Alison Flood 

A different reading of World Book Night

Alison Flood: In reply to the million-book giveaway planned for next year, Susan Hill has come up some alternative ideas, and is looking for more
  
  

Susan Hill
'No hidden agenda!' … Susan Hill. Photograph: John Lawrence / Rex Photograph: John Lawrence / Rex

The Guardian has the Not the Booker prize – now one of this year's Man Booker prize judges, Susan Hill, has come up with Not World Book Night. The novelist was not a supporter of last year's initial event, when one million books were given away, telling the Guardian at the time that she was "totally against" the free handouts because "one of my publishers has had to spend £40,000 on printing books to give away which is £40,000 he cannot now use to publish and promote new authors", and throwing her support behind novelist Nicola Morgan's alternative suggestion: to buy a book and pass it on.

This year she's gone a step further. With Tracy Chevalier and her team of selectors fresh from announcing this year's crop of 25 titles – ranging from Austen to Zuzak by way of Pratchett, Levy, King and Ishiguro – Hill has just launched her own alternative on Twitter, picking her own selection of Not World Book Night titles and inviting people to enter a competition ("How would you organize WBN? New idea? Keep as is? One Tweet only must be IN RHYME") to win them all. From Metroland to The Turn of the Screw, Midnight's Children to The Day of the Triffids, it's a wonderfully eclectic line-up – Hill was "looking to stimulate interest in the best, not suggest the obvious and recommend", she tweeted, later telling me that she was "thinking just to do some more recommends… no hidden agenda!"

Hill's already had a few entries, from @laidbackreader's "24hrs tv progs about books, featuring no celebrity cooks. Indy bookshops to lead the way, discounts but no books given away" to @Vixen_'s "I'd write a little ditty for every city, WBN stays as it is & ask @RealMattLucas to sing it to Les Mis'" and @IanDBarker's "Longer book list, greater choice. Give midlist authors chance to voice".

Here are her Not World Book Night choices in full:

Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth
Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Metroland by Julian Barnes
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
The Sea by John Banville
Asylum by Patrick McGrath
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
The Masters by CP Snow
If on a Winter's Night by Italo Calvino
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Waterland by Graham Swift
A Month in the Country by JL Carr

I've read far fewer of these than I'd like (12, she says in a small voice, compared to pretty much all of the, erm, slightly more commercial official World Book Night line-up), so it's clearly either time to get rhyming or get along to the library. How would you rate her choices compared to the official picks – and which books would you like to see being given away around the country come 23 April next year?

 

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