The James
Bond franchise is one of the most successful in cinema history. It’s now
over fifty years old, yet still as popular and lucrative as ever. Smersh Pod is a cult
podcast celebrating the films, with 40,000 downloads a month, and now its
creator John Rain
has written Thunderbook (£16.99, hb,
978 0957507623) which is, as Al Murray commented,
‘an affectionately droll Bond-by-Bond stroll
through the films we know and love, whether we like them or not.’ It is the perfect Christmas gift for
Bond lovers, an entertaining and informative read that will prime them for the
new adventure No Time To Die which is due for release in April 2020. It has
been selected for the BA Christmas Catalogue and there is a full-page ad
in the November issue of Total Film. Reviews, features and interviews are
planned for Empire and the Guardian. As well as Al Murray,
another celeb endorsement comes from Kathy Burke who called it ‘beautifully
observed and a laugh-out-loud joy’. Smershpod is
already promoting the book extensively through all their social media channels
and one lucky bookseller can win a copy of it by emailing laura@birlinn.co.uk with their bookshop
name and address and Thunderbook in the
subject line.
Sustainability is the buzz word for
businesses right now, and as the Economist said, ‘The Battle to Do Good: Inside McDonald’s Sustainability
Journey (hb, £6.99, 978 1787568167) is a must-read even for those
who are cynical about the business of corporate social responsibility.’ In
it, former McDonald's executive Bob Langert takes readers on a behind-the-scenes eye witness
account of the mega brand giant's decades-long battle to address numerous hot-button
issues, such as packaging, waste, recycling, obesity, deforestation and animal
welfare. Bob gave a talk at the TEDSummit 2019 earlier this year which will be
released on TED.com on 4th November and should lead to plenty of promotion from
TED on their social media channels, newsletters, homepage, etc. You can find
out more at www.ted.com/speakers/bob_langert. Packed with first-hand anecdotes, and
scores of lessons learned, The Battle to Do Good is a real page turner that provides unique insights
and guidance. It’s published by Emerald.
Always a pleasure to hear the wonderful
Brian May talking
about his books with London Stereoscopic, and this morning he was on Radio
2’s Zoe Ball’s Breakfast Show promoting Diableries:
Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell (£60,
hb, 978 1999667436). This cult classic (in a new edition which now includes the
two long lost cards that were missing from the first edition) provides a rare
and satirical look at an 1860s view of Hell. Thanks to Brian's imagination and
his determination to share the wonders of these weird and wonderful 3D cards which
show scenes of torture, fire, and every variety of licentious behaviour; readers
can find themselves transported them to a nightmarish netherworld. And it’s
published (of course) on Halloween! You can listen again to Brian on Radio 2
this morning here.
A fantastic party at the Tate Modern
in London this week for Carcanet’s 50th birthday. In November, there
will be more festivities in Carcanet’s home town of Manchester and there
are also lots of events at bookshops and literary festivals to come. You can
find out more about the celebrations for the Jubilee on their website here.
Pictured
here is founder and MD Michael Schmidt speaking at the party and here
in
the Bookseller you can read an interview where he discusses the highs
and lows of the press's history and their plans for the future.
A brilliant sold-out launch at Off
the Shelf Festival Of Words in Sheffield this week for The Book of Sheffield (£9.99, pb, 978 1912697137).
You can hear its editor Catherine Taylor,
and contributor to the collection Desiree Reynolds,
discussing the book on BBC Radio Sheffield also this week here
and you can read Catherine's fab piece for the Guardian about her summer
job in a cutlery factory in Sheffield in the late 1980s here.
From
the aspirations of young creatives, to the more immediate demands of refugees,
scrap metal collectors, and student radicals; these stories offer ten different
look-out points from which to gaze down on the ever-changing face of the 'Steel
City'. It’s part of Comma’s popular Reading the City series.
A former marketing director at Pepsi
and managing director at HEAD sports, Chris Radford launched his own strategy consulting firm in 1996. He
helped Mars create the Celebrations chocolate brand, turned Galaxy into a brand
leader in the Middle East and helped make Miracle Gro the market leader in
gardening. He has enabled many businesses to take their brands to the next
level with his distinctive 'Differentiate' method and now he’s put it all into
a book: Attractive Thinking: The Five Questions that
Drive Successful Brand Strategy and How to Answer Them (978 11788601030, pb, £15.99). In it, readers can discover
the five key questions you must answer to create a better brand strategy and
the tools to deliver it. It’s out from Practical Inspiration on 1
November.
Many parents and teachers worry that in
these days of endless tests, children’s imagination and originality is getting
lost. A new title from Crown Storycraft
(978 14785834028, pb, £16.99) is a practical resource to support secondary
school teachers in developing their students’ creative writing. This book is
not a style manual. Authors Martin Griffin and Jon
Mayhew think there are plenty of those about. Instead, it picks
apart the craft of narrative writing and provides activities designed to help
their students overcome the difficulties they experience when tasked with
creating something from nothing. Written by two fiction writers and experienced
teachers, Storycraft packs in expert
guidance relating to idea generation and the nature of story and provides writing
prompts that teachers can immediately adopt and adapt in the classroom. We have
three reading copies available for booksellers. Email rwilliams@crownhouse.co.uk with Storycraft
in the subject box and your name and bookshop address to receive one.
Lots more publicity this week for Up Front (£20, hb,
978 1909245969) by Clive Allen. ‘You
need to keep moving forward. If you stand still you eventually end up going
backwards,’ said
Clive
chatting to Football.London. ‘It was completely bizarre,’ he says
of that deal. ‘People who hear about it now can’t comprehend it. If someone
paid what would be the equivalent these days of £50 million
for a teenage striker, they wouldn’t be moving them on without even playing
them,’ that’s here
in
his interview by Jim White for the Telegraph. ‘I am not drinking with
you,’ he said. ‘You are cheats.’ The Evening Standard ran an
extract of Clive and Arsene Wenger’s turbulent meetings, that one’s here.
Knees Up Mother Brown sat down with
Clive and talked career, West Ham and his new book, that’s here and finally here's
an
article in the Belfast Telegraph.
Many congratulations to Parwana Fayyaz who won
the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem
for Forty Names, which was originally
published in PN Review 241 (978 1784101527, £6.99). You can find out more and
read about all the winners here.
The Forward Prizes are
the leading awards for poetry published in the UK and Ireland and Parwana’s
poem draws inspiration both narrative and lyrical from medieval Persian
traditions. You can read the Forty Names here.
Would you rather eat the food and drink
from the Harry Potter books, or that in Disney films? Find out here!
And in this week’s Hot Topics, this week’s top story has got to be
which words have made it into the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
and whether you know what they all mean! Omnishambles? Sumphy? Chirpse? Arlarse?
For all 650 new additions, have a look here and there’s an entertaining article
discussing them here.
That’s all folks, more next week!
This weekly blog is written for the UK
book trade. If you would like to order any of the titles mentioned, then please
talk to your Compass Sales Manager, or call the Compass office on 020 8326
5696. Every Friday an e-newsletter containing highlights from the blog is sent
out to over 700 booksellers and if you’d like to receive this then please
contact nuala@compassips.london
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