Reading

Review: Lord of the Flies

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As I mentioned in a previous post, with the release of the movie by this same title made it necessary for me to read this classic novel. I wouldn’t be able to see the movie, because I know my wife wouldn’t enjoy it, and I had not bought a copy because its theme struck me as gruesome. I’ve had the same problem with the Hunger Games, but with that movie out, I had to buy and read it, I’m glad I read both of them. In neither case does the author write the story as gruesomely as its theme. In both cases, the story is told without emotional embroidery, leaving the reader to consider what the author is saying about humanity.

Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) who was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies  (1954), Golding published another 12 volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, Golding was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature. As a result of his contributions to literature, Golding was knighted in 1988. He was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on its list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.

William Golding

From 1935 to 1940, Golding taught English, Greek, drama and philosophy at English schools. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy, was assigned to a destroyer and left the Navy in 1945 as a lieutenant. He was married and had two children. He had a difficult relationship with alcohol most of his adult life. Golding published 12 novels, 2 collections and 3 non-fiction works.

The novel begins when a British aeroplane has crashed on an isolated island. The only survivors are boys in their middle childhood. A fair-haired boy named Ralph and a fat boy nicknamed Piggy find a conch shell, which Ralph uses as a horn to gather the survivors. Ralph immediately commands authority over the other surviving boys using the conch, and is elected their “chief”. A red-haired boy named Jack, and a quiet boy named Simon use Piggy’s glasses to create a signal fire. The boys become paranoid about an imaginary monster called the ‘beast’. One night, an air battle occurs near the island and the body of a fighter pilot  drifts down in a parachute. Twin boys Sam and Eric mistake the corpse for the beast.  Ralph leads some of the boys, including those who were to attend the fire on a wild pig hunt which culminates in a feast. Tensions rise over the maintenance of the fire and the reality of the beast. Jack makes a tribe of his boys, who paint their faces and engage in ritual dances. Simon, who discovers who the beast really is, rushes to tell Jack, but he is mistaken for the beast and killed by the frenzied boys. Jack and his tribe steal Piggy’s glasses, the only means of starting a fire. Ralph goes to Jack’s camp with Piggy, Sam, and Eric to confront Jack and retrieve the glasses. In the rebellious spirit against Ralph’s authority, the tribe drops a boulder that kills Piggy and shatters the conch. Ralph learns that Jack plans to hunt him. The next morning, Jack’s tribe sets fire to the forest. Ralph narrowly escapes the boys and the fire, and while fleeing, falls down in front of a uniformed adult – a British naval officer who has landed on the island to investigate the fire. 

How can pre-adolescent boys lose their humanity, forsaking all values of friendship, kindness and justice, and become savage, murderous animals? Golding’s novel answers the question with convincing credibility. The author makes use of the wild environment, the perilous situation, the lack of any supervision, and the uncertain outlook to nudge the boys down the wrong path, but he also paints vulnerable characters, communicating inadequately, misperceiving reality to make such a horrible result entirely believable. A truly masterful piece of writing!

Review: Cherished Belonging

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One of my sons-in law sent me this book. Since he is a widely-read, intelligent and very likeable guy, I have read it and enjoyed it.

Cherished Belonging was written by Gregory Joseph Boyle (born May 19, 1954), who is an American Jesuit priest and the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. He is the former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.

Gregory Boyle

At the conclusion of his theology studies, Boyle spent a year living and working with Christian communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Upon his return in 1986, he was appointed pastor of Dolores Mission Church, a Jesuit parish in the Boyle Heights  neighborhood of East Los Angeles that was then the poorest Catholic church in the city. At the time, the church sat between two large public housing projects and amid the territories of eight gangs.  Referred to as the “decade of death” in Los Angeles between 1988-1998, there were close to a thousand people per year killed in Los Angeles from gang related crime.

By 1988, in an effort to address the escalating problems and unmet needs of gang-involved youth, Boyle, alongside parish and community members, began to develop positive opportunities for them, including establishing an alternative school and a day-care program, and seeking out legitimate employment, calling this initial effort Jobs for a Future. 

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Jobs for a Future and Proyecto Pastoral, a community organising project begun at the parish, launched their first social enterprise business, Homeboy Bakery. Initial funding for the bakery was donated by the late film producer Ray Stark. In the ensuing years, the success of the bakery created the groundwork for additional social enterprise businesses, leading Jobs for a Future to become an independent nonprofit organization, Homeboy Industries.

This book doesn’t really have a plot, but that doesn’t make it any less readable. The nine chapters each have a title which may serve as a summary of the content. But for me, the chapters are unimportant, apart from dividing the book (212 pages) into nine convenient parts. The content, alone, is what makes this book a thought-provoking, fascinating collection of stories and reflections on the stories.

Here’s an example of a story. “Adrian stands in front of an almost entirely white group of criminal justice majors and graduate counselors at Lorcas College in Dubuque. He’s a stocky guy, with the expected tattoos etched on his neck and face and shaved-smooth head. After fifteen years in prison and only a brief three months with us at Homeboy, his trip here was his first on a plane and the only time he’s stood in front of a group to tell his story. Actually, he had been out of state before. During his tenure locked up, they had transferred Adrian to Oklahoma from Calipatria State Prison. It took them thirty-nine hours on a bus. He was shackled at the ankles, the waist, and the wrists. The inmates never got off the bus the entire time. ‘To me,’ he tells me. ‘it was torture’. The most noticeable feature of Adrian’s presentation is his sweet-natured voice. It’s not just younger than his thirty-four years it has a quality that is so pure and gentle. It is soulful and true. You just want to listen to him. His authenticity keeps folks spellbound: ‘I know that most people would take one look at me . . . i mean you would see me walking down the street, and you would cross to the other side. But what you don’t know about me is that if I had only one dollar left and you needed it, it would be yours. If you were shirtless, I would give you mine. If your car conked out, I’d help you push it.’ Everyone in the room believed him,”

There are about two hundred stories like that in the book. What’s more each of the characters in those stories stands out as unique: each with his/her own peculiarities. So, the theme of the book is that God loves each of in spite of our faults, and that each of us should show love to the other regardless of the circumstances. It is clear that the culture of Homeboy is primarily one of love. What isn’t covered by the book is how Homeboy gets new members to shed their aggression and defensive nastiness. Apparently the culture of love is so strong that it is both a magnet and a force for change. There are also coaches who are assigned to the new ‘homies’.

Why don’t we have Homeboys in every major city?

Why Read Classics Now?

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There is an article Why you should revisit the classics, even if you were turned off them at school on The Conversation website, dated March 3, 2025 by Johanna Harris.

This caught my attention because with all the current publicity about Lord of the Flies, I have decided to buy and read a copy. I’ve had plenty of chances to do that, but I thought, ‘It’s such a grim story!’ We won’t go to the movie; my wife would hate it, so it’s now or never.

The author of the article, Johanna Harris, is Associate Professor, Literature, Western Civilisation Program, Australian Catholic University.

Johanna Harris

Ms Harris writes: “Throughout my school years I had an exuberant, elderly piano teacher, Miss Hazel. She was one of five daughters (like me) and, like many young women of her generation, had never married her sweetheart because he did not return from the war.

Her unabashed gusto for life and infectious, positive outlook left an indelible impression upon me. So too did the memorable fact that Miss Hazel read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from beginning to end once every year.

As a younger girl I wondered about the ways Pride and Prejudice could be so important to a woman in her eighties that she would want to read it annually. Was it to do with Austen’s depiction of a family with five daughters, or to relive an endearing love story?

Since those years I have seen, more through lived experience than through academic study, just how deeply meaningful the reading of classic books, like Pride and Prejudice, can be.

I no longer simply read this book for Elizabeth Bennett’s love story, but for the finely crafted replication Austen gives us of human character, with all its flaws. Hers are imaginary yet imaginably real situations, all depicted with humour and a sensitively calibrated dose of sympathy for even the most unlikeable literary figures.

The clergyman Mr Collins, Elizabeth’s distant cousin and her rejected suitor, was always repellent for his obsequiousness but I see more readily now his self-serving nature cloaked in altruism. The haughty snobbery of Darcy’s aristocratic aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, hints at a deeper layer of sadness and fragility only rereading can illuminate.

Box-ticking and speed

When we’re at school or university we may read for speed. I remember managing my reading of Ann Radcliffe’s 432-page gothic romance The Romance of the Forest to work out how many pages per hour I would need to read across a weekend in order to finish the novel before my university tutorial. (It was an ungodly ratio and I don’t recall much of the novel.)

Or we may read for the tick-box exercise of writing for assessment requirements: accumulating knowledge of a novel’s original metaphors, descriptions that best capture a prescribed theme (“belonging” or “identity”), or of poetry by which we can demonstrate a grasp of innovative metre.

But how and why do we reread classic books, when we are not constrained by class plans or prescribed exam themes. And why should we?

‘Like a graft to a tree’

Rebecca Mead’s The Road to Middlemarch offers a compelling exploration of one writer’s five-yearly revisitation of George Eliot’s masterpiece, Middlemarch.

Mead first read the novel at school, and Eliot’s subtitle to the novel, “A Study of Provincial Life”, captured precisely what Mead was trying to escape at that time: provinciality.

Eliot’s central character, Dorothea Brooke, captivated Mead as an unconventional intellectual heroine yearning for a life of meaning and significance. Mead marked out important moments with a fluorescent pen, such as when the intellectual and spiritual inadequacies of Dorothea’s husband, Casaubon, dawn upon her. Mead writes, quoting Eliot:

‘Now when she looked steadily at her husband’s failure, still more at his possible consciousness of failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became tenderness […]’ These seemed like things worth holding on to. The book was reading me, as I was reading it.

This idea of books “reading us” can sound like an odd animism. But books can prompt us to reflect on our own lives, too. Eliot makes Middlemarch almost compulsory to reread later in life: the idealism of youth captures the young reader, while the novel’s humour becomes more sympathetic as we age. To reread a novel like Middlemarch is to trace the ways we too have experienced idealism turn to illusion, or have seen the restless pursuit of change turn to a retrospective gratitude and a recognition of grace.

Our ability to acknowledge new depths of meaning in our own lives and to recognise within ourselves a subtler sympathy for the lives of others can be articulated almost as precisely as lived experience itself. As Mead says, “There are books that grow with the reader as the reader grows, like a graft to a tree.”

Feeling for Lear

The same can be said of Shakespeare. As young readers, we won’t necessarily capture the full vision King Lear offers us of the tragicomic paradoxes sometimes presented by old age. The play depicts the loss of power and control over one’s life and decision-making, the tender fragility of family relationships when the care of aged parents is suddenly an urgent question and the madness that can prevail when an inheritance is at stake.

Some of these things might abstractly be understood when taught to us in the classroom, but they are far more powerfully seen when revisited after we have lived a little more of that imaginably real life ourselves.

As students we might have squirmed with discomfort at the literal blinding of Lear’s loyal subject the Earl of Gloucester (the horror of witnessing a visceral, grotesque injury).

But as we age it is the tragedy of moral blindness that lingers, making the final scene so extraordinarily moving: “Do you see this? Look on her. Look, her lips. Look there, look there,” Lear pleads, as if to say that Cordelia, lifeless in his arms, still breathes.

Does he really see her lips quiver? Does he really believe she lives? Is this some consolation with which he dies or is it delusion? Lear’s heart is broken. So is mine.

Each time I revisit this final scene, the grief of Lear as a father is profoundly felt, but my heart is broken even more so by his continuing blindness; his vision (what he thinks he sees) is desperate, untrue, and ultimately meaningless.

Sites of discovery

When we read we inhabit imaginary worlds and each time the reading can be different. Philip Davis, a professor of literature and psychology has written,

Rereading is important in checking and refreshing that sense of meaning, as the reader goes back and re-enters the precise language once again.

Davis points to an idea advanced by the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, of the reader’s collection of special, memorable fragments, which serve as metaphors for the reader’s self-utterances, developed over time. These are “nascent sites for thinking and re-centring”.

This is a similar idea to the novelist and journalist Italo Calvino’s description in Why Read the Classics? of the way classic books “imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable” and “hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious.”

Works of imaginative literature are not manuals for life, though they might along the way gift us with some wisdom; they are sites of discovery and rediscovery.

The classic works we are introduced to at school may establish such sites for thinking about ourselves and others, but it is in rereading them as we grow older that we can better see the ways we have grown as imaginative, moral beings.”

Reading Is Down; Book Sales Are Up?

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Yesterday the Telegraph had an article to this effect written by Hannah Boland, the Retail Editor.

Hannah said, “Across Britain, fewer and fewer people are reading books. The data are plain as day.

The number of children who read outside of school every day has halved over the past two decades, while the number of children who say they enjoy reading in their spare time is down by 36pc.

Among adults, reading numbers are also in freefall. In a YouGov survey last year, two in five people said they had not read or listened to a book in the past year – compared with around a quarter of adults in 2001.

For Waterstones, figures such as these would be expected to raise alarm bells. With the high street in crisis, you would think the decline of reading would put businesses such as Waterstones next in line to face the chop.

Yet the mood is anything but sombre at Britain’s biggest bookseller. In fact, Waterstones’ owners are so confident in the business that they are gearing up for a multibillion-pound stock market listing, with a float expected as soon as this summer.

This month, it emerged that Elliott Advisors, the company’s owner, had lined up advisers at Rothschild to work on the process.

The private equity group is preparing to list both Waterstones and its US cousin Barnes & Noble together as one business.

In a sign of just how well Waterstones appears to be doing, Elliott is understood to be leaning towards the London Stock Exchange for a debut of the combined company.

James Daunt, the bookseller’s lauded chief executive who also runs Barnes & Noble, is himself a Briton.

Daunt, who runs both booksellers, described 2025 as a “fantastic year for us”, with both the US and UK businesses expanding into new areas.

Barnes & Noble opened 67 new stores while Waterstone is adding around 10 new shops a year, even though expansion is harder given it is so well-established.

“Stories of declines in reading evidently do not correlate to book buying,” he says. “Publishers and independent booksellers, as well as ourselves, are all doing well in both the US and the UK.”

The figures back him up. The number of independent booksellers across the UK rose slightly last year, even as the high street was struck by a series of retail collapses and store closures.

Between them, Barnes & Noble and Waterstones made a profit of $400m (£300m) last year, with sales standing at $3bn.

That is despite Barnes & Noble facing the same problem with declining reading numbers as Waterstones. A study by the University of Florida in August found that the number of Americans reading for pleasure had plunged by 40pc over the past 20 years.

Official accounts show that Waterstones’ sales rose to £565.6m for the 12 months to May 3, compared with £528.4m a year earlier, according to documents published on Companies House this week. It made pre-tax profits of £40m for the year.

Barnes & Noble opened 67 new stores while Waterstone is adding around 10 new shops a year, even though expansion is harder given it is so well-established.

Waterstones recently said it had been boosted by growing demand for “romantasy” novels – known colloquially as fairy porn.

These fantastical tales of heroines being swept off their feet by knights and wizards have gained huge numbers of fans among British women.

Sarah J Maas, author of romantasy novel A Court of Thorns and Roses, has sold more than 75 million copies of her books globally. Publisher Bloomsbury said demand for Maas’s books helped it to the highest first-half sales and earnings in its history last year.

Elliott is understood to be planning to remain as the biggest shareholder in the combined bookselling business for some time following the market debut, which may give new investors more confidence in its future.

One banking source suggested now was as good a time as any for Elliott to kick off the process of listing Waterstones on the stock market and realising some return on its investment.

“Everything is a bit s–t,” they said. “But that’s not going to change anytime soon and there have been so few returns back on private equity that if they can, they probably should.”

For Daunt, his focus continues to be on the day-to-day. Over the past week, he has been travelling down the west coast of the US to visit Barnes & Noble shops. Despite falling reader numbers across both the US and UK, Daunt says stores are thriving.

“Bookselling is presently vibrant,” he says.

Soon he will find out if investors agree.”

“The Book Began to Take on a Life of Its Own”

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There is an article, written by Bridget Collins, on the Writer’s Digest website dated 20 August 2024 with a title very similar too the above. It caught my attention because I have written one novel where I experienced the same feeling that the book was writing itself. That novel is Seeking Father Khaliq, which is the best novel I’ve written. I wanted to find out what Ms Collins experience was.

Bridget Collins is the international bestselling author of The Binding and The Betrayals. She is also the author of seven acclaimed books for young adults and has had two plays produced, one at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bridget trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after reading English at King’s College, Cambridge. She lives in Kent, U.K

Bridget Collins

Ms Collins says, “I’ve been fascinated by the concept of silence for a long time, especially the way that it can be both a blessed escape from noise and a prison—I wanted to write a story that evoked that ambivalence and explored what it would mean to be able to control not only what you hear but what everyone else hears. The book is about silence as a luxury, as a magic spell, and as a weapon, but most of all it’s about power and seduction, and about how we become complicit in huge and terrible things—and about how we can try to put that right.

“I can’t remember exactly when I had the idea, but it would have been some time in 2019. Then I actually started writing in January 2020—so it took a long time to get from first draft to publication. And it went through three major redrafts, and changed an enormous amount—everything, from the central relationship to the narrative voice and the structure, changed! The only thing that stayed the same was the ending. It was probably the most difficult book I’ve written to date, with characters coming and going and taking an enormous struggle to pin down. But as I wrote and rewrote, the book began to take on a life of its own, and there was something quite magical about that.

“One of the most interesting and rewarding features of writing the book was working with an authenticity reader from the d/Deaf community. She was absolutely brilliant, and although I’d tried to do as much research as possible in advance of her input, it was really special to have the benefit of her experience and expertise. She had some fascinating insights into the characters and historical background of the book, and also made me think a lot about what I was saying in the context of d/Deaf culture and the current political conversations around that. Not to mention the obligatory moment of any editing process where someone points out something that should have been obvious and you cringe inside…!

“I think because this book was such a hard slog and I had to start from nothing over and over again, there weren’t many surprises—what seemed to happen was a very slow process of revelation and refinement. The book told me, over the course of those drafts, what it wanted to be; but it was like chipping away at a block of stone, watching it take shape inch by inch. That said, the biggest (and in some ways most exciting) change was the female narrator, who only began to speak for herself in the second draft, and then became more and more important.

“I would love it to transport my readers to a vivid, immersive world where they can watch a compelling story unfold—and if it stays with them after they come back to real life, that would be lovely too.”

I can confirm that there is something magical when the book begins to take control in your mind. I didn’t have Bridget’s experience with The Silence Factory of having major rewrites, because I had an idea of the two major characters, the setting and the issue between them. The book wanted the additional characters, and settings and plot. I had to do a lot of research to produce a credible story, but that was part if the fun.

Differences: Author Voice vs. Character Voice vs. Tone

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There is an article, about just this subject, on the Writers & Artists website by Claire ADMIN (sic) It is dated 4 December 2024, and, as it is well written, I’m presenting it.

Unfortunately, it isn’t clear who Claire ADMIN is. A search on the website reveals four authors named Claire, and the link to ‘Claire ADMIN’ doesn’t work.

“Writing terms can be difficult and confusing. We break down the difference between author voice, character voice and tone.

Voice is the author’s personal style. It’s all about how you – the author – describe things; your choice of words, punctuation styles, whether you use short sharp sentences, long running sentences, or a mixture of both.

Voice isn’t something that can be taught, but it is something that can be developed. An author’s voice is instinctual and unique, just like a finger print, however it can take years for an author to develop their own clear voice.

So what makes a strong author voice? If you hide the cover of a book, read the opening page, and know who the author is then they’ve done a great job of creating a strong voice. Here are a few examples from some of my favourite authors and how I recognise their writing.   

  • Kiran Millwood Hargrave has a distinct poetic, melodic prose.
  • Katherine Rundell writes playfully and has some of the most visual metaphors out there. I bet good money that I could pick a Katherine Rundell metaphor out of a line-up!
  • Sally Rooney writes clean, simple language. Snappy sentences and short, sharp scenes of action are then followed by lengthier moments of character interiority

Think about the authors whose books you will automatically pre-order. What keeps pulling you to them? What is it about their writing that stands out? 

Character voice

Yet, an author’s voice isn’t to be confused with character voice. This is all about how your characters come across on the page and how they express themselves, both externally and internally. Character voice can be dictated by many things including their backstory, background, quirks and foibles, motivations and inspirations, personality traits, which can include strengths and flaws, as well as their dialect and word choice. 

A character’s voice will end with that book (unless it is a series) whereas the author’s voice will usually remain consistent throughout all of their books. Each character in your book should have a distinct voice and this is all to do with creating a band of characters who have different interests, quirks, strengths and weaknesses etc. 

The strength of a character’s voice is intertwined with the strength of the initial character creation. Think about some of your most memorable characters in fiction and make a note of what it is about them that stands out. 

For example, Violet Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events is always rational and brave, even in dire circumstances. When she ties her hair with a ribbon, she is able to access her technical, logical mind and come up with an invention that will save her and her siblings from harm.

Tone

Tone is a writer’s attitude toward the subject and the mood implied by an author’s word choice. Tone can change throughout a story, based on the different situations, conflicts or settings that are introduced. A clear tone can help readers to understand the emotion of a particular scene or part in a story. There are many different types of tone, from happy to sad, sarcastic to serious, creepy to light-hearted, curious to conflicted etc. Sometimes, If you don’t convey the right tone for the right situation, readers will feel confused and unsure as to how they are meant to be feeling towards specific characters or moments in your plot. 

Finding your author voice, character voice and the right tone are important to get right because without them, your story might lack depth and your readers could struggle to fully connect with your story.

Review: Dealing with Feeling

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When I saw the announcement for this newly published book, I recalled how my mother had taught me to deal with my feelings: “banish them, unless they’re good.” You won’t be surprised that I’ve spent many years dealing (often ineffectively) with negative feelings, and on reading the book I found that many others have had the same experience.

The book was written by Marc Brackett, who is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center of Yale University. He is the author of the bestselling book Permission to Feel (translated into 27 languages) and which has transformed how individuals, schools and organisations approach emotional intelligence. He has headlined at more than 700 conferences, and advises Fortune 500 companies on integrating emotional intelligence into workplace culture.

Marc Brackett

Marc begins the book with a story about a short-tempered encounter that he had with his mother-in-law after a stressful day. His point is that even he is learning.

He then describes the seven reasons we can’t deal with our feelings:

  1. We don’t value our emotions
  2. We don’t recognise that dealing with feelings is a useful skill
  3. Nobody taught us at home
  4. Nobody taught us at school either
  5. We love the quick fix
  6. We rather treat ailments than prevent them
  7. There is no institutional support for regulation (of our emotions)

He then introduces the concept of regulation of emotions, which is a series of steps we can take to get control of our emotions. Co-regulation is the steps we can take to influence the emotions of others. There are detailed examples of how these concepts work in practice.

He says that it is important to correctly label the emotions we are feeling; this introduces clarity to the process. Next, he introduces four strategies for emotional regulation: quieting the mind and body; thinking critically about what is or has happened; gaining emotional strength through relationships with others; and keeping ourselves healthy. There are further chapters on how children learn emotional regulation and becoming the best version of yourself. The book also includes a practical guide to building emotional regulation skills.

For all the numbered reasons mentioned above, mastering emotional regulation is not am easy subject to teach. One can come across as a superficial expert or a ‘wannabe’ expert. But Mr Brackett’s use of personal examples from his learning experience, his sympathy for people who get it wrong, and his use of familiar language, give the reader confidence in him as a teacher. He also connects emotional regulation to such familiar topics as mindfulness, empathy, yoga, cultivating friends, and personal health care in order to make ER seem less esoteric and more ordinary. His tone and his language are inclusive and friendly. This book will be a valuable guide and handbook for many of us.

Could AI Write a War and Peace?

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In last Saturday’s Telegraph there was an article by Tom McArdle with the title “Waterstones chief: AI could produce the next War and Peace”.

James Daunt, CEO, Waterstones and Barnes & Nobel

THE chief exec­ut­ive of Water­stones has said he is open to the com­pany selling books cre­ated by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, as long as they are clearly labelled.

James Daunt said it would be “up to the reader” whether to pur­chase them if they end up on his stores’ book­shelves.

There are major con­cerns from authors about the impact AI-gen­er­ated con­tent will have on the book industry, after a recent study found most writers feared their jobs were at risk from the tech­no­logy.

But Mr Daunt, who has been the CEO of Water­stones since 2011, told BBC’s Big Boss pod­cast that AI could pro­duce “the next War and Peace”.

“There’s a huge pro­lif­er­a­tion of AI-gen­er­ated con­tent and most of it is not books that we should be selling,” he said. “Hope­fully, pub­lish­ers avoid it; we as book­sellers would cer­tainly, nat­ur­ally and instinct­ively, dis­dain it.”

A Uni­versity of Cam­bridge study last month found wide­spread con­cerns from nov­el­ists about their jobs being replaced by the tech­no­logy and fears that work writ­ten by humans could become “an expens­ive lux­ury”.

In response, Mr Daunt said: “At the more lit­er­ary end I don’t see that being the case. There is a clear iden­ti­fic­a­tion of read­ers with authors, and book­sellers play an import­ant role in join­ing authors and read­ers.

“That does require a real per­son.

“As a book­seller, we sell what pub­lish­ers pub­lish, but I can say that, instinct­ively, that is something we would recoil [from]. It’s really import­ant that authors earn a liv­ing.”

Asked whether the high-street book­shop would sell AI books, he said: “We would never inten­tion­ally sell an AI-gen­er­ated book that was dis­guising itself as being other than that.”

When pressed on whether he would con­sider it if they were clearly labelled, he respon­ded: “Yeah, if it was clear what it was, then I think it’s up to the reader.

“Do I think that our book­sellers are likely to put those kinds of books front and centre? I would be sur­prised.”

He warned that given the exor­bit­ant sums of money being spent by tech com­pan­ies on AI, it was hard to know its lim­its.

“Who’s to know,” he said. “They are spend­ing tril­lions and tril­lions on AI and maybe it’s going to pro­duce the next War and Peace. If people want to read that book – AI-gen­er­ated or not – we will be selling it. As long as it doesn’t pre­tend to be something that it isn’t.”

Dan Brown’s Latest

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Back is September, I reported on an interview with Dan Brown about his new novel, The Secret of Secrets, reported by Hillel Italie of the Associated Press.

For those of who are fans of Brown, I have to confess that Brown went to the same high school I did: Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, although Brown was class of ’82 and I was ’56.

Dan Brown

The reason I mention this is that Brown is interviewed by Matt Miller, in the Fall 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin, the alumni magazine. Matt W. Miller is an award-winning poet, essayist and educator. He taught English and coached football at the Academy for 18 years and is currently an associate lecturer in creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

MM: The last installment of your Robert Langdon series came out eight years ago. What does it feel like to return to that character?

It’s like I never left. He and I share a lot of the same passions: history, art, codes, treasure hunts. I live vicariously through him. I sit alone in the dark with a computer, and he runs around the world. It’s a lot of fun.

MM: The book explores the noetic sciences, a multidisciplinary field that studies subjective experience and consciousness using scientific methods. What drew you to that subject?

I wrote a book called The Lost Symbol about 12 years ago in which there was a character, Katherine Solomon, and she was a noetic scientist. As I was writing that character and learning a little bit about noetics, I thought, oh my god, human consciousness is a book in itself. I thought it would be the book I wrote after The Lost Symbol, but it was too hard. I didn’t know enough about consciousness. I never imagined it would take eight years, but it’s an ethereal topic. I always felt like I was trying to get my arms around smoke, just trying to figure out how to write this.

MM: It’s a deeply researched book. Was there some “aha!” point when you knew this subject had to be the subject?

I read about an experiment in precognition where different parts of the brain light up when you see different kinds of images. In the study, the brain was lighting up before an image was seen. So, what does that mean? Perhaps the brain is creating what image to see. Or there was precognitive knowledge of what was about to be seen. Or perhaps time flows in two directions. Any of those answers, and you’re like, what? None of that makes sense. This experiment made me really think that, from a personal level, I had to understand consciousness. And as a writer, I had to figure out how to share it in a fun package.

MM: How do you balance getting all that researched information about politics, history, science, physics and metaphysics into the novel while also moving forward narrative action and character development?

You make sure that the data dump that you are performing is directly relevant to whatever character you’re writing about. Langdon could be walking down the street and think, oh, Petřín Tower, and I give a two-minute dissertation on Petřín Tower, which feels like an aside, and that’s boring. The information has to be part of solving a puzzle. It must be linear to the plot, not ancillary. And don’t fall in love with your research. If it doesn’t serve the plot, it goes.

MM: That’s the toughest thing for writers, knowing what to cut.

The delete key has to be your best friend. Any artist or musician understands the importance of blank space or silence. The rests and silences give the melody to that place. It’s the same way in writing. You need to let your writing breathe.

MM: You thank your editor Jason Kaufman in your acknowledgments. Does an editor, like a writing teacher, help you see where you need to pull back or where you need more?

That’s exactly what Jason does. He’ll read something and say: “Hey, this is great, but we don’t need four paragraphs about Prague Castle. We need two.” Then he’ll also say: “Oh, you just glossed over this thing. I want to know more about that.” He not only shares my taste, he has perspective, which is what you lose as a writer. It’s nice to have somebody come in and read it as a first-time reader, which is really the only way to know how it’s reading at all.

MM: The Secret of Secrets is set in Prague. What drew you to that city?

Setting is critical. Location is a character. Prague has a personality, as does Paris, as does the Arctic Circle. Wherever you’re setting a book, it needs to be integral to the plot. When I decided to write about consciousness, I knew it had to be Prague. Prague has been the mystical center of Europe since the 1500s, when Emperor Rudolf recruited mystics to come to Prague to talk to the Great Beyond. As far as character goes, Prague is perfect for a Langdon book. There are passageways and a door with seven locks and crypts and cathedrals and all sorts of secrets.

MM: As Langdon learns more about the nature of nonlocalized consciousness, I kept thinking about artificial intelligence. If AI could develop consciousness, where would that consciousness come from? Is it created? Is it tapped into?

Can we create artificial consciousness? When you have enough synapses, does it just happen? It seems unlikely that it just happens. And this whole new model of the brain as a receiver of consciousness changes everything because if we’re trying to build an AI to receive consciousness, it’s a much easier proposition. It’s not like you have to build something that can create all the hopes and dreams and creativity and memories and all that. You just have to receive it. I actually think that this model of consciousness is pretty exciting and makes the quest for artificial consciousness more attainable, as well as consciousness after bodily death.

MM: Not to give too much away, but there’s a fascinating section in the novel about halos and how they are rendered in art. Langdon saw the beams of light as emanating out of halos. But then he realizes he may have misread the images, that the beams are radiating back into the halos, and that is consciousness coming in.

Right. And if you read Scripture, really any religion, one receives the word of God. You don’t conjure God; God flows in. And we kind of miss that. That could be consciousness flowing in because it is not housed within the brain, as materialists presume, but outside the brain.

MM: You have a golem character. In the Jewish tradition, the Golem is a created being, an artificial intelligence with consciousness.

Yes, one of the reasons I chose the Golem is that it’s this inanimate object that can be infused with consciousness just by writing a magic symbol, or a code, on its forehead.

MM: Do you think that this novel and its topic of a nonlocalized consciousness may have a particular prescience in these times?

I hope so. There’s no bigger topic than human consciousness. It’s the lens through which we experience reality, experience ourselves and other people. The fear of death is the universal fear. Religious or atheist, we all are curious and unsettled by the fact that our lives are finite. This notion of what happens when we die is the big question. If we can adopt a mindset where we realize that human consciousness survives death, maybe some of that fear starts to dissolve. And the thing about the fear is that it’s really the catalyst for a lot of bad behavior.

MM: Do you believe in this idea you bring up in the novel that if consciousness transcends our physical self, then we can move beyond the borders of mortality and by doing so move beyond the borders between each other?

Yes, I do. If we can start to understand that this life is just one stop on a much bigger journey, bigger than things like nationalism, country, race and all those things that separate us, then it’s quite possible that humanity could move forward in a benevolent fashion.

Non-AI Novels Will Be a ‘Luxury’

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There is an article in today’s Telegraph written by Tom Mc Ardle which reports on a study done by Dr Clementine Collett at Cambridge University on AI’s effects on literary trends.

Dr Clementine Collett is a DPhil student on the ‘Information, Communication and the Social Sciences’ course at the Oxford Internet Institute. Clementine’s doctoral research explores gender bias in artificial intelligence (AI) recruitment technology.

Clementine has worked as lead author on reports such as IA and Gender: Four Proposals for Future Research (2019) with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and The Effects of AI on the Working Lives 0f Women (2022) with the IDB, OECD and UNESCO.

Dr Clementine Collett

Novels written without artificial intelligence will become an “expensive luxury”, according the report.

Dr Clementine Collett has claimed that the creative market could become “tiered”, with only those who could afford human-written work being able to read it.

“[There] is a real concern from literary creatives that we will have a two-tier market, more so than we have already,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Where human-written work will be more expensive – a luxury item.Those who can afford it will read human-written novels and AI generated content will be cheap or free and that will potentially have big societal implications as well.”

Dr Collett, who conducted the study at the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy (MCTD), interviewed to nearly 400 literary creatives across the UK about the threat of generative AI.

“There is widespread concern from novelists that generative AI trained on vast amounts of fiction will undermine the value of writing and compete with human novelists,” she said.

Dr Collett called on the Government to weigh up the economic growth it has so far prioritised by developing AI, against the potential impact on the creative industries, including readers and the novel itself.

The study found that almost two thirds (59 per cent) of novelists reported that their work had already been used to train large language models, which power AI tools, without permission or payment.

Such practices have already impacted the livelihoods of those surveyed, with more than a third (39 per cent) reporting their income being negatively affected by AI.

The report found genre fiction, especially romance, thrillers and crime, is more at risk from displacement than more highbrow literary fiction. Dr Collett said this was because of their more “formulaic” make up.

“We don’t know what generative AI is going to be able to do in the future in terms of producing more original content,” she added.

“It’s really important because novels are such a bedrock of our thriving British creative industry and they’re the core part of our humanity.” She called on Government intervention to help protect the industry.

Prof Gina Neff, executive director of the MCTD, said: “Our creative industries are not expendable collateral damage in the race to develop AI. They are national treasures worth defending.”

A spokesman for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “We’ve always been clear on the need to work with both the creative industries and the AI sector to drive AI innovation and ensure robust protections for creators.”