Category: Sunday Salon

Could you give up reading for a week? That’s what Bibi van der Zee did. She wrote about it in yesterday’s Guardian. She was beginning to wonder if books were eating her up and whether they were some kind of drug.

I just can’t imagine not reading for that length of time. If I go for one day without reading I start to feel irritable and in need of a book, so perhaps it is a drug of sorts. She discovered this startling information about the effect of reading on the brain.

In a book coming out next year about the psychology of fiction, Professor Keith Oatley describes a piece of research where scientists got people to read while they were in a brain scanner. “When readers were engaged in a story, the researchers found that, at the points in which the story said a protagonist undertook an action, the part of the brain which was activated was the part which the reader himself or herself would use to undertake the action. So, when the story- protagonist pulled a light cord, a region in the frontal lobes of the reader’s brain associated with grasping things was activated.”

I shan’t be giving up reading and I must look out for that book.

Writing Tips: I liked this – yesterday’s articles in the Guardian – a survey of established authors’ tips for successful authorship.  Part one tips from Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy

and

Part Two: Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson

Choice tips: mostly along the lines of

•  Write
• Read
• Get on with it/be persistent

I think this from Will Self goes for everyone not just successful authors:

You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.

Reading – Today I’ve been trying to decide which book to get as my free book from newbooks magazine. As usual I’m spoilt for choice and have to ask myself – do I really want yet another book to add to the to-be-read mountain?

These are the books (soon to be published in paperback):

• The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon (pub date 1 April). Six years after the end of the First World War Evelyn is still haunted by the death of her younger brother. I enjoyed her earlier novel The Rose of Sebastopol, so maybe this would be a good choice.
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (pub date 11 March) Set in 1930, the storm clouds of World War Two are gathering in Czechoslovakia. Landauer House built of glass, steel and onyx is passed from hand to hand. I’ve only read The Gospel of Judas by Mawer – enjoyed that, perhaps this would be good too.
• Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin (pub date 18 March). More about Adelia, a 12th century ‘readerof bones’ for Henry II. In this latest book she has to identify and authenticate the bones of Arthur and Guinevere. I loved the first book Mistress of the Art of Death and the second The Death Maze, although I haven’t read it yet. It would be good to have this third book to complete the set.
• Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo by Julia Stuart (pub date 4 March). Balthazar is a Beefeater and his new job is to look after the exotic animals that are to be moved from London Zoo to the Tower’s grounds. This is a debut novel. It does sound different from my usual choice of reading.
• Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson (pub date 1 April). A murder mystery set in West Sussex in the 18th century. A man’s body is found in the grounds of Thornleigh Hall. His throat has been cut. On the same day Alexander Adams is murdered in London. This is a debut novel too. I do like historical crime fiction, but I’m not sure about this one.

I’ve spent quite a few hours this week unpacking and shelving books. There are still quite a lot of boxes to deal with. So far I haven’t come across my Agatha Christie books and those are the ones I want to read right now. It was made worse this morning when I watched Country Tracks. Ben Fogle  was travelling through South Devon and visited Agatha Christie’s home Greenway House on the banks of the River Dart. Now managed by the National Trust it is open to the public with only 20 people at a time being allowed entrance every ten minutes on allocated timed tickets. Nobody else was there when Ben went in (lucky Ben!) to a beautiful room, lined with white bookcases and renovated to be how it was when Agatha lived there. Now I want white bookcases – D says I’d better get painting! 

I finished reading Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue and Losing You by Nicci French earlier this week and now I’m wondering what to read next. Maybe the next Rebus book – The Hanging Garden or one of the many other books from my to-be-read pile. But what I really want to find are my Agatha Christie books, so I’m off to unpack and shelve more books until I find them.