Jet-lagged, book-style

I confess, I don't read as many books as I ought to. For the simple reason that once I start, everything else stops.

I had a day alone yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I bought Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, so I settled down with a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits and began to read. And read, and read and read.

The book is 600 pages long.

I read it.

That's not a boast - the boast is that I also managed to take the dog out for two walks, and didn't forget to eat... although my blood sugar was a bit low as I cooked my dinner (and it was horrible, but my bad cooking is another story!)

But - wow! - when I finished, and looked up, I felt as though I'd been awake for a week. It took me a moment to remember who and where I was, that I wasn't Ursula, and I wasn't dying all over the place. If you haven't read it, I recommend it - although it's a book that you either love or hate, judging by the reviews on Goodreads. If you've read my stuff, then you're probably in the right frame of mind to handle Life After Life.

(Wow, now that sounds like a boast, doesn't it? A really big-headed one, at that... If you like me, you might like this international best-selling author hehehe.)

Today, as I write this, I still have that vaguely spacy feeling, and I'm not sure I'll be an effective human being. I'm slightly kicking myself I didn't slow down and savour the story. But I can't do that. When I have a new book, I devour it - I can't wait, and I can't stop, and I could never read one chapter a night. If I do that, then I'm not enjoying the book so much.

I should probably go and do all the housework I didn't do yesterday.

How do you like to read?

Are you a chapter a night, curled up in bed reader?

Or do you binge?

Reading out loud

Firstly, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who left such lovely comments about me on Alex's blog the other day... A few people - I was embarrassed to realise - I hadn't visited for a while, so I'll rectify that soon. And welcome to the new followers resulting from that post, it's great to meet you and I'm looking forward to getting to know you.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm doing a reading on Tuesday (argh! so close!). I chose the story, printed it out in 14pt (just in case I get a sudden attack of fear-related blindness), and read it out loud...

"OH HECK!" I thought, or words to that effect. It was awful. The words stumbled over each other, there were too many trying to fill my mouth at once, my voice sounded flat. And there I was thinking this was one of the best stories ever! "I'm a bad writer, I should just stop writing right now!"

But, luckily, I had another thought... I've spent the last fourteen years reading bedtime stories. My kids are growing out of it now, which I miss, but the other night Youngest was feeling poorly and asked for a story. We reverted to my all-time favourite Monkey Puzzle. (This is very closely followed by A Squash and a Squeeze.) Such an easy story in verse to read, and so easy for young kids to join in on the repetition.

Sorry, I side-tracked a bit - over those fourteen years I've also read stories that I've found difficult to read, and three pop into my head straight away: Mr Men stories, Thomas the Tank Engine and Harry Potter. I struggled to read all of these aloud even though they flow so well when I read them silently. No one would say these are badly written, but they just don't work quite so well when the words are spoken.

"Hmmm," I thought this time, "perhaps the style needs to differ between stories designed to be read silently and those to be read aloud." And then I felt much better.

The advice I've read for a very long time has been to read your work out as part of the editing process, but I've decided that this ain't necessarily so. (On the tally of writing rules I've broken, I'm up to about fifteen now!)

I'm off to find a different story to read on Tuesday.

What are your thoughts about reading aloud? Am I wrong to break that editing rule?

Are there stories - your own/kids books etc - that you struggle to read aloud?

World Book Day

Oops! I'm a bit late with this post. I thought World Book Day was tomorrow, but it was - in fact - yesterday (but only, according to their website in UK and Ireland, because the actual day is 23rd April, which falls in the school holidays this year).

If you've got children, you'll know all about this initiative - which aims to celebrate the written word - because schools give out vouchers to encourage children to buy books. If you're an avid user of libraries, there will have been displays (showing the correct date, so I'm obviously immune to posters). If you watch the BBC, you'll have seen them advertsing a whole evening of book related programmes tomorrow - I've already set myself to record it.

I think it's a wondeful idea, to have people all around the world enjoying books, talking about books, going to readings or groups they would otherwise not do. And even if just a few people in every town started reading more generally because of it, then that's a benefit for publishing and writing in general.

There are two points related to this that I've just thought of. (The point of this post was advertising only.)

1. Publishing has to be inventive and fresh and new. But think of the last few years: Harry Potter was inventive and fresh and new, but spawned a few other - however loose - imitations. Vampires have been everywhere, mostly teenaged and angst-y. Before that Bridget Jones practically invented a genre of her very own.

A writer has an idea, maybe mermaids (note to self: no one's written about mermaids yet!) which is new and fresh etc, and it becomes published. Suddenly every publisher wants mermaids and related sea-creatures, so my book - that I've spent years writing - about zebras is rejected for not following the current fashion. Perhaps, somewhere out there, someone would be dying to read a novel about zebras, but all they can find is mermaids. Publishing needs to stop following fashion, or we'll just end up going round in circles.

2. My next point is about encouraging children to read. From personal experience, this is very hard. They come home clutching their voucher, run out to the nearest bookshop and spend it. Brilliant - that's the idea. But actually getting them to sit down and read for pleasure is practically impossible. There are so many other distractions. When I was a child, my favourite past time was reading. I loved Mallory Towers especially, and spent many weekends re-reading the series. I understand that I was unusual, but my kids - boys, so maybe that's why it's so different - will only read when specifically directed, and then only for the briefest time. My eldest would quite happily stop half-way through a chapter, very often never finishes a book, and normally grabs the closest book when I ask him to read so the story is completely missed. I don't know how to resolve this, and would love suggestions.

Enjoy your reading!

A comment on the Booker Prize 2010

[Edited to include the year in the title, to avoid confusion with any other years.]

I probably should have commented on the Booker Prize before now. I suppose it's a given that a writer will have an opinion about this prize. But I'm not sure I do; it usually passes me by. I did comment when the longlist was announced, but since then.... meh!

Some of the problem is that I am predominently a short story writer, so I am therefore more interested in prizes for short stories, and there are some very big prizes that are starting to come to the fore. I like to read these stories worth £5000, £10,000 and £35,000 to see where I'm lacking. Mostly, I have figured out - and this applies to any novel I might write - my stories are not big enough, they do not encompass the large political issues of the day. A lot of the time, they are very small, personal stories. Although I have many opinions, I don't think I'd be able to express them in fiction form.

Another problem is the way I chose to read novels - usually by the look of the cover, the title or, as with one book I bought recently, something striking in the blurb. The blurb of the book I bought, The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, stated that they didn't want to ruin the story so I'd have to buy the book and please could I not tell my friends the ending so they'd have to read it for themselves. So I did buy it. Admittedly, the novel didn't warrant such extraordinary claims - it was a good story, and a good ending, but nothing of the magical element I'd expected. Although, I bet the marketing team were damn pleased with themselves for coming up with that angle!!

Anyway, back to my point on the way I chose to read novels - I do not buy books that have large prizes bestowed upon them; I am more likely to avoid them. Not consciously, not seeing the Booker display in a bookshop and running screaming in the opposite direction. I like to browse and look for something a little out of the ordinary. Big books with big prizes seem sometimes out of my league, I suppose. And mostly, when I feel a book is out of my league - if I do persuade myself to read it - I want it to be mindblowing, absolutely so astounding that the story haunts me for the rest of my life.

Not a lot of books do that though...