Hooray, we have another book from my 20 Books of Summer 2024 project! Cathy from 746 Books has been running 20 Books of Summer since 2014, and I’ve been taking part since 2015 (see all my lists and links here). Matthew picked my list AND its order, so I obediently picked this up second. It dates back to January 2022, when Gill gave it to me for my birthday, choosing kindly from my wish list. Out of the 14 books I received then, I have now read and reviewed 10, with another of them appearing at the very end of my 20 Books (hopefully!). This of course also accounts for one of my 2024 TBR project reads.
Helen Taylor – “Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives”
(23 January 2022, from Gill)
I have been moved by the different ways the simple pracice of reading resonates in daily and larger life narratives. Reading lives cross over with and complement our real lives, each giving substance and depth to the other. Women have described to me their lifelong passion for novels and short stories, their gratitue to those who taught them to read, and nostagia for earliest childhood books. They’ve named writers and books that have comforted, challenged, and transformed them. (p. 225)
Taylor is an educator who has spent her working life talking about books and directing events at and whole literature festivals, so she knows what she’s talking about and she’s both done secondary research and sent out a questionnaire which she admits is non-scientific but has given her all sorts of information on why, how and what women read, where they read it and who they read it with, including looking at women writers and their relationship to books and their own readers.
Taylor makes a valient effort to make sure she acknowledges race as well as gender issues, discussing the research done on what she refers to as BAME characters in books, workers in publishing and attendees / speakers at festivals (shows how things have moved on since 2019 in terminology terms).
Nice little personal points were a mention of childhood visits to Selly Oak library, not far from me and my local library when I was a student, and mentions of two of my clients in her secondary research. There’s also a picture of the (old) Persephone Bookshop (this book was published in 2019) and one of the short section on writers and commentators was sadly on Dovegreyreader, the beloved blogger who suddenly stopped blogging.
I kept thinking as I went along that the connection Taylor was making to women talking about their own life stories as connected to their reading was stretching things a bit, but then I realised that a) I have strong memories myself of reading particular books in particular places (James’ The Golden Bowl in Tunisia; Seth’s A Suitable Boy in the South of France; Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil in the reception of a hammam in Turkey) and how I set such store by the way Emma’s and my Reading Together pulls the strands of our lives closer together and has set us visiting locations in our books, not forgetting the effect reading Iris Murdoch early and often has had on my personal, psychological and semi-academic lives. So there’s that.
An interesting and passionate book paying tribute to women as readers.
This is Book 2 in my 20 Books of Summer 2024.
This is Book 36 in my 2024 TBR project – 105 to go!
griffandsarahthomas
Jun 15, 2024 @ 09:22:19
I’m glad you liked this book; it was the book I was reading just before lockdown in March 2020 and I couldn’t return it to the library until things opened up again (proving the point about remembering the specific time and events in our lives and connecting them with our reading!). I did find it very interesting, in fact, I now have a second hand copy picked up at Tesco’s charity stall in the hope that I might get to read it again soon. I’ve read a lot of books since then😊, and experienced more of life’s challenges, so I’d like to see how I appreciate different points than last time round. As you say, terminology re BAME/diversity issues has changed a lot since 2019 too.
Thanks for the reminder of a book I enjoyed – and well done with your ploughing through your tbr/book projects!
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Liz Dexter
Jun 15, 2024 @ 16:50:15
How lovely! How long did you have to keep it in a safe place till you could return it to the library? I’m glad you enjoyed it, too.
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griffandsarahthomas
Jun 15, 2024 @ 16:59:03
It made a real difference to my life when the library re-opened (after about 3 months, I think). We could then return books and order them, but there was a 72 hour quarantine for returned books and collection of reserved books was by appointment. The books were bagged up in brown paper packages. Gosh – it was a weird time; I did really appreciate the little chats with the library staff when collecting my parcels though – I got to know some of them quite well!
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Liz Dexter
Jun 16, 2024 @ 13:19:55
I didn’t try to use the library during lockdown; everything like that was just too complicated!
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peterleyland
Jun 15, 2024 @ 09:27:48
I remember being really interested in this book from your shelf so good to read the review. I like the way you find the connection in the book with women relating reading to their own life stories and indicated with examples that it was the same for you.
I actually find that very thing is true of me. Perhaps I should write the companion piece about men’s reading??
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Liz Dexter
Jun 15, 2024 @ 16:51:47
Well obviously I know a good few thoughtful men who would have similar reactions to the women in this book, mainly but not all through the book blogging community, it would be interesting to read a post from you about it as there was a sort of current in the book that men read less novels in general and then preferred historical, sci fi and crime, which isn’t of course completely true, just a generalisation.
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Deb Nance at Readerbuzz
Jun 15, 2024 @ 11:43:13
Congratulations on finishing a book from your Books of Summer list! I’m always fascinated with what makes people read, so I’m quite sure I’d like this one.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 15, 2024 @ 16:52:18
Yes, it would be a good one for you. And thank you, I’m a bit behind but not too bad if I can read half a book today!!
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Laura
Jun 15, 2024 @ 16:36:17
This sounds really interesting and good work with pressing on with #20books. (I have actually read 3 of mine but have not got the posts up yet.) I remember dovegreyreader – what happened to her?
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Liz Dexter
Jun 15, 2024 @ 16:53:31
It was, though a bit general of course with statements about more men than women reading sci fi etc, although not claiming “all” men or “all” women (e.g. I read more nonfiction than it would suggest women do in general). And well done! I have done my third one, read yesterday on a slow work day, but need to read half a novel today to be properly caught up!
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Lisa Hill
Jun 16, 2024 @ 00:09:26
Hmmm, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I’m on a quest for relatability when I’m reading. Often, it’s the books most unlike my own life that I find most interesting.
And *chuckle* since I’m mostly reading in bed, I don’t make connections to where I was when I was reading the book. A bed is a bed is a bed…
But still, the question itself is interesting. Why do women mostly read fiction and men mostly read NF? I have a (cheeky) theory which is that a novel has to be completed, from the beginning to the end whereas a reader can dip into NF and read scraps of it, and then reassemble the bits when wanting to sound like an expert.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 16, 2024 @ 13:24:44
I’m not sure I’ve said that we look for things related to our actual lives when we read – anyone who has even glanced at this blog will know I read very widely and outside my experience. It’s more about how we relate what we read to the place and experience of the books in our lives, if that makes sense. For example, reading in bed, but I’ve certainly had a number of beds in different locations and homes over the years. And I certainly associate the big flourishing of my finding books by LGBTQI and Global Majority People community writers, neither of which I am, with when I belonged to Lewisham Library and would drag bags of books there and back on a Routemaster bus, hopping off the platform, bag swinging! I actually think I read mainly to learn more about other lives and experiences, both in my fiction and nonfiction reading.
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kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 16, 2024 @ 14:49:42
Interesting! I suspect I am untypical as I read fairly inconsistently, topic wise, and am often looking something very different or though-provoking or which will take me to another place or time! But I tend to be against generalisations anyway!
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Liz Dexter
Jun 16, 2024 @ 19:30:57
I think I must have reviewed this really poorly, sorry – I’m not saying the book says everyone wants to match their life/place/time but that they relate when and where they read a book to their own lives or things they took from the book to their own lives but not as being the same. You also read a fair amount of nonfiction, though, or at least memoir, which the book doesn’t cover at all.
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kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 16, 2024 @ 19:34:52
True, and probably less mainstream fiction than I used to. But I do associated particular books with particular times/places in my life so that resonates!
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trav
Jun 17, 2024 @ 16:01:28
Not a woman here… but totally appreciate (and can relate to a high degree) the connections you mention between places and books read. It can be very strong. It sounds like this one may be much more of a universal read/experience than the title implies. Thank you for reviewing it here. It’s now on my list as well!
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Liz Dexter
Jun 17, 2024 @ 16:41:05
Yes, I think so. There was a fair bit about books and reading passing between mothers and daughters, aunts and daughters, etc., but I inherited my grandpa’s full set of Zane Grey novels, for example!
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