News of the (Bookselling) World

I consider myself reasonably up to speed with 'current affairs' (lovely catch-all for 'stuff you should know to look cleverer than your friends', which is, of course, why one bothers to read anything these days) and I'd expect even the least savvy of you to be aware of the NotW scandal, and be shocked by it: shock would be a totally reasonable and expected moral reaction to what has happened.

Shock, however, is something that industries, not individuals, experience. As for the book trade - I'm curious to see what will come out of the scandal. Since the recession began, there have been a gazillion books published about the crisis, and generally portraying how awful city bankers are. I'm thinking especially of Geraint Anderson's book City Boys, not only because this has been very popular: in fact, he's a hack. And most of the books that have come out of the recession have also been written in a very journalistic way: I have yet to see a serious, though non-academic, response to the financial crisis. I'm not suggesting that journalism can't be serious, but by its nature it has to be speedily produced with little time for reflection.Whilst, from a trade POV, speed and topicality are vital, I think that hindsight and perspective are necessarily lacking.

Similarly, I'm curious about the possible books that might come out of this scandal. As it happens, Iain Banks was in the Guardian Books today (doing the ol' Q & A) and he rightly points out, to the question:


Q:  Given the current corruption in media and politics, ever considered returning to the themes of Complicity, The Business, Garbadale etc. ? 


A: that books are a very slow way to respond to current events. Whilst that means Publishing House Co can't enjoy a glut of ill-considered sales, it does mean that, for the right person, there's a wonderful book to be written in a few years time. After all, chuck a book out there now, when the story seems to have only just begun, and the book will be lacking, of course, and date easily, compared to a work of richer scholarship, taking into account the full story, and mixing it with a dose of perspective.



I'm of the opinion that too many books are produced too quickly these days, to the immediate short term gain of the publisher, but with little thought for anything else. Take, for example, the glut of Royal Wedding books. Sure, they sold well, but honestly - honestly?!? Too many titles were produced (hands up: I did quite enjoy How to Knit Your Own Royal Wedding) but they pretty much all lacked substance. I'd like to see a book come out in five or ten years, charting the relationship, but then of course Kate won't be so pretty, we'll have all decided we don't love her any more, and her sister's bottom will have overtaken the world in any case. I worry that the same is true of this Murdoch mess: he'll avoid prison, release another Sunday paper, and in a few years time it'll be just another one of those stories they show on the end-of-the-year run down and we'll all be saying, 'Aaah remember that?'. I think the implications will be long lasting, but like the similar journalistic exposure of the expenses scandal last year, it'll be a sounding board for jokes soon enough.

On the plus side, something like 4.5 million copies of the paper sold on Sunday. I can't decide if this is a good thing: obviously, that's [4.5 million] x [the price of the paper] going back to Murdoch, despite condemnation. These sales do illustrate, though, that nothing can really replace print media. And I'm sure that's something that all of Fleet Street can be grateful for.

A really lovely story about a bookshop

As some of you may already know, I work in a bookshop. It is not the sort of bookshop where we are encouraged to be silent and let people browse as they wish. Instead we are meant to engage with customers and talk to every single one of them. I personally think this is excessive - I really hate talking to staff when I'm shopping - but then of course working for someone else is only a temporary arrangement. The Dream is to run my own little bookshop somewhere, and I really don't think that's an impossible challenge. I'll have experience, enthusiasm, and the ability to live on very little money, which is what bookselling is really all about, right?

There I was at work, chatting to a couple of really lovely ladies. I assumed they were sisters; as it happens they are neighbours. We had a very long chat indeed - we discussed A S Byatt (this was a while ago, at least when I was still trying to plough through The Children's Book) and the merits or difficulties of historical fiction. One of the ladies recommended a book to me, and although I was interested, I really didn't think of the conversation much after they left.

How lovely then, to be at work on Sunday, engaged in a really boring task like stickering, when one of the women came back into the shop. She headed right in my direction, and we greeted each other warmly, because she recognised me. She insisted that she was in a hurry and that she could only pop in briefly. Well, if only - she had come in solely to lend me a copy of the book she had been talking about: The Sisters who would be Queen by Leanda De Lisle.

The story looks pretty interesting. I've only read a couple of pages, but it's an era of history that I'm into, so pages should be turning quite easily. As much as I'll find some delight, I'm sure, in the book itself, this little episode has made me so happy for the non-tangible side of things. How lovely that she should think of me again, that she should lend me her possessions, that she should trust me to look after it, that she should care what I think of the book, that I should be interested in talking to her again, either about this particular book or another one. After much thanks I explained that although I would start reading it quickly, as I only work on Sundays, it would be likely that I wouldn't be able to return the book soon. She said she already knew that I only worked on Sundays, as that's what I'd told her last time, when she came in with her friend. How lovely!

I suppose to some people, this might just read as an anecdote about a girl getting excited because someone lent her a book. On the most superficial level, that reading might work. This exchange is important to me though, because it illustrates so much more. It shows books can, and should. bring people together - it shows that sometimes we take the lessons that we learn from books, and do try to become better, nicer people.

Work was also exciting because I had a chat with a chap who's just published his first book. Hopefully I'll be able to arrange an event for him to promote that, which'll be ideal for the both of us. More on that as it happens; I'll plug it here, of course!

Today has been a great day: I've been thinking about this lovely lady lots. I also saw a tutor today, who told me I should do a PhD as my ideas for my dissertation have been so interesting; he said it would definitely be a great topic for a book. How lovely of him! I'll probably do a post about that soon, just to see how it goes down (this means that you have to give me some feedback). I'm super excited about writing it, so I hope that comes across when I summarise it for y'all.

Much love xxx

Ali Smith

Argh! I just cannot believe it has been this long – again! Very naughty.

Part of my excuse can be assigned to my having read lots recently. I went through a mini-crisis and realised I hadn’t truly enjoyed a book for months. I could not be bothered to finish A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book (really nothing special, smug, gratuitous, overly euphemistic), J G Ballard’s Crash (I won’t describe this as it makes me incredibly angry, but suffice to say it is bland, boring, repeititve, and pathetically infantile in its repeated attempts to shock – which of course it doesn’t because I lost interest on page two. Vaughan this, Vaughan bloody that, pubis this, pubis bloody that) and a few other titles.

Finally, having been so impressed by the rave reviews of her new novels, There but for The, I decided to read The Accidental by Ali Smith. This is an amazing book: if you want something that is everything and nothing in one, I urge you to read this. It is funny, sad, wistful, shocking, wry, affectionate, mysterious, challenging and wonderful. It is Joycean at times, which if course I rather like, and she does a wonderful line in pop culture references too (you may need to google a couple of late 2003 film references). There is almost no plot of which to speak (Amber, a mysterious, beautiful woman, interrupts the family holiday in Norfolk, and we witness the fallout) but that really doesn’t matter. I loved the gentle mockery of Dr Michael Smart, replacement dad who finally gets caught up for sleeping with his students, and of duahgter Astrid, with her impressionable, early-teenage ways. Magnus, teenage son, has partly contributed to a local tragedy, and mother Eve is a workshy, deadline-missing, writer (tautologies?) with maternal guilt. Looking for family more fucked up than your own? Definitely something for you here. Smith really is remarkable in her technique: sentences that begin as haunting and eiree finish with wry ironic observation that will have you nodding in agreement, and sympathising with how hard we make things for ourselves. The novel starts in a really distancing way – until you work out – not without persistence – who’s (fucked up) head you’re in, when. Also on technique, I liked Smith’s rejection of traditional beginnings and endings – but I’ll leave that for you. If I told you that it doesn’t end at all, I’d be telling the absolute truth...

Thoughts on editing a blog....which lead to a rant about cover designs

*Note: I actually drafted this ages - yonks - ago, but general ineptitude delayed me from putting it up until now*

Writing this blog has exposed to me how aesthetically inept some people are. I'm not the most visually gifted girl ever, which is why I haven't strayed too much from blogspot's set-piece suggestions. With more time and confidence on my hands, I might do at a later date. But for now, for all its other faults, at least 'generic' can mean 'safe'. Some of the more adventurous desgins suggested have made me vomit. Despite the user functionality of blogspot - somewhere between helpfully patronising and humourously encouraging - the design team clearly think that we're all still in love with tacky '90s design shots.  I'd like to show you an example of what I mean, but that would mean I'd have to go so far as to actually use one of the suggested backgrounds.

Anyway, these thoughts lead me to think about book designs. So, what better a post than something about cover designs of books. (Dear marketing or design departments: this is not something I want to go into, though if you ask me questions about it at interview, I will give - only moderately - more sophisticated responses than the above paragraph.) Since working in a well known bookshop, I have sold *I don't know how many bloody copies* of David Nicholls' One Day.

Only when a friend handed her copy to me a while back did I finally twig that the weird, off colour, funny shape was actually the silhouette of the faces of the characters. God, I should never work in cover design! The image isn't a great one, nonetheless. Orange - yes, so it's attention seeking, but we all know that really just means 'headache-inducing', don't we? I find the 'quirky' angle of the title just a little irritating too. I am sick of this cover: clearly very little thought was put into it (relying instead on the strength of the author's name for book sales - of course, I'd like that to be the case for every book ever sold, but that just isn't, nor will it ever be, the case) and someone thought: 'well, I can't remember the last time I saw an orange book!'. Might there be a reason for that?

(Having just typed that, I've just been on to google to check. Typing 'books with orange covers' leads me to this little gem: I don't think any of the covers are especially strong - with the possible exception of the Elmore Leonard title - but I think it's so cute that in a time of recession, wars, and stonking great budget changes, we - us ridiculous bibliophiles - find the time to sit around and write about the colour of books.)

Something else that can put me off - or equally, make me purchase - a book is the choice of media quotations on the front. Said friend is, like every buddy of mine, hyper astute and intelligent, and I hadn't really thought in depth about this issue before we then had a conversation about the choice of quotations on the front. Something that might appeal to readers of both Marian Keyes and The Times? Well, I can only assume that the book must be pretty generic then. And hardly the most insightful commentators. Why not name the particular journo from the paper? Nick Hornby.... excuse me if I don't cover my thoughts on him. Anyway, this publisher's choice of media snippets doesn't exactly scream 'stop what you're doing and buy this now'. More 'Hello? Anyone? Anyone? We're facing really tough times in the finance department so we're sacrificing any integrity we ever had by prostituting ourselves to the whim of a bunch of faceless reviewers. Please buy'. 'A wonderful, wonderful book' is hardly earth-shattering. In its most literal sense, of course it says something about the book: it also reveals something more disconcerting about the priorities and concerns of the publisher. That is, a total unwillingness to not produce crap. (Not that's he's a crap writer, per se. He just needs to stick to films, not novels. And my point throughout has referred to the cover, not the contents.)

You might be able to tell that I'm getting annoyed. Of course, the covers for Chick Lit are just awful. See here, a Catherine Alliot:

If you'd like to go to her website, you'll see there's been no shame on the part of the designers for keeping things formulaic. Now, I'm all for the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach - until it prevents innovation and encourages stagnation. Which I think it does here. I see why the publishers have done this - after all, isn't chick lit aimed at women who can barely read as it is, and need the help of pictures to even pick the book off the shelf - but really....I mean, really?!?!?

Anyway. One mustn't get too angry. So let me leave you with something beautiful:

Apparently, Fitzgerald absolutely fell in love with this on first seeing it, and can't one see why!

What exactly I've been up to recently.

Shucks, nearly a month has gone past since my last entry. Whoopsy! I think I can be forgiven though - essays call, plus I moved out of my SE1 loveshack, and at one point I was juggling three jobs. I've been busy.  I also have a few draft entries which, if I am a very good girl, should go up over the next few days. Nonetheless, I have found some reading time at least. In no particular order:

1.     Graham Swift's Shuttlecock. A good friend gave me a copy of Waterland last summer, with only 'Simply Brilliant' written on the inside cover. Possibly the most concise review ever. It really is wonderful. Since then, I've read Out of this World too, which I thought was excellent too - lots of the same issues (war, personal pain, intergenerational conflict) cropping up in both. Unfortunately, despite the 'Excellent. Profound. Odd.' review from the LRB on the front cover, I wasn't so enamoured with Shuttlecock. I must point out here that I'm working within a frame of reference. Swift is, of course, excellent. When I say I was disappointed, I mean it was 'less excellent' than the previous two I've read. The same general terrain is covered, always in that hyper self-conscious way of his, and I finished the whole book (to be fair, it comes in at just over 200 pages; not a huge amount for me these days) in a day and a half (another qualifier: Sunday train services are perhaps a blessing after all). I’d recommend it to a friend, but only after gushing at length about Waterland. I’ve got Last Orders waiting for me on the shelf at home; having lived nearby, I’m hoping that might have some personal resonance for me. I think that – the personal element – is what was missing from this one. Sure, he is, critically speaking, a fine novelist. But there was nothing  - and no one - in this one that took me and shook me like in some of his other works (I’m thinking of Harry from Out of this World, mainly).  Read it, but I’ll understand if you prioritise something else over this. (I realise that I haven’t included much – anything – about what actually happens in the novel. I know. I find reviews that bang on about plot rather tedious. Can’t you just be told it’s good, and be done with it?) (Something else of note: the amazon I've just linked you to has a picture of a shuttlecock on the front:

This is significant, given that the book within the book is called 'Shuttlecock' too, and has a picture of a man parachuting - with the intention for it to look like a shuttlecock too. Geddit? Alas my copy is old and a bit naff, so just has some weird blue print pattern.) 

2.     Jonathon Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. Argh – publishing houses – why do you insist on sensationalist quotations on the front of books? Is it so that suckers like me buy them......too cruel. This excellent book has a snippet from HFW  (love love love) on the front (in fact, you could read my little summary about the book from a couple of months ago – yes, it really has taken me this long). I’ve finally finished it. Yes, it made me think about meat production and I think that having read this is the final thing that has made me want to turn vegetarian (note: not that I have already. Gross as many parts of this book are, I ate meat throughout reading it. Does that say more about me or the book?). Unfortunately, most of what JSF has to say is about the American meat industry, but I’m sure some of his points might be salient in a discussion about the meat industry here (to come back – again, I know – to the issue of the cover. How popular are HFW and Joanna Lumley in America? I imagine there must have been different covers for different sides of the Atlantic.). I don’t think, though, that he spends enough time anticipating and covering counter arguments: at once point, for example, he bemoans that most chicken is covered in salmonella. But is this a problem if you cook your chicken? I don’t think so; he didn’t cover the topic. Though a huge amount of research clearly went into this, his best writing is at the very start, when he lovingly recalls his grandmother, and when he brings the issue back to his son, and concerns for his diet. Overall, this was a disappointing book: not enough depth of argument, and I’m left unconvinced.

3.     Sons and Lovers. (I haven't bothered to link this one, because I'm sure you're all capable of going to Oxfam. Better yet, a proper bookseller!) Yes, this was excellent. I was told to read this as I’m currently writing an essay on maternality/sexuality in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (no, I know there are no *real* mothers, but Connie sort of is one, and there’s a ‘mothering as erotic activity’ thing going on, which is what I’m discussing in the essay I’m currently writing) and was told it was the work through which to consider motherhood in Lawrence. It’s excellent. I don’t really understand the feminist issues with DHL. His best writing in this novel, as in Lady Chatterley's Lover, tend to be when he’s discussing something other than sex. Please can we not cloud our judgement of his entire oeuvre just because he got into a bit of trouble in 1928? Thanks. Great. You must read this. I even managed to look over the fact that it’s partly autobiographical; this works as a novel in its own right.

4.     I started C by Tom McCarthy yesterday. Thus far it is creepy and eerie and different to anything I have ever read before, and for these reasons I shall keep on going with it, even though it is rather a struggle (a busy train perhaps wasn’t the best place to start it).

Erm, ho hum. What else? Well, I saw Frankenstein at the National a couple of weeks ago, and would love to re-read that; as usual I just haven’t got round to it.  For my courses, which have now finished, I read a bunch of obscure things – though to make up for it, we had a class in which we watched Mildred Pierce:

. What a wonderful woman, and a marvellous film!

5.     I’ve just remembered – Vile Bodies. Really wonderful, even if the superficiality of the tone starts to get a bit grating after a while. But what a pleasure it is to read a genuinely funny book once in a while. (Nina on sex: ‘For physical pleasure I’d sooner got to my dentist’.) A friend gave a great presentation on infantile sexuality in the novel, which is an interesting way to read it, but even if you read it for the candelabras and costumes and canapés alone, you’ll have picked a good one.

Bookshops/Homelessness

(Disclaimer: nothing I write here could possibly come up to the standard of Orwell's essay on working in a second hand bookshop, which is a really excellent essay. You can find it in his collection 'Books and Cigarettes' which also has an excellent essay about the price of books relative to smokes. However, his is a light hearted, amusing spiel; this is a bit more self-righteous and upsetting.)


I work in West London, in a desirable, trendy expensive area (needless to say, I don't live there as well. Oh no.) The sort of area where the poor people wear Boden and the rich people are international ambassadors. I really didn't think it was the sort of area to attract tramps.


Nonetheless, last week we had a homeless chap in the shop. He was apparently here for most of the day, with a suspicious carton of drink next to him and snoring continuously. He didn't buy a book, of course, although he offered to, on the basis that he could stay a little longer. A colleague had to threaten him with a visit from the police before he would, in that horrible Dickensian way, 'move on'. (I'm not a huge Dickens fan, but do look up that chapter in Bleak House where Jo has nowhere to go after being turfed out from Blackfriars Bridge. Dickens at his best and truly affecting.) His presence irritated, upset and angered other customers.


I doubt a tramp would last that long in a coffee shop, or food shop, or clothes shop, or frankly, any other sort of shop. Why did he seek out the bookshop (it is along a high street; he could have gone anywhere)? Why did he associate the bookshop with sanctuary? Why did he think he wouldn't be moved on? Bookshops do, notoriously, attract the 'oddballs'. Because they are quiet, safe, and you're able to spend a comparatively long time in them without buying anything: a bookshop is one of the few places you can get away with consuming the product without actually buying it (you don't wear Topshop's clothes, or eat a Starbucks pastry without paying, after all). I guess in that sense, they are extremely appealing to the average homeless guy. Also, let's make some suppositions about your average book buyer. Quiet, meek, unwilling to cause a fuss. Likely to stick nose further into the book he's reading than to kick up.


In some sort of way, I don't really mind the presence of the tramp. I object to chucking a tramp out of a warm, safe place, just because he smells. It offends my sense of what it is to be human (call me self-righteous, but this is important stuff). We have a duty to treat the poorest with the same level of respect as we would the richest. If we let a rich person read Murakami's Norwegian Wood all day (as happened a few weeks ago; darn, she damaged that spine) then we have to let poor people do it too.


On the other hand, I can totally see the perspective of the other customers. Say I'd wanted to sit for ten minutes and flick through the first chapter of my potential purchase. Would I be distracted by a smelly homeless guy next to me? Yes. I'd try to find elsewhere to read the book, and if I couldn't find that space, I'd  move on myself, and Bookshop PLC would lose a sale. Bookshops aren't charities or soup kitchens either. Like any other capitalistic enterprise on the high street, they have a duty (sure, a self-imposed and ethically questionable one) to make money. If this means excluding some customers to ensure the continued fiscal support of others, so be it. However, I've said that I can 'see' this perspective; I don't agree with it at all. I think it's pretty awful.


What saddens me the most is that the situation has come to be in the first place. What chain of events led him to fall into a drunken snooze on a Sunday afternoon? Why was no-one looking after him? Homelessness is the social issue that I care about the most - we are all so perilously close to it ourselves. The chain of events that lead to it (lose job - lose family - lose home) is such a familiar narrative that I think at times we (accommodation-safe) types become desensitised to it. It's infuriatingly easy to accuse the homeless guy of letting himself get into 'that situation'. The accusation that homeless people are 'weak' in some way is painfully untrue; the association between homelessness and poor mental health is one we need to look at again. Plenty of insane people have houses; very few homeless people are mentally healthy. Tramps stand out in a bookshop partly because they smell/dress bad, but mostly because, on sight, we make the assumption that they don't have the mental capacity to cope with reading. Intelligence and mental health are totally different things, guys!


So sure, those few lines above are an invitation for a longer argument about the causes and effects of homelessness. Let's come back down to the micro level: the one guy I saw. He still matters. He's an individual, and probably spent Sunday night curled up in a doorway (my dad made the very good point that tramps might be attracted to that part of London precisely because the doorways are so generous and make good sleeping places). The bookshop was a haven for him, and it embarrasses me that the other customers felt it appropriate to complain loudly about his presence. Hell, I'll say it again: he's still a human. Please can we not  be so offended by those who expose exactly how fragile out comfortable, financially secure, home-inhabiting, book buying lives are? Can we please do something constructive about the situation. He was threatened by a police call: was this really the best approach? He didn't do anything illegal, or offensive (in the sense of harassment, rather than sensibilities), and eventually left. 


I think a revealing irony lies in the location of the episode, the bookshop. Why do we read? To expand our minds, and to think about the world around us, and to try and be better people (at least, this is what your average Joe would say). None of these processes were evident in anything I saw last week - it seems that we're all very good at talking the mantra. But when it comes to doing it? I didn't see anyone actually being the change they wanted to see. No-one offered to take him to a shelter, or to walk him to a bus stop (he offered to buy a book, so possibly had some change on him), or to even direct him to somewhere that might have been of use. This collective failure, from a bunch of people who have the time, money and facilities to help, happens on a daily basis in London, but that doesn't stop this one example I've discussed being painful to watch.




A note on language: yes, I've written this from the point of 'us' and 'them' whilst at the same time acknowledging how close the two are. An error perhaps. I've also used the word 'tramp' pretty freely. Is that a problem? I don't think so. Everyone knows what I mean, and I don't want to use a word or phrase ('accommodation negative citizen' to make up a ridiculous example) that totally desanitises the problem for 'us'. I think 'tramp' is a good word because it shocks and makes people uncomfortable, and that's exactly what we need to do on this issue.

Big Green Bookshop

I'm not sure exactly when I turned into a Guardianista, but for a while now I've been a fan of their Life & Style pages, and the Culture pages too. Imagine my delight then, to find an article about bookshops (and local ones at that) on the front page.


Alas, it took me just a quick click and a dash of trade awareness (and the headline, of course, but let's not be literal) to realise it wasn't going to be a happy story. Oh no. The Big Green Bookshop is facing bankruptcy and soon to close. The chain British Bookshops went into administration recently, and Waterstone's have also recently made public plans to close 20 stores (of course, closures don't hit chains so bad, but redundancy is sad for anyone). The book trade hasn't been in a good way for a while, but this recent spate of closures doesn't set the tone for a good year.


To avoid closure, owners Mark, Tim and Simon have set into action an impressive publicity campaign. On their blog (humorous, regularly updated, and full of character) they've written about the problems they face. They've helpfully included the visual aid of the 'Strugglometer', reminiscient of a Blue Peter charity appeal, to let readers (bloggers and book-buyers, geddit) know the progress the store is making. [Hello, BBG: I hope you don't mind me copy+pasting this.]





Anyway: to get to my point. From 6th - 12th March, the Big Green Bookshop are asking people to buy just one book from them. Just one (by which of course I mean, 'at least' one). They already have 1000 customers on a loyalty card scheme, and I don't doubt this number will increase thanks to their publicity efforts. According to the site, a cash injection like this will save them from the abyss.


So. Please go to buy a book from them some time that week. Please. I write this as someone who loves books and the book trade too. Let's not turn our high streets into identikit shopping areas with identikit bookshops and identikit titles. Let's celebrate a local bookshop, one that certainly seems to go way beyond the remit of just a 'shop'. Look! They have board game days and readings and book groups and events for children. They seem like a hub of their community (N22) which is something that all bookshops aspire to do - so few do it well, so let's save the ones that do.  Bookshops matter. They matter so much - Amazon doesn't get chatting to you about your current read, Amazon won't give you honest, from-the-heart recommendations, and Amazon couldn't give a toss, frankly, about anything but profit (see this damning description of how they treat their staff).  Moreover, the chaps behind this operation seem like such lovely blokes - do we really want to see them made redundant, having set up the shop three years ago after the Waterstone's they managed went under? No, we don't. So let's buy some books!