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A blog post about happiness, by Emma Bingham

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Ahh happiness. It sounds so simple doesn’t it?

I don’t think I ever thought I would be writing something public about what I think happiness means to me. Because that’s the thing about being happy, it is really personal. What makes one person happy won’t make another person feel quite the same, and as a result I don’t want this post to become a guide, or even some sort of ‘Agony Aunt’ advice clinic. Rather, this is just me, having been inspired by a wonderful lecture on literature and happiness, trying to work out what I think being happy means to me.

So here goes…

Why do we want to be happy?

It seems like being happy is the new craze. From feel good playlists on Spotify, to bullet journaling accounts on Tumblr, to Humans of New York’s inspirational photo stories on Instagram, to videos of real-life heroes on Facebook, to my new Positively Pooh book I got for my birthday, it seems like society is saturated with ideas on how to be happy, the importance of being happy, and of other people’s happiness.

Yet, on the flip side, within this bombardment of happiness is the potential of putting pressure on people to be happy, even when they’re not. Sometimes, pretending that we are happy could result in things getting worse.

Late last year, I went to watch a musical called A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer.

Yup, it was a musical about cancer.

I was intrigued to say the least. However, confident in the abilities of The National Theatre, Complicité, and director Bryony Kimmings, I went with two friends to go and see it.

There are enough reviews online that will tell you how inspiring, sensitive, heart breaking, self-aware and honest this production was. Never in my life have I been moved by a piece of theatre. There was not one member of the audience who was not crying, and not just crying, I mean crying.

However, I would like to draw attention to one moment in the performance that responds to this idea of what it means to be happy. In one song, the cast (whose characters were in fact entirely representative of real people), sang about social media’s influence on how cancer patients think about cancer. The song made a poignant criticism of the many videos online that show cancer patients being brave, strong, resilient, and happy. The song acknowledged that cancer is not like this all the time, and sometimes you don’t want to be brave, you need to let yourself feel like shit.

And this applies not just to the issues being debated within the musical, but to everything.

The importance of being happy is being delivered to us in bucket load. Even the government have invested in the understanding of the impact of happiness through their Public Happiness and Wellbeing Agenda.

And I don’t want to criticise this. I think it is brilliant that we are becoming so much more aware of the importance of being happy, and finding your own happiness. It just makes me wonder to what extent does the world around me shape my desire to be happy, and whether, by extension, the desire to be happy has shaped who I am.

What does happiness mean to me?

I think I first started becoming hyper aware of my desire for happiness when I was doing my A Levels, I presume in response to my record levels of stress! Having gone through a stressful time in my life, I came out the other side with a desire, not necessarily to be happy, but to be the best and happiest version of me. And this is a thought process that has persisted ever since.

I recognised that ‘stressed Emma’ was not who I wanted to be. I would push away those closest to me and shut myself off from everything. And I’m not like that. And more importantly I don’t like being like that.

Over the years (that sounds like I am old and wise, I am neither old nor wise), I have worked out that I absolutely love making other people smile, and I think this has significantly shaped how I have grown up (though I like to think I am not yet fully grown). Anything that I can do to make others feel happy, results in me feeling happy too.

And this isn’t anything profound. It’s just little things like being bubbly and energetic when you can see that those around you are super tired, just to try and perk them up. Or it’s smiling at someone when you’re all in a really nervy situation, waiting outside an audition room for example, just to show them that you’re nervous too, but it’s going to be okay. None of the things I do on a daily basis are big gestures, but I think I get so much happiness out of trying to make others feel happy and at ease.

I’m not sure that makes any sense. I suppose a lot of my ‘positive thinking’ links to the people I am around, truly valuing those people, and wanting to make them happy.

I know someone who can explain this far better.

The problems of my version of happiness

I would argue that I am a happy person. And when it comes to other people, I am super duper positive. In fact, I believe in my closest friends and family more than I believe in myself.

And there’s the paradox.

Yes I would say that I am happy, but at the same time I am acutely aware that I have low self-esteem, and I often am rather pessimistic when it comes to my own endeavours.

So I suppose sometimes my positivity towards others can be mistaken for me having a positive and optimistic outlook on my own life.

Now I don’t want to dwell here. But this begs the question of how I can feel happy, but still struggle to feel proud of myself, or confident, or calm in stressful situations.

And I suppose, now I think about it, that’s because happiness and positivity are different. If happiness for me is mostly an external process, defined more so by the happiness of others, then positivity is a much more internal thing for me.

So when something gets me down, I don’t think that means I am unhappy necessarily. Instead, the feeling I have is more closely linked to self-esteem and positivity.

HOWEVER

(Let’s move on before this gets depressing)

I am totally aware of this aspect of my personality. As a result I consciously work towards trying to raise my self-esteem and feel more positive about myself. In fact, being happy in general really helps me with this, because happiness gives me the energy, determination, enthusiasm, and support to do so.

The Little Things

There are lots of little things that I do purposely, though now they feel more like habit, to make me feel more happy, and in turn more positive and confident. I have compiled them into a list, perfectly illustrating one of the things I do to make myself feel more self-confident: I write lists.

  • Having close relationships and cherishing my nearest and dearest. I am a super lucky human being because I am surrounded by the most wonderful, lovely, kind, generous, fun, determined and ambitious group of people in the whole entire world.
  • Gratitude diary  Everyday, I write one thing in my gratitude diary that has gone well. That means that even if I think my day has been horrible, I have to find something good in it. And do you know what? I always do! The things in my diary range from ‘The man who was singing out loud while walking down the high street listening to music through headphones’ to ‘IT’S CHRIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAS!!!!’ to ‘I had the perfect day at the Donkey Sanctuary with the housemates’. Again, nothing profound, just the little things.
  • Planning and organising  I LOVE ORGANISING! It is my favourite thing. Everything is colour-coded. I have lots of stationary. At the top of my weekly plan, I always write a positive thought and a song lyric. It’s just a little something I have added to increase the positivity out of something that already fills me with joy.
  • emma bingham
    • Photographs, memories and trinkets  I have photos all over my room. It means that the first thing I see when I wake up are the people who I love the most in the world. I am someone who does place importance on anything with a memory attached to it. Which explain the slightly terrifying mini-figure of the Loch Ness Monster on my shelf…
    • Doing the things that I love  I sing in a choir, I sing in the shower (sorry housemates), I go to the theatre, I do yoga in the morning and fall over a lot, I eat a lot of chocolate, I watch ‘Naked Attraction’ with my housemates, I like to sit with my legs crossed by my head like a pretzel, I will always opt for the cosy night in over the crazy night out, I do pole fitness (no Nanny, it is not my ‘back-up plan’ for if everything goes wrong post-graduation)… And I do a degree that I love.
    • Take some risks and always try your best Sometimes you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
    • Not all days will be good days Off days are normal and they happen all the time. I am gradually learning to accept that some days won’t be as productive, or full of joy, or energetic as others, and that’s allowed.
    • I smile… a lot

    Tah-dah!

    So that’s my big splurge about my own view of happiness. And do you know what?

    I am feeling pretty happy now I have written it 🙂

Catherine Morland, my new best friend, by Emma Bingham

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I am one of those humans who has mixed feelings about Jane Austen… don’t kill me. Ironically, Catherine, the protagonist of Austen’s first written though last published novel puts the reason for this best:

‘If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as hard fate’ (Austen, 79).

Like Catherine was forced to read history books, at school I was forced to read Austen. As much as I loved Pride and Prejudice the first time I read it, after two years of analysing the narratology and the stress of having to retake the exam, Austen became a ‘torment’ rather than a joy.

However…

I absolutely love Northanger Abbey. Not only is it hilarious, it is perceptive, subtle and hard to put down. To me, this is Austen at her best. Catherine has to be one of my favourite literary characters. Here is why…

‘… for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any… She could never learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid’ (Austen, 3).

Cutting perhaps, but I love this description. Catherine is just normal. She sounds just like me, or you, or anyone. She’s not the strong willed, bright eyed Elizabeth, or the forthright, out spoken Emma. She’s plain old Catherine, and I love that.

Northanger Abbey follows Catherine’s adventures on her first trip to Bath. With her nose in Ann Radcliffe’s gothic romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho, she meets lots of different people on her trip, including eligible bachelor Henry Tilney. When she is invited to stay at his family’s abbey, she cannot contain her excitement. A real abbey! Just like the ones she reads about! What follows are events that neither Catherine, nor the reader could have predicted…

Austen supplies many different ways to interpret this book. Is it a critique of reading for pleasure? Is it a critique of gothic romance? Is it a critique of readers? Or is it a critique of society?

Who knows? But by looking more closely at Catherine Morland’s character, I hope to get a little closer to answering these questions.

Catherine – the ultimate fan girl?

I read Catherine as the ultimate fan girl. Urban Dictionary defines a ‘fan girl’ as follows:

‘A rabid breed of human female who is obsessed with either a fictional character or an actor. Similar to the breed of fanboy. Fangirls congregate at anime conventions and livejournal. Have been known to glomp, grope, and tackle when encountering said obsessions.

Hugh Jackman: ‘ello.

Fangirl: SQUEEEEEE! *immediately attaches to Jackman’s leg*

Jackman: Security!’

I don’t think Catherine’s preconceptions of Northanger Abbey or her actions when she arrives are much less extreme than the above definition illustrates. Rather than ‘SQUEEEEEE’ at Hugh Jackman, she follows in the footsteps of her gothic heroines, echoing their language and actions almost precisely, as if she is following a set of instructions.

‘This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! – An immense heavy chest! – What can it hold? – Why should it be placed here? – Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! – I will look into it – cost me what it may, I will look into it – and directly too – by daylight. – If I stay till evening my candle may go out.’ (Austen, 118).

Catherine’s actions here are very funny, and we laugh at her even more when all she discovers is ‘a white cotton counterpane, properly folded’ (Austen 119). But why are we laughing at her? Are her actions embarrassing, or even dangerous and deluded?

During these moments, the narrative voice seems to drastically change. Austen is known for her cutting authorial intrusion, yet in Catherine’s little gothic fantasy, Austen seems to hide her authoritative voice, giving the impression that Catherine is now leading the plot, the heroine in her own story. The reader becomes deeply aligned to Catherine, and is given an insight into her imagination, with Austen only obviously critiquing Catherine’s naivety when Catherine herself has realised her folly. This allows us to become as deeply immersed in Catherine’s narrative as she is, even when we begin to distrust Catherine’s deductions, we are still engaged and wanting to know what the anti-climax will be this time!

Perhaps as she progresses deeper and deeper into her gothic fantasy, blames General Tilney of murder and takes it upon herself to explore the private sections of the abbey, we do become angry at Catherine’s naivety. Certainly, as I was reading the novel, I began to become frustrated as Catherine began to fixate on her goal to uncover ‘the truth’ about General Tilney the murderer at the expense of her friendship with Eleanor Tilney and respect for the family. When asking Eleanor about her mother, rather than support her clearly dejected, upset and lonely friend, Catherine instead invasively enquires ‘Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there a picture of her in the Abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was it from dejection from spirits?’ (Austen, 131). Furthermore, her confidence that the General must have been cruel to his wife just because he has not hung her picture up in the house is immature and naïve; I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the General is still grieving and therefore cannot face looking at his dead wife’s picture.

Despite this, I find it very hard to be too critical of Catherine’s actions. I think really a lot of the reason I find her character amusing and warm to her so quickly is because I see myself in her.

Even now, when I visit somewhere new I want to explore. I remember the first time I visited my Granny and Papa’s new house; they have loads of cupboards that connect behind the walls, and in those cupboards are loads of their old clothes, books, and other random items. I used to explore there all the time with my cousin, making up stories, playing hide and seek, and trying to find Papa’s secret stash of fudge. Still, this Christmas, I played these exact same games with my little cousins at Granny and Papa’s house. I don’t think you ever really grow out of this want to explore, or this ability to create a fiction out of what is around you, just because it is fun and exciting. I can hardly blame Catherine for her false deductions when I did the same.

So is what Catherine is doing really that bad? She is so fascinated by the books she reads she gets excited about visiting places in those books, just like I get super excited about travelling in London now I have watched the BBC series of Sherlock…

I don’t think, therefore, that Austen is critiquing Catherine the reader, or the books that she is reading. If anything, Catherine’s imagination helps her to learn to be happy in the ‘real world’. I suppose, in a way, books for Catherine are a bit like Instagram or vlogs for us. Sometimes it can be difficult to separate yourself from what you see online, or what you read in books. Perhaps, it is only through learning about how to separate yourself from this and find happiness in your own life that we can go on Instagram or read the magazines and be positively, rather than negatively influenced by them. This is the lesson that Catherine learns – to be happy with what she has.

 

 

Henry Tilney and Feminine Fiction in Northanger Abbey, by Zack Eydenberg

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Kirsten Thorne describes the Gothic hero as “solipsistic,” “raged,” and “suicidally inclined” (98). He is often a figure “struggling against the limits of his humanity” (Lydenberg 108). Even Valancourt, from Catherine’s beloved Mysteries of Udolpho, is “no longer master of his emotions” (Radcliffe 442). A gothic hero is supposed to be a mess. Henry Tilney, the hero of the decidedly un-gothic Northanger Abbey, is composed (in almost all occasions), reasonable, and satirical. Yet we know he follows the exploits of those gothic characters as closely as Catherine.   This clues us into the idea that Henry Tilney, while reading the same works as Catherine, is reacting differently. Reading as Henry Tilney does, to acquire understanding rather than mere knowledge, pleasure, or escapism, places novels in a far more valuable context.

Before Henry’s true rank or financial situation is disclosed (29), Catherine already possesses “a strong inclination for continuing the acquaintance” with Tilney. His foremost quality in this conversation and others is being “’not so ignorant of young ladies’ ways as you wish to believe me’” (21). He assures Catherine of the importance of diaries, as they help to develop “the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated” (27). He makes clear his study of fashion, of which “men commonly take little notice” (28). He defends women’s abilities in letter-writing, saying “in every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes” (27). Henry Tilney not only observes women’s activities, but also participates in many of them.

It’s not surprising Henry Tilney loves reading novels as much as Catherine. Reading is a pastime only the “intolerably stupid” (119) dislike. Austen herself says novels are a source of “knowledge of human nature,” and “effusions of wit and humour,” (33-34) Henry’s two favorite things. Henry is keen to “understand the motive of other people’s actions” (141). He describes the results of his readings as “a knowledge of Julias and Louisas” (119). This implies a familiarity with various gothic heroines, but also could mean he has acquired emotional knowledge of those heroines through reading, and can sympathize with others as a result of reading, building upon that understandings of “motive” he mentions. Books also provide him with prized conversational similes, such as the one he uses with Catherine (120). His appreciating novels fits the rest of his character perfectly.

Henry’s appreciation also runs in opposition to the understandings of novels at the time, a novel being “’only a novel’” (33). The narrator explains that “no species of composition has been so much decried.”   Novels then were considered both feminine and useless. Novels were thought to be, as Mr. Thorpe says, “full of nonsense and stuff…the stupidest things in creation”

(48). He does, in fact, give the real reason he doesn’t read novels, which is that he has “something else to do” (47). This highlights many of the problems at play in Thorpe’s understanding of novels and of people, specifically women. Saying that the reason not to read novels is that there is “something else to do” implies that the practice of reading fiction is a waste of time, a novel-ty. “knowledge of human nature” doesn’t seem useful, and so, to Thorpe, it isn’t. With more “knowledge” of that kind, though, he might not have attempted to seduce a woman by calling her favorite hobby “stupid.”   The plot of the novel demonstrates the value of reading by comparing the awareness of a novel-reader against someone who thinks novels are “nonsense.”

Henry displays genuine interest in complexity, which novels provide. He introduces himself through humorous dichotomous perceptions she might have of him. He predicts she will see him as “a queer, half-witted man” (20), then asks that she write him into her diary as “a most extraordinary genius.”. He presents himself as two inaccurate extremes. One of his first acts as a character is to attack simplistic perceptions of people. In this same moment, he attempts to see a situation from Catherine’s perspective. He enjoys complicating. His retraction to his joke about “faultless” letter-writers begins with him denouncing a “general rule” (21). Like good fiction, his humor is an exploration of the general, and a subsequent indictment of it. He doesn’t like general statements or general words, like “nice” (120-121). He quips and corrects in accordance with his obsession with complexity found in novels and in life. So committed is he to this that he “broke the promise” (119) of reading to his sister in order to finish a book faster. His valuation of novels is so great it is sometimes at the expense of the people around him.

Henry perhaps shows unnecessary instruction when chastising Catherine about her having “erred” in thinking the general killed Henry’s mother. He calls her judgment into question, and accuses her of “admitting” questionable “ideas” (222). This is when he has just discovered she thinks his father is a murderer, and that she sought out his deceased mother’s room to gather evidence of this. He calls on her to “consult your own understanding” (222) rather than accuse her of having none. At his most irritated, he displays faith in her ability to observe, comprehend and understand, using the tools their novel-reading should provide, and merely accuses her of not using those abilities. He definitely tries to claim the moral high ground for himself, declaring “you have erred,” instructing her to “consider,” “consult,” and “remember,” (222) and asking many rhetorical questions. At his most serious, though, he goes back to the idea that understanding, in this case understanding the differences between fiction and reality as well as the similarities, is the missing piece in Catherine’s applications of gothic novels to life, but not one she is at all incapable of achieving.

The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Happy Coincidence, by Bethany Ashley

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This week, I had a change of heart. My initial reading of The Pilgrim’s Progress, was that it was tedious and very difficult to get through, despite its simplistic structure. However, I think this was partly due to my lack of knowledge about the Bible. It was hard work, as an ignorant reader, to recognise the parables and the huge number of references as they were being told. Nevertheless, John Bunyan has produced an incredible text that would surely be rewarding if you recognised more than the majority of biblical references. I will one day re-read The Pilgrim’s Progress, after I have read the Bible to see if it is more satisfying.

One aspect I did enjoy, in terms of popular culture, were finding phrases like Vanity Fair and Worldly-Wise appearing in The Pilgrim’s Progress. It is incredible to think that words we almost take for granted had to have an origin somewhere. For my dissertation, I am writing a collection of poetry based on the life of mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing. Additionally, I am developing my own digital humanities resource. Therefore, the opportunity to explore the Reading Experience Database was fascinating. I will certainly be using this in the future to look for new avenues of research.

It was during this exploration of the database, that I happened upon a happy coincidence.

As I’ve been reading a copious amount about Alan Turing recently, I decided to try and find out what he had been reading. Of the three records that appeared, it seemed almost unbelievable that Alan Turing is documented to have read The Pilgrim’s Progress as well as: Reading Without Tears and Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know.

Alan’s extraordinary experience of The Pilgrim’s Progress was as follows: “The only books he had were little nature study notebooks, supplemented by his mother reading The Pilgrim’s Progress aloud. Once she cheated by leaving out a long theological dissertation, but that made him very cross. “You spoil the whole thing” he shouted, and ran up to his bedroom”. – Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, (London, 1983), p. 9, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=31265, accessed: 03 February 2017

As a result of this research, I have decided to work on a series of poems titled respectively after the three books on record. I have included a first draft of one of these below. It is based on the death of Turing’s childhood friend, Christopher Morcam, with whom Alan enjoyed academic argument and astronomy.

 

Reading Without Tears

At sundown before Saint Valentine’s Day a boy

extended out the tether of friendship and yet

died from complications of bovine tuberculosis.

 

I am sure I could not have found anywhere

another companion so brilliant and yet

so charming and unconceited.

 

We journeyed to Cambridge to try for Trinity

I was unsuccessful but he was not and yet

I went and he did not.

 

I wrote his mother to ask for a photograph

so that I might remember him and yet

found I did not need it.

 

I looked over the glass ball stuck round

with paper to mark the stars and yet

couldn’t trace them all alone.

 

On the hockey field I watched the daisies grow

under the warmth of sun and yet

wait to spread their petals wide.

 

My own mother will write to your own

send flowers for the funeral and yet

she will not quite understand why.

 

At sunrise on Saint Valentine’s Day a boy

heard his footsteps fall heavier and yet

he will not quite understand why.

 

Bethany Ashley

On Northanger Abbey and the post-chaise, by John Stafford

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Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey 1817 (written 1798-9)

On re-reading Northanger Abbey (after a fifty-year break) I was surprised by how much was familiar to me, but also how much seemed to be missing! I particularly remembered more detail about travel by carriage that seemed to show the conventions of the time. On checking the Internet, I found that the details I was missing were actually from Pride and Prejudice, where the types of carriage used for various purposes are used explicitly to signal the social status of the passengers and as a means to shock the reader.

A blog entry on Austenblog by  Margaret C. Sullivan: A Closer Look at Carriages and Characters in Pride and Prejudice https://austenblog.com/2010/07/02/a-closer-look-at-carriages-and-characters-in-pride-and-prejudice/ has information relevant to Mr Thorpe’s carriage:
“Younger gentlemen’s personal vehicles were usually either a gig or a curricle. These fast, sporty carriages were similar in being open vehicles with two wheels, seating two comfortably, and driven by one of the passengers; the main difference being that a gig was equipped to be pulled by one horse and a curricle by two, thereby doubling the horsepower—a Trans Am to the gig’s Firebird, if you will. Mr. Collins, predictably, owns a gig, in which he takes Sir William driving while he is visiting Hunsford. Mr. Darcy, also predictably, owns a curricle, which he uses to drive Georgiana to visit Elizabeth at the inn in Lambton.”

And specifically mentions the post-chaise that is ignominiously hired by Catherine Morland:  “A woman of gentle birth would not have travelled alone, especially in a hired vehicle, though it was sufficient for Elizabeth and Maria to have each other as a companion. (To step away from P&P for a moment, imagine what Lady Catherine would have to say about General Tilney sending poor Catherine Morland home alone on the post-chaise with no servant in Northanger Abbey! )”

Catherine Morland is sent about sixty miles on an eleven hour journey alone in a carriage at a cost of £3-4 (they were twelve pence a mile plus extras, and Catherine alludes to the extras: “Her youth, civil manners and liberal pay procured her all the attention that a traveller like herself could require.”)

The experience of travelling without supervision for the first time was a rite of passage in the twentieth century. It made you feel a bit more grown up. In my case it was to work in a hotel as a waiter in Swanage in the school summer holidays when I was sixteen. Travelling by train was something I had only done before with my family for holidays. Others did such a trip for a university interview or to start university. Before the first world war, most people never left home, but by the second world war men and women, boys and girls were being drafted into posts far away.

I believe most British students don’t travel alone until they have their own transport now, the normal mode being Mum’s car. Students from overseas of course have much more difficult journeys, but I wonder if a transcontinental trip by plane is much more challenging than Catherine’s sixty miles in very different times.

Defining Readers, by Nick Ricketts

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I am trying to get my head around the idea of different types of reader. As someone with scientific training, I tend to look for definitions, yet I am not sure that is particularly helpful here. I read an online article just now by Jane P. Tompkins in which the ‘mock reader’ is described as “… another ‘author’ whose existence was entirely a function of the text.” who “… directs attention away from the text and toward the effects it produces.” To me, this implies that the effects produced by a particular text are consistent, but surely that is not the case. I have read the same passage in a book at different times and have discovered a different meaning. My response has varied with mood and even surroundings, and different people certainly have a different response to the same book. My question is, what do we make of this?

The Indulgent Reader, by Bethany Ashley

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I don’t know if I am allowed to admit this, but I haven’t previously read any Jane Austen. I recall opening Pride and Prejudice briefly, then deciding I’d much rather re-read Wuthering Heights instead. So, this wasn’t just my first time reading Northanger Abbey, it was my first time reading Austen – and what an indulgent text I found it. Rich in social history, and impropriety, I loved having the opportunity to explore Bath and the Pump-Room along with Catherine. This wasn’t a book I had to struggle through, I humoured the drama of Catherine crying throughout her breakfast after receiving news from her brother, and earlier wishing to throw herself from the carriage so that she may walk with Henry and Eleanor.

It is quite clear that in places we are also indulging Austen, especially in her declaration on the values on the novel. At times, this created a distancing that removed you from Catherine’s world briefly, and reiterated that you were merely an observer and that Austen too was observing these things. It was quite clear that this was Austin’s interference in the story, but I saw no reason why she shouldn’t use her influence and readership however she had wanted.

One of the passages I found most interesting, awoke questions of the value of the written versus oral text. As Henry, Eleanor and Catherine walk to Beechen Cliff, Henry mocks Catherine’s lexical choice: ‘nice’. It is clear that there are many interpretations to Henry’s mocking, and flirting seems most probable in my opinion, but the important question it raised was whether Henry would have the same critique of the written word. This is not answered in the text but was provocative enough to allow me to think of other places I’d encountered this before.

The most prominent in mind was from the Bible. This year I’ve downloaded an app in which David Suchet, of Poirot fame, will read the Bible to you in one year. (Another text I haven’t read before). In Luke 11:28 Jesus says that ‘blessed are those who hear the word of God.’ Suchet pointed out in an interview about the project, that the emphasis in this passage is ‘hear the word’, not read, not speak but hear the word. I therefore wondered whether Henry was giving the same authority to the spoken word as the written word, or if one is more worthy of respect than the other. The written word is more often carefully considered, than the spoken which is spontaneous, but this doesn’t necessarily make it better, or truer.

I then considered poetry, my go-to form, and one I feel more comfortable discussing. Especially in regards to poetry, do I feel that the reader experience is important in discussing the value of oral texts. There is nothing worse, than finding out your favourite poet is dull at reading their own work, and nothing more powerful that somebody surprising you with something you’d previously ignored by feeling every word fizzing around your bloodstream. There is no truer example of this than Kevin Kantor’s People You May Know. I loved it so much, I bought his collection to re-read which sadly failed to capture the tension in the air, and I spent longer looking at what I thought was an errant comma than enjoying the reading experience.

I am now left to wonder if the next time I re-read Northanger Abbey, I should do so aloud.

Bethany Ashley

The experiment begins, by John Stafford

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It’s an experiment maybe. Get together a brilliant university staff member, a dozen sparkling third year undergraduates and a dozen retired people of various levels of education. Give them a reading list of books so varied that no-one has read them all already and see what they make of them.
Is that a fair representation of what we are doing?

I have a way of reading a new non-fiction book that’s a result of choosing books for a public library in a past career:
1. scan through it quickly to see its structure and ease of understanding,
2. pick a short section I can understand and read it
3. read the whole thing, looking up words and references I don’t understand (there was rarely time to do this as a librarian!)
4. make notes on anything I want to take from it.

James Wood (2015) The Nearest Thing to Life. Jonathan Cape. isbn 9780224102049 was the first week’s book.

I took it at first sight to be an autobiography, as there are childhood and youth anecdotes illustrating many points, and chose the section about his ‘unedifying girlfriend’ (p6) as a good starting place. I had to look up ‘unedifying’. I was reassured that the book was accessible enough to understand its contents. Falsely reassured, though, because although I can begin to grasp the concepts of serious noticing and secular homelessness, I am far from doing so. I have read some of the books referred to in the text, but not many. The quote from John Berger (p. 45) was the first clue I had to start thinking about the meaning of Wood’s text, and I have read some John Berger and read more about art than literature.
I have one note from this first full reading: that a text necessarily assumes some knowledge of its subject on the part of the reader, and the writer must provide enough hooks to what a reader may already know. Still thinking about some other ideas.
I would not have chosen to read this book had it not been on the list, nor would I have chosen it for my library unless it had been requested by a reader

I am in various stages of reading the other set texts, and I am also looking at W.G.Hoskins Two Thousand Years of Exeter, rev ed 2004, to learn something of my new home town; and Gordon C. Fisher, Blender 3d basics 2012, which is about a computer drawing program.

John Stafford