BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE DECEMBER 2016 - WEST YORKSHIRE WRITERS

THE PENNINES TO THE DALES
FROM BIG CITIES WITH HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS
FROM THE MILLS AND INDUSTRIAL HEARTLANDS TO THE UNSPOILT BEAUTY OF NATURE
THE LAND OF TETLEY BEER, THE NATIONAL COAL-MINING MUSEUM
THE LAND OF ARTS (HEPWORTH, DELIUS, O'TOOLE,
THE LAND OF STATESMEN (ASQUITH, WILSON, CASTLE, HEALEY)
THE LAND OF SPORTS (GEOFFREY BOYCOTT, LEEDS UNITED)
THE LAND OF MY BIRTH
THIS IS WEST YORKSHIRE

WEST YORKSHIRE HAS FIVE MAIN AREAS CENTRED AROUND THE FOLLOWING CITIES AND TOWNS



BRADFORD

CALDERDALE (HALIFAX)

KIRKLESS (HUDDERSFIELD)

LEEDS

WAKEFIELD

Some Authors/Writers of Bradford

Ross Raisin - God's Own Country
Alistair Campbell - Political spin doctor of New Labour and famous diarist
Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Asa Briggs - brilliant social historian
Braine, John - Room at the Top
Adrian Edmonson - comedian and writer
JB Priestley - Good Companions and many more
Alan Titchmarsh - gardener and novelist
Patricia Hall

Some Authors/Writers of Halifax / Calderdale

Phyllis Bentley -
Ted Hughes - The Hawk in the Rain
Lindsay Clarke - The Chymical Wedding

Huddersfield

Simon Armitage - Walking Home
David Peace - GB 84

Wakefield

Stan Barstow - A Kind of Loving
George Gissing - New Grub Street
Peter Robinson - Gallows View
David Storey - Savile
John Godber

Some Writers from Leeds

Alfred Austin - Poet Laureate after Tennyson
Alan Bennett - The Uncommon Reader
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones' Diary
Reg Gadney
Tony Harrison
Jeremy Paxman
Caryl Phillips - Cambridge
Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons
John Connor
Nicola Griffith - Hild
Charles Stross
Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar
Jack Sheffield

WHAT I WILL READ:

Spoilt a little for choice but I am lining up:

Angel Pavement by Priestley



Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte


Walking Away by Simon Armitage


The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes


Foreigners by Caryl Phillips

>1 PaulCranswick: Looks cheerful.

I'll be reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Swallows and Amazons this month.

I also hope to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in December.

>7 amanda4242:

Yorkshire Dales


Leeds shopping arcade



River Calder



British Coal Mining Museum



Bronte's house

>9 PaulCranswick: Alright, I'll admit it, it is lovely.

>8 cbl_tn: Carrie 8 books in the first edition of the 1001 Book are written by West Yorkshire born writers
15 books in the Guardian books are written by West Yorkshire writers

>10 amanda4242: :D

The library has been glacially slow in sending the books I requested for this month's challenge so I've been filling my time with a "wildcard" selection, Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. A reread for me, I'm finding it much easier to keep track of all the different factions and shifting alliances this time around--although it's still quite an effort to keep it all straight!

This is a whole cast of authors I am unfamiliar with (other than the Brontes and Priestley). I have my eye on Caryl Phillips to start with, as my library seems to have some choice of his works.

I've finished my BAC 2016 with Gallows View by Peter Robinson which I liked very much. My thoughts can be found here.

I plan to read The Professor by Charlotte Bronte.

>14 laytonwoman3rd: I enjoyed Cambridge by Phillips when I read it some years ago. I've meant to read more of his work, but probably won't get to it this month.

>15 Ameise1: Pleased that you liked Peter Robinson - he would also fit the Canadian Author Challenge!

I hope/plan to join in this month. My wife has enjoyed Peter Robinson's novels and we have at least one on hand around here. I've yet to read a Charles Stross novel and my library has a large selection of his works, so it will probably be one of those rather than a Bronte as I first supposed. We shall see.

Nice to see you Ron.

I am being ambitious this month

Simon Armitage
Anne Bronte
Ted Hughes
JB Priestley
Reg Gadney

and

Caryl Phillips

are all lined up.

I picked up a copy of Dancing in the Dark at the library this afternoon. I won't get to begin it for a bit, as I'm reading Don DeLillo for the AAC just now.

*Finally* got this month's books from the library. I also picked up--and devoured--Hughes' The Iron Giant, which is a lovely little modern fairy tale.

>18 RBeffa: The Charles Stross novel I tried wasn't working for me so I bailed. I'll try his short story collection if I can find where I buried it, or else a Peter Robinson or one of the Bronte sisters.

I read Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding, from Leeds. Not blown away.

I ended up reading Peter Robinson's Not Safe After Dark, a collection of his early short stories through 1998. I have a couple more to read. They are easy to fit in as short reading bits before bed or over a cup of coffee or whatever. As a rule I don't read mystery short stories so I can't really comment on how they compare to the usual fare in Ellery Queen's magazine or other sources, although i do usually read a few mystery novels each year. Robinson seems a decent writer but for the most part these crime centered tales didn't catch my interest. They are all OK in one way or another, just not my cuppa.

eta: I read a library book published in 1998 that contains 13 stories. There apparently is an expanded later published edition that includes additional stories including a novella.

Currently reading:



and loving it!

Peter Robinson may be a Yorkshire writer (although he could also be classified as Canadian IMO), but No Cure for Love was set, for the most part, in Hollywood. There was a Yorkshire connection. Sarah Broughton, the TV actress who was being stalked, was originally from Yorkshire.

Unlike his series featuring DI Banks, this was a stand alone book. It was perfect for finding out whether to invest time in reading his series. I became interested in his writing after seeing him talk about crime writing at the Vancouver Writers Festival In October. And, yes, I will go on to read his series.

I finished The Professor by Charlotte Bronte. This was her first complete novel, but it was not published until after her death. Many of the ideas (an English professor teaching in a girl's school in Belgium) were developed more fully in Villette. This was quite well done and very realistic, told from the first person perspective of a young male English professor. Bronte's great disdain for Belgians and Catholics is quite open here, even more so than in Villette. But there is a quiet feminism in the heroine Mlle. Henri, as she continues to pursue her career of teaching even while married. My only quibble was with my older Oxford edition, which did not provide translations of all the French.

Finished Swallows and Amazons today. I enjoyed the second half, but I fear I'm too old--and to American--for this one to win my heart.

I gave up on Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips. I found myself reading and re-reading and not absorbing the sense. After struggling with that for about 2/3 of the book, and feeling it was not rewarding me in any way, I moved on. The subject matter should have been much more engaging, I think. It's based on real people and some pretty amazing history, but it just didn't work for me.