Cornflower Books

Murder in the Library and a book to give away

 

    Just opened at the British Library in London is the exhibition Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction. This is a look at the history of crime fiction from its early roots to the present day, and it features familiar and well-loved writers as well as more obscure and surprising ones. The 'A-Z' element takes us from 'A' for Agatha Christie to 'Z' for Zodiac as in Soji Shimada's Tokyo Zodiac Murders, an illustrated Japanese detective novel, and highlights of the exhibition - which is free and runs until 12th. May - include John Gielgud's annotated script for Murder on the Orient Express and photographs, from his personal album, for his appearance in Morse, original material relating to the real-life crimes behind Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, and Arthur Conan Doyle's manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (1926).

    The Library is hosting a series of events to accompany the exhibition including, on Friday 8th. February, The Story of Crime Fiction with Mark Lawson and crime fiction writers P. D. James, Henry Sutton and Jason Webster discussing the history of the genre, their favourite classics and their own work, and on Friday, 8th. March, The Female Detective in which a panel of writers discuss what makes the female detective, from Miss Marple to Mma Ramotswe, "an icon of the genre".

   

    You may not have heard of Britain's first fictional female detective Miss Gladden, otherwise known as "G", but in 1864 she appeared in the book The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester where "her deductive methods and energetic approach anticipate those of Sherlock Holmes, and she can be seen as beginning a powerful tradition of female detectives". The Library has recently re-published the book, with a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith, and they have kindly offered me a copy to give away, so to enter the draw please leave a comment naming your favourite crime novels or authors (male or female). I'm looking forward to reading what you write as it should amount to a great list of crime fiction, so please do put your name in the hat - it's open to all - and I'll pick a winner in a day or two.

Waterstones 11

 

    The Waterstones 11 for 2013 have just been announced, and here are the 11 debut novels the book chain has pronounced 'ones to watch' this year.

Pig's Foot Carlos Acosta - that is the Carlos Acosta

Idiopathy by Sam Byers

Y by Marjorie Celona

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

The Fields by Kevin Maher

The Son by Michel Rostain

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

Ballistics by DW Wilson

Fun and games

  

  London readers in search of a bargain may like to pop into Heywood Hill in Curzon Street before 26th. January and have a rummage in their basement as they are offering 40% off a large selection of secondhand and antiquarian stock including items from the libraries of Anthony Powell, Edward Heath and others.

   

    If you haven't already seen it, do read the poem Oatmeal by Galway Kinnell which Nancy very kindly incorporated in her comment on the breakfast post earlier in the week, and another lovely food-related poem, Mother N by Adèle Geras which you can find here.

    Fans of Angela Thirkell (and I am one now having read three books of hers in quick succession last month) will be pleased to hear that Virago Modern Classics are to be bringing out four more of her novels. Pomfret Towers, described by the publisher as having “a pleasingly light-hearted Downton-esque storyline about the marriage plans of a young heir to the entailed family estate”, will be published in November 2013, while The Brandons, Summer Half and August Folly will follow in summer 2014.

   

    Lastly today, this is very tongue-in-cheek this, but follow the link to find out whether you are on the Wolf Hall spectrum, and if so, where!

Power Re-arrangers

    I happened to be in a bookshop this afternoon, and during my brief browse I spotted a favourite novel from last year and took the opportunity of moving its neighbours slightly further along the shelf so that the book in question was face out. It's not the first time I've done a bit of 'guerrilla book-adjustment' like this making me - as Mr. C. coins it - a 'power re-arranger', but although it's only a tiny gesture of support for something I rate, I hope it results in the book catching the eye of a shopper who will buy it and enjoy it. For the avoidance of doubt, no other novel was 'disadvantaged' in the process, and I wouldn't dream of any major interference to a bookseller's display, just a wee tweak here and there!

                                                    ~~~~~

    Did any fans of the Moomins or The Summer Book and A Winter Book watch the documentary Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson which was shown the other night (and is still available on iPlayer)? It was fascinating to learn of all the autobiographical elements in the books, I thought, and watching it might even (slightly) enhance a reading of the 'Summer'/'Winter' stories.

Serendipities in bookstores

 

    "There are all kinds of serendipities in bookstores, starting with -

Alphabetical: while looking for one novel, you might remember that you'd always meant to read something by another author whose last name shared the same first two letters.

Visual: the shiny jacket on this book might catch your eye.

Accidental: superstitiously, I almost always feel the need to buy any book that I knock over.

Prompted: both Mom and I gave very serious consideration to any book placed in the "staff recommends" section, particularly if it sported a yellow stickie (a.k.a. Post-it note) or a handwritten shelf talker - a bookstore neologism I love, because it conjures such a vivid image of a shelf talking to you, or of a person who talks to shelves."

   

    That's another lovely passage from Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club, and I applaud Will's 'creative justification' for buying books! The joy of browsing is in those happy discoveries and chance finds, and Will goes on to say that on the bookshop visit he's talking about there he bought Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar - a 'staff favourite' - and a volume of W. Somerset Maugham's short stories which he had knocked off a shelf.

    There's clearly mileage (albeit with extra expense) in cultivating a degree of clumsiness in bookshops: "Oh dear, I seem to have caused the complete works of X to fall to the floor, taking with them numerous surrounding volumes by other great writers I've always wanted to read. I shall certainly have to buy them all now ..."

    Do you have any bookshop rules, rituals or superstitions? Any serendipitous discoveries?

More blethering

 

    I have no cake to offer you today I'm afraid, but the kettle's on, there's a box of Prince Charles' finest shortbread, and the sun has come out, so since the last one was a lot of fun let's have another chat about what we're reading and any other bookish topics we might care to raise.

    I have too many books on the go just now, the result of reviewing and writing commitments and general greed, but I'm thoroughly enjoying every one, even though a couple are not getting much attention while I concentrate on the pressing ones. Bring up the Bodies is everything you'd expect from Hilary Mantel after Wolf Hall,while John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk is intriguing and impressive and delicious so far; Clare Clark's Beautiful Lies continues to enthrall (I mentioned it the other day), and the passage I quoted from Georgina Harding's Orange Prize shortlisted Painter of Silence gives you an idea of the beautifully still, measured nature of that novel, so I'm spoilt for choice as regards fine writing just now. (Edited to add: just finished Painter of Silence - no wonder it was a strong contender for the prize - and am now on to Edward St. Aubyn's At Last in its stead.)

    In other news, I see Bloomsbury have ordered a 35,000 copy reprint of The Song of Achilles, testament to the strength of the book and the interest generated by its win, and I'm so pleased to see it get the readership and recognition it deserves.

    Though prophecies of doom seem to abound in the publishing and bookselling world, it's always heartening to see optimistic initiatives within the industry such as the new imprint launched by Headline, Tinder Press. This will publish 10-12 literary fiction titles per year, "books that inspire a passionate response and will stand the test of time," and which will have high production values (something a lot of us were saying we wanted) and be ones to treasure. Their list for Spring 2013 includes Maggie O'Farrell's next novel and Peggy Riley's Amity and Sorrow.

    What else? Edinburgh has a new bookshop, it seems (I'm late discovering this)! Looking Glass Books is at Quartermile, the site of the old Royal Infirmary, nicely close to the excellent Peter's Yard, so I shall have to pay them a visit soon.

    That's enough from me - how about you? What are you reading? More than one book at a time? What do you have lined up next? Any thoughts or observations on bookish topics while I make a fresh pot of tea?

 (By the way, today's mug is my breakfast one, Emma Bridgewater's Labradors, sales of which benefit Help for Heroes.)

The shop was open, and other stories

   

    Yes, the never-open shop was open for once, and I went in! I don't wish to be mean, but I'm not surprised they are closing down: it's very dimly lit, the stock is all higgledy-piggledy, the place looks uncared for, and there was nothing there to tempt me - though to be fair to them, Mr. C. found three books he wanted (history x 2 and art) and got them at a good price, but all told, it's not somewhere you'd be making a beeline for if you were looking for a goodish range of secondhand books, particularly as there are other better shops (and charity bookshops, too) nearby.

    Happily, the postman has brought me so many parcels recently that I'm utterly spoilt for choice and don't have to rely on never-open shops. I must quickly mention a few of the highlights of the arrivals piles in case you've missed them over there in the sidebar list on the right:

    Lots of us are fans of Rosy Thornton's novels, e.g. The Tapestry of Love (post here) and Hearts and Minds (post here), so it's great news that Rosy's next book is due out in a few days' time. Ninepins is set in the Cambridgeshire fens where Laura is living alone with her daughter Beth. When she takes in a teenager with a dubious past, and Beth starts to get into trouble at school and out of it, Laura's carefully ordered world seems to be getting out of control. "With the tension of a thriller, Ninepins explores the idea of family, and the volatile and changing relationships between mothers and daughters, in a landscape that is beautiful but perilous." Rosy is always well worth reading, so that's one to look out for.

    Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches was a big hit with me just over a year ago, and I said then how much I was looking forward to the second volume in Deborah's All Souls trilogy, so I'm delighted to now have a proof copy of that book, Shadow of Night. It won't be published here until July, but I'm sure it will be worth the wait as the first book was such fun, and the plot moves seamlessly on, taking Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont to 1590 London where Matthew falls in with a group of radicals and spies for Queen Elizabeth, and the two scour the city's bookstalls and alchemical laboratories, following the elusive trail of the mysterious manuscript, Ashmole 782.

    If crime is more your thing, do you know the Greek detective novels of Anne Zouroudi? I am midway through the first of the series - The Messenger of Athens - and I'm loving it so I'm pleased to know that there are a further five books available now, a sixth title due in June, and then presumably a seventh after that (their themes are the seven deadly sins). More on the first book soon, and more from the arrivals piles, too.

Mary on Waterstones

 

    In case you haven't seen it, here's Mary Portas's review of the Waterstones branch in London's Gower Street. I'd love to see what Mary would do if she did get her hands on a bookshop - note her offer at the end of the piece!

Congratulations to ...

    ... the excellent Mainstreet Trading Company for winning 'best bookshop' in The Daily Telegraph's Shop Awards presented by Mary Portas in London last night!

    Described by Maggie O'Farrell as "a bookshop so perfect you might have dreamt it", and situated in the Borders village of St. Boswells, it is indeed a truly lovely shop - as my recent post on it attests.

Lots of books

     I've seen some of the 20 most beautiful bookshops in the world before (click there and scroll through) but not all of them - aren't they wonderful! Has anyone visited any?

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     Meanwhile, Roger Lewis has 20,000 books - and he can't give them away.

    (Barry Humphries tops that with around 25,000).

The bookshop at night

    Do watch this lovely video if you have a moment - it's such fun! (I sound like Miranda's mother ...). Full details here.

A few miscellaneous links

 

      I'm catching up after a couple of days away, so here are a few miscellaneous links:

 

  -  Happily, our route down to the Forest of Bowland took us through St. Boswells, so The Mainstreet Trading Company made the perfect place to stop for refreshments and a little light book-buying. I also came away with a Love Your Indie loyalty card to be used in participating bookshops (full details here).

  -  In case you haven't already seen them, here are the shortlists for the 2011 Costa Book Awards.

  -  Although I've yet to read any of her books, I follow the blog of Canadian crime writer Louise Penny, and here's a recent post of hers on the publishing process, a subject I'm always interested in knowing more about.

 -  Jojo Moyes' article on the changing face of children's literature prompted a nostalgic moment over breakfast this morning. I don't have a copy of Moorland Mousie on my shelves, but I do still have all my old Pullein-Thompson, Pat Smythe and Ruby Ferguson books, and some of them were read and enjoyed by my daughters (but not my son - though he is nowadays the only one of the three who rides).    

In with the bricks

    Reading various interviews with Ann Patchett around the time her latest novel State of Wonder* was published, I noted that she had plans to open a bookshop in her home town, Nashville. Along with her business partner Karen Hayes, a former Random House rep., her idea was for a not-too-big, not-too-small independent shop that would be a focus for the community and sell the books its owners love and want to recommend.

    Parnassus Books is now taking shape, and to help with start-up costs and to build customer loyalty right from the off, they have come up with a scheme by which a 7-tiered founders' club gives members various privileges from single book discounts to a '20% off' shoppping spree, after hours buying and more. All very enterprising, and if I lived anywhere near, I'd join (I have signed up for emails as I'm interested to follow their progress).

    What makes a good bookshop, one that you want to return to again and again? The following are obvious attributes/elements, but not always present, in my experience at least, and are surely all the more crucial in these tough economic times:

- a pleasant place: light and airy, or cosy but well-lit, with places to sit down and space to browse comfortably,

- stock which looks as though it's been carefully chosen by book lovers, rather than lifted from a retail outlet which doesn't purport to be a bookshop per se,

- knowledgeable staff: people who know books and are passionate about them - and are good with customers!

    Optional extras:

- author events,

- book groups,

- coffee shop (like this one, or this).

    Anything else? What, apart from the above, might draw you in to our fantasy bookshop? Financial incentives such as a customer loyalty scheme or privileges like the Parnassus Books founders' ones? Well-chosen non-book items like stationery, 'gifts', homewares, etc.? Art exhibitions or musical evenings? Writers' groups? London's Big Green Bookshop branches out in other innovative ways, too. Food for thought ...

See also: All pace slackened to a page's turn - a post on 18 Bookshops by Anne Scott.

 

*Stop Press! Many thanks to Linda for alerting me to the fact that the Kindle version of State of Wonder is available for today only at the bargain price of £1.29.

Artistic leanings

   

    Whenever I'm in a shop attached to an art gallery or museum I make a point of looking at the novels they have for sale alongside all the non-fiction that you'd expect them to stock.

    Today in the small shop at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art (No.2) they had - unsurprisingly - the excellent Gillespie and I* by Jane Harris (post on it here), winning its shelf room because it features a painter who is a fictitious member of the Glasgow Boys, together with Life Class by Pat Barker, her novel about the effects of the Great War on a group of artists from the Slade School, and The Hayburn Family by Guy McCrone for which, frustratingly, I can find only the briefest of synopses, but if I remember correctly it has to do with the scion of a wealthy Glasgow shipbuilding family preferring to make his way as an artist rather than joining the business as is expected of him.

    Only three novels about art and artists then, as far as I could see, but if they had space for more I'd hope they'd stock Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee (quite masterly) and Francesca Kay's An Equal Stillness (such an impressive debut), to name but two others.

*On the subject of art, any thoughts on the design of the paperback cover compared to that of the hardback jacket shown above?

Books and cakes!

    We've been down in the Borders today, paying another visit to the lovely  Mainstreet Trading Company in the village of St. Boswell's.

It's one of the nicest bookshops you'll find anywhere, so do make a beeline for it if you're ever in the area.

    We met friends for a jolly good browse and some buying - Anthony Horowitz's new Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk and The MET Office Book of the British Weather came home with us, while one friend discovered Henrietta (I may have influenced that choice ...) and another was scouting out possible reads for a forthcoming long flight.

    And we had lunch: the most excellent, hearty sandwiches followed by superb coffee and a Tunisian citrus cake (similar to this recipe, I think) which was so good we had to exercise considerable restraint not to go back for second helpings.

    Perfick!

All pace slackened to a page's turn

 

    Anne Scott's 18 Bookshops is one of those rare books that is both personal and universal - it speaks of one woman's experience, but in a way that so many lovers of books and bookshops will identify with, and on the transformative possibilities of books and the places in which they are found it will perhaps make the reader see their own encounters in a new light.

    This is a thoughtful work, one of quiet passion and a poet's sensibility. Handsomely designed, though the lack of page numbers means noting and revisiting a reference is a slower business than usual - but then see this post's title which is itself a lovely line from the book - it's a collection of word-portraits of 18 unique shops; some are well known to the author and have particular meaning for her at different times in her reading life, while others earn their place through their importance to literary history. To illustrate that eclecticism, there is the Covent Garden shop at which Boswell met Johnson, the sixteenth century Edinburgh shop, Chepman & Myllar, in which the first printed books in Scotland were produced, and on to the present day, Leakey's in Inverness, formerly St. Mary's Gaelic Church, where in a place in which the language once spoken and sung had 28 separate words for poem, the author finds the copy of Eliot's Little Gidding which she had been seeking; "Sometimes, as here," she says, "a Bookshop may be defined forever in a life by a single found book."

    From the island of Iona to New York City, from small shops in small towns and the quaint and the curious to large city booksellers and establishments which launched major careers, this encapsulates the author's observation that "... bookshops are immeasurably strange and that the mind reading next to mine inhabits a separate earth", and for everyone who has ever seen a bookshop as the gateway to so many other worlds, this beautiful book on the character of such places and their significance to those who are drawn to them must have a place on the shelves.

Current and imminent reading

 

    I haven't been able to add books to any of the sidebar lists for a few days now (there's a gremlin somewhere in the depths of Typepad), so here's a manual update.

    I've finished Mari Strachan's Blow on a Dead Man's Embers and Annabel Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece and I won't pre-empt posts on them but I will say I enjoyed both of them very much indeed.

    I'm now well on with A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked in by Magnus Mills (quite intriguing) and am about to start Sally Gardner's The Double Shadow (much anticipated). Then will come 18 Bookshops by Anne Scott which describes 18 special places "where books are centre stage, but place and experience play their part" - I'll tell you more when I've read it - and a new Professor Dr. von Igelfeld 'entertainment', Unusual Uses for Olive Oil by Alexander McCall Smith (always great fun).

A library

 

 

    "To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul."  Cicero.

 

    Pictured is Vita Sackville-West's tower library at Sissinghurst.

 

    (Readers who go a long way back may remember that it was a Vita Sackville-West novel with which we inaugurated the Cornflower Book Group; given its date, it's possible that Vita wrote All Passion Spent* in that room.

*(I like the pretty new cover).

Libraries, lists and a whisper of a Whipple

    Nutkin, my squirrel letter rack or 'to do' list holder which has come all the way from Australia (thankyou, Kirsty), is shown here with two Persephone bookmarks for books which will be out next month - one of them is Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple!

    I don't know whether Alan Bennett is a fan of Mrs. Whipple's - I wouldn't be surprised to hear he is - but this morning I've been reading his recent article on libraries which is very much worth a look if you have a few minutes to spare. The bit about Cecil Woodham-Smith tickled me particularly.

    From libraries to lists of books, and you may be interested to see the top 100 titles nominated for next year's World Book Night; I'm pleased that one of my absolute favourites is right up there. Nominations aren't closed, though, and if you click here you can see the interactive list and follow the link to suggest your own favourites.  

Saturday miscellany

    - The Telegraph magazine is always my Saturday breakfast reading, and one of its highlights is Mary Portas's shop review column. Today she casts her critical eye over Daunt Books, specifically the Marylebone High Street branch, and you can read what she has to say here. I've never been to Daunt's so I can't comment on her impressions, but I find it very interesting that one of the key areas in which they can compete with online retailers and other shops which sell books at large discounts is service, and that's exactly were Mary marks them down.

    - For anyone who missed Wednesday's post, I've postponed our CBG discussion of The Good Soldier by a week to Saturday 30th. July. Meanwhile, I've got our next book - or possibly even next two - in hand, so more news on those very soon.

    - If you glance over to the arrivals list on the right there you'll see at the top a new novel by the excellent Sally Gardner (her brilliant I, Coriander was a favourite of mine a few years ago, and The Red Necklace was equally impressive and imaginative). The Double Shadow is a book for older teenage readers, due out in early November. I read the opening chapter yesterday and I had to force myself to put it down - I'm reading too many books just now to add another one to the mix - but it was compelling and promises much. Here's the gist:

"In a bluebell wood stands a picture palace. Arnold Rubens built it to house an invention of his that could change the war torn world forever. It is to be given to his daughter, Amaryllis, on her seventeenth birthday. But it's a present she doesn't want, and in it is a past she has to come to terms with ... Who knows what her past has been, or what the future might hold for Amaryllis, lost as she is in this place with no time?

Against the tense backdrop of the second World War, Sally Gardner explores families and what binds them, fathers and daughters, past histories, passions and cruelty, love and devastation in a novel rich in character and beautifully crafted."