John Godber has worked for RNIB for 35 years and is now Head of RNIB Products and Publications. He has retinitis pigmentosa and was registered blind at the age of 10. He reads braille but prefers audio for leisure reading. John talked to Kim Normanton about the role books have played in his life.
Tell us about the first book you're going to choose.
From my childhood it would have to be one of the Just William books by Richmal Crompton. William was an 11-year-old school boy for 50 years. As a child, I think I liked to think of myself as being a bit like William.
Did you have to do a lot of reading as a student?
I chose to do Latin, French and German at A level and then went on to do Latin and a bit of Ancient Greek at Durham University so literature was an enormously important part of all that. One of the difficulties as a braille reader was that many of the books we needed to study were not available in UK editions so we imported them from France and Germany. They were written in the relevant contracted braille language code for those countries so actually I was having to learn not only the language but also a whole new braille code in order to read the books, so that was a real challenge.
Does your second book come out of that time in your life as well?
There are two competing titles here. One is The satires by Juvenil and the other is Voltaire's Candide. Candide says the best thing we can do is live peacefully and cultivate our gardens and for me that's really important and very influential. If we all focused on doing the best we can with what we've got, then the world would be slightly better.
Does your next book reflect another stage in your life?
It actually goes back to my childhood again because my next book would be The house at Pooh corner. This was bought for me as a print book and I've not been able to treasure either braille books or audio books in quite the same way as I did print books. As a parent it was one of the books that I read to my children. I felt very conscious as a blind parent that I had a more limited number of books that I could share with them and I think we probably read The house at Pooh corner, Winnie the Pooh and The wind in the willows many times. I've chosen The house at Pooh corner because it gave me more scope to do the character's voices. I particularly enjoyed doing a rather lugubrious voice for Eeyore, the miserable donkey.
And do you think things are slightly easier now for blind parents reading to their children?
Yes, there is a greater choice and because of things like the Clear Vision project, which RNIB was very involved in funding and working with, there are now more books available where you have braille and print interleaved so that you can take a standard child's picture book and read it as a parent using the same book.
How do you find out about books that you might like to read?
I get New books which comes out every two months. I also use audible.co.uk, and they send me emails, and I have a Kindle. I use any bit of technology, or means that I can, to get hold of books. I also read book reviews. I never used to, because none of the books that were being reviewed would ever be accessible. But with the electronic availability of books I find I can read about a book, flip across to Amazon and quite often find that it's available as an eBook and in less than five minutes I can be reading it. I think that's just fabulous.
So what would your fourth book be?
I very much enjoy reading science fiction and fantasy and one of the books that gripped me from beginning to end was by Ira Levin called This perfect day. It's set in a world where there is perfect peace and happiness. But it's basically because everybody is drugged - it's about somebody desperately trying to get hold of their own mind.
Which would be your last book you'd take to your desert island?
The one that I would choose is by Bill Bryson, Notes from a small island, because it would remind me of home. He talks about how English people take enormous pleasure in very simple things. He says that the Americans believe in instant gratification whereas English people are quite happy to sit in a café in a seaside town with the rain falling outside the window and just say, "Well, you mustn't grumble!" so he paints this wonderfully affectionatepicture of Britain.
John's choice of books
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Just William by Richmal Crompton (braille 3v)
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Candide by Voltaire (TB 917)
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The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne (braille 3v; TB 2294)
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This perfect day by Ira Levin (TB 1223)
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Notes from a small island by Bill Bryson (braille 7v; TB 10500)