World Book Night: some old reviews

Good morning and happy World Book Night one and all.

For me, WBN isn't just about sharing the love of one book, but all books. Yesterday I reposted a review of Love in the Time of Cholera, the book I've chosen to give away, and here are links to some of the other WBN books I've read and reviewed over the years.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

A Fine Balance by Rohinron Mistry

I'm surprised to note that I've never reviewed Cloud Atlas, Northern Lights, or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, but then, I didn't love any of these. Had they chosen the complete His Dark Materials I would have chosen it without a doubt, for the second two books of Philip Pullman's epic are some of my favourite ever books. But Northern Lights didn't quite do it for me in the same way.

Since Christmas I have also been reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and am seriously impressed with it. But other books - for bookclubs, or programmes I run - keep getting in the way of it so I'm now saving it for my next holiday. Bring it on, I can't wait to return to some good old gothic victoriana!

For me, Love in the Time of Cholera was the pick of a good but not great list. Here then, is a link to the book I would have wanted to share with readers, had I had completely free choice. It is, as you might have guessed, Charles Palliser's masterpiece - The Quincunx

As part of World Book Night I'll also be purchasing a relatively unknown book that I like from an independent bookshop to give away. I don't know what it'll turn out to be, but I'll be back to share it with you tomorrow.

53 Books You'll Want to Read in 2010

This post is inspired by the excellent list produced on Bookmunch. I have always been frustrated by how difficult it can be to cobble together a list of books released in the future so am delighted that someone has already done the hard work and saved me the hassle! I have simply added three additional titles, and some comment to the ones I am particularly excited about. 

1. The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
2. The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner
3. Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
   
   
   
   
   Sounds like classic McGregor territory: the search for truth about the past in the objects and people of today. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was a beautiful snapshot image of life on one street, and although the Booker longlisted follow-up wasn't quite as good, he remains an incredibly talented and powerful writer. One to look out for.
   
   
   
4. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
   Philip Pullman does my head in at times, with his endless hatred of C.S. Lewis and his militant hit-you-over-the-head-with-it atheism. But he remains a wonderful storyteller and any new book from him promises a wonderful adventure. Billed as being particularly aimed at those who know their gospels (which I don't!), I'm nonetheless looking forward to learning something more about a subject (theology) which I find endlessly fascinating but can easily become dense and dull. Basically, Pullman is doing what I wish everyone would do: putting non-fiction into fiction, so that my impatient brain can take it in and enjoy the process at the same time.
   Bring on April!
   
   
5. Naming the Bones by Louise Walsh
6. Known to Evil by Walter Mosley
7. Monster 1959 by David Maine
8. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon
9. It Feels So Good When I Stop by Joe Pernice
10. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
11. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
12. Nemesis by Philip Roth
13. Wild Child by TC Boyle 
14. Three Days Before the Shooting by Ralph Ellison
15. Solar by Ian McEwan
    I was lucky enough to hear Ian McEwan reading from this in June of this year, and it is genuinely very funny. I was in a horrible mood going into the talk, but somewhere in the almost campus-novel comedy of his reading, my perception of Ian McEewan as a 'serious' writer was blown completely out of the water. An early tip for Booker success next year, I think.
    
    
16. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell
17. Point Omega by Don DeLillo
18. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
19. The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
20. Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
21. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
    
    
    
    
    When 1Q84 was published in Japan earlier this year it led to a rush of interest akin to that which greeted the release of Dan Brown's new book. The print run was raised from  100,000 to 480,000 and with the plot kept completly secret bookstores were inundated with pre-orders and queues on the day of release. The first of a two volume novel, 1Q84 is described as 'classic Murakami - a "complex and surreal narrative" that "shifts back and forth between tales of two characters, a man and a woman, who are searching for each other".
    No author reminds me why I love reading quite as well as Murakami.
    
    
    
    
22. The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell
23. This Party’s Got to Stop by Rupert Thomson
24. Beatrice & Virgil by Yann Martel
    Well, it's Martel's first novel since the 2002 Booker winning phenomenon that was Life of Pi. Promising another mix of fable, fantasy, and theology this is a book that will attract huge public attention whenever it is released in 2010
    
    
25. All That Follows by Jim Crace
26. The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle
27. Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes
28. Lean On Pete by Willy Vlautin
29. The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
30. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
31. Castle J Robert Lennon
32. Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis
33. The Canal by Lee Rourke
34. Canada by Richard Ford
35. The Leaping by Tom Fletcher
36. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
    
    
    
    
    Already published in the U.S. where it has attracted a massive controversy and no little praise, Eating Animals sees Jonathan Safran Foer's on the verge of fatherhood and facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf. His investigations into the meet industry ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.
    Not published here until Spring 2010, I am hoping that one of the many lovely people I know in the states might see fit to send it to me for Christmas this year (hint hint, wink wink!)
    
    
    
37. King Death by Toby Litt
38. Light Boxes by Shane Jones
39. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
40. The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Simm by Jonathan Coe
41. The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn
42. The Greek Affair by Simon Van Booy
43. Nazi Literature in the Americas – Roberto Bolano
44. Rupture by Simon Lelic
45. The Art of Pho by Julian Hanshaw
46. George Sprott by Seth
47. Taurus by Joseph Smith (author of The Wolf)
48. The Widow’s Tale by Mick Jackson
    
    
    
    
    Mick Jackson is an author who never ceases to surprise. From the charming madness of Underground Man, to the fabricated beastiary in Bears of England he never quite gives you what you expect and his work is all the better because of it. What you can be sure is that The Widow's Tale will be an enjoyable read, full of humanity, warmth, and a little dollop of the unexpected to boot.
    
    
    
49. The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan
50. In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
51. Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie
    The Sequal to Haround and the Sea of Stories, Luka promises another fable on the power of stories, and a life-affirming quest for life and passion. Published in October 2010 by Jonathan Cape, CCV publisher Dan Franklin has described it as “brilliant... as good as [Philip Pullman’s] Northern Lights”. I'm a huge Rushdie fan, next October can't come soon enough for me now.
    
    
52. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
    
    
    
    
    
    The final part of Patrick Ness's excuisite Chaos Walking trilogy, Monsters of Men promises another morally nuanced and occasionally disturbing tale of Todd and Viola, not to mention the very fate of New World itself.
    The Knife of Never Letting Go is the most exciting and thrilling young adult novel I have read in many years and The Ask and the Answer was a worthy sequal. Told in a gritty acerbic voice, and shot through with moments of utter beauty, Chaos Walking will be a classic trilogy read for many many years to come.
    
    
    
53. Ellipsis by Nikki Dudley
    
    
    
    
    Last but by no means least is this thrilling debut from London poet and novelist Nikki Dudley. Exciting, phsychologically complex, and disconcerting, it is a powerful tale of two misfits trying to uncover long hidden secrets about themselves and their pasts'. Dudley has an often startling eye for description and her simple poetic prose will delight readers looking for something slilghtly different in the crime thriller genre.
    
    

My Reading Mojo

This was written as a response to an article on Vulpes Libris charting the evolution of someone's reading habits over the years. I found it fascinating and decided to do the same...

Up until about age 14 I read all the time. It started with reading with my dad at bedtime to practice my reading but soon I had proved that I could read and got to sit back while he read to me. We read all sorts of environmentally friendly children's adventure books: the likes of Michael Morpurgo, the Greenwatch series, books about whaling by someone with the surname Smith. I remember regularly reading late into the night, particularly Matilda by Roald Dahl which I must have read 4 or 5 times. I read to escape, not because my childhood was hard but because the other worlds in those books were so fantastically exciting. The books helped me understand the world, learn what it was I most valued, and ultimately have a mighty great time doing it.

My big Eureka! moment also came with Lord of the Rings when I was 10 or 11. I had started it with my dad but soon the one chapter a night got too slow for me so I began taking it to school and reading on wet lunch breaks and the like. I flew though the last 400 pages or so and loved every single minute of it.

This sort of thing continued for the first year or two of secondary school before being overtaken by computer games (football management games proved the death of reading for me) and staring inanely at sport on the TV. I wasn't a particularly sociable teenager so it wasn't girls or alcohol which was responsible for this, probably just the overriding sense that reading wasn't the cool thing to be doing. Still, I had a 25 minute train journey to school every morning which had to be filled with something and I occasionally read during this (Christian Jacques Ramses series and a few others) but reading was more to fill time than anything else.

During GCSE's and A-Levels revision I read my set texts again and again. I must have read Lord of the Flies and Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence 4 or 5 times so that come the exams I loved them in an intellectual sense even if I didn't in an emotional sense. And all this enforced reading took its toll. When it came to university I didn't want to be told to read any more classics so I applied to study history.

A month before I started university I was sitting around home quite bored and decided to give Harry Potter a go. 6 days later I had read the first 4 books in a haze of adventurous excitement and for the next year or two everything I read was overshadowed by love of those books. Not that I remember successfully reading much else, other than a complete re-reading of Lord of the Rings, that is. I had a tough time personally and remember going to the campus bookshop one morning when I hadn't been able to sleep all night and buying the boxset which I then went back to my room and read one after the other again in about 8 days. I would read fansites and get breathlessly excited just discussing what might happen next, watched the movies slightly obsessively, and even used to buy the candy. (Yes, I was 19 or 20 at the time!)

That summer I had the reading, and life experience (I met the wonderful woman who later became my wife), which changed me. Having found another amazing fantasy world through Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials I read Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being and found intellectual, post-modernist, adult fiction which made my mind swim with ideas.

I would talk with Megan about the books we liked for hours. She had been a complete bibliophile as a child and read all the classics which I hadn't so she was like a beacon of the person I wanted to become. She opened my mind to all sorts of new reading possibilities and I hungrily devoured them. But as university got closer to the end, and then through my masters, I found that I was reading too many history texts to think about fiction. The longer this went on, the more I looked forward to finishing with education so that I could read for pleasure once more. For about 6 months I spent my time planning what I would read when I had free choice once more.

And then, the day I handed in my masters dissertation I sat in the union bar and looked out the window to see that Waterstone's was seeking temporary booksellers. I applied, was interviewed, was not chosen. Not at first anyway. But after the first, second, and possibly third candidates turned it down they offered it to me and I jumped at the opportunity.

The 4 years I spent at Waterstone's were a veritable roller-coaster of literary discovery. Being surrounded everyday by so many wonderful books is an experience I shall never forget. But it ended in February of this year when I got a new office job and since then my reading mojo has definitely taken a downturn. This saddens me greatly, but I don't know to get it back.

Whether at the very heart of my life or simmering quietly on the back burner, reading has always been at the heart of my life and it is something I am incredibly grateful for.

Once Upon A Time in the North - Philip Pullman

Read: May 2008

Texan balloonist Lee Scoresby is 24 and in search of adventure. And when he lands in Novy Odense, a small town in the frozen north, he finds himself in the midst of election fever, as the bright new mayoral candidate Ivan Dimitrovich Poliakov seeks to win populist support for his anti-bear policies. But behind the populist posturing, powerful corporate forces are at work, with oil their ultimate target. Tempestuous and ever eager, Lee and his hare daemon Hester are first courted by the powerful faction, but soon find themselves risking their lives to fight against the candidate and his shady entourage. And then, just in time, Iorek Byrnison appears to offer his powerful support.

Like Lyra’s Oxford, this is a short story published to fill the His Dark Materials gap until the long heralded Book of Dust is written. At less than 100 pages it is a brief adventure, barely an evenings read. It is fast flowing and enthralling, at times you remember just what a good writer Pullman is. It explains another piece of the His Dark Materials universe, depicting the meeting of Lee and Iorek, and offering an interesting insight into the Polar Bear history. There are moments of comedy: neither Iorek nor Lee can pronounce the others name, and Lee struggles to pilot his balloon. But at other times the plot races along at such a speed that you are not entirely sure what is happening. Like Lyra’s Oxford, it is too short to ever truly satisfy the voracious hunger of a His Dark Materials fan. It is a bitesize treat, not bad, but nowhere near as good as the real thing.

And the biggest problem is the price. How on earth do the publishers decide that this book should have an RRP of £9.99? Sure it is nicely presented: hardback, with woodcut illustrations and complete with a small game at the back. But essentially it is a collectors trinket, the sort of guaranteed easy sale that publishers love these days, a work that will sell on the brand rather than because it is any good. £9.99 is an absurd price for a book of this size – you can buy War and Peace for that much! Or how about 5 of Penguin’s Popular Classics at £2.00 each? Or save £3 and you could discover another great teenage fantasy series like Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines or Garth Nix’ Sabriel. £10 is a lot of money for something so slight.

Once Upon a Time in the North is a nice, exciting evenings read. Buy it, if you like His Dark Materials you will love it. But there are many other books that you can buy that are much better value.


6 out of 10

The Only Son - Stephane Audeguy

Something exciting happened to me today. A book I have been waiting months for, finally arrived! But first, a little backstory

Megan and I were in America visiting her family last year, when her step-mom gave us a $20 gift voucher for Barnes and Noble. Well, I hardly need tell you that we were excited. So off we went, eager to sample the local fare.

Barnes and Noble were running an interesting promotion along the lines of Waterstone's recent New Voices, a selection of debut authors with exciting potential. So I stopped by to have a read, and found a book which caught my eye. In every sense, The Theory of Clouds, seemed perfect for me: an ephemeral subject, sparse plot, beautiful sounding prose. The blurb on the back likened it to Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes as well. Eager and excited, I bought the book, unsure exactly what to expect.

Back in Norwich I started it in the bath one night. It was strange, seemingly one biography after another with a thin plot struggling to tie them all together. I had not read anything like it, and wasn't sure what to think. But soon I was engrossed and by the time I finished it, breathless and awe struck one quiet pre-Christmas afternoon at work, I knew I had found a book to love. I was stunned. But no-one I knew had read it, and I wasn't entirely sure of the quality of my taste. So I did something that I had never done before: I read it again. Immediately. And the second time it was even better. In my insanely long review I described it as "the book I have always wanted to read." And it was.

So I recommended it to some other bookshops, put a staff recommendation on it, and convinced my Dad to read it too. We sold 4 or 5 copies in the first 3 months (good going for hardback fiction in a our Campus bookshop) and my Dad loved it. A couple of months later, I even went as far as to encourage the New Writing Partnership to include the author, Stephane Audeguy, in their New Writing Worlds festival (I liked the idea of my favourite unknown author alongside J.M. Coetzee, one of my favourite all time authors). It was too late for him to be included, but hopefully next summer he will be here.

And ever since the day I finished it for the second time, I have been anxiously anticipating the English language release of Stephane Audeguy's second novel, The Only Son. It is a fictionalised biography of Rousseau's lost brother, Fancois, a man of whom next to nothing is known, besides a paragraph in Rousseau's Confessions. Having already won the Prix des Deux Magots in France, I was pretty excited.

And now we get to the significance. IT ARRIVED TODAY! I had just spent 10 minutes being trained in the new Sony Reader by someone who knew nothing about either books, or technology, and was feeling intrigued with the idea of an eBook reader. Then i was handed a small red book, and immediately I remembered exactly why I just don't think i would ever really use an eBook reader. The Only Son is a beautiful book to behold. It has a smooth, unfashionably simple jacket, is strangely short and broad. I have never had a hardback with crinkle cut pages, they are thick and corse to the touch. The typeface is wonderfully familiar from The Theory of Clouds, the smell deep and unknown. And instantly on being handed the book, I was filled with grand enthusiasm, drunk on the potential of these 246 pages, and the adventures to be had within them.

I have only read the first chapter, but so far, so good. When Andy Murray has finished his tennis this evening, I will eagerly devour some more. It is an oft stated, and commonly known fact, but books are utterly enthralling. The more you think you know them, the more they can surprise you. No matter how many I see each day, I am never able to get over that rush of Christmas mornining-esque excitement that I feel when i pick up a book and realise that I want to read it. No matter how much I moan about pay, I am privileged to be able to spend my time working with something I love, and to be charged with sharing this passion with people whenever they step into the shop.


On another note, Waterstone's has today launced another fantastic promotion, Philip Pullman's Writer's Table. I assure you that I am very far from a corporate hack, but credit must be given where credit is due. In the last year, Waterstone's has really made a move to be seen as celebrating great writing. They were becoming far too concerned with profit margins and business speak, so this change in focus has been a delight to witness. First there was Sebastian Faulks Writer's Table, then the fantastic What's Your Story competition (some of the entries, if you havn't read them, were absolutely fantastic), and now Philip Pullman has followed in Sebastian Faulks footprints.

To be given an inside view of Mr. Pullman's tasts is enthralling. Every day, I work with many different promotions, few of which focus on backlist titles, even fewer have a wider purpose than discounting popular book in order to sell more of them. So isn't it a joy to have a non discounted table of books, with a consistant theme throughout them all. Pullman's taste shines throughout, from the inevitable Richard Dawkins, to a whole selection of humourous novels and a couple of books on art and design. Already I have had two customers comment on how interesting it is, on the great variety of books, and how unknown some of hem are. Each comes complete with a little handwritten recommendation from Philip Pullman (one even has a tip-ex mark on it!) which says something about why he chose the book, what he likes about it, or why it should be read. Put together, they look completely unlike anything else in the shop, and offer that rare of things, substance over style.

So well done Waterstone's. You may do some things wrong, (from your absurd decision to remove National Book Tokens from visibility, to your ignoing of Aleksandar Hemon's fantastic new novel, The Lazarus Project) but in this, all praise to you. I think you have realised that big business has a profound place in supporting and celebrating literature, and that perhaps your best chance of long term sustainability is to create a reputation as a company who puts quality above quantity, and who works hard to ensure that books are at the heart of everything you do.

Goodnight people, Andy Murray has just won the first set, and I am eager to read another chapter or two before bed. I love fiction, I really do.