By the time this post goes live I will have been using an editorial calendar for 2 months. That I’m writing this post a month in advance is part of the reason for writing it.

I used to think editorial calendars weren’t for me. A system wherein you note which posts you want to put online and when, that fundamentally means you’re working with a view to weeks ahead, wasn’t something I thought would work. Many big blogs speak highly of it but trying a few WordPress plugins only confirmed my thoughts.

From the time I started my blog, I’ve kept posts in drafts. I always found deciding what posts to post within a two week limit to be what worked best and I rarely reached that limit.

I’ve been using a calendar since the start of March. The turning point was when I realised just how much time I was spending looking at my drafts and wondering what to post. Knowing a calendar could make that easier, because you slot posts in in batches, I decided to go semi-old school, manual, and created a table-based calendar document. It offered the control I felt was lacking in the plugins. It’s working; I’ve been a month ahead. I can look at a full month of days and by slotting in all my ideas and noting where I am in the posting process I can easily switch them around if needed later. It’s also spurred me to write more as seeing blank dates, even if they’re weeks away, pushes me to fill them. It’s a kind of good anxiety.

All this to say if you’ve noticed a change here, there has been one. It seems to be affecting what I post, too, in a good way. I can see at a glance how many less ‘involved’ posts are planned – round-ups, links – and mix it up better.

My belief is still the same – an editorial calendar will work if you want one but I don’t think they’re as essential as some blogs say. It really depends on your ‘whys’, ‘hows’, and time.

For me, the time was right.

What tools do you use for blogging/writing/keeping track of your reading?

Alice from FMCM got in touch with me about World Book Night (this Saturday, which this year coincides with the Readathon) and to ask if I’d like to see a Q&A conducted with some of the authors whose books the volunteers are giving out. I said yes, had a look at the content, and one of the questions – actually, one of the answers – gave me an idea for a post. I’m going to share the answers with you now so we have the context to go on because I’d like to make it into a discussion.

What are 3 books you would give to a reluctant reader?

S J Parris: Talking It Over by Julian Barnes; Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim by David Sedaris; The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett.

Sarah Hilary: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams for its anarchic humour. The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore for its chilling, touching brevity. Honeydew by Edith Pearlman for the sheer joy of short stories.

Leigh Bardugo: The Shadow Hero by Gene Yang. This graphic novel tells the story of the first Asian-American superhero. It’s hilarious, thrilling, and poignant too. Plus, if your reader gets hooked, Gene has a fantastic body of work to sustain that interest. Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older invites readers into a magical New York and takes on themes of creativity, appropriation, and power while never scrimping on adventure. This is a great one for young artists who may not quite believe in their gifts. For younger readers, The Wig In The Window by Kristen Kittscher is a witty, diverse middle grade mystery with an even more charming sequel.

Holly Bourne: One Day – It’s funny, on-point, romantic and sad – with incredible dialogue. There’s a reason the entire London underground seemed to be reading it in 2009. Station Eleven – I’ve been literally shoving this into the hands of everyone. It’s an incredible literary book, but with a gripping premise that will keep anyone up until silly o’clock to get to the end. The Fault In Our Stars – YA fiction is great for reluctant readers as it’s so plot-focused. I defy anyone not to be totally bewitched by this one, and John Green is a great gateway drug into the amazing world of teen fiction.

Ann Cleeves: I’d suggest anything on the Quick Reads list. Quick Reads are books that have been specifically commissioned for people who are new to reading for pleasure. The content is very definitely for grown-ups, but the language is relatively simple and the chapters are short. The scheme has been going for ten years now so there’s plenty for people to choose from. For instance, this year there’s a story by Lucy Diamond about pregnancy, an edited version of Malala’s story and a crime novel by me! I wouldn’t want to recommend specific titles because reluctant readers have their own tastes and preferences like everyone else. Part of the joy of reading is wandering into a library and taking a chance with a book. So instead of giving 3 books, I’d give a library ticket.

Jan-Philipp Sendkar: It totally depends on the age of the reader, the gender, the interests, the personal background so it’s impossible to generalize. I do believe there are books for every reluctant reader, though. Sometimes it is just a matter of time or the right timing. Sometimes it is a matter of finding the right match. One of my children is a very reluctant reader but once in a while, when she finds the right book, very often by accident, never because I gave it to her, she reads through the night. I believe that very often a book finds its reader… and luckily books do have a long shelf live.

Now I actually rather like the reasons the authors gave (I’m all for the John Green, I think that’s a good pick, though I disagree with including the Emily St John Mandel because I think it’s too literary) but it’s the last two answers I like the most and Sendkar’s in particular is the one I’m going to hone in on here (I’ll speak briefly of Cleeves’ at the end because it’s a different subject, though she does end on Sendkar’s note). Sendkar’s answer struck me as a fair response; I think the right book for a reluctant reader is dependent on who that person is.

I wonder if the key, perhaps, is matching potential reader to a particular slice of popular culture, the sort they might like or relate to or be familiar with at the very least, like a child a few years ago might have been more inclined to read the Harry Potter series than a relatively random book their mother loved, albeit that the mother could be right in thinking her child would love it too. Clearly it has happened that way – Harry Potter has brought books to non-readers – but I do wonder if that love of books the recommender has for particular novels can sometimes be a problem.

Here I’m actually thinking of a child trying to get a parent reading or, more correctly, I’m thinking of the effort I went to a few years ago to get my mother reading. She reads reference books and I had just finished my first few Austens and wanted to share them with her. I knew she’d seen Colin Firth appearing from the lake and thought that might be enough context, when mixed with my own enthusiasm, to get her reading it. So I bought her a lovely edition of the book, she read three chapters, and who knows where it is now. I did the opposite of what I do now; I asked her a few times if she’d read it so there were some awkward conversations.

And with that awkward memory, I’d love to know your thoughts on Sendkar’s answer. Let’s not talk any more about my Austen thing…

In regards to Ann Cleeves’ answer I wanted to talk about Quick Reads, the programme she’s involved in and so understandably plugged. I’ve heard a bit about it from Cathy Rentzenbrink from reading her book The Last Act Of Love and possibly also at the blogger brunch. (Rentzenbrink’s the Project Director of Quick Reads.)

Reading about this year’s World Book Night has answered a question I’d had – I’ve seen these ‘Quick Reads’ books and you can’t really get away from Galaxy’s promotions here in the UK (happily in the case of books and not that you’d want to anyway because they really do know how to make chocolate) but I didn’t know what the programme was about. Quick Reads, now a part of The Reading Agency – the literary charity that started World Book Night – is a special line of books commissioned each year. Famous authors write short, easy-to-read books, or they create a collection of stories as the editor, or they abridge popular reads, all in a drive to promote literacy and make books less daunting.

I haven’t got a point on this, I just wanted to share what I’d learned.

Here’s the World Book Night list and after that some questions for you.

• Amanda Prowse: Perfect Daughter
• Ann Cleeves: Too Good To Be True
• Carol Ann Duffy: Love Poems
• Elizabeth Buchan: I Can’t Begin To Tell You
• Holly Bourne: Am I Normal Yet?
• J Paul Henderson: Last Bus To Coffeeville
• Jan-Philipp Sendker: Whispering Shadows
• Jonathan Coe: The Rotters’ Club
• Leigh Bardugo: Shadows And Bone
• Lucy Diamond: The Baby At The Beach Café
• Matt Haig: Reasons To Stay Alive
• S J Parris: Treachery
• Sarah Hilary: Someone Else’s Skin
• Sharon Bolton: Now You See Me
• Stephen E Ambrose: Band Of Brothers

What do you think of the particular books the authors have chosen?
What do you think about what Sendkar says?
What books have you recommended to non-readers?
And are you taking part in/doing something for World Book Night?

Five years (the length of the Club goal), especially given the possibility to extend it, is a long time. People talk of five-year plans – where do you want to be? – so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a list of books for that period starts to become irrelevant, particularly when you’re far from on schedule.

In January I noticed that whilst I’ve barely made a dent in my list it’s not reflective of my reading itself. I’m reading the classics, just not those on my list. Often I know the book I’m reading’s not on my list, other times I’m baffled.

This bafflement introduced me to the fact I’ve changed. When I made the list I was full of the same hope and enthusiasm I still am today but my knowledge of the classics was minimal. Back then I was excited to learn, now I’m further along in my education. I know better what I like; before I just wanted diversity and to read what everyone else was reading. Crucially I made the decision to add only one book per writer, I thought that would be less daunting, and now I’ve some favourite writers I don’t want to move away from them so soon.

The list was a guide, good at the time. I like that it illustrates where I was as a reader then. I don’t want to abandon it completely because there’s no firm deadline and I would still like to read many of the entries at some point. And it did get me reading classics and keeps me on my toes. Perhaps I should pay more attention to it, then I wouldn’t be so shocked when I find a book isn’t on it, but that would be a chore.

For me, then, I think the success of the list isn’t in the reading but in the spin-off. I do wonder if I should update it, or categorise it.

Did you make a Classics Club list? How do you feel about it, however far along you are now?

If you are driving with an aim to pass Winchester, coming from the west, you are shown directions to Jane Austen’s house in Chawton. If you are travelling with an aim to pass Winchester, coming from the east, there are two options – Jane Austen’s house and Gilbert White’s house. Why the discrepancy I’m not sure.

All this to say that once we were driving through the area and came across one of the signs for White’s house, looked him up, and decided to make a detour. The house turned out to be a hidden gem and as such I would like to share it with you.

Located in the village of Selborne in Hampshire, a place where the majority of buildings are old – many thatched – and where any new ones are built to match, is this Gilbert White’s house. Known to those in the village as well as likely those who study the same field, White has been largely forgotten otherwise.

A man of the Georgian period and slight of stature if the supposedly life-scale model is anything to go by, White was a person who favoured details, the little things most people don’t consider, or at least didn’t in his time. It was he who first noted differences in bird songs, categorised breeds. A naturalist and priest, he was educated at Oxford’s Oriel College and was born and died in Selborne. The reason, perhaps, for his being forgotten lies in the name of his book, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne – it’s specific.

In the house also is the Oates’ collection. The Oates family were later owners of the house and very into nature themselves. More on that in a while.

You can visit Gilbert White’s house to see the house, gardens, and tea room, or if you wish you can skip the house and go straight for the coffee. Choosing to go to the tea room is obviously free; you have to walk through the hallway to get there so it’s down to you to be polite and not go wandering into the rooms themselves without having paid entry.

We went to tea first, or, rather, lunch. The tea room is situated in the old dining room so it’s rather apt; I must say the food was lovely. My coffee was brought to the table in a small French Press which is particularly nice as asking a coffee shop or restaurant for decaf so often results in an overpriced instant or an overly-milky espresso-based drink. The soup was superb, the sandwich good, too, and the hot chocolate boasted clotted cream on top.

Back to the entrance hall and to pay for admission to the house, we visited all the rooms we’d passed on our way to lunch and went upstairs. About 60% of the house is decorated in Georgian style, the remaining 40% given over to the Oates family. The downstairs is all Gilbert’s: a room dedicated to information about his life is the first one off the hallway. Painted in an alternative frieze are quotes from famous people about White, including one from Virginia Woolf. Here are a few of them:

“He… raises his eyes to the horizon and looks and listens.” — Virginia Woolf

“From reading White’s Selborne… I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.” — Charles Darwin

“Selfishly, I, too, would have plumbed to know you: I could have learned so much.” — W H Auden

The next room is a library of sorts. This is where you start to notice the quirk of the house. Every bookshelf you see in the rooms dedicated to Gilbert, every single shelf, holds copies of the same one book, his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. The copies are different editions ranging from the first, published in his time, to fairly modern copies. We spotted a few Japanese editions. There are hundreds of this one book in the house; it’s really quite something. It sounds like a project and indeed it was; between 1986 and 2010, one Ronald Davidson-Houston went around buying up all the copies he could, including ones at auction, for the house to have. One might call it mad but in this place you can understand it – we’re not talking Jane Austen here; the lady who lived down the road a little later on is far less likely to find her work thrown in the bin, I’d say, than a person who wrote of a village relatively unknown.

The next room is the parlour, where the hallway opens out, the main stairs play host to the model of Gilbert White, and you can choose between the tea room and the rest of the house. When we visited said main stairs were not open for use – whether they are usually I don’t know – so we followed the room round and used what were likely the servants’ stairs. On the landing are lots of drawings of birds and a fair view of the gardens. Gilbert’s bedroom is shrouded in darkness to preserve the fabrics and thus I did not take a photograph (photography is permitted barring flash). Up another set of stairs is a small library room that can be used for meetings, then there’s Gilbert’s study, and that’s it for the Georgian decoration.

The rest of the upstairs is dedicated to the Oates’ family. The reason for the exhibitions and the walls being whitewashed accordingly is that two members of the family were explorers.

Frank Oates, a Victorian, was, like Gilbert White, a naturalist. An explorer in Africa, he made a long expedition, travelling from Southampton to the then south African colony of Natal further north over the course of nine months. During a visit to Pretoria – then a town, now a city – he’s quoted as having been upset at the lack of a bookshop in the area. He also explored the Americas. The rooms dedicated to his travels are full of stuffed animals, showing the efforts, in a time without photography, to bring findings home. It’s an uncomfortable few rooms to stand in, certainly.

Lawrence Oates, whose exhibition is completed by the sounds of high winds, was Frank’s nephew and also an explorer. He travelled to the Antarctic at a time when little was known about it; those on the return journey perished eleven miles from one of their last storage depots. Sadly, Lawrence himself had already chosen self-sacrifice; suffering badly from gangrene and frostbite and knowing he was slowing the men down he told his crew he was going for a walk and never returned. Photographs showed lack-lustre accommodation, there were references to poor food planning – like most firsts, this one ended badly. In this case at least remnants, research, were recovered – the exhibition includes photograph negatives, stuffed penguins.

At the end of this floor a modern staircase has been added, I expect so that on busy days people can move in a linear fashion. They take you back to the lobby and gift shop.

Would you believe none of what I’ve spoken of acted as the reason I wanted to visit the house? Here is my reason for visiting:

As far as you can see, to those trees, and likely beyond if the information board I saw beyond the fence is concerned, the grounds belong to the house. They haven’t always, but as time has moved on so the grounds have extended. We aren’t talking lots of gardens here – there is a kitchen garden or two – as most of the grounds is simply fields. But it’s stunning. I expect that on busy days they feel smaller but when we were there there were few people and the fields went on and on.

Just outside the house is a lawn kept very short. A ha-ha signals the relative end of it and then the fields are less groomed and ripe for walking. There is a seat nestled in a barrel that I believe was for Gilbert’s perusal of his garden. Seemingly far in the distance is a statue of ancient design. Once you get closer its true nature is revealed – you’ve just been tricked into walking up to a large painted board. The fact it looks like a statue from afar is the very point it exists – there wasn’t enough money for a statue so Gilbert bought something that would look luxurious from the green.

Undoubtedly there will be flowers here in the summer but this isn’t somewhere you go for colour, rather a place for walking and just enjoying nature.

I highly recommend getting off the beaten path and visiting this house. The building is small enough that you could do it on the same day as your trip to Chawton. And because it can and does make a difference I’ll say that the staff are awesome.

Are there any books you’d ever collect a lot of?

Can factually-based historical novels be spoiled? That was the question that entered my head a few weeks ago when I was pondering my last post on the general subject. I think there may be a few genres where the question ‘do spoilers affect your reading?’ needs more details prior to answering but the most obvious in my mind is factually-based historical fiction. Be it historical in general, historical romance or historical fantasy (less likely, I think we can say, to be completely factual), it’s harder to say that fiction based on history, particularly history that we know a fair bit about, can be spoiled.

I suppose you could liken this to the argument that we should get over ourselves when it comes to spoilers for the canon, that they’ve been around too long for anyone to walk on eggshells; a substantial number of people are likely to know the historical details of a historical novel, be they readers or not, and they aren’t going to keep quiet about them. After all, history is a different discipline to literature; to use the favoured turn of phrase, so-and-so would roll in their grave if we made something of their story having been spoilt for us. Where history is concerned, the issue of spoilers is moot.

I reckon the concept is more prevalent in the film industry, where people don’t want to know the ending of a story unless they’re currently watching it. Of course this sort of no-knowledge tends to depend on the person not being into the history except in the context of films.

If a book is based on a real person/people and/or events, I don’t think you can expect to read your book free of spoilers. Not only would you have to watch out for the writings and conversations of other readers but also of historians in articles, in television documentaries and for random occurrences like a 500 years late funeral. And the more popular the history, the more the discussion.

But in this there’s a big positive – if you are sensitive to spoilers this is one genre where you can throw caution to the wind and research. You get to read the book for the first time as though it’s a re-read. Historical fiction is full of opinion and interpretation, more so, perhaps, than other genres and it offers an easy way to study History, to study without studying and to gain knowledge, to learn academic methods and disciplines in a non-academic environment.

I’m thinking we can’t apply the concept of spoilers to factually-based historical fiction in the usual way, that at most we can say that authors’ interpretations and retellings can be spoiled for us.

Your thoughts?