Laya Turnbull’s reading journey

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Laya, a student at Sheffield Hallam University, has written her reading journey for us, as part of her Ideas into Action module.

My first memories of reading for myself, as a younger sibling who wanted be just like her older sister, began with me copying and reading whatever my sister who is two and a half years older was reading at that time because as a child she was also an avid reader and would often share the books after she had read them. This included the Mr Men series by Roger Hargreaves and the Rainbow Magic series by Daisy Meadows but as a small child I could not understand or read properly but enjoyed the colour and trying to collect the whole series. These books still hold sentimental value to me today as I have kept the whole collection in my childhood room as I feel unable to throw them away. Also they still hold relevance to my life today as these books are the theme for my good friend’s birthday party in a few weeks. This shows the sentimental value these sorts of books have for everyone my age and the nostalgia they still have for many people. In talking to my mum about this blog to gather research from her about my childhood reading habits, she told me that when I was little I was also almost obsessed with a book called Eat Your Peas [by Kes Gray]. In this book Daisy’s mother tries to get her to eat her vegetable by promising her increasingly outrageous treats which according to my mum reflected my own attitude to peas when I was younger.

I loved reading as a child and getting read to by my Mum and Dad. However my love for reading declined when I got to secondary school and being forced to read made me lose the enjoyment I once had from it. During this time only choosing short and easy to read stories that probably didn’t interest me just to say I had read something for school because we were made to read or at least look like we were reading during form time. Although my love for reading was regained during the summer and going on holidays when I was not in school. I would read two or three whole novels when on a week long holiday either on the beach or near the pool. I would still describe this as my paradise and my idea of heaven. At this age I tended to read young adult novels usually of the sci-fi or dystopian genre like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins or The Maze Runner by James Dashner, as I loved the romantic subplots with the action packed scenes.

Surprisingly in school as I got older my love for reading increased again as I enjoyed learning about Shakespeare and the plays and poems we had to learn for my GCSEs and A Levels. My favourites were Macbeth, Othello and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is still my favourite book to this day and sparked a small obsession with the 1920s aesthetic and even having a 1920s themed birthday party just last year where I dressed as a flapper girl. The poetry side of my schooling however was something I just had to endure. Even though I no longer have a hatred for all poetry I only enjoy small parts like the metaphysical poetry of John Donne and Andrew Marvell. As I got more back into reading I had felt I had missed out on the children’s books and young adult books that everyone was so captivated by. Because of this it was only recently that I decided to read the whole Harry Potter series and also became fixated as I understood why there was so much praise for the series.

Currently I enjoy reading the typical classics including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and most recently Pride and Prejudice which has sparked a new love for the romantic genre. I love the social commentary of George Orwell’s novels as it mostly reflects my own views on history and politics that I still think are relevant today as I and the author both support socialism. I also have found recently that I enjoy the horror genre after reading Stephen King’s Misery whose tension and unsettling nature stayed with me for weeks after. In the future I am going to read more of his novels. I most want to read Carrie and Pet Sematary. Furthermore, my wish to read lots of ‘classics’ is due to a poster I own where you have to scratch off the books you have read, called the ‘100 books bucket list’. This has prompted me and pushed me to start reading more again. I am making my way through this list slowly and steadily as some of the books on there are not something I would usually read but I feel like it would make me broaden my horizons and read more genres. I am continuing to try and read more of these classics but I am also currently interested in reading online newspapers, magazines and blogs because it feeds my desire to continue my interests in reading but they are short enough that my attention span is not tested and can fit into my busy life at university. I find that trying to fit reading long novels that I do enjoy is difficult to continue in my university life so just reading short newspaper articles and blogs and keeping up with current events is easier for me. I am currently reading Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and its mystery genre is something I would like to continue reading.

Here is Laya’s review of The King’s Secret Matter by Jean Plaidy.

On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute

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By Herbie Williams

Here is our guest blogger Herbie Williams, from Sheffield Hallam University, on Nevil Shute and his novel On the Beach.  

I would not consider myself a fan of ‘classic’ books. Upon first reading the brief for the Reading Sheffield blogs and the list of authors and books, there was only a handful that I had previously heard of. Having read H G Wells’ War of the Worlds and the works of Dickens in A Christmas Carol years ago in my GCSE English lessons, the remaining books and authors were mostly unfamiliar to me. As I discussed in the previous blog about my reading journey, I would consider myself a picky reader, so few of the books stood out to me on paper. The novel I ended up selecting was the On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Judging on the name of the novel, I assumed this would be a fictional story about romance between surfers, hence I went into researching the novel with no expectations of enjoying it. However, after reading the synopsis for On the Beach, it immediately piqued my interest.

Published in 1957, On the Beach is a dystopian / post-apocalyptic novel often described as Nevil Shute’s most powerful and moving. Born in England in 1899, after his service in the Second World War he emigrated to Australia, where the novel is mostly set. The novel begins shortly after nuclear explosions wipe out almost all of western civilisation, with the radiation that followed slowly killing the rest. On the Beach tells a story of normal people living their normal life, including the crew of a remaining nuclear submarine. Initial optimism is short lived, as the community come to terms, knowing these are their last days on the poisonous earth of humanity’s own creation, despite the southern hemisphere having no involvement in the conflict causing it. Both I as a reader and the characters eventually accept that there is no escaping the invisible and inevitable death by the nuclear fallout. I thoroughly enjoyed the portrayal of the characters’ reaction to this, as they ridicule others as they make plans for the future only to continue with life as usual. I found myself strangely enthralled by the hopelessness and bleakness of the story, along with Shute’s matter-of-factly, almost cynical style of writing. There are no heroes or villains or silver linings in the story, just constant pessimism.

Alternate history and post-apocalyptic fiction has been a niche interest of mine for many years. One of my favourite video game franchises, Fallout, follows the narrative of our timeline diverging in the 1940s following the Second World War. In the Fallout universe, the nuclear paranoia of the Cold War never ceases, technology advances rapidly and yet the aesthetic of the 1950s remains strong all the way through to the final quarter of the 21st century, where humanity meets its apparent end as nuclear weapon-induced, mutually-assured destruction bombards western civilisation. There are multiple parallels between the two fictional realities that instantly drew my attention. While Fallout takes a more savage and truly apocalyptic approach to nuclear fallout, with the radiation causing freakish mutations to humans and animals, On the Beach explores humanity’s contrasting reaction to inevitable death, with civilisation continuing normally until accepting defeat in dignity. I had not previously considered this perspective of a post-apocalyptic society, making the premise of the book interest me more.

As I researched the media opinion of the novel and Nevil Shute in its release year, reviews and critiques were few and far between. The Daily Telegraph describe the book as ‘quietly and deliberately terrible’. However, two films based on and named after the novel were created in 1959 and 2000, meaning it was large enough in pop culture to be recognised in Hollywood despite not being a household name, at least to my knowledge. As the book was published a relatively short time after the end of the Second World War, and during the height of the Cold War, one can only imagine that the novel was even more terrifying and bleak to the general public historically, with nuclear war being a very real threat. Despite being dated and slightly naive in its understanding of a nuclear war, I think the novel holds up well today in terms of readability. However, I personally thought Shute’s presentation of female characters in the story to be rather rigid and simple, perhaps a sign of attitudes towards women in the 50s. Reading Sheffield interviewee Anne B is very familiar with the works of Shute, having read many of his novels but believed ‘none of them were as memorable as [On The Beach and A Town Like Alice]’.

Having started to read On the Beach expecting a slog, to say my experience with the book was a pleasant surprise is an understatement. Despite very much being a slow burner, Shute’s cold and detached writing style to reinforce the bleakness of the novel and ability to create incredibly powerful imagery had me gripped, disturbed and borderline depressed. The novel can be summarised by the final stanza in T.S. Eliot’s infamous 1925 poem, The Hollow Men – ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’

Here is Herbie’s reading journey.

Herbie Williams’ reading journey

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Herbie Williams is the latest of our guest bloggers from Sheffield Hallam University. Here he talks about how the Ideas into Action project helped him work out what reading means to him.

Having been born and bred in Sheffield in council estates far from where most of my primary school friends lived, entertainment in my early school years usually consisted of solo activities. Playing with Lego and Star Wars figures and Lego Star Wars: The Video Game were my favourite hobbies in my free time, but the one thing that kept me quiet for countless hours was reading. From the Mr Men and The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Wide Mouthed Frog and Dirty Bertie to The Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise and their seemingly endless follow-up books that followed me throughout school (and admittedly much later as I picked up my brother’s copy of the newest addition to the series to keep up-to-date with Greg Heffley, the main character). I even went to school for World Book Day as Greg, an intricate costume consisting of jeans and a white t-shirt. Reading influenced and shaped me in more ways than meets the eye.

I have fond memories of using my torch to secretly read past my bedtime under my duvet and quickly pretending to be asleep after hearing footsteps on the stairs. Even when I was rumbled, my mum often didn’t scold me, usually giving a gentle slap on the wrist. This however was very much not the case when I got caught playing Mario Kart after my bedtime. She had always promoted reading as a healthy hobby for me and took a very active interest in making sure I had a steady supply of reading material. If there was a book from a series that I had enjoyed, my mum would scour the internet and local bookshops to find any sequels, prequels, spinoffs or anything in-between.

I’ve never really got into ‘the classics.’ Looking at the list of authors and books that were considered must-reads and realising I had not heard of most of them was quite daunting. Of all the titles in the reading list, only two of them had I read before. I had sometimes considered whether elitism may creep into reading, with some thinking that my motivations and attitudes towards reading may be looked down upon. Since writing this blog however, I came to the conclusion that this project was to get an accurate representation of what reading meant and means to me. It doesn’t matter whether I read for enjoyment or to gain more knowledge about a certain subject, only the journey that reading takes me on matters. It also gave me some level of comfort knowing that some of the Reading Sheffield interviewees held similar views and experiences regarding ‘classics’. The only one that came to mind that I enjoyed was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies when reading and analysing it at school but I never considered pursuing similar titles.

While to my peers at primary school reading was mainly a mandatory task or chore, to me reading was a favourite pastime. I treated my academic assigned reading as a time trial instead of enjoying the book and comprehending it as much as possible. Starting with Biff, Chip and Kipper and their adventures in The Magic Key by Oxford Reading Tree, the shelves of books at school to work through the various reading levels at school never interested me as I was a very picky reader. However, the reward for completing the reading levels was becoming a ‘free reader’. This meant I could read books of my own choosing from my own collection and claim it as my weekly reading homework. Even when I wasn’t reading, I was building up my vocabulary: one of my favourite games was finding new words on my pocket electronic thesaurus at school.

My family were another factor that influenced my reading journey – my grandparents. I went to my granny and grandad’s house at least once a week and indulged in cheese on toast and a very enthusiastic reading of The Tiger Who Came to Tea. A trip to the library where my granny volunteered to collect a new book or two to put me on for a few days was also commonplace.

Although as I entered sixth form and higher education my passion for reading was nowhere near what it once was. During the various lockdowns of 2020/21, I picked up my old Kindle out of boredom and flicked through some of my teenage years favourites: The Knife of Never Letting Go, the Gone series and my all-time favourite book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. It at least reminded me of my love for reading. Today, as other hobbies and commitments have taken priority over reading, I still bring a book with me on public transport or read for an hour or so before going to sleep.

Here is Herbie’s review of Nevil Shute’s novel, On the Beach.

A Review of Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L Sayers

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By Ellie Jackson

Ellie, whose reading journey is here, is one of our student bloggers from Sheffield Hallam University. Here is her take on Dorothy L Sayers’ crime novel, Gaudy Night, about poison pen letters in an Oxford College – and about women’s role in the world. Sayers’ stories were popular with many of our interviewees, all born in the middle of the last century, long before Ellie.

Note: The blog includes spoilers.

Dorothy Leigh Sayers published her first novel in 1923 introducing Lord Peter Wimsey, with the publication of Gaudy Night in 1935 being another addition to the Wimsey-Vane Saga. I have sought through many reviews on the internet in order to get a grasp of others’ opinions on the Wimsey-Vane Saga, and come to the conclusion that many have thought Gaudy Night to be the culmination of the Saga, although it is actually not the final piece of the chronicles. There’s Busman’s Honeymoon (1937) and Dorothy Sayers began writing Thrones, Dominations but she later abandoned it and the novel was merely notes and fragments of the story after her death. The novel was later finished by Jill Paton Walsh, and published in 1998. Gaudy Night begins with a reunion at Shrewsbury College, a mysterious crime of poison pen letters and tormenting events in which famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, the protagonist of the novel previously proven innocent and saved by Wimsey after the accusation of a murder she didn’t commit, investigates. The novel is full of gripping techniques of ‘whodunnit’ and I found it rather difficult to put down after beginning. Dorothy was an English crime writer and poet, best known for her mystery novels (The Dorothy L Sayers Society, 2019). Dorothy Sayers is known as one of the ‘big four’ female detective writers from the ‘golden age’ of detective fiction (GBSM, 2012) along with great writers such as Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh. The golden age of detective fiction is still one of the most popular literary genres generally regarded as spanning from 1920 to 1940, and remains as a generic highpoint in literary fiction (UOO, 2022).

Before I began this project, I had never read or heard of Dorothy Sayers’ series of mystery novels. Truth be told, I had no particular interest in reading mystery fiction before commencing my project on Gaudy Night either. Often in my youth I found murder mystery novels to be particularly lightweight in comparison to other literary texts and novels I had read and enjoyed for its passion and emotion, “gives rise to no feelings or evokes no dream” (Brody, 1985). They tend to be least focused on the emotional development and growth of the main character, and rather concerned with answering the question of ‘who committed the crime?’. It is also suggested that detective fiction is said to ‘continually invent stricter rules for itself’ and ‘it is careful only to leave no suspense, nothing unclear. Everything mysterious that it introduces, it makes coherent.’ (Brody, 1985). For this reason, I have never enjoyed reading detective fiction as there is never room left for the readers’ imagination. Surprisingly, I thoroughly appreciated reading Gaudy Night and after witnessing the development of feminist ideas and how class divisions are being represented even within a mystery novel, I now have a completely different perspective for mystery fiction. Perhaps because I have matured and have more reading experiences now than I did the last time I attempted reading a mystery fiction, or because I found it refreshing to read something entirely different to anything I would usually choose. I found Gaudy Night to be less of a stereotypical detective novel, and was able to leave some ideas to the imagination. Regrettably, I did not read the thrilling series in order of events, and so jumping straight in at Gaudy Night I had to work harder to understand what was unfolding throughout the novel, however this did not hinder the pleasure of reading it. Despite having not read the complete saga, I have searched the internet for many in depth reviews and criticisms for the previous novels, and found that in fact not reading the series in order is the most popular opinion when it comes to discovering the emotional intensity of Gaudy Night, and so the reader has no emotional investment already present for each of the characters. Sayers has a superb writing style that keeps the story flowing but also delivers humorous and thought provoking comments to keep the mystery and development of characters and allows insight into the mind of the heroin and writer. In addition to such research, I found that Gaudy Night is the first to adopt a feminist ideology between all of the Wimsey novels, discussing the struggles and development of female characters toward equality and education. Sayers presents her heroine finally as a centre point in the Wimsey saga, a woman with detective qualities and employed to investigate a crime. Sayers does a wonderful job of creating a meaningful but complicated relationship between Harriet and Peter, in which the heroine does not conform to usual stereotypes for women in the time period and the male character respects such behaviour. I think she allows the reader to see the subtle and unspoken moments but also the significance of them. After researching many newspaper articles from the 20th century on Dorothy Sayers and Gaudy Night, The Times newspaper suggests ‘Dorothy Sayers in her early twenties was a focal point for the young people of literary importance of her time.’ (The Times Newspaper, 1958. Pg 13). Harriet is a successful author, wondering if mystery novels will ever rise to the level of literature, mirroring her creator.

Gaudy Night is absolutely a mystery novel – however it contains no actual murder, just a series of poison pen letters, in which the heroine of the story, Harriet, is asked to capture the culprit of these letters and practical jokes played by an individual attending Shrewsbury College. The perpetrator is found to be a servant, an individual seemingly invisible to the rest of the population of the College. Sayers represents the idea of class division by making the invisible servant visible, and reinforcing prejudices against class and femininity throughout the novel. Upon commencing research for this novel and author, I discovered the interview of Kath and Ken conducted by Reading Sheffield. As conversation is flowing, Ken begins to discuss the works of Dorothy Sayers, particularly Gaudy Night. He refers to it as a ‘fantastically written thing’, an opinion I would be inclined to agree with. He also makes a great point about the class distinctions and prejudices throughout the novel, relevant to the time frame in which it was written and the view others have on reading about more old-fashioned ideas and particularly rejecting them, and suggests that ‘if you can’t read a book because that puts you off, it deprives you of so much that’s been written’. Ken makes a valid observation, as most popular fiction from the 1930s contain old-fashioned ideas and can be seen as controversial in modern literature, but don’t take away the significance at the time, or the significance of the message throughout.

Gaudy Night was an absolute pleasure to read, and I can confirm I will be reading the complete saga.

Here is Ellie’s reading journey.

Bibliography

Brody, M. (1985). The Haunting of “Gaudy Night”: Misreadings in a Work of Detective Fiction. Style, 19(1), 94–116. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42945532

Gerard Bianco Storyteller Marketing, 2012. DO YOU KNOW THE “BIG FOUR” FEMALE DETECTIVE WRITERS FROM THE “GOLDEN AGE”? https://gerardbianco.blogspot.com/2012/08/do-you-know-big-four-female-detective.html

The Dorothy L Sayers Society, 2019. About Dorothy L Sayers. https://www.sayers.org.uk/biography

The Times Newspaper, 1958. Miss Dorothy Sayers. Issue no. 54037. Pg 13. University of Oxford, 2022. The Golden Age of British Detective Fiction. https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/the-golden-age-of-british-detective-fiction?gclid=Cj0KCQiAu62QBhC7ARIsALXijXQM5rQy9do9UC32rA1tvaqJKBwvLhR_SCWuF2EyyH7vt2mB8ulYh8kaAgHqEALw_wcB

Ellie Jackson’s reading journey

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Here is another of the guest blogs from the Sheffield Hallam University students working with us through the Ideas into Action programme. We ask the students to write their own reading journey (a task they seem to enjoy, as they’re rarely given the opportunity to think about reading for pleasure) and to review a book or author popular with our original interviewees, all born at least 60 years before the students. It’s always interesting to see our material through the eyes of people born in this century, and we hope that the chance they get to look back increases their understanding of the world when their grandparents and great-grandparents were young.

Ellie’s memories of visiting the library and discovering Enid Blyton are pin-sharp.

As a child, I was introduced to books from the first moment I can remember. I was born and raised in a small town on the outskirts of Nottingham, and moved to Sheffield in September 2020 to complete my degree in English Literature. I was taken to the library in our small town multiple times a week by my grandparents, with rows and rows of more books than I could count. This experience is encapsulated into my memory; my younger self being completely mesmerized by them. I later realized that the library probably had no more books than a couple of hundred, a miniscule amount as opposed to other libraries I have visited after this. And so my reading journey began at a young age; the earliest books I remember reading are the Tales of Beatrix Potter and the Winnie the Pooh collection. My parents would read them to me before bedtime each night over and over again. I was fascinated by how the pictures in the books came to life, from the authors’ writing and the way my parents would adopt a new tone for each character. In my room I had a bookcase of around 200 books, and even more that were given a space in our spare bedroom as my parents would never throw them out, and I must have gotten at least five new for each birthday and Christmas.

My grandparents have always had a vast impact on my life in general, but more so when it comes to my reading experiences. I never had a positive reading experience during my years at primary school. Having to make my way up the reading stages with the Biff and Chip book collection was something I dreaded and remember asking my then teacher, if I could read The Wind in the Willows, or Peter Pan. I sped through the books, and I knew I could read more advanced ones. I was told that I was lacking in punctuation and quite far behind in writing skills than most of the other children in my school year, and that I needed extracurricular sessions with my English teacher after school. I became completely disheartened and despite knowing I was a great reader and it being my favorite pastime, I started reading less and less. My grandparents would collect me from school each day, and later informed me that they had noticed I wasn’t as interested in reading anymore, and no longer wanted to sit with my nose buried into a book before dinner. And so, instead of taking me to the library to borrow a book, they had taken me into their attic and let me have the choice of what I would like to read. From this day, I discovered multiple authors that have had a huge impact on my personal reading journey so far, such as Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, as well as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. After listening to many of the Readers’ Voices interviews on the Reading Sheffield website, I realized myself and Margaret Young both shared our first reading experiences and with our grandparents, as her grandfather was an ‘avid reader’ and grandmother read classic novels much like the ones I was introduced to by my own grandparents, ‘Dickens and so on’.

As I was searching through the Reading Sheffield website to find more of others’ reading journeys, I came across Gillian Applegate’s interview, and despite being born 61 years apart, I noticed we share a similar enjoyment in reading Charles Dickens, specifically Great Expectations. This story is one I remember well and also studied during my GCSEs and came across again during my first year of university. I enjoyed watching the BBC adaptation of Great Expectations almost as much as I enjoyed reading the book for the first time, and found a love for watching TV and film adaptations of other celebrated novels too. Gillian also discusses her love for historical novels, which definitely resonates with myself as I prefer to read classic, timeless novels such as Wuthering Heights and War and Peace, both of which I have appreciated in the past few years.

Enid Blyton’s work as a whole has inspired much of my reading journey, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Wood becoming my favorite books for years of my childhood after being read by my mum before bedtime. I also used Enid Blyton as a case in point within my Extended Project Qualification at A level, discussing her as an author but also arguments put out through the media about her work. I absolutely loved creating this project as her books had been a huge part of my childhood, and I achieved an A*.  Regrettably, in order to complete my degree, I have many great (and some, in my opinion not so great) books that I have to read, consequently causing a lack of reading for pleasure and rather for work purposes. An example of the books I haven’t enjoyed so much throughout my modules is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Both are great books for those who enjoy adventure fiction, and I loved the psychological analysis of both novels involving Freudian analysis. However I personally did not engage as well with these novels as I have with the others I have studied, such as Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Animal’s People by Indra Sinha. I hope to begin reading much more for myself from now on and to work on managing my workload of novels along with ones I am personally eager to read, as there are so many books still sat on my bookshelf that I feel guilty for neglecting, while picking up the same books I have been reading all year. I have recently commenced reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers for the other half of this project, and plan to purchase the rest of the collection to this book for my own reading pleasure.

Here is Ellie’s review of Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers..

My Reading Journey

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For the last couple of years, Reading Sheffield has taken part in Sheffield Hallam University’s Ideas into Action project. The participating students examine our research and read a novel popular with our readers born in the 20th century. Then they write their own reading journey and review the novel. For many of the students, it’s a new experience to write about something as personal as their reading history. They say too that they have often never heard of the novel they review, or don’t know much of the context in which it was written.

Here is a powerful reading journey about the impact, both physical and imaginative, which reading can have. The student has asked to remain anonymous.

One of the earliest memories I have of myself as a child is where I was curled up next to my mother, both of our bodies wrapped in the sheets with only the warm faint glow of the lamp’s light to illuminate our faces and most important of all: the words scribbled upon the page of the book she was reading to me. I found great comfort in her warmth as one of her arms wrapped around my body, causing my head to rest on her chest and the other firmly holding the book into place, so I could be in awe of all of its illustrations and languages. Most importantly I was in awe of how my mother read.

Her sweet voice seemed to make the author’s words come to life in a way film never could. The way she mimicked certain characters’ voices helped to give me a sense of immersion. It encouraged me to imagine the characters right in front of me, talking with me. As though I was their friend. As though I myself were a character in one of these pages. Is it any wonder why I chanted ‘Again! Again! Again!’?

The fact of the matter is, I was surrounded by all forms of literature work, and often finding reality boring and unkind, I’d purposefully attempt to sneak a book off the shelf in desperate notion to create some form of escapism. To me, it truly didn’t matter what I was reading, even if I couldn’t understand the words, even if the phrasing of the words themselves were strung together in ways that would intimidate me, I would still persevere and read on. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t understand the deep intricacies of the violent nature of men or their beautifully woven words of peace and love throughout the works of non-fiction. As long as I was reading, I didn’t have to interact with the world, and that’s what mattered to me the most. To this day I still regard reading as a private activity, something to only be indulged in with myself and by myself.

Hence why my first experience to the library was an odd one. On the way there my body was riddled with immense giddiness that I tried my best to rein in. Well, as much as an eight-year-old could rein in anyway. I knew my expression didn’t hide my joy, or for a better term, it couldn’t hide my joy. My mother’s hand had already enveloped mine and I squeezed it in turn to silently showcase my brimming glee.

The steps towards the library seemed magnificent to me. I soon imagined how it was a replica of what I had read in the books. I looked up in awe as from my view, the top of the building seemed to tickle the clouds with its touch. My imagination soon encouraged me to envision a flying creature of sorts (truthfully, I imagined a tiger with wings) looming over just above those same clouds, watching me with eagerness.

It all seemed to be going fine so far, right? Of course, that’s what I thought of as well, until we stepped foot and made our way into the building then I saw other people.  Now this may confuse you, after all you may ask, ‘Well, what else did you expect? It’s a library.’ This is where my thinking becomes nonsensical so allow me to explain.

Whenever I read, I became completely under control of whatever the piece was, regardless of its contents. Due to this I let myself be engulfed and, in my mind, I let myself be vulnerable. I grew so attached to fiction and it morphed into something so private in my mind that when I saw people there with the same interests as me, rather than make me tremendously happy, it scared me.

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how I got from that position to soon seating myself down on a hardened chair, my eyes scanning the pages of the book right in front me, yearning to know just why this version of Cinderella gave me the perspective of the stepsisters and not Cinderella herself, but I’m so grateful it happened.

It wasn’t long before I was at the mercy of the words again, and once again nothing else mattered, once again, it was just the book and I. Soon I began to venture out to my primary school library when allowed to and I’d find myself reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, etc.

I soon found myself immersed in the stories of the Celtic warrior Boudicca and the Egyptian Pharaoh Cleopatra. I wanted to be just like them, strong, intelligent, brave, willing to do anything for ones they love. I still do. Some things never change.

My love for reading only grew as did my experience of life in general. I soon learned that reading didn’t only enhance my life, but how through reading I was able to engage in life, constantly balancing the two. My cousin would often gift me her unwanted books, that were in pristine condition on the sole basis that she knew I would love to read.

It would take every ounce of my self-control to not tear the bag right from her hands there and then. On those days I’d spend the rest of my day reading what was gifted to me. If I correctly recall my current total for most books read in a day is roughly five to six. I’m determined to beat it one day.

Throughout my degree I find myself reading more to not only widen my collection but to ensure I succeed academically. Do I still love to read? Yes, absolutely. I remind myself that excelling academically is only a benefit to wider reading and not the sole reason why I choose to engage in it. I still write my stories, sonnets and poems that are not addressed to anyone else but I.

I am proud to call myself a writer and a reader. Writing forced me to acknowledge myself, and reading, no matter whether it be from a book, or a video game, allowed me to fall in love with myself and that is something no one can take away from me, but I’d sure like to see them try.

Reading Memories

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By Lynne Gibbons

Our friend Lynne Gibbons shares her reading memories, prompted by her book group’s choosing to read Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading (London, Square Peg, 2018).

I really enjoyed Bookworm and I’m sure it will have sparked many memories for all our group. I can imagine there will be lots of ‘I loved that…’ and ‘I couldn’t stand that!’. I was reminded of books from my own childhood, from my daughter’s childhood and from my days teaching infants.

I’m still quite partial to books labelled ‘for children’ or ‘YA – young adults’. (That’s a whole other discussion – should books be age categorized at all?) I have to confess that I caused great arguments at my Lancashire book group, by recommending YA books. The one they really hated was The Knife of Never Letting Go (Walker Books, 2013) by Patrick Ness, but I was so sad when they were quite dismissive about Here Lies Arthur (Marion Lloyd Books, 2011) by Philip Reeve. I won’t expand on either book, but I still recommend them!

I still have some books from my childhood, including the Enid Blytons shown below. Apparently I had hysterics whenever the blue book was suggested. In that one, Mary Mouse, who was the family’s nursemaid, left the children because they were so naughty. She did return in the end, but I obviously couldn’t stand the upset and eventually I took to hiding it! ‘Not the blue book – don’t read the blue book!’ 

Post-war books look so sad now, but my Dad sought out some lovely picture books for me and later enrolled me in the Children’s Book Club. I think it was run by Foyles and happily it didn’t seem to have specific boy or girl choices, so I read lots of Biggles, by Captain W E Johns, as well as Dodie Smith!

I also accumulated piles of pre-war, vintage volumes from jumble sales, mostly run by the local Labour Party. I loved Susan Coolidge’s Katy books, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series and L M Montgomery’s novels about Anne Shirley. But I have to say some of the more obscure volumes were puzzling, to say the least! Two Missionary Ladies in Tibet or Little Maid Marigold? These books are ‘prize fiction’, that is, moralising novels given as prizes for punctuality and the like at school or Sunday School in late 19th and early 20th centuries. The photographs below show a prize book, Doreen (London, John F Shaw, 1928), by Charles Herbert, and the bookplate awarding it to Ivy Eyre. I think Ivy was a friend of my parents from the Labour Party.

Little Maid Marigold (London, Religious Tract Society, 1902) is by Eleanora H. Stooke. Two Lady Missionaries in Tibet (London, S W Partridge, 1909) is by Isabel Suart Robson and includes a photograph of the two ladies, Annie R Taylor and Susie Carson Moyes, and a fascinating 30-page catalogue of the publisher’s Popular Illustrated Books which range in price from 6s to 3d. The Missionary Ladies come in the 1s 6d list.

And there was always the library to borrow books from! Highfield was my first one, when I was aged 4.

Thanks to Bookworm, I was reminded of a conversation with my friend Frances. She never had a doll’s house when she was a child. Her lack of this toy has stayed with her as my ‘blue book’ horrors have with me. Did we suffer any long-term consequences? I don’t know but the memories are sharp. I’ve recommended to Frances that she read Rumer Godden’s The Doll’s House (London, Michael Joseph, 1947). This is a surprisingly dark story about the dolls who live in the house. When I checked in Bookworm, it turns out that Lucy Mangan knows and loves this book too.

Tea, cake and books

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On Saturday 3 September we held a tea party to support Mary Grover’s new book, Steel City Readers. We want to raise £12,500 so that the publisher, Liverpool University Press, can make the book free to download online.

Steel City Readers is based on the memories of 65 Sheffielders. We asked them about the books they read for pleasure between 1925 and 1955. (You can read or listen to the interviews in full here.) Mary explores their compulsion to read when there seemed little to be gained, the background – home, school, library – to their reading and the effect of factors like class and gender on their reading choices.

The tea party was a wonderful occasion. Tea, cake and talk about books. What’s not to like?

We heard from Mary, who described how she researched the book, formed the narrative running through it and put her own reading journey into it.

Some of the books informing Steel City Readers

The Sheffield artist Lizz Tuckerman brought along some of the pictures from her exhibition In Praise of Libraries, illustrating the reading journeys of some of our interviewees.

The Lord Mayor and other guests viewing Lizz Tuckerman’s pictures

Sheffield poet Eleanor Brown read poems inspired by our interviewees. You can read the poems in Eleanor’s latest collection, White Ink Stains, published by Bloodaxe Books and available from local and online booksellers.

Slaap kindje slaap
Sleep baby sleep
Daar buiten loopt een schaup
Outside is a sheep
Een schaap met witte voetjes
A sheep with little white feet
drinkt eijn melk zo zoetjes
who drinks his milk so sweet.

from White Ink, by Eleanor Brown, in White Ink Stains (Bloodaxe Books, 2019).

Julia Banks and Shirley Ellins, two of our interviewees, described the pleasure and pride they had gained from their participation in Steel City Readers. Julia talked about her life in the Netherlands, learning Dutch nursery rhymes to help her young children as they went to nursery school. Shirley told how reading helped her discover her passion for history, the subject she taught for many years.

The young Shirley Ellins
Julia Banks

Our special guests were Sheffield’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Councillors Sioned-Mair Richards and Jackie Satur. The Lord Mayor, who regularly reads to groups of schoolchildren in the Lord Mayor’s Parlour, spoke about what reading meant to her and about her discovery of books like The Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, school stories, Susan Coolidge’s Katy books and Jean Plaidy’s historical romances, to name but a few.

Councillor Sioned-Mair Richards, Lord Mayor of Sheffield

Many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the tea party so enjoyable.

Here is the link to our Just Giving page. We are grateful, especially in these hard times, to everyone who has donated so far, and hope for more donations.

Steel City Readers

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By Mary Grover

Reading Sheffield’s main activity this year is to raise money to support ‘Steel City Readers’, the book by our founder, Dr Mary Grover, about reading for pleasure in Sheffield between 1925 and 1955. The memories of the Sheffield readers we interviewed for our oral history project are at the heart of the book. We want to raise £12,500 to make ‘Steel City Readers’ free to download through an Open Access Licence, so that anyone may read it. Here is our Just Giving page where you can make a donation.

Mary Soar (born Wilkinson)

When you joined the queue of boys waiting to ask Mary Wilkinson to dance, you didn’t know that you were in for something more than swinging a girl round ‘in a room with a lovely bouncy floor above the garage on Psalter Lane’. For, in between dances, Mary brought out her ‘Confession Book’.

With this and a fountain pen, the resourceful girl soon extracted from her friends, male and female, but mostly male, their innermost desires. Each person had to ponder how to conclude a set of prompts like these:

‘I am going to marry for . . ‘

‘My favourite girl is . . .’

My favourite dance band is  . . . ‘ (Harry Roy being the ‘Marmite’ band)

My favourite author is . . .’ (Most of them were thriller writers like Edgar Wallace and the authors of the long-running Sexton Blake series.)

Reading Sheffield discovered Mary’s precious time-capsule ten years ago when we set out to explore the books that mattered to Sheffield readers in the Thirties and Forties. We interviewed 65 readers from all over Sheffield, born before 1945, about what they read when they were growing up.

Mary’s Confession Book is a treasure because people who are not famous, like Mary and her friends, rarely leave records of how they thought and read. Yet, our personal histories and our tastes are individual and surprising, and reflect the times in which we grew up.

The first reader whose memoir I explored did indeed become famous. He was born long before our readers and his reading could easily have derailed a career which was to see him inventing the process of creating stainless steel. Yet Harry Brearley’s first love was reading.

Harry Brearley

Like most of our readers, Brearley had no books at home and even less schooling. He had no access to books from municipal libraries, so, being the resourceful child he was, he made his own. He became a bottle washer in a chemistry laboratory, went to night school, and was inspired by the great educator and philanthropist, John Ruskin. The boy kept borrowing Ruskin’s economic treatise, Unto This Last, copying it out, page by page. He bound the pages with scraps of leather he had scrounged and created a copy of Ruskin’s great work that was his to keep. A formidable achievement, but it was Sheffield’s good fortune that he decided that ‘Reading, there was no living in it’. He turned his attention to the chemistry textbooks lent him by the head of the laboratory.

Adele Jagger aged about 16 in the back garden of 277a Ecclesall Road

For most of our readers, growing up during the Depression, the Second World War and the hard times that followed, there was, still, less of a living to be made from book-learning than there was from taking up a good apprenticeship, if you were lucky enough to be offered one. So why were so many of the people we interviewed gripped by the reading bug and the desire to entertain and educate themselves by reading? For many, with little encouragement, reading became a kind of addiction. Adele, born in 1942 whose father was a painter and decorator, never saw either of her parents hold a book yet, as she put it, ‘something gets hold of you, doesn’t it?’  When I suggested to Doreen, born in 1934, that when she started courting there might not have been time for reading, she was quite tart with me: ‘You can read and dance, Mary!’ Doreen had to leave her grammar school early for lack of parental support. Mary Wilkinson had to leave school early because the family printing business folded. Both girls never let the absence of a School Certificate rob them of an education. They kept on reading.

Doreen Gill and her husband

Most of our readers depended on Sheffield’s superb libraries for the books they read but annuals and comics also changed people’s lives. When Fred Jones from the Manor got tuberculosis in the Thirties at the age of 8, he was a non-reader: ‘I just couldn’t fathom it’. He was sent to Nether Edge isolation hospital and thanks to a mound of comics donated by an imaginative benefactor, he came out fluent, ‘never able to put a book down’ and got to night school.

Fred’s story is told by one of our interviewees, Malcolm Mercer, a boy who never passed his 11+ but became headmaster of Parson Cross School largely because of his own reading. When he left school at 14 to become a shop-assistant he bought himself a notebook and recorded everything he read. He borrowed books from Park Library, setting himself his own curriculum, which included Scouting for Boys, Lord Beaverbrook’s Success, 100 Tips for more Trade and Tolstoy’s Tales of Courage and Conflict.

Park Library

Steel City Readers is inspired by the pleasure Malcolm, Doreen, Mary and others found in the books they hunted down. Liverpool University Press is publishing it as an e-book which will make it free to readers globally, but an author must find £12,500 for the licence fee and other costs to publish it. Will you help Reading Sheffield pay the fee? If you could make a donation, perhaps in memory of someone you know whose life was changed by reading, we would be most grateful and you would be contributing to preserving Sheffield’s history.

The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary

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By Val Hewson

This month our sister project, the Sheffield Hallam Popular Fiction Group, is celebrating its tenth anniversary by publishing a collection of reviews, The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary: Exploring Popular Fiction 1900-1950.

We think this wonderful cover image is a publicity photo for Sheffield Libraries (Picture Sheffield. Ref: u02265. Used with permission)

When the idea of a book was first suggested, we felt that members of the group should choose the books and authors they wanted to review. This was risky, as we might have ended up with 20 Agatha Christie reviews, but the strategy paid off. There are 22 authors and 25 books in The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary. There is everything from children’s classics to dystopian science fiction, from politically radical to conservative, published between 1908 and 1950, mostly British – but also Russian, Canadian, Austrian and French – some still popular and others long forgotten. No Agatha Christies, but she gets lots of attention elsewhere, so we don’t feel guilty.  

Helping to edit the reviews gave me the chance to revisit books I know well, like L M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (a friend for 50 years now), but also to get to know books new to me, like Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel. The work made me wonder if our Reading Sheffield interviewees said anything about the authors chosen for the anniversary book.

Dennis Wheatley appears to be the best remembered, with at least 15 interviewees mentioning his tales of espionage, war and the occult. Chris F (b. 1939) recalled:

… the house library at school had one or two Dennis Wheatleys and they all had the salacious bits in them and we all knew where they were, pages 27 and 28, and if you opened the book, they were well-thumbed.

Dorothy Latham (b. 1931) revelled in L M Montgomery’s stories of Canadian girlhood:

My absolute passion was Anne of Green Gables…I adored all the series. If I’d have had a daughter – which I didn’t. I had two sons – she would have been called Anne…I adored it, and I – I was just absorbed with it.

For James Green (b. 1936), Rafael Sabatini brought back family memories:

My mum always used to read romances. And my dad’s two favourite authors which you very rarely hear anything about now were Rafael Sabatini, and Jeffery Farnol. And I think, if I remember right, they’re mainly historical novels about French revolution, and you know, that sort of thing.

Ken M (b. 1928) told of borrowing Leslie Charteris’ Saint books from ‘a tuppenny library down at Fir Vale shops that had a huge selection of stuff’.

Warwick Deeping, Ethel M Dell, Mazo de la Roche, Josephine Tey, Compton Mackenzie and others all appear in at least one interviewee’s account of reading. Alan B (b. 1944) told of being asked at school to name a famous author and answering ‘Mazo de la Roche’, who was one of his mother’s favourites: ‘I was laughed at and … I perhaps realised that perhaps all our authors aren’t equal!’ And here’s James Green again, on Hank Janson, whose ‘not very well written’ books excited many of those charged with upholding public morals:

And Hank Janson was a detective who was a bit Mickey Spillane type. And they were considered very very racy. In fact, the teacher would take it off you if he caught you reading one of those.

Madeleine Doherty (b. 1940) is our only interviewee to mention Charles Williams, a member of the Oxford ‘Inklings’, along with C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien, who wrote Christian fantasy thrillers. Madeleine was ‘hooked’ on Williams’ books, but they made her uneasy: ‘they were weird, they were weird. Sometimes I used to frighten myself’.

Some of the authors chosen for review by the Sheffield Hallam reading group do not feature at all in our interviews: Gaston Leroux, Lettice Cooper, Pamela Wynne, Lady Eleanor Smith, Vicki Baum, Valentine Williams, Mary Dunstan, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. This doesn’t mean that they weren’t read by our interviewees but simply that they weren’t remembered. My bet is that many, if not all, were read.

In some cases, books were made more popular by being made into films. Vicki Baum’s novel, Grand Hotel, for example, was a huge success and the 1932 film, starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and John Barrymore, made it still more popular. The case of Lady Eleanor Smith is similar: her 1941 Regency romance-with-touches-of-horror, The Man in Grey, was the source of the first and very successful Gainsborough film of the same name, with the sterling British cast of Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and James Mason. Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and Gaston Leroux also wrote novels that were adapted for films.

Even where there were no films to help, there were libraries. Tuppenny libraries of the sort found at Fir Vale would certainly have stocked the thrillers of Valentine Williams and the romances of Pamela Wynne, and Lettice Cooper would have featured in the book lists of many subscribers at Boots Booklovers’ Library on Fargate. Sheffield Libraries might also have had copies of some or all of these, as the City Librarian, J P Lamb, took a much more liberal view of fiction than many of his counterparts. Lamb believed that popular books helped establish the reading habit in people, and stocked his branch libraries with Ethel M Dells and Edgar Wallaces, as well as classics.    

Whether they are well-known and/or admired today, or lying for now unloved on the shelves of second-hand bookshops, all the authors featured in The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary are interesting for what they tell us about the times in which they were written.

The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary (ISBN 978-1-4717-0438-3) is available from Amazon or can be ordered from any good bookshop.