Reading Spa in Bath

Now this is a find for my bibliotherapy research - a bookshop in Bath that offers the Reading Spa experience: Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights.  It's nailed it.  Unlike other so-called bibliotherapy services, this one delivers without pompous or patronising claims.  Mr B's has been open since 2006, and won best Independent Bookseller of the Year twice.  You can read about its rise to success on the website, which also tells you about the individual team members and the Reading Spa experiences.  Would you buy one of these for a friend?  Yes!  Listen: "As the recipient of a Mr B’s Reading Spa voucher you are invited to visit our gorgeous shop in Bath for a one-on-one book chat in our sumptuous Bibliotherapy Room with one of the Mr B’s team over a mug of tea or coffee and a delicious slice of cake. Your bibliotherapist will then gather and introduce you to a tower of books specially selected to suit your reading tastes. Each Reading Spa voucher includes an amount to spend on books, so that you can pick your favourite recommendations and take them away with you."

 You can spend £55 or £100 on a voucher, which includes £40 or £75 respectively to spend on books.  I'd call that a bargain, with tea and cake thrown in AND a goodie bag AND one-to-one advice on what to read next. 

It's hard not to get over-excited about this find (WHY did I not know about this place before?!) because as someone who has worked in bookshops, who is convinced there is a future for bookshops (the real sort, with people, and shelves and actual books) the website for Mr B's makes me want to cheer.  And make a pilgrimage right now to Bath.  So, if even the website can make me feel so happy, imagine what bibliotherapeutic power must lie in the shop itself.....

Pre-Christmas Anticipation

This last week before Christmas is one of the best in the whole year: so full of anticipation, of purpose, and of gathering surprises and treats for friends and family.  This is the time of year to dig out the classics, and relish the extremes of bleakness and surfeit winter-themed literature can offer.

I've just re-read Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, and am still instantly transported to that stark Massachusetts landscape by the description of a place where "day after day, after the December snows were over, a blazing blue sky poured down torrents of light and air on the white landscape, whcih gave them back in an intenser glitter."  Mattie's cherry coloured scarf, and the red pickle dish, stand out like warning beacons of colour in this colour-starved context.  It's a dramatic story, with a terrible twist at the end, and it is so well-written that the sadness you are left with haunts for days afterwards.  Thoroughly recommended for winter reading - especially if you get the beautiful, tactile Penguin English Library edition. 

The cover design on this series are stunning, and the production values make them a pleasure to hold and to read.  Coralie Bickford-Smith is the designer, and she has managed to keep the covers identifiably in the Penguin tradition, but strikingly different, too.  The Independent quotes Penguin's publishing director Simon Winder as saying that he "decided to revive the series as he walked around Tate Britain one day last year, and saw people in their late teens sketching the works. 'It made me think how wonderful it would be not to have read books such as Wuthering Heights yet, and how I thought I had a duty to make this prospect as attractive as possible.'" The font is Dante MT Std, a clean, serif font with a roundness to the letters that makes it easy on the eye.



Reviewers were quick to scrutinize the choice of 100 titles for the initial relaunch of the series this year, The Guardian noting that "the 2012 English Library so far is less keen on fact, more keen on fantasy. Is this a fair reflection of our contemporary state of letters?"  Have a look at the list, and see if you agree.  Will this list stand the test of time (and provoke sales?)

Design matters.  Bibliotherapy is more powerful wrapped in great design, and Penguin have struck a mightily effective blow in the argument for the superiority of the physical book over the digital with this lovely series.  As I was writing this entry, my package from another great design company, Emma Bridgewater, arrived.  Now I have my books AND my Christmas mug to fill with mulled goodness to accompany them!  All set for winter and Christmas now!

December Thoughts, Part 2....

From design-ability.com

December Thoughts...

It's cold.  And windy.  And wet.  It's also that point in the term when everyone seems tired, fractious, and run down.  Still a little while to go until Christmas, but the cheer is not quite in sight - so much to do before it comes, and no time to do it!  This is the perfect point for some bibliotherapy, so here are some thoughts:

1.  Buy some books!  Today Penguin are offering 50% off all books on their website.  This is all the incentive you need to indulge in some reading for Christmas.  Penguin English Library have just released Ivanhoe, which was a no-brainer buy for me! (And have also succumbed to ordering a copy of Pullman's Grimm Tales, which will be used for research purposes as well as pleasure -win-win!)

   

2. Watch some book-ish things!  Apart from the impending Hobbit-ness, you can watch clips such as this one, on banned books, by Bookmans:

or this, more upbeat one, I'm reading a Book:

or, finally, this more reflective piece on reading, from William Lyon Phelps (click link).  I'm grateful to Bookmachine for highlighting these on their Facebook page:  another bibliotherapy goldmine!

3. Treats:  in my case, am seriously coveting one of these wonderful ipad or iphone covers, sold via SexyCodicology and Red Bubble:

Valerie Eliot - T.S. Eliot

The news that Valerie Eliot died on Friday has provoked lots of pieces in the Press about her life, and her marriage to T. S. Eliot, as you'd expect.  I hadn't really thought much about her life, post-Eliot's death, but there is a lot to reflect on in her role as protector of Eliot's legacy.  An article in today's Telegraph talks about the literary widow, and asks, "who ultimately knows the dead writer better, the academics who pick over his work, or the woman who shared his life (or part of it)"

It is a very emotively worded question, and yet one that strikes at the heart (emotive again!) of a literary academic's research life.  Do we "pick over", like vultures, the works of dead authors?  And does there have to be conflict between the people who (of course) knew the writer personally, and those who read, respond to and appreciate his/her literary outputs?  

Eliot loved his wife, and I was amazed and moved by the poem he dedicated to her when he wrote his play, The Elder Statesman:

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.

There is a wonderful little video clip of Valerie Eliot and Fiona Shaw, who reads this poem to her, here.  Valerie Eliot lived a long time after her husband's death:  I hope that looking after his literary estate was a real bibliotherapeutic vocation for her, and that her work will be sensitively continued by those that will continue this now she is gone.

Links to more articles of interest:
Revealed: The Remarkable Tale of T S Eliot's late love affair
The Two Mrs Eliots
Guardian Obituary

Christmas card, 1961

Christmas card, 1961, a photo by Faber Books on Flickr.

This is a lovely David Jones illustration - done for a Faber Christmas card!

Waterstone's Postcards

 When I was in Oxford last week, I found these postcards in the Waterstone's there.  Part of their rebranding exercise (and missing apostrophe gripe taken for granted!), they have some impact.  But do they work?  There's a great blog post analysing them here, and the author comes up with some great alternative straplines that suddenly make these feel not-so-good. 

 Yet, it made me wonder again at the short-sightedness of bookshops and publishers in terms of responding to what readers like, and the potential -- the huge potential -- for so much more book-related merchandise to be produced.  I was drawn to these, by the till, instantly.  Would have paid a pound or two for a set, if they hadn't (joy!) been free.  With Christmas approaching, bibliotherapy gifts are still far too thin on the ground.  Yes, I could visit The Literary Gift Company (and have), several times.  This has some interesting products, but some are, frankly, dull as dull.  And there is so much that is creative and beautiful in publishing....

 In this area, branding is a big help.  Penguin and Faber already do a limited selection of branded gift goods, and who wouldn't love a boxed set of postcards for Christmas, or some playing cards?  But -- come on, publishers, you can do so much more! 

Maybe it's time to work up a proposal for some bibliotherapy treats.....

The Caxton Window at Stationers Hall, London

On Friday, we took the new students to visit Stationers Hall, in London.  One of my favourite things there is the Caxton Window, which shows Caxton with the young King Edward IV and his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville.  On the floor, bottom left, is Wynkyn de Worde.  The window was given by Joshua Butterworth, the law bookseller, as his gift as Master in 1894. 
My photograph doesn't do it justice at all - the colours are beautiful, and the story it tells and the details around the edges mean it's hard to tire of looking at it.  The rest of the Hall has further stained glass panels depicting Shakespeare, Tyndale, St Cecilia, Caxton and Cranmer:  it is a stunning location, and easy to feel centuries of publishing history pulsing in the atmosphere....

Weird and Wonderful!

A little something to lighten a dull Sunday afternoon:  take a look at this post from another blog, The Private Library (http://privatelibrary.typepad.com/the_private_library/2011/04/really-weird-titles-and-the-private-library.html)  

 

Medieval Authorship

I've just finished writing my half of a paper for the British Branch meeting of the International Arthurian Society next week in Oxford.  Programme can be found here.  It's the first time I've collaborated on a joint paper, and (with fingers crossed that Leah agrees!) it has been a remarkably smooth experience.  I've always wanted to work more closely with colleagues who research French medieval literature, and this paper shows what value you can get from joining areas of expertise.  I'm nervous about my input: the paper looks at medieval ideas of authorship, and how publishing uses the author as a paratext to promote texts, and I've used some very current publishing examples to try and draw parallels with what Caxton was doing in the fifteenth century.  Some of the books I've found useful are A J Minnis's Medieval Ideas of Authorship, N F Blake's William Caxton and English Literary Culture, and Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur, edited by K S Whetter and Raluca L Radulescu, particularly the essay by Tom Hanks.

After a long period with very little time for concentrated reading, am glutting on a long reading list that is in desperate need of attention.  It is taking a while to feel like my brain is connecting ideas again:  have found it difficult to switch off management / admin antennae that mean always thinking of several different tasks at once and how to achieve results, and find focussed space so that reading and thinking on one connected thread works.  I love it that my desk looks like the photo.  Bibliotherapy in a mind-muscle sense!  

Coleridge

“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Richard Fisher comes to talk about Adding Value to content

Last week we were privileged to welcome Richard Fisher, Managing Director of Academic and Professional at Cambridge University Press, who came to talk to us about adding value to books.  Richard is a great speaker, who engages directly with the audience, and he made us all think about the value we place upon content in different formats.  How much would we pay for a book as a physical thing?  How much if that was an ebook?  Would we care if the physical book had the ebook thrown in for free?  What makes people spend money?  Why should we pay for anything?
He talked about the Big Three - Amazon, Google and Apple - and made us aware of the dangers of the digital age in terms of the risk of losing content through the loss of the technologial platforms that support it.  The growth of ebooks is startling at the moment, but the real challenge is how to keep sales trajectories going beyond the current bumpy take-off of the e-markets.  Richard stressed the need to keep up to date, recommending blogs like The Scholarly Kitchen and Mike Shatzin's The Shatzin Files.   A great session, leaving us all with much to mull over.....

Bibliotherapy: Benjamin Button

One of my students, Julie Young, recently lent me her beautiful copy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F Scott Fitzgerald, to read.  It was a classic case of being seduced by book production and title - because I have to admit, Fitzgerald is quite near the top of authors I've tried but am not keen to try again....but this little volume, by Scribner, shows how bibliotherapy is not just the text itself.  This is a softback book, but with inside flaps and wonderfully tactile cover (silky in feel), and the pages are a deep cream, rough cut, with wide margins.  The act of reading was a pleasure, and the text itself, which (sorry, Julie!) would have left me cold and untouched without its perfect packaging, went down with little murmur of protest.  The story would be whimsical if it wasn't so bare:  like a fairystory without the room to create imaginative contexts, it felt quite ruthless.  There was an unease here:  the author felt present, watchful, but withdrawn, and I couldn't shake the sense that this was a carelessly written piece.  I enjoyed the film much more, as this did give visual resonances to the very sparse prose. 
However, I have loved the book itself, as an object, and have also enjoyed looking at Scribner's website, which is correspondingly beautfully laid out.  Scribner is an imprint of Simon and Schuster, and has an amazing literary pedigree.  Well worth more research, in the future...!

The Joy of Books

My favourite thing of today - definite bibliotherapy, after a long day at the office!

OUP: new horizons | The Bookseller

OUP: new horizons The Bookseller

During a day spent researching academic publishing, I came across this article from last year about OUP's vision for the future. Nigel Portwood (a Cambridge University graduate, and the first non-Oxford graduate to head up the company in its 425 year history!) has a strong background of heading up and driving forwards big trade publishers in digital sales strategies in a global context. One of his key achievements at OUP has been to create the Global Academic Business, which combines many elements of the company. Portwood says:

“In some ways that change was evolutionary because we had been working towards closer links across those academic divisions. Yet nobody had taken the leap to say this is a global market, this is a market where formats no longer matter. The idea of books versus journals versus reference materials . . . that’s all gone now. I suppose that’s the biggest change that we made: acknowledging that the publishing has to be format independent, that we have to invest more in online and we have to think about moving resources across the business.”

He is optimistic about digital readers, and points to the rapid changes in the journals market to show why he holds these views:

“Users can now access more content more easily, for a lower price per article than they ever had before. They have the added functionality of cross-referencing and searchability that was never available. The industry has invested to enable this to happen; and the industry has grown as a result.”

The piece ends with Portwood's belief that now is the time for ambitious creative manoeuvring:

"Yet our industry has changed so much in the past five years—if you are not thinking ambitiously now, you’ll have a problem in a few years’ time.”

Looking at what announcements have already been made in the last few months, with both OUP and CUP announcing major digital publishing platforms with partnerships with other academic presses, Portwood's words are already looking prophetic.

Bibliographical Bibliotherapy!

I've just been looking at what is new in terms of books about books and publishing - and there is treasure in abundance!  Putting together an order for the university library, I wonder how much of a fight there is going to be for some of these titles?! 

This Is Not The End of The Book, by Umberto Eco, has got to worth reading.  And Books, A Living History, by Martyn Lyons, is also intriguing. 

Then, what about The Lost Art of Reading, by David L Ulin?  In this book, Ulin asks why literature is so important.  And what it offers, especially now. 









More to follow, with some reviews, but for now, must get back to reading the work of John Thompson, in his impressively well-researched Merchants of Culture, which is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand publishing today.  It also has a fabulous image on the cover of a Babel-tower of books!

January Blues

I don't like January.  The antipation and colour and joy of Christmas is gone, and the New Year is always cold, dark, and brown and grey.  January is a month for reflection, and far from being a time for new starts (living and breathing within the education system means September will always hold that spot) it fills me with a kind of dread.  The best month, then, for a spot of bibliotherapy.  Sartre said, "To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June", so am going to test that theory.  A poem to raise spirits and energy levels, to infuse some positivity into 2012.  Choosing something to post was a challenge, but in the end, I have simply indulged myself, and picked a favourite.  You may like it - or you may not.  But for me, it will always work as an instant pick-me-up, more potent than red wine or dark chocolate....

 

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!                                   Emily Dickinson

Enter, the Blogging Apprentice!

For many months I have been urging my students on the Publishing course to create and maintain an online presence, and the results have been inspiring and impressive. Yet, despite several false starts, and plenty of ideas, the art of blogging has somehow proved to be personally challenging! Until now. My research interests are coming together under the pursuit of a better understanding of the various ways ‘bibliotherapy’ has been and could be used. As a medievalist, I have long been aware of the conviction of medieval writers that texts had the power to heal and to improve all sorts of situations: as a reader and lover of books, I know that this enjoyment is based on that capacity to get lost in new imaginative or descriptive spaces. So, how can I find out more? The flotsam of thoughts to explore include, at this point, looking at the Poems on the Underground initiative, reading up about the scientific uses of bibliotherapy, and looking particularly at how poetry has been used to help soldiers (the First World War has left a remarkable body of evidence to show anthologies of verse were among the most treasured possessions a soldier at the Front had).
This blog will hopefully enable me to share findings (and more flotsam and jetsom!) and to receive feedback, brickbats and all, as I proceed!