What I hadn’t factored in was the sheer volume of boxes involved and how the fact that the contents were written on the side wouldn’t necessarily help me to Actually Find Anything.

But as time goes on and homes are found for our possessions, and load after load of cardboard goes to the tip, it’s getting easier to reconnect with the stuff I have been not so much ‘looking for’ as ‘vaguely hoping to come across again at some point’.

Like the box at the bottom of this stack.

On the side I have scrawled,  ’Bah! BBB- keep separate’. (I think I meant ‘keep these books, which I don’t actually own but am holding until the right person in need of a good read claims it for their own, separate from the books we do own’ rather than ‘Isolate this box!’. Although at that point in the packing process, things did get a little hazy.) In there is a trove of wonderful reads donated to the Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza. I’m looking forward to giving them away, very soon. So please, don’t give up on the Bah! BBB – I haven’t.

Current books available for anyone in need of a good read are here. They are fabulous.

But I still can’t wait to get to that box.

Tiger Hills

Their Finest Hour And A Half

A Little, Aloud

It’s just occurred to me that rather than asking you to leave a public comment saying that you’re in need of a good read, you may prefer to email me. Or you may want to let me know of someone else you think could do with a literary lift.

Please, email me with your name or the name of the person who you think would like a good read, the address, and your book choice. I’ll do the rest.

I like the idea of it such a lot that I invited Jen over to tell me more about it.

Me: Hi Jen, and welcome to Bah! to cancer. Could you tell me a little about The Reader Organisation, and what you do?

Jen: The Reader Organisation is a national charity dedicated to bringing about a reading revolution. We are pioneers of reader development and social change, making it possible for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to enjoy and engage with literature on a deep and personal level.

Me: Why is reading so important?

Jen: Reading is important because unlike other art forms, it expresses thoughts and feelings. Plus, we have hundreds of years of literary resource that just cannot be forgotten about. Our ethos is that literature is not an aesthetic experience but practical help for being human, ‘Get Into Reading’ was started to address the waste of this fabulous resource, the thing Doris Lessing, in her 2007 Nobel acceptance speech, called “a treasure-house of literature”.

Me: Is there a difference between reading aloud to others, reading aloud to yourself, and reading silently?

Jen: Yes, reading silently alone expands your mind and is a pleasurable activity in itself; reading aloud to yourself gives the words real life – particularly with poetry, that should always be read aloud; reading aloud in a group enables both the words to come to life and for individuals to express their thoughts and feelings about it: it also helps you to concentrate and to come together and share something valuable and important with others. Reading aloud also means that for people that are illiterate, or struggling to concentrate, or no longer have the ability to read, great literature is still accessible.

Me: Is there a link between mental health and reading?

Jen: The Reader Organisation has firmly established the link between reading aloud together as a practical way to develop good mental health, because it’s a group activity, it brings people together, because it’s reading, because it’s reading aloud, it’s hugely accessible. Get Into Reading group members can choose to read aloud in the group if they want (and many do as confidence grows), or it can be left to a facilitator to do all the reading – the environment is totally relaxed and there are no pressures in any way. Plus there are lots of cups of tea and plenty of biscuits! We work a lot with the NHS and one of our most successful Reader-in-Residence schemes has been with Mersey Care NHS Trust. Dr David Fearnley, Psychiatrist of the Year 2009 and Medical Director at the trust says that “Get Into Reading is one of the most significant developments to have taken place in Mersey Care NHS Trust and mental health practice in the last ten years.” (Read more about our work with health here.)

Me: What about a link between coping with stress and reading?

Jen: Recently I spoke to a man in my reading group in Liverpool (a successful business man who runs a marketing company in the city), who summed this up really well: “Focusing on reading has a lasting benefit that extends beyond the group: at 6.30pm on a Wednesday I can be at screaming pitch with pressure, by 6.45pm totally absorbed in Dante and by 8.30pm fully relaxed and ready to face anything. Through reading I have now found a perfect new dimension to my work/home life balance; an interest that fits easily into my busy schedule. The routine is crucial: when stressed I can always look forward to the next group. I’ve only missed one session all year – work appointments get moved or cancelled but I see the reading group as non-negotiable date in the diary. They’re are a safe-haven. No phone calls. No hassles. No interruptions. I just love it.” Reading is a great relief for stress because it enables you concentrate on things other than what you have been preoccupied by. Reading aloud is even better because unlike reading on your own, which when you’re stressed or depressed can lead your mind to wander from the page, makes you concentrate even more. As a group facilitator, I find myself after a very busy day in the office, that going along to the group is a great leveller, bringing me back down to earth and putting things in a bit of perspective again.

Me: I stopped reading for a while when I was ill, because I didn’t have the concentration span for my ‘usual’ books. Do you have any advice on how to choose books?

Jen: The important thing is not to feel daunted or that “I should be reading this”, so take small steps at first but do also pick great literature: I wholeheartedly believe that our greatest writers enable us to access a language that helps us to identify our thoughts and feelings, whilst also giving us a wider world view. The greatest stories and poems are great because they are about being human. If your concentration span is short, start with short stories (Saki, Chekhov, Tobias Wolff, Katherine Mansfield), or ask someone to read poems aloud to you. Our recently published book, A Little, Aloud, contains reading ‘sessions’ that take no longer than 30 minutes to read – and that’s reading aloud – so that’s a very good place to start too.

Me: If Bah! readers want to find out more about bibliotherapy, where should they go?

Jen: If you’d like to find out more about Get Into Reading, visit our website: www.thereader.org.uk, or for more information about standard Bibliotherapy practice, you can start by looking at this (but bear in mind this is entirely different to what we do).

Thank you, Jen. I think this sounds like a brilliant project. I am thinking about all the time I have spent in hospital waiting rooms and how much better it would be if all of us patients had read aloud to each other rather than flicking through long-dead copies of The Sunday Times Magazine and wondering if we all look as bad as each other.

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I have three copies of ‘A Little, Aloud’ to give away in this week’s Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza. If you’d like one, leave a comment below, telling us which book or books you remember reading aloud or being read aloud to you. You might also enjoy this blog post, which sums up the daily delight of reading to your children at bedtime.

This book was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2009 and looks like the perfect mix of escapism and fun. You can find out more about it here. I’m grateful to the author of ‘The Devil’s Music’, Jane Rusbridge (website here, Twitter here), for donating it.

The Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza is all about getting a good read to people in need of one, so if that’s you, please leave a ‘Pick me!’ comment below. The winner will be drawn at random next Saturday. (You don’t need to be dancing with cancer, by the way, to be in need of a good read.)

To donate a book to the Bah! BBB, please email me.

Sarita has offered to send a signed copy to the winner.

So there are now 2 copies of this fabulous book available for anyone in need of a good read.

You know what to do. Leave a ‘Pick me!’ comment and I’ll draw names at random next week.

‘Tiger Hills’ by Sarita Mandanna is, as the Daily Express put it, “an epic and extraordinary debut from an astonishing new talent” (Caroline Jowett). It’s the story of Devi and her family, a saga set in the late 1800s in India.

If you’re in need of a good read, just leave a ‘Pick Me’ comment and I’ll draw a winner at random next week.

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I know I’m a bit late, but here are the winners of the last two Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanzas……

Gaynor won the signed copy of ‘The Bridesmaid Pact’ by Julia Williams, and the signed copy of ‘Murder in the Green’ by Lesley Cookman goes to Ebren. Just email me your address and I’ll get your books out to you as soon as possible. (Which will be next week, because as you read this I’m working in Sweden.)

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One last Bah! BBB thing. I have a whole stack of lovely, lovely Bah! BBB books to give away. They are carefully marked in a box in a crate in a warehouse in south west London, waiting for our house purchase to complete. So if you are a writer or publisher and would like to donate a copy of a good, uplifting book, this really would be an excellent time to let me know! Please email me if you can help. Thank you.

‘Murder in the Green’ by Lesley Cookman is part of the Libby Sarjeant series of murder mysteries, set in the village of Steeple Martin. It’s a perfect book for a long afternoon on the sofa, or a stint in a waiting room: intriguing, fun and full of Morris Men. What more could you ask for?

You can visit Lesley’s excellent website here, and follow her on Twitter here. If you’re in need of this good read, please leave a ‘Pick me!’ comment below. The winner will be announced next Saturday.

I came to read this because I’d set off on a long journey with only a few pages left to read of the book I had with me. I went into Waterstones in a panic and was overwhelmed by the choice… so I asked Twitter to recommend a fiction paperback and said I’d buy the first one suggested. It was ‘The Bridesmaid Pact’. I bought it. I read it. I really enjoyed it. It’s funny, it deals with some pretty hefty themes, and the characters are all interesting and believable and just a little bit flawed. There’s a review of it here. Julia Williams blogs here and you can follow her on Twitter here.

If you’d like this signed copy, then please leave a ”Pick me!’ comment. (If you can add a funny bridesmaid anecdote, so much the better.)

The winner of the book will be drawn at random next Saturday, when there’ll be another Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza giveaway.

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The Bah! BBB is all about providing a good read when you need one. If you’d like to donate your good, uplifting book,please email me.

(I’m quite liking this ‘book giveaway every weekend’ thing. What do you think?)

You may remember Allison’s previous novel, ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’, the story of a mother trying to do everything, with consequences that made me both laugh my mascara off and cry my mascara off. (If you haven’t read it, you really should. It’s brilliant. You can buy it here.) This time Allison is writing about being a teenage fan of a pop star – in this case, David Cassidy. There’s a review of the book here. You can follow Allison on Twitter here.

If you’d like this copy, please leave a comment below, telling us who your teenage crush was. In the interests of full disclosure: mine was John Taylor from Duran Duran.

Those cheekbones! That hair!

The winner of the book will be drawn at random next Saturday, when there’ll be another Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza giveaway.

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The Bah! BBB is all about providing a good read when you need one. If you’d like to donate your good, uplifting book, please email me.