Me And My Big Mouth

How's This For A Quote?

"Alex Marsh's charming and funny book charts his trajectory through East Anglia armed with nothing but four chords, the truth and some chickens" AL MURRAY.

The Pub Landlord himself was tickled by Sex & Bowls & Rock and Roll: How I Swapped My Rock Dreams for Village Greens. He's right. It is funny.

And it is published next week.

Spread The Word: Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

Attention. Deficit. Disorder. by Brad Listi is a disarmingly wonky road trip across much of America. And beyond.

When Wayne Fencer attends his ex-girlfriend's funeral he discovers that she had aborted their baby when they were still together and this knocks him off his axis for a while. Holing up in his apartment he makes a tidy sum on day trading and decides to go for a wander.

Quite a long one.

Listi's novel takes Wayne and the reader halfway across the USA, through Mexico, over to Cuba and back again, ending up at the Burning Man festival and a sexual encounter with a giant Scandinavian woman.

Attention. Deficit. Disorder. was picked as one of Amazon.com's top ten debuts of the year when it was first published. I think Listi is one of the most exciting young writers in America at the moment.

Imagine Dave Eggers but not quite as smug.

Here's your chance to check him out. I have ten copies to give away as long as you promise to read it and review it online as soon as you can.

So, what are you waiting for? Just leave a comment and I will pick ten winners from the list.

As An Aside

Seeing as my week-long free book giveaway is bringing loads of new people to the site may I draw your attention to my sidebars?

Sprinkled across, down and around the left and right columns are a plethora of extra bits and pieces and you are very welcome to browse them at your leisure.

There is the obvious stuff such as a list of all the books I have read this year, what CDs I am listening to and what I am currently reading.

But there are some more unusual trinkets. I have picked out some new and forthcoming books that you might want to keep an eye on, they just might be big hits. Or some hidden gems that may have passed you by. Quick Flicks are short reviews of books that I have dipped in to but, crucially, not actually finished. And you can even snoop through my own library.

And, as they say, lots lots more.

Have a ramble. Go mad. Be my guest.

Spread The Word: I Have America Surrounded

In I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, John Higgs explores the weird and wonderful life of the high priest of American counter-culture.

I think it is one of the hidden gems of the list at The Friday Project. A fascinating and entertaining account of a remarkable life. I would love to help it find a wider audience.

Which is why I am giving away 10 free copies today. Just leave a comment below and I will select the winners at random tomorrow.

All you have to do is agree to read it next and review it online.

Over to you.

Free Trial

I am a big fan of Stack Magazines, as many of you know.

They currently have a free trial offer going on.

Worth a punt. What have you got to lose?

Spread The Word: The Sonnets

Every day this week I will be giving away free copies of some wonderful books from The Friday Project backlist.

They are all great reads but are a couple of years old now and I am keen to give them a tiny boost with a flurry of online reviews. Spreading the word. Spreading the love.

So the deal is this:

To put your name in the hat just leave a comment beneath the blog post. If you win a free copy of any of the books I simply ask that you make it the next thing you read and that you review it online once you have. An Amazon review would be great but your blog or website even better. You could even push the boat out and do both. I won't stop you.

First up is The Sonnets by Warwick Collins. This short, exquisite novel is a fictional account of Shakespeare's time living under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton. This was when he was believed to have composed many of his most famous sonnets and Collins weaves 32 of these into the narrative.

I am not a Shakespeare fan by any stretch of the imagination but this novel really does not require knowledge of the man and his works. It is an entertaining, clever, sometimes racy story of Elizabethan noblemen and women and most of the people I know who have read it have found it to be a delight.

Here is a particularly nice review from John Self at his excellent Asylum blog.

So if this sounds like your kind of thing then leave a comment below. I have 10 copies to give away and will pick recipients by random tomorrow. Keep an eye on your inboxes for the good news.

A Song For Sunday

More from Hello Saferide. Because they are/she is wonderful.

Back To Work

I go back to work on Monday after a fortnight off and straight in to my new job as Director of Digital Product Development for HarperCollins.

To ease myself back in I was wondering if you had any digital technology blogs or websites that you read and rate highly. Or any other places online that you think are pretty good when it comes to all things technology related.

I may well have come across some of them before but I am sure many will be new to me and I would value and welcome your suggestions.

It will give me something to read on the train in on Monday morning so that I can at least give the impression that I know what I am doing when I turn up.

Thanks.

Widgety Goodness

I say Scott, what's this intriguing widget that has just popped up in the corner of your blog?

Well, I am glad you asked. It is a snazzy little thing we have been working on to promote Like Bees to Honey, the new novel from Caroline Smailes.

Go and have a play around with it. It does all sorts of things.

Once you have answered some questions you get to ask one of your own, claim your own bee and have your own hive.

It has been built by the very clever Stray and designed by the arty Badger. They've done a fine job.

You can read all about the widget, how the hive works and lots of other stuff at Caroline's website.

We'd love you to feature the widget on your own blog. If you'd like to, here is the code:

<object id="bees2honey_widget" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="176" height="280" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> <param name="align" value="middle" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="src" value="http://www.newloop-clients.co.uk/blog/bees/bees2honey_widget.swf" /> <param name="name" value="bees2honey_widget" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="false" /> <embed id="bees2honey_widget" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="176" height="280" src="http://www.newloop-clients.co.uk/blog/bees/bees2honey_widget.swf" name="bees2honey_widget" bgcolor="#ffffff" quality="high" allowfullscreen="false" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" align="middle"></embed></object>

Which, if you cut and paste it correctly, should look like this:

Have fun.

A Folk Song A Day

This is great,

Folk singer Jon Boden, the vocalist with the wonderful Bellowhead and numerous other projects, is recording a different folk song for every day of the year. And what's more, he is making them all available as free downloads from iTunes.

You can find out all about it at www.afolksongaday.com.

We're Gonna Need A Bigger Post

Ingredients

1 x Jaws VHS

1 x The Matrix DVD

1 x Haruki Murakami novel (preferably Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World but any of his weird ones will do)

1 x Radiohead CD (Kid A is recommended)

Method

1) Weld The Matrix DVD to the Jaws video using a soldering iron. Best to get a grown-up to help you with this part.

2) Using some duct tape, attach the welded items to your Murakami novel. No need to be precise, just wrap the tape round a few times to make sure they are secure.

3) Staple Kid A to the back of the book.

4) Place in microwave for 90 seconds.

This is what you'll get when the timer goes ding.

 

It has taken me some time to get round to reading The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. It was first published in 2007 but I was actually sent a manuscript in 2006 which I didn't bother to read. What a fucking idiot.

I hesitate to tell you what the book is about as a) I don't want to spoil the surprise, b) it is a bit complicated, and c) I am not sure I will do it justice, but I will give it a shot.

Eric Sanderson wakes up on the floor of his flat. He has no memory. No idea how he got there. He discovers a letter from 'the first Eric Sanderson' instructing him to contact a Dr Randle. Randle helps Eric deal with his unusual condition, a memory problem which, from time to time erases everything he knows. It was probably sparked by the death of his girlfriend while they were on holiday.

But that is not, strictly speaking, the case.

Letters keep arriving from the first Eric Sanderson. Many of them contain instructions and warnings. The second Eric Sanderson needs to protect himself. To hide.

From a conceptual fish.

A shark, known as a Ludovician, to be precise.

If it catches him it will erase his memories. All over again.

So Eric goes on the run but is also in search of the mysterious Dr Trey Fidorous, an expert on conceptual fish and perhaps the only person who can help him.

It's enough to make your brain hurt, in a good way, and I haven't even touched upon the complicated stuff yet.

Steven Hall has created an incredibly complex universe within an entirely believable and consistent reality. It all sort of makes sense, even though it is fantastic and far-fetched. As a feat of imaginative creation it is nothing short of a wonder.

I particularly enjoyed the way the text itself became part of the story, the way the letters and characters would take on a life of their own. 

But the real treat is how much of a page-turner this is. All complexity and weirdness aside, and there is plenty of that to feast upon, this is a cracking science fiction mystery that keeps you guessing right up until the final page.

And beyond. Properly beyond. Hall has created a whole bunch of 'un-chapters' that exist outside of the text itself. You don't need to find them to enjoy the book, it is a fantastic read without them, but floating around the internet and dotted around the real world is a load of extra stuff. One is apparently found in the UK special edition, another in the Canadian version of the book. I don't think they have all been found.

So there you go. A pathetic attempt at reviewing one of the most imaginative novels I have read in many a long year. It pretty much defies description. The best thing to do is buy a copy and read it yourself.

And if you decide to do just that then you might want to check out the author's website and the ongoing discussion forum about the book.

The Raw Shark Texts is published by Canongate and it's fucking great.

O Tell Me Muse...

In this remarkable book Zachary Mason 're-imagines' The Odyssey from a number of different viewpoints. Forty-four retellings of the greatest story ever told. It kept me spellbound for hours.

Tackling small chunks of the original story, Mason sometimes introduces a new twist, or changes the narrator, alters the books internal logic or remixes the original with fascinating results.

So you have a version in which Odysseus finds himself bored on Ithaka so sets off to retrace his steps, revisiting the scenes of his adventures.

In another, The Iliad is revealed to be an elaborate set of rules for playing chess.

Or the suggestion that Paris was, in fact, another name for Death and is was the Grim Reaper himself who stole Helen, leading Menelaus to declare war on Hades rather than Troy.

And one chapter is narrated by the cyclops Polyphemus, offering a slightly different take on the version of legend.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey is not, I would suggest, a book to sit down and read from start to finish. It isn't intended as a linear narrative - many of the chapters contradict themselves - and is, instead, a volume to dip into over a couple of weeks. Although, be warned, it is hard to leave it alone for very long.

This is a short work of epic imagination. It will, I am sure, prove a delight to anyone who has ever read and loved Homer's two epic poems, although those unfamiliar with them may well wonder what all the fuss is about. They are very much favourites of mine and it is high praise indeed when I say that I will be shelving this book alongside them.

I confidently predict that The Lost Books of the Odyssey will feature prominently in the book of the year round ups, but don't wait till then, treat yourself now.

A Song For Sunday

My Best Friend by Hello Saferide.

Me, Elsewhere

Not much going on here today so you might want to see what I am up to elsewhere.

I am interviewed on the Beat Magazine website. There is loads of great stuff on the site, some nice essays, reviews and other interviews. Well worth checking out.

Those nice people at Authonomy are holding a Writing Fiction workshop on Saturday 17th July. There will be panel discussions and workshops with four industry insiders - novelist Roma Tearne, literary agent Harry Mann, editor Annabel Wright and, erm, me. It is a full day event and tickets are on sale now.

The next stop on our Firestation Book Swap world tour will be at the London Review Bookshop on August 5th. More details on how to buy tickets will follow shortly but do save the date in your diary, especially if you have been meaning to attend a book swap but couldn't be arsed to travel to Windsor.

And if you would like to listen to my dulcet tones you can always subscribe to the Firestation Book Swap podcast on iTunes. How can you resist?

Leave A Light On For Me

Paul Auster is one of the most oddly fascinating American authors of the past twenty years or so. His New York Trilogy is considered by many to be a modern classic. Novels such as The Book of Illusions and Brooklyn Follies have been considerable bestsellers.

For me, his best work is often found in the quieter books. The ones that slip under the radar without attracting too much fuss. The Music of Chance and Leviathan are exceptional, exquisite novels. If you have never read any Auster then I would suggest you start with NYT but you should quickly move on to Chance or Leviathan. They are marvelous.

Whatever you do, don't begin your Auster acquaintance with Man in the Dark. It is not that it is a bad novel, more an unfinished one. Or, to be more precise, two unfinished books stitched together.

In recent years Auster has been doing what Milan Kundera has grown increasingly fond of, namely writing sketches of novels, ideas of novels and presenting them as complete. This doesn't mean they aren't a good read - I enjoyed  an in the Dark quite a lot - but they are a bit vague and unsatisfying.

August Brill is an elderly book critic. He shares his house with his daughter and granddaughter. All three are missing their significant others, for differing reasons, and a sense of loss and sadness pervades their lives. August can't sleep, and to pass the long nights he makes up the story of a young man who awakes to find himself in an alternative America, an America at war. This fictional character created by another fictional character wanders through a suitably Kafka-esque wasteland trying to work out where on earth he is and how to survive. This invented tale becomes part of the book's narrative, the two story strands weaving together reasonably effectively.

The fiction within the fiction is the more entertaining of the two stories so the author drops a huge clanger when he abruptly kills of this strand to concentrate on the solemn mood piece set in the 'real world'. It is a significant error, effectively revealing the join between what ultimately can only be viewed as two separate novels coveniently stitched together.

It is a shame as there is a great deal to enjoy in Man in the Dark, even if it doesn't quite make the grade. One for Auster completists only I would suggest.

I'm Reading Angels In Bed

It has been a while since I read this so this review is long overdue and may be a bit vague but I am on holiday and I don't really care.

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies is the first in The Cornish Trilogy. Not, as I had assumed for the several years the books sat on my shelves, anything to do with Cornwall; the title instead relates to Francis Cornish, a rich philanthropist and art collector who conveniently dies at the beginning of the book, thus setting in motion the bleak, dark comedy that is to follow.

His collection is a rambling mess, piled up in a dusty apartment, and the job of sorting through it falls to three of his friends, all professors at The College of St John and the Holy Ghost. They will allocate the works to the various museums and galleries to which they have been donated and can, for their efforts, select one item each to keep themselves.

Which leads to a clandestine and competitive search for a lost Rabelais manuscript supposedly hidden somewhere within the piles.

This background story is embellished with the goings on at the college itself. One of the professors is coping with the aftermath of an illicit encounter on a sofa with a student. And by coping, I mean pretending it never happened. She, on the other hand, is in love with the old duffer and spending every hour she can helping him in his offices.

But then Brother Parlabane turns up. An ex-faculty member now a monk who has gone off the rails, he acts as the catalyst for all manner of goings on. His appearance gives the various story strands a kick up the arse and sends them off in a number of dramatic, comic, rather rude and tragic directions. He appears to be an eloquent yet bumbling eccentric but you sense a cruel heart beneath it all. He reminded me of Bunny in The Secret History, and The Rebel Angels certainly has the same sense of campus community, gossip, secrets, rivalry and slight other-worldliness of Donna Tartt's modern classic.

The book is also populated by a fine supporting cast of characters such as Cornish's nephew - a businessman with seemingly no interest in art at all - and a mad professor squirreled away in his laboratory studying the science of shit.

The Rebel Angels is both intensely serious and delightfully silly at the same time. I opened the book with zero expectations as I really knew next to nothing about it and ended up sailing through it in a couple of days and relishing every opportunity I had to spend time with it. There are two more books in the trilogy and I will certainly read on. The second in the series, What's Bred in the Bone, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize which I am taking as a good sign.

I have also subsequently picked up some more books by Robertson Davies. He is one of the (few?) giants of Canadian literature and I suspect I will be reading a lot more of his work.

Happy Bloomsday

He says, never having read Ulysses and having found The Dubliners to be a load of old tosh, but Happy Bloomsday nonetheless.

Is this the only major event marking the existence of a fictional character? Is there a Don Quixote day in Spain? A Moomin day in Finland? A Barney the fucking annoying purple dinosaur day in the USA?

Which got me to thinking. Which fictional character so you think should have their own day and how should we celebrate it?

I would vote for one of the following:

Ferminsday, in which gentleman have to doff their caps to ladies and charm them with wit and banter in honour of the tramp Fermin in Shadow of the Wind.

The Day of the Rat, in which we can dress as our favourite characters from Haruki Murakami novels. I would go for the Sheepman but would be very keen to meet the woman with the most beautiful ears in the world.

Odysseusday, in which we all go off for a bit of a scrap and then take 10 years to find our way back home. Sort of in keeping with the whole Bloomsday vibe. We could probably only stage this once every decade though.

Or maybe Mr Gum Day, where we can act like old lazers, play butcher's darts with our mates and terrorise little children.

Your suggestions are more than welcome.

Believe The Hype?

You may have picked up on some of the buzz behind forthcoming novel The Passage by Justin Cronin. Twitter is tweeting away with numerous mentions. There is a promo movie online and Waterstone's seem to be going potty for it. 

They are currently giving away free samplers of the book in all their stores. And these aren't little flimsy pamphlets - oh no - we are talking about big broadsheet-size blighters.

Quite impressive. But not as impressive as the quotes that emblazon the inside cover. No fewer then 10 Waterstone's employees wax lyrical about the book and how splendid it is. 'Amazing', 'wonderful', 'a master class' and 'completely addictive'. High praise indeed.

But the lead quote is the most notable. The fiction buyer for the chain calls The Passage 'the most astonishing book of the decade'. Blimey. This is someone who must read hundreds of books a year as part of their job so such a claim is really quite something.

After all, we are talking about decade which has brought us Cloud Atlas, The Road, Life of Pi, Atonement, The Da Vinci Code, several Harry Potters, The Corrections, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, No Logo, Wolf Hall and Martine McCutcheon's debut, The Mistress.

So what exactly is this book that has garnered such remarkable and, seemingly in the case of Waterstone's, unanimous praise?

What follows may contain spoilers but I feel OK about that because they are all revealed in the sampler anyway, so this is a bit like someone reviewing a movie trailer. Some essential information will be imparted but it shouldn't spoil your enjoyment of the main attraction.

Chapter One is a promising start. I was not-so-secretly hoping I would hate it but thoroughly enjoyed this potted history of a single mother trying to make ends meet in smalltown America. It isn't perfect - Cronin paints with a broad brush and if Waterstone's genuinely thinks this is astonishing then they'll all need to take time off work in amazement if they ever read Plainsong by Kent Haruf who does this sort of stuff ten times better - but I was quickly wrapped up in it and felt genuinely moved when she makes a heartbreaking decision right at the end.

But then the vampire bats arrive. Chapter Two takes the form of emails from a scientist in the jungle. As the messages develop you discover that his party, backed by the military, are being attacked by killer bats. A more jarring change of tone would be hard to find. It was a bit like watching a classic David Attenborough wildlife documentary and then accidentally sitting on the controls and flicking over to Hole in the Wall. It threw me completely.

Chapter Three is not so much of a jolt. An FBI agent is recruiting death row prisoners for a secret experiment. Agree to sign up and their death sentence is commuted to life without parole. Assuming they survive whatever it is that awaits them, of course.

And the rest of the sampler - a quite substantial six chapters spread over 20 broadsheet pages each printed in three columns - jumps from one storyline to another. It is certainly entertaining but is also, let's be honest, a trifle silly. It reads very much like an episode of The X-Files, albeit a pretty good one. The sort of episode you would probably watch again if you stumbled across it during late night channel hopping. If you are prepared to suspend disbelief then you will probably have a good time.

Of course, I have only read the sampler. A few people whose opinions I value have finished the whole thing (all 800 pages of it!) and tell me that it gets a lot better where the sampler leaves off. Some of the Amazon reviews I read mention that it jumps to 100 years in the future which I guess would take the narrative to a whole different place.

So, does The Passage justify the hype, which is considerable? Well, I guess that depends on what sort of books you like. If you enjoy reading Stephen King then I dare say that this is going to be a cracking read. If, however, your definition of an astonishing book is something more like the aforementioned The Road or Cloud Atlas then I can't imagine this will make it into you top ten of the year, let alone the decade.

It is all pretty good fun though and sometimes it is nice to read a book that takes you on a ride without taxing the little grey cells all that much.

But if it is just an enjoyable romp then why all the fuss?

A cynic might wonder aloud as to whether Waterstone's would be quite so keen on The Passage is it were published by a small indie with no money to spend but this is no place for such sentiments. No sir. Clearly a whole bunch of people at the book chain have had a whale of a time with The Passage and that, coupled with bold and ambitious support from the publisher, should ensure that it becomes a very big seller indeed.

Personally, I won't be reading on past the sampler. It was perfectly decent tosh to browse over a cup of tea but I doubt I could sustain my enthusiasm over 800 pages. And I was never much of an X-Files fan anyway. Even if I were I am not sure I'd stump up the £20 RRP, perhaps waiting for the paperback instead.

That being said, if Cronin ever writes anything that fulfils the promise of the opening chapter, which is thankfully vampire-free, then I would be very keen to read it. In The Passage he is working with a subject that I just found a bit daft, if he tackles something more grown-up then I will be towards the front of the queue with my hard-earned cash.

The Passage by Justin Cronin is published at the end of this month by Orion.

Job Centre

I appear to have a new job. Director of Digital Product Development, no less.

How exciting.

Very sensible of me to kick things off with a two week holiday.

In all seriousness though, this is all exciting stuff and I am looking forward to some very interesting projects.

But I will carry on publishing books with The Friday Project, of course.

More anon.

Kafkaesque

I was delighted to discover (via some blog stats) that Me And My Big Mouth is cited on the Wordnik site in its entry for 'Kafkaesque'.

I must have used the word in one of my reviews and Wordnik have quoted me thusly:

"Very odd, somewhat bizarre and a little muddled but has a certain Kafkaesque appeal." — Me And My Big Mouth

Wordnik describes itself as 'the most comprehensive dictionary in the known universe'.

Who am I to argue?