Who’s ever wondered
why most business books are written by men? Well, if you and your bookshop are bored
of the same old macho willy-waving, then this
is a highly refreshing list in the Independent
of ten that are written by women. It includes two titles from a publisher we’ve
recently been delighted to welcome to Team Compass; Practical Inspiration Publishing. This is the home of books that
mean business: from management to marketing, parenting to leadership, HR to
outdoor skills, internationally recognized authorities share their expertise. Strip Naked and
Re-Dress With Happiness by Maria Hocking
(£10.99, pb, 978 1910056448) is an emotional and thought-provoking title about how to
survive and thrive though adversity; whether you’re in the boardroom or just
facing going out alone. Maria shares her emotional journey of battling
alopecia, amongst other health challenges, and how these shaped her outlook but
also her future career. The Invisible Revolution by Nicola Huelin (£14.99, pb, 978 1910056615) shows the reader how they can join
the empowered mumpreneurs and build a business they love. From finding your
vision and personal values to marketing and persistence, it covers multiple
important aspect of the business world. The list also includes the recent Hay House title Purpose: Find Your Truth and Embrace Your
Calling by Jessica Huie
(£12.99, pb, 978 1788170567). In it, Jessica documents her journey from
teen mum struggling to make ends meet, to an extremely successful entrepreneur
who advised the prime minister and worked with every celebrity around. Estelle,
no less, said of this title “Once you
read her story you are left feeling refreshed, rebuilt and ready to take on the
world.”
Thanks
Estelle, let’s have a bit
of your uplifting music right now!
While we’re on
the subject of inspirational women; it’s Feminist
Book Fortnight from Saturday 16th June to Saturday 30th June. In
celebration of Vote 100 (the
hundredth anniversary of some women in the UK getting the vote) a group of
radical and independent bookshops is launching this fabulous celebration of
feminist books, when some of our very favourite indies around the country will
be highlighting the diversity of feminist books with displays of books and
events. You can find out all about it here.
Lots of
publicity coming up for the wonderful Elsewhere Home (pb,
£8.99, 978 1846592119) by Leila Aboulela which is published by Saqi on 2 July including interviews
and extracts in the Herald, a feature
in Woman’s Way, radio interviews on the
BBC World Service and lots of appearances
at festivals. It’s been longlisted for the People’s Book Prize which you can find out
more about – and vote for – here.
Here’s a
highly topical book coming from Pluto
in September. Talking
to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff (pb,
£14.99, 9780745337852) is by Glyn Ford and is a very
controversial take on one of the most terrifying political situations of the
twenty-first century. Glyn has visited North Korea over 40 times and has worked
with the regime’s leadership as MEP. He has been highly in demand recently –
he’s very knowledgeable and opinionated and has just done a couple of slots on Talk Radio, one with Eamonn Holmes and
one with James Whale. You can hear his views on the Trump / Kim summit on this
terrific five-minute video promoting his book on YouTube here. Talking to North Korea challenges
the media myths which paint it as a rogue state run by a mad leader, myths
which are used Glyn believes by Western governments to support a military
strike against the country. What if, instead of forcing regime change, the West
listened to what the regime actually wanted?
Punch and Judy Politics? I’ll say! Who saw the extraordinary
scenes at PMQ’s this week? What perfect timing for Ayesha Hazarika and Tom Hamilton’s
book which launches next week. The authors have been much demand with their
comments all across the media! Ayesha and Tom spent five years preparing Ed
Miliband for the weekly joust, living through the highs and lows, the drama,
the tension and the black humour of the political front line. With their unique
knowledge plus personal recollections from key players from both sides,
including Tony Blair, David Cameron, William Hague, Ed Miliband, George
Osborne, Vince Cable, Harriet Harman and Neil Kinnock, this insightful and
often hilarious book takes you behind the scenes of some of the biggest PMQs moments.
Punch and Judy
Politics: An Insiders' Guide to Prime Minister's Questions (£20, hb, 978 1785901843) is published by Biteback.
I had a bit of
a chuckle at this A-Z of Author Events on Secret Bookseller’s blog. A is for
Authors, B is for Books – yep I think we’re all in agreement so far. How about
K is for Knobhead and N is for Narcotics…
What is a
“lost” women’s classic? How unappreciated does something have to be before you
consider it lost? Also, lost to whom? In a recent article on Top Ten Lost Women’s Classics in the Guardian, which you can read here
Nuala
O’Faolain’s Are you Somebody? (£7.99,
pb, 978 1848406858) was listed as one of the “books, you’ll realise, that your
library was lost without.” New Island
reissued it this year in an anniversary edition to mark ten years since the
author’s death. The Guardian said of
Nuala’s writing that she was “someone
witty and female who would not only call a spade a spade but acknowledge the
blade, the handle the funny way it sticks out of the earth” and this book
is as Roddy Doyle said “an extraordinary,
powerful memoir. It is beautifully written, with an honesty that is both
sensitive and stark.”
Great to see Kalwant Bhopal launching her book White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-racial
Society (£15.59, pb, 978 1447335979) at
The Centre for Research in Race and
Education in Birmingham this week. Despite claims that we now live in a
post-racial society, Kalwant examines how race continues to disadvantage those
from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, shifting from overt to covert
racism. She also shows how certain types of whiteness is privileged, whilst
other white identities, Gypsies and Travellers for example, remain marginalised
and disadvantaged in society. Drawing on topical debates around education,
employment, class and poverty, this important book examines the impact of race
on wider issues of difference in society. It’s published by Policy Press.
Martina Evans’ Now We Can Talk Openly About Men (pb, £9.99, 978 1784105785) is the Observer’s Poetry Book of the Month –
with an enthusiastic review saying “I
loved everything about this book … there is a garrulous humanity and humour in
Evans’s writing.” You can read the whole feature – which includes an
extract, here.
Now We Can Talk Openly about Men is a pair of dramatic monologues, snapshots of the
lives of two women in 1920s Ireland. The first, Kitty Donovan, is a dressmaker
in the time of the Irish War of Independence. The second, Babe Cronin, is set
in 1924, shortly after the Irish Civil War. Kitty is a dressmaker with a taste
for laudanum. Babe is a stenographer who has fallen in love with a young
revolutionary. Through their separate, overlapping stories, Evans colours an
era and a culture seldom voiced in verse. It has just been published by Carcanet.
In 1919 Sigmund
Freud published an essay The Theory of
the Uncanny that delved deep into the tradition of horror writing and
claimed to understand its darkest tricks. In the spirit of this great experiment,
back in 2007, fourteen leading authors were challenged to write fresh fictional
interpretations of what the uncanny might mean in the 21st century; updating
Freud’s famous checklist of what gives us the creeps. Possum, one
of the stories from this award-winning collection has now been turned into a
film, which is premiering
on the 25th June at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Directed by its author Matthew
Holness and starring Sean Harris, who is on magnificently twisted form as
Philip, a troubled children’s puppeteer who is forced to face up to his wicked
stepfather (Alun Armstrong) and the dark and surreal secrets that have tortured
him his entire life. Comma are publishing a new edition of The New Uncanny (£9.99, pb, 978 1905583188) that Time Out called
“a masterclass in understated
creepiness.” I LOVE the new
cover! It’s available to order now.
As the #MeToo
movement spreads across the creative industries, writers are facing
increasingly draconian attempts by publishers to police their behaviour,
calling into question centuries old assumptions about the desirability – or
even the possibility in today’s networked world – of separating writers’ lives
from their work. So begins a very thought provoking article in the Guardian here
about the return of ‘morality clauses’ in US publishing contracts. Are
writers entitled to hold offensive opinions? How about sexual misconduct? And should
their behaviour influence our opinion of their work?
Author Andy Hedgecock wrote a brilliant article recently for The Morning Star about the real-life
people that inspired his short story Trying
Lydia in Comma’s anthology Protest: Stories of
Resistance. He found that researching
a Luddite rising in Nottinghamshire revealed state collusion which offered many
insights into the present. You can read the whole piece here.
Andrew Liddle’s new biography Ruth Davidson: And The Resurgence Of The
Scottish Tories (hb, £18.99, 978 1785901744) continues to gain
attention, particularly, north of the border of course with a variety of news
pieces in The
Times, Daily
Record, Scotsman,
The
National and Herald
Scotland and this review in The
Times. A lesbian, kick-boxing former Territorial Army reservist, Davidson
has broken the mould of both Tory and Scottish politics and has been touted as
a future Prime Minister. This first biography of one of Britain’s rising
political stars examines how Davidson rejuvenated the toxic Tory brand and asks
what the future holds both in Scotland and beyond for this extraordinary young
politician. With Scottish politics in flux following the hard-fought
independence referendum and Britain s imminent departure from the EU,
Davidson’s profile will only become more prominent as she heads up the official
opposition. It’s published by Biteback.
John Erik Fossum and
Hans-Petter Graver, authors
of Squaring the
Circle on Brexit: Could the Norway Model Work? (978 1 447348122, pb, £ 12.99) have published an
interesting blog post here
for the LSE Politics and Policy website
– all great timing, with Brexit debates more in the news than ever! It’s
published by Policy Press.
The William Roache book Life and Soul: How to Live a Long and Healthy Life (hb, £18.99, 978-1781809778) is published by Hay House next week and there’s loads
of publicity – he is going to be EVERYWHERE! Just for starters that includes Loose Women –15th June, BBC Breakfast – 20th June, RTE TV – 22nd June and Granada TV News – 20th June. He will be speaking
on the following radio shows: BBC Radio 2
Steve Wright – 19th June, BBC Radio 5
– date tbc, BBC Radio Manchester –
20th June, Newstalk Pat Kenny Show –
22nd June and will be featured in the Daily
Mirror – 10th/11th June, Daily Mail
– w/c 12th June, Sunday Express, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail Weekend, OK! –
w/c 12th June and the Radio Times w/c
12th June. And there’s likely to be more!
There was a
great review of Banthology (£9.99, pb, 978 1910974360) in World Literature Today
saying "The stories, while cohesive,
are not so similar that reading them feels monotonous. Rather, utilising
uniquely different styles, each author manages to capture and fully develop a
different perspective on the same overarching themes of immigration and
xenophobia." You can read that here.
It’s Pride Month and of course Jessica Kingsley are fully committed to
publishing pioneering books on LGBT issues for all readers. From children's
storybooks, through to memoirs and practical guides for practitioners, there's
something for everyone. To celebrate #Pride2018 in your
bookshops check out their full range of titles here.
Always good to finish with some music –
and in the absence of an official England World Cup offering, what do we have
to entertain us? First up is this unofficial remix – Rasputin Rebooted from Ricky Wilson and Freddie Flintoff. No, I’m
not joking. OK then how about this, Live
it Up, the official FIFA video by Nicky Jam
feat. Will Smith and Era Istrefi. Hmm. Or you could try Colors from Jason Derulo which is the
Coca-Cola World Cup anthem. No? Not really feeling it? Never mind, this little ditty from CBeebies is trending rapidly – and something tells me it could yet
be the hit of the summer…
That’s all for now 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@compass-ips.london
thanks for sharing information....
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