Another month, another book review. In this episode, we look at 'Under the Skin' by Michel Faber. Most famously known for his book, 'Crimson Petal and the White', 'Under the Skin' is Michel Faber's debut novel, a wonderful blend of sci-fi, thriller, and literary genius. We loved this book and hope you will too. FYI: Spoilers alert in this review!

If you like our videos, please like and subscribe to our channel, The Pleasure of the Text, for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEp9cZ4HOovyKHeNEDt_BwA

In this episode, we referenced other podcast episodes:
1. Secret Rendezvous by Kōbō Abe
2. A Disappearing Act: Book Bans and What They Mean for Literature
3. 'Women's Work': Forgotten Writers

bookreview #bookreviews

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In this podcast episode, we use the act of translation as a technique/device to develop "The Reticence of Lady Anne" by Saki. This method forces the reader to produce a 'slow reading', to get to the heart of how each word, chosen meticulously, has the ability to change and enhance the work as a whole.

To join in on the exercise, you can download the "The Reticence of Lady Anne" from this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/116IUchqycSwZ-i4EKr6BlM-Ge_z18QND4R5-CzyYivQ/edit?usp=sharing

To see how Gareth and I fared in the exercise, you can see our work in progress here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MiRzMJJqywUnWmaAJhPqfEGaOpnRGAngZjQGRSP0lHA/edit?usp=sharing

Show notes can be viewed at https://thepleasureofthetext.com/

As always, if you like our videos, please like and subscribe to our channel, The Pleasure of the Text, for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEp9cZ4HOovyKHeNEDt_BwA

creativewriting #defamiliarization

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We are incredibly grateful and fortunate to have a long-time friend and fellow writer join us for this podcast episode; Shahn. As a dedicated writer, she is continuously developing her craft and finesse in the creative writing process. Shahn has much to share on what happens after one has finished their manuscript, namely, receiving substantive feedback from a trusted creative writing group, to enrich the final manuscript for publication. Shahn is an inspiration to us, carving out the small hours of her day (around a full-time job!) to work on her story; we are beyond excited for its future publication.
Please enjoy!

As always, if you like our videos, please like and subscribe to our channel, The Pleasure of the Text, for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEp9cZ4HOovyKHeNEDt_BwA

creativewriting #writingfeedback

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Show Notes

Articles Referenced during the Podcast:

Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name by Catherine Nicols. (2015). https://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-what-i-learned-sending-my-novel-out-und-1720637627
VS Naipul find no woman writer his literary match – not even Jane Austen by Amy Fallon. (2011). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers
12 Women Writers Who Wrote Under Male Pseudonyms by Helen Armitage. (2018). https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/articles/12-female-writers-who-wrote-under-male-pseudonyms/
The often-overlooked Women Behind Male Writers by Noelle Talmon. (2019). https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/women-behind-male-writers/
Why do so few men read books by women? By MA Sieghart. (2021). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/09/why-do-so-few-men-read-books-by-women
Male writers continue to dominate literary criticism, Vida study finds by Hannah Ellis-Peterson. (2015). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/07/male-writers-continue-dominate-literary-criticism-vida-study-finds
Scent of a Women’s Ink: Are women writers really inferior? by Francine Prose. (1998). https://harpers.org/archive/1998/06/scent-of-a-womans-ink/

Didn’t end up quoting, by a fascinating read nonetheless; Joanna Scutts on How We Find – and Lose – Women Writers. (2019). https://lithub.com/joanna-scutts-on-how-we-find-and-lose-women-writers/

The Complete Virago Modern Classic Collection(and there are over 717!)

PSA: Announcing a new, collaborative project!Throughout this episode, it became abundantly clear that the growth and development of literature will remain stunted until we can collate all the overlooked writers into a new Canon, the World Canon. Gareth and I will be developing this list as time goes on, and we would like input on this project. If you are interested, send a message to admin@thepleasureofthetext.com.

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In this podcast, Shannen and Gareth take the work that they developed in the previous week's podcast, Transcribing Music, and give each other feedback. This is an excellent podcast for new writers wanting to start their collaborative journey, giving and receiving feedback on their work. Enjoy!

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Show Notes:
Thank you so much to Alex-Production for the music we used in this video:

Wonders by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
Food by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
Horror by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
Soundtrack by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

We used this website to create our randomly generated character: https://www.character-generator.org.uk/quick/

Enter scene left, our character, Siddarth Patterson: Siddharth Patterson, 18 years old, is a gentle man from Edinburgh who can only speak when the moon is in Scorpio. He has crazy, orange hair. He comes from a troubled family. He is hiding a terrible secret concerning the future.

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In this week's episode, we talk about the books that shaped the way we read and write, from childhood to now. Join us and enjoy as we navigate this trip down memory lane.

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Obviously, no work of art is created in a vacuum – but what are the more noteworthy examples of literature owing its existence to a second author? And does it matter if credit is not given where it's due – or is the aesthetic ideal of the singular vision more important than the occasionally-ugly truth? – Do too many authors spoil the book? By WB Gooderham.Author Conan Doyle

The late Author Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is a British writer (and physician), notably renowned for his creation of the character Sherlock Holmes, in which he created four novels and fifty-six short stories on the adventures of Dr Watson and Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Not as well known, Doyle was a prolific writer, and created other works in the genre of fantasy and science fiction, following Professor Challenger, and comedic pieces about Brigadier Gerard, a Napoleonic soldier. He also produced plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe. Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland— during nearly all his life, parcelled out among three occupying empires, and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche.

Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish

The late Raymond Carver (1938-1988) was an American short story writer and poet, and contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s. Gordon Lish is an American writer, yet as a literary editor, he championed Raymond Carver’s work, and many others, including: Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. In August 1998, three years after Carol Polsgrove described Lish's heavy editing of Raymond Carver's Neighbors and published a facsimile page showing the editing, The New York Times Magazine published an article by D. T. Max about the extent of Lish's editing of Carver's short stories which was visible in manuscripts held at the Lilly Library. Before his death, Carver had written to Lish: “If I have any standing or reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you.”

Harold Bloom

The late Harold Bloom (1930-2019) was an American literary critic and, in 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." Following the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. During his lifetime, he edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm.

“Shedding all polemic, Bloom addresses the solitary reader, who, he urges, should read for the purest of all reasons: to discover and augment the self. His ultimate faith in the restorative power of literature resonates on every page of this infinitely rewarding and important book.” This covers a bit of his book, How to Read and Why.

Why Join a Book Club?

To be Continued…

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Show Notes.

Poe
Anne Decatur Danielewski, stage name Poe, is a musician who rose to celebrity in the mid to late 1990s, fusing jazz, rock, folk, hip-hop and electronica elements, with intimate lyrical compositions. She has released two albums, the first in 1995, titled Hello, and the second album in 2000, Haunted. This album is inspired by her brother’s debut novel House of Leaves, and by the discovery of a box of tapes left behind by their late father, film director Tad Danielewski. This album contains pieces of both.

Leslie S. Klinger
Leslie S. Klinger is the editor of the three-volume collection of the short stories and novels, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Since the 1960s, the study of the rich fantastic literature of the Victorian writers has been Klinger's consuming passion. He has written dozens of articles on Sherlockiana, published 20 books on Sherlock Holmes, and regularly teaches UCLA extension courses on "Sherlock Holmes and His World" and "Dracula and His World."

Vladimir Nabokov
The late Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), was a Russian-American novelist, translator, poet, and entomologist. He wrote his first nine books in Russian between 1926 to 1938 and achieved international acclaim after moving to the US, where he started writing his works in English. Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and is considered one of the greatest 20th-century works of literature. Nabokov's Pale Fire, published in 1962, was ranked 53rd on the same list. Other works from Nabokov include:

Invitation to a Beheading
Pnin
Despair
King, Queen, Knave
Lance

You Should Have Left
You Should Have Left (2020) is an American psychological horror film written and directed by David Koepp, based on the 2017 book of the same name by Daniel Kehlman, starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried. In the film, a former banker, his actress wife, and their spirited daughter book a vacation at an isolated modern home in the Welsh countryside where nothing is quite as it seems.

Margaret Atwood
Reading is a rewarding experience, especially so when the work is Margaret Atwood’s. It’s truly rare to read a piece where you can feel the fun being had by the writer on the other end, and that was apparent all through Murder in the Dark, a collection of Atwood’s short stories, from vignettes, to much longer works. If you would like to join us, you can buy the book here and here.

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This episode is part of a series of creative writing exercises we have put together to help writers develop strong, well-rounded, characters. Listen to our first episode exploring character building,Textual Portraiture here.

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Spoilers Alert! “Pseudo-review” of Smile and Caveat

Smile
Official Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcDK7lkzzsU

Rose (Sosie Bacon) first learns about the smiling monster that takes over her life when a distraught young woman named Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) is brought to Rose’s hospital in a state of near-hysteria. Laura explains that she’s been seeing an “entity” no one else can see, a creature with a horrible smile that sometimes appears to her in the guise of other people she knows, alive or dead. Then Laura collapses screaming, clearly something over her shoulder that Rose can’t see. As Rose calls for help, Laura stands up calmly smiling, and slits her own throat. - https://www.polygon.com/23374118/smile-ending-meaning-director-interviewCaveat
Official Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoOkSYrf8ew

When the slick and calculating Barret (Ben Caplan) offers Isaac (Jonathan French) a five-day job "babysitting" Barret's adult niece Olga (Lila Psyches), who needs "company" at her "isolated" childhood home, Isaac, a drifter suffering from some kind of amnesia and the mental fog that goes with it, is confused. Barret claims to be an old friend, but Isaac has no memory of him. Also, why is this supposed old friend offering him so much money to hang out with a woman clearly too old to need a "babysitter"? Isaac says, baffled, "There's got to be more to it than that." Suddenly, the title card appears, in jagged letters: "CAVEAT." - https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/caveat-movie-review-2021Defamiliarization
The Russian Formalists’ concept of "Defamiliarization", proposed by Viktor Shklovsk, refers to the literary device whereby language is used in such a way that ordinary and familiar objects are made to look different. It is a process of transformation where language asserts its power to affect our perception. It is that aspect which differentiates between ordinary usage and poetic usage of language, and imparts a uniqueness to a literary work.

Laura Hasn’t SleptDesperate to rid herself of a recurring nightmare, a young woman seeks the help of her therapist. To read more, head over here.

Tanganika Laughing Epidemic
An interesting article on the Tanganika Laughing Epidemic can be read here.

M.R. James

Montague Rhodes James (1862 –1936) was an English author and medievalist scholar. Though his work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some consider among the best in the genre. He redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, his protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story"

The short film, Lost Hearts, can be watched here.

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In our second creative writing segment, we practice our writing craft to develop strong characters. Join us as we look at mugshots from the New South Wales Police Forensic Photography Archive, taken in the early 1900s. The idea for this podcast came from our recent interview with debut author Cheryl Sullivan. If you would like to join in, head over to Mugshots of Sydney in the 1920s at thepleasureofthetext.com.

David Lodge

Professor David Lodge is a graduate and Honorary Fellow of the University College London, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was Chairman of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989, and is also an author of numerous works, including The Practice of Writing.

Graham Greene

English writer and journalist, the late Graham Greene (1904-1991), was regarded as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Strangely enough, he developed a reputation as both a ‘serious writer’, working on Catholic novels, and what he called ‘entertainers’ or thrillers. He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966 and 1967; however, in 1966, Nelly Sachs and Shmuel Yosef Agnon co-won, and in 1967, Miguel Ángel Asturias won the final title. He was recruited into MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6, or SIS), the foreign intelligence service of the UK, by his sister Elisabeth in 1941, where he met and befriended Kim Philby, a secret Soviet Agent; Greene later wrote the introduction to Philby’s 1968 memoir, My Silent War.

Brighton Rock
The End of the Affair
The Quiet American
The Heart of the Matter
The Power and the Glory
The Third Man and Other Stories
Stamboul Train (Orient Express)
Travels with my Aunt
The Ministry of Fear
Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene: Complete Short Stories

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In this latest podcast, Shannen and Gareth discuss why you should join a book club. This episode is filled with many wonderful gems, including discussions on what a good book club is, a tier system for ranking books that change us, Oprah Winfrey's book club, and excerpts from members from the Vicious Circle, I mean, The Algonquin Table. Enjoy!

Shownotes

J.R.R. Tolkien

The man, the myth, the legend, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) is best known for his high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Termed the “father” of modern fantasy literature, Tolkien wrote stories of Middle-earth to read to his children at night, yet he completed much more in his life. Additionally, Tolkien was a philologist, a poet, and an academic, a professor of English Literature at many Universities, including the University of Oxford, until his retirement in 1959. He was a member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group, which included his close friend C.S. Lewis. In 1972 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. After his passing, his son published his father’s extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, gifting us the Silmarillion amongst other works, including works on the invented languages for Middle-earth!

Ursula Le Guin

What could be termed a prolific writer, the late Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) had a literary career spanning nearly sixty years, producing over a hundred short stories and more than twenty novels, as well as poetry and other works. Her works include speculative fiction, science fiction works set in her Hainish Universe, and the beloved Earthsea fantasy series. The Earthsea series saw her win both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, making her the first woman to do so. But she didn’t stop there; in her lifetime, she received numerous accolades, including eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-two Locus Awards, and in 2003, Ursula became the second woman honoured as a Grand Master of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. But wait, there’s more: in 2000, the U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend! There is so much to be impressed by with Ursula, and others agree; she has influenced many other authors, including Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks.

Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching
The Last Interview
Always Coming Home
The Unreal and The Real
The Dispossessed
The Lathe of Heaven

Stanislaw Lem

Polish writer, Stanislaw Herman Lem (1921-2006), wrote predominately science fiction, but also essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology and literary criticism. Lem’s books have been translated into more than 50 languages, selling over 45 million copies, and his science fiction stories are deemed satirical and humorous (though that may have been lost in translation…). His most renowned novel is the 1961 Solaris, with most of his works exploring philosophical themes through speculation on technology, intelligence, human limitations and humanity’s place in the universe. An interesting fact, the Polish Parliament declared 2021 the year of Stanislaw Lem.

The Truth and Other Stories
Tales of Pinx the Pilot
Solaris
Fiasco
The Cyberiad
Return from the Stars

Ian Fleming

British writer Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908-1964) is famous for his spy novels featuring the roguish Mr James Bond. A writer at heart, Fleming moved through several jobs which didn’t stick before he started writing. Much of his inspiration came from his work for Britain’s Naval Intelligence Division during World War Two, where Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye, and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and died in 1964 at the age of 56 of heart disease. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times and has been portrayed by seven actors.

Moon Raker
Live and Let Die
The Spy Who Loved Me
For Your Eyes Only
Dr No

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Numerous literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature; the late Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Given the troubled political and social atmosphere of Russia in the 19th century, his works engage with the human condition under such conditions, and explores themes of religion and philosophy. Dostoevsky also dealt with censorship and book bans in his time; he was arrested in 1849 for discussing banned books critical of the Tsar, and sentenced to death. However, his sentence was commuted; he then spent four years in a Siberian prison camp. From rags to riches, Dostoevsky developed a gambling problem in his later life, at times needing to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most highly regarded Russian writers.

Crime and Punishment
The House of the Dead
The Gambler
The Brothers Karamazov
Devils
The Idiot
Notes from the Underground
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Michael Sala

Michael Sala was born in the Netherlands in 1975 to a Greek father and a Dutch mother, and first came to Australia in the 1980s. He lives in Newcastle. His critically acclaimed debut, The Last Thread, won the 2013 NSW Premier’s Award for New Writing and was the regional winner (Pacific) of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. The Restorer is Michael Sala’s latest novel.

The Tiger Book ClubThe Tiger Book Club is the brainchild of one of my best friends, Luke. Not someone who does things by half measures, he took the plunge, created a book club, and created bookmarks for every member. On the back of the bookmark reads:

“This bookmark is intended to be used solely as a placeholder for any pause, discontinuation, hesitation or adjournment of reading of any book, opus, publication or manual. The “Tiger Book Club” hereby removes themselves of accountability from any grievance, wrongdoing, crime, or immorality incurred from the stipulated misuse of this article. I am not a lawyer, and nor are you, unless you are, in which case, you would know more than this bookmark regarding the legal ramifications of untoward actions, for example, flinging it like a playing card like Gambit. Keep out of reach of children, unless they are reading and are in need of a placeholder as they wish to stop for the time being. Please don’t use this bookmark wrongly. I’m begging you now. I can't go back to prison. You’re grown. You can do what you want. There’s no way I can stop you from doing that. I’m just a placeholder. But I will be one in your mind. A tab sticking out of your life’s transcript, your conscience, reminding you of the warranted guilt felt for your misconduct. Try as you might, I will always occupy a part of your brain. Maybe it’s a part you want to forget, but you won't. Not even on your deathbed, when Death comes and relieves you of your burden, and every thought you thought you had evaporates in a cloud of realization that it was all a ruse to keep you conformed to societal norms. Tricks played by your own brain that you had while locked in a room that is your mind. You’ll still remember, like that old lady in the Titanic movie, only there’s no dropping the blue necklace thing into the water for you. Fran Drescher was a 10.” My Bookmark, thanks Luke!

The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig

Winner of Goodreads choice 2020, this is the synopsis for The Midnight Library:

“Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe, there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, and realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through The Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place."Goodreads

Other books by Matthew Haig include:

The Comfort Book
The Humans
How to Stop Time
A Boy Called Christmas

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled existence. Except, sometimes, everything... Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the 2017 debut novel by Gail Honeyman, and the winner of the 2017 Costa Debut Novel Award.

Kōbō Abe

The late Kōbō Abe (安部公房), (1924-1993), was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer, and inventor. He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University; however, he never practised, instead giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim. In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map. In 1973, he founded an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. He was elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. Over a seven-year period in the 1960s, Kōbō Abe wrote the screenplays for four films directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, three of which were based on Abe’s own novels. Other works by Kōbō Abe:

The Ruined Map
The Box Man
Secret Rendevous
The Woman in the Dunes
The Face of Another
The Ark Sakura
The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kobo
Three Plays by Kōbō Abe
Beasts Head for Home

Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Lee (1922-2015) was an English actor and singer, and a huge fan of Tolkien’sLord of the Rings. In an incredibly long career, he played Saruman in both the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the Hobbit film trilogy. He played many other villains, playing Count Dracula, Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, and Count Dooku in the Star Wars films. Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011, and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013. He credited three films for making his name as an actor, A Tale of Two Cities (1958), in which he played the villainous marquis, and two horror films, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and Dracula (1958).

1st Tier Books

In this podcast, we talk about 1st tier books; books that change you and have a fundamental impact on the way you think and operate in the world. Gareth mentioned some of his 1st tier books; The Ruined Map by Kobo Abe, Bel Canto By Ann Patchett, and Any Human Heart by William Boyd. Shannen mentioned The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedwick, which she read when she was younger, andAll the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. What would you consider some of your 1st tier books, those that you will never let go, or donate to a book store? Let us know!

The Best Book Clubs Throughout History

The Socrates School and Socratic Circles

Great philosophers such as Socrates, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato congregated at The Socrates School in approximately 400 BC. […] To hold a Socratic circle, a group must choose and analyze a thought-provoking text through inquiry, thoughtful response, and communal spirit.

Junto Club

This book club was founded by Benjamin Franklin and his literature-loving friends in 1727. The Philadelphia-based club was comprised of tradesmen and artisans discussing morals, politics, and natural philosophy. The Junto Club convened on Friday evenings for nearly 40 years. The club served the community by acting as a platform for various public projects. Some of Franklin’s weekly meetings resulted in plans for the first lending library, the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, and others. Besides the planning of public projects, Franklin structured his meetings with a list of 24 questions. In 1743, a new branch of the Junto Club was created. It was called the American Philosophical Society and still exists to this day.

Book of the Month Club

The Book of the Month Club was a mail-order business, founded by Harry Sherman in 1926. […] By 1927, Book of the Month Club had over 60,000 subscribers, and a new class of readers was created. Though it received some backlash from critics, the Club soon became a household name. Readers found titles like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird on their doorsteps. Today, Book of the Month Club boasts more than one million subscribers, and Harry Sherman is considered “the father of the mail-order business.”

The Bloomsbury Group included Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, economist John Maynard Keynes, critic Clive Bell, and painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

Stratford-on-Odeon included Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.

The Inklings included J. R. R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Roger Lancelyn Green, and Adam Fox.

Margaret Fuller

On November 6, 1839, American journalist, editor, critic, and translator Margaret Fuller held the first of her Conversations, considered the First Book Club in the U.S., a series of discussions [...] intended to compensate for the lack of women's education with discussions and debates focused on subjects including the fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature. By serving as the "nucleus of conversation", Fuller intended to answer the "great questions" facing women and encourage women "to question, to define, to state and examine their opinions". She asked her participants, "What were we born to do? How shall we do it? Which so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by". These gatherings have been called the first woman's book club in the U.S.

Margaret Fulton

The late Margaret Fulton was a Scottish-born Australian food and cooking writer, journalist, author and commentator. Fulton's early recipes encouraged Australians to alter their traditional staple of "meat and three vegetables" and to be creative with food. She encouraged international cuisine from places such as Spain, Italy, India and China.

Oprah Winfrey

Needing no introduction really, Oprah is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author and philanthropist. The Oprah Winfrey Show ran in the US national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. I could go on, but for now, Oprah Winfrey’s launched her book club in 1996, which was a turning point in the history of book clubs — a moment that author Toni Morrison called a “reading revolution.” In the first three years, each book Oprah chose averaged sales of 1.4 million copies. Those who dismissed it as “schmaltzy, one-dimensional” missed its serious core: books ranged from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Kareninato William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, to Maya Angelou’s The Heart of a Woman. In a way that is surprisingly reminiscent of those early women dissidents starting reading circles, Winfrey spoke about literature in civic terms. “Getting my library card was like citizenship; it was like American citizenship,” she told Life Magazine in 1997.

A brief mention of Barak Obama’s reading list, which can be viewed here.

Algonquin Round Table

The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons, they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country. The group played many games, most notably a game called the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture:

"You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."Charter Members included: Alexander Woollcott (critic and journalist), Robert E. Sherwood (author and playwright), Robert Benchley (humorist and actor), and Dorothy Parker (critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter). Other Members included: Tallulah Bankhead (actress), Noël Coward (playwright), Edna Ferber (author and playwright), and Harpo Marx (comedian and film star).

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker (1893 –1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker travelled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker."

Resumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

A great example of Dorothy Parker’s level of satirical wit is displayed in her critique of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

The Portable Dorothy Parker

Robert Benchley

Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon, while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humour brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.

Why We Laugh—or Do We?

In order to laugh at something, it is necessary (1) to know what you are laughing at, (2) to know why you are laughing, (3) to ask some people why they think you are laughing, (4) to jot down a few notes, (5) to laugh. Even then, the thing may not be cleared up for days.
All laughter is merely a compensatory reflex to take the place of sneezing. What we really want to do is sneeze, but as that is not always possible, we laugh instead. [...] Analyze any funny story or comic situation at which we “laugh” and it will be seen that this theory is correct. Incidentally, by the time you have the “humor” analyzed, it will be found that the necessity for laughing has been relieved. ()* The Benchley Roundup:

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Goodreads

Gareth and I chose this book for our horror genre selection for our Book Club segment, yet others, as well as the author, define the book as a love story (let us know your verdict over at pleasureofthetext.com). I am beyond excited to read this treasure, and if you would like to join us, you are in luck! House of Leaves has typically been a difficult book to get hold of, but this book has recently been reprinted, and there are more copies available to avid readers in most bookstores now.
Other Works By Mark Z. Danielewski:

The Fifty-Year Sword
The Familiar Series
The Whalestoe Letters
The Little Blue Kite

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*Harvest of the Unborn by Cheryl Sullivan*

“The true work of the writer is the true work of all artists: to take risks, to lean far out over the edge of the accepted truth, to see what can only be seen from that vantage point. Ask yourself every once in a while: Am I in over my head? Am I posing questions in my work to which there can never be satisfying, final answers? Am I trying to tackle a project here that is well beyond my capacity as a writer? Am I just a little afraid of the direction that all of this is going? If the answer to each of these questions is yes, then you are heading in the right direction. Steady on.” – Excerpt from The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore

Introducing Cheryl

Cheryl Sullivan is a Queensland writer. She was raised and educated in Ipswich, began writing as a single parent in Mooloolaba and in 2010 committed fully to her writing after moving to Brisbane. Harvest of the Unborn, a paranormal thriller set in the past, is her first novel. The idea for Harvest of the Unborn was first developed through numerous writing courses at Queensland Writers Centre, where Cheryl first pursued her interest in creative writing. She joined the Brisbane Writers’ Group to practice her craft and later accepted an offer to coordinate the group. Cheryl has twice been shortlisted for Queensland Writers Centre’s Adaptable to Screen Program. She is also a recipient of the 2019 Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Australia Day Achievement Award for her encouragement of writers of all genres. In her spare time, Cheryl enjoys painting with acrylics and is a life-long learner, always keen to develop her writing craft.

Harvest of the Unborn Synopsis

A TIME DURING POST-WWII, SYDNEY IS THE PLACE OF CULTURE AND CELEBRATION FOR MANY, BUT IT IS ALSO THE CITY OF DARKER SECRETS…

Investigative journalist Charlotte Tyrell seeks out the reasons for a woman’s disappearance from a Kings Cross boarding house. Then another beautiful young girl disappears from the boarding house under very suspicious circumstances. Is the Landlady and her strange twin daughters who operate the disturbing house for boarders responsible, or is something, or someone, more sinister at play? The locked basement, where Charlotte discovers the missing girl’s belongings, is bare upon investigation by Detective Michael Devlin, who takes the search for the girls personally, as his sister, Madelaine, is also missing. His friend, Madelaine’s fiancé, and war veteran, Joseph Moody, has rejected society to find solace in the abandoned tunnels beneath St James Rail Station. Joseph constantly struggles against fatigue and his nightmares where foreboding figures carry unconscious women through a shimmering light. He has no idea if his visions are real or not. With their lives at stake, Charlotte, Michael and Joseph will discover the answers they seek to everything they fear, and the only question left to answer will be – can they survive the truth?

Queensland Writers Centre

The Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) is a not-for-profit- membership organization with a mission to support, celebrate and showcase QLD writers. They provide a wealth of resources through comprehensive online and in-person services. Additionally, they provide information and advice for writers at all stages of the creative process. QWC host an event every week called Writers Friday, which uses the Pomodoro technique to help facilitate creative productivity. To find out more, visit the QWCs website. QWC also runs a number of programs and residencies throughout the year, including the ABLE Programs: Printable, a program preparing an author’s brand in the literary market; Adaptable, which seeks material for film or television adaptation, open to writers across Australia and New Zealand; Scriptable, which presents emerging screenwriters the chance to have their work read by experienced screen practitioners and receive feedback; and Publishable, giving 25 successful applicants with completed manuscripts the chance to take part in a tailored manuscript development program.

Lori-Jay Ellis

Lori-Jay is the CEO of QWC where she works to help writers at every stage of their writing journey. She has considerable knowledge of the industry, and a wealth of advice and support to give to writers at every stage of their writing journey. She currently teaches and mentors writers in achieving outcomes in their writing lives. Connect with Lori-Jay on LinkedIn, or through QWC.

Brisbane Writers Group

The Brisbane Writer’s Group aims to foster writers and help them improve their writing, disseminate information on the craft, and allow members to communicate more effectively. Find out more on their Facebook page.

Anna Campbell

Anna Campbell started her first book in grade three and from there completed an English Literature degree at Queensland University, and while working many jobs, she worked on her writing. She loves writing regency historical romances featuring passionate regency heroes and the women who captivate them. She has written over thirty novels, and her books are listed on her website http://annacampbell.com/.

Louise Cusack

Louise Cusack is an International award-winning fantasy and romance author and has been a member of Romance Writers of Australia for over twenty years. Her best-selling trilogy Shadow through Time, published with Simon & Schuster Australia, was selected by the Doubleday book club as their Editor's Choice. In Feb 2012, the series was released digitally by Pan Macmillan’s ebook imprint Momentum Books. As a writing tutor for over ten years, Louise runs her own business, "Writers: Working with Louise Cusack", and has completed over 200 manuscript assessments, tutored over 100 writing workshops and mentored over 400 hours with more than 50 clients, helping them develop their writing craft. She is also on GoodReads.

Saint James Tunnels, Sydney

Curious about St. James Tunnels, one of the eerier settings in Harvest of the Unborn? Have a look at some of the photos here before the proposed government initiative to turn the area into bars and restaurants.

The Crimson Petal and the White

The Crimson Petal and the White is a 2002 novel by Michel Faber set in Victorian England. The title is from an 1847 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson entitled "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal", the opening line of which is "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white."

Where you can connect with Cheryl and her work

Goodreads
Facebook
Amazon

Want to see/hear more with Cheryl?

Getting to Know QWC – Cheryl Sullivan (QWC Member).
Between the Covers: Podcast on Spotify 11 June 2022.
Queensland Writers Centre – My Writing Journey – Cheryl Sullivan
State Library of Queensland – Cheryl Sullivan

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Show Notes and More:

Kōbō Abe

The late Kōbō Abe (安部公房), (1924-1993), was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer, and inventor. He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University; however, he never practised, instead giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim. In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map. In 1973, he founded an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. He was elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. Other works by Kōbō Abe:

The Ruined Map
The Box Man
Secret Rendevous
The Woman in the Dunes
The Face of Another
The Ark Sakura
The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kobo
Three Plays by Kōbō Abe
Kangaroo Notebook

Machi Yamada

In 1945 Machi Yamada and Kōbō Abe married. Machi Abe was a success in her own right. An artist and a stage director, the couple saw successes within their fields in similar time frames. They joined a number of artistic study groups, such as The Night Society and the Japanese Literary School. Machi Abe illustrated Inter Ice Age 4.

Virago Classics

Virago Modern Classics are "dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works. Its aim was, and is, to demonstrate the existence of a female tradition in literature and to broaden the sometimes narrow definition of a 'classic', which has often led to the neglect of interesting books." Some of our favourites are:

Mrs Polfrey and the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
Frost in May by Antonia White
The Lost Traveller by Antonia White

Editors of Kobo Abe’s work mentioned

Juliet W. Carpenters- An American translator of modern Japanese literature. Born in the American Midwest, she studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. After completing her graduate studies in 1973, she returned to Japan in 1975, where she became involved in translation efforts and teaching. Other works translated by Carpenter:

Japanese Women: Short Stories by Yamamoto Shūgorō
The Hunter by Nonami Asa
Masks by Enchi Fumiko
Shadow Family by Miyabe Miyuki
A Lost Paradise by Watanabe Jun'ichi

E. Dale Saunders (1919-1995) – Was an American scholar of Romance languages and literature, Japanese Buddhism, classical Japanese literature, and East Asian civilization. Saunders obtained an A.B. degree from Western Reserve University in 1941 and an M.A. in Romance Philology from Harvard in 1942. He continued his studies in Japanese after joining the U.S. Naval Reserve, later earning an M.A. from Harvard in 1948 and an Doctorat de l'Université de Paris in 1953. Other works translated by Saunders:

Inter Ice Age 4
The Woman in the Dunes
The Face of Another
The Ruined Map
The Box Man

The Ruined Map, The Box Man, and Secret Rendezvous exist in a Trilogy of sorts:

The Ruined Map [1967]

Mr. Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these, he embarks upon an ever more puzzling pursuit that leads him into the depths of Tokyo’s dangerous underworld, where he begins to lose the boundaries of his own identity. Surreal, fast-paced, and hauntingly dreamlike, Abe’s masterly novel delves into the unknowable mysteries of the human mind.

The Box Man [1973]

In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.

Secret Rendezvous [1977]

From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters. Within a few days, though no closer to finding his wife, the unnamed narrator finds himself appointed the hospital’s chief of security, reporting to a man who thinks he’s a horse. With its nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is another masterpiece from Japan’s most gifted and original writer of serious fiction.

Raymond Chandler

American-British novelist and screenwriter, the late Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) became a detective fiction writer at the age of 44 after losing his job at an oil company during the Great Depression. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime, with the majority of those made into motion pictures. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was made into a film, and an anecdote told about Chandler is that when asked about who killed the chauffeur, he didn’t know!

The Big Sleep
Farwell, My Lovely
The High Window
The Lady in the Lake
The Little Sister
The Long Good-Bye
Playback

Yukio Mishima

An incredibly interesting character, and described as one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century, the late Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, and founder of the Tatenokai, an unarmed civilian militia. In 1968 he was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but in the end, it was awarded to Yasunari Kawabata, his countryman and benefactor. According to the author and translator, Andrew Rankin, Mishima’s work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death." His works include:

Confessions of a Mask
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Sun and Steel

Fiji Mermaid

The birth-child of P.T. Barnum described the Fiji mermaid as "an ugly dried-up, black-looking diminutive specimen, about 3 feet long. Its mouth was open, its tail turned over, and its arms thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony.” The Fiji Mermaid was the cryptozoological nightmare, comprising the head and torso of a monkey and the back half of a fish. Just look at the photos here, enough send.

Morgellons

In this unrecognized condition, sufferers of Morgellons have sores that they believe contain fibrous material. As Gareth mentioned on the podcast, Joni Mitchell has battled with this disease, preventing her from performing and travelling. She had this to say, "Fibers in a variety of colours protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral."

Shutter Island

Shutter Island is a 2010 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels, who is investigating a psychiatric facility on Shutter Island after one of the patients goes missing.

Books and Bao

Run by founders Jess and Willow, Books and Bao combine both diverse literature and culture-based travel. Follow Willow on YouTube for the latest recommendations of literature in translation, you can not go wrong with a pick from his curated lists. Will had this to say about Kōbō Abe’s Secret Rendezvous:

“Of all of Kōbō Abe’s novels, Secret Rendezvous is the one which so many inspired works can be traced back to. Similarly, it is the one most obviously inspired by the man Abe is so often compared to: Franz Kafka. [...] It’s evident just how inspired Murakami must have been by the works of Kōbō Abe, and Secret Rendezvous in particular. So much of the tone, characters, and events of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle can be found in the architecture of Secret Rendezvous. Beyond Murakami, there are clear links between the genetics of this novel and The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. [...] While Secret Rendezvous is so explicitly inspired by – and even reads like an homage to – the works of Franz Kafka, it also takes on a life of its own and has its own unique themes to explore. Kafka was intensely obsessed with the paralysing, confusing, alienating, inhuman bureaucracy of post-industrial Western life.” Secret Rendezvous, on the other hand, is more concerned with how our jobs, our roles, our relationships, and even our places of working and living seem to mould and shape us into ugly, unknowable, unhelpful things. Alienation is still a key Kafkaesque theme here, but it’s what causes that alienation and what it leads to that makes Abe’s novel uniquely its own piece of art." From “Kobo Abe: 3 Must-Read Genius Surreal Novels” by Will Heath.

Just beautiful Willow, and if you are a fan of us at The Pleasure of the Text, you will be a fan of Books and Bao. In Gareth’s famous words, “Like and Subscribe!”

GoodReads

Along the same vein, if you want to know more about what Gareth and I (Shannen) are reading, and our thoughts, follow us on Goodreads, where we provide a review on Secret Rendezvous and other amazing books.

House of Leaves

Our next book for our book club segment on The Pleasure of the Text is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. A synopsis of the book can be read here. If you would like to join us, you can buy the book here and here.

Harvest of the Unborn by Cheryl Sullivan

Joined by the lovely Brisbane-based writer Cheryl Sullivan, listen and enjoy as we discuss her book Harvest of the Unborn, her journey to becoming a published author, and her creative process.

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Show Notes:

Authors discussed, their works, and sidenotes.

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people” - Thomas Mann.

Graham Green

Brighton Rock
The End of the Affair
The Quiet American
The Heart of the Matter
The Power and the Glory
The Third Man and Other Stories
Stamboul Train (Orient Express)
Travels with my Aunt
The Ministry of Fear
Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene: Complete Short Stories

Wikipedia

Ah, Wikipedia, where would we be without you?I challenge any curious individual to make the claim (absurd though it may be) that they have not, at anytime in their life, used the wonderful resource that is Wikipedia. Want to know what catabolism is? Wiki it! Want to know what Cacophony is? You get the picture. Quoted from the Wikimedia Foundation’s own website, “your generous donations help us maintain our independence, serve our diverse and global community, and––unlike many other major websites––guarantee that Wikipedia will never have to rely on advertising. In short, your donations help keep free knowledge free.”

Alice W. Flaherty

Author of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain, Alice Flaherty has many titles; neurologist, researcher, physician and educator, and her interests included the neural basis of creativity. In her work, she argues that specific areas of the brain function for literary creativity, and that blocks (writer’s block) resulted from disrupted brain activity in those areas.

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain

Free Writing

Monday or Tuesday, published in 1921 by the Hogarth Press, is the only collection of short stories published in Virginia Woolf’s lifetime. The collection includes a short story titled ‘Monday or Tuesday’, but the phrase crops up earlier in 1919 in Woolf’s essay ‘Modern Fiction’:

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it.

[1] See Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (London: Vintage, 1997), p. 376, citing a letter from Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 16 Oct 1930.

Virginia Woolf

The late Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is considered one of the most important 20th-century modernist authors, and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness (free writing) as a narrative device. Strange for the times, she was encouraged by her father to start writing professionally in 1900. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an artistic and literary group comprising herself, her brothers and their intellectual friends. In 1917 Virginia and her husband, Leonard Woolf, founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work.

Mrs Dalloway
To the Lighthouse
A Room of One’s Own
The Waves
Orlando
The Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf

Writing in Cafes

Have you always thought there is more to writing in a café besides coffee and cake? Well, you may be right. Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition can be read here.

The OuLiPo Group

The OuLiPo group, founded in 1960, believed in the use of literary constraints to inspire creativity. The writer most famously associated with OuLiPo was Georges Perec (1936-1982).

Perec wrote a 300-page mystery novel without using the letter 'e' (La Disparition [1979, A Void]). This is known as a lipogram (i.e. a written work in which a particular letter or group of letters is intentionally omitted).
He also wrote a short story with 'e' as its only vowel ('Les Reventes' [1972, 'The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex')].

Rather than inhibiting him, Perec claimed that such constraints freed and inspired him to the extent that ‘many of his texts almost wrote themselves.’

Oulipo Compendium by Alastair Brotchie

Georges Perec

Perec (1936-1982) is a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, essayist, and is a member of the OuLiPo group. Oulipo Group, you ask? Oulipo is short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature", or an even better description was coined by Raymond Queneau, Oulipo’s founder, who described Oulipians as "rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." Oulipo was a group of French writers and mathematicians who sought to use constrained techniques to enhance their creative endeavours. Georges Perec was a notable member, as well as Italo Calvino. Perec wrote the novel La disparition, which did not contain the letter ‘e’ (which is an incredibly common letter in the French language). Just as impressive as Perec’s feat, this novel has been translated into multiple languages, also excluding common letters. It was translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void, which omitted the use of ‘e’, the Spanish version excludes ‘a’, whilst the Russian version excludes ‘o’.

Life: A User’s Manual
Things: A Story of the Sixties with a Man Asleep
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
W or the Memory of Childhood
A Void
I Remember
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books
The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise

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In our very first podcast episode, numero uno, we talk about what can be achieved in 48 hours or a weekend to progress your writing forward. Please enjoy as we discuss the recommended coffee intake, available writing challenges, and the creative practices of other Writers.

Show Notes
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." - Henry DavidThoreau

Ernest Hemingway

Many works by the late Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) are considered classics of American literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, “for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style” on 20th-century fiction. Some interesting facts on Hemingway: as mentioned in the podcast, Hemingway wrote standing up. He also survived two plane crashes, was an avid hunter and fisherman, and he loved polydactyl cats! If you happen to be staying in Regensburg, Germany, make your way to Hemingway’s (www.hemingways.de), where Shannen wrote some of her novel, Hemingway style, with absinthe. Hemingway’s works include seven novels, six short story collections and two nonfiction works.

The Sun Also Rises
The Old Man and the Sea
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Moveable Feast
Winner Take Nothing
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

George Plimpton

Widely known for his sports writing, the late George Plimpton (1927-2003) was an American journalist, writer, editor, actor, and the occasional amateur sportsman. Many of Plimpton’s works involved him competing in professional sporting events, and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. He is also known for establishing the Paris Review, a quarterly literary magazine, founded in 1953, which published works and hosted interviews of some of the greats; Italo Calvino, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Parker and Hilary Mantel, to name a few. Plimpton edited The Paris Review until his death in 2003.

Truman Capote: In which various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career
Paper Lion
Out of my League
One for the Record: The Inside Story of Hank Aaron’s Chase for the Home Run Record
The Bogey Man: A Month on the PGA Tour
Shadow Box: An Amateur in the Ring
The Paris Review Anthology
As Told at the Explorers Club
The Best of Plimpton

Graham Green

Brighton Rock
The End of the Affair
The Quiet American
The Heart of the Matter
The Power and the Glory
The Third Man and Other Stories
Stamboul Train (Orient Express)
Travels with my Aunt
The Ministry of Fear
Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene: Complete Short Stories

Joan Lindsay

The late Joan Lindsay (1896-1984) was an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and artist. Her most celebrated work, Picnic at Hanging Rock, written over a four-week period, is predated by her literary work, Through Darkest Pondelayo (1936), which she wrote under a pseudonym at age forty, then her second novel, Time without Clocks (1962).

Picnic at Hanging Rock
Time without Clocks

Steven King

Described as the “King of Horror”, Steven King has published 64 novels and sold over 350 million copies, dabbling in multiple genres: horror, suspense, crime, supernatural fiction, science-fiction and fantasy. Acceptance of Carrie by publishing house Doubleday, set King’s career in motion. As we discussed on the podcast, and openly mentioned in Stephen King’s memoir and craft book, On Writing, King developed a drinking problem in the early 1970’s, and then later a drug addiction. Yet, since the 1980’s, he has quit all drugs and alcohol, and later acknowledged that he didn’t need substances to engage in the creative process. Notably, King donates roughly $4 million per year “to libraries… schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts.” There are too many of King’s books to list, but below is a list of my favourites. Additionally, a new fantasy book, Fairy Tale, is on track for release on the 6th of September. You can engage with Stephen King on Twitter (https://twitter.com/StephenKing), or on his website (www.stephenking.com).

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
It
Misery
The Shining
Pet Sematary
Salem’s Lot
The Green Mile
Misery

Michael Crichton

The late Michael Crichton (1942-2008) is most renowned for the Jurassic Park franchise, but, he has produced many other fantastic works, having sold over 200 million copies of his books worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. For those internally debating their choice of career, take a leaf from Crichton’s book (pun intended). Crichton received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, but never practised, instead choosing to focus on his writing. Crichton first started writing under the pseudonym “Jeffrey Hudson”, which was a reference to the 17th-century court dwarf and his own height (a towering two meters).

The Terminal Man
The Andromeda Strain
Jurassic Park
The Lost World
Sphere
Timeline
State of Fear
Dragon Teeth

Salman Rushdie

Sir Salman Rushdie’s work combines historical fiction with magical realism, often looking at migration issues, especially between Eastern and Western civilizations. Where to start? Rushdie’s second novel, Midnight’s Children, won the Booker Prize in 1981, and then won the Booker Prize for “the best novel of all winners” twice, both for the 25th and 40th Anniversary of the Booker Prize. If you hadn’t heard already, on 12 August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed on stage in Chautauqua, New York, where he was scheduled to deliver a lecture, More Than Shelter, focusing on “the United States as an asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression”. What sparked this event was the publication of Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. This book has been incredibly controversial: a fatwā was ordered by the Supreme Leader of Iran on the 14th of February 1989; on the 7th of March 1989, the UK and Iran broke diplomatic relations over it, and a failed assassination attempt on Rushdie in August 1989. It has re-sparked the conversation on free speech and literary censorship. Rushdie is recovering, and one of the best ways to support him is to buy his works. You can follow him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/salmanrushdie) or his website (https://www.salmanrushdie.com/).

Midnight’s Children
The Satanic Verses
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Languages of Truth
Quichotte
The Ground Beneath her Feet
Victory City
East, West: Stories
Shame
The Moon’s Last Sigh
Luka and The Fire of Life
The Enchantress of Florence

John Irving

Five of John Irving’s novels have been adapted into films, including, The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, a Prayer for Owen Meany and A widow for One Year, but he has produced other acclaimed works beyond these. I will let an excerpt from his own website, An Introduction to John Irving, describe him and his work: “Superior fiction asks three things of the novelist: Vigorous feeling for life as we live it. Then imaginative force, strong enough to subvert and rebuild unhindered. And then – but this is rare and so essential that we might call it the “reality principle” of fiction– shrewd sense to keep the first two locked in stubborn love with each other.” To read more, you can follow him at his website (www.john-irving.com), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/JohnIrvingAuthor), or on Twitter (https://twitter.com/irving_john).

The World According to Garp
The Last Chair Lift
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Cider House Rules
Until I Find You
The Hotel New Hampshire
Setting Free the Bears
A Son of the Circus
The Water Method Man
A Widow for One Year
The Fourth Hand

Margaret Atwood

Reading is a rewarding experience, especially so when the work is Margaret Atwood’s. It’s truly rare to read a piece where you can feel the fun being had by the writer on the other end, and that was apparent all through Murder in the Dark, a collection of Atwood’s short stories, from vignettes, to much longer works. An acclaimed poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and teacher, she has now added environmental activist to the title, with the release of her 8-week virtual live course Practical Utopias in February 2022. If it opens again, I wouldn’t think twice about applying for a spot! Her novel, A Handmaid’s Tale, now on Netflix, frequently ranks as one of the most banned books in the U.S. This is what she had to say on that: “I had thought America was against totalitarianisms. If so, surely it is important for young people to be able to recognize the signs of them. One of those signs is book-banning. Need I say more?” You can follow Margaret Atwood on Instagram (@therealmargaretatwood), Twitter (@MargaretAtwood), Facebook (Margaret Atwood), or her website (http://margaretatwood.ca/). For a great podcast with Margaret Atwood, head to Tim Ferriss’s podcast, Episode #573 (https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/).

The Handmaid’s Tale
The Blind Assassin
Cat’s Eye
Alias Grace
Oryx and Crake
The Heart Goes Last
The Testaments
The Penelopiad
Murder in the Dark
Wilderness Tips
Good Bones
The Circle Game
Power Politics

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The late Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, critic, philosopher and theologian. He was a member of the Lake Poets, a group of English poets in England who followed no single “school” of thought or literary practice; together, the members were considered part of the Romantic Movement. Romanticism is claimed to be a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, with creative works heavily characterized by the idealization of nature, suspicions over science and industry, clandestine literature, individualism, and a notable glorification of the past. As discussed, Coleridge was known for his meticulous and rigorous reworking of his poems, more so than any other poet.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Major Works

Harlan Ellison

If anyone warrants the name prolific in their careers, Ellison surely deserves the title. Before his death in 2018, Ellison wrote 70 books, 400+ short stories, 1000+ essays, dozens of TV screenplays and much more! An American author, he was known for being outspoken and abrasive, with a combative personality to boot, evening describing himself as “possibly the most contentious person on Earth.” On a particular dispute involving contract obligations, he once sent 213 bricks to a publisher via post, and to make a final point, a dead gopher… His work was influential in the New Wave speculative fiction space, a movement in the 1960s and 1970s characterized by a high degree of experimentation in form and content, engaging with complex concepts, such as utopia, surrealism, postmodernism and entropy.

The Edge of Forever
Honourable Whoredom at a Penny a Word
The Deadly Streets
A Boy and his Dog
I have no Mouth, and I Must Scream
Stalking the Nightmare
Way of an Assassin
The Sound of a Scythe

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment
The House of the Dead
The Gambler
The Brothers Karamazov
Devils
The Idiot
Notes from the Underground
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Neil Gaiman

Most people would have engaged with Neil Gaiman’s work in one way or another. The Sandman and American Gods have been adapted for TV; Stardust was made for film, and Good Omens, which Gaiman co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, was also made into the beloved TV series titled, you guessed it, Good Omens. Gaiman has a gift for crafting stories suitable for all ages; some of my favourites are The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and, in addition, he wrote the English language script for the anime movie Princess Mononoke. To get a true sense of Gaiman beyond my mere words and for aspiring creatives, I highly encourage you to watch his Inspirational Commencement Speech at the University of Arts in 2012. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikAb-NYkseI). “A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love.” You can engage with Neil Gaiman on Twitter (@neilhimself), Instagram (@neilhimself), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/neilgaiman), or his website (https://www.neilgaiman.com/).

The Graveyard Book
Sandman
Coraline
Neverwhere
Norse Mythology
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World
Fragile Things: Short Stories and Wonders

Harper Lee

The late Nelle Harper Lee (1926-2016) won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for her best-known novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird. This book was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown in Alabama, and the irrationally of adult attitudes towards race and class. She helped Truman Capote research the novel In Cold Blood, and it is contested how much she contributed to the writing. Harper Lee, quoted in Newquist in 1964, “I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers, but at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways, this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.”

To Kill a Mockingbird
Go Set a Watchman

Lee Child

Known by the pen name Lee Child, James Dover Grant is a British author famous for his Jack Reacher thriller novel series, which follows a former American military policeman (Jack Reacher) who wanders the US. After being made redundant from a corporate job, Child decided to start writing novels, stating they are “the purest form of entertainment.” After a prominent career following Jack Reacher through 26 books and counting, Child announced in 2020 that he was handing the reins over, not to his son (error on our part) but to his brother Andrew Grant. Want to know more about how Lee Child manages only to write a first and only draft? Read the article by Andy Martin, who follows him around during the production of Lee Child’s 20th novel in the Jack Reacher series here(https://theconversation.com/the-man-with-no-plot-how-i-watched-lee-child-write-a-jack-reacher-novel-51220 ). You can engage with the Jack Reacher series on Twitter (@LeeChildReacher), Facebook (www.facebook.com/LeeChildOfficial), and his website (www.JackReacher.com). Below are the first five books of the Jack Reacher series.

The Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
The Visitor
Echo Burning

James Patterson

The starving artist doesn’t always have to be the accepted trope for an author, and it certainly isn’t for James Patterson. In 2016, Patterson topped Forbes’s list of highest-paid authors for the third consecutive year, with an income of $95 million. For perspective, his books have sold more than 400 million copies, covering thrillers, non-fiction, and romance, and he was the first person to sell 1 million e-books. James Patterson and Stephen King have an… entertaining relationship, but both have “a mutual respect – sort of.” In 2015, Patterson established the James Patterson Pledge with Scholastic Book Clubs to put books in the hands of young readers. Scholastic Book Clubs was one of the initiatives available within my rural school when I was younger, and it’s one of the reasons I’m such an avid reader now. Here here, Mr. Patterson! You can connect with Patterson on Instagram (@jamespattersonbooks), Facebook (www.facebook.com/JamesPatterson), Twitter (@JP_Books), and his website (www.jamespatterson.com/).

Red Alert (co-authored by Marshall Karp)
Along Came a Spider
Liar Liar (co-authored by Candice Fox)
The Black Book (co-authored by David Ellis)
19th Christmas (co-authored by Maxine Paetro)

Georges Perec

Perec (1936-1982) is a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist, and is a member of the OuLiPo group. Oulipo Group, you ask? Oulipo is short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature", or an even better description was coined by Raymond Queneau, Oulipo’s founder, who described Oulipians as "rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." Oulipo was a group of French writers and mathematicians who sought to use constrained techniques to enhance their creative endeavours. Georges Perec was a notable member, as well as Italo Calvino. Perec wrote the novel La disparition, which did not contain the letter ‘e’ (which is an incredibly common letter in the French language). Just as impressive as Perec’s feat, this novel has been translated into multiple languages, also excluding common letters. It was translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void, which omitted the use of ‘e’, the Spanish version excludes ‘a’, whilst the Russian version excludes ‘o’.

Life: A User’s Manual
Things: A Story of the Sixties with a Man Asleep
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
W or the Memory of Childhood
A Void
I Remember
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books
The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise

Writing Challenges Mentioned

Milwordy (www.milwordyformuggles.wordpress.com/about-milwordy/)

NanoWrimo (https://nanowrimo.org/)

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