My Bookshelf

Friday 31 May 2013

Bridget Jones discovers social media...


I have to admit that I am yet to read a Bridget Jones novel. I have seen both the films and snorted with laughter my entire way through both but I have never owned, read, stroked, smelled a Helen Fielding book. It's not exactly a book I have to be ashamed about not reading I think we'll agree but I do hate feeling left out when everyone gets excited about a sequel novel or film where I've never seen/read 'the first one'.

For me it is that case where the first person I ever discussed the book with told me that it wasn't any good. So, being the easily impressionable child that I
am was, I didn't read it. As it happens, though, I do completely trust this person and, if my own theory works whereby a good film adaptation is often the result of a poor book or vice versa, then this person was probably right because the first film in particular is arguably one of the best ever films (fact.) and features one of the best ever British accents by an American (double-fact.).

So with these not particularly intellectual but nevertheless considered observations, the question is - are we excited that there is a new Bridget Jones novel from Helen Fielding on the horizon?

I have to say I'm apprehensive... but perhaps the distance from its prequels will serve the new novel well (
The Edge of Reason was published in 1999 and the film was released in 2004).

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
is to be published on October 10th 2013.

Thursday 30 May 2013

Lionel Shriver at the Southbank Centre


Lionel Shriver is, first and foremost, a woman (for those of you who didn't know, I figured I should set things straight as I did previously spend half a talk thinking Mark Haddon was Shriver...). You will most likely know her as the award-winning novelist behind We Need to Talk About Kevin, a book that touched a lot of nerves but was, and not just for that reason, completely brilliant.

A couple of years ago I attended an event held at Foyles on Charing Cross Road celebrating 21 years of the Random House imprint, Vintage. I'm a big fan of Vintage books... they have an impressive lineup of writers and their signature spines make my bookshelf look really pretty and they totally match my duvet cover. As a Vintage author, Lionel Shriver attended the event to discuss her work as well as one of her favourite novels,
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates - you're starting to see why I might like this woman... Anyway, after a narrow miss of finding out the ending before I'd even started (thanks to a ridiculous, inane and frankly offensive question from a strange woman with bizarre hair in the front row), I decided it was about time I picked up Kevin.

Not only did I love the book but there is something so wonderfully frank about Lionel Shriver and you really have to go and see her to know what I mean. She creates, somehow, a weird infectious awkwardness. Tuesday night at the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre was no different. Someone somewhere had paired her up with the most inappropriate interviewer imaginable. You have to be on your toes, witty and difficult to intimidate to interview Shriver because she's not going to pussyfoot around things.

The one thing Shriver wanted us to walk away with was that her new novel,
Big Brother, that looks primarily at the effect obesity and our relationships with food, is most definitely not autobiographical. That is all very well, but the fact of the matter is that the concept was inspired by real events. Shriver lost her own brother to obesity two years ago. Had he survived, her family would have faced having him move in with them and this novel seems to have grown out of the 'what ifs' of Shriver's situation.


Shriver spoke touchingly of the relationships between siblings - one that I value myself immensely - but she did not at any point use her brother to sell this book. From an extract she read, Shriver once again seems effortlessly to elicit recognition and understanding from her readers through her writing. Even if the instances in her novels appear to be entirely personal and unique to the character, you are still able to think 'yes, that totally applies to me).

If you get the chance to see Shriver talk, do it. She's hilarious, she's honest to the point of awkwardness at times but how refreshing to hear someone say what they think than what they think you want to hear. As a result, you may not always agree... but that's quite fun. Plus she rights a great story.

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Stylist's Top 100 Books of the 1920s


With all the Gatsby mania following the release of the film, 1920s classics are now starting to reappear in the bestseller charts. Stylist magazine have jumped on this band wagon and kindly provided a very helpful list of inter-war novels for us to choose from. Click on the image above to see. Are all your favourites there? How many have you read? Anything missing?

Some relevant posts:

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Sunday 26 May 2013

Personalised First Editions rake in £440,000

English Pen logo
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit / Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Fifty-one first editions, one each from an impressive line-up of award-winning authors, were donated to the 'First Editions, Second Thoughts' charity auction this month at Sotheby's in aid of English Pen. Titles included Bridget Jones by Helen FieldingNorthern Lights by Philip Pullman, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and the list keeps going. Let your jaw drop (or draw job as I just typed...) by taking a look at all 51 lots on English Pen's website.

Each title is thoroughly
 annotated or illustrated by the writer and together raised £440,000 for the literary association when the auction was held on 21st May.

To give you an idea of what went for what, Roald Dahl's
Matilda, which included a number of new drawings by illustrious illustrator Quentin Blake, went for £30,000. Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader fetched £11,000 and an annotated edition of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day sold for £18,000.

Unsurprisingly, the book everyone is talking about is JK Rowling's
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Rowling had herself made notes on 43 pages of the bestselling novel and provided 22 illustrations. Philip Errington, the Director of Printed Books at Sotheby's, described it as 'the definitive copy of any Harry Potter book' where, Rowling's personality 'leaps from [the] pages and we are treated to a remarkable insight into her creative genius.' Sadly, I do not have £150,000 to my name let alone to bid on such a book, which is what it eventually went for at auction last week.

Minor jealousy ensues but generally, cheesy as it may sound, it's nice to see that books can still touch people enough to part with such large amounts of money, and all for a literary cause. Heart feels warmed.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby


The wait is finally over - Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby has finally graced our screens to be met with, shall we say, mixed reviews... The main criticisms seem to be 1) it is overly glitzy, with too much focus on the roaring twenties parties. 2) Not enough of the novel's darkness and 3) not enough 'emotion' and sadness.

I can't say I'm surprised. Take a much-loved book written nearly 100 years ago and then make a film in 3D with Leonardo Di Caprio... you're
never going to please the critics. That said, I'm a big Gatsby fan, and I loved this film. The glitz and the glamour was there, sure, they had to be. All I wanted to do was go out on a wild New York night out, drink myself silly and negotiate my way home without falling into the lake... arguably that wasn't really the reaction they wanted but it really does look so fun.

As for the novel's darkness, from just the trailer I could see Luhrmann had injected a whole lot more darkness than any of the film's predecessors. It was the darkness that I was excited for and I didn't feel disappointed.

The emotion was there, too. All helped by fantastic performances from both Leo. The casting in general, I have to say, was spot on. Tobey Maguire was definitely my Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan was so brilliantly evil, Isla Fisher was just, well, unrecognisable and wonderful as Myrtle and Carey Mulligan was so perfect for Daisy, it's hard to see how she could have been so difficult to cast! The only person I felt did not match the image in my head, was Leonardo Di Caprio himself. Luckily Leo, for me, can't do any wrong and this was no exception. And for once his baby face was a complete asset! You could completely believe Gatsby's wide-eyed hopefulness and childlike fascinations/obsessions.

Everything was then polished off and brought to life by the genius jazz/hip hop fusion soundtrack, which has arguably received far more attention than the film itself and saw Jay Z receive an Executive Producer credit. Florence and the Machine, Lana Del Ray, The XX, will.i.am, Jack White, Beyonce and Jay Z himself plus more... and loads of original songs. Impressive doesn't quite cover it.


What really had to win me round, though, was the 3D malark. Bleh, I really can't be dealing with it - gives you headaches all for the sake of not very much. This, however, I have to say, worked. It didn't distract me and it really added to Baz Luhrmann's theatrical vision for this iconic story.



Highlight? Gatsby's cream jumper. If anyone can find this exact item of clothing, get in touch... there is no reward greater than my appreciation...



If you don't like Baz Luhrmann, don't see it. If you read The Great Gatsby yesterday, again probably don't see it (no use going to see a film being able to pick out every single discrepancy), if you hated Moulin Rouge, don't see it. If none of these apply, GO SEE IT. It's a real feast.

Relevant posts:

Friday 17 May 2013

Book Club: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Circus has already suffered a bad defeat, and the result was two bullets in a man's back. But a bigger threat still exists. And the legendary George Smiley is recruited to root out a high-level mole of thirty years' standing - though to find him means spying on the spies.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
is brilliant and ceaselessly compelling, pitting Smiley against his Cold War rival, Karla, in one of the greatest struggles in all fiction.





There is always a bit of healthy competition within a book club - who has the best track record, whose tastes are guaranteed to clash etc - but it's always a bit rubbish when you keep picking  books no one likes. As it happens, I haven't loved any of my choices so far but an on-going joke has begun that one member has continued to pick the worst... one novel receiving a record 2 out of 10. But when she announced that the next book would be the Cold War classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carr
é, we all felt pretty hopeful!

I immediately revealed that I'd seen the film (hardly going to miss anything that stars Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth AND Gary Oldman all in the same film) at which point everyone's excited faces vanished at the thought of having to risk another choice. I explained, though, that luckily I have absolutely no idea what the hell happened. I remember standing up at the end of the film turning to my sister and both of us shrugging our shoulders - neither of us had a clue what had just happened - and it seemed neither did the rest of the cinema. It was made all the more frustrating because I could tell it was a good film; I miraculously managed to feel all the tension and appreciate the acting without understanding the plot.

And that, really, is how best to sum up the novel. One person didn't get past 120 pages once she'd realised after a trusty Wiki search that she had not picked up any of the plot so far. The rest of us all felt it was well written, easy to read in terms of literal sentence structure/syntax etc, but so deliberately obfuscating that we found ourselves completely lost in this world of espionage where there were a billion characters, all with about three code names and constant jumping back and forth in time and a maze of conversations within conversations. It took me about 200 pages before I could identify any of the characters from the film.

That said, I did feel, at least in the first and final thirds, that the inevitable structure of characters reporting back to their superiors meant that there were moments where everything was clarified that helped you catch up. Unfortunately if you skim read over that important conversation, you were pretty screwed for another 150 pages.

I loved being immersed in the politics and drama of the Cold War, though, which felt all the more authentic somehow after taking into account that the book was first published right bang in the middle of it. Doesn't everyone secretly hope that they will be picked up at university as some bright young hope for the secret service?? Would be the coolest thing ever. I suspect the fact that i use words like 'cool' means that I will never be considered...

All in all, I liked 
Le Carré's writing and I loved the ending, which I felt built up tension brilliantly, so I felt I should have enjoyed the novel a whole lot more than I did. As one person put it, there was just no satisfaction at the end of the book because I ultimately wasn't 100% sure whether I'd got everything. Wikipedia certainly proved me right on that point.

O
verall the book club gave an average rating of 5/10 and I gave it a 6/10

Wednesday 15 May 2013

Bookseller Industry Awards

The Random House Group
When Jennifer Lawrence (yes - her again, I'm trying to increase my blog's key words ok?) won her Oscar, I got myself into a bit of a bate. As amazing as I was starring in The Happy Prince aged 5, there is no way I'm going to find myself on that stage at the Kodak Theatre collecting my Best Actress Oscar any time soon. Furthermore, it's not like there are any opportunities to win stuff (not that that is my sole prerogative...) in my industry unless I actually write a book myself. That is, to be fair, a lie as there are the Bookseller Industry Awards so what I really meant was - there's no opportunity to be flooded with offers from top designers to dress the nominees for a red-carpet occasion. That aside, if you win a Bookseller Industry Award, that's still pretty cool.


This year publishing giant Random House received Publisher of the Year. BookScan figures show the publishing company to have earnet a massive £47.3m from E L James' Fifty Shades trilogy, making them the 3 bestselling novels last year. And just to rub it in, Random House managed to also stack up 28 number 1 bestsellers and 70 prizes. Give credit where it's due n' all that...

Other winners include, perhaps unsurprisingly, 4th Estate (HarperCollins) and editor Nicholas Pearson who is behind Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies, which has continued to dominate the chart in paperback upon its release last week. Foyles walked away with their 2nd National Bookseller of the Year Award and Pottermore was awarded Digital Strategy of the Year. Arguably no surprises, but it's nice to see that you can still do plenty of exciting things in modern publishing, even without the red carpet events...

Saturday 11 May 2013

OED on Book Hunt


One of the best things for me about being in the working world is discovering all the fascinating if not slightly odd jobs that are out there. Like, someone writes those little strips of paper for fortune cookies... and if your cat has been looking a little frazzled lately, it's all going to be ok because there are pet psychics out there who telepathically access an animals unsaid thoughts and emotions.

Perhaps not quite as odd, but nevertheless a job I'd never considered before, is the Oxford English Dictionary bibliographer. The position is currently held by Veronic Hurst and she's found herself in a bit of a predicament. 51 entries in the OED cite the 1852 book,
Meanderings of Memory written by Nightlark. The dilemma is not that the book was written by a wannabe supervillain, but that it appears to have vanished entirely. The OED is therefore now appealing to the public in the hope that someone will be able to help them trace this, likely pornographic, book on which 51 words rely on for their existence.

It all started off when someone OED was working on the word 'revirginize', an entry that is supported by a quotation from Meanderings of Memory, which reads: "Where that cosmetic … Shall e'er revirginize that brow's abuse." But the book couldn't be found.

The theory that the book is in some way pornographic came about when OED were trying to determine why a book might not be readily available in the public domain. But if you know anything to the contrary or, in fact, a copy has slipped incognito into your collection under your bed... best get in touch with Veronica Hurst at OED. Now
there's a real mystery. None of this Da Vinci Code stuff.

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Oops... Guccifer Takes on Candace Bushnell


Is it just me or does the latest novel from Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell strike you as an unlikely target for Guccifer, the hacker previously associated with infiltrating top figures in the US government and the Bush administration in particular, targeting the likes of George W Bush himself and Colin Powell. Most recently memos from Sidney Blumenthal, for former aide to Bill Clinton, distributing memos sent to Hilary Clinton but reformatted on pink backgrounds with Comic Sans font...

Candace Bushnell's latest novel,
Killing Monica, was yet unpublished - that was until Guccifer hacked into Bushnell's accounts and started tweeting extracts from the first 50 pages to the author's Twitter feed.

Not only was the incident extremely concerning and embarrassing for Bushnell but while she was frantically trying to regain control of her account, Guccifer started posting screenshots of her terrified emails to her editor and agent: "
Oh dear, this is terrible". Then, in a final moment of indulgence, Guccifer claims responsibility for the hacking and how does he do it? Oh just by sending an email from the AOL account of actor Rupert Everett.

Luckily the book world has decided to roll with the 'this is great publicity' slant on the whole incident, rather than scrap the book entirely. Jack Perry of Digital Book World said: 
The pages are not edited nor approved for consumers. But her fans will know that and will be thrilled to get a 'sneak peak. This is great publicity for a book that isn't even written yet.
Of course Bushnell isn't the first author to fall victim to literary leaks; JK Rowling has had her fair share of scares, as did Spice Girl Mel B with her memoir and Twilight writer Stephanie Meyer, who felt forced to abandon her sequel to the series, Midnight Sun.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

London Literature Festival 2013


It's been a while, my apologies - all I can say is that my life has been a little less full of books over the last week and a little more filled with, well, wine, dancing like Beyonce, sunshine, a whole lot of food and all, often, at the same time. That aside, people, I am back and what do I have for you? Only the London Literature Festival programme!

Brace yourself if you have a tendency to get a little over-excited - there is definitely potential for some Beatle mania, only with no Beatles... and to be honest probably not much mania around the usual Southbank clientele... anyway, the festival will be at London's Southbank Centre and feature two literary prize readings (
2013 Man International Booker Prize Readings and the Women’s Prize for Fiction Readings) as well as conversations with fiction royalty Barbara Kingsolver, Lionel Shriver, Dalrymple, Audrey Niffenegger... and Rupert Everett. Thought I'd just slip him in there even though he probably doesn't quite qualify as literary royalty, but he does have a book out so he's earned his place.

Claire Tomalin's publicist has gone a little crazy and signed her up for five lectures on literary figures from Thomas Hardy to her latest subject, Charles Dickens, to Jane Austen who would have been celebrating
Pride and Prejudice's 200th anniversary this year.

Other things you can expect include plays, graphic novels and a whole lotta poetry... which I'm afraid I will be largely avoiding because not even an English Literature degree has raised by brow high enough to pay for poetry. I would probably pay to see Keats, or Eliot, or Hardy - that might be worth seeing... especially as it would likely involve a very dramatic awakening from the dead which would be pretty original entertainment in itself.

I really shouldn't be so mean about poetry, I'm sure there's loads of good stuff on if the non-fiction and fiction line-up is anything to go by. Check out the entire programme here, but be quick - tickets are vanishing quickly.

Some other relevant posts: