The move from one point to the next sets the mind racing. Each turn makes a new path and we continue, with directions altered and every outcome marked by the journey through which it came.

Readers Archive identifies the punctuation marks along many and varied pathways of reading and research. By uncovering the links made by others, be they linear or tangential, Readers Archive offers up a list of possible turning points for further reading and departure.

Each month an invited contributor writes a text, which discusses the process of research within their personal practice as a writer, maker or musician. Further access to those followed avenues of research are given through a list of works the selector considers to have been key on that journey. For the duration of the month this selection will be available to view at Donlon Books.

Each essay and list will be available to take away during each month's selection and subsequently from this online archive.

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Will Hodgkinson 6 November Ð 20 December 2009

Will Hodgkinson is a writer, journalist and television presenter. His books chart his own journeying within music; learning to be a guitarist in Guitar Man (2006), writing and recording a pop song in Song Man (2007). His most recent book, The Ballad of Britain (2009), documents his travels around Britain making field recordings of folk music. His journalism includes a column in The Guardian as well as contributions to Vogue, Mojo and the Telegraph among others. Songbook, shown on Sky Arts is a series in which Hodgkinson interviews songwriters about their inspirations and the stories behind some of their most well known songs.



Essay

Ignoring Your Influences And Getthing On With It

Everything that you read, watch or listen to somehow soaks in and helps you find your own voice. But it's typically on a subconscious level. When you are writing a book there are all kinds of things that you are think-ing of without realising it. Whenever I'm trying to put a piece of writing of sustained length toge-ther there are influences that I'm not aware of while they're happening, but will get a sense of years down the line.

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Selected Readings

Nico: Songs They Never Play on the Radio
James Young

A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole

The House on the Strand
Daphne Du Maurier

Oblomov
Ivan Goncharov

The Buddha of Suburbia
Hanif Kureishi

Tulsa
Larry Clark

Folk Roots, New Routes
LP, Shirley Collins and Davy Graham

Moyshe McStiff and The Tartan Lancers of The Sacred Heart
LP, COB

The Child Ballads Vol 1
collected by Peter Kennedy

Blanche
Film, Walerian Borowczyk



For help in finding or purchasing any of these titles please contact Donlon Books at mail@donlonbooks.com