Monthly Archive

Emma Johnson, Arvon’s Development Manager (pictured on the left), woke up one Sunday and ran for Arvon. Emma hopes others will do the same - spreading the word about Arvon’s work with words, whilst having a lot of fun on the way.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not naturally athletic and it takes quite a lot to get me out of bed on a Sunday before 11. But yesterday I fought every urge to stay under the duvet and ran the Hydro Active Women’s Challenge 5k in Hyde Park. It’s the third time I’ve participated and I love the day itself -  the sun always shines, Hyde Park always looks lovely, and its a massive buzz to take part in something that generates so much good will towards so many deserving charities. I ran for Arvon, getting sponsorship from friends and family, and I hope to raise about £400 before gift aid is added.

If you would like to raise money for Arvon this way, then please do let us know. Raising money through sponsorable activities is easy, fun, and, most importantly, it spreads the word about Arvon to a wider audience. So if you feel inspired, then do please get in touch at e.johnson@arvonfoundation.org

If I can - you can!!

Arvon Friends Manager, Philip Cowell, asked all the Arvon Friends on email what book they were currently reading. All in the spirit of sharing what we like to read, and why, some of the responses so far are posted here. Don’t forget, 2008 is the National Year of Reading. Be inspired. (Join Arvon Friends to have your say!). The above, beautiful photo was taken by Marco Casse.

Clarissa Henry
Richard Powers: Plowing the Dark. Last year, I ‘discovered’ his The Time of Our Singing since when I have read everything of his that I can find. If I may be allowed to add: I think he is one of the most remarkable writers writing today. I have also now read his Operation Wandering Soul, The Echo Maker, Galatea 2.2 so I feel entitled to my opinion! Hope the weather in the UK is better than here in Vienna where it is quice frankly dreadful!

Jenny Evans
I’m currently reading The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett and am thoroughly enjoying it - she is a very fine writer. I chose to read it because of an article in The Week where Erica Wagner (literary editor of The Times) selected her 6 best ever books and this was one of them - you couldn’t get a higher recommendation than that!

Paul Francis
I am currently reading Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis, a patient, thoroughly documented indictment of UK foreign policy - and the failure of the media to report it fully. Yes, it confirms some prejudices, but there’s surprises there too, and it’s all backed up. Devastating.

Frank Egerton
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut — I’m not a science fiction fan but was intrigued by Vonnegut’s Times obituary – in which this book was praised — and his humanist beliefs. The book is terrific: KV has a light touch and is writing about 1950s America quite as much as ‘chrono-synclastic infundibula’ etc.

Kate Steer
The Scottish Enlightenment: the Scots’ Invention of the Modern World. Normally I don’t read much History but am enjoying this immensely. Its author (Arthur Herman, American) writes most engagingly. Irvine Welsh declared in the Guardian, “Every Scot should read it.” I agree.  p.s. In July I read, twice, a first novel, Salvage, by Gee Williams. It’s a literary thriller and “fell guid”! 

Rachel Hazell
Ice Bird, by David Lewis. I’m genning up on Antarctic adventures in anticipation for my stint working at Port Lockroy this season.

Jacqueline Gazzard
My reading comes via recommendation, the sudden realisation ‘its a classic and I only saw the movie’ or good old cover design….and cover design will frequently win out as I’m a packaging junkie. This was the case with Miss Webster and Cherif  written by Patricia Duncker. It is not great literature but I really enjoyed it as an unusual slice of escapism and easy read! Its a little cliched I guess but quite life affirming too - life isn’t a dress rehearsal so get on and enjoy it!

Emily Johnson
I am reading The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko.  It’s the second book in the night watch trilogy and I like it.  It’s about people called ‘Others’ who have magical powers and divide into the dark and the light.  Claims to be ‘JK Rowling, Russian style’ on the cover.

Kadija George
Mimi Khalvati, The Meanest Flower, Read it this morning for breakfast. Ignore the sentimental slush on the back and go straight for the poems, ‘Motherhood’, ‘Sundays’, and the first poem, ‘The Meanest Flower’.

David Lloyd
George Eliot - Middlemarch. I am re-reading this great novel after a gap of twenty years. It is a book which maps the personal journey of its heroine Dorothea but it also paints on a large canvas capturing a period of social and political change from the coming of the railway to the Reform Acts and the changing role of women.

Jane Reed
Just finished The Rossetti Stone by Kristin Phillips.  Fascinating first novel with a wealth of historic detail intertwined with a love story. Why am I reading it?   I love reading first novels and comparing them with the one to which I am forever giving birth.

Gillian Hush
Since you ask, I’m reading Half of a Yellow Sun and very good it is too!

Sarah Treco
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert. Confessional, exuberant, and wacky, a travel memoir of a surprizingly wise journey to self-discovery.

James Furber
John Le Carre’s The Mission Song. There are few bookshops on the Isles of Scilly, but I have always enjoyed Le Carre as a holiday read; the Honourable Schoolboy now appears with a reassuring freqency in his writing which is fine by me…

Fathieh Saudi
I am reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron…it seems its an international best seller..i think i need it now.. as i feel i have been a shadow artist for long time and i would like to overcome my censorship… Julia wrote: creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent….it’s a great useful book like a course you can do by yourself…

Gill Hancock
I am reading The view from Castle Rock by Alice Munro. The book starts with accounts related by members of her family who emigrated to Canada from the Scottish Borders and slips from memoirs into fiction.  In very good words  Munro conveys the particular atmosphere of relationships.

Carole Satyamurti
I’m currently reading The Iliad in Robert Fagles’ translation. It is a verse translation and wonderfully vivid and linguistically rich. He seems to manage to find an inexhaustible supply of words for sticking a spear into one’s enemy!

Kryss Brady
I have just finished reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. It is about a boy and his stutter, “Hangman”, and everything else that life throws a fifteen year-old in 1982 (the Falklands War, his parents splitting up, his sister going off to university and his own coming of age) and it is brilliant, hillarious and poignant in equal measure.  If I had another sentence I’d tell you that: I chose it for our book club because, having read Cloud Atlas and enjoyed Mitchell’s ability to switch genres, period and prose style in one book, I wanted to see how he tackled this lighter subject.

Louise Tondeur
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It’s a beautiful book. Dangerous, topsy-turvy, energetic, magical. What a great opening line. And he breaks every rule. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is masterful too.

Geraldine Terry
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. I’m reading this because I read an excerpt in a Costa coffee bar when it was nominated for Costa book of the year and I’m totally gripped by it – just fabulous.

Jane Stemp
This is going to sound dreadful. The book I am reading at the moment is my own title, Double Bind. Mind you it is only in Word format so far: and it does need revising - but I am finding bits of it better than I thought, so I suppose you could say I’m enjoying it ….

Simon Barraclough
As You Like It, William Shakespeare. I’m hoovering up all the Shakespeare plays I haven’t read yet and finding them uplifting, inspiring and deliciously complex. (Simon has his debut poetry collection Los Alamos Mon Amour out from Salt Publishing in March 2008.)

Andrew Lucas
I am two thirds of the way through The end of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas. I have to confess that I bought this book not through recommendation but because it has a great cover….so far the proverb is incorrect.

Linda Ewles
Julian Barnes, Arthur and George. It’s my reading group book so I will plod on with it but that’s what it feels like: a plod.

One Friend wrote to say:
I am currently reading books by C.J. Sansom.  I have read Dissolution, Sovereign and am about to start Dark Fire.  Although I don’t usually read crime novels, I am captivated by the main character, Shardlake, a lawyer in the time of Henry VIII.  But the main attraction is the way the sounds and smells of Tudor England are brought to life, so that you feel as though you are really there with the character.

Prue Skene
I’m currently reading Pat Barker’s Life Class - firstly because I’m an admirer of Pat’s and am actually studying The Ghost Road for an Open University course, and secondly because it was the choice for my book club - we’re discussing it next Monday (Sept 17).  Certainly worth a read if less multi-textured than the Regeneration trilogy.

Kaz Fairs
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. Alledgedly its going to help me keep the faith, so far so good…

Gina Walker
I’m reading The Snow Geese by William Fiennes. I’ve just returned from an Arvon Starting to Write course on which Will Fiennes was a tutor – he is a compassionate writer, who’s first book beautifully articulates his love of language as ‘a way of being in love with the world’.

Alan Buckley
I’m currently re-reading Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes - he sometimes lapses into self-pastiche, but the (many) poems that work here are utterly breathtaking. Also reading Fernado Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, a birthday present from a friend who makes Bernardo Soares look like a feelgood motivational guru…

Judith Allnatt
I’m reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This is an unusual book in almost every way, not least because it’s narrated by Death. Fascinating.

Caroline Pitcher
Abela, the girl who saw lions by Berlie Doherty. I am a children’s writer,  and Berlie’s moving, beautifully-written story is the one I have loved best this year. (Caroline Pitcher wrote The Shaman Boy.)

Pauline Smith has been relief centre-directing at our pre-Domesday house, Totleigh Barton. She was eager to promote a friend of hers - Joanna Guthrie - who has recently had published a new collection of poetry. More than happy to do so, we present below Pauline, Joanna and Billack’s Bones.

I had some great news today. My very good friend, Joanna Guthrie, e-mailed me to say her first collection of poetry has been published by The Rialto. Jo and I met as postgrad students at Exeter University. We both graduated on the same day with an MA in English Studies (Creative Writing) but were sad that our paths would no longer cross on a regular basis. As writers, we had become used to sharing our work (her poems, my short stories) and giving loving but honest criticism to each other. Fortunately, this didn’t stop when Jo moved up to Norwich and we continued to give each other encouragement via e-mail. To hear that Billack’s Bones had finally been published was brilliant - even more so when Jo generously told me I had been part of that process. Jo has close connections to Arvon and has attended a couple of poetry courses - the latest just last year with Catherine Smith and Neil Rollinson here at Totleigh. Catherine offers a fine review of Billack’s Bones along with another to be proud of from George Szirtzes. Have a read yourself! Jo’s voice stood way out as early as our first MA poetry seminar with Andy Brown, now a lifetime ago in 2004. I know it won’t go away now. You can purchase Billack’s Bones through Inpress Books.