Plenty of media coverage this week for Prisonomics: Behind Bars in Britain’s Failing
Prisons by Vicky Pryce this
week – cross letters to the Telegraph saying “who says crime doesn’t pay”
and so on – all good stuff to help you sell this book! Vicky Pryce appeared on the Today Programme
on Radio 4 and on BBC Breakfast and was on Channel 4 News
on Monday evening on and also the ITN News at Ten. The second part of her
serialisation in the Mail which you can read here also
appeared this week and there will be interviews with her in the Times on
October 19th and the Guardian on Monday 21st October. Prisonomics has just been published in hardback by
Biteback and is a compelling analysis of the cost to the economy, as well
as the human cost, of keeping women in prison. Vicky
Price uses her own very challenging experiences and the diary she
kept in prison to look at how prison works, and should work, from an economist’s
perspective. She has strong views on how the prison system works, especially
with regard to how it treats women and this book is a genuinely interesting
read. Her previous book, Greekonomics,
was highly acclaimed and sold 3,000 copies.
Now, Compass Points doesn’t usually bring you
children’s books – but here’s a really terrific title coming from Emex in
November. Exploralab: 150+ Ways to Investigate the
Amazing Science All Around You is a great book that teaches young
readers all about the mind blowing science that right there if they just knew
where to look! Exploralab begins the way
every day does: with the instant we open our eyes. Readers then embark on a
journey through a typical day in the life of most children, engaging many
scientific principles along the way. There are tons of activities that explore
the forces at work around us – the wavelengths of sunlight that hit our eyelids,
or the sound of the alarm clock that so rudely wakes us up. But that’s not all
– most of the book’s “laboratories”
contain special gizmos - such as mirrored inserts, spinning discs and polarized
filters – that help readers play with optics, physics, chemistry, earth science,
astronomy, social behaviour and more. And a removable magnifying glass on the
cover empowers kids with a tool of discovery that they can use inside the book
and out. Popular science is a subject on a real roll at the moment – and this is
the ideal Christmas present for parents wanting to give children something
educational – but also a bit zany and fun! It’s a £16.99 hardback with over 500
colour photos and there is an absolutely cracking promotional video for the book
on YouTube which you can see below that does the job of
explaining what the book is all about brilliantly, so I urge you to have a look
at it! And you can order Exploralab here.
While we’re on the subject of children’s books, take
a look at these two lovely titles from brand new Hesperus children’s
imprint, Hesperus Minor - bringing forgotten children’s classics back
into print for new generations to discover and older generations to revisit.
The Blue Fairy Book and The Red Fairy Book are gorgeous and bewitching
collections of fairy tales, edited by Andrew
Lang. Lang (1844–1912) was a
Scottish novelist, journalist, poet and literary critic who collected stories
from communities and traditions all over the world for his fairy books: from the
Arabian Nights, China and the Brothers Grimm. Many of the tales were translated
into English for the first time for these anthologies, from languages as diverse
as Russian, Norse and Japanese. There were twelve coloured Fairy Books,
originally published in the nineteenth century – and Hesperus Minor will
be publishing them all – these first two are coming in November.
The covers are
absolutely stunning, and these are beautiful and stylish classic editions. I
adored the Andrew Lang Fairy books
when I was a child – his retellings of both popular and more unusual tales
capture the imagination and take you to enchanted, far-away lands where anything
can happen. The Blue Fairy Book includes Little Red Riding Hood, Aladdin,
Puss in Boots and Rumpelstiltskin as well as little-known stories
such as The Yellow Dwarf, The Bronze Ring and The
Master-Maid. The Red Fairy Book
includes Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel as well as less
popular tales such as The Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Marvellous
Musician. These are hardbacks at £14.99 – absolutely ideal for the many
parents and grandparents looking for Christmas presents. Andrew Lang’s fairy
books helped to lay the foundation for our continuing fascination with fairy
tales as entertainment and cultural objects, and each is a veritable treasure
trove of stories. The books have the original black and white illustrations
throughout.
Many parents are looking to read their children the
original fairy tales after years of relentless Disneyfication of the stories –
however, by all accounts Tangled, the recent Disney retelling of
Rapunzel was actually pretty good – and now seems to have attracted a bit
of a teenage cult following! Watch the trailer below and see what you think – and
then order those Andrew Lang titles!
As knowledgeable booksellers, you will of course be
familiar with the work of Philip K Dick –
and also know how many major Hollywood
blockbusters are based on his work. He is probably not however, a household name
despite the huge popularity of his ideas. A Life of
Philip K Dick: The Man who Remembered the Future by Anthony Peake is a fascinating book written with
the co-operation of numerous close acquaintances of Dick. He was a writer who drew upon his own life to
address the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia and transcendental
experiences of all kinds and more than ten major movies are based on his work,
including Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, Minority
Report and The Adjustment Bureau. Dick lived through a hugely
eventful period in American and world history from the upheavals of WW2 through
the Cold War through to Flower Power and the ‘Summer of Love’ as well as the
traumas of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal. He was born in 1929 just
before the Great Crash, his twin sister died when she was a month old and his
parents were divorced by the time he was three. In his teens, he began to show
the first signs of mental instability, but by then he was already producing
fiction writing of a visionary nature. A Life of
Philip K Dick is published by Arcturus (£9.99 with 8 pages of
photographs) in November.
And let’s remind ourselves of a couple of examples
of the Philip K Dick genius – below is the trailer for Blade Runner – the original short story on which it’s based was called
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – which I personally think is a much
funkier title!
And how about this trailer for Total Recall which was based on We Can Remember it for
You Wholesale – again – a cooler and cleverer title I feel, but maybe
lacking that Hollywood
zing!
Looking for the ideal Christmas present for the hard
to please women in your life? Well, I think Hunks in
Trunks by Alex Knight should
probably fit the bill nicely. This £7.99 paperback from Summersdale is
the ideal gift for anybody who appreciates the male form, especially in a state
of undress. It features retro photography and has a 60s California
Order up some Hunks in Trunks here – ooooh yes
please.
Never mind the trunks – what about what’s inside the
trunks? Oooh er missus – and if you enjoy this type of remark then you will
almost certainly share Compass Points’ hysterical amusement at this saucy spoof advert for deck sealant!
That’s all for now
folks, more next week!
This blog is read weekly by over 600
booksellers, publishers and publicists. If you would like to order any of the
titles mentioned, then please click here to go to the Compass New Titles
Website or talk to your Compass Sales
representative.
OMG looooove that deck maintenance ad!
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