
I'm a big fan of bookclub meetings with friendly banter, good books and being a meeting of minds. The bookclub meetings held at the Festival last year were an absolute treat. Following the comedic revelation that I was not Carol Ann Duffy there were some wonderful insightful comments about her poetry. Sally Nicholls also gave a wonderful reading from Jackie Kay's short stories. One of my highlights of the Festival was hearing Jasper Fforde & Andrew Tate (two of my favourite writers) discussing Walden which somehow drifted into a discussion about the Muppets. It was an essentially Greenbelt moment – profound, spiritual and witty.
The people who came along to the sessions shared from their own experiences, talked of their responses to the books. (Thank you for that, I was deeply moved by some of the things you shared & said).
This year the literature subgroup have popped their collective thinking hats on, had some passionate discussion and have picked three very different books which we commend to you for discussion at the Festival.
1) Ali Smith – The First Person and Other Stories
Ali Smith is a wonderful writer and in the short story form her skills really zing. Smith has a knack for capturing conversations, pinning moments in a relationship & unlocking the process that goes into writing a novel. There's much here to delight and inspire, some of these stories will leave a smile in your mind.
2) Thornton Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Wilder's novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. The story of the collapse in 1714 of "the finest bridge in all Peru", killing five people, it is a parable of the struggle to find meaning in chance and in inexplicable tragedy – a struggle many people face today. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy Prime Minister Tony Blair quoted from the novel at a memorial service.
In the novel, a Franciscan missionary sees the bridge "divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below". He then sets out to trace the lives of the victims, linked only by their deaths, in an effort to understand the seemingly random nature of the tragedy. Wilder later explained that he was seeking to address the question: "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?
3) Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary life of Lady Hester Stanhope by Kirsten Ellis
The life of Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839) sounds like something from fiction. She was Prime Minister Pitt's niece and companion. She joined her brother on a voyage to Spain and kept travelling. She travelled to Constantinople and Damascus and was the first European woman to enter the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, but eventually made a home in Joun, in the mountains of Lebanon. When her clothes were lost in a shipwreck she dressed like a Turkish man, smoked a long water-pipe and rejected her birth culture. Famous for her wit, beauty and energy, she became the greatest woman traveller of her day. She developed a passion for the Arab world and forged lasting friendships with pashas, emirs and sheikhs – and was revered by the Bedouin, whose cause she championed, as their ‘Star of the Morning.’
If you don't own any of these books, you should! Click on the titles of the books to buy them from Amazon, and a portion of money will go to Greenbelt. Your local library should also stock these.
You'll find these discussions in The Hub the venue where Visual Arts and Literature coexist. Bring a mug of something warm and prepare to share your thoughts with other equally passionate souls. I can't wait to hear what people will have to say about these books. Will you be there? You won't want to miss this, it's going to be great!
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Ben Whitehouse is Literature Coordinator for the Greenbelt festival. He writes a blog – White Like Milk – and you can follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Benjiw


Bono – who probably won't be at next year's Festival – had an article in yesterdays NY Times listing 








