Yesterday it was the birthday of not one but TWO of
our great literary giants. Kingsley
Amis, who was born in 1922 in Clapham and Spike Milligan who was born in 1918 in
India
Have a look here at twenty hilarious Spike Milligan
quotes – with some terrific photos too – and then go here for some very amusing lines from the man who once
said “If you can’t annoy someone, there is little point in writing.” How
true Kingsley, how very true.
The London Book Fair was this week of course – lots
of opportunities for those attending to meet their pals, eat horrible overpriced
food and drink endless warm fizz in plastic glasses. Naturally of course Compass
Points was there on your behalf – sniffing out the genuinely interesting
publishing stories for you as well as glugging the free plonk.
Scott Pack
made his first acquisition for his new Compass list Aardvark Bureau –
look out for When the Professor Got Stuck in the
Snow by Dan Rhodes coming in
October. This is the title which Rhodes
self-published 400 hardback copies of in February last year, attracting
mainstream media coverage and critical acclaim. It’s a satire starring atheist
Richard Dawkins, who is forced to stay with a vicar and his wife after
getting caught in a blizzard. Sounds pretty good to me, but what on earth does
Richard Dawkins make of it?! Pack said Dawkins has a “great sense of
humour” and was a “champion of free speech” before adding that he
thought other publishers were too afraid to publish the title for fear of being
sued! Read a bit more about it in the Bookseller here.
Max Ström Publishing have what I think
will be a brilliant book coming up in October. Called Journey of Change: Women Pushing Boundaries it is
the diary from an all woman team in the Round the World Yacht Race – it will be
packed with inspiring photos as well as insights from the sailors.
And
Myrmidon has acquired Investigating
Sherlock by Nikki
Stafford – an unofficial
guide to the award-winning BBC TV series, which they will publish in paperback
in September. The book examines each episode through in-depth and fun analysis,
exploring the character development and cataloguing every subtle reference to
the original stories. “This is a real, ultimate fans' guide,” said Kate
Nash, from Myrmidon. “Investigating Sherlock is more than just trivia.
There's no other book on the market that considers Sherlock as a phenomenon and
puts the BBC TV series into context. Included are biographies of Benedict
Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as well as Arthur Conan Doyle, and interviews
with Sherlockian experts.”
Comma Press has sold the German and
American rights for Atef Abu Saif’s
The Drone Eats With Me. The book
documents the siege that took place in Gaza Gaza
Well, I don’t know about you – but I’m greatly
looking forward to all of these forthcoming titles. Hang on though, according to
the French intern currently working at Gallic, who has been at Olympia
this week; the London Book Fair is mostly a chance to “shake hands and say
“You’re the best” and reply “No, you’re the best”” You can read his
entertaining comparison between the Salon du Livre (the Paris equivalent) and
the London Book Fair here – as he puts it: the chauvinists versus the
capitalists!
There will undoubtedly be lots of media coverage for
the VE Day anniversary celebrations on the 8th May – and a new British rom-com,
A Royal Night Out, is released at the
start of May to coincide with them. And hurrah – it is based on a chapter from
the Birlinn book The Final Curtsey
by the Queen’s cousin, Margaret
Rhodes (B-format pb, 978 1780270852, £7.99). It’s a fictionalised account of the night
when the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret slipped out of the palace on VE Day
and mingled with the crowds. And according to the movie, got into a bit of
trouble and enjoyed the first hints of romance! The movie stars Rupert
Everett and Emily Watson as the king and queen, and has already seen
big preview features in the Daily Telegraph and there was an interview
with Margaret Rhodes in the Daily
Mail who called the book “one of the most remarkable books ever written
about life at the heart of the Royal Family” which you can read here. There will be an extract of
The Final Curtsey in the Radio
Times on 8 May and Margaret Rhodes
has been interviewed by The One Show, which will be broadcast around the
release of the film. Channel 4 News have also interviewed her and there
will definitely be more publicity to come – this film looks great fun and you
will remember that The Final Curtsey was
already a bestseller in hardback, so this is all good news! The stock will be
reprinted with a sticker mentioning the film – order it now!
Here’s a trailer
from the film – looks fab!
.jpg)
Amidst all the ranting from UKIP et al about
immigration, there are some genuinely fascinating stories to be told about the
clash of different cultures that occur in modern Britain Britain Manchester to a London Middle East . Back at the barracks she supports her soldier
comrades preparing for the War on Terror. On the one hand, she describes having
to deal with the squaddie drinking culture and deeply engrained stereotypes; on
the other, her parents are still trying to find her a suitable boy to marry.
This is an extraordinary true story about the most violent of culture clashes
and there will be plenty of press coverage for it. After leaving the army, Alisha Khan went on to work for the Ministry of
Defence on campaigns for British soldiers in Afghanistan
Coming at the end of May is the hotly anticipated
new collection from bestselling crime writer and author of The Monogram
Murders: Sophie Hannah. Marrying the Ugly Millionaire: New and Collected
Poems features both previously published and new and unseen work from
the author whom the Telegraph called “a real star” and who is both
the winner of the Crime Thriller of the Year
Award and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize – no mean feat to be one of the
UK’s best-loved poets, AND an internationally-acclaimed and bestselling
psychological crime writer! Marrying the Ugly Millionaire: New and
Collected Poems (pb, 978
1784100254, £12.99) by Sophie Hannah is
published by Carcanet on 28 May, and you can find out more and order it here
Make sure you capitalise on the publicity
surrounding Lifeblood: Gill Fyffe’s outstanding story of contracting
hepatitis C from a contaminated NHS blood transfusion and its life-altering
consequences, which has received wall to wall coverage in the national media
during and after the publication of the final report from the Penrose Inquiry,
the UK’s only public inquiry into the worst medical scandal in the history of
the NHS. Gill appeared on BBC Radio
4’s Today programme, BBC Breakfast News, Network News, BBC
Scotland’s Scotland 2015 programme, Radio Europe, and there were
features in the Daily Telegraph, London
This week’s Compass Points seems to
feature an extraordinary number of strong and admirable women – so to celebrate
that, let’s just imagine what it would have been like if Hermione had been the
main character In the Harry Potter books. Have a read of
Hermione Granger and the Goddamn Patriarchy here on Buzz Feed!
Pascal Garnier was a leading figure in contemporary French
literature who died in March 2010. He lived in a small village in the Ardèche,
painting and writing for adults and children and Gallic publish his noir
novels in the UK – if you haven’t discovered these paperbacks with their
beautiful, pared-back prose and striking covers for your bookshop yet, you
really should! Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with
quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. The Financial Times called him
“A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard” while the Observer says
his writing is “bleak, often funny and never predictable”.
Boxes (pb, 978 1910477045, £7.99) is the new paperback coming in May – those readers
who love Patricia Highsmith, and Georges Simenon will love
Pascal Garnier too – John Banville
and Ian Rankin are fans – what more endorsement do you need! Find out
more and order Boxes here.
Compass is now on
Twitter! Follow us @CompassIPS. You’ll get the breaking news on our top titles
even faster – and better still, we can find out what all of you lovely
booksellers are up to – and re-tweet your news back to all of our publishers,
editors and sales people! Happy days!
This week we bring
you our favourite tweets from #makeabooknerdy...
Eat
Pray Lovecraft
iMac
beth
Pi
and Prejudice
The
Fault in Our Statistics
The
Secret Life of Spelling Bees
Zen
and the Art of Ham Radio Maintenance
Angles
and Demons
The
Lord of the Ringtones
Alright,
last one for me: There’s a Fault in Our Star Trek into
Darkness
That’s all for now
folks, more next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment