Words in the Park

There's a new Literary Festival taking place in the glorious surroundings of Holland Park, London on May 18th-20th.  Words in the Park is the latest venture from the wonderful Ways with Words group of festivals. There are now 4 throughout the UK and they've been going for 21years. More power to them.

The Book of the Future

Here's a piece from the New York Times about The Book of the Future.

The thingy-ness of books

A Ted talk about how designing books is no laughing matter--or is it?

Uggie writes...

We've had a recommendation from Uggie the dog. "If I've yipped it once, I've yipped it a thousand  times, where Dog Stars are concerned , you have to take the rough with the smooth. Rinty is rough , I am smooth. All the same I generously recommend Rin Tin Tin, the Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean. Donate to Give a Book here.

Affection for fiction

Philip Hensher in an interview in The Guardian today speaks of his unshakeable affection for fiction: "It allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people. People are certainly better at all sorts of things if they can hold a novel in their heads. It is quite a skill, but if you can't do it then you're missing out on something in life. I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't."

When I was a Child I read Books

"I remember once, as a child, walking into a library, looking around at the books, and thinking, I could do that. In fact I didn't do it until I was well into my thirties, but the affinity I felt with books as such preserved in me the secret knowledge that I was a writer when any dispassionate appraisal of my life would have dismissed the notion entirely. So I belong to the community of the written word in several ways. First, books have taught me most of what I know, and they have trained my attention and my imagination. Second, they gave me a sense of the possible, which is a great service-- and too often, when it is ungenerous, the great disservice--a community performs for its members. Third, they embodied richness and refinement of language, and the artful use of language in the service of imagination. Fourth, they gave me and still give me courage.  Sometimes, when I have spent days in my study dreaming a world while the world itself shines outside my windows, forgetting to call my mother because one of my non-beings has come up with a thought that interests me, I think, this is a very odd was to spend a life. But I have my library around me, my cloud of witnesses to the strangeness and brilliance of human experience, who have helped me in my deepest enjoyments of it. Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word: Read. "
From award-winning author Marilynne Robinson's latest book, When I was a Child I read Books.

Bookworm in India

We've been a given a lovely thank you present by Helen from Helping Elsewhere. It's a special beautiful book called The Wedding of the Frogs, and is published by Bookworm where children learn to love books. Thank you, Helen, this really means a lot to us.