Last Thursday evening I got together with a lovely crowd of women at our soon-to-be home in Landressy Street, Bridgeton for a ‘Books That Changed Our Lives’ event with Orkney-born author, Alison Miller, and GWL Librarian, Wendy Kirk. Alison, whose first novel, DEMO, was published by Penguin, was able to travel down to GWL especially for the event, thanks to the Scottish Book Trust. She’s currently working on a family saga set on her home turf in Orkney where she’s Reader in Residence.
When the event was first mooted by Adele Patrick, GWL’s creative director, she suggested we do ‘The Book That Changed My Life’. Typical of me, I couldn’t narrow it down to just one book! (Well, maybe I could have when I was 25, but as the years roll on I think you deserve more than one change-my-life moment.)
To make the choosing easier, Alison and I thought we should be allowed three each: one poetry, one non-fiction and one fiction. And to make the evening even more interesting GWL librarian, Wendy Kirk came along with a wonderful selection of related book recommendations.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to blog about the various choices we made, and in April Alison and I will be having a ‘return match’ when we do the event again as part of the Orkney Book Festival. So there’s your dilemma. Either make your way to Orkney to hear us talk about our selections, or drop by this blog again to read about them!
Just to whet your appetite, here’s the selection Alison made for the Glasgow Women’s Library leg of our tour. How many of you would have chosen one or all of these titles?
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
- Woman on the Edge of Time by Madge Piercy.
- Fat Like the Sun by Anna Swir,
- Women who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman Perkins.
OVER TO YOU!
Let’s just imagine for a moment that you were chosen to do a Books That Changed Our Lives event at GWL. What would you choose – and why? We’d really love to know what books mean something special to our GWL readers. And it will be interesting too to see how often – or not – the same titles appear.
If you’d rather not leave your real name when you’re commenting, feel free to use a pseudonym. So what are you waiting for? Who knows, your suggestion might just change someone else’s life!
Happy reading – and hope to hear from you soon.
Magi
ps we might just ask a reader to do a Books That Changed Our Lives with us some time soon… So we really do want to know your CLICK! books.
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