The most powerful influence on what we read is personal
recommendation:
- Two out of five adults are encouraged to read a book
after receiving tips from friends (Office of National
Statistics, 2002)
- 43% of young people will read something as a result
of a peer recommendation (Nestle
Family Monitor, 2004)
- 67% of all purchases are influenced by word of mouth,
rising to more than 90% in leisure markets - movies, music,
television, books (McKinsey, 2003)
News update on the power
of reading recommendation
The organisers of the South-West's Great Reading Adventure
are hoping to unite cities across the UK in a one-book reading
campaign next year. Project director Andrew Kelly is in talks
with reading project organisers in Hull, Glasgow and Liverpool
about a 2007 campaign, which would be used to mark the 200th
anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.
Andrea Levy's Small Island is the title most likely to
be selected for the campaign, although the publisher and
reading organisation s have still to formally commit to
the campaign. A children's book on diversity to run alongside
Small Island is also planned "so that everyone feels
they can play a part in it. There is a sense of occasion
about the project" said Kelly.
(Bookseller, 17 February 2006)
A literacy initiative that copies book groups for adults has had significant benefits and made reading "cool" in the eyes of pupils who previously had been reluctant or struggling readers.
A report on the project concluded: "Both boys and girls showed significantly more positive feelings about reading in school. Boys reported that they were more frequently reading for pleasure at home, recommending books to friends and getting totally absorbed in a book.
"These gains meant that the boys effectively 'caught up' with the girls in these aspects. There was an improvement in the number of books that all pupils reported reading, which bordered on statistical significance."
The evaluation, by a team from Strathclyde University's department of childhood and primary studies, was commissioned by the Scottish Executive and examined literature circles of pupils ranging from P4 to S1 in four schools.
The idea originated in the USA and has been tried out by some Scottish authorities, including Aberdeenshire, West Lothian and South Lanarkshire. While the American book circles tended to be pre-packaged activities and assumed a literary purpose for the work, teachers in Scotland are being urged to see the circles as having the twin purposes of engaging pupils in reading and literary analysis.
Sue Ellis, one of the researchers and a specialist in literacy teaching for primary schools, said one teacher had at first excluded the lowest-ability pupils in her class from the initiative, fearing that it would be too challenging for them. The teacher then felt guilty when she discovered that her bottom group had all gone to the library by themselves, borrowed the same book and were holding their own literature circle. Ms Ellis said: "This drives home how much lower-ability pupils want to be part of a classroom and have a right to the same opportunities."
The pupils were given a degree of freedom to choose the text (although lower-ability groups needed more teacher direction and support in this task), and the eventual aim of the initiative was to allow children to run the circle themselves.
Although all the teachers involved acknowledged they had to do some preparation and groundwork and initially had to provide some management of discussion, all saw the project as an opportunity to give a measure of control over some key areas to the children.
Single-gender groups seemed to produce a strong group solidarity and a club ethos, but the boys also acknowledged that they felt more work was done when there were girls present. This finding led the research team to suggest that teachers should ensure that pupils get "a balanced diet of single-gender and mixed-gender literature circles". They made a similar recommendation regarding mixed-ability groups.
Ms Ellis added: "We knew that to get engagement in the reading curriculum we needed four things: the notion of choice of task and how you go about the task; collaboration in making it social; texts that are interesting to the actual reader; and high-quality, relevant teaching. Literature circles allowed for that."
The research team found that children in the literature circle classes gained autonomy and enthusiasm for reading, with teachers reporting that children began to ask to set up additional groups. Parents also reported that their children had been discussing the books spontaneously at home.
The study found that the receptive vocabulary of the boys also improved, which the researchers described as "an interesting result because a wider vocabulary contributes to verbal reasoning ability and thus empowers children's ability to learn across the curriculum".
Find the full report at www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/11/SRLitCir
(TES Scotland, 20 January 2006)
Book swapping is increasingly popular with British book
lovers. Three UK book swap sites went live in 2005 and there
are now more than ten sites worldwide for book swappers
to choose from.
The concept is simple. Join a site, register books you
no longer want and then offer to swap them with other users
for books you haven't read. A new book arrives in the post
and that novel that's been gathering dust on the bookshelf
for months gets an appreciative new owner.
The first known UK-based website to offer book swapping
over the internet was ReadItSwapIt (www.readitswapit.co.uk).
The site, invented in 2003, offers over two thousand books.
"We wanted to create a site that would enable people
to gain access to hundreds of books, without having to spend
any money," said co-founder Neil Ferguson. The site
has just attracted its 500th member and is the only completely
free book swap club in the UK.
Another site is MyBookYourBook (www.mybookyourbook.co.uk)
which went live in 2005.
Each site offers a slightly different service; while some
offer direct exchanges with other users, others work on
a credit system, allowing users to swap books for credits
that they can then use to acquire books at a later date.
Environmental charities like Friends of the Earth and Scottish
Waste Awareness Group have praised the book recycling element
of book swap sites.
(ReaditSwapit press release, 15 December 2005)
OUP is to publish a special edition of Jules Verne's Around
the world in 80 days, fronted by plasticine heroes Wallace
Gromit. The animated characters created by Nick Park have
been recruited to lead the Brunel 200 Great Reading Adventure,
in a bid to get south-west England reading Verne's book
in the 80 days from 5 January 2006. Brunel will work in
partnership with OUP to distribute 52,000 editions of the
book to schools, libraries and companies throughout the
region. There will also be 50,000 abridged children's versions
and 42,000 illustrated guides to the history behind the
book.
The project is jointly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund,
the Millennium Commission, Arts Council England and First
Great Western Railways.
(Bookseller, 11 November 2005)
The Berkshire book award was launched in 2004 and had a
very successful first year with over 50 schools and 1200
young people taking part in the award for the best, recently
published book written for young people. The 2005 Award
was launched on 28 September by Anne Cassidy, author who
was placed third in 2004. Young people all over the county
nominated their "good reads" for the 2005 Award.
The shortlist of six titles are as follows: The opal deception
by Eoin Colfer, Ark angel by Anthony Horowitz, Eldest by
Christopher Paolini, Harry Potter and the half blood prince
by J.K. Rowling, Lord loss by Darren Shan and Clean break
by Jacqueline Wilson. Voting takes place week commencing
13th March and the winner will be announced on 24th March
2006. The Award Website www.berkshire-els.gov.uk/bba
gives all the information about the Award and will enable
young people to swap reviews online.
In April 2005 Stevenage Borough Council launched 1book4stevenage,
a long-term project to get the whole of Stevenage reading
the same book at the same time.
1book4stevenage began when author Ken Follett brought
to the Council's attention similar campaigns in America.
The project is backed by Stevenage Mayor, Councillor David
Royall, and supported by Hertfordshire County Council, Stevenage
Museum, Stevenage library and Ottakers bookshop.
Books will be available from Ottakars in Stevenage for
half the usual price and North Hertfordshire College has
showed its support by purchasing £1000 worth of the book
to distribute to Stevenage people.
For further information about 1book4stevenage telephone
01438 242179 or email 1book@stevenage.gov.uk.
(Stevenage Borough Council press release, February 2005)
A group of prisoners has won the top prize in a prestigious
competition to find the country's best reading group. Unfortunately,
for all too obvious reasons, they will not be able to pick
up their prize - an expenses-paid trip to Edinburgh.
The High Down Prison Group in Surrey has been named the
winner of the Penguin/Orange Reading Group Prize. The prize
would normally be a trip to the Edinburgh Book Festival,
which starts next week, so instead the prisoners have been
paid a visit by the best-selling author Nick Hornby and
will receive £200 worth of book vouchers.
One member of the prisoners' group, known as Jamie, said
the chance to meet Hornby for a reading session on his book,
A Long Way Down, was "incredible". Another member
described it as being a "breath of fresh air; a monthly
release when close to despair".
High Down is a category B jail and is understood to house
some criminals serving life sentences. Bram Stoker's Dracula
and Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer were
among the group's reading material. Prison librarian and
book group founder Kay Hadwick said, "The reading group
based at High Down Prison operates in a trusting environment
where disagreement in reading choices never results in confrontation.
The reading group offers members a relaxed forum to discuss
books and enable prisoners to escape… prison life."
(Independent, 5 August 2005)
If you love reading you'll be delighted to find 'The Reader',
a literary magazine that aims to give the best book recommendations.
The books you enjoy the most are often found by word of mouth.
'The Reader' lets you know about all sorts of books - not
just the latest bestsellers being pushed by marketing departments,
but genuine recommendations from real readers. To find out
more visit www.thereader.co.uk
A new promotion that draws on the reading experiences of
the keenest borrowers in the country, and is a selection
of 21 of the best issuing titles by emerging writers, highlighted
by PLR figures.
The promotion comes from Reading Partners - a new consortium
of publishers and libraries devising radical ways of working
together to market books differently, amplify the reader's
voice, and expand the audience for reading.
Miranda McKearney of The Reading Agency said, "It's
time to stop artificially classifying readers as either
borrowers or buyers. Bookshops and libraries are all part
of the same reading universe and it's in all our interests
to work more closely with readers… Borrowers Recommend
celebrates and builds authority for libraries' powerful
contact with readers."
The experimental 2005 promotion is a pilot taken up by
over half of the UK's 208 library authorities. In 2006 Reading
Partners hopes to take Borrowers Recommend into the book
trade, promoting both emerging writers and the role libraries
play to high street book buyers, responding directly to
the correlation between book buying and borrowing highlighted
in the 2000 research, Reading the Situation. The promotion
will be an annual event in libraries.
(PLR press release, February 2005)
Scottish Booktrust, the Edinburgh Book Festival and World
Book Day are among the partners in a new initiative to find
the most popular Scottish books. The poll will be the focus
of a major reading campaign in Scotland this spring and
summer. A list of 100 books will be unveiled in a guide
published with the entertainment magazine The List on World
Book Day (3 March) 2005. Free copies of the guide, part-funded
by the Scottish Arts Council, will be circulated among Scottish
schools and libraries. Fiction and non-fiction books will
be eligible, while poetry and drama will not.
A public vote for the favourite books from the list will
determine the ranking of the top 100, to be announced at
the Edinburgh Book Festival on 27 August 2005.
(Bookseller, 28 January 2005)
Birmingham City Council has set up a book focused website for
kids aged 11 to 14. The site displays a number of books which
young people can discuss online, and vote for their favourites.
Each week the two books with the fewest votes are taken off.
Visit www.bgfl.org/vote
to take part.
(January 2005)
From January to March 2005, every resident of Bristol over
the age of 14 will pick up a copy of Helen Dunmore's novel
The Siege, and begin a passionate discussion of this
fictional account of the destruction of Leningrad in 1941.
The debate will spread through the city's schools, offices,
pubs, libraries and living rooms. Or, at least, that's what
Penguin Books is hoping will happen.
Over the past two years, the city has devoured copies of
Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Robert
Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids. This year sees Bristol's
third annual Great Reading Adventure, the aim of which is,
according to its organisers, "to bring communities together
through the power of literature".
Five thousand copies of The Siege will be made available
throughout the city and 6,000 special reading guides are being
printed. Dunmore, who moved to Bristol 29 years ago, and launched
this year's event, says: "I hope people will feel excited
about the project. The idea is to extend reading a book from
a solitary imaginative journey to a moment where people come
together to discuss the themes, and possibly relate their
experiences of wartime in England.
Andrew Kelly and his wife, Melanie, organisers of the Bristol
event, came across the idea of a city-wide read while on holiday
in Chicago three years ago. "The mayor was organising
a Chicago-wide read of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird,
with all sorts of events, including a dramatisation of the
trial that is at the centre of the book," says Andrew.
"It seemed like a great idea." Fired up, the Kellys
persuaded Penguin to give them 8,000 copies of Treasure Island,
which is partly set in Bristol, for their inaugural project
in 2003. "This generated so much interest that the Bristol
libraries, which had lent out the book 16 times in the previous
six months, had a demand for 1,600 copies in two months,"
says Andrew. "We estimate that, in all, at least 20,000
people read it.
Penguin plans to extend the project next year, with mass
readings of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh in
Oxford, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking
Glass by Lewis Carroll in Brighton, Lady Chatterley's
Lover by DH Lawrence in Nottingham, Fair Stood the
Wind for France by HE Bates in Northampton, and 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne in Hull.
(Telegraph, 10 January 2005)
All 32 Scottish library authorities joined together for a
new reading promotion. Read the Festival was based around
the these and titles of the festival's authors, with additional,
complementary titles. The project was designed and (web) hosted
by Opening the Book. The four themes were: East meets West;
conflict; food and 'matters of the mind'. Libraries featured
displays of the books and themed 'carry-out' bags. Readers
were able to share their views about Book Festival events,
ideas of reading groups - and find our more about their local
library service. Read the Festival is part of the Reader Development
programme funded by the National Lottery through the Scottish
Arts Council and managed by CILIP Scotland, the Scottish Library
and Information Council and Opening the Book. www.readthefestival.net
(Library and Information Update, October 04)
Everyone in Liverpool is this year being urged to read Holes
by Louis Sachar, the story of a wrongfully convicted boy sent
to dig holes for some mysterious reason. The read-in concept
started in Seattle in 1998, and spread to Britain in 2002
when Leeds adopted Patrick Suskind's Perfume. Bristol has
since taken on Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island and
John Wyndam's Day of the Triffids. Oxford and Reading adopted
Jerome K Jerome's classic Three Men in a Boat.
(TES, 10 September 2004)
Pete Owen, an accountant from Manchester, is the youngest member
of the Racketeers, a reading group that meets once a month.
For the first year he says he was "very embarrassed"
about his membership. Now, though, things have changed: "I've
developed a literary arrogance at work. I pick people's books
up at lunchtime and throw them in the bin, especially fantasy
novels."
Britain has 15,000 reading groups, hailed as a social phenomenon
to rival text-messaging or reality television. But the Racketeers
are highly unusual: they meet in pubs, are fiercely competitive
- and are all men.
Huw Parker, a teacher from Bolton, explained how gender politics
played a part in their formation: "My wife and a load
of friends started a reading group. A male friend of mine
wanted to join, but they were all ladies and said he couldn't.
So he and I organised one." Parker believes there are
clear distinctions between the male and female groups. "We're
quite combative and argumentative and not very consensual.
I don't want to stereotype, but that's perhaps more of a male
approach. There's a competitive element about the way we vote
for which book to read next. And in a retentive male way we
hold an AGM and give a prize to one of the authors, which
is quite an arrogant thing to do. We have some intense and
highly personal debates. There is swearing. We decide on the
book of the year and send the author a £50 prize for
a celebratory meal."
Now the Racketeers have won a prize of their own - the Penguin/Orange
Reading Group Prize, which is awarded each year to the group
who demonstrate 'the most imaginative and diverse reading'
in Britain.
The Racketeers's top ten reads, 2003:
1. Waterland, Graham Swift
2. The Honorary Consul, Graham Greene
3. Brick Lane, Monica Ali
4. Surfacing, Margaret Atwood
5. Black Boy, Richard A. Wright
6. Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
7. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
8. The Golden Age, Gore Vidal
9. Stars and Bars, William Boyd
10. Cheaters, Eric Jerome Dickey
(Observer, 15 August 2004)
Public libraries can get readers more involved in the controversial
Man Booker Prize. As well as the usual posters and email information
updates, the organisers are setting up a special microsite on
the website. It will help users make quick choices to read from
the longlist when it is announced in August, based on criteria
such as 'easy', 'disturbing' or even 'no sex'. After the shortlist
in September the site will enable readers to order shortlisted
titles form their local library. This website also allows people
to vote for the People's booker. The organisers of the Man Booker
Prize believe that involving libraries will bring literary fiction
and authors to a readership they may not usually reach.
To register for the campaign email jonathan@bookcommunications.co.uk
or call 0121 246 2770.
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