The Power of Stories–Reflections on Oxford Reading Spree

Whenever I sit down to write a blog I feel nervous. This was exaggerated for this blog, many people have already written good blogs on the conference and I wondered what I could add.

I am going to focus on a single thread of the conference and leave aside both the wonderful experience of meeting so many passionate, considerate and talented people and the feeling of energy to try new things I left with.

The thread I am going to talk about is story. Many of the presenters at The Spree delivered their talks in some way through their personal stories. This engaged us and drew on our emotions. This is part of what made the day so uplifting, inspiring and funny. It was a beautiful example of form reflecting content, being encouraged to share wonderful stories by people who were in turn sharing stories. It really highlighted the personal nature of reading, dependent on situation, company, expectation, and much much more. To quote Martin Galway reading is indeed a “Many splendored thing”.

I love the short story “Piere Menard: The Man Who Wrote Don Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges which explores the idea that a modern man writes and identical text to Don Quixote and contrasts identical paragraphs. This relies on reading as an interpretive negotiation between writer and reader.  I have often imagined what it would have been like to have read a series in a different order and I have recently enjoyed the second in Abi Elphinstone’s Dreamsnatcher series much more than the first due, in part, to reading the wonderful descriptions of nature in the sun of spring.

Besides being a fascinating topic to ponder this has made me very keen to read a little Borges with my class as a way into the idea that in many ways each person reads a different book while they read the same text. I hope to be able to use this to encourage bookish conversation. Writing this has made me wonder whether part of many children’s unwillingness to discuss books, even those they have greatly enjoyed, stems from an assumption that everyone who has read it has read the same book as them.  

Thank-you to all those who made Oxford Reading Spree such a wonderful event. This is but one of many things it made me think about.