BooksThatMatter (Adrian's Random Rubbish)...

MURDER IN THE NAME OF HONOUR

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:20:00 +0000

I am temporarily reverting to the original purpose of this blog which was to talk about books of significance. Very few books matter quite as much as Rana Husseini's book MURDER IN THE NAME OF HONOUR which is a truly significant book about so-called honour crimes by one of our bravest human rights journalists. Rana is someone everyone should know of, listen to, think about and read. Yes she is a client of mine but I consider that to be a true priviledge ... click here for information about MURDER IN THE NAME OF HONOUR (Oneworld Publications)

The So-called Hub

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:27:00 +0000

Waterstone's are doing a stunning job of making book publishing, selling and buying harder for all. Many of my clients are in a considerable state of anxiety about where their new books are, why they can't find them in store, why stocking across Waterstone's seems completely random. This piece in the current Bookseller:

Publishers Voice Fears Over Hub

casts some light. The thing that I think is most horrible about it is that it undermines authors' confidence in what their publishers tell them and it is completely invidious. Sure all new systems have teething problems - I sincerely hope these are over soon ....

The Mail on Sunday Section 2, 27 Sep 2009. Pages 14

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:08:00 +0000

The Mail on Sunday Section 2
27 Sep 2009

It's been a while ...

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:40:00 +0000

... since I gave any thought to this blog - but I've just spent some time updating all the links on my work blog The Raft Blog which made me start looking at some of my authors' blogs and then that made me start thinking about this blog and that made me start thinking about blogging. Even though I am convinced that I have nothing worth saying. Even though I'm feeling professionally credit crunched out of existence. Even though I seldom do anything other than read a slush pile largely filled with unpublishable books (although the mountain of slush does make the rare rare rare exception a jewel beyond reckoning). Even though I've spent most of the summer sending my fellow musicians out to play fabulous gigs in wonderous locations while I've stayed behind. Even though, even though ...

So I've given it some thought.

And some more thought.

And yet some more thought.

And have to admit that today I don't have a great deal to say - but what I would like to say is that I have discovered the joy of rosehips (the most delicious and delicate conserve known to humanity) and also the joy of Daniel Ehrenhaft a writer I've only come across because he has had the huge wisdom and foresight to buy my author Helen FitzGerald's debut Young Adult novel Amelia O'Donohue is SO not a Virgin for the North American and international markets. So he's well worth discovering.

Oh and I've had an idea for a novel I want to write (not sure if I'm still allowed to write novels now that I'm a literary agent) - but it's the very first time in a very very very long time that I've had even the tiniest urge to splurge in prose. I'm rather excited by this and, heck, I might even do it. So be warned.

CC at Coalition

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:47:00 +0000

Leftfield 027
Originally uploaded by carnival collective

Our LeftField warm-up gig from Friday last week ...

BIG SPLASH SPLOSH

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:56:00 +0000

Fire escape 3
Originally uploaded by carnival collective

Well, we played Brighton Marina on Saturday night as part of the finale of Brighton Festival - and praise B it did not pish down as forecast and there were THOUSANDS of punters watching us across the water, and we DID have a ball - but twas also muchos muchos difficile as we were strung out on a floating pontoon that bounced back off the beat under our feet and also one end of the band couldn't hear the other end ... but still LUVERLY to be playing ...

Tired now :)

Anne Weale's Death: Farewell Bookworm

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:06:00 +0000

I've just cast a glimpse at Anne Weale's marvellous blog Bookworm on the Net to see whether she has posted any new thoughts on the world of books only to learn that she has very recently died. What a terrible piece of news for books, for publishing and for the blogosphere. Anne's bracing and intelligent views have been amongst the most refreshing I've encountered - she was a lovely writer and very, very wise. We also periodically chatted on email, usually about pet authors who are wrongfully neglected and I shall miss those exchanges enormously.

What a sad piece of news to get unexpectedly at the end of a Friday ...
There is a small catalogue of appreciations of Anne's life/work/thoughts starting to appear on her blog

I can't think of anything else to say except how sad I am for her family.

Crusoe George & Frankfurt

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:40:00 +0000

Well, while I've been at the frankfurt Book Fair plying my wares, son Crusoe's continued his media rise - getting pieces in local papers, on the BBC and now on Meridien. I've also had a few emails from people asking for links to his tunes - so here's a link to The Jazzy Letter Jay which is my favourite of his tunes. And now that he's all famous like, he's disgruntled that it's Soulful Swing, one of his oldest tunes, that's at no 1 in the Amazingtunes.com download chart - so he's hoping some people will start to listen to his other stuff...

Frankfurt was a total hoot - mad parties, lots of jaw ache - but sooooo much work to do now. I'm also reading my way through a pile of books written in Dutch which I can only read at a snail's pace, to assess their viability in the UK & US markets ... in between this I DID manage to read one for pleaure/leisure. Mary Lawson's The Other Side of the Bridge, which I bought on the Ferry despite the R&J book club choice sticker on the front (Something usually guaranteed to send me skedaddling away double quick). However the competition in the spinner was sparse and I needed to pay on card rather than use a 50 Euro note (change in sterling)> Yes, such is the basis of the modern impulse book purchase. The beginning did not engage me, I have to say - too many coming of age stories have passed through my shelves, and the brooding sense of tragedy whether past or present would have stopped me in my tracks had I any choice. But a couple of chapters in and it worked itself beneath my skin and in the end it turned into a profoundly moving book. It's odd about it's start - I did wonder whether it had been her first novel (in terms of writing chronology) rather than her second as it had a lot of the characteristics of the strong debut. Anyway, I ultimately liked it - to the point of tears...

Crusoe George does it again

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:32:00 +0000

As I busy muself getting ready to depart for the Frankfurt Book Fair to try and earn the family a crust, my eldest son Crusoe is in the papers again, apparently this tim starting to earn money off his music downloads (see the Saturday Guardian)

I think I'm going to have to review the rental arrangements on his bedroom - sorry - make that Recording Studio ... cor blimey, maybe I can retire after all.

Crusoe George AKA Rebrand

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:05:00 +0000

Ahhh - my little boi has done it again, bless him, warming every one of my fatherly cotton socks at once. The flagrant little self publicist has a rather good write up in today's Metro about his music c/o Amazing Tunes..

Apparently my no. 1 son is s new star in the making with his piece Soulful Swing featuring at no 5 on the Amazing Tunes download chart. He even has his picture in the paper too...

He IS clever...

Barbara Nadel: Better Voice than Plots

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:28:00 +0000

I've probably read too many books by Barbara Nadel too quickly. She's regularly compared to Donna Leon and sets all of her books in Turkey - mostly Istanbul. The cumulative effect of binge-reading her works is most peculiar. After 5 books I really love her writing and have grown to like her characters hugely. Also interesting for detective-based crime fiction, they don't actually have a single dominant character which I think is quite unusual: they are much more ensemble pieces. I also find her Turkey very convincing - I spent a great deal of time in Turkey some years ago - and when I'm feeling literary I regularly return to the fiction of Orhan Pamuk and Yasar Kamal. Nadel summons Turkey up with her pen every bit as well as these serious, major writers. Nadel's Istanbul is exquisitely evoked, as is her Anatolia. Now, as Meatloaf might put it two out of three aint bad - but that's as far as I can go. Weirdly, I just cannot get to grips with her excessively baroque plots. In this incredibly human, real, breathing world, Nadel spins some of the most ghoulishly excessive twaddle (plotwise) I've ever encountered ranging from a teenage boy who believes he's a Vampire to a mad artist who kills and embalms his own young children to incorporate them in to an artwork (with the support of his doting wife). There's also one with a deranged super-spy on a moral quest to purify society. Just bizarre. Any way it's a bit like overdosing on sweets - and left me feeling very groggy and more than a littel queasy. Strange strange strange. Am I missing something here?

Carnival Collective Rocks Glastonbury

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:07:00 +0000

Carnival Collective at Glastonbury and in THE INDEPENDENT

It was soggy, boggy madness - but fun.

Glastonbury 2007: Left Field, Circus Field, Small World Stage: Carnival Collective

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:23:00 +0000

Me & some of my CC colleagues at a gig in Stanmer Park last Sunday

My semi-annual step away from things literary and a massive reminder to anyone venturing to Glastonbury. Check out Carnival Collective's web site for details of all our gigs at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival.

We're gracing various bits of the Theatre & Circus Fields - as well as Left Field and the Small World Stage in Green Futures. And mighty excited. No matter how many times I play there, each one makes me feel like a child anticipating a very special treat.

Post Glasto, we'll be at Larmer Tree and sundry other venues...

Back to books... this weekend's Blog will be a Barbara Nadel's Turkish novels' analysis.

The Man on the Balcony: A Nicci French Precursor

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:39:00 +0000

The Man on the Balcony (Martin Beck)by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

I was really interested to discover and read a 1960s Scandinavian detective novel by a husband-wife team in the style of Nicci French meets Henning Mankell. A lot of 1960s/70s crime fiction doesn't stand up to modern scrutiny, marred by among other things casual racism and sexism. The Man on the Balcony is a marked exception - and a fascinating one. The authors' biog (which is quite brief) passes an interesting comment - identifying them as lifelong Marxists. An unusual statement in a crime novelists' author blurb - a context which usually tends to more anodyne comments. But it is, I suspect, quite significant.

The Man on the Balcony ticks all the crime/thriller boxes of plot, characterisation and atmosphere, but more interestingly it provides an understated but compelling critique of modern (or at least post-War) society. Throughout the book the reader is made aware of the corrosion eating away at social structures, mores, workplace, family relationships. It is incredibly well done - not an in-your-face lecture, just a gradual accumulation of inference. Like Nicci French, there is no sense of two authorial voices or any division of purpose and it is a very smooth and convincing read. I believe Sjowall and Wahloo wrote 10 novels in the series before Per Wahloo died and the books stopped. There's quite a lot about them on the internet including this Britannica entry, and there is a lot of comment on both their literary and political legacy. I am very excited to have found them by chance and can't wait to get my hands on the other 9 books. They also appear to have influenced some fairly awesome literary luminaries (according to Amazon at least, for what that's worth!) including Grahame Greene and Henning Mankell.

Adam Thorpe's The Rules of Perspective & Chuck Palahniuk's RANT

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 20:13:00 +0000

Another hasty library dash where more of my attention was devoted to preventing diverging children vanishing off the radar than to an actual, informed choice of books. Fortunately this week's haul contained gold in the form of Adam Thorpe's The Rules of Perspective (Jonathan Cape, Hbk 2005) which pulls off the challenge of finding something fresh to say about the human condition and the Second World War.

This is an extremely powerful novel, compellingly written and completely devoid of resistance workers, farmers wives hiding airmen or any of a dozen cliches of that conflict. Thorpe skilfully interweaves two stories - one of a young American soldier taking part in the liberation of Germany, and the other of a group of German art gallery staff taking cover in their museum under the Allied bombardment. We know from the very outset that they do not survive the ordeal as Parry (the American) finds their corpses as the novel begins, but we do not know how or to what purpose their stories will unite. Because the reader knows of the Germans' fate, the whole book is infused with a disturbing sense of doom - but Thorpe exhumes more than just their final hours and the conclusion of the book was, to me at least, totally un-anticipated.

Thorpe is a very poised and considered writer. I knew of him, but I shall now be seeking out the rest of his books (except, perhaps, the poetry as a long stint of helping my eldest revise for his GCSE English Lit has killed any interest in verse I might have once had.).

Post Script No sooner have I posted this than I find Thorpe has a new novel out reviewed in today's Observer by Adam Mars Jones. It's called Between Each Breath and Mars Jones gives it an ambivalent review comparing it unfavourably to The Rules of Perspective. I'll still look it out, but it sounds as though I've begun reading Thorpe with one of his stronger books.

SUNDAY'S ADDENDUM: RANT by Chuck Palahniuk

And as I am updating Saturday's post on Sunday - I'll take the opportunity to review one of Thorpe's stablemates at Cape: Chuck Palahniuk's RANT which I read hell-for-leather at the park today while I was being slack-dad with my two youngest.

I've not read Palahniuk before or, even more unusually, any reviews of his work. All I knew of him was that his novel Fight Club had been adapted for film. The Brad Pitt toned, half-naked film posters remain a clear image of personal inadequacy (proving that it's not only women who can be victims of poor body image as a result of depictions of 'ideal' body shapes in the media) and consequently never saw it. Never will. So I came to this with no expectations beyond a worry that it might be a bit too slick or gimmicky. Instead I found a deeply disturbing, but highly addictive, fast-paced postmortem of a very strange life - that of Rant Casey (or Buster or Buddy depending on who is talking to the reader). Palahniuk describes the book as an 'oral history' and has pulled off a very zesty multiple-voiced account - bystanders, friends, relatives, teachers, cops, academics all chip in to tell it how it was through their eyes.

Rant is an enigma - a violently damaged, yet strangely moralistic character, charismatic and repellent in equal parts. He is the product of a white-trash 13-year-old's pregnancy with more than a little hint of Rosemary's Baby about it. He is also the vector for a horrific mutation of rabies that is incurable and highly contagious - a typhoid Mary for our times. But is it our times?

Palahniuk deftly plays with the reader's realities - this world is our own, but there are ways in which it is either a dystopic future or an alternative present. Society has become stratified with a whole opt-out subclass of night-timers opposing the more 'normal' daytimers, and also carrying out appropriate menial and degrading jobs. Party Crashers are like escapees from David Cronenberg's imagination and have a horrendous road-tag game that plagues the night-time freeways as they careen through the traffic dressed in wedding clothes, or with baby carriers bolted to their car's roof, wielding destruction as they go. And everywhere, the rabies spreads.

There are elements of RANT that making me think of other books, writers, thinkers. Of recent books it's most akin to Melvyn Burgess's reworking of Icelandic legends BloodTide but also there is the obvious Hunter S. Thompson comparison, but Palahniuk's voice is original and very much his own (excuse the tautology)and the world of RANT creeps into your thoughts. It chilled me even as I burned in the sun in a playground full of happily squealing toddlers and kids. In his world - whatever world it is, everything is horrible. But it is a compelling, breath-taking horrible: the horrible that makes you suck through your teeth with admiration for Palahniuk's creation and nerve. Rant is risk-taking fiction at its best.

Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children & the Copy Editor, and the missing children...

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Mon, 28 May 2007 21:27:00 +0000

Donna Leon is one of my indulgences - a pleasing recreation like a glass of that other Venetian beauty, a good prosecco. While I have suspected that Donna Leon owes more than a little to Andrea Camilleri, she is none the worse for that, and I have become deeply attached to her Commisario Brunetti over the years.

I was pleased to find out that my literary heroine (admittedly one of many!) Ursula K. Le Guin is also enamored of Brunetti and his brood in her recent review in The Guardian. And like Le Guin I also regretted the palpable absence of Brunetti's children from this narrative as Leon evokes the dynamic of Brunetti's family superbly. I also felt quite chuffed that Ursula likes the same things about Donna Leon as I - like getting a sort of seal of approval from someone terribly grand.

Much as I enjoyed it (and my moment of connection with the creator of Earthsea) Suffer The Little Children, which is vintage Leon in all other ways, was badly let down by something that makes me feel a bit pooterish. It is chronically affected by sloppy copyediting and proof reading: too many literals by half. Worst of all was a key scene where Brunetti is interviewing Marcolini - a nasty neo-fascistic politician cum ceramics mogul - and Marcolini's name is replaced with Marvilli - a Carbinieri captain who has appeared in the book at length - causing momentary confusion for me. It made me wonder how something that glaring could have slipped through the editorial net and it marred my enjoyment of the book.

It also made me reflect upon the places where I most often encounter really bad typos, sloppy editing, inconsistencies, etc .... yes, crime novels. Am I imagining this or is there a lower standard of desk editing in that sector of the industry? Surely the sort of audience that is poring over hints, clues and innuendo is going to be enraged by glaring glitches? Or am I unusual.

I don't think so.

But anyway, Suffer the Little Children gave me a weekend of pleasure, but Donna, do please bring back Raffi and Chiara, Ursula and I miss them.

authorsites launches

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:41:00 +0000

Just come across an interesting new service for writers that ISN'T some self-publishing con in disguise (myGODhwmanyofthosearethere???)

It's called authorsites and is pretty much what it says on the tin, which is always encouraging. Basically it seems to be a fairly idiot proof tool for authors to create and run a website for their books and is cheap as chips with no catches and/or strings. All round a good thing I would say.

Book worldily I've been too busy to do much more than read

1) THE SLUSH PILE - oh my, please spare me from books by 'high-class-call-girls' - although it is interesting that obviously there is a common (mis)conception in call-girls' circles that books pay better than dating dubious business men

2) My lovely clients finished books: Helen FitzGerald has delivered the sequel to her marvellous Little Girls (coming out in the UK from Faber) which has a very special place as she was the first author I signed to the agency and the 1st book deal the agency did...

3) A bit of train reading to-and-from the London Book Fair. I have to say I most enjoyed Ian Rankin's piece of juvenilia The Flood which was a dark and disquieting journey through a tight-knit Fife community and also had a hilarious preface about its original publication by Polygon (then a student-run publishig house at the University) which I read out with much glee to the rights director of Polygon who had the table next to me at the Fair.

My book purge is going to resume next week - inspired by Brighton's launch of the new Amnesty bookshop in the North Laine.

Books That Don't Matter (Really)

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:11:00 +0000

I've decided to purge and clean - the advent of new shelving in my life is the catalyst, so I have begun the painful task of pruning the library.

Books to BITE THE DUST

Family Food by Heston Blumenthal Heston, I am sorry. I really liked this book and gave it a glowing review on amazon when I bought it, but it has never once been used. I think because there is nothing in the book that I haven't got a dozen recipes for elsewhere. It's actually a good book but more for the beginner cook (or family!)

Behind the Scenes at the Museum I can't remember which prize this won (Booker?), but it's sat sadly and once-read for far too long. It has no real sins as a novel but what does it offer me now? I can remember its contents too too well.

Blanche McCrary Boyd passed through my consciousness without troubling it deeply. The time of the Little Girls' revolution is up. It's languishing at 860,000 on amazon and unlikely to shift from my perspective. A book about which I felt nothing at the time, so why did I keep it?

Out out out

So that's 3 books culled out of, errrm, somewhere round about 1,500 - 2,000.

The new minimalism, not for me... this process might take some time.

But if the UK book retail trade totally collapses I might be glad of them all, for the warmth and company if nothing else as I read in Friday's Guardian that BORDERS MIGHT PULL OUT OF THE UK MARKET - which is fairly dramatic and might have my publishing clients anxiously checking their returns forms in coming weeks... more on that one later...

Rebrand: Change of Direction

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:02:00 +0000

OK - family hype time... so, son no. 1 has put up a seriously good new track called 'Change of Direction' on his Myspace, featuring husky voiced Kassia on vocals - click HERE for a listen. Poor guy's not rebuilt his fan base since someone hacked in and deleted his whole site a while back. It's cool stuff, worth a listen!

And then to complete a family sandwitch with me generationally hovering in the middle, my dad Neville Weston has a presence in the Tate Liverpool exhibition
Centre of the Creative Universe. Always hard to accept hipness in an elderly parent (except in the hip-replacement category) but he was one of the movers and shakers on the Liverpool scene during the '60s and a show about that avant-garde era opens next week at Tate Liverpool.

And then to complete this familial thang, I've also just realised that it's Valentine's day and my entire family save for me are asleep and I'm doing what? Sitting up blogging. This is perhaps the saddest moment of my life!

I'd better fix a mug of cocoa and pour out a bowl of shreddies at once. And while in my (Cocoa)Cups (mebbe I'll moisten the shreddies with single malt) I'll ruminate on the sad news of Grumpy Old Bookman slowing down his blog-rate after contributing a million words to cyberspace. A MILLION WORDS...

But actually, I haven't only been blogging. I've read two prospective authors' manuscripts and practically wet myself laughing at a slush-pile proposal for a sort of romance/adventure that is the funniest bad book synopsis I've ever read... sadly I can't post it for your delectation as that would be extremely cruel to the wannabe author who is destined to stay a wannabe... but my it made me laugh. I wonder if "The Worst Books Never Published" might have the makings of a christmas hit. Hmmm.

The Glass Books of The Dream Eaters

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:42:00 +0000

G. W. Dahlquist'a much hyped monster volume has come to me twice. Once as a ten-part serialisation in tribute to the cliff-hanging publishing of the 19th Century and once as a massively fat and rather shiny hardback.

And finally I've read it: what a contradictory experience. As a first statement I have to say it was utterly addictive. I was horrible to my family the whole time I was reading it, I could not think about anything else and I was totally, totally absorbed by its highly melodramatic plot - once I had got past what is possibly the worst written opening sentence I have ever encountered. What was the copy editor thinking!? However as a whole it left me unsatisfied, which is unusual. On the whole a book engages or it doesn't, it convinces you or it leaves you sceptical and The Glass Books of The Dream Eaters confounds this by doing both on every count. It is very interesting that the amazon reviewers' barometer points both ways at once - proclaiming it masterpiece and 'worst book ever'... What struck me after I'd gorged on its high-Victorian pastiche was that its greatest achievement is sustaining so much drama and pace over so many pages without faltering and its greatest flaw is that, for me at least, I never came to love the characters, or feel like I'd gained any insights into them. I then started to think about its literary debts - and interestingly I concluded that it owes its greatest debt not to Victorian adventure, but to a modern writer who owes his debt to that era/genre. Philip Pulman's Sally Lockhart Quartet which kicks off with the assured Ruby in the Smoke is actually a far more exciting and successful execution of this kind of pacey, avid writing. Once again, it makes me think that it is writers of young adult novels who are doing most of the innovating at the moment - think Melvyn Burgess, David Almond, Jan Marks & Co... Of adult writers playing with genres, I think Dahlquist is not as interesting as Sussana Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Anyway, if you are due to be stuck on a plane or train for many many hours The Glass Books will divert you and grip you - but don't expect it to change your view of the world, or sustain its interest past the closing of the last page.

Blog Failings...

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:02:00 +0000

Recent Reading I want to Blog about but haven't had a chance...

It seems like only a few days since I was moaning about not having time/insight/inspiration to read anything - now I've been reading but haven't managed to write a word.

The most recent stash of books that I most want to write about properly are:

Suite Francaise Irene Nemirovsky

Gatty's Tale Kevin Crossley-Holland

The Chateau William Maxwell

Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Gordon Dahlquist

I will - but first, so much else to do...

Scott Pack Uncovers All, Without Wings & Flies

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:58:00 +0000

Some day, I must get round to meeting Scott Pack. I never did in his time at Waterstone's and I probably would have been deeply suspicious of him coming from inside the retail behemoth's jaws so to speak.. but every time he has a column in The Bookseller I now turn to it eagerly. For a grumpy individual like myself, it's nice to occasionally have something to agree with in print!

This week, Scott Pack has an excellent piece about genre fiction and the scope there is for moving it out of its box - he cites Jess Foley (aka Bernard Taylor) whose saga No Wings To Fly was very successfully repackaged by Random House in Waterstone's-friendly new design to great success. But has this experiment been repeated - I don't think so, but I'd love to hear (with examples) if it has. Once more, the Pack has homed in on one of my biggest bugbears - how often really worthwhile books, entertaining, well written, often jewels are buried by literary snobbery about genres. OK there are some notable exceptions (the great Ursual K LeGuin for Fantasy and any number of literary crime novelists) but there are books that it would be hard to slide a piece of paper between in terms of quality, but that are miles apart in the minds of literary editors. Now I have a confession to make, in my book-PR role I do sometimes send wantonly inappropriate books to the books page editors just to see if I can get a rise. I've only had one notable success when a particularly pink book received an email back from Robert McCrum saying "you've got to be joking". And then I felt sad that I had been...

This quarter's THE Book Magazine has arrived, with an interesting piece by Jocasta Brownlee on the dangerous topic of book cover design. Always fascinating to see inside the process and Hodder do have particularly strong covers... oh, and, ahem, three of my articles - one on Oliver James' new book Affluenza one on self-help books and the final one on Sybille Bedford's novels.

Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter and Changing Mores

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 22:10:00 +0000

I am so inundated with new manuscripts to read, books that I am working on for clients and the general noise of book publishing, life as a literary agent and book PR that I don't seem to be able to read new books that aren't work related. I'm sure it will pass, but what it means is that I am constantly scanning the shelves for the old and the battered. Books that in preference don't even have a dust jacket (in case I start thinking about jacket design issues). I've ended up surrounded by a lot of faded burgundy cloth binding and I've also discovered that a bay in my living room with built-in shelves is damp and some of my favourite oldies are rather mildewed. However, I am sure that Graham Greene would find it apposite that some of his elegies are in danger of fungal overload. I just finished reading The Heart of the Matter which I don't think I have opened in at least a decade, possibly longer. Interestingly it is no masterpiece, it has the world-weary poise and listless hero of some of his greatest (TRULY great) books but it lacks the universality it needs to transcend it's age, class and overall its Catholicism. I think it's fascinating that the world is so changed now that the religious guilt and the forbidding of divorce is almost unimaginable as the pivot for a whole novel. Yet it was the heart of the matter of many of Greene's books - the person who married, lost out in love, found true love but could never fulfil it because their church forbade divorce was the dominant plot element of several of Greene's most significant books including The Quiet American and, well, practically everything else he wrote. It was a theme of vast importance to lesser known but magnificent writers like Pamela Frankau (whose masterpiece The Willow Cabin also hinged on a marriage that could not be dissolved). This was only a generation back...And of course Greene, ever the contrarian, managed a lifetime of adulterous affairs and his last enduring relationship was with a married woman (Shirley Hazzard's Greene on Capri is good reading on this topic).

It's a testament to these writers that their literary skill still manages to take the modern reader (or this one anyway) with them, even in a lesser book. Still, Scobie dying the way he does is a little unsatisfying an end. I think I shall have to go and read one of his spy novels, and then maybe some Malcolm Lowry.

So, 2007, I think my dusty reading habits will wear off soon. I have Suite Francaise as a bridge - a conveniently old book newly enough published to wean me back onto the present day.

On the book/work side I have had several great pleasures

1) the ever wonderful Shirley Collins got an MBE in the New Year honours
2) the entertaining Wendy Salisbury has an entirely suitable UK publisher in Old Street
3) Don Letts' autobiography is already garnering a lot of interest
4) Helen FitzGerald nears the end of her rewrite of her debut novel for Faber/Allen & Unwin and others
5) Rana Husseini's major work on Honour Crimes will see its launch
6) I've been invited to a mysterious and rather posh book party in Fitzroy Square (the publishing lunch might be dying, but there's obviously still some life in the launch)and it's not my job to organise it. Wheee!

A Case of Digital Heartbreak

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 21:53:00 +0000

My eldest who is just veering towards age 16 puts long hours and thought into composition - musical, rather than any of his academic coursework, but hey, you can't have everything. He's had a my-space presence showcasing his toons which he's been building for a while and which he was getting mega traffic through - around 2,000 plays a day of some of his stuff. Well, now, someone has phished him or hacked him or something and his whole site vanished over night eliminating all that virtual footfall and music cred in a single stroke. So - if you have a heart go visit babyfacedj, aka rebrand at his myspace site and sample his kicking, funk fuelled, jazz tinged, hip-hop flavas. And suggest his site to anyone who might care....

and make his Dad feel he's done someting for his first-born.

DROUGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Adrian Weston) — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:28:00 +0000

There is a reading drought in my life right now, which is weird as I am reading almost constantly, but almost all for work...

Manuscripts - have had a deluge of dreadful ones of late and then an absolute gem which I will be posting information about on the WORK BLOG and I am working through the final edit of Rana Husseini's deeply moving and very disturbing book on honour crimes which comes out in April.

Stuff for journalism: I've hugely enjoyed reading Oliver James's new book: Affluenza (coming out in January from Vermillion) which formed the basis of an interview for THE Book Magazine plus a pile of self-help books and a re-reading (bliss) of Sybille Bedford for a big feature on her also in the Jan issue.

Stuff for PR: lots of good and entertaining, but while I'm on a psychological bent I've just tackled the proofs of Dorothy Rowe's new book My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend on sibling relationships, out from Routledge in the Spring. What I liked most about reading Rowe was her extensive use of literary sources, so many of her examples are drawn from fiction which, perversely, seems more real than the cases based on 'real' but anonymous patients. More of this anon.

Stuff for light relief: None. Now this has not caused the pile of books I want to read or that I am waiting to read to stop building. Toppermost is the new John Le Carre which I bought for spouse for her birthday, but which son no. 1 stole. It has not been seen. Then comes Suite Francaise, which I think might fit rather nicely with the major Syb. Bedford binge still fresh in my mind.