I definitely read more works in the non-fiction category. I feel that everything we read has some effect upon us. Of course certain works might have a major effect upon our thinking but sometimes it is the single sentence, the phrase or the statement that goes the deepest in our minds.

I know that in recent months I have found it much easier to accept and to embrace multiculturalism. That change within me came through the comments that WW Members have made when referring to this broad and emotive subject. It has been quite a dramatic change for me and I am now far more content in my mind; so I say thanks to all.

My choice of non-fictional reading range from Biographies to Scientific works but I cannot think of any subject that doesn't merit looking at or absorbing with relish. The more non-fiction we read the more we realise the narrowness and limitations of our individual minds. There is so much that is bewieldering and fascinating in the 'real' world. I only wish that Life were continuous and that the process of learning and perhaps understanding would go on forever.

Len

I agree about war books being upsetting. I read a lot of non-fiction about China for my film book, for background about on history, culture and politics. By far the most gruesome and upsetting was 'The Rape of Nanjing', about Japanese soldiery and how they treated the unfortunate people of a city they occupied. I think, for shock effect, it rivalled 'The Camp on Blood Island', a WW2 war book my father had hidden at the back of a drawer, away, so he thought, from prying eyes.

I like crime fiction and non-fiction, and have just finished 'Harold Shipman: Prescription For Murder', just as unsettling in its own way as the above-mentioned. Most readers of my generation will remember the impact of Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider', about existentialists in literature, supposedly written in the British Library whilst he was camping out on Hampstead Heath at night. He went on to become a leading expert on serial sex murderers and now lives in Cornwall. I read one of his books recently called 'Murder in the Forties'. He likes to philosophise, ascribing a lot of post-war murders, for instance, to ex-soldiers unable to adapt to civilian life.

Travel books, of course, and accounts by bad-tempered Theroux and amused Bryson,but any account of people travelling alone and for a purpose is interesting, except for those written by people who move to France, Spain or Italy and bore the pants off me complaining about encounters with foreign workmen until at last they harvest their first olive crop and it was all worthwhile. Sorry, this was supposed to be recommended non-fiction.

A neglected genre I really like is college prospectuses, or prospecti.It's amazing the subjects that attract enough people to form a viable class.

DIY books I like, my substitute for actually doing something about it, and I really enjoyed a book called something like 'Is your home clean enough?' by those two dotty women on TV.

When I was younger and having to work as well as try to find time to study and write, I read a lot of books on time-management, and one I remember was called 'The Seven Habits of Successful People'. It may have been more than seven.


Sheila

The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
With Nails, Richard E Grant
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-drugs-and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Changed Hollywood, Peter Biskind
Down and Dirty Pictures: Mirax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent film, Peter Biskind
Film Art: And Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
The Kid Stays in the Picture, Robery Evans
Lucky, Alice Sebold
A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Into the Silent Land, Paul Broks

And probably many more, particularly film books, but I can't think of them now.

Emma D - just checked out The Language of Clothes on Amazon - looks wonderful, but expensive! Maybe for Christmas...

L

Lianne, I had a quick look and it's on Abebooks second hand, lowest £6.60. That may not be the newest edition - I don't know if it's ever been seriously updated - but the ideas she talks about don't change, even if the fashions do.

Emma

My non-fiction books outnumber the fiction on my shelves, and I like to think that the wall of books which lines one room of the house is both revealing and totally baffling. Ancient Egypt at one end, then cats, biography/autobiography/popular culture, travel, metaphysics/philosophy, horses/riding, horse racing. So Nefertiti's top left and Best Mate bottom right. Eclectic, or schizophrenic? (Fortunately, my large collection of writing tomes and various dictionaries are behind me in my 'office', otherwise 'schizophrenic' might've given me trouble.)

I can't do the 'deep and meaningful' list, because I'm far too shallow and meaningless - hey, I even like tales of folk who move to Spain/Italy and harvest olives - particularly Annie Hawes' 'Extra Virgin' (Liguria, Italy) and Chris Whatsisname's 'Driving Over Lemons' (Andalucia). So here's the rest of Mojo's Guide to Popular Culture, starting with my favourite travel book of all time:

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi - William Dalrymple
A Cure For Gravity - Joe Jackson
Cider With Roadies - Stuart Maconie
True Adventures of the Rolling Stones - Stanley Booth
The Man Who Listens to Horses - Monty Roberts
Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication - Stuart Walton
Masks of the Soul - Benjamin Walker
American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story - Cynthia True
Egyptian Mummies - Bob Brier
The Cat Who'll Live Forever - Peter Gethers
Seabiscuit - Laura Hillenbrand
Diana's Story (and all his other books) - Deric Longden (This is NOT about a princess, BTW. That's one aspect of popular culture I DON'T do!)

Writing books? Dorothea Brande and Stephen King - even though I'd never consider reading his novels, as they're not my thing.

I've actually begun to prefer non-fiction, which is a bit worrying for an aspiring novelist. But I'm reading Armistead Maupin right now, so that's okay...

Julie

I don't know if I've begun to prefer non-fiction, but it must be 50% of my reading. When I'm on a first draft, I tend not to read fiction at all. (You should - or rather I'm glad you didn't - see what I wrote after an evening reading Raymond Chandler. Not pretty!)

Emma

I like Diet Books and Cookery Books, which appear to work against one another but I supose it's inevitable that anyone who needs to diet will be interested in food. Less attractive, although I've read some, are books about running and other sports which tell you where to do it and what kind of eqipment you'll need. I should be more specific but non-fiction is by it's nature stuff you dip into for specific information - like all the guide books to Denmark I'm reading just now. It's because there's no narrative thread to lead you on, unless it's biographical, and even then you can skip the duller parts without losing the plot - the mc just goes from youth to middle age. Most of the non-fiction I read, though, is newspapers and that really encourages a lot of skipping.

I'm reading a book in my favourite genre, how to write, and this one is about travel writing: 'The Writer's Handbook: Guide to Travel Writing' edited by Barry Turner. One chapter, by Adam Hopkins, called 'A View from the Armchair' does usefully discriminate amongst the 'gone to pastoral Europe' authors I mentioned, whom he calls the 'Shangri-la' school of writers. He makes a spirited defence of Peter Mayle, for instance. Reading this reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading Dervla Murphy's travels with her bicycle.

The main reason I borrowed the book from the library was the Listings of Publishers and Agents which constitutes about half the pages, but there's also an ineresting list of bestselling travel books of 2003. Right at the top is 'The Road to MacCarthy' by Pete McCarthy, which I haven't read, but further down, at number nine is one by the same author I did read and disliked a lot - I was in China with a scarcity - called 'McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland' The author had the idea of visiting all the bars he could find that bore his name. He's not even Irish and had never been there before. What a great pitch for a book idea. Further still down the list is one of my own favourites, the AA's 'Camping and Caravanning in Britain'. Since going to the Reading Womad festival in July I get all excited every time I pass Millets.

Some of the titles on peoples lists are intriguing but I think they need some kind of comment or mini-review.


Sheila

Yes, I remember reading Dervla Murphy's first and enjoying it very much, but generally travel books are only slightly above sci-fi and fantasy on my list of never-read. I think I have a stereotype of travel writing in which it's all about the author, and I find that a real turnoff.

One non-fiction issue which is interesting me at the moment is when you get a memoir/autobiography, and then a biography of the same person by someone else. My current example is Margot Fonteyn, by herself (and I think it was by herself with lots of help, not simply ghosted) and the stunningly good biog of her by Meredith Danemen. Another is Period Piece by Gwen Raverat, and Frances Spalding's biography of her. The stories we choose to tell about ourselves and what others would choose to tell, and what the biography chooses to put in, are all different, and so revealing.

Emma

Yes, I think I agree with you, which is why I'm concentrating at the moment on using my travel places as background for short stories. Not that fiction isn't about the author, of course, only more (or less) disguised. That's why I feel ambivalent sometimes when I'm commenting on someone's work and I don't like the main character - it feels almost as if I'm making a personal attack on the author.

Yes, the idea of different points of view is intriguing. I was reminded when watching Helen Mirren as Elizabeth 1st on TV of all the different interpretations of her character and aspects of history that have been emphasised in the versions I'v seen. I have an interest in actresses who have portrayed. Glenda Jackson lives at the top of my road and I'm reminded of Elizabeht when I see her in the supermarket.

Sorry, I've strayed from the thread. It is a very fertile one, I think.

Sheila

Thanks for that Emma, I'll check it out.

L

'McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland' The author had the idea of visiting all the bars he could find that bore his name. He's not even Irish and had never been there before.

Ah. You must've read the censored version, because the Pete McCarthy who wrote my hugely entertaining and extremely funny copy was (sadly, he died earlier this year) half Irish and spent all his childhood holidays at his mother's family's farm in West Cork. Curious...

Julie

I meant he had never lived in Ireland and hadn't been back since childhood. I expect that is why he was so keen to re-discover his Irish roots. My ex-husband is half-Irish and goes back from time to time to trawl the bars, which is possibly why I was a less than sympathetic reader.

Sheila

Sheila,

You wrote in one of your comments... 'Not that fiction isn't about the author, of course, more (or less) disguised.'

I read this as part of your first paragraph mentioning short stories and travel writing.

I think this may well apply to the majority of travel writing, but I do not agree at all when you embrace 'fiction' and mention short stories.

It is an interesting point and I am sure worthy of a separate forum discussion. This has arisen in past Forum discussions but the first question I must ask myself is exactly what you meant by this, for I may be misunderstanding your statement.

By the way I agree with you about Glenda Jackson and Elizabeth. I fell in love with that lady quite a few years ago. The 'younger versions' of all of us are still very much in my mind and Glenda looked so much like my late wife.

Len

That was before Glenda became a Politician!

Hi Len!

I am glad my mention of Glenda evoked pleasant memories. Fortunately, Glenda made a few films which sometimes have a TV re-run, so you may catch one. last saw her onstage doing something called 'Rose', a monologue.

I am suprised that my view concerning characters as authors thinly disguised is contentious. Maybe it's truer, anyway of more traditional writers, the canon I studied when I did my degree, where, in the early works at least, the main character is (more or less) always the writer. Just before I sat down to write my stint today I was reading an interview with Beryl Bainbridge in the Guardian and wasn't at all surprised when she said her first five novels were autobiographical. She didn't call her main character 'Beryl', 'though.

It's true that older writers have wider horizons and more 'authorial' voices. It just occurred to me this morning, whilst swimming at the local baths,a good thinking place for me, that there is a male character in one of my short stories through whom I can express my own views on a variety of subjects that interest me, mainly of a socio/political kind, within an entertaining narrative framework. I think I can write as a man because I've been married for so long, although the character I'm thinking of is nothing like my husband. I wouldn't have tried it when I was younger. He will really be 'me', of course, in the sense that he will be where I've been, and the people he knows will be people I know or have known. I am the first to admit I don't have very much imagination. I think P.D. James said Inpector Wexford is her doppelganer.

Nick Hornby's point-of-view character in a book I read recently, 'How to Be Good', is supposed to be a woman, but she's not at all credible as such, to me at least, perhaps because Nick Hornby is not old enough to know how women think, or perhaps because he doesn't empathise sufficiently with women.

Sheila

Sheila,

It's funny but the same sentence Len refers to struck a chord with me too but not for the same reason. I think I do agree that the character of the author shines through even when it's fiction. I know that I form an opinion of the personality of the writers of fiction that I read but I'm not sure if that impression comes from the behaviour/ reactions of the main characters or if it comes from the style of writing or the choice of subject matter or a combination. I must think more about that.
If I 'like' an author, I am much more willing to forgive them for perceived flaws in their novels, flaws I would be much more critical of in an author I don't 'like'.
It's an interesting point.

Ashlinn