Driven to Read

As a strong advocate of literacy and bibliotherapy, even I have to admit to having limits as this story from the BBC indicates:

A bus driver has been suspended after a passenger filmed him apparently reading while driving along a dual carriageway in Birmingham.

The passenger, who wishes to remain anonymous, filmed the National Express West Midlands driver steering with his elbows while holding a small book.

They said they took the footage after getting on the number 61 bus at Selly Oak at 2005 BST on Monday.

National Express West Midlands said “immediate action” was taken.

The footage has since been posted on video sharing website YouTube.

The story is here.


I wonder if he was reading this book as it has become ubiquitous in the UK?

London Book Fair Opens Under the Volcano

The London Book Fair gets underway at Earl’s Court today. This is an event I enjoy attending annually to gauge the state of publishing which has been suffering from the twin-pronged approach of economic and technological challenges.

This year the Fair faces another problem: the ash falling over Europe from the Icelandic volcano that has cleared the skies of aircraft. Many people will be unable to attend the Fair due to the air-travel blackout, while others on mainland Europe are changing their air-travel arrangements to ferry, road and Eurostar Rail methods. The result might be a shortage of attendees from the United States and other overseas territories.

As the madness of the Fair arrives in London this week, The Observer’s Robert McCrum spends a day with legendary agent Andrew Wylie in New York:

Today he comes to greet me in the tranquil, overheated hallway of his 12th-floor office as the day closes and the evening light merges into the fluorescent glare of uptown off-Broadway. In person, Wylie is slight, courteous and soft-spoken -- as if with his dark suit and formal good manners he can live down his reputation as competitive, self-willed, transgressive and ruthless.

The contrast between his polite self-presentation and his erstwhile reputation as a hell-raiser and “a lizard” makes for an edgy formality. But it doesn’t take long for his sardonic bad-boy self to break through the mask. Wylie's minimalist office displays several promotional copies of the Nabokov backlist in various foreign editions. When I comment on the number of literary estates (Borges, Mishima, Waugh, Lampedusa and Updike, to name some of the most prominent) controlled by the Wylie Agency, he says, with a mirthless laugh: "People are dying like flies." It's at moments like this that you can see why, in the Anglo-American book world, he is known, simply as "the Jackal".

Once a more than slightly feral predator, however, Wylie has now become something far more menacing in the literary undergrowth. In a business environment where many of the principal publishers, booksellers and rival literary agents are reeling from the remorseless depredations of recession and digitisation (the IT revolution), he can make a good claim to be the most powerfully composed and uniquely global writers' representative on either side of the Atlantic, a king of the book publishing jungle.

McCrum’s piece is lengthy, interesting and here.

The Best Unread Books of the Decade

As many in the media present their lists featuring books that defined the decade, I often ponder upon the books that missed my radar. January Magazine will be unveiling its best of 2009 lists shortly. While sending my crime and thriller choices to Rap Sheet editor, J. Kingston Pierce, I pondered on the games fate and luck play in life. Many highly successful writers have often indicated that much of their success can be laid down to “luck” or “fortune” and that it took many clicks on the wheel of fortune to get success. I know many worthy books remain on the shelf because fortune and fate didn’t play a hand. I enjoy books that give me challenge and I am always on the look out for something that can alter or reinforce my view of life.

It was rather interesting to read The Guardian’s decade’s best unread books:

While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years, many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unnaccountably never made the 'best of' or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn't have got away.

I read this listing and selected the following to purchase this afternoon as they intrigue me and I am surprised I missed them:

From Christopher MacLehose, MacLehose Press publisher:

Journal by Hélène Berr, published in 2008, deserves to be read and studied in every school in the civilised world, read and reread for what it tells of the circumstances of the arrest of a young and brilliant Jewish girl in Paris and her eventual murder in Bergen-Belsen, days before that camp was liberated. The story of how the text of her journal came to light so many years later is remarkable enough. The journal, which is a love story too and an account of inescapable horror, is beautiful and beautifully translated by David Bellos, whose Afterword entitled France and the Jews is also essential reading.

From Isobel Akenhead, Hodder & Stoughton women’s fiction editor:

The one book I would say I felt almost physically heartbroken about not succeeding with in the last decade was The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson. She's the most phenomenally talented (and bestselling) American author, whose unique voice just sings off the page, and this brilliant novel tells the tale of a woman who has to search through her own past to uncover what really happened to a little girl who has just been found dead in her swimming pool. It's as pacy as a thriller, but so rich that you feel you're reading something much deeper. There were a number of reasons it wasn't the success we hoped for -- primarily I think that it trod the line between commercial and literary in a way that made the retailers struggle to understand it. But I'd urge anyone to read it -- I feel absolutely sure they wouldn't be disappointed.

Here’s The Guardian’s complete list of books that may have missed your radar.

Interview: Thomas H. Cook

Today in January Magazine, contributing editor Ali Karim interviews Thomas H. Cook, author of The Fate of Katherine Carr and a writer who just might be the best known author you’ve never heard of.

“You like puzzling out the solutions to mysteries?” asks Karim. “Then tackle this one: why isn’t American Thomas H. Cook one of the world’s biggest-selling authors? He’s prolific, with more than two dozen crime and suspense novels to his credit, plus non-fiction books and anthologies he has edited. He won an Edgar Award for his 1996 novel, The Chatham School Affair, and 2005’s devastating Red Leaves was nominated for an Edgar, a Crime Writer’s Association Dagger Award, an Anthony Award, a Barry Award and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award.”

Read Karim’s interview with Cook here.

Lightning Strikes Twice

January Magazine has been following Linwood Barclay’s career for many years. Thus we know, as well as anyone can, that his success with No Time For Goodbye certainly is no flash in the pan. As reported by The Bookseller:

Thanks in part to a spot in W H Smith's "£2.99 if you buy the Times" promotion, Linwood Barclay's Too Close To Home (Orion) has soared to the top of the bestseller lists, in another strong week for the trade.Barclay's follow-up to the 2008 smash hit, No Time for Goodbye (Orion), sold 45,622 copies during the seven days to 1st August, in a week when book sales jumped 2.5% on the previous week to 4.6m copies sold—a 2009 high. £30.9m was spent at UK book retailers last week, according to Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market data, up 5.1% year on year.And in exactly the same scenario as last year, Jeffery Deaver's latest thriller has to settle for second position behind Barclay. The Broken Window (Hodder), his second Kathryn Dance thriller, sold 32,795 copies through the market last week. In the same week last year, the continuing popularity of Barclay's "Richard and Judy" Summer Read, No Time for Goodbye, ensured Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme thriller, The Sleeping Doll (Hodder), was kept off top spot.

The full piece is here.

Linwood’s latest novel, Fear the Worst, has just been released, and the Canadian author and journalist is embarking on a virtual book tour:

Join Linwood Barclay as he travels the blogosphere in August 2009 with Pump Up Your Book Promotion Public Relations on his first virtual book tour to discuss his new suspense novel, “Fear the Worst” (Bantam Books).

One evening your child doesn’t come home for dinner. And just like that the world you thought you knew becomes a strange and terrifying place.

Tim Blake thought he knew his teenage daughter as well as he could know anyone. But when Sydney vanishes into thin air, all she leaves behind are questions. At the hotel where she was supposedly working, no one has ever heard of her. Even her closest friends can’t tell Tim what Sydney was really doing in the weeks before her disappearance. Now, as the days pass without a word, Tim uncovers secrets about a daughter he didn’t know and a dark world of corruption, exploitation, and murder right around the corner from his once seemingly safe life.

Harlan Coben Isn’t Lost at All

At The Rap Sheet today, January Magazine contributing editor Ali Karim talks to rising star Harlan Coben.

For all of his fame, author Harlan Coben is remarkably low on hubris and pretentiousness. As a result, I’ve always enjoyed his company. He was particularly charming with my family during the 2007 Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, and in the process turned my son, Alexander, into a huge fan of his series featuring sports agent and troubleshooter Myron Bolitar. That series began with Deal Breaker in 1995 and this year added a ninth installment, Long Lost, which sends Bolitar and his horny sidekick, billionaire and martial artist Windsor “Win” Horne Lockwood III, into the center of a global conspiracy.

Although Coben cut his teeth on suburban crime fiction set in and around New York City and New Jersey, where he was born in 1962, in Long Lost he proves to be adept at working on a much broader canvas.

Karim and Coben’s exchange is here.

Reading Between the Lies

Some people lie about what they have read and, according to Stephen Adams at The Telegraph, it’s more than just a few:

Under the cover of an anonymous questionnaire, two-thirds of people admitted to fibbing about having read a book.

Surprisingly, given its brevity and pace, 1984 heads the top 10 list of books we falsely claim to have read.

The rest of the list is largely predictable, stuffed full of weighty volumes most have seen dramatised on television but not read line by endless line.

Besides War and Peace and Ulysses -- which can both exceed 1,000 pages depending on edition -- other unread works include the Bible, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and A Brief History of Time, by Professor Stephen Hawking.

Many also bluffed about reading classics by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters.

And why did all those people lie? In some cases, it was to make themselves appear hotter:

He concluded it all boiled down to sex.

He said: “Research that we have done suggests that the reason people lied was to make themselves appear more sexually attractive.”

Meanwhile, over at The Guardian we see that celebrities are not exempt from attempting to amp their sex appeal by (ahem) enhancing their intellectual profile.

Pop star Jarvis Cocker lied about having read Tess of the D'Urbervilles in his Oxford University admissions interivew. (It didn’t help.) Filmmaker Stephen Frears says he doesn’t think he “read Ulysses to the end, but I can’t remember if I actually lied about that one.” The poet Benjamin Zephaniah denies lying about what he’s read. “If I’m asked about a book I don’t just want to say yes or no, I want to discuss it so to me there’s no point in lying.”

Barbarians at the Gates

As an observer of the woes to publishing and literacy coming from the effects of the global economic meltdown, I was dismayed to read that reading and book-selling in general are under severe pressure. In fact one of the reasons I’ve not posted for a while is that I have been busy keeping my own business interests afloat when many around me are looking for government life-rafts.

To cope with the despair and pervasive gloom, I find reading novels to be the best form of escape in these surreal times. In my opinion -- and that of many other observers -- reading is integral to a healthy society, especially in the young. However, even any positive news relating to books and publishing in today’s business environment is bittersweet. For many book buyers, there has never been a better time to snag bargains especially in the used-book market as many people cull their bookshelves, looking to convert printed words into cash. Last week Forbes reported that Portland, Oregon-based Powell’s Books is seeing a huge surge in people selling their old books. While bookselling has never been more challenging and the woes from the United States have started to spread to the United Kingdom, there was a surreal story that The Guardian reported on Saturday of a most bizarre book sale:

In the end it was difficult to say whether it was a book lover's wildest, happiest dream -- or a worst nightmare.

From dawn till dusk yesterday thousands of bibliophiles, not to mention a good few traders who were looking to turn a quick profit, plundered a giant warehouse brimming with free books.

Some loaded up their cars with mostly second-hand novels, biographies, reference books and magazines.

Others, including ones who had travelled hundreds of miles to join in the legal looting, drove vans straight into the heart of the warehouse and crammed in their choice of dog-eared treasures.

Those who had no cars carried books home in sagging bags and crates, pushed them away in shopping trolleys or in prams or wobbled away on bikes.

Tables, chairs, bookshelves were also carted out. The south-west had not seen anything like it since the scenes of plundering on Branscombe Beach in Devon when the container ship Napoli spilled crates of goodies on to the shingle.

The frenzy was the result of a book retailer moving out of a warehouse it leased on a trading estate in Bristol but leaving its books behind -- hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of them. The owners of the warehouse, which covers more than an acre, invited local people to help themselves to any books they wanted.

The Daily Mail opted for high drama and shocking photos:

The treasure hunters stand knee-deep in Danielle Steels, Len Deightons and Jeffrey Archers, hoping to find more exotic literary fare.

This is the scene at a huge book warehouse whose contents are being given away after they were abandoned.

Seeing the photographs makes me wonder if the barbarians really are inching over to our gates. The Chinese have a famous proverb which doubles up as a warning “May you live in interesting times.” Seeing those photos reinforces my view that we certainly do.

Interview: Natasha Cooper author of A Poisoned Mind

International bestselling author Natasha Cooper talks about her professional background, her interest in today’s economic uncertainties and what it is she finds so fascinating about the complex world of laws and lawsuits.

January Magazine contributing editor, Ali Karim, sets up his exclusive interview with great care:

A crime writer who does much to support the crime-fiction genre both in the United Kingdom and United States is the extremely talented Natasha Cooper. It was just before the millennium that I first met Cooper (a pseudonym used by Daphne Wright), back when she held the demanding and prestigious post of chair of the British Crime Writers Association. At the time, I’d just finished reading her novel Creeping Ivy (1998), the first of her Trish Maguire legal thrillers, and I was fascinated with her ability to compose such vivid prose about the darker side of human motivations. I readily ranked her in the same league as Ruth Rendell.

The full interview is here.

Reasons to be Cheerful Even When the Bubble Burst

I had a surreal experience recently meeting up with Mark Sanderson, who writes the “Literary Life” column for The Telegraph and who has written a novel called Snow Hill that will be published by HarperCollins in 2009. The surreal angle is that, when we met at the HarperCollins crime dinner recently, we discovered in a surreal twist of fate that Sanderson and I both attended the same primary school in a village in Cheshire in the 1970s.

During that excellent dinner, I also discovered that HarperCollins editor Julia Wisdom’s first rock concert was seeing the British Heavy Metal band Hawkwind, who also happened to be one of my all time favorite bands, as well as that of Ian Rankin. Over the meal, Wisdom and I discussed the merits of Heavy Metal and Hawkwind’s psychedelic brand of space opera, especially their ground-breaking 1973 concept double album, Space Ritual, which was recorded live in London and Liverpool in December 1972. This album is an astounding mesh of science fiction, drugs and heavy rock and features writing from British SF writer Micheal Moorcock, as well as poet Robert Calvert and the whole Hawkwind entourage, including Lemmy who was a.k.a. Ian Kilmister who later formed Motorhead.

So with Hawkwind in my mind currently; I am pleased to announce that Reasons to be Cheerful (Adelita) by Paul Gorman is being released next month in the UK. It celebrates the short life of graphic artist Barney Bubbles who helped design the covers and imagery of many Hawkwind albums including Space Ritual and the definitive In Search of Space. Bubbles also designed graphics that Hawkwind used in their concerts. But Bubbles worked with many other British acts, and the title of Gorman’s book relates to the iconic Ian Drury and the Blockheads single of the same name.

It seems Bubbles made the transition from Hawkwind’s brand of SF Heavy Metal to the raw pulse of the emerging British Punk rock scene, reports The Sunday Times:

Soon Bubbles was designing record covers for Hawkwind, an explosion of ideas that pushed their freeform space-rock into a new dimension. The 1971 classic X in Search of Space, which unfolded into the shape of a cruciform hawk, was an elaborate triumph of sci-fi nouveau. “It was in the days of LSD, and I think Barney used to take the odd acid tab when he was doing the sleeves," laughs the Hawkwind co-founder Dave Brock. “You can probably see the results of that in his artwork, like Space Ritual.” Indeed, with its sleeve panels of cosmic embryos, nipple planets and sonic waves, Space Ritual combined Bubbles’s ideas on philosophy, theatre and art. Still he refused to sign his work, though his reputation was growing apace.

By the mid-1970s, Bubbles made the transition from hippie to punk, reshaping [New Musical Express] NME’s logo and landing a job as in-house designer at Stiff Records. His graphics gave the fledgling label a sharp, smart new identity. He created sleeves for Nick Lowe, the Damned, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello and more — many of which cleverly subverted art movements such as dada and constructivism. It was a fiercely intelligent streak he carried through to F-Beat, Radar and Go! Discs. “His sleeve work was sensational,” asserts the Stiff photographer Brian Griffin. “And his work rate was phenomenal. I never saw Barney sleep, ever. Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick is one of the great art pieces of the 20th century. It’s mind-blowing. I think it’s up there with a Picasso painting.”

You can see some of Bubbles’ work from Word Magazine here. However, like many creative people, Barney Bubbles was a troubled soul who tragically ended his life, here reported by Mark Paytrees at the Hawkwind fan site Starfarer:

Barney was struggling. The regular outlets for his work were drying up. He was underpaid for the work he was still doing, and a love affair crumbled around him. "I used to do this magazine with him called Y," recalls Brian Griffin. "And one day we had this argument about the rude words in the text. It was the only argument we ever had. I went round to see him and patch it up, and he'd lacerated his face with a razorblade." Nik Turner also witnessed a more desperate Barney around this time. "I got a call from his girlfriend, who said, 'Come round and help us, Barney's threatening everyone with a knife.' I did and he said, 'Look, I'll kill you too.' Then he threw the knife on the ground. He was having a nervous breakdown. Soon afterwards, he committed himself to a hospital."But Barney never recovered. "He phoned me up on the morning he committed suicide," Griffin remembers. "He said, 'Beej, I really feel terrible.' I recall him being worried about his VAT. I said, 'Don't worry, after I've finished shooting this Echo & The Bunnymen video I'll come straight over.' I finished early, mid-afternoon, and I phoned up. But it was too late. His sister came to the phone and said, 'Barney's killed himself.'"

Costa Male

Having an awards list from Costa Coffee seems apt when you consider that strong coffee is what you need when faced with a novel that refuses to be put down. The BBC reports that the big issue with this year’s awards is that the shortlist for best novel is all male:

De Bernieres has been nominated for his book, A Partisan's Daughter, which judges described as “an elegant love story about the lies we tell ourselves and why we have to”.

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave tells the story of three young characters, including Little Bee, a 16-year-old refugee from Nigeria, and how their lives intertwine. The book was inspired by the author's early childhood in West Africa and a visit to a detention centre in Essex.

Trauma by Patrick McGrath is described as a “riveting read”

And Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture is about an elderly character approaching her 100th birthday.

There are five categories in all, the others being poetry, biography, first novel and children's. Each category winner receives £5,000.

The overall winner receives £25,000 and will be announced on 27 January, 2009.

Personally I was delighted to see Man Booker longlisted and CWA Dagger winner Tom Rob Smith shortlisted for Best First Novel.

Best Novel Award

• Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
• Chris Cleave, The Other Hand
• Louis de Bernieres, A Partisan’s Daughter
• Patrick McGrath, Trauma

First Novel Award

• Poppy Adams, The Behaviour of Moths
• Sadie Jones, The Outcast
• Jennie Rooney, Inside the Whale
• Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

Biography Award

• Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End
• Judith Mackrell, Bloomsbury Ballerina
• Sathnam Sanghera, If You Don't Know Me By Now
• Jackie Wullschlager, Chagall

Poetry Award

• Ciaran Carson, For All We Know
• Adam Foulds, The Broken Word
• Kathryn Simmonds, Sunday at the Skin Launderette
• Greta Stoddart, Salvation Jane

Children’s Book Award

• Keith Gray, Ostrich Boys
• Saci Lloyd, The Carbon Diaries 2015
• Michelle Magorian, Just Henry
• Jenny Valentine, Broken Soup
  

According to The Independent:

The Costa judges whittled 616 submissions down to 25 books. Known as the Whitbread before it was taken over by the coffee chain in 2006, the competition is unique in bringing together adult and children's fiction as well as biography and poetry.

The overall winner will be announced in January and will receive £25,000.
The youngest contender is the Liverpool-born Jennie Rooney, a 28-year-old lawyer who completed her first novel Inside the Whale during lunch breaks from her legal practice. She will find herself competing in the first-novel category against Sadie Jones, daughter of a Jamaican poet, Evan Jones. Sadie Jones's debut, The Outcast, set in post-war suburban England, has already been shortlisted for the all-female Orange Prize. The only man to make it on to the first-novel shortlist is a former screen writer, Tom Rob Smith, whose Stalinist-era Child 44 was described as "unputdownable".

This year's judges include the author Lisa Jewell; the actress and writer Pauline McLynn; the journalist and broadcaster Michael Buerk; the poet Roger McGough; and the writer Victoria Hislop. A final panel of judges, to include a member of the book-reading public, will be announced next month.

While The Guardian’s coverage includes asking some of the shortlisted authors what they would do with the money. (Charity, says Tom Rob Smith. Lollipops for his children says Sebastian Barry.)

Morgan on the Failure of Capitalism

I’m a big follower of the work of Gumshoe nominated Richard Morgan, having known him since he debuted with Altered Carbon. Morgan was recently interviewed at the SF Web site IO9 and his insight is always of interest, especially in these economic meltdown days.

I was intrigued at Morgan’s response to Alex Carnevale’s question relating to Morgan’s take on the economic situation and what he had written in an earlier novel:

Market Forces was a screenplay and you picked it apart for a novel. It's eerily prescient -- what does it have to say about what's happened with the economy?

I'm kinda torn because on the one hand it's always nice to be right. On the other hand, I own a house like everybody else. And I don't want to see its value drop by a third. I am constantly perplexed by the reaction to Market Forces, especially the reaction in America. I didn't really think I was saying anything startlingly off the wall. To me it seemed like I was extrapolating a fairly obvious line. Anyone who knows anyone who works in high-risk financial institutions. Anybody who has friends who are merchant bankers, or stockbrokers or commodity dealers or has anything to do with that world will tell you, and I had a number of e-mails of people saying this, this is how these people operate. It's a high-testosterone environment. These people thrive on risk and massive fast success. It's a self-reinforcing loop. The more successful you are, the more testosterone you build, and the bigger risks you're prepared to take. Inevitably you're heading for a crash with that, it's impossible to sustain.

The book was really written as a critique not so much of the systems but of the mindset of this kind of boorish American business model asshole machismo. I didn't really think I was saying anything spectacularly unusual. I thought anybody who looked at would say, "Oh. Yeah, that's right." I ran into an awful lot of people for whom market forces are a kind of religious faith. I hate to caricature, but I do think American culture has a faith problem in the sense that there's much more of a willingness on that side of the Atlantic to take things on faith, and just accept stuff and believe in something wholeheartedly.

In Europe people just seem to be a lot more cynical about these things, whatever it may be, if it's religion or politics or whatever. And yet it would appear there are a lot of people for whom free markets are tantamount to a kind of religious faith. And by writing the book I'd stomped on that as if I had written a viciously anti-Christian satire. That may be it, I don't know. It may be that it was a book in which it's hard to sympathize with everybody because the characters are all fairly unpleasant.

As for what's happened now, I can just say, "Yep, see." It's not a very emotional "Yep, see," because to me it doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to predict something like this.

Read the full IO9 interview here and there’s more from Alex Carnevale here in “Novelists Write Our Way Out of The Financial Crisis” or stick around IO9 with Meredith Woerner and get really depressed when you discover “Why the Economy is to Blame for More Night Rider.”

Photo of Richard Morgan (left) and Ali Karim taken around the time Altered Carbon was first released. Photo courtesy Ali Karim.

Interview: Mark Billingham

In a January Magazine exclusive interview, contributing editor Ali Karim sits down with British crime fictionist Mark Billingham (In the Dark, Death Message) and asks why the author has decided to take a break from police procedurals, how he took to composing a standalone novel and how he constructs credible dialogue. Says Karim:

Mark Billingham is a very interesting writer. That’s true not only because he’s one of Britain’s most sought-after stand-up comedians (though his act can be somewhat R-rated in places) and has also worked as an actor, but because he launched right out of the gates with a strong and astonishing debut novel called Sleepyhead (2001). That book heralded the start of a major London-based police procedural series featuring Inspector Tom Thorne and his team of inner-city cops. There have since been half a dozen additional Thorne novels, the most recent being last year’s Death Message, which showed that text messaging can have a decidedly dark side.

The full interview is here.

Rushdie and the Law

Sir Salman Rushdie has been in the press rather a lot lately. His novel The Enchantress of Florence has been nominated yet again for a Man Booker Prize marking its spot on the controversial longlist. The shortlist will be announced at the beginning of September with the winner being awarded on October 14th. Rushdie is likely a favorite for the award, as last month he was awarded the Best of the Bookers for 1981’s Booker winner Midnights Children. I read last week that Ex-Special Branch detective Ron Evans mentions Rushdie in a negative manner in his autobiography On Her Majesty's Service which is due for release shortly. One of the negative comments alleges that the team of protection officers nicknamed Rushdie “Scruffy” as we reported here last week.

This has reportedly enraged the well-known author, especially as the story has spread like wildfire from traditional print media -- in this case The Telegraph -- into the blogsphere, as reported by the Guardian, who devoted the whole of its page two on the matter under the headline “‘I was never called Scruffy’ -- Rushdie set to sue over former bodyguard’s claims:”

Ron Evans, the book’s author, claims Rushdie was imprisoned by his guards who “got so fed up with his attitude that they locked him in a cupboard under the stairs and all went to the local pub for a pint or two. When they were suitably refreshed they came back and let him out.”

The author was alerted to the claims by a newspaper story about the alleged cupboard incident last weekend, which has subsequently been picked up on websites and blogs.

Rushdie said: "The simple fact of the matter is that nothing of this sort happened. My relationship with my protection team was always cordial, certainly entirely professional. This kind of absurd behaviour never occurred. There are three references in his article to drinking on duty - it is absolutely forbidden for police officers, particularly in possession of firearms, to drink on duty. They did not do so.

"The idea of them raiding my friend's wine cellars then me asking them to pay for this is completely fictitious. It is absurd the idea that they would lock me in a cupboard and go to the pub.

“It is like a bad comedy. My relations with the protection officers were cordial and I am still friendly with a few of them. At the end of my nine years of protection they held a reception for me. I had a lot of sympathy and understanding from the police. Our relationship was the exact opposite of what has been written. I never heard myself called by the name Scruffy in nine years.”

Read more about why Rushdie is employing lawyers to prove his name that he was never referred to as “Scruffy.”

Rushdie or “Scruffy”?

After reporting that Salman Rushdie was awarded the Best of the Bookers this month for 1981’s Booker winner Midnights Children; I was amused to read that Ex-Special Branch detective Ron Evans writes less flatteringly about the award winning author in the UK Telegraph:

In his autobiography On Her Majesty's Service, Evans paints an unflattering picture of Rushdie as tight-fisted, rude and arrogant, and claims the team of protection officers nicknamed him Scruffy because of his unkempt appearance.

He said the protection team were expected to pay him rent for their sparse lodgings in a safe house, and were on one occasion confined to their rooms so Rushdie -- codenamed Joe -- could spent an intimate evening with girlfriend and later third wife Elizabeth West.

Evans was assigned to armed protection duties in 1989, when the controversial author, now 61, wrote the Satanic Verses, which was condemned for its allegedly blasphemous depiction of the Prophet Mohammed and banned in India, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The revelations make for amusing reading especially when they locked Rushdie in a cupboard and went to the pub. The Telegraph piece is here.

Meanwhile, Rushdie has been nominated for yet another Man Booker. (This time for The Enchantress of Florence.) You can see that longlist here. The shortlist will be announced at the beginning of September with the winner being awarded on October 14th.

King’s Short Treats

As someone who is surrounded by books, I have to prioritize my reading carefully. Unfortunately some books get left behind on my To-Be-Read pile when a favorite author’s work arrives on my doorstep.

One writer whose new releases automatically leap to the top of my TBR pile as soon as the postman calls is Stephen King. I have collected his work since I was an adolescent and was amused to see how much his older works are worth because, according to Books and Magazine Collector, he is the third most collectable author in the United Kingdom. The new issue Books and Magazine Collector devotes a lengthy section to collecting Stephen King first editions.

While at the Harrogate crime fiction festival earlier this month, I was graciously invited to celebrate Peter Robinson’s 21 years of Inspector Banks at a cocktail party hosted by Hodder and Stoughton, Robinson’s British publisher. While sipping chilled chardonnay with Robinson, we remarked at how fortunate we had both been when at a party specially organized by the same publisher to celebrate Stephen King’s release of Lisey’s Story back in 2006, King himself had come over to talk to us. It had been a very special moment, during which we discovered that King is a fan of Robinson’s Alan Banks series. I also discovered that I lost the ability to speak coherently in the presence of King.

I have been recently enjoying more from King than I had expected; after Lisey’s Story we had the “lost” Bachman book Blaze. Earlier this year we had the wonderfully creepy Duma Key. This fall we can expect another King work, a collection of short stories called Just After Sunset. The Hodder and Stoughton team know of my fascination for all things King and were kind enough to send me a proof volume of his new collection containing four of the stories as well as a new introduction and afterword from King himself. Just After Sunset is the fifth collection of short stories from King. It collects work that has been published at various publications in the past.

The sampler sent to me contained four stories that I hadn’t read, so to celebrate this treat considering that the weather was so good this weekend, I took out a bucket of ice into my garden and filled it with bottles of beer, and put on my reading glasses, seated myself on a reclining chair and read through the samples. These are my thoughts:

“Willa” is a creepy little story about the victims of an Amtrack rail crash in a small town in Wyoming. While the passengers wait for a recovery train to take them away from the station that they appear stranded upon, David searches for his fiancé, Willa, who has left the station and gone to a bar in town. The premise of this story is signposted early on, but this doesn’t detract from the tale because it really is an examination as to the continuity of life after death. Willa is an interesting tale of love, and how it may remain alive after death.

“The Gingerbread Girl” is a full blown Stephen King horror novella and one that makes the pages fly by as it is a tense tale of survival and madness. Emily and Henry are a loving couple whose relationship disintegrates after their infant child dies. To cope, Emily takes up running, not just jogging, but serious running at every possible opportunity. She leaves her husband and moves into her Father’s beachside holiday home, where she encounters a serial sex-killer and finds that perhaps her running has got her into deep trouble; trouble that could cost her life. However, Emily is not a quitter and perhaps something in her ability to run may save her life. Part horror, part chase thriller, and part a peak at how people cope with grief, this little tale packs a satisfying punch. Reminiscent of Gerald’s Game in terms of style and motivations.

“Mute” was my favorite story from this samplerr. A morality tale about a traveling salesman who picks up a mute and deaf hitchhiker and passes the time by telling him about how his wife left him for an older man, and how she left him in debt and with a compulsion to buy underwear and lottery tickets. This is a throwback to King’s early style, more pulp than literary, and bloody great fun with a killer ending -- literarily.

“Ayana” is somewhat like “Willa” in that it is also an examination of what may happen between the transition between life and death. When a young girl passes a healing touch to an old man dieing of pancreatic cancer, a chain of events occurs that may indicate that life is far more mysterious than the death that awaits us all. A haunting tale that lingers in the mind.
I would add that I enjoyed previously “Stationary Bike” which was released as an audio novella as well as the post 9/11 novella “The Things They Left Behind.” But as for the others, I’ll have to wait for November to read them all. However from reading this quartet of samples, I know the wait will be well worth it.

But if waiting until November for these stories seems unbearable, why not read one of them online at The New Yorker. The publication here offers up “Harvey’s Dream” from 2003.

Barclay 1, Potter 0

I got in a spot of bother with a post about Harry Potter last year, from which you can gather I have probably been struck off J.K. Rowling’s Christmas card list. However I am definitely a fan of the United Kingdom’s currently bestselling book: Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye. I am pleased to see that, despite having Harry Potter and his cabal of friends making a nuisance of himself in the UK book charts, Canadian Linwood Barclay has seen off the pesky schoolboy wizard, as reported by The Bookseller:

Linwood Barclay’s No Time For Goodbye (Orion) has retained top spot for a second week with a 56,291 weekly sale, up 2,354 week-on-week. Barclay achieved the feat despite competition from the paperback release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury), which became the fastest selling book of all time upon its release in hardback last year.

The children's edition of J.K. Rowling’s seventh Harry Potter instalment sold 37,644 copies through the market at an average selling price of just £1.96 - 78.2% off its £8.99 r.r.p.

Note that neither Orion Publishing or Linwood Barclay didn’t need the heavy -- and in some cases suicidal -- discounting that Bloomsbury and Harry Potter enjoy. However in fairness, Barclay does owe a great deal to having his UK debut being selected as a Richard and Judy book.

Silence Falls on Publishing News

The two trade publications that represent the book business in the United Kingdom are The Bookseller and Publishing News. I know many of their writers, so it was with alarm that I read this:

PUBLISHING NEWS, THE book trade weekly, is to cease publication. The issue of Friday July 25th will be the last. The news was announced in a statement today (Wednesday, July 15 2008).

The publication, founded in 1979, has been hit by the same problems that have affected all magazines and newspapers, as advertisers have shifted increasing proportions of their spend to online and direct sales. PNL’s founder and Chairman, Fred Newman, commented: “This has been a sad and difficult decision to make, but the nature of the book trade which today offers a multiplicity of ways for publishers to sell books both to booksellers and to consumers has changed dramatically. For the biggest book publishers, the trade press is now only one of many options for the promotion and sale of their titles.”

This is yet another symptom of the global economic downturn and the transfer from print publication to online, with many advertisers joining the migration. It is not all bad news however -- even though this is only keeping a brave face on such terrible news.

Newman stressed that all other activities of PN Ltd are unaffected by the closure of Publishing News. The company will continue to organise the British Book Awards and has recently signed a new two-year contract with its headline sponsor, Galaxy.

Read the full report here, while rival The Bookseller reports here.

Salman Rushdie and the Best of the Booker

We reported earlier this week about the Best of the Booker award. Here's part of the BBC 's announcement:

Sir Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children has won the Best of the Booker prize, as voted for by the public. The 1981 book beat five other former Booker winners shortlisted from the prize's 40-year history. Sir Salman, who was unable to attend the London ceremony as he is currently on tour in the US, sent his thanks via a pre-recorded message. It is the third Booker award for the author, who was also the winner of the Booker of Bookers in 1993.

"Marvellous news -- I'm absolutely delighted and would like to thank all those readers around the world who voted for Midnight's Children," the author said.

The other Booker winners that made up the shortlist for this best of award were:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999)
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988)
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (1974)
The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell (1973)
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (1995)

The Independent reports:

Rushdie's post-colonial story about the partition of India won 36 per cent of the vote. At least half the voting public was aged under 35 and more than a quarter of the 7,801 votes cast came from the US. Rushdie, 61, who was born in Mumbai but educated in England, is currently promoting his latest book in Chicago but sent a video message conveying his thanks to voters. His sons, Zafar and Milan, collected the trophy.

He said: "[I think of] how astonished my younger self writing Midnight's Children in the late-1970s would have been about this. It was written with such hope but not with the expectation that this book would still be interesting and relevant to people who were not even born when it was written."

His youngest son, Milan, 11, said while he was still to read his father's magnum opus, he was born just eight minutes before midnight, similar to the protagonist of the novel, who was born on the stroke of 12.

Meanwhile, The Guardian features several downloads:

Audio: Salman Rushdie talks to Stuart Jeffries

Blog: They picked the right winner

In pictures: the life of Salman Rushdie

Read the original Guardian review (PDF)

Read an extract from Midnight's Children

The Guardian Book Club have a treat for Salman Rushdie readers as he will be appearing at a special event at The Shaw Theatre in London at 7 p.m. on July 28, talking to John Mullan about Midnight's Children. Tickets are £10/£8 and can be bought direct from the venue Tel (0044 871 594 3123) or from the UK 0871 594 3123.

Behind the Best of the Booker

We’ve written about bibliophile Mariella Frostrup in the past. Frostrup fronts BBC Radio 4’s Open Book program as well as presenting Sky Arts Book Program. She is also one of the judges of the “Best of the Booker” award which will be announced in just a few days. The Independent reports that Frostrup is a real renaissance woman as well as a friend of actor George Clooney:

The Best of the Booker, [is] arguably the most prestigious literary prize ever awarded in this country [Britain]. The winner will be announced on Thursday, once the public has elected the finest of the 41 novels to have won the Booker Prize. Salman Rushdie is favourite with Midnight's Children, and you can vote online now. But there is a catch. Your own preference -- Pi, say, or Amsterdam by Ian McEwan -- may not be available for selection. The contenders have already been cut down to a shortlist of six, by a panel of three judges including Mariella Frostrup.

The article explains how Frostrup’s life became entangled with her love of books which developed into her fronting TV shows, radio and her own journalism:

She grew up in Ireland, in a house full of books. Her mother was an artist from Scotland, and her father a Norwegian who wrote for the Irish Times. He died of alcohol poisoning when she was just 15. Frostrup was still in shock when she found herself living in a squat in Shepherd's Bush. "Despite the posh tones, I had almost nothing. Even when I was partying a lot, I was also driven by the need to pay the bills."

She broke into TV as a film reviewer but expanded into all kinds of arts and discussion shows. Sexism means it will not last, she says -- “look for the women past 40 on mainstream TV” -- but for now she is not above doing a voiceover for Marks & Spencer while Myleene Klass cavorts in a bikini. Books are what keep her on screen: she has been canny enough to parlay a surprise invitation on to the Booker panel in 2000 -- “I was flabbergasted” -- into a leading role in the literary world. Why was she asked? “For the same reason they ask a lot of people who don’t have a direct connection with books: to lend a common touch to the proceedings, in terms of books being reader-friendly as well as wonderfully crafted and important.”

The full article is here. More information on the Man Booker Prize is here. The Best of the Booker will be awarded at the London Literature Festival on July 10th. Look for the longlist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize to be announced at the end of this month. It will be whittled down to a shortlist on September 9th, with the prize itself being awared in mid-October.

An Eye on Fiction

As an obsessive reader, I have always been interested in what so much fiction-reading was doing to my mind, and how it made me see the world and occasionally reconsider the way this maddening planet functions.

I’ve known and written at length about the beneficial effect that bibliotheraphy has on people who are either down or actually heading towards depression. I have often recommended books to colleagues and friends when I perceive them heading towards a black dog state. They have thanked me as the book made them alter their thinking. Despite the common snidey swipes I’ve faced based on the stereotypes that often present readers of fiction as socially inept animals, unable to cope with reality, wasting their time, or just plain weird -- I am happy to report that fiction readers are the complete converse. This is scientifically proven so I no longer feel odd discussing books at the dinner table, because -- thanks to New Scientist -- I can tell from the eyes, that what they’re thinking about me, is wrong, damned wrong.

I have subscribed to Britain’s weekly New Scientist magazine for many years. I recently read a very interesting article by Keith Oatley, who is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Toronto. The piece was called “The Science of Fiction.” Unfortunately New Scientist’s online presence is a subscription only facility but Oatley’s paper is abstracted here:

The Victorians thought that reading Greek and Latin classics, including the stories of Homer, Sophocles and Virgil, would equip them for life. In the 20th century, great novels were considered to be improving. These days, with all the competing attractions of video games, the internet and movies, parents may be happy if their children read anything at all, while adults who enjoy fiction are more likely to view it as purely pleasurable rather than educative or life-enhancing. That is ironic, because for the first time in history there is now scientific evidence that reading fiction really does have psychological benefits.

Basically the paper reports on a scientific experiment carried out by Oatley and his colleagues where they took a large sample of people in the following groups: [a] readers of fiction; [b] readers of non-fiction as well as [c] non-readers.

They compensated for gender, race, age and all other factors and tested the sampled groups’ cognitive processes. It is an absolutely fascinating experiment which reported that readers of fiction are more insightful, have highly developed empathy and understand the social manners that the world works to, compared to non-readers and readers who read non-fiction only. To understand why fiction readers have the advantage click here for PDFs of Oately’s scientific papers that examine the link between reading and cognitive abilities.

Part of the test involved the test-group looking at eyes and reporting what they saw. I found this test fascinating and scored 33 out of 36, indicating a high level of perception. My wife who is only an occasional reader scored only 22.

Try this test for yourself and see how you rate to discover the links between reading and the effect it has on the mind, or visit Oatley’s Blog and discover that, despite his scientific background, he also wrote two novels.

Oh and did you guess whose eyes appear in this piece? I took the photo, so can offer a clue: the writer shown is currently at the top of his game and I’m all eyes whenever he releases a new novel.

What Reading Crisis?

When confronted with so many books on my review and reading pile I sometimes wonder exactly who is reading these books? Then I see many bookstores closing, supermarket chains pumping out discounted bestsellers, and I worry about literacy. I recently spoke with bestselling author Lee Child, a confirmed bibliophile, about the reading crisis, but he has a much more positive spin on things:

I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna, but I have a vague feeling that reading is going to come back big-time. The thing that took people away from reading is pretty much saturated now--games, the Internet, DVDs, etc. Reading is like a virus that sleeps gently in the soil, undisturbed, and it will come back in a big way, probably with the younger generation using these new reading devices like the Kindle.

This week Business Wire issued a report that seems in part to support Child’s viewpoint based on a Harris Poll they commissioned:

For years, people have been crying about the death of the book. While reading books may be declining, Americans are reading. Just one in ten (9%) say they typically read no books in an average year. About one-quarter (23%) read between 1 and 3 books, while one in five (19%) read between 4 and 6 books and 13 percent typically read between 7 and 10 books. And, over one-third (37%) of Americans say they read more then ten books in an average year.

There are certain groups who are more likely to read more than ten books in an average year. Looking at the generations, almost half (47%) of Matures (those aged 63 and older) say they read more than ten books compared to just one-third (33%) of Baby Boomers (those aged 44-62). Women are also more likely to read more than men – 44 percent of women read more than ten books a year compared to three in ten (29%) men. Candidates may not want to try books to reach their partisans, but they may be a good way to reach out to Independents. Just one-third of Republicans (33%) and Democrats (35%) say they read more than ten books in a year compared to 44 percent of Independents.

However it’s not all good news. The report indicates that readers are buying fewer books, and many cite lack of time in today’s world as the major reason for lack of reading. Even so, the boom and crime and mystery fiction continues:

In looking at the different types of books people read, non-fiction and fiction are almost even (82% and 80% respectively). The largest single genre is mystery, thriller and crime (48% read) followed by history (35%), biographies (31%), religious and spirituality (28%) and literature (27%). Men and women have different tastes in the type of books they read. Women are more likely to read mysteries (57% versus 38%), religious books (32% versus 24%), and, perhaps not a surprise, romance novels (38% versus 3%). Men, on the other hand, are more likely to read history (44% versus 27%), science fiction (34% versus 18%) and political (22% versus 9%).

Authors in the Sky

I recently mentioned SkyArts’ The Book Show hosted by journalist and bibliophile Mariella Frostrup. Thanks to CrimeFicReader I found the best bits of the show now available on a dedicated YouTube page with more than 300 video clips from full-blown interviews as well as authors talking about books that they recommend. There are also insights into publishing as well the editorial side of the business, but beware: this dedicated YouTube page could eat up your entire week.

Particular highlights are Mo Hayder, Jeffery Archer, Nicci French a look at Romance Fiction from Mills & Boon, Patricia Cornwall, Richard Dawkins, Alice Sebold, Ken Follett and Ian McEwan.

The archive is here, but be prepared to lose a day watching these fascinating clips.

The Doctor’s Appointment

What is it with the medical profession that has made many a fine novelist? I got into a conversation with Dr. C.J. Lyons when we met up at the first International Thriller Writers Conference back in 2006. We both discussed our own writing endeavors, made the more interesting due to both sharing a scientific discipline. When I heard that her first novel, Lifelines, would be released by Berkley on March 4th I was delighted for her and asked her to tell me more about her debut. As she has been a thriller reader for many years, she provided me with her take on villains.

However, I was curious about Lifelines’ journey to publication. Lyons kindly provided me this insightful piece which might give hope to those of you who are scribbling away, juggling life, family and day jobs with a passion for the written word.

In Lyons’ own words then:

You see, first I was a pediatric ER doc, then a rural community pediatrician, then I quit my day job with two publishing contracts in hand.

And then I found myself unemployed, my debut dream dashed when the publisher pulled the book because of cover art problems, and wondering how the heck a nice pediatrician like me got into this mess.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised -- I’ve never been known for playing by the rules.

So there I was, fall 2006, mere months into a relationship with my new agent, only weeks after buying back the rights for the book-that-never-was and parting company with my old publisher, and it’s days away from the winter holidays when “nothing ever happens in publishing.”

And my agent calls and says: You’re not going to believe this.

Then she says: Strangest thing -- this has never happened, not in all my years in the business, not to an unknown like you.

I’m thinking that these are not very encouraging words coming from someone at an A-list NYC agency, but I say nothing as I wonder if I’m somehow jinxed.

She continues: Berkley just called. They want you to create a new series for them. Actually it’s more like creating a new genre. Something that hasn’t been done before, a mix of women’s fiction/medical thriller/romance with an on-going cast of characters. Kind of Grey’s Anatomy-meets-ER.

Long pause as I process this. I know Berkley -- they publish some of the best women’s fiction, medical thriller, and romance writers out there.

“Are you sure they want me?” I ask. How stupid was that? Giving them time to think and change their minds?

“They’ve read your stuff, love your voice. What do you think?”

What did I think? The chance to make my own rules, to create something fresh, new that hadn’t been tried before? It was a huge, huge gamble... for both Berkley and me.

I thought it was great!

I dove into the project. My editor at Berkley was fantastic as we began a give and take, exploring this strange new cross-genre world we were creating. We sent a draft of the manuscript to wonderfully generous authors including David Morrell, Tess Gerritsen, Heather Graham and Lisa Gardner to see what they thought.

They liked it! Several said Lifelines kept them up at night as they had to read it in one sitting!

Praise like that from writers of that caliber -- well, you can only imagine how it made a novice like me feel.

And then Berkley provided a fantastic cover, complete with real live models in a real live photo-shoot (to go with the real-life doctor-author, my editor said). Unheard of in these days of stock art!

This debut looks to be just the right tonic for raising the heart rate and a solution for insomnia sufferers.

New Yesterday: Not Quite What I Was Planning by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser

While driving into the day-job this morning after spending a late-night writing; I listened to a piece about SMITH Magazine on BBC radio 4. It seems that they have released a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser. It features people’s life-stories with one important proviso; the memoir must be six words. The book contains almost 1000 six-word memoirs, including additions from many celebrities including Stephen Colbert, Jane Goodall, Deepak Chopra and many more. It is addictive and rather moving considering how our lives unravel.

The SMITH Magazine Web site reports the genesis for these six word memoirs has a literary heritage:

Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the recountre by asking our readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (“Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”) and poignant (“I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (“Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”) and hilarious (“I like big butts, can’t lie”).

A few of the pithy memoirs as examples are:

“Sometimes God wants the dishwasher’s job” -- Ken Blackman

“Part time writer. Full time waitress” -- Erin Hicks

“Good Catholic girls graduated to suicide” –--Mary Skol

“2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 jobs” -- Loretta

“I lied, I loved, I birthed” -- Tracy

“Life too short, eat good cheese” -- Vince

Could you sum up your life in just six words? Need inspiration? Check out this video of examples culled from pithy memoirs and, as the book is released this week, SMITH Magazine will be on tour to promote their little book of memories. (Or should it be, “their book of little memories?”)

A Visit to Sky Arts

I enjoy watching The Book Show on the British satellite channel Sky Arts, hosted by writer and presenter Mariella Frostrup. Frostrup is a real bibliophile who also presents BBC Radio 4’s weekly Open Book which can be accessed online via the listen again facility on the BBC’s I-Player.

I was flattered to be asked to contribute to the new Sky Arts Literature Blog’s End of the World Reading List:

Inspired by The Book Show’s competition to win a bookshelf full of books ArtsWom decided that we should help spread the good word about good books and invite people from across the ‘net to share their recommendations for the last book to read before the end of the world.

Admittedly, this is something of a morbid topic, but when the end comes and this fragile orb finally cracks, it may be too late to panic buy, too inappropriate to copulate, and just too ironic to pray -- so what else is there to do other than settle down and read a quality novel.

Industrial chemist, freelance journalist, book reviewer, soon-to-be author, and The Book Show fan, Ali Karim has already enlightened us with his decision. Selecting the yet-to-be-released Child 44, the debut novel by Tom Rob Smith.

Follow the link to discover why I chose the yet to be released Child 44 to read, if the four horseman of apocalypse came to town.

Blogger Crimeficreader selects Black Out by John Lawton and writes why this novel would be her apocalyptic read:

It’s an exceedingly rare occurrence for me to re-read a book/novel. So, with the end of the world imminent, I’d grab the one book I can admit to reading twice and dipping into on another two occasions. For me, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining novel, first published in 1995 and that novel is Black Out by John Lawton.

The setting is London during WWII and the star of the show is one Freddie Troy, the younger son in a wealthy Russian immigrant family. However, Freddie does not want to enter the family’s newspaper business. He becomes a copper. The novel opens with a group of boys finding a hand in the rubble of the Blitz-torn East End. Where it might be all too easy to assume that this is a victim of the bombing, Freddie’s sharp eye and intellect lead him to suggest otherwise. Forensic pathologist Kolankiewicz, Freddie’s partner in investigations and sometimes off the record personal doctor, backs him up. And so begins an investigation that is satisfyingly complex, going to places you’d never have imagined

While Helen of No Such Thing as Too Many Books Blog chose Reunion by Fred Uhlman:

Although a part of me thinks I ought to read a book I’d never read -- one of the many I’ve been ‘meaning to’ read for years but never got round to (such as Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment), I would probably go for this one, Reunion by Fred Uhlman, which I’ve read several times already. Barely the length of a novella, it’s the book that has probably affected me more profoundly than any other.

You can read her selection here.

The artsWOM blog sponsored by Sky is an interesting addition to the blogosphere. If you live out of Sky’s satellite reach, the Web site has archived material such as features on writers as diverse as Mark Billingham, William Boyd, John Banville (aka Benjamin Black), Melvin Burgess and many others.

Review: Duma Key by Stephen King

Today, in January Magazine’s fiction section, contributing editor Ali Karim reviews Duma Key by Stephen King. Says Karim:

I was about a quarter of the way into Stephen King’s Duma Key and feeling a sense of growing dread and dark foreboding when I came upon this passage spoken by the elderly property owner Elizabeth Eastlake. It serves as a taste of what Edgar Freemantle might experience upon relocating himself to Florida, to an idyllic beach-front residence called Duma Key:

“Edgar, one is sure you’ll make a very nice neighbour, I have no doubts on that score, but you must take precautions. I think you have a daughter, and I believe she visited you. Didn’t she? I seem to remember her waving to me. A pretty thing with blond hair? I may be confusing her with my own sister Hannah -- I tend to do that, I know I do -- but in this case, I think I’m right. If you mean to stay, Edgar, you mustn’t invite your daughter back. Under no circumstances. Duma Key isn’t a safe place for daughters.”

The hairs on the back of my neck bristled and a chill fell upon the room and I swear I thought the lights dimmed for a second. The first thought that came into my head was: “some books are dangerous.” Trust me, Duma Key is one such book.

The full review is here.

Review: No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

Today, in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor Ali Karim reviews No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. Says Karim:

No Time for Goodbye has a great premise, and a cast of real people trapped in a terrifying and totally extraordinary situation. Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge is a troublesome young girl, caught out late one night with her boyfriend Vince Fleming -- a bad boy from a family of criminals, whom Cynthia’s parents dislike. While fooling around in the back end of a car with a case of booze, this pair are spotted by her father, Clayton, who immediately hauls Cynthia back home. Following a huge family row, fueled by the booze she had shared with Fleming, the girl storms off to her bedroom, locks the door, and falls into an all-consuming slumber. Come morning, Cynthia -- full of remorse, and with her head throbbing from the drink -- struggles downstairs, only to find that her mother, Patricia, her father and her elder brother, Todd, have all vanished. There’s no note of explanation, no signs of life, and no clues as to their whereabouts.

It’s understandable that Cynthia would be worried -- and she has good reason, because even 25 years later, her family’s disappearance remains a complete mystery.

The full review is here.

Review: The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason

Today, in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor Ali Karim reviews The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason. Says Karim:

Structurally and thematically, The Draining Lake bears a resemblance to Peter Robinson’s award-winning 1999 novel, In a Dry Season -- at least insofar as it alternates between a back story that relates to the murder, and the present-day investigation. The obvious difference between these works is that Robinson’s back story was set firmly in World War II, while Indridason’s has its feet in the later Cold War. Both novels do, however, share a similar style of conclusion, with the solution to the crime being delivered only late in the game, and far from what the reader might have anticipated.

The full review is here.

Tintin Controversy

At the start of the year I reported on a special celebration of the Tintin comics in France to mark what would have been writer Herge’s 100th birthday. The article indicated that many writers recall spending their youth in the company of Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock and the eclectic gang as they traveled the world seeking adventure.

With the upcoming big screen adaptation of Tintin by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg we report some controversy in respect to publisher Little, Brown’s re-issues of the Tintin Tales. The 1931 title, Tintin in the Congo, has reportedly been pulled from the publishing schedule due to its portrayal of colonial Black Africans. It seems there has been a groundswell of opinion to ban this book from many sources. The BBC reported earlier this year:

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is calling on high street books to pull a Tintin adventure from its shelves over claims it is racist. Complaints about Tintin in the Congo have led to Borders and Waterstones moving it to their adult section.

A spokeswoman said the book contained “words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles.” Borders said they are committed to let their “customers make the choice.”

Publishers Weekly also reported on this controversial re-issue:

The book was first published in 1931, then updated and colorized in the 1940s. While this is the first U.S. publication of the newer version, San Francisco-based publisher Last Gasp released a black and white fascimile edition of the original in 2002. Also as part of its centenary celebration of Hergé’s birth, Little, Brown will publish a boxed set containing all 24 Tintin books in November. The set will include all its previously published Tintin books, as well as the final three. Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Tex., said she could not decide where she will shelve Congo until she sees the book. But she said the series is not very popular in her store: “We’re not talking about Harry Potter here. By and large, the mom who walks in here who grew up in Houston, she doesn’t know who Tintin is.” Leslie Reiner, owner of Inkwood Books in Tampa Bay, Fla., plans on shelving the book in her store’s graphic novels section. She said Tintin books “haven't been selling that well, but I anticipate more sales with the fall release.” Barnes & Noble and Borders did not respond to requests for comment.

This pressure has lead Little, Brown to reconsider the re-release of Tintin in the Congo, as reported in Publishers Weekly:

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which had been planning to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book criticized for its racist, Colonial-era depictions of Africans, has quietly pulled the title from its fall list, PW has learned. The publisher also said it will not include the book in a forthcoming box set of all 24 books in the Tintin series.

Publicist Melanie Chang did not give a reason for the standalone book’s cancellation, but of its omission from the box set she said, “Given the controversy surrounding the Congo title, we felt including it in the box set would eclipse the true intention of the collection, which is to showcase Hergé’s extraordinary art and his remarkable contribution to the graphic arts.”

The republication of classic works of fiction that reflected the attitudes of a less enlightened generation can cause controversy and even confusion. Remember the original title of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians?

A Big Apple for Your Thoughts

January Magazine and Rap Sheet contributor and Anthony nominee (for service, for his work with Shots) Ali Karim has been blessedly quiet on the topic of Harry Potter for the last week or so. That’s because he’s been hooping it up at various international crime fiction conferences. (Karim is man in black on the left above. Man in black on the right is crime fictionist Vince Flynn.)

Karim’s firsthand reports from Thrillerfest, the International Thriller Writers second annual conference held last week in New York, are here.

Good-bye to an Editor from My Childhood

Before the irritating Harry Potter became ubiquitous in youth literature, there was an influential British editor called Margaret Clark who shaped some of my juvenile reading. I’m sad to report Margaret Clark passed away last month. According to The Guardian:

Margaret Clark, who has died following a brain tumour aged 80, was one of a distinguished band of children’s book editors who were responsible for changing the profile of children’s book publishing during the 1970s and 80s. They were passionate about the quality of the books themselves and about reaching more readers by publishing a wider range of fiction and picture books which reflected the changing experiences and expectations of contemporary children.

The Guardian’s obituary is here.

Some of us still remember the publishing houses that became imprints when larger conglomerates gobbled them up. One of these was Bodley Head where Clark found herself as a senior editor. I recall reading her “new adults” series which included work by Aidan Chambers -- who I remember reading avidly along with Paul Zindel’s The Pigman.

The Times reports:

Like all the Bodley Head books of these years before the firm’s absorption into the Random House conglomerate, Clark’s were helped towards distinction by the genius of the production director, John Ryder, and it is matter for regret that many of the books whose publication she oversaw have not survived the current fashions.

Lucy Boston, whose later work she edited, paid tribute to her skills in her memoir Memory in a House (1973) and these are seen most notably in her cultivated regard for poetry, conspicuous in her editing of David Mackay’s A Flock of Words (1969) and of the Bodley Head Poets series (1964-72) – great poetry selected by eminent and sympathetic modern writers.

Clark was also foremost among British editors in seeking to cater for a teenage readership through the Bodley Head’s “New Adults” series of fiction, following and sometimes, as with Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, adopting texts from the already busy exploitation of the genre in the US. (An influential British “first” came with Breaktime (1978) by Aidan Chambers.)

In 1980, Clark became the chief of the Bodley Head’s children’s division, and even after her retirement in 1988 she continued with what was more or less a lifetime’s preoccupation with children’s literature.

The Times piece is here.

Margaret Clark was born September 19, 1926 and died April 25, 2007. I celebrate her contribution to my early reading habits. Her efforts still linger in my memory.