant.' So that painful bowel biopsy was all for nothing...I rather suspected as much when I came to in the middle of it.

Gluten-free fresh flour

Artisan also sell fresh gluten free flour and Ingrid warns that it needs to be fresh as once it's milled it oxidises and tastes bitter. 'That's when industry reaches for potato flour and egg powder to mask the off flavours. Because they don't understand the water absorbing properties of gluten free grains, they stick the bread together with Xanthan gum.

'Ever made a pancake with rice flour? It's so crisp and delicious you'll never use wheat flour again,' she says. Their website contains vegan recipes using fresh flour. Who's for truffles on a quinoa Glutini? Log on to http://www.artisanbread-abo.com/ and check it out for yourselves. You can order by phone (01227 771 881) or online.

Love, lust and loss during World War II - The Night Watch

2011-01-21T17:16:00.000Z

Helen Giniver runs a dating agency round the back of London's Bond Street station. Viv Pearce is her colleague, who takes care of the admin. Helen lives in Streatham with Julia Standing, a well-known author. She is besotted with Julia and prone to irrational fits of jealousy over what looks like a relationship brewing with another woman -- not without reason if you follow the book's backward drifting timeline from 1947 to 1944 when Helen bumps into Julia for the first time, having heard about her from her then lover, Kay Langrish, Julia's ex.

Kay now lives in the attic flat of her neighbour and landlord Mr Leonard, a Christian Science healer in Lavendar Hill. She spends her time watching various disabled people on their way in and out of consultations with Mr Leonard or just wandering about the streets, looking mannish and just generally looking, though back in 1944 when she was co-habiting with Helen, she was an active and dashing member of the ambulance service, rescuing victims of the blitz or dealing with their remains.

Viv's guilty secret is Reggie, 36 and married. Viv is single and lives at home with her widowed father. Her younger brother, Duncan lives with Uncle Horace -- not his real uncle but none other than Mr Mundy, the prison warder who befriended him when he did a four-year stretch at Wormwood Scrubs for something we don't discover until the third section of the novel in 1941 in a poignantly described episode. Kay observes them as they visit Mr Leonard regularly for Uncle Horace's bad leg to be healed. Duncan works in a candle factory doing menial work and here it is that his old cellmate in the Scrubs, Robert Fraser, now a journalist, re-discovers him. Viv recognises Kay from a harrowing incident during the war, skilfully related, when Kay - a stranger to her - helped her out of a serious predicament in an act of human kindness that could have cost Kay her job.

Having set out her stall, Sarah Waters in The Night Watch (Virago, 2006), works backwards to unravel the stories that connect her main characters and explain how they got where they are in the first place. The more I read, the more I was sucked into their past lives, the better to understand how Viv came to have an affair with Reggie and the part Kay played in saving her life. Ironically, neither Viv nor her boss, Helen seem to be aware that their lives are linked by the various people they know. Duncan's sad and poignant past is revealed, uncovering aspects of life that were illegal or taboo in the 1940s and enabling us to compare the differences in attitudes and tolerance levels between those times and today.

The human condition is laid bare in those years of rationing and deprivation, where nightly enemy bombing raids were part of the normal way of life and fear was a constant bedfellow; where generosity of spirit compelled people to hold out the hand of friendship to friends and strangers alike. Waters' cast embraces a spread of 'characters' in the absolute sense of the word, superbly created and developed with their own distinctive traits and foibles.

This is a beautifully crafted piece of work, displaying a wealth of meticulous research and attention to detail that brings the story to life in a three-dimensional form. The bombing raids are so realistic that you can see and hear the planes droning overhead dropping their insidious load, imagine the searchlights scanning the night sky and smell the acrid smoke of the fires; you can imagine the shattering of people's lives and homes, the abject horror of the blitz and how it destroyed their world.

The Night Watch is a revealing historical document and story of love, lust, loss and change. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prize and you can read an extract on Sarah's website at http://www.sarahwaters.com/ An adaptation by Paula Milne will be shown on BBC-2 this Spring.

Gluten-free cookbooks for Coeliacs and wheat intolerants

2011-01-06T16:59:00.003Z

Anyone who has a wheat intolerance, like I do, will know the misery of coping with the symptoms and how socially debilitating it can be. And if you're intolerant to the wheat, the chances are you may have issues with other gluten grains like oats, barley and rye, so substituting wheat for rye bread, which I can only liken to eating the sole of my shoe or chomping my way out of a cardboard box, can be soul-destroying when you're in need of a comforting fix of hot, springy buttered toast.

Since food manufacturers began tampering with our food in the hopes of making it last longer and look more appetizing, consumers have begun voting with their digestive systems which have finally lost patience and it can only be consumer demand that accounts for the plethora of gluten-free food shelves that have appeared miraculously in the supermarkets (I suspect, rightly or wrongly, all made by the same source but packaged corporately); not to mention all the new food products that have emerged, often from sufferers themselves or with suffering relatives, after experiments with healthier ways of cooking (which reminds me, I'm still waiting for that box of gluten-free bread samples using non-gluten flours and no yeast (hurrah!) from the Artisan Bread Organic bakery (online bakery at http://www.artisanbread-abo.com/).

The problem for some of us, though, is that most of these mass-produced gluten-free foods on the shelves contain other substances, like sugar, citric acid or corn products which, if you have systemic candida or other gastric problems, are also likely to create digestive disturbances. The upside is that at least someone is making an effort and there are now all sorts of once-forbidden products that are free from intolerance ingredients on the market, like flour, stock cubes, pasta, chocolates and ice cream (http://www.boojabooja.com/)

Food for Friends gluten-free recipe book

So you can imagine my delight when Infinite Ideas, the Oxford publishers, sent me a copy of Food for Friends - Modern Vegetarian Cooking at Home, by Jane and Ramin Mostowfi with Kalil Resende. Included in the recipes are vegan and gluten-free options and they're taken from the menu at the restaurant of the same name that they run in Brighton. Ramin and Jane took it over in 2004, joined by Kalil six months later and they have since built up a good reputation for inventive vegetarian cooking using local ingredients and exotic flavours. 'One of the features of our book is that many recipes are dairy and/or gluten-free, and that simple adjustments are often suggested for adapting dishes to specific diets...' The book is a collection of their customers' favourites and for the ingredients you don't have to drive 60 miles to find the only supplier of obscure foodstuffs in a barn down a cobbled street.

Beginning with the Basics - stocks, sauces, dressings - salads and soups lead on to pastas, grains and pulses, fritters and burgers, tarts and stuffed veggies, ending with big pots and slow cooking and a section for special occasions, desserts and baking. So if you're gluten-free, you can take your pick from Spiced Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Coconut and Ginger Soup to Puy Lentil, Aubergine and Red Wine Moussaka and much more.

Phil Vickery's Gluten-Free Cooking recipes

TV chef Phil Vickery goes a step further in his book, Seriously Good! Gluten-Free Cooking. He became interested in gluten-free cooking when selling some of his Christmas puddings at a fayre and noticed how many people thought they couldn't buy them because they had Coeliac Disease. Phil already knew about it from his past cooking experience and was delighted to tell them that the puddings were gluten-free. He joined up with Coeliac UK to produce his cookery book and it begins with a lengthy explanation about Coeliac Disease, its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and suggestions for choosing and eating alternative foods.

Although many people on a gluten-free diet can't tolerate gluten, they are not necessarily coeliac, though recent research suggests that a large percentage of people diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) - an umbrella term used by medics for 'I don't know' - are in the process of becoming coeliac. It isn't something that happens overnight and it can take many years to develop. And it's worth remembering that tests and biopsies for Coeliac Disease can produce false negatives and positives. (And can be very painful - I remember waking up in the middle of a Coeliac bowel biopsy and being unable to convey how excruciatingly painful it was.)

Phil's recipes are not vegetarian but there is a special section of vegetarian recipes. I looked for the Christmas pudding recipe but ironically, it isn't there, so I'll have to make do with Millionaire's Shortbread with Bramley Apple Dip. But he does cover Breakfasts, Smoothies and Drinks, Snacks, Outdoors, Comfort, Salads, Parties, Baking and Desserts. Both these books are lavishly illustrated with beautiful colour plates and are in hardback format.

By coincidence, as I was writing this, a friend arrived home from a cruise on Cunard's recently-launched Queen Elizabeth liner to tell me that they provide a full gluten-free menu for anyone who requests it. I'm finding that more and more savvy restaurants are providing gluten-free alternatives on their menus, so there is hope for humanity yet.

Cooking Without...

And I can heartily recommend Barbara Cousins's cookery books, which cut out just about everything a sensitive stomach could wish for - Cooking Without, Vegetarian Cooking Without and Cooking Without Made Easy (Thorson's). I've been using them for years and they're great everyday cookbooks.

Sarah Waters and The Little Stranger

2011-01-04T20:56:00.000Z

Hilary Mantel, writing in The Guardian, called it 'A perverse hymn to decay...'

I didn't find Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger (Virago) frightening, unnerving or chilly as other critics did. In fact, for most of the time I was waiting for something sensational to happen. A dead child's name scratched on the walls, odd knockings, bangings and bell ringings didn't induce me to sleep with the light on (although a fox screaming outside my window as a I read, as experienced by Suzi Feay of the Literary Review, certainly would have made me reach for the Rescue Remedy).

My mother and aunt were ardent followers of things that went bump in the night and were constantly tripping off to eccentric old ladies in turbans to find out what the future had in store for them. When my mother died, she left behind a diary full of automatic writing that nobody could decipher. The Sister and I were used to pushing upturned glasses round a circle of letters with Yes and No at the top and bottom and asking daft questions that always ended up in riots of laughter, so we were no strangers to the 'supernatural'. This came to an abrupt halt one day in our mother's absence, when we 'borrowed' the forbidden equipment from the sideboard. By the time she arrived home The Sister and I were clutching one another in terror, scared stiff of the terrifying atmosphere we'd created in the room and a ghastly smell like bad cheese that permeated it. I said it was her feet; she swore it was mine and we became hysterical.

Author Sarah Waters

If I'd wanted to be scared it wasn't happening for a long time in The Little Stranger but I did enjoy reading the book and found it hard to put down, finishing it in two sittings despite its length. And I must admit that were I any of the characters in the novel, I would have been terrified out of my wits. The narrator, Dr Faraday gives us the background to the focus of the story - Hundreds Hall, a Georgian mansion in Warwickshire - which provides the perfect setting for a creepy Gothic novel. Faraday has visited the pile, as a boy. Now, as an adult in the 1940s, he strikes up a friendship with the remaining Ayres family, who are all basically damned, living eccentrically in decaying splendour in a forgotten era.

Faraday, now a qualified doctor spends a lot of time with the widowed mother, Mrs Ayres and her two grownup children, Roderick and Caroline. But his logical medical mind attributes the strange happenings there to psychological issues, so that if he and his colleagues had had their way the entire clan would have been locked up in mental homes. Readers are given the option of deciding whether it is paranormal activity and an entity is at work in the house to destroy the family or whether it's possible for a frustrated human being to subconsciously convey their angst into the house to attain the freedom they desperately desire by terrifying them all into insanity or worse. This is what is so fascinating about the author's extraordinary tale.

The drama and conflict at the climax is enthralling and skilfully handled and her research impeccable. She weaves her knowledge into the plot, mainly through dialogue so that it's given naturally and not in large chunks of indigestible exposition or as an academic lesson in how knowledgeable she is, like some writers do (though I have to say that Faraday certainly has his fair share of introspection).

The doctor is an unexciting man and some of his tale is repetitive and long-winded but Sarah Waters controls the pace this way and builds up her story slowly until events explode. She also manages to get inside the male mind and evoke the various moods and reactions of Dr Faraday when his expectations are damned in circumstances beyond his control. In parts, the style of his narrative reminds me of Daphne du Maurier. And she exposes the weaknesses of the British upper classes in their cloistered environment, a dying ember of a bygone era declining into a post-war world in which they are unable to adapt. Enlightening but sad.

The Little Stranger was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize in 2009 and the South Bank Show Literature Award. Film rights are under option. A firm devotee of this author, I'm off to read The Night Watch.

You can learn more about Sarah Waters's work on http://www.sarahwaters.com/

Scary short stories from top Russian writer

2010-12-29T16:26:00.001Z

'There once lived a woman who had a tiny little (sic) daughter named Droplet.' The baby never grew, which wasn't surprising, as the woman found her in the head of a cabbage.

'There once lived a woman who was so fat, she couldn't fit in a taxi, and when going into the subway she took up the whole width of the escalator.' She was really twin ballerinas who became victims of a magician.

Children's fairy tales? There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbour's Baby is a most unusual collection of urban folk tales, dark and creepy with extraordinary plots and here and there a hint of humour. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's stories are published under Penguin's Modern Classics list and she is said to be one of Russia's most acclaimed authors. She has written 15 collections of prose and her novel, The Time: Night was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize in 1992.

Her short story collection pulls you into forests, empty rooms in derelict buildings, hospitals, death, decay and other such dimensions, the stuff that nightmares, or scary paintings, are made of. If you need cheering up, they're not for you. They contain a strong scent of sadness, lost moments, missing children, neglect and distorted images. They trickle off at the end without satisfactory closure, open-ended so that readers can draw their own conclusions. They left me asking 'So what? What was all that about?' The trouble with an open end is that readers can feel cheated and unfulfilled.

What pulled me into them and eventually hooked me in the final section was the author's astonishing imagination, her flair for pacing and strong sense of place; but above all, her originality of plot and diversity of conflict. Like Alice's adventures, they contain one twist and turn after another. There are only so many stories to be told - seven it's said - and though they are re-told in many different ways, so often aspects and incidents seem undeniably familiar; here, we are presented with new and original ideas that aren't.

Themes cover loss, death, homelessness and poverty and loss of identity. They feature grotesques, bundles of clothing, rags, cloaks with hooded faces. Stories are told in a surreal world of unconsciousness, dreams or through near death experiences. As for fairy stories, we don't know what happens to Snow White in her coma but these stories unfold in that twilight state. It was almost a psycho-analytical experience of activity in the author's mind, like troubling dream sequences in need of interpretation.

It was therefore no surprise to learn from the translators' introduction that Petrushevskaya's writing had been banned in Russia. Her stories about Russian women were too dark and direct for Russian taste. Her plays were shut down. It was only with the breakdown of the Soviet Union that she was able to publish her work and become the national literary figure that she is today.

The stories are divided into four sections. To read the story Revenge from the first section: Songs of the Eastern Slavs, follow this link at Penguin Classics: http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780718192075,00.html

Campaigns for books and World Book Night give-away

2010-12-21T15:30:00.005Z

Listed on the Society of Authors' website are a number of campaigns on the lookout for supporters to uphold the rights of writers and the future of books; some are under threat from lack of funding and others from annhilation by new technology or overzealous political correctors.

To help prevent our libraries from cuts and closures:

Voices for the Library - http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/
The Library Campaign - http://www.librarycampaign.com/
Campaign for the Book - http://alangibbons.net/

If you're against vetting in schools and visa restrictions on visiting artists and academics, try the Manifesto Club - http://www.manifestoclub.com/

To join the campaign for all UK children to become readers, log on to the Just Read Campaign - http://www.justreadcampaign.co.uk/ and if you truly believe that e-books and readers are likely to sound the death knell for the printed book, join The Campaign for Real Books - http://www.campaignforrealbooks.org/

If you're a writer, you might want to sign the petition of the Libel Reform Campaign - http://www.libelreform.org/ or any of the following:

The National Campaign for the Arts (which represents all the arts) - http://www.artscampaign.org.uk/
Save the Arts, organised by the London branch of Turning Point Network - http://www.savethearts-uk.blogspot.com/

The Largest Book Give-away Ever

You have until 4 January 2011 to become a book giver for World Book Night (WBN), which will be inaugurated on Saturday, 5 March, just two days after World Book Day, the national reading campaign. A million books will be given away by 20,000 dedicated readers to the public in the UK and Ireland and the event will be broadcast by BBC2.

One of the 25 chosen titles

If you would like to participate, you will be expected to say in about 100 words why you want to give away 48 copies of your favourite book chosen from a selected list of 25 titles. Recipients may be reluctant readers or people who don't have easy access to books, bookshops and libraries. To enter, log onto http://www.worldbooknight.org/

Alan Yentob, Creative Director BBC and member of WBN editorial committee said: 'BBC2 will host World Book Night from its inception on December 2 through to the event itself on 5 March. Whether as a giver, recipient or viewer, we hope that BBC audiences will be inspired to get involved with this groundbreaking project.'

Author Margaret Atwood said: 'When Jamie Byng told me about World Book Night, I was amazed not only by its magnitude but by its simplicity. The love of writing, the love of reading - these are huge gifts. To be able to give someone else a book you treasure widens the gift circle. I was thrilled to be asked to support World Book Night, and doubly thrilled that The Blind Assassin was chosen to help launch it. Long may its voyage be!'

The campaign is supported by such high profile people as Colin Firth, Antony Gormley, Seamus Heaney, Damien Hirst, Nigella Lawson, JK Rowling and many others and is backed by The Booksellers Association, The Publishers Association, Independent Publishers Guild, The Reading Agency, libraries, charities and other organisations.

Write a film review for Christmas and win £100

2010-12-14T09:49:00.000Z

Fancy yourself as a film reviewer? Classical narrative structure works as well for movies as it does for novels but you'll be looking at image and action a little more closely. You only have until 24 December to come up with a film review of the greatest Christmas film never made.

Best for Film have launched a Christmas writing competition called Write Christmas to combat the Hollywood tat that turns up every year at this time. Invent the 'most ridiculous, potentially iconic Christmas film' that has never been made and you could win £100, publication on http://www.bestforfilm.com/ and an A1 poster of your movie by OTM Entertain, the team that designed posters for The Hurt Locker, In the Loop, Splice and The Losers.

Judges are Metro film editor, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh; actress, author, film critic for The Danny Baker Show, Emma Kennedy and parody film critic, author, blogger, Cleolinda Jones.

To enter, email your review before the deadline to info@bestforfilm.com with 'write Christmas' in the subject line. And you can read more about it on http://bestforfilm.com/community/write-christmas-competition Good luck!

Mabel Lucie Attwell's story

2010-12-02T15:41:00.000Z

Mabel Lucie Attwell (1879-1964)

Rummaging round a second-hand book sale, I found an old quarto size Lucie Attwell's Annual, gifted to Nancy Brindle by her aunt for Christmas 1934. So, if you're wondering what happened to that chunky children's tome, Nancy, wherever you are, I've got it. These children's books were published by Dean & Son, Ltd of 6 La Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, London EC4 and they were beautifully illustrated with colour plates mounted on the pages and glossy coloured prints of cherub-cheeked children, pixies and elves.

Attwell was a book illustrator in the early part of the 20th century, having studied at the Regent School of Art and Heatherley's School of Art but failed to complete her courses because she liked to have free rein over what she drew. The chubby-cheeked children with the chunky legs were modelled on her little daughter, Peggy Wickham who became an illustrator herself. Attwell also illustrated a Hodder & Stoughton edition of Peter Pan and Wendy by J M Barrie, among many that she drew for books, magazines, advertisements, postcards and greeting cards.

She was born in Mile End, London in 1879 and she rose to popularity during the 1930s and 40s. She married the artist Harold Earnshaw in 1908. They met at the St Martin's School of Art and both contributed to the ILN Group of magazines, such as Britannia & Eve. She moved to Cornwall to live with her son, Peter in 1945 and died there on 5 November 1964.

I remember these annuals well, if only for the large black typography on the lovely thick pages that I used to tear into pieces, screw up into balls and chew as a toddler, just to annoy The Sister, who thought I was mad.

The characters in them had names like Bertie Bunnie, Babs and Bunty (she seems to have favoured the 'B's). Bunty goes for a visit to London Town with her imaginary elves, the Boo Boos, smartening them up first with baths and new suits. Bunty has an argument at the station as the clerk doesn't know how many Boo Boos go to one ticket. Nothing changed there then...It contains lots of twee poems about going to jolly parties or gathering flowers gay and various activity pages for cutting out, like Billum B Boo who couldn't make up his mind whether to be a bobbie or a sailor. Readers are urged to help 'this queer Billy B Boo' by painting him a suit in blue. It all seems so innocent compared to what kids get up to these days.

But I doubt if the story, Betty's Black Brother would pass muster these days and rightly so. Betty, aged five receives a letter from Africa. Her parents live there apparently and they're on their way home with a baby brother for her. Betty loves her little black doll, Yao Yao best, so she's looking forward to a brother who looks just like him. When her parents arrive with the new bundle, Betty is very upset to find he is white. Mother gives her a paint box to calm her down. Seems she didn't want a little white brother...'He did look rather a pet although he was white...', but she thinks he would be 'prettier' if he were black. So she takes her paintbox and sets to work on him with the black paint. Mum, after the initial shock, understands how she feels but explains genteelly that when baby grows up, 'he would just hate to be different to other English boys.' She illustrates this by a bed of roses of various hues and compares them to children, saying they are all beautiful but every tree 'has its own special shade...' and that each country has 'its own special colour too,' white for England, black for Africa and brown for India. She explains that it wouldn't be right to 'rob another country's colour for our Baby...' My goodness, words fail me. I wasn't expecting to find such blinkered thinking among the pixies and elves. I'll stick to Pop and Mop, the twin Weemen who live on the borders of Goosey Glen. Heaven knows what they're going to get up to...

There's a Mabel Lucie Attwell club anyone can join on http://www.mabellucieattwellclub.com/

Working with schools when your child has ADHD

2010-12-01T14:52:00.003Z

Writer Camilla Chafer edits a great little education and parenting website at http://www.theschoolrun.com/ which is full of good advice, free worksheets, resources and competitions. Camilla and I are both authors of books published by Need2Know Books so when she asked to interview me for an article she was writing, to include in an ADHD pack, I readily agreed. The article highlights how parents and schools could work together to ensure ADHD children get the best from their education. The article is reproduced below by kind permission of The School Run and packs are available from their website by pressing the 'Subscribers' tab at the top.

ADHD: The Essential Guide
by Diane Paul (pub. Need2Know Books, 2008)

Working with schools when your child has ADHD

Many schools struggle to understand the complexities of ADHD which leaves parents feeling unsupported.

TheSchoolRun spoke to expert Diane Paul, author of ADHD – The Essential Guide for her advice on how to help parents work with their school to help their child.

Diane explained that ADHD is complex and where strategies might work for one child, they won’t for another. “ADHD isn’t the sort of thing that will go away, although symptoms can improve as they grow older. These children can cause huge disruption in a classroom and disturb teachers and other children; that is why, in extreme cases, drugs are used to calm them down.

These are all available strategies but there is no guarantee that they work for everyone, as there are so many variations of ADHD which can be combined with other issues. Teachers aren’t always sympathetic so there is no guarantee a parent can work with them or that the strategies mentioned will work. Some parents find moving to other areas to find sympathetic schools, or where LEAs who don’t have financial restraints for special needs, can help

For parents, who need support too, the best suggestion is to join a local support group. There they will find other parents of ADHD children, can network, compare notes, join in activities and learn how to cope.”

How should parents approach their school about concerns that their child has ADHD?

Most young children go through a stage of being boisterous and energetic and with classes of up to 30, teachers may not be aware that some of them may be showing signs of ADHD. Other children may stare out of the window and daydream a lot and, although it can be a symptom of ADD, there’s no reason for teachers to suppose they are any different from any other child. So parents need to impress upon teachers that, if they suspect or know their child has ADHD, it is because this negative behaviour is ongoing, consistent and repetitive, whereas the other children will mature and grow out of it.

About half of ADHD children may also have specific learning difficulties, like dyslexia, dyspraxia coupled with other conditions like Asperger’s Syndrome, anxiety or depression and these need to be addressed separately. It’s important to talk to the teacher, head teacher or SENCO about it, so that teachers can keep an eye on the child and work out a strategy for helping them. ADHD children are likely to display the same types of behaviour at home, at school and in social settings.

Parents need to work with the school, wherever possible but neither parents nor teachers are qualified to diagnose ADHD. That needs to be done by a team of medical professionals.

What can parents do to ensure schools support their ADHD child?

Some schools, teachers and doctors don’t always recognise ADHD and put the behaviours down to the ‘terrible twos’ or poor parenting. ADHD is a universally recognised condition and diagnostic guidelines are available from the World Health Organisation.

Parents need to be assertive with authority figures like teachers and doctors and to find out as much as they can about ADHD so they can discuss it knowledgeably. Some internet sites contain useful information, like NHS Direct or ADHD support groups, whose information packs would be useful for schools and parents.

Any meetings or phone conversations with the school need to be minuted as it’s important to keep records of what is said and copies of all correspondence and keep a diary to record incidents, meetings and action taken. Schools have to recognise the situation and the SENCO can make a referral for a statutory assessment. They will visit parents and submit forms to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and the teacher will form part of the diagnostic team.

What can schools do to support ADHD children?

Medical and behavioural treatments work alongside support at school and home. Drugs work in the short-term but are only prescribed in extreme cases. This may mean taking them at school as they help to calm down the child; so teachers need to be aware that they have to take them, though many are on slow release tablets these days.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommend behavioural interventions at school among other strategies and it’s useful for schools to be familiar with their guidelines.

Educational psychologists should deal with any behavioural issues or educational difficulties like reading, writing, spelling, language disorders and specific learning difficulties. Behavioural therapists can show teachers how to plan activities and give praise when the child succeeds. Teachers should be aware of the many strategies to help control poor behaviour.

What sort of help is accessible by schools to support ADHD children?

Schools are legally obliged to identify pupils with educational or behavioural difficulties and can make a referral to CAMHS for special needs assessment. They will give their opinions, answer questionnaires and comment on your child’s behaviour.

If the school disagrees that there should be a referral for assessment to obtain a Statement of SEN for special support, you can apply for one yourself by contacting your local LEA’s SEN section. Authorities vary and many teachers lack training to deal with ADHD and don’t employ appropriate strategies, or financial constraints could hold them back.

The school’s SENCO should help if your child isn’t progressing or developing skills, if they display poor behaviour, find it hard to communicate with friends and teachers or have speech or language issues.

Are there strategies parents can use to ensure their child keeps on top of homework?

Teachers could give them homework task charts to ensure that they’re organised and they know what they need to do.
Ask your child to say out loud what they need to do, then let them repeat it silently to themselves.
Being organised is important, so they need clear rules.
If punishments are used, they need to be given right away.
When tackling big tasks, do them a bit at a time so they won’t be too daunting.

How far does criticism affect ADHD children and their education?

It’s hard to say. Every ADHD child is different and has different degrees of the condition with a variety of co-morbid symptoms.

They can have poor self esteem generally and need building up, not putting down but this is true for everyone.

Do teachers need to consider the language they use when talking to an ADHD child and whether it is positive or negative?

Positive feedback for ADHD children, who tend to suffer from low self-esteem, is essential. Punishment is less effective. Teachers could make them monitors or give them special tasks so that other pupils will view them positively too.

They could be encouraged to approach the board and write words on it.

How can teachers and parents help their child get organised and not become distracted in class?

ADD children who gaze out of the window should be placed away from them and nearer to the teacher at the front of the class.
Ensure classroom rules are clear and easy to understand.
Directions should be specific.
A checklist for each subject is useful.
Vary activities so that the child doesn’t get bored doing the same thing for too long; alternate sitting down and physical activities.
They will respond better to specific tasks with goals and rewards.
Try to use books with large fonts but illustrations need to be tied up to the content on the page so they relate to them.
Pages shouldn’t contain too many activities.

What are your top tips for ensuring ADHD children get a good experience from school?

Be lavish with praise and ensure others can hear when you mention their achievements.
Keep calm so you don’t reflect any negative reactions to the child.
Make eye contact when addressing them.
Give instructions in one sentence.
Structure projects so they use lists and charts.

A useful book for parents is 1-2-3 Magic to help control poor behaviour, encouraging good behaviour and strengthening relationships. There is a teachers’ version called 1-2-3 Magic for Teachers. The latter explains effective classroom disciplines and means of productive communication with parents.

http://www.theschoolrun.com/

Judges for Man Booker 2011 - win signed 2010 shortlisted books

2010-11-25T15:55:00.001Z

Judges for the 2011 Man Booker Prize have just been announced: Matthew d'Ancona, writer and journalist; Susan Hill, author; Chris Mullin, author and politican and Gaby Wood, Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph. Former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington takes the Chair.

Literary Director of the Prizes, Ion Trewin said: 'Every year we look for a different mix of judges and I'm particularly delighted by the breadth and range of interests of the 2011 team.'

Dame Stella Rimington commented how much she looked forward to chairing the distinguished panel. 'I am sure we will have many stimulating debates and will come up with a worthy winner of next year's prize.'

Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Prize with The Finkler Question (published by Bloomsbury) and the 2011 longlist will be announced in July. The longlist, or 'Booker Dozen' as it's known, comprises 12 or 13 titles out of which the shortlist of six books will be announced in September. The winner will be announced on the BBC from London's Guildhall at the awards ceremony on 18 October 2011.

Win a set of signed copies on the 2010 Man Booker Prize shortlist

And now's your chance to win a full signed set of the Man Booker Prize 2010 shortlist:

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue, Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)

Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy, The Long Song (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)

Tom McCarthy, C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

All you have to do is log on to www.themanbookerprize.com/news/vote and enter. Good luck!

Writing for the love of writing, says Case Histories author, Kate Atkinson

2010-11-24T17:41:00.000Z

Author Kate Atkinson

The New York Times wrote of author Kate Atkinson that she begins her story, grabs the reader and doesn't let go. I loved her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1995 and also enjoyed Human Croquet but didn't get round to reading any more of her work until I laid my hands on Case Histories and When Will There Be Good News? Both books feature private eye Jackson Brodie in detective stories. The New York Times is exactly right for I did find them beautifully written and impossible to put down, even though the bulging cast lists had me so confused that I resorted to writing down names and brief notes about the characters to avoid having to flip back and forth to remind myself who they were and who was married to whom. But hey, that's what age does to you when you reach, er...

The plots of both stories are intricately worked out and it was probably their complexity that hooked me and compelled me to read on. Atkinson weaves her stories around chunks of exposition so that the plots unfold as you plunge into each character's back story as they appear; it's something I advise my students not to do, probably because they can't pull it off as effectively as she can and once the plot has frozen, I tend to forget what was going on before that. Sometimes I find it irritating when the narrator throws out anecdotes and memories about someone's relative or friend or some minor scene that has no bearing on the story. It's rather like a flash of lightning with jagged points firing out in all directions in rapid succession so you can't stop looking. But the stories come out of the characters and fully-rounded three-dimensional people they are.

It's all about love and loss. In Case Histories the four sisters were beautifully drawn and to say anything about them would be to give away too much; Sylvia, the leader is the ugly duckling who hears the voice of God and Joan of Arc and has fainting fits; attention-seeking Julia, the outrageous flirt seems to have bagged Brodie and discarded him for another by the next book, Amelia, more bookish has a crush on him and poor Olivia, their mother's favourite, at the age of three, is murdered.

Theo is morbidly obese and dotes on Laura, one of his two daughters who agrees to work in his law practice before university. She is brutally murdered in his offices by a knife-wielding maniac and Theo spends the rest of his life trying to find the murderer before turning the job over to Jackson.

Michelle, a housewife lives in a country cottage with her baby and husband and is secretly studying. In a moment of madness when interrupted, she murders him with an axe.

Jackson, meanwhile, has been hired to follow Nicola, whose husband thinks she's cheating on him and here and there we follow Jackson's own turbulent private life so we don't regard him as an automaton and are aware that he's a real person with emotional problems of his own.

So you can see how complex his task is going to be with a dramatis personae that long and yours too if you haven't already read it. I'm still halfway through the second book but am finding it even more difficult to follow than this one and haven't made a note of anything, having developed right arm rotator cuff impairment from hunkering over the keyboard for too long without a break, hence my absence from the blog for a while.

At The Guardian Hay Festival in 2009, Atkinson said that she would prefer to have enough money just to write books and not have to write for publication. A lot of my past students say they want to write so they can go into bookshops and see the spines of their books lined up on the shelves showing their names, or because they have boring jobs in IT and think the life of a writer would be more exciting, or they want to be the next JK Rowling, or they want to be rich and famous. How refreshing to hear an author actually saying that they write for the love of writing, which is the reason most of us do this; anything else is a bonus.

Case Histories will be televised as a six-part BBC1 series adapted from the book itself, One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? Case Histories won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster. Atkinson's latest Jackson Brodie novel, Started Early - Took My Dog is now on sale. I've a feeling I need to catch up. Her website, http://www.kateatkinson.co.uk/ has lots of resources and help for reading groups.

York Festival of Writing open for bookings

2010-11-14T16:32:00.014Z

Just back from an exhausting day at the Open College of the Arts headquarters in Barnsley (Yorkshire) observing the stalwart tutors who assess students' assignments for their grades. Up at 5am to catch an early train to Sheffield and a helpful tip to change trains instead at Meadowhall, as the connection left from the same platform. It didn't, of course but we won't go into that and suffice it to say that I missed the same connection on the way back. Consequently, the blog has been neglected for a few days while I've caught up with other things, like sleeping or detaching Black Bertha, the spare cat from Harry the Cat's nose at regular intervals when he catches her with his stash of tuna.

So this seemed like a good time to invite my first guest blogger to contribute to BforB. Harry Bingham writes about the Festival of Writing at York which he initiated a couple of years ago and describes how it all began and where it's going. Next year's event will soon be upon us, from 25-27 March 2011 at York University and bookings are now being taken. Phone 0845 459 9560 or email info@writersworkshop.co.uk You can also book via the website at http://www.festivalofwriting.com/

Harry Bingham is a best-selling author of novels and non-fiction and author of Getting Published. His co-organiser is Kate Allan, author, agent and books industry publicist.

Guest Blogger Harry Bingham

We writers are crazy. About two years ago, a friend of mine asked if I’d be interested in setting up a festival of writing. Like a literary festival, only this one would be exclusively for writers … and instead of filling the event with media-celebrities, we’d bring along agents and publishers and top-selling authors to pass on their knowledge and know-how.

Like an idiot, I said yes.

So we started to research venues, and realised that we needed a place which could offer overnight accommodation for several hundred people. And a restaurant to feed them. And lecture halls which could hold anywhere from 30 to 800 people. And all on a campus which was pretty, but modern, and compact, and disability-friendly, and well-run. There just aren’t all that many places in the UK which could fit that brief, but the University of York ticked all the right boxes. But did we realise that our booking would involve a large deposit? And that we’d be on the hook for all the rest of the (even larger) amount of money, whether or not we sold the first ticket? And did we want to go ahead and make the booking?

Like an idiot, I said yes.

And I’m so pleased I did. There were quite a few nerve-wracking moments during the planning phase (would anyone come? would anyone come?) but the event was an absolute smash hit. We had some brilliant, brilliant speakers (my personal favourites: Katie Fforde for her warmth and general loveliness. Roger Ellory for the inspiration. Simon Trewin for telling it straight.)

We also had some wonderful agents and book doctors, who gave tough, realistic but constructive feedback to all and sundry.

Better still, the delegates who came were just wonderful. So warm, so enthusiastic, so keen to learn. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a weekend with so many people and so much buzz. It was exhausting, but inspiring.

And this year, it’s the same again, only bigger and better … and without the vague terror that no one is going to turn up. We’re pretty sure that the 2011 event will be a sell-out, so we’re encouraging everyone who’s interested to book as soon as they can.

Patrick Jansen-Smith

This year again, we’ve got some fab people coming. The event I’m looking forward to most of all is Patrick Janson-Smith’s talk. (He’s the chap who made bestsellers out of Andy McNab, Joanna Trollope, Bill Bryson, Sophie Kinsella, and many many more). Also Philippa Pride, who is Stephen King’s British editor. Also, if I could, I’d want to go to the Emma Darwin and Debi Alper double-act on Friday afternoon: they’re doing a mini-course on voice. But alas I’m running my own mini-course on Getting Published, so that’s out.

Plus of course, the usual host of agents and publishers and book doctors, all there to help first-time writers get better.

Last year, our star pupil was Shelley Harris who ended the Festival with six agents trying to sign her up … and who got a very juicy two book deal from a major publisher not long afterwards. This year, who knows what’ll happen? I’m sure of only two things: the first is that the weekend will be wonderful. The second is that by Monday morning, I’ll be so tired I won’t get out of bed until teatime.

I hope to see you all there …

How to write a book in a month

2010-11-06T13:38:00.005Z

Stuck in The Garret this week trying to develop an idea for a new book with a musical flavour that is supposed to be funny but isn't (yet). Humour is the hardest genre to work in and is so subjective. Kate has a piano lesson and when she's finished struggling through a Rag that has terrified the life out of her ('I'll never play that!) she turns to me and waits...and waits. 'Well?' she says, wanting approbation. When I don't reply she says 'Great, I can go to work tomorrow and tell everyone I sent my piano tutor into a coma.'

During this hiatus, I am engrossed in trying to work out a plot to insert into the theme of the interior world of piano teaching and the interractions between students and tutors. I have loads of material. By Monday afternoon, I have received six piano cancellations for a variety of reasons and I'm certain some grandpas have died twice. Paul has taken a month off as he's taken on too many things (I could have told him that); Elizabeth is going off to South America and will return in January; Isabella takes two weeks off just before her first exam and I give up a free afternoon to take her mock exam and scrape off the rust.

Write a book a month (BAM)

Someone sends me a slim book by Cyn Mobley called BAM or Book a Month. I wish! I'm already struggling with requests from two publishers for non-fiction ideas and I'm not in the mood for writing about blood pressure knowing the research will push mine up higher than it already is. I like following instructions so I look at BAM and it's basically a breakdown of the sort of preparation I would do anyway and how I learnt to develop a script at uni (although in truth this only fell into place when I read an out of print American book on their reading list called Film Scriptwriting - A Practical Manual by Dwight V Swain, which explained everything I needed to know that wasn't happening in lectures). Most of those were taken up by the tutor moaning about his lack of writing commissions.

BAM splits up the development into deadlines, a bit like having a life coach dividing up your tasks to success.

Finding the story and creating the logline (precis)
Looking for conflict
Developing the three act structure
Fly-to points (plot points or turning points)
Chapters divided up into acts and scenes and
Rewrites

Why development first is a good idea

Some writers prefer to begin with a blank screen and invent a character out of whose development a plot emerges; it then takes them over, as do the characters and they allow themselves to be transported into another world, usually to get lost halfway through; or they have three endings and don't know which to choose. Some well-known authors write that way. If I were going on a journey, I would want to know my destination before I set out or I would probably find three possible turnings and not know which to go down. A lot of writers have unfinished manuscripts in their desk drawers from losing control to their characters and not knowing where they are heading but as Cyn Mobley has over 40 books in print, I'm with her. However, as far as the deadlines for each action go, with the best intentions I have far too much going on in my life to reach them. I've never missed a publisher's deadline yet and the fastest I wrote a book was in three months but setting a deadline for myself is another thing. I've never taken much notice of myself.

The Snowflake Process

A few years ago, I remember reading something called The 'Snowflake' Process for Designing Novels by software architect Randy Ingermanson. He believes that good fiction is designed before it's written. He also follows the Three Act Structure technique. One idea sparks off another and since then, I've noticed a plethora of 'writing by number books' coming onto the market, so choose with care. I can recommend these two, which I think were the forerunners.

Randy's article can be downloaded free from his writing site at http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ and BAM can be obtained through http://www.amazon.com/ or direct from Cyn Mobley http://www.cynmobley.com/ (don't be put off by the greyhounds; they're her passion).

And about humour, when I did my MA in scriptwriting, a fellow student was asked why she had left three blank spaces on every page of her script. 'Those are for the laughs,' she said. 'I'm going to fill them in later.' We had been told that for comedy, we needed to have three laughs to a page.

Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman

2010-10-30T13:33:00.001+01:00

Mr Rosenblum's List (Sceptre) is a first novel for Natasha Solomons. She promised her grandfather, Paul Shields OBE (nee Schwartzshield) on his 90th birthday that she would dedicate her first novel to him and the story takes its inspiration from her grandparents, who arrived in England from Berlin in 1936 virtually penniless. They were given a pamphlet entitled Useful Advice and Friendly Guidance for All Refugees. By 1970, he had received an OBE for services to British industry, having become a successful textile manufacturer. He had also become a successful Englishman. And this is the theme of Natasha's amusing and insightful book, for it contains a great deal of truth about acceptance, bigotry, snobbery and being an outsider.

Natasha lives in Dorset, where her grandparents enjoyed cottage life and, writing about what she knew provided her with the perfect backdrop for Jack Rosenblum's efforts to be accepted as a German Jewish immigrant into levels of middle English society that were firmly closed to him. 'He wanted to be a gentleman not a gent' and 'He could finish The Times crossword in under two hours'. Jack buys a Jaguar XK120. Meanwhile, wife Sadie refuses to obey Rule 108 on his list: to learn bridge and tennis, to have 'nice nails' and a purple rinse on her hair. Sadie would prefer to be in Israel and doesn't support his wild plans until she reaches a rather extreme epiphany.

Jack's successful East End carpet factory, tailored suits and welcome at smart restaurants mean nothing when he fails to achieve his final Rule: No 150. He is refused acceptance at every middle class golf club in the country (except when he applies under the guise of Professor Percy Jones, when he is welcomed with open arms; he approaches the same club secretary as himself and suddenly the club's list is full). 'Twas ever thus. Jack begins neglecting his prosperous business to follow his obsession of building the greatest golf course in the country in a Dorset village.

At this point, we suspend disbelief to follow Jack and Sadie to their country cottage where she enters a world of her own, baking traditional Jewish cakes for the villagers, who love the baking. But she continues to feel like an outsider and what lunatic builds their own golf course?...puh, puh, puh. Daughter Elizabeth keeps a safe distance at university, having changed her surname to Rose.

As we are pulled further down the rabbit hole, we find Jack surrounded by the sort of cast we might expect to find in a Vicar of Dibley episode or Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream's Rude Mechanicals; or then again, perhaps Jack has peopled himself with characters from the Thomas Hardy novels he's been studying as part of his entry into English culture. A woolly pig, a dastardly knight of the realm and a brew of special cider lead us further into Wonderland and we laugh and cry with each turn of Jack's misfortunes. It's best to read the rest for yourself for Jack and Sadie encounter a host of obstacles set in their way at every turn. It's full of intrigue and invention; irony and improbability but dig below the surface and under the molehills is lodged a bucketload of truth.

You can visit Natasha's website at http://www.natashasolomons.com/ She's been shortlisted for The Galaxy Book Awards New Writer of the Year Award and the novel is to be made into a film, so mazeltov Natasha. She's currently writing her second book, The Novel in the Viola.

Too many creative awards? The Orwell Prize opens for entries

2010-10-25T18:24:00.002+01:00

I love writing and being able to indulge what some people think of as a hobby. Getting paid for what I do is the cherry on the top of the tree, the apple in the toffee, the chocolate in the brownie or a night out with George Clooney, whatever crumbles your biscuit. That should be enough, it helps to pay the mortgage and keep the vet from the door but out there, beyond the garret lies a fortune in prize money to be had for producing 'the best' the writing world has to offer. They're a great ego booster for the winners and an even greater PR coup for any commercial organisation that chooses to sponsor them.

Unashamedly, I stood up and received two framed certificates from the British Medical Association (not at the same time) thinking my time had come and how proud my late parents would have been. I didn't sell any more books than I'd sold before and still nobody has ever heard of me, according to a family member who once met a journalist who said he didn't know me. I didn't know him either but he still managed to impress her mightily. The sister asked how much I'd won and when I said, 'a framed certificate' she mumbled something like, 'what's the point of that then?' and changed the subject. The fact that I'd won it alongside journalists Bryan Appleyard and the late John Diamond made no odds. She'd never heard of them anyway.

So why do we have to give prizes to writers, actors, singers and artists who a panel of judges decide have produced something far greater than their peers, rather like a beauty pageant where the beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, as Plato would have it, while the rest of us sit and giggle on the couch in front of the tele? (No prizes for that paragraph!) Do we have awards for the World's Greatest Plumber or Electrician of the Year? No we don't, so why do we have them for writers, actors, singers and artists? Answers on a framed certificate please. And here's the latest...

The 2011 Orwell Prize

The theme for the 2011 Orwell Prize is 'poverty', marking the 75th anniversary of Orwell's journey to Wigan Pier and there's £3,000 each for the best political journalist, author and blogger.

The Orwell Prize is Britain's most prestigious prize for political writing, Orwell's ambition being 'to make political writing into an art'. The prize came into being in 1994 thanks to the late Professor Sir Bernard Crick, so that well written political writing would be aimed at general readers, rather than academics.

Earlier this year Andrea Gillies won the 2010 Book Prize for Keeper, about living with Alzheimer's when she cared for her mother-in-law; Peter Hitchens won the Journalism Prize for his foreign reporting while working for The Mail on Sunday and soi-disant 'social worker' Winston Smith won the Blog Prize for Working with the Underclass. A special Lifetime Achievement Award went to documentary-maker Norma Percy. Log onto http://theorwellprize.co.uk/ for more details and how to enter. Good luck!

First Steps Out of Depression

2010-10-21T15:26:00.002+01:00

Scientists have been trying to discover why a large percentage of writers suffer from depression. It's just possible that spending too much time alone, not getting enough fresh air, exercise or sunlight and spending their days in a fantasy world are contributory factors. Among the well-known writers said to have suffered from depression:

Hans Christian Anderson - James M Barrie - Samuel Beckett - Robert Burns - Truman Capote -Patricia Cornwell - Charles Dickens - Theodore Dostoevski - TS Eliot - William Faulkner - F Scott Fitzgerald - Ernest Hemingway - Victor Hugo - Franz Kafka - John Keats - Edgar Allen Poe - Dylan Thomas - Leon Tolstoy - Tennessee Williams - Virginia Woolf and many more

Sue Atkinson has written several books including Building Self-Esteem and Climbing out of Depression. She is a mathematics education specialist and the wife of a CoE archdeacon with four grown up children. Her latest book, First Steps out of Depression (pub. Lion Hudson) draws on her own experience of dealing with and recovering from depression. In it, she offers advice and writes about her own depression to let readers know that they are not isolated.

It is estimated that 1 in 10 people suffer from depression, more women than men. 1 in 10 men are sufferers, compared to 1 in 4 women and 4 per cent of 5-16-year-olds in the UK. But that is the tip of the iceberg for not everyone consults their doctor. Most of us feel fed up and a bit down sometimes but that is not depression and it can only be imagined if it is experienced. Telling a depressed person to pull themselves together and snap out of it is a complete waste of time for that is just what they are unable to do. It isn't a simple matter of 'cheering up'.

Sue says 'depression can affect anyone - including those we would imagine must be happy and contented, such as doctors, celebrities, rich people. Some people can be more prone to depression than others. It is an illness that requires help to lift sufferers out of the darkness.' Depression is a result of a change in body chemistry, which is often helped by medication. It isn't something we volunteer to suffer from. 'There seems to be no single cause of depression but it can be a mixture of many different things from what has happened to us in the past to what we think about ourselves in the present.'

In her book, Sue explains the physical signs and the thoughts and feelings that can form part of being depressed. She advises what to do immediately if you are feeling suicidal and how to take the first step towards getting help from your doctor. The book contains 'Myth Busters' that help to dispel fears and misunderstandings about depression and chapters include:

information on staying in bed vs grabbing the moment;
hiding behind 'I'm' fine' vs acknowledging the truth;
drowning in worries vs developing strategies to reduce stress;
doing what others want vs making our own decisions;
blaming others vs taking responsibility for ourselves;
hanging onto resentment vs deciding to let go;
choosing despair vs choosing hope;
information for families of depression sufferers
a list of useful resources

Creative writing pupil resisted everything but temptation

2010-10-16T18:22:00.004+01:00

People often ask me why I gave up workshopping in schools. The switch from live workshopping to distance learning from the safety of a home office was like leaving a war zone and finding myself in Switzerland. The final indignity took place in an inner city secondary school. You know how when things begin badly, they get worse...sometimes God throws the book at us so that we can learn lessons, the main one from this being never to run a writing workshop in a school again.

I was given the wrong directions to begin with and arrived late. The teacher who had sent them gave me a lecture on always taking my A-Z with me to places I'd never been before (even when the directions could have landed me in Berlin presumably). I was taken to the staff room, where the head was addressing the teachers. Some of the inmates had smeared excrement over the walls in the boys' loo and the cleaner had been sick.

The first writing workshop took place in an atrium with the perfect humidity for cucumbers. Some off-stage machinery noises meant I had to shout. Shouting in the round isn't a useful thing to do as the kids behind me couldn't hear above the machinery and the babble of their own voices as they chatted among themselves and hurled paper darts at one another, generally making the little chaps from South Park look like The Waltons. Empty paper littered the floor and the teacher agreed that the absence of desks hadn't helped and that the location was totally inappropriate.

For the second session, we moved to a classroom. The children began running around and screaming. One jumped out of the window and ran off. A couple of teenage girls sat on the window ledge and chatted. When I said not to write the title yet, they wrote the title. It was impossible to raise any enthusiasm to the sea of blank faces whose concept of 'the next sentence' probably meant three months for TWOCing a car.

Most appeared to be semi literate. Workbooks contained uncorrected spelling mistakes, some of them made by the teachers. 'Loose' instead of 'lose' was common, as was 'its' in place of 'it's'. 'We don't correct them all as we don't want them to lose confidence,' I was told. Shouldn't that have been loose confidence?

But joy of joys when some of the girls completed their short stories. The beautiful heroine, sweetness and light to the end, reached for a sword and hacked off the head of the baddy, releasing a stream of blood across the room. As most of the writers had used the same gory plot, I asked what was going on. 'It's taken from the video games we play.' A poster in the corridor advertising National Reading Week showed the school's chosen theme: Horror.

But it wasn't all gloom and doom. In one class I found some promising work probably because the Head was the teacher in charge and they were all terrified of her. A little boy, who hated writing, worked with me one-to-one and produced a wonderful story about the thing he cared for most - football. We were all staggered and I would have hugged him had I not risked arrest.

I lasted until the end of the third session of the six I'd agreed to run, when it culminated in a mass exodus through the window and the disappearance of my wallet from my bag. It was obvious who'd done it - a special needs pupil who shouldn't have been in my class and wasn't doing any creative writing - but they couldn't find anywhere else to put him. It had taken them months to coerce him back into school after a long absence. They weren't going to jeopardise their chances of rehabilitating him just because my credit cards had got in the way of temptation. Suddenly it was my fault.

The teacher went to find the child and as I left the classroom, a small 12-year-old girl skipped up to me, all smiles. 'Would you like to buy some drugs miss? Cocaine, heroin, whatever you want?'

'Excuse me?'

A little boy intervened. 'She's only joking,' he said, looking alarmed and pulled her away from me. I would like to believe he was telling the truth.

I found the teacher in the staff room chatting to a colleague. Had she found the child, I interrupted? Not yet, she would go and look for him in a minute. When I mentioned the word 'police', she shot out of the room like a human cannonball. I was persuaded not to contact them and my wallet was returned intact with no explanation or apology. I was ushered out of the school rather more quickly than I'd gone in.

A supply teacher said the children were lazy and idle and lacked motivation but the teacher who had given me the dodgy directions said, 'they are wonderful when they get used to you. They always play up with strangers.' Well, that's all right then,' I thought, went home and had a nice cup of tea.

Mysterious past of the Sarajevo Haggadah

2010-10-14T15:30:00.001+01:00

The Sarajevo Haggadah is a medieval Jewish prayer book and in her novel, People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks's brilliant history of its origins and survival through the upheavals of Jewish persecution through the ages is not all mythology, for there is such a Haggadah and some of her story is based on fact. Like all authors who possess a creative imagination, she weaves her own story from what she learned about the book during her research. In effect, this novel covers several genres - history, religion, mystery and detective work - and having read books before that attempt mixed genres, she succeeds where others fail. Having a background as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal may have helped with her knowledge of the various countries where the action takes place but it certainly helped with her ability to research; no detail is left uncovered and we receive lessons in the minutiae of book conservation, the art of painting miniatures, wine analysis and much more. Most of it was fascinating and illuminating but I have to say that by the end of the book, the words 'too much information' came to mind and I wondered why the author felt the need to air quite so much erudition. It happens sometimes. Apart from that, I devoured the book's 368 pages as though I'd just come off a fast.

Some people have compared this book to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and I wasn't surprised to hear that. The thought had already flashed across my mind while the protagonist was flitting from one continent to another without stopping for a loo break or a hamburger and chips and I wondered who was paying her airline bills; this was what I disliked most about Brown's book and what smacked it in the credibility face. That apart, I found People of the Book beyond comparison in that it had far more literary style and a more realistic and original plot and it's written by a seasoned journalist and Pulitzer Prizewinner. The main characters were well developed and had their own lives stranded around the plot until its resolution but there was a cutoff point at which I felt it was time to end and it didn't.

The Haggadah* in question is rescued from the ruins of war-torn Sarajevo - ironically by a muslim (not for the first time) - having originally come to light there in 1894. Ozren Karaman, head of the National Museum library saves it under intense shelling and stores it in a bank vault. In 1996 rare book restorer Hanna Heath is asked to work on the ancient book, which belongs to the Museum. The book, with its lavishly painted miniatures, has survived for 600 years on its journey through wars and persecutions and times of peace where people of all faiths have lived together in harmony. Hannah becomes fascinated by its history - I would even say obsessed - and the clues she picks up from objects she finds trapped within its pages - salt crystals, a hair, wine stains, a butterfly wing - provide the basis of its story as we backtrack in time through its adventures to its origins. It's a fascinating jigsaw of people through the ages, linked by the theme of persecution and how people survive or perish in times of terror.

*What is a Haggadah? It's a prayer book and instruction book for young people used during the home service of Passover and it tells the story of the Exodus from Egypt, when the Jews fled from bondage. It includes songs and psalms recited to celebrate the Festival. It was introduced nearly 2,500 years ago to comply with words from the Old Testament Exodus, first published as a book in the 13th century and there have been many alterations made over the years with each new version.

People of the Book is published by Harper Perennial, 2008. Geraldine's website is at http://www.geraldinebrooks.com/ and on it she gives the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

Howard Jacobson wins the Man Booker Prize 2010

2010-10-13T12:46:00.017+01:00

Author Howard Jacobson has waited a long time to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and last night he pulled it off with his novel, The Finkler Question, published by Bloomsbury. Long-listed twice - in 2006 for Kalooki Nights and 2002 for Who's Sorry Now - this was the first time he'd been shortlisted and he won on a three to two vote.

Jacobson also takes home a £50,000 prize, quite apart from the prestige, which will result in a boost of sales and a lot of media interest. The novel's themes include love, loss, male friendship and what it means to be Jewish today.

Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, who chaired the judging panel said: 'The Finkler Question is a marvellous book, very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize.'

The judging panel included Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, a former dancer and now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House and a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

2010 Man Booker Winner Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson (58) was born in Manchester, studied at Cambridge University and taught literature at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. He has written 15 novels and had always wanted to win the Prize. The novel is sad, occasioned by the deaths of close friends and he describes it as 'a dark novel', though it also contains humour. Sir Andrew Motion has described it as 'funny but so nearly adjacent to tragedy...it's highly articulate, everything works in it very well.'

Author Hilary Mantell's novel, Wolf Hall was last year's Man Booker winner. Since then she has sold over half a million copies in the UK and rights in 37 countries.

Your favourite short story survey

2010-10-13T11:41:00.001+01:00

The organisers of National Short Story Week want us to tell them about our favourite short stories. So if you log on to http://tinyurl.com/32zg3o7 it will only take you a minute to fill in their survey. What do they want to know?

Your favourite short story writer
Favourite short story
Where you usually read short stories

Not sure about the last one. Does that imply people read short stories in places where they don't read novels or newspapers? (Does anyone still read newspapers?) Would I read novels in bed and short stories in the loo for instance? Or does it mean do I read short stories in magazines or short stories in books? Or am I being obtuse? Or a bit thick?*

Moving on swiftly, you can pass the link to friends and family and find out the results of the survey nearer to National Short Story Week, which takes place on 22-28 November.

Michael Arditti recommends James Joyce's The Dead, Joanne Harris, Ray Bradbury's Pedestrian and Alexander McCall Smith, Somerset Maugham's The Outstation. My own choices appear in the previous blog where details of the Week are given.

*Having just done the survey myself, they did explain away the ambiguity of the third question but I still don't get its significance. Log on to http://www.nationalshortstoryweek.org.uk/ for more about the Week and read the blog below entitled What's Your Favourite Short Story?

Manchester Lit Fest and Blog Awards

2010-10-11T14:41:00.021+01:00

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney

One award I won't be winning is this year's Manchester Blog Awards. If only I'd known...I could have nominated myself in the absence of anyone else wanting to do it. It's all part of the current Manchester Literature Festival, which kicked off on Thursday and continues at venues across the city until Monday 25 October. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen will be appearing while Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney will bring things to a close on the 25th.

Some of the interesting highlights include:

Jeanette Winterson at Manchester Cathedral on 21 October delivering the Manchester Sermon
Historical novelists and historians Sarah Dunant and Alison Weir
Bernard Cornwell talking about his latest novel, The Fort
Short story collection Mud: Stories of Sex and Love from Michele Roberts on 20 October at Waterstone's bookshop on Deansgate and Amanda Craig with Hearts and Minds;
Crime writers Val McDermid and Sophie Hannah discuss gender roles in fiction and other women's issues in crime fiction at The Whitworth Art Gallery on 22 October.

Crime writer, Val McDermid

Sixty events on the programme gives participants loads to choose from. A great innovation for Gaskell lovers offers a literary coach tour to the newly restored home of Cranford author Elizabeth Gaskell in the Manchester suburbs and on to The Gaskell Memorial Tower in nearby Knutsford.

Award-winning TV writer and producer, Paul Abbot, a Patron of the Festival, (now in its fifth year and originally a poetry festival), said: 'I am delighted to be a patron of such a ground-breaking festival that brings writers of international repute to the city. Since the festival began, it has not only nurtured emerging local talent, but has also provided these new writers with a valuable showcase for their work, which is so important in today's competitive market.'

Full information can be found at http://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/ or phone 0870428 0785.

Manchester Blog Awards logo

As for those blog awards, the shortlist has been decided and this year's event takes place at The Deaf Institute on Grosvenor Street on Wednesday, 20 October. You can read more about it at http://www.manchesterblogawards.com/

Open College of the Arts pilots mentored writing course

2010-10-06T13:29:00.023+01:00

OCA course leader Jane Rogers

I'm a little late mentioning that the Ilkley Literature Festival began last Friday but there's still plenty going on there until 17 October so it's not too late to download a programme from their website - http://www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk/ - or to ring the box office on 01943 816714 - it's easier to get through in the afternoons. A lot of events are sold out, as you can imagine, including the workshop on Character and Voice in the Short Story, on 9 October led by writer Jane Rogers but it isn't my tardiness that robbed you of a great experience, as it sold out immediately it went on the Festival website. Jane Rogers heads up the creative writing courses at the Open College of the Arts (OCA), based in Barnsley but you can drop into the Manor House for free at 1.30pm the same day to hear Jane talk and meet OCA director Gareth Dent and writer Livi Michael, who has recently written a children's course for the College. (Livi's workshop, Write An Historical Children's Story is also a sellout event.)

The Open College of the Arts is an educational charity set up in 1987 'to widen participation in arts education.' Courses include photography, fine art, writing and music and students can gain credits towards a degree, accredited by partner university, Bucks New University - http://www.bucks.ac.uk/ The creative writing courses include poetry, basic writing skills, lifewriting, fiction, and writing for children. The College was founded by Michael Young - Lord Young of Dartington - with the aim of offering distance learning high quality arts courses to the general public under the guidance of professional artists.

The courses are at three levels and students receive professional feedback on their assignments and access to student forums so they can discuss their work with other students and staff. Students enrol from all walks of life, the oldest to date being 92. Around 2,000 people enrol each year and OCA have enrolled over 50,000 worldwide since it began, mostly from the UK. Not all of them want a degree and many study to boost qualifications or just for leisure.

A recent OCA innovation is being piloted for people who don't want to follow a structured writing course but who do feel the need for a mentor to help them develop a work of their own. Forty three-year-old Akiel Chinelo is the first student to enroll on this scheme so that he can develop a book idea. Akiel is a performing storyteller and poet but when it comes to tackling a book, he feels the need for ongoing guidance and support. This is where I come into the picture for I'm the tutor piloting the project. I will be giving Akiel constructive criticism and feedback on various sections of his novel as he submits them and I'll be keeping a careful eye on its structure and development. This is a level three course and if it's successful, it will be open to anyone with a project they would like to develop under the watchful eye of a professional writer and tutor. You can see and hear Akiel talking about his work in the OCA video below.

Akiel Chinelo from Open College of the Arts on Vimeo.

To find out more about OCA courses, visit http://www.oca-uk.com/ or email enquiries@oca-uk.com or phone: 0800 731 2116 (0044(0)1226 730 495 from outside the UK).

What's your favourite short story? National Short Story Week

2010-10-05T15:42:00.002+01:00

The first National Short Story Week is nearly upon us. The idea is to focus attention on short story writers, publishers and events and promote literary events and publications nationally and locally. It's up to you what you do about it, so you can organise your own events. The brainchild of audio producer Ian Skillicorn, the aims of the Week have the support of an independent steering group composed of experts in writing, editing, publishing, teaching, producing, broadcasting and performing. Ian, the Week's director was the founder of Short Story Radio and he produces and broadcasts short stories and supports short story writers.

The short story has been a much-neglected form for a long time and I'm glad to see it's becoming popular again. Although there have always been multitudes of writers and would-be writers beavering away and sending their stories out to magazines, there are more writers than outlets for their stories, many of which wing their way back fairly quickly. Publishers of short story anthologies are thin on the ground too, so it's all very well encouraging people to get to work on them if there aren't enough outlets for them.

I expect the Week is as much about reading as writing, so what's your favourite short story? Let's have a vote on it. Mine was ever Oscar Wilde's The Story of Dorian Gray followed closely by Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Writer Katie Fforde, short story week patron

National Short Story Week takes place from Monday, 22 November until Sunday, 28 November and you can learn more about it and how you can get involved on http://www.nationalshortstoryweek.org.uk/ They have a list of magazines that publish short stories, which you can search for online.

Lessons in Living from a Feline Zen Master

2010-10-02T17:38:00.000+01:00

If you think my relationship with Harry the Cat is a little bizarre, it's boringly normal compared to Kat Tansey's Choosing To Be, where she explains how she discovered her cat was actually a Buddhist Zen Master. Through hearing and intuition, Kat communicates with her pet, a beautiful Maine Coon cat called Poohbear Degoonacoon. And in this day of new discoveries and spiritual awakenings, who's to say that she doesn't. Harry the Cat and I have jokey conversations but he always responds to my comments with grunty noises and I think if he had a voicebox he'd be able to express himself properly. He almost always does what I ask of him as though he understands everything I say and when I ask where the birds are his head goes back and he looks straight up into the sky; he makes my piano students laugh when he barges through his door shouting 'hello' at the top of his voice.

So maybe it's not as mad as it sounds. Eckhart Tolle, author of the best-selling Power of Now says, 'I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats.' Kat, an American writer, was felled by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1993 and found herself in the depths of a suicidal depression. She'd spent the previous 20 years following a high-pressure career in change management when she suffered burn out. How she regained her physical, emotional and spiritual health is described in her book and we follow her journey based on Poohbear's advice according to Buddhist teachings. He tells her to get a kitten and little Catzenbear joins the family. Observing cats in action or even sleeping is a lesson in itself. I learnt the art of perseverance from mine. Never give up, no matter how loud the 'no' becomes. Don't take the shouts personally. They always give in in the end and give you what you want just to get rid of you. But I digress.

Kat Tansey

Poohbear advises meditation and Kat learns how to practise Insight Meditation at a Buddhist meditation centre, which 'helps develop concentrated awareness and gain insight into the changing nature of the mind'. She learns to let her thoughts come and go and to observe them and reflect back on them after they've passed; how to focus on the still points on the body to become more grounded and get rid of the mind chatter. She begins to move forwards with her experiences, each step monitored by Poohbear, until she allows herself to unblock her frozen feelings and respond, first to joy, then to other emotions. 'My dog doesn't worry about the meaning of life. She may worry if she doesn't get breakfast but she doesn't sit around worrying about whether she will get fulfilled or liberated or enlightened,' says Charlotte Beck in Everyday Zen. Animals just are; they do what they do without analysing every movement. They live in the moment; they don't wallow in past hurts or disasters, nor do they worry about the 'whaf if?' of the future, like humans do. These are chains and living in the Now gives us freedom to appreciate our lives and the world around us. Kat Tansey learned to let go of her thoughts and gradually began to live a more peaceful, happy life. With each setback in her meditation, she became ready to take the next step and to see it as an opportunity. She freed herself from what the Buddhists term 'ordinary mind' - 'a mind hindered by clinging, anger, sleepiness, restlessness and doubt' - the Five Hindrances she conquers with the help of her feline Zen Master.

Julie Lines from Voice of the Animals

Jean Davies from Whiskers Pet Care

For anyone who would like to enjoy a better relationship with their pets, Jean Davies, who runs Whiskers Pet Care in Manchester, http://www.whiskers-petcare.co.uk/ is running 'playshops' in animal communication. She spends most of her time with animals as she looks after people's pets for them when they're away from home. '...I spend a great deal of my time communicating with animals,' she says. 'There are lots of ways that we do this, including verbally, through body language and intuitively. We all have the ability to communicate intuitively, albeit rather dormant in many people, but this is so easy to re-learn.' She co-facilitates the 'playshop' with Julie Lines of Voice of the Animals, http://voiceoftheanimals.org.uk/ on 27/28 November in Manchester.

Contact Jean Davies for more information at jean@whiskerspetcare.co.uk

Choosing To Be - Lessons in Living from a Feline Zen Master by Kat Tansey is published by Findhorn Press. Kat is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction books on topics that arrive in her life demanding her attention. She lives on the west coast of America. http://www.choosingtobe.com/

Catzenbear, Poohbear's muse

Check out your writing style

2010-09-28T08:47:00.001+01:00

Cory Doctorow

If I had £1 for every new writing student who tells me they want to be the next JK Rowling, I'd have finished the house renovations long ago and be basking under a Seychelles sun. The basis of creativity is originality and who would want to be the second anything? Then I fell on http://www.iwl.me/ and curiosity took over. I Write Like... tells you whose writing yours resembles and I just couldn't resist it could I? (Please God it's not JK Rowling, I thought.) I pasted in a few paragraphs of prose, pressed Analyse and hey presto, my writing most resembles the style of David Foster Wallace. Well...that isn't so bad; David Ullin, book editor of The Los Angeles Times dubbed him 'one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years' and his great 1996 novel, Infinite Jest was included in Time magazine's All-Time List of 100 Greatest Novels (1923-2006). (Info from Wikipedia, what would I do without it?) Sadly, the author came to a tragic end two years later so I had another go with a different couple of paragraphs and hey presto for the second time, my writing emerged in the style of Cory Doctorow. OK, I buy that, publishers please note.

Special Days and Writing

2010-09-25T15:33:00.001+01:00

We have special days for all sorts of things now, including Talk Like A Pirate Day (19 September), World Frog Day (20 March), Towel Day (25 May) and the one I heartily approve of - International Chocolate Day (13 September) so it's good to know that schools are devoting a special day to celebrate writing. Everybody Writes Day takes place this year on Thursday, 21 October when primary and secondary schools leave off the curriculum to indulge in writing activities of one sort or another. Everyone has to participate, not just the pupils and staff but site manager, catering staff and parent volunteers too. This is a Booktrust project (Booktrust, for those who don't know, is an independent national charity based in London for the promotion of reading for pleasure) in partnership with The National Literacy Trust (also a London-based indy charity that changes lives through literacy). http://www.booktrust.org.uk/ and http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/

Planning your own Everybody Writes Day

You can begin planning your own day by logging onto the site at http://www.everybodywrites.org.uk/ and downloading some PDFs of guides for both primary and secondary schools or ask for hard copies. You can also download the logo and find some advice on publicising your Day. If you want to know what schools have done in the past, watch a video clip of Macaulay Primary School's Everybody Writes Day (I tried to download it but you can't be good at everything) or check on activities in other schools suggested on the site. Your project could involve staging an alien spaceship crash landing in the playground to trigger a school newspaper project, a series of after-school workshops for parents and children to write a family history, or even working with a graphic designer and your local authority to make some leaflets promoting recycling to teenagers. Imagination is everything in the writing world and without that writers would have nothing to write about.

The University of Sheffield evaluated Everything Writes in 2009 to see what effect it had on pupils' attitudes to writing and on their standard of work. The report can be downloaded from www.everybodywrites.org.uk/download.php?file=/downloads/EW_final_evaluation_2009.pdf Their research found that the project had a positive impact on:

pupils, teachers and schools;
boys' attitudes to writing;
children who are reluctant writers and those at risk of underachieving.

Other literary days worth noting in the diary:

World Literary Day (8 January)
World Book Day (14 March)
International Children's Book Day (2 April)
International Special Librarian's Day (13 April)
International Creativity and Innovation Day (21 April)
World Copyright Day (23 April)
World Press Freedom Day (3 May) and
International Literacy Day (8 September)

Maybe someone will think about launching an International Blogging (or Stop Blogging) Day soon...or even a Month - ever heard of Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month? I'll stop now before it becomes obsessive.

Boots on the Ground by Dusk - tribute to Pat Tillman

2010-09-24T14:25:00.001+01:00

Boots on the Ground by Dusk is a poignant, impassioned tribute to former professional footballer, Pat Tillman from his mother, Mary Tillman who wrote it along with journalist Narda Zacchino. A relentless seeker of truth, Mary obsessively overturned every stone to see what would crawl out after her son's death in Afghanistan two years after he gave up the job he loved to join the US Army with his brother. Pat sadly lost his life in more than suspicious circumstances during an enemy ambush. She unearthed more questions than answers when she was told Pat had died by friendly fire. Did he fall or was he pushed? The Tillman story eventually made headlines in the USA when she uncovered what the White House and Pentagon were concealing. A film documentary about Pat's life and death by director Amir Bar-Lev is doing the rounds too.

It's a powerful read when you get to the nub but some of the earlier account is repetitive and it doesn't really get going with the investigation in earnest until three quarters of the way through. From then, the shocking revelations can't fail to have their effect. The earlier part was Mary's more personal tribute to her son, dipping in and out of anecdotal information about his childhood and how he progressed to footballer and into the army, some of it necessary to the development of the plot but it lost a bit of the bite by beginning at the beginning and not hooking me with a more immediate and exciting opening.

Learn more at http://www.bootsonthegroundbydusk.com/ The Pat Tillman Foundation has been set up to support people who have left the the army and are following other courses into new careers. Mary Tillman is donating all the profits to the Foundation and the publishers are giving a $1 donation for every Tillman book they sell. To buy the book, contact www.blurb.com/bookstall/detail/1500065

ADHD Awareness Week and where to find information

2010-09-20T12:13:00.000+01:00

A cute new idea for helping children understand where they're coming from has been launched in time for ADHD Awareness Week - that's this week, 19-25 September. It's all about raising awareness of this confusing condition and it's aimed at reaching children themselves. While parents and other adults find it hard enough to comprehend Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with all its co-morbid connections and the accusations flying around that they don't know how to bring up their children, ADHD children themselves must be even more in the dark about what's wrong with their 'norm'.

What's Up With Astra?

Medikidz explain ADHD

Now Medikidz, who publish a range of graphic novels to explain childhood illness imaginatively in comic form, have come up with a great ADHD comic book, beautifully produced in bright primary colours to explain ADHD to the kids that suffer from it. It's authored by Dr Kim Chilman-Blair and Marvel Comics expert, John Taddeo, who contributed to the drawings; and it's peer reviewed by Professor Peter D Hill. In it, Medikidz, a team of five super-heroes from planet Mediland are on a mission to explain clearly the medical background to ADHD; each of them is an expert on a different part of the body. I found it great fun and enjoyed reading it - it's a lot clearer than some of the ADHD websites I've come across so maybe adults should read it too. It explains how the brain works in the case of ADHD sufferers and outlines the main symptoms: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Where we parted company was the recommendation of drugs as the main antidote, followed by therapy and that side effects were mild. I wouldn't want my child to be pumped full of chemicals, certainly not in the long term, if other solutions were out there, not to mention the millions, yes the steadily risiing millions of £s these stimulants cost the NHS each year. I wondered if Medikidz was backed by a drugs company as we see their adverts so often on school wall charts and info packs under the guise of educational resources but it seems the series is put together by a medical team with a bright idea. However, in the UK, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines stress that medication should be used in extreme cases only and that side effects should be monitored regularly as some can be more severe than others. A good site to check out is http://www.handle.org/ based in the USA where alternative drug-free methods are used to help control ADHD symptoms with a high success rate. Dr Chilman-Blair said: 'There is a great amount of confusion about what ADHD is and why it occurs and while this information is often explained to parents, the children themselves are often overlooked.' Log on to http://www.medikidz.com/ to find out more and buy a copy of the book (or get it from http://www.amazon.co.uk/).

ADHD: The Essential Guide

by Diane Paul

While we're on the subject of ADHD information and it's ADHD Awareness Week, I might as well throw in a plug for my own book, launched at the end of 2008. This is a guide for parents and carers of ADHD children and it pulls together all the disparate info parents need in one place. This includes ADHD's definition, the signs and symptoms, causes, what parents should do, the drugs controversy, talking and alternative therapies, nutrition, support from schools and families and transition to adulthood as yes, it may get less of a nuisance but it doesn't necessarily go away. There's a big help list so you can find all the organisations to contact and a long list of recommended books and research material. It can be obtained from bookshops, amazon and the publisher at http://www.need2knowbooks.co.uk/

Seven Myths about ADHD Debunked

You can download a free version of the Seven Myths and full explanations from www.additudemag.com/resources/printables.html What are they? I'll give you a clue:

1: ADHD isn't a proper medical disorder
2: ADHD children are unfairly advantaged because they're given special considerations
3: ADHD children will outgrow their condition
4: ADHD is for boys only
5: ADHD is about bad parenting
6: ADHD children on medication can become drug addicts later
7: ADHD sufferers are just stupid or lazy and never make anything of their lives

The Children's Bookshow tour

2010-09-16T15:20:00.002+01:00

Children's Laureate Michael Rosen

My earlier children's post on reading has aroused more interest than any other, so you might like to know that The Children's Bookshow is going on tour beginning on 22 September at the Oxford Playhouse. This is an annual event designed to coincide with Children's Book Week and the idea is to introduce children to the top authors, illustrators, storytellers and poets to inspire them to foster a lasting love of books. The tour was launched in 2003 to celebrate books and authors featured in Simply the Best Books for Children, published by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and it has grown from there. During the next two months, it will visit 17 theatres and is expected to attract thousands of children. At each venue, an author will take the stage for an hour and enthrall children with their storytelling. At Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, for example, Children's Laureate Michael Rosen will be centre stage on Thursday 21 October at 10.30am. Schools can hold free workshops attended by an author or illustrator too, giving the pupils a chance to work on their own writing and receive a published book. Promoting books to children from an early age in this way is a great idea and let's hope future generations who've had this experience will help to ensure that book publishing and reading continue, given that the book world is experiencing so many threats of annihilation from new technology, lack of funding and other drawbacks.

Call 07789 853142 or email thechildrensbookshow@gmail.com for tickets for Michael Rosen's performance and the other venues across the country. You could claim a free school workshop with one of the authors. Visit Michael's website at http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/ to read more about his writing. The Children's Bookshow can be contacted at 9a Peploe Road, London NW6 6EB or phone Kate Tull 07740 256330 or Sian Hardy 07789 853142, email as above, website http://www.thechildrensbookshow.com/

Read and Write Fest in Sheffield

2010-09-09T15:27:00.010+01:00

A few weeks ago, I trained it to Sheffield and walked straight into a wonderland of water fountains as I left the station. I don't hear a lot about Sheffield, living in Manchester but I didn't imagine it would sweep me off my feet the moment I left the station. On my right gleamed a huge metal water wall which accompanied me all the way down to the road and put me in a good mood. Clever. I wished the boffins at Manchester's Piccadilly Station would come up with something as creative, inspiring, innovative and welcoming to visitors after a long train journey. I didn't see a great deal more of Sheffield as I was heading for a meeting opposite the station for creative writing tutors of the Open College of the Arts and remained there all day but I'm assured the city centre is just as original.

Off the Shelf

So I lift my hat (or would do if I could find one to fit my little head) once again to their annual writing and reading festival, Off the Shelf which happens this year from 9-30 October all over Sheffield. The activities they've put together are too numerous to go into in this small space but it's worth sending for a brochure to see what's on among the author visits, workshops, poetry, storytelling, talks, exhibitions, competitions and more...whew, I'm fair out of breath now. You can get one by emailing offtheshelf@sheffield.gov.uk or phone 0114 273 4400 or you can download one from the Off the Shelf website.

What's On?

Let's have a cherry pick..

Crime writer Val McDermid discusses her latest novel Trick of the Dark set in Oxford's colleges on 9 October at the Showroom Cinema;
Jenny Eclair is at the Pennine Theatre on 13 October with her new book, Chin Up Britain! based on her successful stage show Grumpy Old Women;
an interesting event at the Sheffield City Hall Ballroom on 27 October with Manchester Camerata, is themed around 'letters'. 'The Yiddishbukk by Osvaldo Golijov was written in 1992 based on remnants of verses quoted in a letter from Kafka to Milena. The music commemorates three children interned by the Nazis, the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and Leonard Bernstein. An extract from The Diary of Anne Frank will be included';
Alastair Campbell will be at The Octagon on 28 October reading from his political memoirs Prelude to Power, answering questions and explaining why, being a Yorkshireman, he supports Burnley FC;
You can attend a first rate Masterclass with poet John McAuliffe on 24 October;
Or attend Write Down Your Street Free Workshops working with professionals, creating your own story or poem saying what's good about where you live; free writing workshops go on until February all over the city ending with a showcase, open mic and exhibition of work;
Finally, as I've no more space, Sheffield Readers' Day 2010 is worth attending. It takes place in the Town Hall with special guest, Jack Sheffield and books offered by Bloomsbury, so this sounds like the big one. The authors will all be there: Howard Jacobson, just short listed for the 2010 Man Booker with The Finkler Question; Jane Rusbridge with her first novel, Devil's Music; Anne Zouroudi, a local writer with The Lady of Sorrows, Louise Levene, the Sunday Telegraph critic and Radio 4 presenter introducing her first novel, A Vision of Loveliness and Marika Cobbold, Swedish author with Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers, love, angst and divine intervention and we all need a bit of that.

You can follow the festival on Facebook - Off the Shelf Festival of Writing and Reading,

also on Twitter - otsfestival or checkout the website on http://www.offtheshelf.org.uk/

Puss in Books

2010-09-08T17:35:00.006+01:00

Superpuss Bootsy Adelman

Harry the Cat
'Oprah Schmopra'

Washington superpuss, Bootsy Adelman thinks she's a cat above the rest when it comes to celebrity status. For Bootsy has been featured in a book along with her person, PR supremo Marc Adelman; and her English cousin, Harry the Cat from Manchester (aged 20) is quietly gnashing his teeth - at least, the ones he has left. So what's all this about? When Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former US Democratic Senator John Edwards wrote her best-selling book, Saving Graces (Broadway Books 2006), she included Bootsy among the many stories she told about her experiences on the campaign trail with John, who was the VP nominee with John Kerry in 2004. Said Marc, who worked very closely with the couple from 2002-05, 'I used to bring Bootsy up to the Edwards' children all the time, so we were both mentioned in the book. It was a New York Times best seller and when Oprah had Elizabeth on the show, she told her that she'd read every word of it.' So Oprah knows about Bootsy too huh? Harry the Cat is now gnawing his left paw. Elizabeth's second book, Resilience (Broadway Books 2009) was also a best seller and she's become a high profile speaker with the media in her own right. Saving Graces describes her life growing up in a military family; her years as a mother, when she had a child every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s; the tragic death of her teenage son Wade in 1996; her support of her husbands' campaigns for Senate, the Presidency and Vice Presidency and her fight with breast cancer, which was diagnosed in 2004. What's significant is the value of support she received from the people around her in the community and the strength she drew from strangers. Think about that, Harry!

Blair versus Brown

2010-09-05T13:29:00.001+01:00

Predictably, given the media hype, Tony Blair's memoirs, A Journey are outstripping sales of some of the top fiction blockbusters written by authors like Dan Brown and JK Rowling, according to Waterstone's and it's already tops at Amazon.co.uk. Sales have apparently left Lord Mandelson's book, The Third Man standing. The profits from the book are being donated to the Royal British Legion for a new sports centre for injured troops. We won't go into that...but much of the gories have been extracted from the text by the media already, including Mr Blair's drinking habits and his tottering relationship with Gordon Brown, so as this looks like another political rubber-necking exercise for the curious, I'll give it a miss. What does interest me now that I've mentioned author Dan Brown, is The Daily Telegraph's article on Oxfam's most received and best selling books list where Brown's (not Gordon's) books are top of the most donated and he is their 10th best-selling author, reputed to be the highest paid author in the world (although the charity's best-seller is Ian Rankin). Sorry? I'll just check that. I'm aware the Da Vinci Code sold phenominally well at 81 million copies worldwide so when did quality of writing cease taking precedence over media hype? Some popular authors don't write that well, even with the help of editors but they are often great storytellers. (I have names.) Having read the controversial book, (Brown's, not Blair's) I hoped that creative writing students would avert their eyes and look for a more instructive example of how to structure a novel, create a convincing plot that you couldn't drive an amphibian truck through, believable characters who you could root for and prose worthy of the legacy left by Dickens and Austen. Why am I teaching people how to write?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer and Barrows

2010-09-01T13:16:00.000+01:00

The originator of this book, Mary Ann Shaffer, from West Virginia became fascinated with the island of Guernsey when in London in 1980. She flew there and, while stranded by a fog, she found a book to read called Jersey Under the Jack-Boot. Years later, she decided to write a book about Guernsey under the jack-boot and its repercussions on the islanders' lives immediately after the war. Sadly, Mary Ann died in 2008 but before she did and knowing the book had been sold worldwide, she asked her niece, Annie Barrows to help her finish it. It's a light-hearted little confection, written in letter form, something that I normally find hard to digest. However, my irritation at the flurry of letters back and forth between the protagonist, Juliet, her publisher and the disparate group of islanders, who reminded me of some of the cast of Last of the Summer Wine, influenced my judgment only for a short while. I was soon captivated by the group of oddball but charming characters who verge on the caricature, though they don't go quite over the edge and in some ways it reminded me of Wodehouse; the Sunday Telegraph likened it to Nancy Mitford. When writer Juliet gets a letter from Dawsey Adams in Guernsey after the war because he owns a book that once belonged to her, it opens up a can of letters from some of the other islanders, all members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and quite why they adopted this bizarre title is made clear in the book so I won't spoil it. From them, she learns about their lives under the German Occupation and a tragic love story begins to emerge. Once she goes over there, her life changes forever. Somehow the author manages to balance the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis with a light-hearted insight into the human condition. And from under the froth emerges the theme that there is good and bad in every group of people, whether nationality, race, religion or the residents of a small island. I keep falling upon this theme of how people behave in times of duress and novels about the second world war. It must be something in the air. You might be interested to know that Annie Barrows, whose background is in libraries, bookstores and publishing has authored the Ivy and Bean children's series and The Magic Half. Log onto http://www.anniebarrows.com/ if you would like to visit her. The book is published by Bloomsbury Publishing, who published the first book I ever wrote.

Penguin launch new Dhammapada translation by Dr Valerie Roebuck

2010-08-31T12:20:00.001+01:00

Penguin Classics are to launch one of the best-known and best-loved works of Buddhist literature - a new translation of The Dhammapada by Dr Valerie Roebuck on 14 September 2010 from 3-7pm at Cardiff University. Beginning with a Symposium at 3pm, Dr Roebuck will talk about 'Translating the Dhammapada: Problems and Pleasures'. Other speakers will be Dr Elizabeth Harris from Liverpool Hope University, Dr Mahinda Deegalle from Bath Spa University and Dr Naomi Appleton from Cardiff University. The book launch from 6-7pm is free and open to anyone who would like to attend. Contact Naomi Appleton on, AppletonN1@cf.ac.uk to reserve a place for either or both parts of the event. Although the official launch takes place on 14 September, the book is already on sale now.

The Dhammapada forms part of the oldest surviving body of Buddhist writings and is traditionally regarded as the authentic teaching of the Buddha, spoken by him in his lifetime, memorised and handed on by his followers after his death. A collection of simple verses gathered in themes such as 'awareness', 'fools' and 'old age', The Dhammapada is accessible, instructional and mind-clearing, with lessons in each verse to give ethical advice and to remind the listener of the transience of life. Valerie Roebuck has previously translated The Upanishads (Penguin India 2000; Penguin Classics 2003). She graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA(Hons) in Oriental Studies and a Ph.D for a thesis on South Indian Bronzes. She is a freelance scholar and lecturer, an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Manchester and an Associate Member of the Centre for the History of Religion in Asia at the University of Cardiff. She practises and teaches meditation in the Samatha tradition of Buddhism.

The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton

2010-08-26T12:08:00.000+01:00

Swotting up on DJs isn't everyone's cup of tea but you never know who logs onto your blogsite, so I like my blogs to be as eclectic as possible. I well remember (just about) Jimmy Savile (note the correct spelling) drawing lunchtime crowds at Manchester's Plaza Ballroom where he was manager in the 50s, if only to see the technicolour of his hair and watch his strange antics, never mind the records he played. This particular type of madness was a great draw for students and office workers who considered themselves to be normal but held Jimmy in great regard. I bet none of us had an inkling he would be Sir Jimmy one day. He was the first DJ to use twin turntables and a mike, which is what established him as number one but it wasn't just that; he had something extra that pulled in the crowds - stage presence, charisma and a sense of humour. I'm glad he's featured in Brewster and Broughton's book. In it, they interview 46 of the world's greatest DJs and apart from Savile, others include Grandmaster Flash, Frankie Knuckles, John Peel, Terry Farley and Tiesto. We discover how the first DJ came about, the development of different musical genres and the progress of the DJ from unsung pioneer to overheated superstar. Music covers Northern Soul to disco, rock'n'roll and techno. And as a social history, it gives an insight into the civil rights movement, changing fashions, sexual mores, politics and every facet of music culture from the 40s until today. The authors have written extensively on dance music, including Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, and the definitive DJing manual, How to DJ (Properly). They founded their website http://www.djhistory.com/ as an archive of dance music and if you're a dance music collector or a DJ you will probably have been there frequently. This is their fourth book and it is due for publication 30 August 2010. It can be obtained from http://www.djhistory.com/ The duo have a weekly podcast on http://tinyurl.com/chn2sa

Top Tips for Children's Reading

2010-08-23T13:18:00.000+01:00

Research carried out by distant learning organisation, Learndirect shows that more than 54 per cent of parents admit to brushing up on their English and maths to improve aspects of their lives, such as work and almost 32 per cent of parents want to brush up on their basic English and maths to support their children's learning and development, such as reading together. Now Learndirect have teamed up with top children's author, Peter Corey to help parents boost their children's reading skills and help families re-charge during the final week of the summer holidays - with tips for reading together as a family and top recommended reads. Two free online storybooks help prepare children starting or going back to school and these can be found on www.learndirect.co.uk/readtogether.

Peter's top 10 tips for making reading a great experience for kids of all ages

Read little and often - 10 to 15 minutes a day is fine. For younger children, use bedtime or bathtime if there's no time during the day;
Try to make reading fun, so don't pressure your child if they're tired or lose interest. Laugh at the funny stuff and enjoy rhyming words - this can be very rewarding;
Enjoy the story - talk about it and encourage your child to ask questions. You can then see how well they've understood what they've read;
Enjoy the pictures too. They can make words easier to understand and bring the story to life;
Be brave in your choice of reading. Search around, even if you think you've found you and your child's favourite author;
Borrow books from the library. They have lots of choice and can match the right person to the right book;
Long words can be broken down into smaller parts to make them easier. Some English spellings don't make sense but don't worry if you or your child stumble - it might be the word's fault;
Don't be afraid to judge a book by its cover and check what's written on the back. It should help you decide if you and your child will enjoy the book;
Kids enjoys repetition as it helps them understand stories, so don't worry if they want to read the same book again and again;
Always praise your child for trying hard to read and let them know it's OK to make mistakes. We all get words wrong. Practice makes perfect and solving reading problems together is part of what makes storytime fun.

Shakespeare and Company in Paris

2010-08-20T11:48:00.004+01:00

Just opposite the Notre Dame in Paris in the Latin Quarter lies a magnet for booklovers and the curious. For 37 rue de la Bucherie is where 96-year-old American, George Whitman opened his now famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company in August 1951. Since then, over 50,000 people are thought to have slept there - yes, beds have always been provided for those without a place to lay their heads - and such luminaries as Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Lawrence Durrell and Allen Ginsberg have stopped by for tea.

In the 60s and 70s when I lived and worked in Paris, Shakespeare's was one of my favourite haunts. Going in there was like entering one of Alice's adventures in Wonderland, dwarfed as I was by the masses of shelves and dusty old books tumbling in all directions. George was an interesting sort of character, with his pointy beard and quiet manner and he managed to convince us all that he was the illegitimate great-grandson of the poet, Walt Whitman. We were never sure whether to believe him or not but I liked to think it might be so. 'Would you like some peaches?' was usually his opening gambit. He would take a bowl of them out of a fridge that stood incongruously among the books and if you didn't like peaches, a glass of iced tea would do just as well. In those days, it was rumoured that the upper floor was full of mattresses for anyone who wanted to stay but I never ventured up there. A writer could pick up any amount of crazy conversations if they were short of dialogue and I remember well a young American wearing a huge backpack asking another similarly attired teenager, 'Are you heading for Katmandu?' The reply: 'Yeah, I'm heading for Katmandu.' It all seemed so cliched, until I actually found myself in Katmandu some years later, and understood what they were on about.

So who is George Whitman and where did Shakespeare and Company come from? The story goes that George was born in New Jersey but his parents moved to Salem, Massachusetts when he was a baby. His father, who was actually called Walter Whitman was indeed a writer but, as a physics professor, he wrote about science in the home and community, not poetry. After the Second World War, George studied French at the Sorbonne and acquired a collection of English books which he sold first in his hotel room and later from a barge. Eventually, he settled for the 17th century building that is now legendary, changing its name from Le Mistral to Shakespeare and Company in the 1960s after Sylvia Beach, the originator died. Sylvia Beach, an American living in Paris opened her English bookstore and library at 8 rue Dupuytren in 1919 and two years later moved it to the rue de l'Odeon where it attracted many famous writers and artists like Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, until France was occupied in 1941. Beach became famous for publishing Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 as it was banned in the UK and USA.

Nowadays, Shakespeare and Company is in the capable hands of George's 29-year-old daughter, Sylvia since George has retired and she has regenerated it by organising biennial festivals for writers. The fourth such event took place in June this year with 'Storytelling and Politics' and it drew hundreds of people to a white tent overlooking Notre Dame for three days to hear some notable literary speakers. Things are different now and I'm told the beds are interspersed among the bookshelves but they're still there, as is the library. Monday evening readings attract well-known authors and Sunday afternoons are for tea. Young volunteers, known as 'tumbleweeds' man the shop now, some criticised for their coolness to customers but for me, it was George Whitman who had the cachet and the graciousness that made Shakespeare and Company the legend that it became.

Shakespeare and Company is open every day from 10am until 11pm, except for Saturdays and Sundays when it opens at 11am. Metro: Cluny-La Sorbonne. (Tel: 00 33 (0) 1 43 25 40 93)

Kindle's new UK Store and e-books: will they replace print?

2010-08-19T11:49:00.001+01:00

If you're into e-books and e-readers, you might like to know that Amazon, the on-line bookseller has made over 400,000 books available in the UK from their new Kindle Store. This includes 84 best-selling titles, national newspapers, magazines and over 9,000 blogs. Let's hope that extends to mine. Some contemporary classics are exclusive to the Store, such as Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Amazon have already begun accepting pre-orders for the new Kindle itself. Among its features are a new electronic-ink screen, which Amazon claims has 50 per cent better contrast than any other e-reader, a new sleek design with 21 per cent smaller body than the previous model, although it still has the same 6 inch-size reading area and a 15 per cent lighter weight at 8.7 ounces (247 gms). The new Kindle with Wi-Fi costs £109 and with Free 3G wireless and Wi-Fi, £149. You can learn more about the UK Kindle Store at www.amazon.co.uk/kindlestore and full details of the new Kindle and Kindle Wi-Fi at www.amazon.co.uk/kindle3G and www.amazon.co.uk/kindleWi-Fi

Is this the end of printed books?

I don't know about you but personally, there is nothing like the feel and look of a paper book; it's a sensory experience not to be missed; not to mention the thrill of browsing round a bookshop or possessing the rows of books lining my bookshelves, lovely to see, great to hold, flick through and dip into. Some of them I will read again (and again), some come in handy for research, some I will lend to my most trusted friends as I know they will return them and some are signed by the authors. Hah! They can't do that with an e-reader. E-book readers have been slow to take off but they are doing well in America and now gaining popularity in the UK. For some, they will be another 'must-have', to leave around for visitors to see that they have the latest gadget, though little used; they will make good gifts and I would consider buying one to take on my holidays as reading is mostly what I do when I'm away, in the shade, in a quiet corner (typical!). I don't think traditional books will ever die out but if Kindles and their like help to encourage non-readers to begin reading books, newspapers and blogs, and as long as e-books are not viewed as a cheap alternative to print books, they will have their place in the market.

The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee

2010-08-15T16:03:00.002+01:00

I always buy books that have the word 'piano' in them and there seem to be lots of them around nowadays. However, this one had very little to do with pianos and pianists; the protagonist, Claire just happens to be a piano tutor in 1950s Hong Kong and having an illicit relationship with Will, the driver of her pupil's parents, the Chens. The pupil herself, Locket has her own story but that's just one of the many mysteries that the author unravelled while I was glued to her book. Will has been targeted by a flighty young Eurasian woman with a taste for the high life among Hong Kong's hedonistic set. Trudy Liang lives for the moment. We flit between the 40s and 50s gaining a fascinating insight into the class-ridden snobbery of expat life in the colony pre, during and post war. Some of these people have nowhere else to go and lived by their wits during the Japanese occupation. As both a historical and social document, it's worth reading. It pulled me into another world where I could imagine these people and the world they inhabited. Lee spent years researching the background to her story and pays extraordinary attention to detail. We see Will experience the cruel and foul conditions of the Japanese prison camp, while Trudy saves her skin (for a while) under the protection of the enemy. He could join her on the outside but his integrity gets the better of him. This is a story of love and betrayal. Will's experiences during the war have taken their toll on his ability to open his heart and his relationship with Claire is doomed from the start. It also shows us to what lengths some people will go to save their own skins at the expense of destroying the lives of innocent people and how it takes a war to make saints and sinners of us all.

Teach us to Sit Still by Tim Parks

2010-08-13T16:41:00.002+01:00

Since the 1980s, metaphysical counsellor Louise Hay has devoted her life to helping people heal their lives by getting rid of the negative attitudes that she believes can bring about physical illness. Her philosophy: 'We are each one hundred per cent responsible for all our experiences, our future. The point of power is in the present moment. When we really love ourselves, everything in our life works. We create every so called illness in our body. We must release the past and forgive everyone.' One of her books in particular, You Can Heal Your Life became an international best seller and it included advice and exercises that could be put into instant use. Forgiveness is cleansing. I've tried it and it works. Louise came to this conclusion when she was diagnosed with cancer, which she says disappeared after she had a thorough mental and physical cleansing, clearing herself of all resentment.

A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing

Best-selling author and translator (this is book number 21), Tim Parks wasn't a believer in alternative therapies or 'new age mumbo jumbo' and throughout his healing process, he maintained his sceptical stance. But he decided to write a book about his healing journey and how he discovered that body and mind are indeed linked. Once you get past the medical opinions about his prostate, which came to nothing and move on to his quest for an alternative solution for the relief of his chronic bladder pain, the read becomes more fascinating. It's also worth bearing in mind that when the medical profession give up on you, it is simply an indication that they have reached the limit of their knowledge and not that your condition is necessarily untreatable; there may possibly be someone somewhere else that can help you. Like many people who reach this stage, Tim turns to alternative therapies for help. In India, he consults an ayurvedic doctor who tells him about energy flow and blockage caused by 'mental tussle', but sesame oil enemas don't appeal. He becomes fascinated by internet postings of people with similar physical symptoms - so many different opinions and treatments. His health becomes an obsession but he's convinced by now that 'medicines are not the answer'. But sitting down all day at a desk could restrict blood flow to the contracted muscles and affect surrounding nerves in the pelvic floor and even affect muscles away from that area. And the antidote was relaxation and massage. How the author resolves his problem is for readers to discover but it begins with a book called A Headache in the Pelvis by David Wise and Rodney Anderson - breathing and meditation form the main part of his healing journey. Being an award-winning writer, it's no surprise that Parks expresses himself so well in print. His journey will be of interest to anyone with chronic pain. Interspersed with his own story, he studies the effects that illness has had on other writers, artists and well-known people. Published by Harvill Secker, London 2010.

Six-word Story Comp

2010-08-09T11:04:00.001+01:00

How would you like to win a week at an Arvon writing centre? Poet Karen McCarthy has the tough job of choosing a winner from the entries for the Arvon Foundation's story competition. And this year, the theme is one of those six-worders that crop up in the media every now and again.

Remember Hemingway's famous six-worder? 'For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.' Actually, I've never read one as good as that. If you think you can top it - send it to: competition@arvonfoundation.org or tweet to @arvonfoundation. The closing date for entries is 1 September 2010. View their website for information about courses: http://www.arvonfoundation.org/

The Kindest Thing by Cath Staincliffe

2010-08-06T17:55:00.001+01:00

Enjoy is perhaps not the most appropriate word to describe the story of a woman who is accused of assisting her sick husband to die but author Cath Staincliffe's words sucked me into them and held me firmly in their grasp from beginning to end and enjoy them I did. It left me feeling reflective. What is so fascinating about Cath's new novel is the change of style from her usual Sal Kilkenny mysteries and Blue Murder TV series starring Caroline Quentin to this more literary study of a topical subject that could face anyone. Deborah is persuaded, against her better judgment, to help husband Neil to end his life. Neil is dying of motor neurone disease and he wants to go out with dignity, feeling well; the irony of this is that he doesn't die a good death but I won't spoil the ending. The magnetism of Cath's writing has as much to do with her thorough research as it has to do with her syntax. For anyone who thinks 'there's a book in everyone', think again. Books are on shelves, between covers and it isn't a simple matter of dropping words onto a keyboard. Cath spent hours learning about legal and court procedures and gleaned much about everyday life in a woman's prison by going into one and talking to the prisoners. She recreates the 'warm, worn wood of the dock' realistically. Her research is meticulously woven into the fabric of her plot. I'm inclined to find flashbacks and time switches distracting but they are hardly noticeable here as they are so necessary to understanding the loving relationship that has built up since the couple met at university; it is done brick by brick until the wall is up and a loving family unit has been created; only to be tragically destroyed. We follow the effect of Deborah's actions on the lives of the couple's two children and get an insight into the workings of the mind of a woman in grief for the husband she loves while she fights to defend herself against his murder - or manslaughter. It's not so much a plot as an examination of the lives of two people and an insightful study of human reactions, thoughts, feelings and fears from the viewpoints of the people whose lives are touched by Deborah's actions. Five stars.

The Kindest Thing is published by Robinson UK, 2010

Big Fat Lies: Is Your Government Making you Fat? by Hannah Sutter

2010-08-03T13:38:00.001+01:00

Food survey

According to a survey carried out by weight-loss specialists All About Weight, 64 per cent of Britons don't have time to lose weight. The organisation, dedicated to promoting the right attitudes towards food and lifestyle, conducted an online survey that produced 1,230 respondents, who showed that they had no time to diet or exercise because of their busy lifestyles (presumably they had enough time to halt their busy lifestyles to eat enough food to put on the weight in the first place). 38 per cent of respondents didn't have time to shop for healthy food choices (how does that differ from shopping for unhealthy food choices, I wonder?); 32 per cent blamed stress at work leading to the lure of convenience foods and 23 per cent blamed their busy lifestyles. 'Have you lapsed on a fitness programme in the last three months because of pressure on your time?' ticked 64 per cent of the boxes and 'lack of time to prepare healthy food choices at home' 40 per cent.

Now for the book

Now I can segue nicely to a book on this very subject written by diet lawyer Hannah Sutter who takes up the cudgel against the government, the NHS, the Food Standards Agency and 'numerous other associated authorities' to uncover 'a series of highly disturbing fictions that underpin government health policy and have implications for the weight and health of all of us.'

So, what's it about? Levels of obesity are said to be rising, despite the government's message to eat less fat, just eat less in general and to get more exercise. I haven't read Hannah's book myself yet but think it deserves a mention at this point, given the recent government 'obese vs fat' controversy and remembering that not everyone who qualifies for those labels are that way through eating too much or munching too many crisps.

Hannah Sutter

So far, Hannah's book has been well reviewed by her medical peers. Professor Iaian Broom, director of the Clinical Obesity Research Centre at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen says: 'The metabolism of starch requires insulin and overproduction of insulin will result in fat accumulation. Big Fat Lies helps bring this message out from behind the cupboard and rightly answer questions and the whole emphasis on starch in our daily diet.' Award-winning writer, lecturer and broadcaster Dr John Briffa says, 'Big Fat Lies is a passionate polemic book challenging the anti-meat brigade and the nonsense that somehow cheap starch is good for us.' H'm, as a non-vegetarian member of the anti-meat brigade I'd like to know more about that.

Big Fat Lies is published by Infinite Ideas Ltd.

NLP: Principles in Practice

2010-07-30T12:05:00.002+01:00

Round about 1989, I read a book called Heart of the Mind by Connirae and Steve Andreas. It was about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and it covered such life crises as having to respond resourcefully to criticism, asserting oneself respectfully, positive motivation, making decisions and dealing with disaster, all essential coping strategies for procrastinating writers. I still have it and dip into it occasionally. NLP expert Lisa Wake, who lives in Yorkshire has just released her latest book on this growing therapy.

A bit about the author

Lisa Wake was a nurse who moved into management before she left the NHS to launch her own business. Awaken Consulting & Training Services Ltd. She helps businesses grow by 'awakening greater possibilities and choice'. Lisa trained to be an NLP trainer and is now a Neuro-Linguistic psychotherapist as well as coach, facilitator, change agent, trainer, supervisor and mentor. In 2007, Lisa was awarded the status of Master Trainer of NLP because of her contributions, which included writing and developing NLP concepts.

Who will read the book?

In this book, Lisa reveals the tools, techniques and mythology behind NLP and the research that underpins it. "The book is designed to be read by a wide range of audiences," she said. "Currently...there are a number of universities offering undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate programmes that include NLP either wholly or partially. Large organisations in the public and commercial sectors have adopted the principles and practices..." Since 2000, a 'considerable shift' has been noted in the teaching of NLP in management processes as a mainstream topic. "NLP has also been adapted and integrated into psychotherapy practice and is now a mainstream psychotherapy recognised by the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Educational programmes are littered with some of the tools and techniques of NLP, with NLP being integrated from Government policy level down to grass roots," she said.

What's in it?

In the book, Lisa describes the various techniques, how they work and link back to the overarching theory and principles of NLP. Relevant literature supports or challenges the model. 'Each section then concludes with a recommended exercise to follow and examples of how the technique can be applied across a number of different contexts." Her client list is impressive and includes big business and NHS Trusts.

NLP: Principles in Practice is published by Ecademy Press in the UK. Lisa's website is at http://www.awakenconsulting.co.uk/

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2010-07-29T15:11:00.001+01:00

I experienced some difficulty getting into this but once I got past the cryptic colour introduction I discovered it was possibly one of the best books I'd read in a long time. Beautifully written, I remained glued to its every page and at 553pps that was a long read far into the night(s). Holocaust themes are making their mark as older generations are beginning to talk and that's as it should be. Fine detail has been held back for too long. Amazing stories have come from my own friends and family and it seems that hardly anyone I know has been left untouched in some way by the atrocities of the 1940s. This book is realistic and poignant with believable characters and a rivetting plot. It's narrated by Death, who comes to claim his victims and there are lots of them.At the same time, he reveals the sad story of the book thief, 9-year-old Liesel, whose parents are in a concentration camp. Fostered by a German family, she forms a strong spiritual attachment to the Jewish refugee hidden in the cellar, an attachment strengthened by their mutual love for the written word in the books she steals. It isn't a happy story but it's a story about Nazi Germany in 1939 so what more can I say?

Published by Black Swan (2007) Ideal for a book group.

Harry the Cat blogs The Lady

2010-07-28T16:20:00.002+01:00

She's gone out, so I thought I'd teach her a lesson for shoving that pill down me this morning. I'm Cocoa, the office cat (aka Harry the Cat). Of course, everyone knows that writing from the point of view of cats, dogs, goldfish and trees is a no-no in the proper writing world but nobody reads her blogs anyway so it doesn't matter. For my first effort, I'll review this magazine in her out-tray called The Lady. Apparently, it's had a revamp. She wrote something for it once I remember, so she's bound to say something nice about the New Look in case she wants to send them something else. She's been reading it since her enforced stay at Miss Wilkinson's School for Gentlewomen in the 1950s, I know that. I don't want to be catty but that model woman in this week's issue doesn't have a whisker on her face and...oops, she's back. Pretend to be sleeping, that always works.

Always a big follower of The Lady, I thought I'd leave it a while to settle before I decided whether to continue buying it after all these years. On the downside, I think probably the worst change has been the addition of an office dog's column...disbelief, shock, horror on this one. It's a dog...dogs can't write...hello? Penny Smith though is always a pleasure to read, no matter where and her sense of humour makes up for it. In general, I think I'd like to see stronger themes come out of the articles, for most of them don't tell me anything new or impart any information I could think 'wow' about, even (and especially) from the big names. What is the point of interviewing Julie Andrews just to tell readers how nice she is, as if we didn't know. So what's new? The old Lady articles used to inform and educate. I remember reading about Suzanne Lenglen and thinking wow, that's really interesting. (Suzanne who?) Quite - go look up a back copy. Forgotten achievers of the past had another 15 minutes of fame and topics we took for granted had an airing, like the history of tea. Why would readers of a certain age want to read about a young model person, especially when the adverts specialise in retirement homes and electric stairlifts? Twiggy perhaps (congratulations on that one) or whatever happened to Jean Shrimpton or Barbara Goalen. I know, yes, who? And another thing - have you noticed how often free product plugs creep into the articles, especially book titles (good heavens, what am I saying?) The difference is that that is the purpose of this blogsite. When the adverts become more entertaining than the articles, it's time...who's walked across my laptop with dirty feet?

Just dealing with the forensics

Beryl Bainbridge First Time Author Prize

2010-07-28T15:03:00.000+01:00

Do book prizes sometimes make you wonder exactly what it was that caught the judges' imaginations because it sure as anything doesn't catch yours? Now's your chance to have a say for yourself for The People's Book Prize is voted for by the public and the first winner of the Beryl Bainbridge Prize for a First Time Author is 27-year-old Adam Perrott, author of children's book Eerie Deirdre Darkly. Unfortunately, Patron of the prize, Dame Beryl Bainbridge, died only three weeks before the presentation in London last week. Adam is carer to his two children, aged 3 and 7 months and says he is 'just daddy to them,' and they weren't aware he had become an award-winning author. His book was a smash hit when it came out in 2009 and sold its first print run in eight weeks. It's a comedy about a little girl and features monsters, hotel inspectors, talking tarantulas and a one-eyed octopus called Barbara. It is now available as a free audio download at http://www.eeriedeirdredarkly.com/ Adam's second book is currently being edited and will be out next year. If you want to know more about The People's Book Prize, log onto http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/

Deafness and Hearing Loss - The Essential Guide by Juliet England

2010-07-26T16:08:00.000+01:00

Need2Know Books, an imprint of Forward Press have just brought out this particular guide but they have a whole stable of them on a variety of hot topics and they are becoming v fashionable (but then I would say that as an N2K author wouldn't I?). Oddly the cover of this particular one features two women signing, dressed in brightly coloured, patterned frocks, one woman wearing dangling earrings - all the things I was told to avoid when doing deaf awareness training, as they can be so distracting. The author, Juliet England is a writer with a severe hearing loss, so she writes from experience. Juliet explains the different types and degrees of deafness and the help and aids available from communication techniques to cochlear implants and more. The deaf world is little known to those of us with hearing but we could become a part of it at any time, so it's fascinating to learn about the ways in which it could affect every aspect of our lives. The book is clearly written with step-by-step explanations. This is an easy to read, informative guide to hearing loss and how to cope with it in a hearing world. The case studies are particularly useful. It's available from bookshops or direct from Need2Know in Peterborough and you can see the full range at http://www.need2knowbooks.co.uk/ The ADHD guide is particularly enlightening, especially for people who believe it doesn't exist and more particularly because I wrote it. Plug...plug...why not, you only live once and if you have IBS or are stressed out from next door's barking mutt or trying to juggle the baby with the board room, you will find instant help from the guide to Stress. And if you're an expert on a specific health topic and have a way with words, why not contact Need2Know - they're on the lookout for topic authors.

The Messenger by Daniel Silva

2010-07-26T11:44:00.000+01:00

Published by Penguin Books (2006), if you're a follower of Silva's books, this is one of the Gabriel Allon Thriller series. It was lent by a friend, so it's not my usual cup of tea. Allon is an art restorer and secret Israeli spy, who blows his cover in this book. He's delegated to keep an eye on American art expert and beauty (of course), Sarah Bancroft, recruited by Israeli Intelligence to infiltrate an evil cell of Al-Qaeda terrorists, whose financial backing comes from the Saudis (infiltrators of everything). The terrorists attack the Vatican at the start and finish with the between story dedicated to Messenger Sarah's jet-setting life with the wealthy Zizi, ace villain. It's pacey, slick and action-packed. It's also well-researched on both sides' surveillance systems but tough on the poor Messenger who gets slapped around so much and whose personal relationship with Allon never materialises; the woman who does captivate the professional killer remains a shadowy figure in the background and was set up to be there for him when he emerged. I didn't really care about the gun types used but doubtless some readers would relish such attention to detail and it did feel like chunks of two separate stories in a circular structure. Most shocking was the publisher's sloppiness in the amount of literals in the text, something that would never have passed muster in Allen Lane's day. Silva, who lives in Washington DC has written 13 books, 10 in the Allon Series. The Washingtonian compares him to Greene and LeCarre. What do you think?