Tuesday, August 05, 2008

pay the band that plays your song

and then there are days like these where men in suits stand above you orange from too much time spent lying in a combination of both sunbeds and sun drenched beaches. It's remarkable how the possession of one thing, money, can seem to be held far more in esteem than another single naturally human attribute. Possessed of a furrowed brow and a tailored jacket & pants to the unnaturally corpulent body, the male stentorian stalks the young retailer carefully and waits to leap to the puffing sweaty attack. Too much?

I've been diving back into the English classics. Is there anything as soothing as a bit of Dickens, comfortable and as paternal as a worn leather armchair in a comfortable room. It's a statement alright as is Austen in all her mind-twisting nihilism. She seems convinced of the need for suffering, beating down her characters so their mind becomes altered by the ordeal. But this isn't about Aunt Jane. This is about Mary Shelley.

Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Her husband, Precy Bysshe, was anxious, she writes us in her introduction to the 1931 edition of Frankenstein, that she should prove herself worthy of her parentage. But, she tells us, life, reality and ultimately a family got in the way. But she eventually did get round to it. And here's the proof: Frankenstein is a phenomenon. There's no other way around the summing up of it. The first striking aspect of reading Frankenstein is that, as a novel, it is nothing similar to the various forms that it is popular assumed to be. First of all there is no Igor. There is no Igor! Where does Igor come from? Frankenstein operates entirely alone which casts a far more sinister shadow over the proceedings then does the ultimate creation of the monster. We all know the monster exists, the whys and wherefores are entirely at odds with what a modern reader new to the text would expect. We are not prepared for the savagery with which the creation forces itself on the creator. There is no way of being prepared for the blinding egotism of Frankenstein who, again contrary to popular belief is not actually in the novel a titular doctor. The orgasmic freedom that he creates the monster comes solely from within him. His madness isn't portrayed as insanity but rather beyond the boundaries of socially acceptable self-indulgence of the intellect. The appeal in creation is obvious; who is there who would not secretly admit to the wish of seeing a physical end-product solely derived from imaginative intelligence? His creation of the monster is in defiance of the rules of the university and the society of academics that he travelled to the Bavarian university of Ingolstadt to join. All of his subsequent actions are trapped by the consideration of the effects that he might have on his immediate world around him and the wider effects on the community he considers himself part of. I'm sure that Burroughs loved this novel as it illustrates, no, illuminates, systems of control like no other gothic novel. Gothic novels tend to demystify. Frankenstein tends towards inversion, inwards towards the question of mystery. The mystery is that of Frankenstein. he commends himself to the higher power of god. The creation Frankenstein commends himself to his known creator. I could be glib and invoke Dawkins to tackle that as I consider it as proof positive that God must have existed at some point for someone. But then again I hate Dawkins and would do anything to turf him out on his pious arse.

I had originally read the 1818 text which should still be available from Oxford's Classics when I was a precocious reader of 12 and the importance of these things were completely unknown to me. I then gae up on reading for about 2 1/2- 3 years. I reread the book last week that put me back onto the path of righteousness and belive it or not it was John Grisham's Pelican Brief. I love thrillers and John Grisham is one damn fine legal thriller writer. Don't bother with any of the later stuff as he runs out of tangible ideas but the Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Client, The Partner- all those and several more are just damn good reads. You can feel the author reveling in being anti-capitalist and left-wing. The characters are quickly sketched and fleshed out by their actions. I'm always being told by way of excuse for buying these books that they're easy to read. Not so. They may be easy to scan but anybody can read any book. His pace is unerring and he's certainly no Dan Brown. Grisham has an eye for detail and research. Each character's routine is loved and tread with a light step endearing the reader to them or not,.Coal, a presidential exectuive in Pelican bears remarkable resemblance to Mr. Slope from Trollope's Barchester Towers. It just can't startle me in the slightest if there is some connection there. Just read the damn thing and be done with it. It'll only take a couple of hours and I guarantee you'll have a rollicking good time.

So many surprises out there it's only possible to know where to begin. Where you'll end up is hardly anyone elses concern but your own.

As a final note amazon has recently bought or is/was about to buy abebooks.com. Is this the nail in the coffin for independent booksellers? Tune in next week to find out.



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Sunday, July 13, 2008

the insomnia factor

Insomnia does strange things to the brain. The early hours of the morning can fly by at times; before I know it the entire night has flown by and it's six in the morning. Sometimes. Other times the night crawls by & the wee hours barely bother moving on trapping the sufferer in an external exoskeletal of pain, weariness & superhuman suffering. For some reason known only to God and a handful of scientists sworn to secrecy insomnia actually doesn't kill you. Just forces you to find random links such as this, this, and this. The point I'm trying to make or believe myself is that insomnia is in actual fact a virtual form of madness which isn't necessarily cured by sleep just as the experience of taking hard drugs isn't necessarily cured by not taking any more, or staying sober. And, as I'm sure we're very aware that all three of the above subjects; insomnia, drugs and 'madness' are all more or less inter-related when it comes to literature. Taking a broad view of craziness related issues myself I generally & wholeheartedly believe that to be on the fringes of society is madness. Simply put: why would you do that to yourself? Why stay on the outside when you know it's going to cause you so much bother? Why stay different in a world that will attempt to grind you down should it be determined that you are "different"?

Well, this brings me neatly to the first book I want to write about. The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut. Mark has just written the introduction to his father's latest book Armageddon in Retrospect which has been posthumously published. The Eden Express was first published in 1975 was out of print for years and picked up again by Seven Stories Press in 2002. It's a non-fiction book about his dealings with schizophrenia; the title comes from his trying to unite the Outer and the Inner life so he can reach Eden while living in a Hippie commune in British Columbia. Schizophrenia brought him to it in record time. Mark is remarkably well-written both in his introduction to his father's work and his own memoir of schizophrenia. One of my favourite quotes from the Introduction is: "Anyone who thinks that Kurt's jokes or essays came easily or were written off the cuff hasn't tried to write." Eden Express itself is well-written with thoughtful and unpretentious prose. He attests his recovery to megavitamin therapy and the book is full of useful information on schizophrenia which, even if the reader is not directly or infirectly affected by the malady,  makes for comforting reading at that hour of the morning when your limbs are encased in sleep but you're still awake surfing the web. There's a particular sensitivity and rounded knowledge that he brings to his writing that doesn't always exist when the offspring of famous writers tend to take to the same craft. Fittingly enough Mark Vonnegut, who was named for Mark Twain, is a pediatrician which adds just the finishing sheen to the poetry of the relationship between father and son.

Moving swiftly along- the blue sky shines through my window every morning. How is it that in this city the very early morning is often spectacular to see whereas the rest of the day is usually grim and grey?

Ooh, this is a nice one. Certainly Orwell's strangest book. The Clergyman's Daughter. Dorothy Hare is devoted to her father, the titular clergyman. She looks after her patrician father and her household chores are all timed to the minute. The central theme is one of modern slavery, how various systems of control insinuate themselves into modern life. Dorothy's position within the parish is undoubtedly not of the lowest order yet her life is miserable. Here's the catch though: She is seen by the parish gossip kissing the most disreputable man in town, a certain Mr. Warburton, goes home to make costumes for a kids pageant or play and while the glue is melting on the stove, the heavy smell dulling her senses and kettle whistling, she falls asleep only to wake up on a beach having lost all memory of who she is. An event which remains both unquestioned and unexplained throughout the entire book! Now here's the thing, Orwell later repudiated the book dismissing it as tripe. Personally it's my favourite Orwell. Orwell was not a beautiful writer, he was a journo. He waged war on the cliché demanding that all clichés be henceforth dropped from the English language. Cliché was a 'tired worn boot' that needed to be cast off, which only went to prove that it is practically impossible to talk about clicés without using clichés. He was not an admirer of the aesthetically beautiful but an exposer of the intrisically socially ugly. 1984 is a big ol' brute of a book, painful to read in every way, which establishes O as being the English version of Dostoevsky, or, in other words, prepared to bludgeon the reader with meaning until, bloody and fainting, the reader submits that salvation is only possible through sweat, blood & tears. Dorothy works picking hops, is a beggar on Trafalgar Square finely portrayed through play format which suits the chaos of the action and she goes to teach in a school where she is immediately beset upon by the despicable mistress. I'll never forget Miss Strong, Dorothy's predessor whose legacy is empty bottles stashed around Dorothy's room. The whole work ends with Dorothy ending back in the parish at the kitchen table, glue melting on the stove &c. What I love about this book is that Dorothy is not by nature a bitter person, neither do her experiences change her for the worst. At times she is desperate for money, company and the recognition of society but her lifelong experience of being a subject at the hands of her father has made her naive. Each new situation that she finds herself in she accustoms herself to as a child not knowing anything better. Her helplessness is entirely in the mind of the reader and Dorothy's grace is entirely indebted to the fact that she always has been a slave. Perhaps Orwell disowned the book as it is one of few indications he actually had a creative imagination. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect Orwell in the same way I do Dostoevsky, but he called the shots as he saw them and his books are identifiable as being part of his life in a way that it is possible to set out chunks of his life through the representation of them in his books. In this way Dorothy is the black sheep of Orwell's lifelong oeuvre and that suits her & me just fine and dandy.

I'm going to eat soft-boiled eggs and marmite soldiers.





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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A little relief after heavy ramblings.. .



http://www.france24.com/en/20080616-literature-paul-auster-siri-hustvedt-paris-norway-sorrows-american&navi=CULTURE
Posted by littlesnapper at 00:07:13 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Monday, June 23, 2008

bunch of bloody amateurs

It's not rocket science but tell me I'm wrong. How few small bookshops are there present, both on the streets or with a presence on the web? How hard has it become these days to find a decent bookshop where you can walk in & talk about books or, alternatively find a decent selection without being talked to when you don't want to be harassed? How hard is it to find a decent all-round bookseller full stop?

Large chain bookstores, mass market publishers & wannabe booksellers (Tesco) are the worst bunch of amateurs I've ever seen. They are completely incapable of understanding that you can't replace a poor-selling title with larger numbers of a better selling title. Try selling someone who comes in to buy a copy of say Tarjei Vesaas' Ice Palace a copy of Butcher's Blood River. Or the new autobio of Cherie Blair. Won't work. In fact I read a great quote in one of the free London papers when Mrs. Blair's autobio was coming out. "Let's face it," the reviewer wrote, "We'd all rather read Jordan's latest book than Cherie's book." Which says plenty for choice of reading material as well as English politics. I'm not slagging off the state of English politics, as I'm terrifically glad to be part of the harmony in this dynamic society. Amazon are even worse. We've all seen the ephitet "People who bought this book also bought..." It all smacks  of desperation. Amazon know how untenable their situation is at the pole of international bookselling. Why else would there be ten million little buttons and extra little bits on any given page you visit on the Amazon site? In order for the structure of Amazon to work the consumer needs to be overawed by the vast domain incorporated into the site. If the consumer were not in awe of the massive co-ordination required of such a behemoth & damned certain of Amazon as being the easiest as well as the cheapest the whole premise of the virtual shop would all fall apart. In fact, I'm pretty certain that were such a realisation to take place, ten minutes of searching around on the web would find  an alternative that was either quicker, cheaper, local, more ethical or simply more convenient.

With such a heavy emphasis on supporting local businesses it is possible that small independent bookshops will gradually find it possible to entice local customers back through their physical & virtual doors. It is also entirely possible that Amazon will remain the Microsoft of virtual commerce & that small bookshops will become somewhat ephemeral installations before they close down. Bookshops will always be around somewhere in the background the question really is how long will they be around for & how reliable will the service be? Can owners of already large & established stores who let's face facts only need to manage profit  margins be persuaded that bookselling as a profession is a viable alternative to shifting numbers?

Or, and here's something that I would personally find fitting, let's have phd candidates in tweed jackets & bespectacled arty students behind the desks at Tesco's pushing Dickens and Hunter S. Thompson. Let's have Amazon sending free sample chapters of Ibsen along with the latest tome on the Bush dynasty. If you're going to do something might as well do it all the way.
Posted by littlesnapper at 23:22:06 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, June 20, 2008

they rise up, knees up, knees up..

So I'm back from the festival in Paris which was quite frankly astounding. I sold some books, bought some books, left some books behind and got a whole new reading list.

For those of us who don't really feel like handing in to the large consumer empire I discovered a shining example of commonsense in André Schiffrin. Son of Jacques Schiffrin who started both 'La Serie Pleiade' and the Pantheon Press, André advocates the decentralisation of the book publishing industry which by extension can be made for the bookselling industry too. Centralisation encourages the homogenisation of an industry which, for the most part, has played its most important roles in the communication of revolutionary ideas and then counter-revolutionary ideas. It is also, by any account, an industry which thrives economically on that which is personal and quirky. You can't sell a million books the same way you can sell a million ipods. Here's how it works.
Bookshops mostly have their ordering done for them by central hubs. I won't go into any details but you know who the culprits are. Thus the ordering is done by popularity, what sells the most and is in The Bookseller as a best-seller is ordered in and kept in order to satisfy popular demand. Fine. What is not fine is the refusal of booksellers to stock a book on the grounds that it won't be profitable enough. Well, y'know guess what? Books don't make money if you only have the same ones in stock! Whereas six people might each buy a copy of one book and six other customers buy a copy of any other book, if you don't have the variety in stock you'll only sell seven of the original best-seller to those twelve customers.

And it makes sense. The same principles that apply to the book publishing world apply themselves to book-selling too. And it ain't easy.I have a small selection of about four books right now that I can sell to individuals. Some books that I sold out of within a week of being in the bookshop (hand-to-hand def my forte) were never replaced on the grounds that they would never sell again and I remember another instance of where I sold five or six copies of a book in a week and it was 'replenished' with twelve copies as opposed to the original five. (which makes no sense because I'm not going to be able to find more people to buy more of the same book based on the same time frame) And no matter how many people come in to the bookshop and tell me it's a nice place I have to be honest. I look around at the austerity and the impersonality of the shop and I know that it's all a little forced. The Bookshop, when I arrived had really excellent staff, tremendously knowledgeable booksellers who loved what they did. And now of the original set up only two or three besides the management staff are left. It's been at least 4 months since I stopped telling certain people I work there because I find it just a tad uncomfortable.

If you have managerial status and are looking into how to make more money in your business without turning into a mere vending machine, book-selling by the best-selling numbers read André Schiffrin's book The Business of Books. I need to go to work right now otherwise i'll have one less reason to be able to call myself a bookseller. More on this issue later on.
Posted by littlesnapper at 11:01:36 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Slapping Dawkins

"This book is too old! It can't be that much" Yes and the idiot brigade strikes me effortlessly out again. The above was immediately followed by, "I'm sorry but I'm just going to get it up the road at Borders".

First of all: If you're not buying the book stop fingering it. You'll scuff it & devalue it & it's just badmannered.

Second of all: Stop glaring at me as if I took your daughters virginity; I know I make up the prices but I make them up according to a specific set of rules and in any case she should be so lucky. In all likelihood I wouldn't touch her with someone elses.

Finally: Just get out. Use the two brain cells you have to rub together enough motion to just get out the door. After that you're someone else's problem. Not the bar around the corner because I go there andwould prefer never to see your face again.

"It is a bit steep sir, I agree," I gingerly take back the offending article, "Though may I suggest Foyles rather than Borders? The staff there are so much more knowledgeable about these things."

The thing about bookshops & I'm not sure if I've mentioned saying this before is that the perfect bookshop has no customers in it. I'm not saying I don't want to sell any books but I really wish there were a vetting process for really rare & beautiful books that you had to sell. Selling a new book is just so much of a different process. Selling something rare that you have cared for, restored, read, kept on your shelf, investigated the history of, feel close to... A new book is one among millions that you can ship to anyone of a discerning palate. You're not necessarily selling a book as you are selling your customer the time to read that particular book. Don't get me wrong, the contents are important, but in only so far as the text goes.

A rare book. Something of which maybe only 1,500 was printed. Of which most have rotted away due to awful paper standards and worse bindings. The dustjacket still entirely intact. With a rare book every square micometer of anything visible or not is important and noticed. Filed away in the booksellers memory for future reference. If it's a good book or even a very good book, not just a big title or name like Woolf or Salinger, its rarity becomes sharper. An object almost worthy of worship. Iconic. Think Jimi Hendrix 1968 Fender Stratocaster.

Perhaps for the rest of the world this is not so. But I don't walk into mosques & churches & monasteries proclaiming loudly the futility of their religion. Or slap Richard Dawkins in the face for being Richard Dawkins. Live & let live, I say. I once had an argument with God in a church at full volume but She was the only one around. It's not important that someone doesn't believe in what a book does, what's important is that I do. I want to slap Dawkins in the face because I believe he's well intentioned but I respectfully sell his books & get paid for doing so brimming with good vibrations. It's the only way to get a customer to come back so's I can set them on the right track.

Finally here's a bookseller story I heard somewhere:

Boy walks up to a bookseller & asks if he has a book in stock. Bookseller isn't entirely sure he heard right so asks the boy to repeat the title he's looking for.

Boy: Do you have the Lion the Witch & the Warzone?

Bookseller (sighing heavily): Young man the book I'm going to sell you is considerably less interesting than the one you have in mind.
Posted by littlesnapper at 01:55:46 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday, May 29, 2008

If you're in the area..

Drop into  the Shakespeare & Company literary festival from the 12th to the 15th of June.

www.festivalandco.com

I've also been invited to a "Young Booksellers" meeting hosted by the ABA. Apparently these booksellers range in age range from their twenties to sixties. Booksellers are strange strange people. God bless us every one.

That's it for this one. Times are very busy and very productive. Website things are coming along slowly but surely and soon the littlesnapper will be trading.
Posted by littlesnapper at 10:12:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Friday, May 23, 2008

the little snapper lives!

I bought the domain name yesterday. I want a countdown clock. By september the littlesnapper will live for all your book-buying and selling needs!
Posted by littlesnapper at 21:06:53 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

the cult and the awful..

I've decided this blog will be written two to three times weekly. There. I said it. I'm very busy trying to earn a living selling books and it takes me time to articulate & gather these thoughts of great profundity.
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Some of my favourite books tend to be referred to as cult books. These books tend to be single books in the body of an authors work and are marked as being distinct from anything else the author has written. A one of a kind book that ticks all the boxes and is revered by smallish groups usually outside the mainstream audience of readers. For example. Terry Pratchett, Anna Kavan & Marian Keyes are cult authors. The body of their work appeals to the same audience and their books are easily recognisable as being part of their 'oeuvre'. I'll write more about them in a later post. Cult books are generally difficult to transpose into different mediums such as film, theatre, or godmercifulsaveus, the broadway musical because they isolate and highlight peculiarities of text and story that become their emblems. A few examples.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind: Brilliant book about evil incarnate that becomes a master of scent &the manipulation of the olfactory senses. You'll be fascinated by 18th century France and its surrounding atmosphere that faintly suggests parahuman conditions that can shape our lives and yet be invisible to us.  The laboratories that Grenouille, the main character, uses are reminiscent of alchemy and they are, perhaps a little obviously, the means by which Grenouille transforms himself into a murderer. The translation is damn good. Writing which cuts clear and concise images and builds Grenouille from a freak into a figure worthy of lore. Made into a film in 2001 where the filmakers overcame the difficulty of showing scent by using colours. This was followed by the two novella's The Story of Mr Sommer, which is illustrated by Sempé & The Pigeon which wasn't so well received. Both gems in their own right but the subject matter is so dramatically redisguised in the slow-moving tales that they become almost parables and much more difficult to identify.

Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth: Released as a film twice. Once in '73 with Edward Fox in a  decent faithful adaptation and once in '97 in a godawful modern adaptation with Richard Gere and Bruce Willis. The table of contents is divided into three parts;
1. Anatomy of a plot
2. Anatomy of a manhunt
3. Anatomy of a kill
which is exactly how the book unfolds. The narrative splits its time between the assassin's careful preparation for the kill & the mild-mannered detective who goes about his business of tracking down the Jackal and finding out more about him. The book is notable for the meticulous way in which it sets out the details of both men. The Jackal's manipulation of women and opportunists for a political cause is  shown in relief to the background of an initially sympathetic cause. The former soldiers that make up the OAS are seeking recognition from a government who isolated them and left them in a conflict zone by granting Algeria's independence. The Jackal's journey to Paris takes on the form of a revenge killing set up by a extinct political structure. In the end there is none of the usual 'good guy, bad guy' routine. Just an ending. Don't bother even trying to read anything else by Forsyth. It's all rubbish that reveals him to be a right-wing idiot who just hapened to fall on a brilliant story that fitted his technique. This one  though ticks all the boxes and will set the imagination afire.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson: This one is credited with the popularisation of such terms we use every day on the internet such as 'avatar', 'meta-verse', and the idea of internet shopping malls and high streets. What differentiates this cyber-punk novels from, say, William Gibson, is the intensity of the satire and high level of intertextuality from ancient Japanese and Greek texts to the present. Think 1950's pulp paperback Western with a Japanese twist in a probable future. Basically the world has been screwed so badly that we prefer living our lives jacked in to the interactive meta-reality of the web. Our avatars are created by us in a superb inference of wish fulfillment worthy of Joseph Campbell. That universe is threatened by the appearance of a drug which you take in the meta-verse called Snow Crash which does the obvious. Again, the writing is fast-paced, concise and clear. There's are good guys who go after the bad guys and then there are the oblivious. Sound familiar? The reason this one is a cult classic though is because of the immediate recognisability of the satire that easily bridges the uncomfortable gap between straight fiction and sci-fi. The intertextuality doesn't interfere with the easy reading of the book either but rather doesn't simply stop at the textual. The main character's name is 'Hiro Protagonist'! I won't spell it out. It's a great little book and although it was Stephenson's third novel he hasn't yet written another one quite like it that damn good & all his other books just fade in comparison.
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And there are, of course others. But I'll keep them for another time. I've got to keep something to stuff up my sleeve, otherwise what would be the point?
Posted by littlesnapper at 00:30:12 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Listening to the people

Alright. So I've listened to the comments, deleted some of them. If I delete your comment it's only cos I want to be stringent about it. Also it's amazing how much readers are saying the same thing. What we need is an open forum and it will come soon on the website. I'm impressed anyone can decipher my unwriterly scrawl.

Yesterday another old Irish guy comes into my shop. He's from Bournemouth and apparently the name of his shop fell down and he's never bothered replacing it. During the day he sits in the Brazilian café next door while the sign in the window of his shop lets you know where to reach him. "I made my money long ago," says he to me, "If I didn't own the damn building I would have been out long ago." Pulling out another book from the shelf he literally shouts at me. "This was remaindered thirty years ago, WH Smith had a bin full of them for threepence each." He shoves the film tie-in Raymond Chandler back on the shelf. "Bought loads of them an still have them." We started talking about the state of bookselling &c &c. It's a conversation that always follows the same lines and doen't do much to deviate but it's always a fresh topic that all booksellers like to harp on. "It's sad when you can see in The Bookseller that you can buy a shop with all its stock," and this is the shocking bit, "for cost."

It's true. If you wanted to buy a bookshop and had enough cash to do it, there's no stopping you. In fact now is the time, my friends, to take advantage in a business-like manner of other people's misery. Buy the goddamned bookshop you've always wanted with your friends. Learn from the business model of such shops as Shakespeare&Co and the folksdown at the lovely, though for me still unseen, Atlantis Books and start trading. Trade online and trade hand to hand. Door to door if you need to. Convince people to read Ezra Pound just because you love the idea that life slips by like a field mouse/ not shaking the grass, and because you need to meet the rent this month. You will learn so much from yourself it'll be surprising. Give it a while and you'll have been elevated by your craft, humbled by the fact that you will never 'make money' from the trade and will have read such diffferent genres, books of all kinds, learned to tell a book by its cover, the year by the paper. All automatically becoming intrinsic. That's the great thing about bookselling. All you'll ever need to know about what you're doing is right there in the copy you're holding in your hands. Hardback, paperback, dustjacket and without, broadsheet, poster, artwork. Then you'll get around to the cynicism that lets face it, you have to deal with in any trade though none schools you quite as thoroughly as the book trade. You'll believe that the only bookshop is one without anyone in it (for various reasons). That the majority of the book-reading public are idiots led by the fresh-slaughter scent of mass-production-fed marketing. Can you believe that The Reluctant Fundamentalist been promoted on poster with the words"the Man Booker nominee that everyone is talking about." or that "no one can go without reading. And it's working!!! since the ad came out people are buying that book over others! Lambs, if you'll excuse my french. The only thing that stands between the vat of disinformation is you. The bookseller. 'Nuff said.

Hell, if you want help setting up an independent book venture just give me a shout and I can put you in touch with like-minded people.

In my last post I said the book trade was in recession. The Boss is in financial difficulties. He fired and rehired me in the same phone conversation yesterday. Today I hit the streets looking for another job. No one will be immune to my charm. Bookshop owners will fall at my feet and beg me to come work for them. My extensive list of contacts will cohesively gel into a beautiful greased up mechanism that will enable to choose my pick of whom-so-ever I please. Pray for me.

And finally the plug. I hope y'all get some good reading tips from the text of this blog but in case they've all been too subtle and/or you don't have time to be chasing these things up here's a quick tip:

Last in the Emitron series and produced by the outrageously talented boys at Borbonesa, indie publishers, indie booksellers, bibliofanatics. It's enough to make you sick with envy and jealousy. Did I mention they were beautiful too? Yep, all Swedish blondes who'll welcome you with open breasts should you ever make the pilgrimage down to Brighton to see them. Just mention you bought Emitron 4 and you'll be in like Flynn. It's 3.5 UK pounds so that means it's within grasp of everyone. It's a beautifully intricate little designed booklet that contains all the sum of knowledge in the universe which veers somewhere close to the direction of art. As much a collector's piece and artwork as much as a book buy two, one to read,& one to keep in the original packaging. You would be an idiot to have them sell all of the numbered first editions without you having one for yourself. I got mine in the post yesterday so I'm good. You heard it here first.

Posted by littlesnapper at 11:10:20 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |