Their first, his last, my everything

This is a Book Week guest post from JoJo Kirtley of JoJo’s So-Called Life.

Back in the day, when I started out teaching, I did some voluntary work for a charity who offered one-to-one tuition to help illiterate adults. The basic ethic was to teach adults how to read and write, if they got any qualifications that was a bonus but my own personal aim was to help them read their very first book. There were a lot of people attending this project who were desperate to learn, which was great but I was saddened by the number of people who just couldn’t read. The funding has long gone for such projects in Manchester and will probably never exist again, especially if the current government have their way. However, I can’t help wondering that it’s a basic right to be taught how to read and it’s so important that everyone can but the number of young people I come across, at work, who can’t, is just heartbreaking.

So, we should never take for granted our ability to read. It was my Grandad Tom who I remembered being a great lover of books. When he died, I was only 19 years old and I helped clear out the things in his room. In it, was the last book he’d ever read, James Joyce’s, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and as I flicked the pages one was dog earred and stood out. It was the story of Saint Thomas Aquinas. I laughed because part of me felt like he’d spoken to me from the grave. It amazed me how much that book stayed with me, in so many different ways. I guess my real love of books started from there.

When I was a kid, I asked my Mam and Dad for one hundred books for Christmas. (No wonder I got bullied at school!) I was obsessed with collecting them. I’ve a library now, all stacked up in my dining room. Some people don’t appreciate them and my father in law often joked, when I was pregnant that he’d burn them to make way for baby things. (I always secretly thought of all the things I’d destroy if he did!) This Christmas, my Dad bought me a kindle and I was gutted. I tried not to act like a spoilt brat but part of me was disappointed. I just couldn’t see myself using it compared to books. I’ll never forget one of my student’s excitedly meeting me at their front door with a celeb biography they’d read from cover to cover. It was the very first book they’d ever read and they were chuffed; I’m just not so sure a kindle would have made the same impact.

Now, I wanted to write my top ten list of books but I struggled so here’s a special list of recommended books that I urge you all to read-I call them my turning point books. These are the books that for some point in my life changed it, forever. Firstly, I fell in love with Charles Dickens at an early age, the story of Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol gripped me. No man can tell a tale like Charlie apart from Thomas Hardy and after reading Far from the Madding Crowd, I was hooked on him too. I then fell for Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart probably one of the most mind-blowing stories-ever. By the time I was 17, I was an avid reader of plays-first the classics, Shakespeare, Brecht, Ibsen and Miller. I also loved Tennesse Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but the very first play, I ever read that made me freak out was Sarah Daniels’ chilling, Masterpieces, followed closely by the voices of Irish playwrights such as Christina Reid and Anne Devlin who really made me realise that feminism was very much alive. For me though, the ultimate play that defines my understanding of feminism has to be, The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. Don’t go and see the play just read it: I promise, it’s amazing. Books that have made me laugh out loud include Bridget Jones’ Diary, travel book-McCarthy’s bar, anything by Bill Bryson and Simon Armitage’s All Points North. The one’s that have had me in floods of tears are The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Other books, I adore include are One hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and E. Annie Proulx ‘s The Shipping News. However, out of the blue, a writer who has made me feel all tingly, all over and her first novel bowled me away was Sarah Waters. Tipping the Velvet is honestly just a sublime read. Poetry-now, I love that too-Harrison, Heaney, Cooper-Clarke and Angelou not forgetting Spike Milligan’s classic, The Ning, Nang Nong! Oh, I really could go on and on and on……I just adore reading.

There are so many books that I love and many that I can recommend! Some have shaped the person I am, some have touched me, made me laugh even made me cry; I’m just glad I’ve been lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to read. Now, it’s my duty to teach my son, Thomas and hopefully pass on my love (and his namesakes) of reading-I guess it’s one of the greatest gifts he’ll ever receive.

JoJo can be found at her blog, on Twitter and on Facebook.