Me And My Big Mouth

Quite Contrary Fairies

This book has fairies in it.

Do not be alarmed.

They aren't those awful pallid Rainbow Fairies. Oh no.

These are a bunch of evil little buggers. A right unpleasant bunch.

And they are all over the place: in the teapot, wandering around the garden, creeping into bedrooms and night and, in one memorable early scene, splattered all over a car windscreen.

Tanya can see them. She has the second sight. And when she spends the holidays with her grandmother she unearths more little creatures than she can deal with, along with a whole bunch of family secrets.

This is a proper classic in the making. It is a children's book of the old school - dark, magical and with that sense of wonder that I am sure is sweeping young readers away every night beneath the duvet. With torch, of course.

It certainly did for me. Although I have an angle-poise lamp from John Lewis.

The Thirteen Treasures by Michelle Harrison is not only one of the best kids' books I've read in ages (and with two offspring I do tend to read a lot of them), it is also the most enjoyable book of any genre I have read so far this year. It reminded me of the Dark is Rising series. If you've got little, or even not so little, readers in your house then I am pretty sure they would love this.

A Song For Sunday

Airplanes by Local Natives.

Archive: The Bookseller, January 2011

Here's my most recent Bookseller column which I don't think ever made it on to their website.

If you don't have time to read it here's the short version: most books that are sold don't get read and we shouldn't really worry about it.

---

I write to you as the newly crowned Bookseller Fantasy League Champion for 2010 [pauses for applause]. Those who took part may want to know my winning strategy so they can emulate my success in 2011. I could claim that it was down to my sixteen years experience as a retailer – the old boy’s still got it and all that – but the truth is far simpler.

Mine was the only team, I believe, that included the top three bestselling books of this Christmas – Jamie Oliver, Guinness and that bleedin’ meerkat. Most people could have predicted the first two but the last was somewhat of a surprise hit. It will certainly have come as a shock to Horace Bent, the competition organiser, who included it as one of the cheapest selections on the original entry form. He won’t make the same mistake next year with Churchill the dog, the Go Compare opera singer or whoever else may jump on the publishing bandwagon, I am sure of that.

But apart from being the most popular titles in our nation’s bookshops this festive season, these bestsellers have another thing in common – like all books, many copies will receive no more than a cursory browse, never to be opened again.

We can be very precious in our industry, hence all the stuffy ‘what is the world coming to?’ comments when A Simples Life first took off, but we often forget that a book sold is not necessarily a book read. At Christmas, books are just one of numerous options for people purchasing gifts. Of course it is great when someone presents us with a wonderful book that we go on to love but, more often than not, a book for Christmas is just a convenient option to tick someone off the list: Nigella for mum, the new Clarkson for dad, a Blue Peter annual for the kids. Job done, at least it is if you are purchasing purely for stereotypes.

And let’s be honest, a huge proportion of these Christmas books will be left to gather dust alongside the bubble bath and dodgy after shave of this past festive season. But, and here I finally get to my point, this really doesn’t matter. I would even go as far as to say that it is vital we continue to publish books that lots of people will flick through once or twice and never turn to again. Our very livelihoods depend on books being viewed as viable gifts, no matter what the recipients do with them.

Take away all the books that will never be read and British publishing would collapse overnight. It is, after all, the thought that counts, especially if that thought gets some much needed money into bookshop tills. Now, where’s my bloody prize? ;

Recommended Reading

'This book has owls. I do not like owls.'

A wonderful short essay about online book reviews by Charles Baxter over at the Fiction Writers Review.

Thanks to L. Lee Lowe for mentioning it in a blog comment.

Wilderness Reading

In little over a week from now I will be heading off to the west coast of Scotland for a writing break. Just me, a laptop and a cabin in the woods.

I need to travel light so am not intending to take many books. Perhaps just the one.

So if you could recommend one book for me to read while I am stuck in the middle of nowhere, what would it be?

Something Scottish? Something wilderness related? Something set in a cabin? Something completely different?

In Short

My other blog, which you can find over here, is now into its fifty fourth day.

For those of you who don't know, I am reading a different short story every day for the whole of 2011 and blogging a review.

I have revisited some favourite stories, dipped into the shorter work of authors I admire and sampled a whole host of writers who are completely new to me.

If I had to pick out some highlights they would be:

Rain on the River by Jim Dodge

The Would-Be Father by Charles Baxter

The Man Who Drew the Brook by Richard Blandford

Philemon and Baucis by Tibor Dery

and

The Littlest Hitler by Ryan Boudinot

Do please pop over if you get the chance.

Brief Encounters

I have been making a dent of the piles of books waiting to be read. Here are some initial impressions.

Jacques Strauss - The Dubious Salvation Of Jack V.

A coming-of-age novel set in the last days of Apartheid in South Africa. The 11-year-old narrator is very funny indeed and I am willing to bet that this gets some great reviews and a warm reception from readers when it comes out in May. I hope to post a fuller review nearer the time.

Alon Hilu - The House of Rajani

Greatly enjoyed the opening section of this Israeli novel in which the narrator is having trouble convincing his new wife that they should consumate their nuptials. Set in Jaffa in the 1890s, this is much more entertaining than I had expected and I shall definitely be reading on.

Jonathan Clark (Editor) - A World by Itself: A History of the British Isles

An impressive-looking tome in which six distinguished historians each tell part of the story of these isles. At over 700 pages, it is a bit daunting and that isn't helped by the rather dry tone. I must confess that it reminded me a bit of my old text books, not inherently a bad thing but, you know, I don't really want to go back to school at my age.

Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English

I've lost count of the number of novels I've been sent over the past ten years or so that concern a child arriving in England from an African country and having to adapt to a new life. I can tell you precisely how many of them I thought were any good. None. They have all mushed together into one amalgamated book in my head. I can't really tell them apart. None of them were awful, it is just that none of them really stand out. This is another for that pile, I'm afraid. Eleven year old Harrison is fresh in from Ghana and is fascinated by running, the local gag and by pigeons, well one pigeon in particular. It is one of the Waterstone's 11, their pick of the best debut novels of the year, so they must have seen something in it that I didn't. My loss, perhaps, but I can live with that.

Angela Thirlwell - Into The Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown

A portrait of the Pre-Raphelite artist (although he didn't actually consider himself part of that group) Ford Madox Brown through the story of the four main loves of his life. And quite a bohemian tale it is too with children born out of wedlock, free love and rather a lot of nude models. The book presupposes that you have a knowledge of Ford and his work, which I don't, and as such wasn't really able to lure me in to the story sufficiently to want to finish the thing. If you are a fan, though, it would be worthy of investigation.

Naomi Wood - The Godless Boys

England in the 1980s. The Church controls the nation. Members of the Secular Movement have been banished to an island off the coast. An English girl arrives to search for her mother who vanished a decade before. A most intriguing set up and a promising opening. I can see this being quite a talking point when it is published in April. I wonder if Richard Dawkins or the Archbishop of Canterbury have read it yet?

Garth Nix & Sean Williams - Troubletwisters

Twins, a boy and a girl, discover that they aren't quite as normal as they thought when they receive a peculiar letter and a map from someone calling herself Grandma X. Things take an even more unusual turn when their eccentric father returns from a business trip with something more than just dirty laundry in his suitcase. An exciting opening to this new book for kids and I shall certainly pass it on to Ethan and/or Martha to read.

Mischa Hiller - Shake Off

It's a spy thriller but our hero is a PLO operative tasked with finding a venue for secret Palestinian-Israeli talks. Great to have something that feels like a John Le Carre novel from the 70s but with an alternative angle. The author's first book, Sabra Zoo, was very good and if you haven't come across Hiller before he is worth getting to know.

A Song For Sunday

The Glenn Miller Orchestra with In The Mood.

Martin's Amiss

In the first episode of the new BBC series Faulks on Fiction, which took as its subject the concept of literary heroes, Martin Amis was interviewed about his own creation, John Self from the novel Money. Sebastian Faulks argued that once Self had plonked his obnoxious fat arse on the pages of a book the literary hero had effectively been killed off for good.

Bollocks, frankly, but that isn't the bit of the programme that has caused controversy. It was something Amis himself said when talking about his writing:

"People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable."

I cut and pasted that from this Guardian piece that picks up on the anger this has caused amongst writers and readers of children's fiction. The Telegraph and Independent have also run pieces on the furore and blogs and Twitter are afire with complaint.

And rightly so, as it was a fucking stupid thing to say. Although, having seen the interview when it was broadcast, I don't think there was any malice or disdain in the statement, I think he was just trying to explain why he writes what he does in the way he does.

It was the next sentence which, I think, strikes at the heart of the matter.

"I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the heart of the problem I have with Martin Amis. His inability to write in anything other than his own perceived 'high style' makes his stories, in my opinion, unbelievable, his characters unsympathetic and his books unentertaining and annoying.

I accept that he is seen by many as a very talented writer with a loyal and hardcore following. I just don't think he can tell a story for shit.

[An aside: I was speaking at a creative writing conference a few years ago. I mentioned that Amis was considered to have written some of the finest sentences in English literature, an opinion I had read in more than one review and interview. The problem, I suggested, was that was incapable of stringing them together to make a good novel. I received a round of applause. So it isn't just me.]

I suspect that Amis is very much a niche author now, anyway. Each new book sells to about the same number of people (10-15,000 hardbacks and 30-40,000 paperbacks, which I accept is a healthy niche!) and there is no sign of his audience growing. His influence on the British literary scene is more historic than anything else. His opinion matters, to some, because of his previous achievements and that is probably fair enough. But it will be interesting to see if he can write anything during the rest of his career that can delight, inspire, amaze and entertain as much as some of the current crop of children's authors are doing right now, authors like Chris Priestley, Michelle Harrison, Andy Stanton and Philip Pullman. Or if his classic books will endure in the way that works by Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, A.A. Milne or Arthur Ransome have done to this day.

I have my own view on that, but only time will tell.

Soundbites

I have been dipping in and out of the piles of new arrivals again. Here is a small taster.

Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles

The story of the Trojan War told through the eyes of Patroclus. It sucks you in from the very first page. Not published till September but I shall certainly be reading the whole thing before then and shall report back. One of the most promising new books I have sampled in ages.

Paul Farley & Michael Roberts - Edgelands

Two acclaimed poets turn their hands to prose in an attempt to capture the essense of the 'edgelands' - the wilderness between urban and rural, between town and country. Not sure if there is really a whole book in it but they mention both Jack Hargreaves and Georges Perec early on so I am prepared to give it a go.

Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

A novel set during the Spanish Civil War. It looks interesting enough but is taking its time to reveal its delights to me. There is certainly something here but I am not quite sure what it is. I think I will shelve it for a while and come back to it fresh at a later date.

David Szalay - Spring

One of the Daily Telegraph's 'Twenty Under Forty' writers tackles a complex portrait of a modern relationship. The jury is still out on this one.

Emma Forrest - Your Voice in My Head

I'll be honest, I don't usually have a great deal of time for books about people with 'issues'. I understand the sadness and devastation of mental illness but I really don't want to read about them. Sorry. This may prove to be an exception, though. I greatly enjoyed the opening chapters, especially the description of her father who sounds like a hoot. And not too much whining so far.

Andrew Barrow - Animal Magic: A Brother's Story

A family memoir, more specifically about the author's brother who died in a car crash shortly before his wedding, his fiance dying by his side. He left behind an unpublished novel, just completed, that eerily predicted his own demise. I am sure the broadsheets will wet themselves over this, and it is interesting but didn't quite grab me enough to read on.

Rebecca Skloot - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The remarkable true story of a poor black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951 and how cells taken from her have played a crucial part in medical science ever since. Absolutely fascinating.

Helen McEwen - Invisible River

A young woman sets off for art college in London, leaving her alcoholic father behind in Cornwall. Pleasant, if unexceptional, campus drama so far. Very easy to read though.

Xinran - Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love

Xinran has been chronicling the lives of Chinese women for some time now and this new book looks at the stories of children, all girls, who have been adopted and also of mothers that abandonded their offspring, often because of China's one child policy. I am not sure if there is a law of dimishing returns on these books but the tales remain powerful and important.

Recommended: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Song of Achilles.

More Book Swap Goodness

We have not one, but two Book Swaps happening this week.

Tomorrow night, as previously mentioned, novelists Jessica Ruston and Sarra Manning will be taking to the stage to eat cake, answer questions from the jar and generally be wonderful.

But on Sunday afternoon we will be holding a special Book Swap just for kids and it is absolutely free.

Not only that but we have two amazing authors coming along as well.

Tamsyn Murray writes for both younger and older readers. Her Stunt Bunny series stars Harriet Houdini, a rabbit with a talent for escapology who goes on to become a big TV star. And her two novels for older readers, My So-Called Afterlife and My So-Called Haunting, are about teenage ghosts. They are all getting rave reviews from fans of all ages and she went down a storm when she last paid us a visit.

Michelle Harrison is the award-winning author of the 13 Treasures series which are all about fairies. But these are not your ordinary namby-pamby fairies, oh no, these are mean little blighters who like a good fight and causing all sorts of mischief.

Michelle and Tamsyn will be sitting on the Book Swap sofa from 2pm on Sunday 20th February. They wil be chatting about their work, answering any question that members of the audience want to ask and signing copies of their books for anyone who can persuade their parents to buy them a copy - or bring along your books from home if you already have them.

All are welcome and entry is free. You might even get a biscuit. More details here.

Our Junior Book Swaps are lots of fun and the whole family are very welcome to come along. Mum or Dad can grab a coffee (or even something stronger) from the bar and the children can bring along old books they don't want anymore and swap them for new ones.

We hope to see you there. Or, if you are a little too old for such things, perhaps you could spread the word.

Thank You

I just wanted to say a quick thank you for all the 21st Century Dodo ideas.

You are really very kind.

Lots of them are already on the list but plenty of suggestions for me to check out and others that have made me think of new areas to look into.

The book is published this Christmas.

I'll give away loads of copies on here.

I love you all.

 

Loyal Readers, I Need Your Help

In a couple of weeks' time I will vanish off to a cabin on the west coast of Scotland and cut myself off from human contact and the internet.

You see, I have a book to write.

21st Century Dodos will the the second book written by my alter-ego Steve Stack. I have been researching it, making notes and pulling together entries for a couple of years now but the time has come to actually get the bloody thing written.

But what's it about, I hear a small number of you mumble?

Here's the blurb:

There are many thousands of endangered creatures on the planet. If you include animals, insects and plants then about 3 species become extinct every hour of every day. That's almost 27,000 a year.

Every single one of these is, of course, a tragedy but, let's be honest, we haven't really noticed. When the last Bolivian centipede pops his hundred clogs it is very sad but makes bugger all difference to our daily lives.

So this book isn't about them.

Instead, Steve Stack investigates the many inanimate objects, the unsung cultural icons of society, which don't feature on any endangered list, don't have people raising money on street corners on their behalf, don't feature in documentaries narrated by David Attenborough, but are just as likely to become extinct. Many already have.

Coke can ring pulls, telephone boxes, VHS, cassette tapes, village post offices, the test card, hand-written letters, Spangles, classic telly ads of yesteryear, Whizzer & Chips - all of these and many many more are bid a fond farewell in this affectionate, if slightly irreverent tribute.

And here is where I need your help. I'd love to know what inanimate objects you miss or mourn for. Which shops, sweets, items, experiences, buildings, traditions, TV shows, events, odds and sods you have noticed are no longer with us or soon to vanish. Hopefully I will have covered most of them already but it would be great to have your suggestions.

Please fire away in the comments below.

Token Valentine's Day Review

A splendid idea - a new translation of Ovid's classic poems on the subject of love and seduction.

I found the introduction and supporting material most interesting, and these are well worth a browse if you find yourself in an obliging bookshop during your lunchbreak. Sadly, the forced rhyme of the poem itself did grate on me very quickly.

Achilles had an old teacher, called Chiron,

who gave the boy a lyre to vent his ire on.

If you are more tolerant of rhyme than I am then I suspect you'll really enjoy this.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all, especially the cute ones.

Some Book Swap Glamour

In honour of Valentine's Day, the BAFTAs, the Oscars and anything else slightly fancy, the Firestation Book Swap will be going all glam (as if an evening with myself and Marie Phillips wasn't swanky enough) this week as we welcome two rising stars of modern fiction.

Jessica Ruston was one of the guests at our very first Book Swap back in August 2009. At the time she had just published her first novel, Luxury, and she returns to talk about her brand new book, To Touch the Stars, which is all about high fashion and dark secrets. She is being hailed as the successor to authors such as Shirley Conran and Judith Krantz but her books definitely have a more modern take on the lives of the rich and famous.

And alongside Jess on the sofa will be Sarra Manning. Sarra is already a popular author with young adult readers with bestsellers such as the Diary of a Crush trilogy but You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a book for grown ups which, I hope, means it has lots more sex in it. Sarra worked at Melody Maker and Just Seventeen and her writing can frequently be seen in magazines such as Red, Grazia and Stella.

Jess is always a good laugh and Sarra shares my penchant for obscure Scandinavian bands so expect lots of high quality banter and spendid accesorising. I am already picking out my best frock.

The Firestation Book Swap kicks off at 7.30 prompt this Thursday 17th February. Tickets are £5 or you get in for free if you bake a cake. If any of my readers are thinking of coming along for the first time then leave a comment here and I will put you on the guestlist.

We also have a free Book Swap for kids coming up this Sunday, more details of that later in the week.

A Song For Sunday

Dolphins by Tim Buckley.

Island Hopping

In J. Maarten Troost's first book, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, we found him hanging out on the Pacific atoll of Kiribati while his lovely wife did a real job (some sort of humanitarian thing for the UN, as I recall).

Getting Stoned with Savages rejoins them a couple of years later. Having returned to the USA and really not enjoying it all that much, they head off for Vanuatu and Fiji. Once again, Mrs Troost will be employed while Mr Troost, well, won't be.

What I loved about the first book, which made it into my Top 10 of 2009, was the fact that the author was not a traveller, he wasn't passing through, he was actually living in a tropical paradise and pretty much doing nothing. This allowed him to get under the skin of the place and share the experience with the reader, tell us what it was really like, but still with the detached and slightly bewildered air of the outsider.

What it was really like, it turned out, was a bit shit. In some cases, quite literally. Swimming back to shore after his first dip in the sea to find a family taking a communal dump in his direction being one such example.

The Kiribati he got to know was beautiful but poor, with no real infastructure and plenty of dodgy goings on. It was great fun to read about but not quite as much fun to live there. It had its moments though, and Troost was eager to share them as well as the crap bits.

Much of that tone and humour is transported to this new book but it isn't quite as successful this time round. The author is moving about a bit, writing the first book, looking after a newborn baby and lots of other stuff that stops him from just bumming about. It was the fact that he had next to nothing to do on Kiribati that made his take on it so entertaining, it felt different to other travel books I had read. This is a bit more traditional, and I kinda wish it wasn't.

That is not to say that it isn't funny, informative, barbed, irreverent and entertaining - it is. It's just not quite as good as the last one. Which is a shame.

Nonetheless, if you are a fan of travel writing and have yet to sample Troost's wares then hop to it and grab hold of The Sex Lives of Cannibals. Once you've read it you'll be quite forgiving of this second one, which is still a heck of a lot more fun that most other books in the genre.

Secrets & Lies

I went to see a play, so I did. The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman. It has just opened at the Comedy Theatre in London with an impressive star cast, including one Keira Knightley.

The Children's Hour was written in the early 1930s and is set in a small boarding school for girls. One of the students, a difficult child named Mary, reacts to being punished for some minor misdemeanor by spreading a rumour that two of the teachers, played by Knightley and Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss, are lovers. This lie end up having major repurcussions, lesbians not being the most popular social group in America at the time.

I know a lot of people have a problem with Knightley. I happen to think she is rather a good actress. I thought she was great in Pride and Prejudice and also The Duchess, although my favourite screen performance of hers would be the little seen The Jacket with Adrien Brody, a movie well worth seeking out if you have the time.

Knightley has been clever with her choice of stage roles so far, I think. Neither Karen Wright in this play, nor her previous appearance as Jennifer in The Misanthrope, are the leads. Both productions are ensemble pieces. She isn't asked to carry the production in either case, taking a lot of the pressure off, I suspect. This enables her to concentrate on her character and how it fits within the rest of the play. And she is good at that. Very good, in fact.

As are the rest of the cast. I don't think there is a duff performance in here. Each character comes to the fore at different times, each actor given their moment and each seems to take that opportunity and do something special with it but, importantly, no one is trying to act anyone else off the stage here.

Elisabeth Moss is no more than a peripheral presence for the first two acts but has one of the play's most moving moments pretty much to herself towards the end. Ellen Burstyn could have chosen to chew the scenery as the elderly matriach whose total belief in the rumour brings ruin upon pretty much every character but she is incredibly restrained. I was close enough to the stage to catch some tiny glances and expressions that spoke volumes.

But, for me, the two stand out performances were from actors I had never heard of before. Tobias Menzies plays Joseph, the fiance of Keira's character, a good man who stands by both women as they go through this ordeal. He is splendid.

And then there is Bryony Hannah as the troubled teen whose blatant lie lands everyone in the shit. She is remarkable. I confidently predict that she will at the very least be nominated for awards for this performance and could well go on to be a hugely successful actress. A name to watch, mark my words.

The play itself is good, very good perhaps. I was not familiar with it, never having seen the film, but knew from almost the first few scenes what what going to happen. It didn't matter all that much, not to a Columbo fan like me, but it did take a little of the edge off. That being said, whenever I thought about the time The Children's Hour was written or how it must have played to a McCarthy era audience some time later, the author herself falling foul of the HUAC, I certainly found its impact amplified. The power of one small lie resonates across the decades and can be applied to all manner of situations. The play still carries some real clout.

The Children's Hour is directed by Ian Rickson who won awards and rave reviews for Jerusalem last year. The production design is simple but effective, the transitions between scenes see actors move furniture around in choreographed moves that add a dream-like quality to proceedings.

The thing with theatre, unlike television or cinema or books, is that each production exists for only a short period of time. This wonderful cast will only perform together for a couple of months. There will be no recording, no DVD to take home. You may have to pay quite a bit more for a theatre ticket than a movie ticket but you are being invited to witness something that won't be around for long. In this case, I would advise shelling out your hard-earned cash as it is something a bit special.

A Song For Sunday

Hangover by Betty Boo. A pop classic of the highest order. She knew how to do the do. Oh yes.

And she is dressed as a squaw. It rarely gets better than this.

The Word Made Flesh

I was sent this book from the States just before Christmas. I am not really a fan of tattoos, although I do find them fascinating on other people, so didn't expect to think much of it but I kept finding myself picking it up and dipping back in.

It is, essentially, a collection of photographs of tattoos people have had that are inspired by works of literature. It got me wondering, as I am prone to do on this blog, whether there was any quote that I would consider having engraved indelibly upon my flesh.

And I came to the conclusion that no, there isn't.

I guess most of the writers I really love are more about an accumulation of words then any one phrase or sentence. Perhaps something from The Odyssey, but I can't think of what it could be.

But who am I kidding? I'd never have a tattoo. I can't even bear to write a reminder on my hand. It just ain't gonna happen.

That being said. I did quite like the look of some of these.

 

All taken from The Word Made Flesh Website.

But, of course, the question I have been building up to is this:

Which literary quote would you have tattooed? And where? What font?

Or perhaps you already have one?

Do tell.