The Importance of Books: My List

I’ve just made a list of books I've read in the last year.  

Stephen King, in his seminal book On Writing declares how important it is for anyone who aspires to write that they should read. A lot.

We should read all kinds of stuff – deep, shallow, funny, serious,

tragic comedic. Stephen King lists the great number of books he had read in a year. Interestingly he includes in the list the many books he has read in audio form. For some people – not me- this might be seen as kind of cheating, an  easy way.

But I have this friend who consumes books on audio every single day while he is working at more manual tasks. He points out that with an audio book you listen to every word. You don’t skip. Every word counts. As it should.

I once gave a talk to a reading group for people of all ages who were sight-impaired. The discussion was vigorous and interesting . These readers had an unsurpassed grasp on the detail, the characterisation and the narrative of the novels we were discussing – all read on Audio Books.

And, like audio books, reading on Kindle, Tablets and Phones is sadly sniffed at in some quarters. And yet, my inside source tells me the 46% of books are read in this form. Thank God they do. Some of those are my books and perhaps yours.

It’s been my lifetime delight to curl up with a good book, seduced by the smell and feel of new paper and the sight of great prose. But now as well as this I also love listening to stories on my iPod, and racing through novels and research sources on Kindle and on the internet. So the modern way works brilliantly for this reader and writer.

So this is why this morning I made a list of the books I’ve read in the last year. I’ve read them all with appreciation and enjoyment. It’s not been intentional but probably my list signifies my preoccupations as a writer as well as a reader. Perhaps your book is there! On my list there is – as there should be – lots of fiction there as well as sources of information and research for my new and my  earlier book. The books  range from the serious to the light hearted, the trivial to the serious, from the poetic to the informative.

Do you have your own list? Let me have it with a 50 word bio. and I’ll post it here on Life Twice Tasted.

So anyway – here’s my list:

1. Sometimes a River Song  Avril Joy
2. Phantom Notes Brian  Turner
3. Partners  John Grisham
4. Bonjour Darling  Heather Francis
5. The Last American Martyr  Tom Winton
6. Wake  Anna Hope
7. The Ballroom  Anna Hope
8. The Dark is Rising  Susan Cooper
9. A Murder of No Account  Julia Underwood
10. Twin Piques  Tracie Bannister
11. The Story Sisters Alice Hoffman
12. Solem  Clive Johnson
13. Hadrians Wall Path Walking into History: Jane V Blanchard 
14. Decide Where to Go  Eileen Elgey
15. Lazy France in Marseillan Laurence Phillips.
16. Noonday  Pat Barker
17. One of Ours  Willa Cather
18. Parades End  Ford Maddox Ford
19. Five Children on the Western Front  Kate Saunders
20. Plainsong  Kent Haruf
21. The Last Ballad  Helen Cannam
22. Ill Met by Moonlight  W Stanley Moss
23. Night Soldiers  Alan Furst
24. The White Venus  Rupert Colley
25. The Last Englishman  H.L.Carr  Byron Rogers
26. The Lost Guide to Life and Love Sharon Griffiths
27. Mushrooms .Collins Gem
28. Dip  Andrew Fusek Peters
29. Zone of interest  Martin Amis
30. The Diary od Adam and Eve Mark Twain  
31. The Risk of Reading:  How literature helps us understand ourselves and the world.  Robert Waxler
32. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase  Joan Aiken
33. New Grub Street  George Gissing
34. Wild Swim  Kate Rew
35. Swimming Home  Debora Levy
36. A Month in the Country  H.L. Carr.
37. Waterlog   Roger Deakin
38. 12 Years a Slave  Soloman Northup
39. A King in Yellow  H.P.Lovecraft
40. The City and the City   China Miéville
41. The Judas Goat  Robert P Parkerf
42. The Last Iceberg Anne Ousby
43. Jamaica Inn  Daphne du Maurier
44. The Centauress  Kathleen Jones
45. Death at the Castello   Erica Yeoman
46. Ring of Clay  Margaret Kaine
47. The Book Thief  Markus Zusak
48. The Blackbird House Alice Hoffman
49. Robert Graves: Life on the Edge   Miranda Seymout
50. On Writing: a member of the craft   Stephen King
51. The Secret Life of Bees   Sue Monk Kidd
52. The Birds and Other Stories  Daphne du Maurier
53. Dear Life ( Short stories) Alice Munro
54. How Fiction Works   James Wood
55. It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again Julia Cameron 
56. The Avenue A Newcastle Backstreet Boyhood        Samuel W Herbert

  

  

It took  a hundred books to

research The Pathfinder

Hugh and the Writer’s Bookshelf

 My monthly conversation with my friend Hugh is always a delight.

We ramble through our own idiosyncrasies and preoccupations, our families, current films, politics and theatre - and books, always books. Hugh encourages me to re-read the Victorian novelists. I put him onto my more contemporary favourites. Sometimes we happen to talk about my own novels, which he has been reading. He also reads my work in progress with enlightened interest. (New novel now - going full steam ahead…)

At one point last week he asked me how old I was when I knew –

just knew – I would be a writer. I had a think and said, ‘I would be eight or nine.’ His eyebrows raised and he gave a little smile.

But it’s true. As often happens, Hugh made me think of my process: how the acquisition and maintenance of  my tools, for becoming and being the writer I am, has taken a lifetime to acquire.

You need to start early - reading voraciously and writing almost continually are the surest foundation. . 

When I was nine I regularly borrowed five library books a week. I also wrote stories and published little books of my own, made of folded paper and hand stitched spines. I used to keep this practice a secret but as I met more lifetime writers I discovered quite a few had made little books in their childhood,

One necessity for any writer aiming for success in writing novels is the ingenuity and skill to create physical and mental space in your life to free up your spirit and unleash your imagination; to make space and time to spin up ideas and make ever new and ever better stories. To  prioritise your writing before all your other preoccupations. - Not very easy for girls or women I feel - the aristocratic Vita Sackville West with her tower, and the self-evident genius Virginia Woolf with her meticulous husband might be the exception here.

So,  child into adult,  you read – from Fairy Tales to children’s

comics, From Jane Austen to Wilkie Collins, From Virginia Woolf to John le Carré, from Dorothy L Sayers to Ian Rankin, from Willa Cather to Ian McKewan, from RD Blackmore to Catherine Cookson,. And on. And on.

The intense process of reading good writers alongside your own writing process has a profound effect. Even so, one should never assume that you’ll find universal answers to your writer’s questions that will transform you unto JK Rowling or JR Tolkien, Alice Hoffman or Zadie Smith.

The effect is more subtle than this. You read these novels, imagining they can read you. In the process your own writing somehow clarifies itself in terms of category, syntax and style. It improves because your sense of writing as a skill deepens and you come to define and develop your own style and essential themes.

Inevitably reading as a writer becomes part of your natural creative process. You notice how good writers in every field have this or that effect. Even while enjoying a novel for itself you will notice vivid characterisation, the dynamics of pace, the evocative locations, the elegant structure.

Of course, being your own original writer, you won’t mimic, or

copy such things in your own work, or else your novel will become a parody - if not a travesty. But the awareness of such fine approaches will embed itself in your subconscious and will find a natural place in your writing and influence your style.  

 So, from the very beginning I have discovered that reading

leads to writing leads to more reading and better writing. 

And now I come directly to books that focus more deliberately on the technicalities of the writing process. 

Today one can almost drown in the plethora of advice on this subject, on the authorweb, in articles, between the covers of a book, or in course books for the thousands of ‘Creative Writing courses..

I am always coming across lists (I have written some myself …) that promise to ensure your success with their top tips for :-:

Creating great characters

Editing your book

Ending your novel

Increasing your pace

Enhancing your prose

Pitching your novel to an agent, publisher

Promoting your book

Of course these can be important aspects of improving your writing and require your close attention - but, ensuring success?

If only! I say, with a wry smile.

In my workshops I often tell people that every writer should have

behind them their own writer’s  bookshelf  - books specifically focusing on the writing process and creativity, written by writers whose own writing has an appreciative audience out there in the difficult field of published fiction.  

It’s good to avoid the sources that can be very shallow pools, sometimes written by writers whose creative output consists of instructional books on the writing process. Writing a novel creatively and organisationally, is the hardest most disciplined creative task. Writing a book about writing a novel is easy compared to this,

I ask you! Would you take advice as a potter from a person whose only output had been recipes for, the constituency of, and the location of clay?

We writers all have our chosen books – to pick up at the end of the day; to tap into the creativity of accomplished writers from across the world and recharge our own. Glancing at my shelf I see I have books for all seasons. You will have your own.

Amongst mine are:

• Stephen King’s: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft  - Honest professional self knowledge from a master practitioner.

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• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. - Reminds us that writing is part of a creative family incorporating art and music. We borrow from and create with our brothers and sisters

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• Zen and the Art of Writing:  |Releasing  the Creative Genius Within You. Ray Bradbury – what it says on the tin.

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• This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosely. A practical guide offering structure and inspiration to beginners and more experienced writers
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• Almost anything by Susan Sontag including Against Interpretation and Other Essays   Pure inspiration towards your liberated creative self.

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• Almost anything by Ursula le Guin including The Wave of the Mind; Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination She’s a passionate thinker with an imagination that touches universals.

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• A special mention for Avril Joy’s  From Writing With Love. Ane enabling and inspiring book  from a novelist and artist.  If you are looking for inspiration and encouragement, sign on of Avril Joy’s newsletter. The best weekly source around,
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• But even such great books are only of helpful if your own talent for prose and story is already highly developed by the lifelong reading/writing/reading process described above with the proviso that your writer’s confidence is mature enough for you to incorporate good advice and reject advice that doesn’t enhance you own unique writing.

 

I now come to the book that would be on my shelf if there were only room for one.

I sometimes think I have read every book on the writing process in the world and now can learn nothing new.

However came I recently across How Fiction Works by James Wood and keep going back and back to take it all in. This book is beautifully written, highly informed, drawing writing inferences from hundreds of novels, stretching right back Don Quixote from to Ian McEwen.

Most importantly James Wood makes a passionate and compelling case for the novel as a form, arguing that it puts other forms of creative writing firmly in the shade.

This absolutely coincides with my view and I have been waiting for someone to put this case as well as this.

How Fiction Works is inspiring and full of ideas which are now spurring me on the stretch my writing game and not settle for anything less than my best.

Me and Stephen King and the Attraction of the Audiobook.

 Being - for the last fortnight - unable to read or write properly or do anything requiring energy I resorted to listening to audio-books. I don’t often resort to this as I like words on the page, be it paper or Kindle screen.

However the concentration for pure reading deserted me alongside my appetite and my energy. So, by means of the audio-books in the last week I have ‘read’ three books: The Forgotten by David Baldacci; Zoo Time by Howard  Jacobson; Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin. Waiting for me to enjoy are ring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel; Where There’s a Will by John Mortimer and Victorian London by Lisa Picard. I have also managed to read on the paper page The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourself by Stephen Grosz.

(Should you be interested -  my next post here will be my personal notes on these individual books…)  

But I have to say that this experience has made me reflect on the audio-process. First, how wonderful that these texts were unabridged. When I think of the care that we writers put into every word, every paragraph of a novel it seems some kind of heresy to abridge it to make it fit into a required audio timescale. So the audio-time is anywhere upwards of ten or eleven hours.

Also, being read by accomplished readers, the rhythms and nuances of the prose enhance the meaning - perhaps more than the echoes in the head that emerge from reading on the page.

It certainly improved my line by line attention as I have to confess, as a lifetime reader, to a well entrenched and somewhat destructive habit of speed-reading and skipping. With audio books you can’t skip; you have to let the story unfold at the author’s designated pace.

It could be the euphoria of the illness but I would swear that I have enjoyed these books much more intensely than usual. As I come back to life and writing and work I’m certain I’ll use this form of reading into my book habit more   regularly in the future.

And then I suddenly remember I’m not alone. In his exceptionally good book On Writing author Stephen King urges all writers to read widely, wisely and well for their own self education. He lists the books he read in a single year. His list is enormous. Then he tells us that he had read a great proportion of this list by audio-book.

I suppose I could declare an interest here. All my books are now on Kindle - just got the stats – they’re trickling out very well there (except for Family Ties. Do give it a try. One of my best, I think) . But as well as thise= they are also out there in audio-book form. An Englishwoman in France looks very fine in its audio-book packaging. They’re available through libraries to order borrow and download. Or through companies like Audible.

And now I’ve had my own valuable and enlightening audio experience I treasure the thought of my own readers enjoying my novels in this steady appreciative pace, read by the brilliant actresses who give them their voice

NEXT: Tomorrow my appreciative notes on the audio books I have read this week. By David Baldacci, Howard Jacobson, Ian Rankin, Hilary Mantel, John Mortimer   Lisa Picard, Stephen Grosz.

Click: My novel set in North London