Author talk as part of the 'Off the Shelf' Festival - Audrey Niffenegger

On Wednesday evening I attended my first ever 'author talk'.  This was just one of the events being held as part of the 'Off the Shelf' Festival of writers and readers in Sheffield (9 - 31 Oct 2010 details on http://www.offtheshelf.org.uk/).  I have to admit that despite this being held for a few years now I had not heard of this before.  As you can see it is held over a 3 week period and contains lots of different events including workshops and on the 30th they hold a Bookswap' event where you can take books you have read to swap for others.  This isn't a new concept for me as I do this all the time only via the post.  I use 2 different swap sites that operate in different ways.  The first one is http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/ and this works as a straight swap between members - one book for another and the second is http://www.bookmooch.com/ which works on a points basis you get so many points for each book requested from your list and you then use those points to request books from other members.

Anyhow, I seem to be digressing from the main purpose of this post.  The evening was advertised as 'An evening in conversation with Audrey Niffenegger'.  This event was held in the Pennine Lecture Theatre at Sheffield Hallam University.  The 'conversation' started as an interview, very much in a 'chat show' style of question and answer and later went to questions from the audience.  Audrey told us a little about her life and how her first novel 'The Time Traveller's Wife' was written.  She started her career writing/creating graphic novels and for a very short time she thought of doing this in this media but soon realised that it would be better in words.  She explained how she started with the title and then wrote the ending and the death of her main character and then worked back from there.  When she was later asked by a member of the audience if she was sad to kill her character off she answered with "No, because as I wrote that as one of the first things I didn't really know him, so he didn't stand a chance".  Audrey went on to talk about her graphic novels and her second novel 'Her Fearful Symmetry' which is very different to Time Traveller's Wife and is a ghost story.  This was followed by questions from the audience which covered a variety of things and finally she was available to sign our books.  All in all it was a very interesting, insightful evening.

Apologies and film review

My apologies to any of my readers that I haven't posted any reviews yet I just haven't got round to it as I've been busy reading.  Quite ironic I suppose but that's how it goes.  Anyhow, I am out tonight at an 'author talk', part of the 'Off the shelf' literary festival in Sheffield but I will catch up with this at some point.

In the meantime I thought maybe you might like to see a few comments on the films I have seen too.  Last night we went to see 'Made in Dagenham'.  This film was based on issues surrounding the strike by the women machinists at the Ford Dagenham plant in 1968.  As I was only 8 years old when this strike occurred I wasn't really that aware of it but this strike went along way towards changing things for women and actually resulted in 'The Equal Pay Act' becoming law two years later.

I thought this was well acted, especially the actress who played the part of Rita O'Grady.  These women were incredibly brave in standing up to all the men around, even after it resulted in the temporary closure of the entire plant at Dagenham as they couldn't continue to produce cars when they didn't have seats.  Viewing this from the female 'perspective' (naturally I couldn't really look at it any other way could I) there were lots of places where I wondered why the character didn't slap the man she was talking to at the time.  I can only say that I am very much glad I was still a child then as I doubt I could be so restrained.  The injustice those women were experiencing was appalling.  For example the part of the factory they worked in was so hot they sat in their underwear while they worked.  Also and this wouldn't be allowed today, the roof leaked so much they had to use umbrellas to protect their machines.  To top matters off they were regraded to 'unskilled' workers and their pay cut because they were women, when men did the same job they were paid as 'skilled'.  The women of today myself included have alot to thank these women for.  All in all, a brave portrayal of an important issue that isn't really known about by my generation and younger.

First Post

Well this is my first ever post on my newly created blog!  So what am I going to talk about on here? I've never done this before but as I was inspired by a fellow member of the ReaditSwapit forums I will probably post my book reviews on here.  I'm not a person that 'chatters' alot in this type of thing but I will try and keep it all light.  I'll post some reviews later so watch this space....