 Welcome, and it's really lovely to see everybody. My name's Catherine Mann, I'm the Libraries and Arts Manager for Staffordshire County Council, and I chair the Libraries Connected Books and Reading Group. So thank you everybody for coming, and thank you to the British Library for the use of this wonderful venue. It is a real privilege to welcome you to this round table, which is something that we've wanted to do for a long, long time. And while COVID did get in the way, this session now provides us with the opportunity to reflect on how reading has changed during the pandemic and how libraries can respond to this. At the Libraries Connected seminar earlier this week, Jonathan Douglas, the Director for the National Literacy Trust, described how reading for pleasure is the empowerment of literacy. Reading and the loan of books, either physically or digitally, remains our core business, and is threaded throughout all of the Universal Library offers and promises. Through encouraging individuals of all ages to read for pleasure and for purpose, libraries support the growth of a literate, empathetic, imaginative and confident society. Through reading, we want to connect people who feel lonely and isolated, we want to encourage existing and new library customers to re-engage with the physical library offer, and we want to position our libraries to support community recovery and high street regeneration. This morning's session will be for an hour and a half. We will then break for lunch before celebrating the BBC Novels programme this afternoon. There are no five drills planned, as far as we're aware, and the toilets, if you haven't found them, if you go back out onto the landing, the gents around that corner and the ladies the other side of the stairs. So, I'd now like to hand over to Carol Stump, the President of Libraries Connected, who will introduce the session and chair the programme this morning. Thank you. Good morning, lovely to see you all here in person. So, words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair, so said the great Sigmund Freud. Storytelling, creative writing and reading have long been recognised for their therapeutic potential. The use of literature as a healing method dates back to ancient Greece, when Grecian libraries were seen as sacred places with curative powers. As any avid book reader can tell you, immersing yourself in a great book can make your brain come alive. It sounds romantic, but science is now proving this to be true. Many people turn to books in the pandemic. It's interesting to see why, but of course it's important to acknowledge the barriers to reading that people faced. During times of crisis, people find themselves faced with lifestyle changes. One of the earliest and most notable changes seen during the COVID-19 lockdown was how we consume media and especially how we read. The independent newspaper researched reading habits among the UK public. They looked at how much people have been reading, what type and genre of text people have been reading and to what extent people have been returning to previously read books. Respondents generally reported that they were reading more than usual. This was largely due to having more free time, due to being furloughed or not having to commute or the usual social obligations or leisure activities. This increased reading volume was complicated for those with caring responsibilities. Many people with children reported that their reading time had increased generally because of their shared reading, but had less time than normal for personal reading. Reading frequency was further complicated by quality versus quantity snag. People spent more time reading and seeking escape, but an inability to concentrate meant that they made less progress than usual. People spent more time reading, but the volume they read was less. When Peter May wrote his thriller lockdown in 2005, publishers thought the scenario Imagine London shut down by a bird flu was too far fetched. But May, who donated his advance to those on the front line of the fight against coronavirus, has seen sales sour since it was published. Despite the early figures showing spikes in interest for content about pandemics and isolation, it appears that people quickly tired of these topics. Many respondents sought out subject matter that was at least predictable if not necessarily comforting. Many found solace in the security of more formulaic genres, who done it and other types of thrillers were often cited. Others found themselves significantly less picky about genre than they were before the lockdown. They read more and more widely. Many found the lockdown to be a great opportunity to explore things that they didn't normally have the time to desire or desire to read, like hefty classics that seemed too dull or heavy to bring on a commute. Unsurprisingly, lockdown also made rereading a physical necessity for some. Some respondents noted how they were unable to visit the library or browse at the bookshop for new books. Others reported that this simply wished to save money. On the other hand, the participants who reported rereading less than normal during the lockdown period wanted to use their new found time to seek out new topics and genres. We've invited six amazing speakers to give their personal perspectives on why reading became so important and as a sector we can build on this, keeping the levels of interest around reading high and reaching those who were excluded for whatever reason. So I'm delighted to welcome our first two speakers. Monique Roffi, her stunning book, The Mermaid of Black Conch was published on 2 April 2020 and became one of the most talked about books last year. Described by Goodreads reads as a special and deep book with a lot of heart. The Mermaid of Black Conch won the 2020 Costa Book of the Year award. The novel was shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith's Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Monique will be fascinating to hear the journey of that book and what it says about us as readers. Monique will be followed by James Urquhart from the Arts Council England. With a background in reading and writing, James Urquhart spent nine years as a bookseller and 15 as a freelance literary critic before joining Arts Council England in 2010. Currently, he has the national role of senior manager, Libers and Literature and is based in Nottingham. So Monique, over to you. Thank you. I don't know where to start. I just want to follow up from this phenomenon of people reading so much more and reflect on why that might be. I guess for me it has something to do with the fact that we are born storytellers and we've been telling stories forever and we've amassed a repository of stories that are printed and also that are all. I reckon it's like we turn to this repository that humans kind of made over a very, very long period of time and in this repository there are classics, there's comfort, there's wisdom, there's magic and there's resonance for us all. We all learn stuff. I mean, if you read the same book that we love, for me it's a book like Jane Eyre. We can read that again and again and again. So I also think it's self-care and we always know how to care for ourselves. We always have an instinct about how to heal and so you could almost say something quite witty like books and medicine. We have this kind of innate ability to kind of grope or grasp towards what's going to make us feel better generally. So I think there's possibly that had something to do with this sort of spike in interest. Yeah, and in terms of my book, The Mernay de Blac Honche, it had a remarkable journey. It was published by an independent press on the 2nd of April 2020, which is basically in the eye of the first wave of, well, like in the middle of the first wave of COVID-19 last year. I happened to be clinically extremely vulnerable and I was shielding. So there was this kind of, and it's not just me, there were some of my friends as well in group or so. Other people were published in April last year. The pandemic happened, it was so weird, wasn't it? It was like, is it coming? It was really hard and the government didn't know what they were doing either and then suddenly boom, you're in lockdown. And I don't think publishers were able to predict what would happen. And so books that were published in April or even maybe May and June of last year had a similar fate to mine, which was they kind of were plunged into a chasm. I had crowdfunded for publicist for the book. We had an arts council grant. Mani, sorry, could you use the microphone? Would you be able to use the microphone? Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know, oh, sorry, pardon me. So, okay, I'll just continue. So the book, it had an arts council grant behind it for a book tour. I had crowdfunded for a publicist and I thought, for an indie press, it had a fair fighting chance of being read and seen back in April. And then this sort of catastrophe happened and the book just kind of fell into this hole along with many, many other books that were published that month. And two things happened. One, obviously, I was crestfallen and I just thought, well, nobody was interested in mermaids in April 2020. But what also happened is I did see the writing community respond with such incredible generosity. So there were some really big name writers who kind of came to my rescue. David Nicholls, Bernardine Everestowe, Nikita Gill. I know Bernardine, but she's not a close friend and I didn't know the others and they could see what was happening to us and they did these amazing feats of... David Nicholls launched my book on his Twitter platform. So did Nikita Gill. Bernardine blurbed me on Richard and Judy's book club that appeared. So there was a kind of really interesting generosity of spirit that happened in the writing community. But after that was over, I kind of just sort of thought to myself, the mermaid's dead, really, it's over. She can't survive the pandemic. And then she turned up on a prize list, which was the Goldsmiths short list. And then we heard about the costa soon after, which felt like I was incredulous to be long listed let alone to win the category and then the mermaid won the book of the year in January, which I always call this the miracle, because it's a miracle for an indie book to get that kind of touch, it's just such a sort of very, very positive thing to happen. But I think any writer would find this an amazing, life-changing, altering fortune for the book. So my book has gone from, you know, it was basically none of the mainstream publishers knew what to do with it, wouldn't publish it. Indie Press published it, a very reputable one, People Tree Press, extremely solid home of black British and Caribbean fiction. Then we tried to arm the book with the best we could so that it had a fighting chance and the pandemic just took the book off the table and many other books too, also it felt. So I feel enormous, I mean, when I'm a much older person I think I'll look back and I'll be able to be able to sort of sum it up better because the ride of this book and also its appeal, the other thing is this is a book written in Creole, English, not standard English, it's written in poetry as well. I'm incredulous as well that it's had such a wide reading audience now, a broad appeal and I also think, you know, it blurs genres so it's speculative fiction, it's fantasy, it's about a mermaid. Mermaids have, everyone loves mermaids but she's an indigenous ancient sort of badass mermaid very different from, you know, what Disney's presented. So I feel a huge amount of, like, you know, respect actually. And one more thing I just want to say is so there is something about, I wonder if the publishing world is underestimating the reading world really and this book really sort of proves that and I think there's this idea that what we need to be producing as writers is something easy and kind of nice and good and sort of mainstream and standard English and something that's not too complicated and my book is extremely complicated, packed with ideas around race and gender and otherness and people love it, you know, so it's been quite interesting as an old veteran of the writing world. I think that's what all I've got to say. Sorry about the mic. Thank you, Monique, and I am, I'm just so glad that mermaids have had the pandemic. Thank you, that was lovely. James, can I hand over to you now? I'll try to be on mic and juggle notes and not tip my glass all over the floor. Very good to be here, thank you very much for inviting me, it's a real pleasure to be back here. First time I've seen my boss in 20 months and a bit sort of wrap it out of the hutch. There'll be more of that. So I'm going to start with a bit of context as to how our thinking about and support for reading for pleasure has developed over the last few years, but also how the Arts Council supports and values reading and the importance of that reading ecology. So quickly, some of our biggest literature investments are specifically focused on supporting readers. Book Trust is by far the biggest in the literature playbook, 5.4 million pounds supporting their national book gifting scheme and programme with early years. We support the reading agencies range of programmes targeted at broad and specific audiences of all age ranges. And in 2018, we also brought the reader into our national portfolio programme. Based in Liverpool, it convenes reading groups in a range of community settings and celebrates the power of reading allowed and the well-being benefits of reading as a group activity. I'm back to well-being because that's already Monique and Carol have kind of flagged that. So bringing the reader in in 2018 marked a distinct shift in our focus and our emphasis on a stronger focus on reading. At about the same time, we convened a round table on reading for pleasure chaired by Sir Nicholas Serota, the Arts Council chair, which brought together major publishers, the BBC, libraries, bookshops, all with the purpose of trying to find ways in reading activities. In particular, we've looked for activities that draw in non-hobitul readers, the stimulated interest in the pleasures and rewards of reading for those who maybe have no books at home or no positive reading role models, or for whom reading might be uncool or just uncomfortable. One such project that came out of our round table conversations was the National Literacy Trust's Connecting Stories, which again, I'll come back to that in a moment. So what are the growth of interest in reading for the next 18 months? For me, rising workloads and being shut in during lockdown created an urgent need for mental space. For recovery time, curling up with a good book seemed a perfect answer, which obviously I wasn't alone in that opinion. In March and April 2020, library membership soared by as much as 700% in some areas, even as libraries were closing. And some admittedly probably regular readers were jumping on the possibility of borrowing ebooks for free. Worth remembering that at this point, Amazon would be prioritising shipping bookstock. So in that context, there were limited avenues for replenishing your sources. Over the spring and summer, some independent bookshops began offering remote services from phone and online orders to mystery gift boxes that could be biked around to your house if you were lucky enough to have an indie in that context. The library services were ever possible, working around hygiene protocols. Some arranged home deliveries and offered great support, especially to the more vulnerable customers. Libraries connected offered fantastic and pragmatic support nationally to help libraries. One simple example was interceding with publishers around licence arrangements which enabled some of those family story times that happened in libraries to become online events, which was massively welcomed. Another pragmatic opportunity for picking up a book, I think the sense of well-being offered by reading was a crucial factor in that uptick in reading habits. So the last 18 months have been cluttered with stress, anxiety, financial and domestic pressures, something that I'd called mental claustrophobia, health worries, fears for personal safety and for some of the grief. During the pandemic, I think many people found that reading has offered escape, enjoyment, comfort, distraction, reassurance, empathy and hope. So, coming to how can we keep levels of interest around reading high and also what are the ways in which we can reach those who might have been excluded. So at the end of August, library football was ran about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, borrowing was up to about 90%. E-book lending was ran about 70% higher than it had been before the pandemic. So one question is, can this be sustained over the longer term if this is actually evidence of a net increase in reading in terms of e-book borrowing and physical borrowing returning to health. So the Arts Council, we invested £300,000 in the last year to support e-book budgets in libraries in recognition of that spike in demand, but also in recognition of the demand of providing e-stock and the increased costs compared to physical books. We'll support dialogue with publishers to well, the publishing sector generally that highlights these increased costs to libraries and seek ways in which we can improve access. Last October, we also invested in the UK launch of bookshop.org which is an online platform that pays a large share of profits back into local bookshops and since launching that platform sold over £10 million worth of books including giving £1.6 million back to high street independent bookshops. It's something that increases customer access to books and reading opportunities without damaging high street interests which is something that we're very keen to keep in mind as well. What does the foreign to digital mean for place-based festivals? Initially hit hard by the pandemic, in some cases the pivot to online delivery has opened up potential new audiences and readers. People from the next town or city or even country beaming into local festivals, some who can join when the cost of travel are removed and possibly when the costs of tickets are removed as well. Possibly those with mobility difficulties or those who are anxious in public spaces or in larger crowds or those who've always felt that going to a literary festival or a book festival just isn't for them and who might have found a different way into that. We've supported fledgling organisations like the Big Book Weekend which is the inspiration of writers Kit Dwell and Molly Flat Book Weekend is an online only festival that proactively platforms working class and diverse writers and its inclusive programme approach has attracted highly diverse and in many cases new audiences. I think these developments are really interesting for nourishing and attracting new and different audiences but underlying all this I still think there remains a strong theme of well-being which we really shouldn't ignore. So there are imaginative ways and approaches that can tap into reading as an ingredient of well-being. Some of which you'll be familiar with. Whether it's Empathy Lab founded by Sarah Mears and others or maybe the Gravity Festival which the reader is hosting in a fortnight's time 5th to the 7th of November. It's a hybrid literature and well-being festival aiming to create a place where the serious problems of life can be spoken about cried over and laughed at which for me seems a pretty good manifesto for the power of reading. What else will we do? We seek to support organisations and individuals that are managing to be creative and effective at nourishing reading for pleasure especially with reluctant or with non-mainstream audiences. We'll continue to advocate for investment in reading activities in and out of school for all ages in support of the excellent offer provided nationally by our local public libraries. Some organisations we've supported over the longer term. The Reading Agency you'll be familiar with delivering its well-established targeted programmes throughout the year from quick reads to summer reading challenge. This year it received an additional £3.5 million investment from the government to extend its reading well and reading friends programmes directly as a result of the pandemic responding to well-being cantering isolation. We're also investing in large scale projects which reach people and communities that might be excluded from opt-in reading offers. I mentioned earlier the Connecting Stories project. We've allocated £2.4 million to this up until 2023 and it's specified in our delivery plan for our 10-year strategy Let's Create. It's a project that's located in 14 nationwide hubs from Hastings to Middleborough not in a straight line that is. All identified by granular data development, data that was developed with Experian. It brings together lots and lots of different datasets. It targets need down to ward level so it can be really, really specific as to how it gets the work that it does through to the people that identified most at need. Activities are engaging accessible. They include exhibitions, walk and talk trails, residencies, competitions. It has investment from lots of publishers offering books and cash. And the partners include local libraries, schools, local authorities and health services, charities, food banks and other organisations who are focused on bringing reading to where people are rather than the other way around. So in conclusion Arts Council strongly supports and values all sorts of things. Reading and the importance of the reading ecology. We're increasing our emphasis on reading and our funding, putting more resource into stimulating good and interesting and inclusive reading projects. There's been a resurgence of reading amongst established readers during lockdown but I think also interesting new quarters that we collectively need to sustain. Well-being and supporting good mental health are crucial and I think we really need to pay attention to that. And we're developing work with and cooperation between libraries, publishers, booksellers, writers and readers to achieve this. Thank you very much. Thank you James, it's really good to hear that Arts Council are going to increase the emphasis on reading. It's really good to hear the plans for the future. We've got some time for questions I think Sarah that's going to help with that. We've just got a couple of minutes for questions. So does anyone have any questions either for Monique or James? Just stick your hand up if you do. Thank you. This is for you Monique. I'm from Brent Libraries and you did come and give a talk many years ago on white woman on a green bicycle and we'd love to have you back. And can I say how delightful it was that you won the cost award, but also along with Ingrid Grisell because two novels set in Trinidad and I just think that is just absolutely amazing. So the question that I had for you is you mentioned your pleasure that you got from reading Jane Eyre and I just wondered thinking about Jean Rhys who wrote The Wide Cegasal C which looked at the first Mrs Rochester who came from the Caribbean and I just love that connection and I just wondered what your thoughts were around that very first book and you know the linking to Jane Eyre. I mean I hate to say but so much has been written about these two books and how they're linked and the genius of Rhys' critique of Jane Eyre. Does anyone following what I'm saying? Yeah. So I love both books and I have complicated feelings about both books. I love Jane Eyre because I read it when I was much younger and obviously it's a story of an orphan who's sent to an institution so I went to a boarding school and I was about the same age as Jane Eyre and so the orphan outsider growing up in an institution was kind of well it resonated deeply and it's a gothic tale of this abandoned wife sitting up in this attic prowling, this creole mixed race woman yeah so and so you have to really think about it and I mean Jean Rhys Jean Rhys knew this woman you know Jean Rhys I'm not sure if she was mixed race was she a white woman Jean Rhys I think was from the Caribbean Exactly but a Creole woman a Caribbean a white Creole So I think Jean Rhys wanted to respond to how this woman the white you know the mad woman in the attic had been stigmatised as mad and and so her response was extremely audacious which is to write a novel from the Caribbean rewriting a canonical work and in its place became a canonical work in a different canon it's just marvellous it's just incredible I have complicated feelings about white sogassocy as well because well Jean Rhys has been stigmatised as mad Antoinette Decawsway is stigmatised as mad and I think mad women are traumatised women generally so it's kind of belittling the trauma that the mad woman has been through and a little bit of a Freudian hysteric you know there's something there that's sort of unsaid as well and my character Arcadia Reyn in her maid is not a mad woman she's not mad or white she's not a mad white woman she's caught up in the complications and obviously living with the curse of her history historical background she is part of what's left of the plantocracy I don't know whether I'm answering your question I think I've probably rambled a bit sideways I love Jane Eyre because it gave me so much comfort as a child and I love Jean Rhys' response to Jane Eyre and they sit side by side powerful novels one critiquing the other and yet I think that there might even be room for a critique of the critique so that's a long long answer but thank you thank you sorry we don't have any time for any more questions but I don't know whether you're staying Monique or James yes so you know I'm sure you'll catch them at lunchtime so can I just have a round of applause so I'd like to invite Ayub Khan and James Bartlett on to the stage thank you so we've got Ayub Khan who is head of libraries and cultural services for Warwickshire County Council and James Bartlett from the RNIB so Ayub Khan MBE as I said is head of libraries his interest extends to international library development with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion particularly as a former refugee himself he has worked on library projects in several countries for the British Council in 2013 Ayub was awarded an MBE for his services to libraries and he is past president of SILIP, the UK's Library and Information Association Ayub is the vice-chair of the Midlands Area Council for Arts Council England he's a member of the British Library's Public and Union Rights Committee and he's also joined the cultural leadership board of the West Midlands Combined Authority Ayub's president elect of libraries connected James Bartlett is the senior manager reading services at RNIB with a responsibility for the services that provide accessible reading materials to blind and partially sighted people across the United Kingdom this includes leisure reading books daily newspapers monthly magazines an extensive collection of educational reading materials and more formats include talking books braille, e-text and an increasing amount of digital delivery alongside physical media by post crucial to the success of this is the support RNIB receive from many publishers who have generously donated their content to the benefit of RNIB's reading service customers thank you, so I'd like to invite Ayub to speak Thank you so much for it's so exciting to be here in person we had libraries connected seven hour earlier on in the week today here so it's all basically all come together it's the first time I'm more tired from these two years I really forgot how to do the knot just about so really let so I'm asked me to talk a little bit about an article I wrote for the box seller magazine about a reading to the lockdown and a public library perspective going and interrogating our library cataloging what are people reading looking at the book list and really have some updated it so I really want to talk to you about that because the first thing I did was when I was sort of thinking about what were people reading lockdown what were habits, why were people reading were people reading sort of more so the first thing I did was you mentioned the public light lending rights committee so basically I a member of the sub-bush library so I ran them up and said have you got all the data that nationally sort of people are sort of reading fantastic resource to have but unfortunately they were changing computer systems and things were changing so really sort of the data was really quite some time off so what I did sort of did was start looking at our own sort of catamol talking to library staff and also talking to some of my colleagues around so what was being talked to you so I really like to sort of start up with a bit about the sort of well being aspect of sort of reading and they made me talk about reading choices what people were buying and really what people were borrowing so doing this all the time we now know that more reading was happening during lockdown I think that's been fact that and Jonathan Douglas earlier on at a library sort of conference also reiterated the fact that when they asked people what would make you read more what would make you sort of go back to reading the first thing that they basically said was more time and all of us had a lot more time during sort of the lockdowns but I think there's a bit more to it than just having more time while reading sort of levels reading sort of rows and people reading more and I think reading is a real stress buster fears of infection social isolation jobs and money worries and perhaps homeschooling raised levels of anxiety for the population even shopping for sort of groceries became worrisome or deals of wearing sort of masks, handfiles hand wipes and social distancing really sort of raised the sort of anxiety levels both for adults and children but also children too fast stress for effects of normality eroding and we've seen all these statistics in terms of mental health and sort of children according to the reading agency and there being sort of here 55% of children reported feeling stressed when schools close and 60% were worried about relatives might fall sick. The reading wild campaign reported in December 2020 that an estimated 1 in 4 children were feeling anxious there's plenty of evidence to suggest that reading makes us feel better it's a popular cultural pastimes we've just heard in terms of the work that the arts cancer do around sort of reading and it has positive measure of impacts on our health and well being the stress busting effects of evidence of reading across the sort of age range was really sure or demonstrated in this national literacy trust report that Jonathan mentioned earlier on in the week they basically surveyed more than 50,000 9 to 18-year-olds and what they sort of reported that nearly 60% of them felt they felt better for reading during lockdown so these statistics are all in the articles and this will provide some of this so what were people reading and what factors affected their choices as well as really trying to get out from this article some studies divided reading lockdown into two camps that like to read comfort, reread familiar old favourites and those who prefer to use their bonus reading time if you call that to experiment with different authors and genres with a shielding furlode or otherwise stuck at home we had more time to revisit books that we loved two thirds of respondents to the May 2020 survey said that reading interests both fiction and non-fiction will change so just before talking about reading what were choices, what were people buying before we looked at there anecdotes of evidence suggest early interest in books about disasters and epidemics in Wayne and readers wanted to escape the reality of the global pandemic a quick look through the various lists on this show the mix of crime, thrillers fiction, autobiographies cookery books again talking about books saying that you were at home and DIY books were amongst the top many of us ensued whilst feeding our minds with books unusual also went down the knockdown journey of home baking biggest of ways and also DIY projects also books on health and well being and home base activities such as gardening will really be used all day on top top there escapism again featured strongly on the top titles for children bestsellers including fantasy adventures comedy titles along with along with puzzles and joke books and a few familiar characters such as Harry Potter Stick of the Dog and Spot were also of the sort of favourites there according to the publishers association audiobook downloads were the fastest growing format popular with both children and adults book sales surged during lockdown and the upward trends continues through 2020 more than 200 million printed books were sold in the UK the best performance for many years so that's incredible more books were being basically sold at any time in the last few years when people think really books of habits were sort of dying away so borrowing choices public libraries offer the alternative alternatives such as free clicking collect we've just heard about book loans and home delivery to shielding readers feedback was very positive the lucky deep selections the titles hand picked for customers by librarians were popular and encouraged readers to explore new authors and genres customers in Warwickshire's showed a preference for happy endings and books about hobbies, outdoor activities and help with homeschooling and sort of DIY so I asked the staff you know you put these bags again what are you sort of putting what are customers asking for meanwhile library authorities saw a substantial increase in digital and according to library sort of connected research e-book grows by 146% e-audio by 113% magazines and by 80 and newspapers by 223% so that's huge and these are some new figures that were released by you and sort of quite recently Warwickshire's adult borrowing figures for the first 12 months of the pandemic restrictions make interesting reading the top 5 most borrowed printed titles were different to the 5 e-audio sort of titles loan featured on the sort of list with over 500 downloads sort of simultaneously on offer print and digital borrowers showed somewhat different sort of taste during lockdown these emerge across all formats as one library staff from our stock services so what she said to me was Christine crime and thriller always issue well but during the last year we've noticed an increase in romance escapism and new boosting loans plus while being titles have been incredibly popular we also noticed popular revisiting all favourites books that have always meant to read some time and the perennial best sellers classics were issuing sort of well so I said what were children's reading what we were doing in terms of children's reading what were those books again we went into our library catalogue to find out what reading habits were there and clearly some parents sought to mitigate the effects of lockdown limitations on the young children development by borrowing lots of books to help with literacy but the 5 sort of top picture books or titles in Warwickshire included The Gruffalo Child The Hungry Caterpillar We're going on a sort of bear hunt so you sort of basically familiar sort of titles across there and Harry Potter titles took the 5 places for younger readers and eat audio charts and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the most downloaded ebook and we've got to remember that obviously some of the restrictions were sort of lifted so you know we were allowed to have a lot more e-lending as well as availability Warwickshire star said why does lockdown exposure contributed to the popularity authors such as Liz Pynchon, Julia Domenson and David Williams also provided online content free for libraries so those really helped a lot with the sort of loans and what was really interesting was the schools library service reported a boom in requests for teachers for some real books I went during the sort of pandemic and we were allowed to support schools for home schooling and those that were basically of key worker children schools so when I went to schools library service there was masses of green boxes of loans and there were sort of hundreds of them and basically what the staff there were saying was that teachers were really really keen to get real books in the hands of key worker children in the school because there was so much online sort of reading sort of going on and that they were worried about sort of the time that children were spending on screen so they really wanted that so that was really sort of an interesting so will it sort of last it's difficult to predict whether the pandemic will have a long-term effects on customers reading habits and trends browsing which sought such a big part of normality sort of times was severely sort of curtail so what's really interesting was we were basically in libraries choosing books on behalf of our customers or customers were choosing books from the library catalogue and that browsing part had sort of disappeared so it would be really interesting when the public lending rights figures come out to see how is it going to fare with future years when customers are coming into libraries themselves but what we found is that physical borrowing is sort of continuing we're about 70-80% up in terms of our reading from pre-panicked days so basically we're basically only sort of 20% sort of down from 2009 so really reading sort of levels and book borrowing is sort of continuing to go up and hopefully by the end of year we will have reached levels that we had in 2019 and so that's it and our digital borrowing is sort of continuing to sort of go up to 20,000 downloads a month so we are seeing sort of continuous something so basically I'll sort of leave it there to go on so much more but we're basically some of the questions might come later so thank you Thank you very much, I hope some really interesting facts and figures I'll hand over to James, thank you So good afternoon everybody as was mentioned so I look after RNIB's reading services and we provide Braille and talking books to over 50,000 customers who are spread throughout the UK and we do this by a mixture of sending stuff through the post articles for the blind and increasingly we offer a digital online service and so in the past year we have sent out 1.4 million books to our readers and that's across USBs, CDs physical Braille books and all variety of digital download So as I'm sure you've all experienced when COVID first emerged we had to close our physical circulating Braille library because we wanted to assess the risk of you know when you read a Braille book you actually have to touch every single cell on every single line and we weren't sure about what the risks at that point because COVID was such an unknown quantity of what the risks of an infection might be At the same time our customers were finding themselves very much like everybody else but particularly you know, accentuated they were at home, they're very isolated they had no visitors the trips out that they may have done ceased and they had two key concerns first one was getting food because they were no longer going to the shops and having sighted assistance somebody to go around and describe to them everything that they could buy and they were finding that time was weighing very heavily on their hands and as we know mental health can be heavily impacted when you have too much time not occupied So we were looking at how we could react to this and so RNIB did an awful lot of work with supermarkets to get priority shopping slots for people to make sure they had the food that they needed day to day but at the same time on the library side of things we moved to producing fresh Braille books for people so we were like embossing on demand so when somebody received a book they were the first person to read every single one of those pages and touch Braille and if you're an experienced touch Braille list you can actually tell whether something has been read before by somebody else or not just checking the time so alongside this activity we worked with publishers to get their permission to include their audio books on our radio stations so RNIB has a connect radio which you can get on the internet you can get it on your digital TV and we were able to put out books on there as well at a reasonable hour and we provided free subscriptions to our newspapers and magazines because what people were really hungry for was the latest news what was happening, what we were hearing about Covid not just the headlines, they wanted to read the index and understand what it meant for them so we were working in every way we could to keep people supplied with the reading material that they were asking us for and obviously alongside that huge quantities of our talking books on CDs and USBs as well now you might have thought that we were ahead of this just the month before in February 2020 we launched our brand new online reading service we had no idea that Covid was arriving and we had spent the last two years working on this this new platform was much more versatile not only could we put talking books on it we could have put Braille on it and I'll come back to the Braille in a moment and our customers driven by adversity it pushes people to find new and different solutions so our whereas our previous platform had about four to five thousand active readers on it our new platform has now got to thirteen thousand active people using it and I think part of that is driven by people having overcome their inertia their usual cycle of things they were looking at other ways to read books so what are the lasting impact of this we've now moved fully to a Braille on demand service the books that we provide to people they're smaller, they're lighter they don't have great big heavier plastic covers on which is another helpful thing because we're not adding to the plastic in the environment challenges and it's strange enough that just two years ago we met the Dutch library for the Blind just across the other side of the Eustam Road and they've been doing this for the past ten years and they're explaining how and why it works and in the course of the conversation they said and of course for for cleanliness and for hygiene and my manager and I looked at each other and we thought cleanliness and hygiene we were aware of some of the issues that could come back but not did we realise until Covid impact did just how much resonance that that throw away comment from them was going to have so now we produce fresh Braille books for all of our customers and interestingly enough our Braille readership our active Braille library customers have been steadily declining year on year and we had just gone below a thousand active borrowers and in the last year or so we've actually increased back to 1300 and more and in asking people why have they come back they said not least it was because the big books, the plastic cover books were too hard to handle a lot of our audience although we serve people of every age the majority of them are a retirement age as a third age and they were finding dexterity issues handling the big books and they were too heavy on their laps too heavy to turn around and you have to bear in mind if you take a Harry Potter book I know they're quite a solid book in print if you have it in Braille it fills a bookshelf and they're not the size of the books that you've got sat there beside you on the chairs these are big tomes bigger than an A4 piece of paper so it was fascinating to us that we've actually been able to turn that around and regain some traction with our customers which is fantastic a 30% increase in your active customers of a very specialist readership is just brilliant I started in Braille when I started at RNIB and to have that pickup from people is just amazing but alongside that just looking at the time time does whiz by when you're sat here doesn't it it does for me it may not for you we've done increasing amounts of e-brow so much as you might read a book on a Kindle we are now providing books electronically so on an SD card we can now supply people with a library of thousands of books and when I started at RNIB an electronic brow display cost the same as a Ford Escort car around £8,000 to £9,000 and I remember at the time being absolutely staggered and now we can supply people with an electronic brow display for about £500 to £600 whereas an equivalent car is around £20,000 or more so you see the difference in the course of 30 years and these work, they've got electronic pins that go up and down so you read a line, you press a button the pins drop down and the fresh line comes up to read again by touch and I have spoken to people on brow readers who've said they've read far more braille with their orbit than they would have ever managed by reading a physical book so again, it's empowering to people and we've given away over 300 braille readers to people and we're about to embark on a further round of that I haven't really touched on our talking books we send out an immense amount of CDs and USBs to people it's our biggest service by far over 40,000 active borrowers but what has been exciting for us two months ago we launched a smart speaker skill so people are no longer waiting on the post to arrive and I don't know about what it's like where you live but where I live everybody in my local Facebook group is complaining about the randomness of when the post does and doesn't turn up well if you're waiting for your next book to arrive that is quite a significant thing to be waiting for and now people can actually call the book on demand and I had mentioned that our audience were much of the older age group I was talking to a lady the other day and at the end of our conversation she said she's got an Amazon Alexa she said to me, you do know how old I am, don't you? and I kind of guessed she was about 70 from the bits we were discussing and she said I'm 100 and you know what you're going to go okay and I think it just exemplifies age is not a barrier it's about the confidence and willingness to give something a go it's not an age thing it is about being prepared to give it a try so I just wanted to finally say I read our customer feedback every month and the thing that has stood out to me through the pandemic is I quite reasonably I expected our complaints to grow people are saying to me send us more, send us more what has actually grown has been our positive feedback people saying to us you don't know how much this means to me and the word I read every month from customers but their word is it's a lifeline and to be able to provide that to people is the most amazing thing to be involved with to be providing that to people who say otherwise the days are endless and empty I'm reading a book, it gives me the escape and actually just the point you made about the books of interest family sarcas is what people have really relished reading and I think they've been very removed remote from family, from human contact and it's been heartwarming to them so I'll finish there but thank you very much. Thank you, what a valuable service Thank you both I think we've got time just for one question if somebody's got a question for Aable James It's a fascinating talk from you I wanted to ask a in 2020 the other big story was Black Lives Matter and I wonder if that had an impact on book loans obviously looking through the sort of catalogue in terms of borrowing sort of history there Black Lives I don't think necessarily featured because there's so much of a time lag in terms of people accessing resources new sort of books coming in so I'd imagine, you know when I said that the top digital loans with newspapers and I'm just wondering is whether a lot of the content that they were reading was around sort of the Black Lives Matter movement and what was going there so I think a lot of that would have probably been digital there but we didn't sort of see a trend then a lot of people going out there and by borrowing lots of interests in terms of Black History authors from minorities and sort of Black People sort of from that point of view so it'll be interesting maybe next year we might see that evidence sort of appear across that a really interesting sort of point Thank you Great question Thank you, thank you Ayub and James Absolutely fascinating, thank you So next I'm going to invite Debbie Hicks from the Reading Agency and author Sophia Armad up to the stage Thank you So Debbie Hicks MBE is a founder member and creative director of the Reading Agency She has responsibility for program development and delivery, cultural strategy and policy planning creative innovation, research and evaluation She's been the inspirational driving force of the reading and health work of the Reading Agency including creating reading friends a UK wide reading befriending program focused on combating loneliness Sophia Armad worked in advertising and in the House of Commons before becoming a full time author In 2010 she set up the BIBI foundation which arranges visits to the houses of parliament for children from underprivileged backgrounds Sophia has written several children's books including Under the Great Plum Tree which was endorsed by Amnesty International and long listed for the UK Literacy Association Book Awards She has also contributed an essay to It's Not About the Berker Muslim Women on Faith Feminism, Sexuality and Race edited by Maryam Khan Thank you, Debbie It's fantastic to be here today and I'm really pleased to be able to not only celebrate the novels that have shaped our world and all the fantastic work that's gone on around that but also the reading that saved our lives basically during a very difficult time of deprivation and challenge restoring us enriching our worlds and connecting us at a time when social connections were really difficult At the Reading Agency we're absolutely passionate about the proven power of reading We know from the work that we do with our library partners but also from the research and evidence that we gather that it really can help to tackle big life challenges building skills and learning improving health and wellbeing and connecting individuals, families and communities all really key areas of need that have been absolutely amplified during the last 18 months but we're also really really passionate about our special and long standing relationship with public libraries and the way that working together we can enable massive engagement with the benefits of reading particularly for those vulnerable and excluded communities that need those benefits the most Public libraries can reach people that are hard to reach and out of reach for other services During lockdown it's absolutely true to say that our physical lives got smaller and smaller but our reading lives got bigger opening up new windows to the world providing escapillism and relief teaching us new things and inspiring big conversations about important topics Just from my own personal perspective my reading journey has taken me into the future with Isigurus, Clara and the Sun into the past with Maggie O'Farrill's Hamlet around the Salt Pass with Rainer Winn and to the Caribbean with a monarch's amazing story of the mermaid and Ingrid Passade's Love After Love and these are just some of the amazing places and people that I visited when we couldn't visit anywhere so reading has been a lifeline for me but for those most in need whether it's been children missing school and struggling to catch up or the lonely and the isolated have been even more significant at a recent webinar which some of you may attended on the library offer for people experiencing homelessness a representative from the big issue said that when vendors were surveyed at the beginning of the pandemic about their needs what were their needs most what did they want support for it was interesting that along with the central services books came top of the list and at the same time journalist Maeve McLennan author of No Fixed a Boat who was also talking at the seminar told a very moving story about the escape and comfort that books have provided for a young refugee at her time of greatest need helping her to feel connected but also to improve her English and find her way in a new world so these are just some personal stories but they are absolutely backed by evidence a lot of stats today but I'm just going to share a few of them from the work that we've done so our 2020 World Book Night Research indicated that one in three people read more during the lockdown than they did before but interestingly there was a particular spike in young people's reading with 45% of young people saying that they were reading more Nelson's data indicates that 30% of adults were reading more print books 20% were reading more e-books and 9% listening to more audio books but again there was a spike in young people's consumption with one in four young people listening to audio books more during lockdown than they did before we've heard about reading as a way of relaxation and escape and that very clearly has come through in the evidence and cited by lots of people as the reason they picked up a book one in two adults said that reading provided much needed entertainment and a way to pass the time young people and children said that having more time to listen to audio books provided a welcome distraction had a positive impact on their wellbeing and helped them to relax and sleep and the wider evidence completely backs these findings with regular readers reporting fewer feelings of stress stronger feelings of relaxation and a greater ability to cope with difficult situations given the focus on escapism and relief as we've heard it's not surprising that fiction was a very particular genre of choice during the first lockdown with crime in the classics especially popular but as we've also heard books about epidemics the plague by Camus and the viral storm by Nathan D Wolfe also saw massive sales perhaps less escapism here than learning through the experiences of others and then there was a return to comfort reads and an increase in rereading and reading books with formulae plots obviously we needed our books to be a safety blanket as we've heard books book sales spiked during lockdown with one in four adults buying more books than before and whilst libraries closed as you know there was a massive increase in online borrowing we know that one third of the UK public engage with public library services during the pandemic and that they made 3.5 million more e-book loans than usual during March to August so there's no doubt that all this reading helped to open up closed world and connect people at a time when they needed it most with 41% of adults saying they felt lonelier than before lockdown and one million people becoming chronically lonely between April 2020 and February 2021 Reading groups known for generating a sense of community flourished and moved online and our shared reading program delivered with public libraries reading friends delivered massive reach and impact we were set a target of delivering 16,000 reading befriending engagements between January and March and public working with public libraries we delivered 70,000 reading inspired conversations online and by telephone and this book chat really did make a difference to people so 85% of reading friends participants said they felt less lonely as a result 83% felt more connected to other people and 74% said that they had added purpose to their week and it absolutely was a lifeline for many people there's one particular example of when a library a library member of staff was on a Zoom call with someone who really did take ill during their reading befriending conversation and they were able to get some support for them at a time when they had no one else to talk to and if reading is good for you so is library use with 60% of people surveyed by Carnegie saying that the engagement with libraries had a huge impact on their wellbeing and made them feel more connected to their community and less alone during the pandemic so in the midst of really challenging and difficult times reading has provided a lifeline to many including some of our most vulnerable communities but there are challenges digital reading and book lending services have not been available to all particularly the elderly and those living with disadvantage and we know that existing inequalities have only widened and become more entrenched during the pandemic there's also been a widening of the gap in reading enjoyment and daily reading engagement between boys and girls during this period but all in all I think it's been a success story and there are strong foundations on which to build so how can we retain this momentum we've learnt a lot during the last 18 months about digital value, scope and challenge and the importance of new blended ways of working that combine the best of online and face-to-face delivery we've seen the massive engagement and outreach potential of quality assured reading for pleasure and empowerment programmes such as the summer reading challenge reading well books on prescription programme and reading friends delivered by public libraries interlocal communities to feed creativity and enrich lives whilst supporting skills and learning health and wellbeing and social connectivity we've tried the way but I think we need to keep on doing what libraries do best providing free and democratic access to diverse reading content alongside physical and digital reading opportunities to celebrate reading expand reading choices share stories and connect over book talk it's been tough but I think we now have a really important story to share about the proven power of reading to change lives to help ensure that it's life changing benefits reach everyone particularly those that need it most it's a really powerful story so let's take this opportunity to tell it thank you thank you Debbie some really valuable evidence about the power of reading and libraries there thank you hello everyone I'd like to begin by saying how delighted I am to be part of the event thank you for the invitation I was asked to say a few words on the growth of reading in children and young people during the last 18 months how we can keep that level of interest up and how we can reach children that have been denied access to books research, I'm sorry I've got stats as well published by the National Literary Trust shows that children and young people have turned to books in this pandemic the 2021 annual survey's key findings are that children's reading was raised from 47% pre lockdown to 55% post lockdown and it's important to note that children's reading was at a 15 year low before lockdown in the 2021 research more than a quarter of children said they enjoyed reading a third said they were reading more and they're reading adventure comedy, fantasy and real life stories research also showed that reading supported children's mental wellbeing and enabled them to dream 59% said reading made them feel better 31% said reading helped them when they felt sad and 50% said reading encouraged them to dream about their future the National Literary Trust research has also shown that the gender gap in children's reading habits wide enjoying lockdown or joe books are popular with boys 51% of boys said or joe books increased their interest in reading and 43% of boys said or joe books made them more interested in writing so perhaps or joe books can be used to keep boys interested in stories not all children's books are given the option of audio by the publishers but perhaps that data could convince publishers to use this medium more I also wanted to talk about access to books and I wanted to begin by telling you about my access to books when I was a child I grew up on a London Council estate with strict Asian parents in the 80s the estate was made up of blocks of flats with a children's park and a public library tucked in the centre the library was the one place where my mother allowed me to be on my own as a child I like to think of the estate library as my happy place I spent Saturdays and entire summer holidays in that library I don't need to tell a room full of book professionals how access to the shelf of books opened new worlds to me and raised my aspirations you all know during lockdown a young footballer made headlines with his campaign to feed hungry school children a little later he spoke of reading and books and how no one had ever placed a book in his hand Marcus Rashford said there were times when the escapism of reading could have really helped me I want this escapism for all children not just those that can afford it I have to admit that when I read those words I wept a little for that small boy who could have escaped his reality for a little while each day by diving into an adventure or a mystery or any other type of story and we know that today there are so many children that do not have access to books although the pandemic increased reading for many there were children from low socioeconomic backgrounds who were denied books because of the closure of schools and libraries and even before lockdown there were permanent closures we know that 800 public libraries have been closed since 2010 school libraries are closing too I call up schools to offer author visits and the number of secondary schools that no longer have a library space so how can children from low socioeconomic backgrounds access books I've already mentioned the National Literary Trust research which showed that use of audiobooks increased during lockdown perhaps audiobooks and ebooks might be one way to go forward the bricks and mortar building may have gone from some high streets but the books are available to access online perhaps if there are more children's ebooks than audiobooks an effort is made to promote the public library service to children they would use that medium it would keep children reading I myself used the Libby app during lockdown religiously went through which children's books were available on there and very very few the ones that you would find on the supermarket shelves but in terms of range hardly anything there so maybe effort can be put into that to give children that access but of course that doesn't mean that you have to go from print and just go the digital way we have to dig our heels in this was linked into that bit that you said about working in parliament and fight for the physical public spaces for books in education there is the wonderful campaign by the children's laureate Cressida Cow to put primary school libraries at the heart of the pandemic response with 100 million yearly investment I myself am a big supporter of the great school libraries campaign and the school library association I do believe that there should be a legal requirement for all secondary schools to have a library it is crucial to children's learning one final thing to say from a personal angle something I feel passionate about when it comes to children's reading and that is that stories are for everyone regardless of the author's heritage or the skin colour of the main character we should really challenge the idea that a book written by a certain type of author is for a certain type of child the book should only ever be about the genre it's a horror story or an adventure or a crime-selving mystery I do believe that books should be displayed according to genre and not the skin colour of the author it is crucial that inclusive books are placed in front of white children books dispel stereotypes and offer a more balanced view of the world especially those children who grew up in a homogenous environment I have visited schools in parts of the country where I have been told that I might be the first person of colour that the children have ever met to me as a Londoner that was mind-boggling the first time I heard that but that is the reality in so many parts of the country stories are for everyone the whole points of books is to create empathy to walk in another person's shoes but children will only pick up a book if they feel it is a story for everyone and those of us who promote children's reading needs to be clear about that and to promote that that was really interesting to hear about your experience particularly as a child and the journey you went on with the public library as well so that was really good, thank you It's got time for one more question for Debbie Otifire, anyone who's got the question anyone who's got the question? Isabelle Fantastic, a lot to process on both of those so there's a question for you, Sophia we've heard a lot today about it's very interesting that reading is both a solitary activity but it's also a communal activity and we heard I think especially from Monique when you were talking with Sarah really interesting about how there's a connection between the reader and the author an author and another author there might even be a century or more between those authors and also Monique you talked about that sort of treasure trove of stories that may go back hundreds and hundreds of years so obviously in lockdown we were all cast back upon ourselves in solitary reading but I wonder as an author how you're looking looking forward what do you think the future is for how the more communal and connected reading might operate as we move out, hopefully move out of this dreadful pandemic Sorry, I'm not quite sure I answered the question how is it community? Yeah, so obviously in lockdown we were all cast back upon solitary reading and so there wasn't the chance for us to reading groups or together or to meet authors face to face although there was obviously the growth of some of that happened online but now that we're moving out of the pandemic I'm wondering as an author if you've seen has that the future of that connected communal reading do you think that's changed? I think what I'm looking forward to is just to be able to go back to schools and do author visits I'm saying this as an author and it pays my bread and butter but they are so important it's so important for children to see authors. I mentioned that I've been to parts of the country where I might be the first person of colour that they've come across and interesting I mean I'm kind of going off on a tangent here but what I did notice I've been doing this for the last eight years since I got published and I noticed that after Brexit sort of 2017-18 2018-19 suddenly I was getting more bookings in areas that I'd never visited so I was going into sort of pockets in Hampshire other parts of the country all my areas also low socioeconomic backgrounds as well where schools felt that becoming into the school would contribute in a positive way for the children's learning so I said I'd go on off tangent then I did but I think in terms of children's class reading reading aloud that makes a huge difference and as I said all the visits hopefully. Did you want to add to that Monique because did you want to add to that I've always been aware that there's this kind of circulating idea or myth that the novel is dead that books are dead that they're going to die that the e-book is going to kill I've just heard this like for 20 years now and it's just like a sort of it's like fake news it's not true I feel so buoyed by the fact that I've been writing for 20 years that I'm mentoring emerging writers from the UK and the Caribbean who are going to write for 20 more years as well they've got a future in books like we like this it's not going away so the future the good news is that books are going to they've got fairly the future is fine is safe for books we're not going to go away I don't think we should be scared of the digital at all my royalties they make a difference and also means that people they're cheaper as well audiobooks as well and if the research is showing that audiobooks make a difference to boys being interested in stories that's huge something that publishers should be jumping on that's something that all those campaigners should be pushing the publishers that boys are reading boys are interested this is just a medium the whole point is the story I've got a friend who was reading Anna Karenina on his phone and that to me is like the intersection between what the digital era what the digital era can do for us which is you're reading a classic that was written I don't know it's just go by a Russian man sitting in the car park waiting for your daughter to come on the next train so it's just an amazing it should be creatively embraced by creatives it's always one type of person that says an awful is dead one gender one age group it's never been more alive actually thank you so much that was a really interesting question Isabel thank you we are at lunch but just before we reach speaker and we've only got a few seconds each for this we'd like you to tell the audience about a book that you are longing to read so Debbie I will start with you okay so I'm going to have two I'm longing to read one of yours Sophia so I'm going to right so I'm going to read under the great club Tree of Secrets of the Henigel but I'm also going to re-read Hamlet because you know it's a long time since I've read that book and reading Hamlet it's a baby we want to go back and we visit it wow thank you so I want to read a book by the children's author Anjali Rav she just had a book released last week which is called The Line Above the Door and the reason I'm really keen to read that is I really believe that classrooms can be more inclusive if we are more inclusive of our history the book is about she's looking at hidden histories about the contribution that the people from the empire made in the world wars and my book that is not a plug I promise is a Norrhaenai syniacan that has been so generously donated today bought today is about a world war II heroine Churchill spy Norrhaenai syniacan basically all I'm saying is that hidden histories we need to bring them into the classroom and I'm really really excited about Anjali's book and she's a great writer thank you the book I want to do is called The Vegetarian by Han Can and I had it there but somebody said it was a really dark story it's set in sort of modern day soul about sort of a young part time graphic designer has this sort of weird nightmarish dream around animal cruelty and it's a really sort of dark and I didn't want to read it during the pandemic it's sort of sitting there and I'm sort of just waiting now we're out meeting other people so I really want to go in and read that because I've had colleagues who have said to me that's absolutely amazing book and I said is it good or no and they just wouldn't give me an answer whether they really liked it or they didn't so that's something I really want to go back to and read thanks I have Monique a young Cornish it's a Debbie novel by a young Cornish writer called Charles Carol and I actually met him recently at the inaugural Falmouth Bookfest which was a blast and it took me five hours to get there but when I got there I was lucky enough to meet all these local writers and Charles and I were chatting away and he's like oh I've written this book called The Lip and I was like ooh what's that about and it's told from the point of view of a young woman who's literally living in a caravan park or a cliff which they call The Lip and it's just an untold not often heard story of like working class poverty Cornish life told by you know an up-and-coming writer just ticked so many boxes for me it's just like yeah I want to read that The Lip, Charles Carol Thank you, James So the question gave me some false thoughts really and I think the book I'd like to read is A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr that was printed in came out in 1980 and it was won the Guardian Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize and I'd have to give the context I've read most of his other works and they're quite droll and very funny and I enjoyed those and a 15 year old me struggled a little bit with this book and I think 40 odd years later I'd like to look at it afresh and see what I think of it now so yes A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr Thank you and James again So I think probably a couple but at the moment I'm halfway through reading Archipelago which is one of Monique's earlier books and it has this lovely kind of as well as a mermaid theme which I'm really enjoying there's a looping reference to Moby Dick which has been sitting on my Kindle it's partly read page 53 for about 5 or 10 years Monique's book reminded me actually of a brilliant book by a woman called Eta Nazland who wrote a book called Ahab's Wife which was about Ahab's Wife and it was a massive book because Ahab's Wife is only mentioned in about two lines of Moby Dick and it seems to have come together it makes me think now's the time I need to go back to it so it's going to be Moby Dick but something slightly more recent I'm really interested in the book of shortlist and in particular Richard Powers bewildered because of the climate fiction current vibe for me and thank you so much can I just finally say it's been so wonderful to listen to the speakers they've been absolutely great it just gets you that interest back in reading and it's been just wonderful to hear your take on that so can we just say thank you very much to all the speakers