Wordsmithing: A COUNT DOWN TO WORLD BOOK NIGHT

Tuesday, 1 March 2011

A COUNT DOWN TO WORLD BOOK NIGHT

Chairman of the event, Jamie Byng, chief of publisher Canongate hopes the event will have "an enormously positive impact on books and reading."

"Having a million books given to one million different people on one night in this way is both unprecedented and hugely exciting," he said.

He is right!

The event starts in Trafalgar Square, this Friday night. Margaret Atwood, John le Carré and other major writers will be reading from their books to mark the official start to this amazing concept.

Comprehensive lists of books were forwarded to a panel. The merits of many well-known and well-loved books were debated. The titles they selected will be handed out for free. This is the list they chose:

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
Alan Bennett - A Life Like Other People's
John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Lee Child - Killing Floor
Carol Ann Duffy - The World's Wife
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Seamus Heaney - Selected Poems
Marian Keyes - Rachel's Holiday
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Ben Macintyre - Agent Zigzag
Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Yann Martel - Life of Pi
Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun
David Nicholls - One Day
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
CJ Sansom - Dissolution
Nigel Slater - Toast
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Sarah Waters - Fingersmith

Twenty-five books.

I watched the televised parts of the debate that lead to the selections - every one of them had to be remarkable to get through to the final twenty-five.

Currently, I have read three :( I intend to read them all, starting with One Day by David Nicholls ( Has anyone got a copy I can have? ;))

WHICH BOOK WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE GIVEN ON WORLD BOOK NIGHT?

2 comments:

Summer Ross1 March 2011 at 16:20
Wow- this sounds really neat! I think I might want to read the worlds wife.
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Unknown2 March 2011 at 01:20
Hi Summer
The World's Wife is near the top of my gotta-read list too :D
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RETURN: YA Paranormal Romance

I was running late. But, it was nothing I couldn’t make up with a bit of effort. I shook my head. Confident and happy? I smiled. Increasing my stride, I pushed until the muscles in my legs burned. I kept up the pace even when the hill grew steeper.

Magpie Lane was hardly wider than a ribbon that edged the woods but that didn’t stop traffic using it to get to the motorway quicker. Large trucks and fast cars loved Magpie Lane. They sent vibrations running through me rising from the soles of my trainers. I felt the disturbance in the ground, even before the air pressure tried to knock me off balance. I hunched my shoulders as the cab hauling a container spat stones up at me.

Jogging on the spot, at the entrance to woodland, I ached to leave the road and go inside. My Mum was probably still asleep but I could hear her you-never-know-what might-be-in-there lecture buzzing on repeat inside my head. I should run safe. Not even I would argue that running through the woods on my own was the best definition of safe but I wanted to run-wild and the woodland offered me that. This early, I should be safe from axe murderers or perverts in the trees and besides, I was fast.

I jogged down the slope into the trees. From two paces in, I felt different. Freer. It felt so right. Running in the woods did great things for my style. Avoiding the roots and dodging branches forced my stride longer, I had to step higher. The woodland, The Weald, was only a sliver of ancient woodland that the developers forgot to build on but it felt like it could have been anywhere. Everywhere. At any time. The oaks and beech trees dominated the space and the skinny, silver-birches squeezed up beside them. I laughed. For a second, the woods reminded me of school and I needed to run a lot faster.

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Tuesday, 1 March 2011

A COUNT DOWN TO WORLD BOOK NIGHT

2 comments: