The Guardian's Blog, page 237

Daniel Tammet: What I'm thinking about ... Tolstoy and maths

'Mathematics, Tolstoy understood, is like literature: a way in which the world expresses itself'

In 1869, Russia's most famous writer published his most famous work. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy's magnum opus, is a perennial favourite for the title of "world's greatest novel". It is a reputation to daunt even the hardiest of readers; a tome so heavy as to make a librarian's knees sag. And yet, its size is inclusive: roomy enough for all manner of odd thoughts and fascinating digressions. Where else could you find a book fuelled equally by metaphors and maths?

I came rather late to the great Russian author (in my 30s – I could barely stand reading the usual fat novels at school). It is a long story, too long for here, involving high-functioning autism (which I've got) and fiction (which, for ages, I could not). Tolstoy's masterpiece, I finally discovered, had space even for the divagations of my mind. His curious mathematical asides left me hooked.

These are the controversial, or "boring" bits, resembling the tight and intense arguments of a pamphleteer: the pages that many readers tend to skip, and some editors to cut. They are wrong to do so.

"The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous," he writes. "To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history … only by taking infinitesimal units for observation … and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history."

Calculus – which Tolstoy defined as "a modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely small" – lent the novelist a vocabulary in which to re-imagine the world. Even the biggest battles, the loudest leaders, the strangest stories, to believe him, arose from incremental change brought about by a multitude's infinitely small actions. If Napoleon fumbled while Moscow burned, it was not for any of the carefully thought-out reasons dreamed up by the historians. On the contrary, a commander's orders could only ever have effect if they coincided with the momentary, multitudinous conditions on the ground.

Mathematics, Tolstoy understood, is like literature: a way in which the world expresses itself. Words and numbers: both allow us to entertain pure possibilities, immune from prior experience or expectation. Perhaps that is why some of Count Leo's closest friends were mathematicians.

The novel's first publication in 1869 prompted much controversy. Historians howled at Tolstoy's "falsification" of their field. His fellow novelist, Turgenev, denounced the calculus-inspired speculations as "charlatanism" and "puppet comedy". But mathematicians, now as then, proved far more receptive. Stephen T Ahearn, writing in 2005 for the Mathematical Association of America, praised Tolstoy's ideas as being at once "rich" and "deep" and encouraged teachers to use them in their classrooms.

Why not? After all, calculus helped me to cherish the work of Tolstoy. A few pages of Tolstoy might well help learners fall in love with calculus.

Daniel Tammet was at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to discuss his book Thinking in Numbers

Edinburgh International Book FestivalMathematicsFiction
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Rebus revisited – Ian Rankin picks his favourite moments

Ian Rankin looks back over his Inspector Rebus novels and chooses some of his favourite moments

Edinburgh's master of tartan noir, Ian Rankin, revealed his favourite Rebus moments to an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Here are a few of his choices.

Favourite pub scene: Set In Darkness

Rankin's favourite Rebus pub scene takes place not in his usual haunt, the Oxford Bar, but in the Royal Oak. Rebus decides to nip down to the bathroom, which can be reached without entering the pub. A window looks into the bar and as Rebus glances in, he doubles back. There in the bar, singing a Burns song is his nemesis Cafferty, who Rebus believes is safely locked up in jail.

"Rebus' world is off kilter completely," says Rankin. "I don't always manage to surprise Rebus, but I like the fact that I did this time."

Favourite scene between Rebus and Siobhan: Set In Darkness

Sitting together in the car, Rebus reaches across Siobhan's legs to retrieve something from the glove compartment. She flinches, thinking he is making a pass at her, but neither of them wants a romantic relationship.

"Just that tiny little reaction of her flinching gives a richness to their relationship that a thousand words of trying to spell it out wouldn't do," says Rankin. "A relationship would completely destroy the working dynamic between them."

Favourite description of Scotland: Strip Jack

Rebus reminisces about his childhood as he pulls off the motorway at Kinross. He remembers the family picnics at Loch Leven, the community he grew up in and holidays in St Andrews. "Those are basically my memories," explains Rankin.

Favourite one liner: Mortal Causes

Rebus is asked if he has any enemies and replies: "I can think of half a dozen who would throw confetti at my funeral."

Favourite guest character: A Question of Blood

At a London charity auction, the winner of the chance to appear in a Rebus novel told Rankin "I don't mind what kind of character I am as long as my mate Wee Evil Bob can be mentioned as well". Rankin had such fun writing the character Peacock Johnson and his sidekick Wee Evil Bob into A Question of Blood that he tried to contact Johnson to ask if he could include them in other novels. The website and the email address he had been given didn't exist, and after doing some sleuthing of his own, Rankin discovered he was the target of a practical joke by Stuart David, the former bass player for the band Belle and Sebastian.

"I thought I'd taken a real man and made him fiction," says Rankin, "but I'd actually taken a fictional man and made him fictional."

Favourite book: Black and Blue

Rankin's breakthrough novel sold four times as many copies as his previous books and won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger award. Rankin says that until that point, he had worried that he would never make it as a writer. "Suddenly I thought, I know what I'm doing. I'd written a book that was better and more complex than my previous work."

Favourite musical quotation: Let It Bleed

"After a drink he likes to listen to the Stones. Women, relationships and colleagues had come and gone but the Stones had always been there. He put the album on and poured himself a final drink. The guitar riff, one of easily half a dozen in Keith's tireless repertoire kicked the album off. 'I don't have much,' Rebus thought, 'but I have this'."

Rankin uses song lyrics for his titles: Let It Bleed is an album by the Rolling Stones. "I would rather be a rock star than a writer," he says.

Favourite description of Siobhan: Resurrection Men

Cafferty tells her: "You've got more balls than Tynecastle."

"She wouldn't be flattered by that remark," says Rankin, "because it implies she's put her womanness aside to become one of the boys. But it says a lot about her because she's a ballsy character."

Least favourite book: Knots and Crosses

Rankin says he wrote it as a postgraduate literature student, "and it reads like it was written when I was a postgraduate literature student. I wasn't inside Rebus' head; he was just a cipher to get me through the story."

Favourite opening: Let It Bleed

Rebus is pursuing some kids in a car chase through Edinburgh that ends with a crash, the car hanging precariously off the Forth Road Bridge. Rankin calls this his "Hollywood moment".

Favourite Edinburgh location: Oxford Bar

"It's more than just a pub, it represents something to Rebus, something unchanging in a changing world," says Rankin. "As Martin Amis said, 'without women, life is a pub'. There are very few consistent women in Rebus' life so he spends a lot of time in the pub, which is why he could never properly retire because he'd be dead within a year."

Favourite location in Scotland: The Black Isle

Rankin described his latest Rebus book as "a road movie set up and down the A9, Stirling to Perth, up to and past Inverness to the Black Isle".

"I love the Black Isle," he says, "a couple of good boozers, good restaurants, dolphin watching, you name it."

The perfect location for a cantankerous sleuth with a taste for alcohol, it seems.

� Ian Rankin's new Rebus novel, Standing in Another Man's Grave, is published in November.

Edinburgh International Book FestivalIan RankinCrime fiction
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Watch out - Mosby's carrying a blade

One Leeds writer, Mick McCann, praises another, Steve Mosby, who's very big overseas but still waiting for a breakthrough here - though the Guardian has given his work approving reviews

My work brings me up against all kinds of low life Leeds writers; they gaggle together around book launches, literary events and 'talks'. We newer ones are a fairly close-knit community and easy to track down, except for one. Steve Mosby keeps his distance. Maybe he's shy and hasn't searched us out; perhaps his genre and bigger (than most) publishing deal means he doesn't need the support and camaraderie of the Leeds lot.

Intrigued, I've been gently stalking Steve for a year, ever since I'd finished his stunning sixth novel Black Flowers on holiday. When my main criticism of a book is 'there isn't enough swearing', you know it's good. I was so struck with it that I badgered Mrs Mick to put down her 800+ page biography of Che Guevara to howls of 'But I don't like crime fiction. I don't do thrillers.' A couple of days later she was a convert, thought the swearing was perfectly adequate, and on returning to work spread the word. Within weeks there were groups of people buying and passing around his books.

What is it about then that sucked these disparate people in? Obviously they are thrillers with multi-layered and compelling plots but, although ingenious and original, these are simply the foundations of his books. From them, he builds atmospheres and places that you inhabit. There's characterisation, brilliantly handled, that seeps through the stories until you are living the lives of fully-rounded people. Possibly most startling is his ability to immerse you in the worlds and emotions of new characters in a couple of pages.

I'm struggling to decide what I like most about the books. They're scattered with little gems of insight into the human condition and reflections on the nature of life but, for me, it's between the simple mastery of the writing craft and the humanity. From any angle you look he's a fabulous writer and to have the humanity shine through in dark, violent, brooding thrillers is quite an achievement. You empathise; you feel the fear, the sadness and the elation.

None of the Leeds writers (or people) I'd asked had heard of him, hardly surprising as his UK sales are low compared to those overseas. His books have been translated into nine languages and he received a six figure sum for the rights to the German translation of The 50/50 Killer alone. I had to meet him but he's as elusive and secretive as a Water Rail in a reed bed. After 12 months of gently courting him he agreed to a meet up, he had to; he's a writer and I wanted to write about him.

I was careful as I knew he'd be carrying a blade; well, strictly speaking, it's a dagger, a prestigious Crime Writers Association Dagger. Now, I'm sure there'll be a pecking order – Frederick Forsyth won the CWA Diamond Dagger – but Steve had just won the 2012 CWA Dagger in the Library Award, selected and voted for by librarians from across the country. Librarians know books and I was impressed, especially as the award is for a body of work rather than a single title.

So what do you need to know? The young Mosby gorged himself on Stephen King and amongst his current favourite writers are Jack Ketchum, Mo Hayder, Graham Joyce, Michael Marshall Smith and Tim Willocks. He started pestering publishers at the age of 17 and got his first deal nine years later.

I was slightly surprised to hear that he often works in public spaces, tapping away on his laptop in a Leeds city centre pub (such as The Packhorse) or café in total anonymity. I wasn't surprised to hear that he's not interested in the social realism that many of us Leeds writers value so highly but more the internal side of life and crime that inhabit his dark, psychological thrillers.

Although he's from Leeds and that undoubtedly informs his writing, he doesn't define himself as a Leeds writer, his books are not set specifically in Leeds, places tend to be unnamed, but lots of Leeds places get reinvented and included. He creates his own locations but draws on his experience, visualising and twisting the settings to suit his needs, creating landscapes to fit the stories.

Unlike, say, Peter Robinson, one of Leeds' most successful crime writers, Steve doesn't do the safer and commercially astute serial books following the lives of a set cast but creates a unique world in each standalone novel. His newly released and brilliantly paced Dark Room contains all the attributes that I've described above but is also an ingenious study of cause and effect, patterns, statistics, probability chance, fate and randomness.

Skimming through press reviews on Steve's website, you find them sprinkled with predictions of 'this will be the book that breaks him'. I'm not going to go down that line as his career seems to be a slow build. I will, however, point out that his last three novels seem to be attracting industry attention and praise and it's not just his dagger. His 2010 novel, Still Bleeding, was longlisted for Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year whilst Black Flowers (2011) was shortlisted.

Our meeting was the day before the winner, Denise Mina, was announced and I asked what difference being shortlisted (or winning) might make to his UK sales but Steve was too excited about having his name listed with 'bigger names', people he admired, to think about the effect on sales.

I'm giving you some sound advice here: search out some Steve Mosby and take a chance. Then you can say that you were into him before he was 'big'.

Mick McCann's encyclopaedic How Leeds Changed the World leaves very little out.

LeedsCrimeCrime fictionStephen King
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The Bulwer-Lytton award for brilliantly bad starts

Winner of worst fiction prize says she had to reach deep inside herself to find 'the utter dregs within'

I was on holiday last week, so was unable to bring you the news that as well as truckloads of gold medals, August has also seen Team GB bring home the gong for the worst sentence of the year. Hurrah. Hats off to Cathy Bryant, from Manchester, who has just won the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, named in honour of Sir Edward's 1830 novel Paul Clifford and its fabulously contorted opening. The Bad Sex award is funny. The Diagram prize can be extremely amusing. But the most joyfully ridiculous of the literary prizes must, surely, be the Bulwer-Lytton.

Here's Bryant's winner, if you don't believe me:

As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.

Foul yet brilliant. I'm also something of a fan of the best children's literature entry:

He swaggered into the room (in which he was now the 'smartest guy') with a certain Wikipedic insouciance, and without skipping a beat made a beeline towards Dorothy, busting right through her knot of admirers, and she threw her arms around him and gave him a passionate though slightly tickly kiss, moaning softly, 'Oooohh, Scarecrow!'

And I can't help but fall for the fantasy winner:

The brazen walls of the ancient city of Khoresand, situated where the mighty desert of Sind meets the endless Hyrkanean steppe, are guarded by day by the four valiant knights Sir Malin the Mighty, Sir Welkin the Wake, Sir Darien the Doughty, and Sir Yrien the Yare, all clad in armor of beaten gold, and at night the walls are guarded by Sir Arden the Ardent, Sir Fier the Fearless, Sir Cyril the Courageous, and Sir Damien the Dauntless, all clad in armor of burnished argent, but nothing much ever happens.

The awful thing is that I can actually see that appearing in a fantasy novel...

But back to our winner. It was her first time entering the Bulwer-Lytton, Bryant tells me, but – a long-time fan of the contest – she was inspired to do so this year by a trip to the optician. "The eyelash mites came from a terrifying optician who wouldn't stop enthusing about the awful things," she said. "I asked her if I had them and she said no, clearly very disappointed with me. I was clamped into one of those lens-testing machines so I couldn't flee. But now I can't gaze romantically into anyone's eyes without checking them first for inflammation, which tends to spoil the moment (fifty shades of red?) a bit."

As an author, Bryant feels she's probably "better at funny than meaningful". She's "currently working on a spoof diet book – only because I discovered that all the others were actually being taken seriously by people, to my surprise."

I'm looking forward to it. And as for any future Bulwer-Lytton entrants, a little tip from this year's winner. "We're surrounded by bad writing everywhere, so the bar is very, very low – to write for the Bulwer-Lytton one has to reach deep, deep inside oneself and find the utter dregs therein," says Bryant. If anyone's compelled to share their own writerly dregs with us here – the greasiest sebum of your imagination! – then please feel free.

FictionAwards and prizesFantasyAlison Flood
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The death of the novel will presage a rebirth of writing

Anxiety about narrative fiction's survival might be quietened by reflection on how poetry has reinvented itself for changing times

Yesterday, at the Edinburgh International Book festival, China Miéville gave the final World Writers' Conference keynote speech on the future of the novel. The conversation between delegates ebbed and flowed afterwards but one of the most notable remarks came from Jackie Kay, who responded to what she perceived as an atmosphere of gloom about the novel's survival with bemusement. "Why do novelists so fear the death of the novel?" she asked. "Poets don't fear the death of the poem."

There is constant and loud debate about the death of the novel – Will Self was voicing his doubts about it only this week – but far less debate (though not none) about the death of the poem. The true distinction, however, is not between novels and poems, but between poems and storytelling. The novel is a specific but not fixed form of storytelling, in the same way as the romantic lyric, or the sonnet, is a form of poetry. The two deep patterns are story and poem.

There are two essential instincts in engaging with the world through language. The first is the cry of encounter linked to the desire to name; the second is the evaluation of options as a result of the encounter.

The Tyger is a poem by William Blake. Tiger! Tiger! is a story by Rudyard Kipling, introduced by a verse. The first doesn't tell a story but offers us a burning presence in the imagination: the second doesn't dwell on presence except in so far as it is an aspect of consequence. Consequence is vital. To take a very brief passage from Kipling:

Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away Messua's son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked, old money-lender, who had died some years ago. "And I know that this is true," he said, "because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he got in a riot when his account books were burned, and the tiger that I speak of he limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are unequal.

"Because Purun Dass always limped". In stories there is always an implied "and then", and a "because". There is neither a 'then' nor a 'because' in Blake. No one reads a poem like Blake's to find out what happens in the last line. The end is the beginning.

There are various forms of narrative poem. We can deploy the old categories and talk of epic poems, discursive poems, and dramatic poems as well as lyrical poems, but there is something significant in what Edgar Allan Poe argued: that longer poems are essentially linked short poems, a series of flashes.

Coleridge's "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner", is a ballad and therefore a story. But even here, where story would seem to be the point, it is not the story that registers most deeply. It is tableau after tableau, each with its own presence: the encounter with nature and the imagination. The Mariner himself is thin as a character, a semi-transparent vehicle for a series of encounters with the world.

Poetry is where the presence burns more than the narrative drive.

Ideas of character and consequence are at the heart of the novel, and inform the story. EM Forster sighed about having to impose stories on characters but he felt obliged to; nor might Oscar Wilde's Miss Prism have been entirely wrong in suggesting that fiction meant that the good ended happily and the bad unhappily: happiness and worth are issues in novels to an extent they are not in poems, and even the great modernist novels in which voice and character seem almost interchangeable, offer choices and links that prevent the book from breaking up into a series of poems. We seem happy to enough to read passages from Homer, Virgil, Milton, Pope and Wordsworth: it would seem wrong to know the great novels through this or that passage.

There is no sense in arguing for the supremacy of the poem or the story: both are equally important. The poet and the storyteller co-exist in human beings, though not to the same degree in individuals.

The novel being a highly specific, on the whole stable, form of storytelling, assumes a great deal about the reader's relation to the world and language, and it is quite possible that such a relationship will demand – may already be demanding – a different psychological form of storytelling. Just as it might demand of poets a different construction of poem.

The novel may be dying – it does get to feeling a bit tired at times – but the instinct to story does not die, nor does the instinct to poem.

Edinburgh International Book FestivalEdinburgh festivalPoetryFictionLiterary criticismGeorge Szirtes
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Liverpool protest over Pussy Riot

News from Nowhere bookshop hosts readings by staff before customers join in reciting the band's Moscow cathedral prayer

The sentencing in Moscow of three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot - Maria Alyokhina, 24, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22 – to two years in a penal colony  after being found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" provoked protests around the world, and Liverpool has been no exception.

The sentencing followed an incident in which the band performed a protest prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the Russian capital, calling on the Virgin Mary to 'chase Putin out'. Russian President Vladimir Putin has come under widespread criticism over the sentencing. 

In Liverpool, News From Nowhere, the radical, feminist and community bookshop on Bold Street, was the venue for a reading of defence statements by the trio, in which they denied being motivated by hostility to religion, but said they wished to highlight links between the Russian Orthodox Church's leadership and the Putin regime.

The readings were performed by two members of the staff and a friend, who wore the band's trademark balaclavas. Staff and customers joined in reciting a translation of the prayer which Pussy Riot had performed in the cathedral.

Sal, one of the staff of the bookshop, which is both a women's collective and a workers' co-op, said:

It was great to be part of a world-wide day of protest, action and solidarity with the three members of Pussy Riot who were being sentenced in court at the same time as we read out their testimonies at the bookshop.

The fact that the three women have been sentenced to two years in prison for singing a song not only highlights the levels of repression and censorship in Russia, it also shows that feminism is still a dirty word and a threat to the patriarchal hegemony.

She added:

Women being silenced by the state is nothing new but the current clampdown on women's rights, gay rights and human rights generally in Russia is seriously worrying. Pussy Riot have helped to shine a spotlight on the current state of Russian society under Putin, but sadly they have had to sacrifice their own freedom in doing so.

News from Nowhere is a doughty survivor of the heyday of 'alternative bookshops' in the early 1970s. You can read a summary of its history here.

LiverpoolPussy RiotRussiaVladimir PutinProtest
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Tips, links and suggestions: What you are reading today?

Your space to talk about the books you are reading, to share interesting links and to tell us the topics and authors you think we should be covering on the books site

Hello there! What with the Olympics, summer holidays and Edinburgh International book festival, it's been a while since I have put up a new blog.

At this very moment, the World Writers' Conference is taking place, discussing everything from novels and their relationship with current affairs to censorship. Today China Mieville is tackling the future of the novel. If you have missed any of the talks and are interesting to know more, we have all the keynote speeches which you can find on our festival book page, here. There are some really interesting twitter conversations going on too which you can find by searching for the hashtag #writersworldconf.

We will be reporting, podcasting, blogging and tweeting from the festival based in Charlotte Gardens in Edinburgh, for another week. You can read all our coverage of the festival on our Edinburgh books page, or follow us on Twitter using the hashtag #Edbookfest. But that's enough about us and what we're doing, here's what you have been reading over the last few weeks:

Redbirdflies:

Just finished Jackie Kay's excellent Red Dust Road and now reading Victor Lavalle's novella Lucretia and the Kroons. Not sure next whether to get on the bike with Suzanne Joinson's A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar or on the boat with Charlotte Rogan's The Lifeboat. A nice problem to have and summer the best time for it.

GetOver99:

I've recently read Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night and was really glad I did. I would almost be as bold to say I enjoyed it more than Gatsby, but this might be because I was looking out over the Med as I read it so got carried away with connection. I saw a similarity in both books, in that they both have an alpha-male who Fitzgerald builds up and then knocks down.

Given that this book is rumoured to be semi-autobiographical I am not sure how I am supposed to feel about Dick. By the end of the book I really did not have much sympathy for him. I know he had been used to some extent, but he made all his own decisions and his paranoia only started once he had been unfaithful.
A great summer read for sure!

vera456:

I've started Skywalker: Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Walker. It's very good. There are some mildly annoying typos, but he's a good narrator and very matter of fact about everything he's encountered on the Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. I'm about halfway through, at the point where things are beginning to turn mean. The congenial parade of people trying to hike the trail has expanded to include some others who need serious psychological help.

Tell us what you are reading in the comment thread below and we'll round up some of your thoughts and comments in next week's blog. Here's a list of some of the books we'll be reviewing and writing about this week, subject to last-minute changes.

Non-Fiction

• Difficult Mothers by Terri Apter
• History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton
• Priestland, Merchant, Soldier, Sage by David Priestland
• I Am The Secret Footballer

Fiction

• The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian
• Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
• The Heart Broke In by James Meek
• The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
• The Adult by Joe Stretch

Hannah Freeman
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Lord of the Rings in the style of: Tolkien mashups

How would it sounds if Hemingway had written The Lord of the Rings? Or PG Wodehouse? Have a look, and submit your versions

One of my favourite things, ever, on this site was the series of brilliantly ridiculous entries to the "Dumbledore's death in the style
of..." competition. Despite valiant attempts by HP Lovecraft and JD Salinger, it was eventually won by Geoffrey Chaucer for the ingenious "The Poppynge of the Clogges".

So I was always going to love alternative versions of The Lord of the Rings, as detailed here.

Thanks go to the New Yorker for pointing me in its direction this morning: I particularly like Ernest Hemingway's version ("Frodo Baggins looked at the ring. The ring was round. It was a good ring") and PG Wodehouse's ("Blast! I say, bother! How can a chap overthrow the Dark Lord? I suppose I will have to delay my campaign.") But it's the middle of August, and we need more, I say, more! Can anyone do me a Geoffrey Willans? A JK Rowling? A Stephen King?

JRR TolkienAlison Flood
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Harry Potter, Orwell or Dickens: which book would you most like to pass on to your children?

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is the book that parents would most like their children to read, according to a poll. What would be your choice?

This is, actually, a nigh-on impossible question to answer, at least for me. The University of Worcester asked 2,000 adults which book they'd most like to pass on to their children, and the top 10 is a strange mix of Tolkien, Austen, Orwell and Dickens. Topped by A Christmas Carol, which was picked by 19% of respondents, the Harry Potter books come in second, with The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice and Alice in Wonderland making up the rest of the top five.

I have no idea how any of these people picked just one book they wanted their children to read (let alone why they went for Harry Potter or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). It's a version of the desert island books question, which I can never answer even when I'm thinking for myself alone, made worse because it's for our children, so of course I want to pick the most perfect, most transporting, book I can possibly think of. And just one! How even to choose between genres; between children's books and poetry, the classics and science fiction, romance and fantasy?

I honestly can't, and I'm tying myself up in knots a little here worrying about what I'd go for. That said, I certainly wouldn't have chosen A Christmas Carol, even as a reader, although not a particularly avid one, of Dickens. If it has to be Mr 200, then David Copperfield or Great Expectations (not placed on the list) would be better bets for me – and they've more pages to boot; if Orwell, then I'd send my children 1984-wards, rather than to Animal Farm (seventh on the list).

It's a bit unfair to criticise their choices, though, without at least coming up with something of my own. So, with great difficulty and many reservations, I'm going to say that if I had to pick one book – just one – that I wanted my child to experience, I'd go for Cry, the Beloved Country. It's the novel which made me realise as a teenager both that there was a world outside my own, and that language could be truly, gloriously beautiful. The problem is, I think I loved it so much because I found and read it on my own, with no parental or curricular urging, so it'd probably only spoil it if I forced it on younger generations.

Anyway, I invite you to join me in my pain, and bearing in mind that – thank goodness – you don't really have to choose just one title, what would you go for, and why? And don't worry, you can always change your mind.

The top 10 books parents want their children to experience, according to the University of Worcester poll

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

The Harry Potter series, JK Rowling

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Harry PotterCharles DickensGeorge OrwellJane AustenJRR TolkienLewis CarrollCS LewisHarper LeeAlison Flood
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Edinburgh International Book festival: day 10 bulletin

From Patrick Ness giving the lecture on the fourth day of the World Writers' Conference to events with Jeanette Winterson and Helen Dunmore, here's what's coming up on the 10th day of the festival

Yesterday at the book festival, there was a heated debate at the writers' conference on national literature, featuring Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. Today's writers' conference event on censorship promises to be just as riveting, with a keynote address from journalist and children's author Patrick Ness, chaired by Chika Unigwe.

Across the rest of the day, US author Joyce Carol Oates will appear and Orange Prize winner Helen Dunmore will talk about her new book The Greatcoat. This afternoon, Jeanette Winterson returns to talk about her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, and Laurent Binet and Maria Duenas will chat to Stewart Kelly about their startling debut novels.

And tonight, lauded SF novelist China Mieville will chat to Patrick Ness in a sold-out event.

And although it's a weekday, the RBS Children's Programme has plenty of highlights for book-lovers of all ages. This evening, it's the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, chaired by Philip Ardagh and featuring Liz Pichon and Rose Impey. Later, Melvin Burgess and Margo Lanagan – two writers who have been equally celebrated and denounced for tackling controversial subjects – appear together too.

As of this morning, tickets are still available for:

14.00: Allan Wilson & Lucy Wood

14.30: Duncan Campbell Smith

15.00: Edinburgh World Writers' Conference: Censorship Today

15.30: Merlin Waterson with Tam Dalyell

15.30: Graham Rawle & Elizabeth Reeder

16.00: John Harrison & Gabrielle Walker

19.00: David Torrance

20.00: Tom Kitchin with Kirsty Wark

In the signing tent today, you'll find:

Today's free events promise much too: the Amnesty International Imprisoned Writers Series discusses Human Rights in the UK, with readings from Will Eaves and Sue Reid Sexton. And at Unbound, there'll be readings from authors featured in the book festival's box set of short stories, Elsewhere, presented by publishing houses Cargo and McSweeney's.

And as we enter the last week of the festival, time's running out if you want to take part in our Edinburgh Book Swap – tweet us with pictures of the books you've swapped and why you think they're worth of sharing.

Edinburgh International Book Festival
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