Posted By: Sam Ruddock, 09 June 2011
Summer Reads is in full swing. We’ve got six wonderful books that each featured in the top ten titles loaned at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library in May - with Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor top. We’re already closing in on 1000 loans across Norfolk and hopeful of making 2500 by the end of July. All of which means that the most important part of Summer Reads is going well and people are reading the books.
The big question now, however, is what comes next? If reading these books is just the start then what else can the readers of Norfolk look forward to? The answer: LOTS! We’ve already had two fantastic Book Club meetings, a Flash Mob, Read-in Café (the second of which is this Thursday) and book-lovers quiz. These will continue through the summer so if you’re looking for opportunities to get involved in Summer Reads, or just want to see what other readers think, then there is plenty for you to choose from.
Perhaps most exciting of all are the readings that each of the authors will be giving in Norwich. As Petra Kamula noted on this blog a few weeks ago, listening to literature read live can provide a fresh way of experiencing words on a page and hearing an author talk about their inspirations and the wider context of a piece can bring it to life. Back in May we hosted a sold-out evening as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival with Simon Armitage and we still have five more readings to look forward to.
First up we have Katie Kitamura, Andrey Kurkov, and Evie Wyld reading at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library on Tuesday 21st June. On first view their books are dramatically different – Kitamura’s a hard hitting and sparse tail of a fighter building up to the mixed martial arts fight of his life; Kurkov’s a playful and irreverent satire of nationalism in the former Soviet Union; Wyld’s a tale of damage passed between the generations in rural Australia – yet that can often be one of the highlights of readings. Books tend to find ways of making strange connections between each other, and I’m particularly looking forward to uncovering some of these here. I’ve been a fan of Andrey Kurkov for many years but never had the opportunity of hearing him read, so that will also be a great pleasure.
Later that week, on Thursday 23rd June, Joseph O’Connor makes a flying visit to read from Ghost Light as part of an event that sees him partnered with fellow Dubliner John Boyne, (author of bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) whose latest book The Absolutionist is partly set in Norwich. Dublin was the most recent addition to the UNESCO Cities of Literature Network that Norwich hopes to join shortly and Ghost Light is full of colloquial Dublin voices and language. It has that lilting atmosphere, too, that Joseph O’Connor captures when reading and I can’t wait to hear him do so live. This is sure to be an absolutely fantastic event with two leading authors.
And then in July, Robin Bayley visits Norfolk to read in Dereham and Norwich. I’ll write more about these soon. In the meantime, don’t forget to book your tickets for the above events, and join us at the Read-in Café on Thursday and the Ghost Light Book Club next Tuesday.
Happy reading, and remember, when it comes to Summer Reads, reading really is just the start.
