On October 10th, we launched our website as part of the Off the Shelf festival. Lindsay and Carole made us welcome at Sheffield Quaker Meeting House, a superb venue. Thanks to Off the Shelf for supporting the event and to Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield Town Trust and Aviva for funding the website. We were able to thank, in person, Jane Ferretti from the Sheffield Town Trust and Professor Chris Hopkins, Head of the Humanities Research Unit at Sheffield Hallam.
We were delighted to see so many of our interviewees and their families and friends.
Lizz Tuckerman who constructed, designed and maintains the site gave a talk explaining how to navigate your way around readingsheffield.co.uk and Dennis Tuckerman described the editing process involved in preparing the audio recordings.
Eleanor Brown read some of the poems she has written in response to our interviews.
Reading Sheffield chair, Mary Grover, and Val Hewson, our website editor, talked about what comes next – finishing the reading journeys you can read on our blog and researching popular reading in Sheffield in the last century – where and how people chose their reading, which books and authors they read and what it meant to them.
Pam was born in 1952 and has lived in Sheffield for 51 years. She was a teacher.
Reading has always been extremely important to me, although I cannot remember how I got started or recall having stories read to me. I have vague recollections of Joyce Brisley Lankester’s Milly Molly Mandy and Noddy and Big Ears from Enid Blyton, but my clearest memories of reading and being read to come from school at the age of nine, when I had obviously become a very keen independent reader. Reading times were part of the school day (I remember reading Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did and finding it hard when I had to stop!) and we were read stories which I found gripping e.g. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis, and Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi from The Jungle Book.
Pam at the age of ten
Reading was encouraged at home; my mother was a great reader although she can’t have had much time when we were all little. I don’t remember possessing many books. I did have a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses which I loved, and Sunday School prizes were books of Bible stories. I had my own bookcase in my bedroom so it must have housed some books!
From the age of seven I joined the local library – Wennington Road, Southport – and from nine was allowed to go on my own. I would be there most days during the holidays, having read my allocation of three books very quickly. I loved all Enid Blyton’s books (except The Secret Seven), the American Bobbsey Twins from Laura Lee Hope, and Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School. I’d read into the night with a torch under the covers. We all had a weekly comic, mine was the Judy, eventually moving on to Jackie. Disaster struck on one occasion when we were all suffering from chicken pox: somehow the librarian got wind of this and we were banned from the library for three weeks! I remember being devastated and extremely bored – we didn’t have a television and we were confined to bed; mother having been a nurse, she treated us like patients in a hospital!
I’m not sure how much my reading was directed, apart from negatively. Certain books were considered ‘not suitable’ e.g. James Bond, and we were not allowed to use the adult section of the library (I can’t remember when that restriction was lifted). Needless to say, adult literature, especially if it contained sex scenes, became very attractive, and I remember taking paperbacks off the shelf in Woolworths and reading the juicy bits! I also read a lot of stories about young women in different careers – all very romantic of course! My ambition was to be an air hostess for a long while. Encyclopedia Britannica introduced me to non-fiction, and we also had the monthly Reader’s Digest at home. Mum’s medical books were a fascinating read and I remember spending ages poring over diagrams of the human body. I was also influenced by Bible classes and read a lot of Christian literature by authors like C S Lewis, David Shepherd and Richard Wurmbrand.
In my middle to late teens I read Mills and Boon stories obsessively! Mary Stewart, L M Montgomery and the Anne books, Georgette Heyer were great favourites. You can see that my taste in reading material was pretty lightweight and romantic! I don’t remember reading anything particularly weighty or classical except through school, for O Level and A Level English Literature, which I very much enjoyed. There was reading for pleasure (escapism) and serious reading (study).
At university I eventually decided to give up reading Mills and Boon books as I was virtually addicted to them and living in a world of unreality! More variety was needed! However I’m struggling to remember what took their place! Maybe that’s when I discovered Mary Stewart – slightly better literature! I remember reading Lord of the Rings around this time, all three volumes in less than a week (once I’d got through the first 50 pages). There was a period when I read a lot of adventure and fantasy fiction/adventure books by eg Alistair MacLean, Raymond Feist, gritty, daring, exciting reading. But I was frustrated that female characters were few and far between, and fairly insignificant. Were exciting women writers in short supply in the ‘70s and ‘80s? I was introduced to Winston Graham and Poldark in 1986 when I was on maternity leave, and was hooked.
Since moving to Sheffield in the early ‘70s I’ve always used the local library. I first joined Walkley Library in 1973, moving to Broomhill a few years later, and now I mostly use Woodseats Library. When teaching I used the Schools Library Service regularly – what a fantastic resource that was! I have also made use of the Library’s Book Group loan service in the past.
Walkley library
Broomhill Library
Woodseats Library (courtesy of Sheffield City Council/Picture Sheffield. Ref: a06117)
It was fortunate that my husband Alan also loved reading, so it was a companiable pastime for us both. In fact in those days, before digital readers, holiday reading books formed a very large (and heavy) part of our luggage. The thought of running out of reading material while we were away was horrifying!
I’m happy to say that I managed to pass on a love of reading to both my children, who continue to spend time reading as adults. My daughter and I visited Prince Edward Island a few years ago, visited Green Gables and went to see Anne the Musical. Of course I re-read all the Anne books and appreciated L M Montgomery’s creation all over again, especially Rilla of Ingleside, a very powerful portrayal of the effect of WW1 on women, something I hadn’t appreciated on my first reading.
I’m wary of watching screen versions of contemporary novels I’ve really enjoyed, especially if my imagination has been very fired; for me they rarely match up to the intensity or quality of the written word. I prefer to stick with the version created in my own head. There are of course exceptions: Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean and Brokeback Mountain from Annie Proulx, all of which worked really well for me. And interestingly I enjoy screen versions of the classics – Sunday afternoon serials formed part of my adolescence. However with e.g. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) or Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens), I couldn’t take the risk! I am more likely to be inspired to read the book after having seen the screen version. I expect there to be so much more depth to the text.
About 25 years ago I decided to keep a record of the books I read in order to pursue further works by authors I had enjoyed. I also joined a reading group in 1999 which was instrumental in widening my reading material. It is also very interesting, challenging and informative. Talking with other people who have read the same book but who may have a very different understanding of it is fascinating and has added another dimension to my reading journey.
Here and below pages from Pam’s reading journal
These days I continue to read widely and mostly for pleasure. I love losing myself in a good book, and always have a book on the go. Reading in bed is a huge pleasure! I enjoy crime fiction and have my favourite writers and investigators. I still read romantic fiction for a bit of escapism and every now and again re-read a Georgette Heyer. In addition to the monthly book group choice I will read an average of five or six books a month. I’ve also begun to re-read some of the classics, such as the Hugh Walpole Herries series, The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, and Jane Austen’s Emma. I find I read these much more carefully now, in order to appreciate the text.
