Browsing the Bookshelves

I stumbled across The Writeout Club's website today. Superficially, it's a place where new and established writers can showcase their work and, it seems, chat among themselves.  But what struck me about this site was the emphasis on show casing 'new' writers. Seriously, it's not only you that will not have heard of these guys before, amazon apparently hasn't either.  Anyone can request e-copies of some of the showcased works - although a brief glance at some of the synopsis offers indicates that a degree of selectivity might be wise - read and then review them. So, tired of the same old, same old in Waterstone's 3 for 2 offers? Bored with Borders cautious offerings? Stick to the back teeth with the poor selection of commuter fodder for the brain dead in John Menzies? Try the writeout club. You can bet your bottom dollar most will be drivel writ long and large, but you've a better chance of finding something new, exciting and fresh there than in many high street chain stores.

Well done to Francesca and Joe Gil for creating such an interesting, and might I add seductive-looking, website for all us booklovers, even if we're not writers. I might have requested one of the books myself, except that I happen to have a copy of one of then - Joe Blues' Teaching the Headmaster - sitting right in front of me already. I wonder how that happened...ever been anywhere near the South Bank?

Ok, I confess, I'm a sucker for novels with whacky titles...like this one...

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Simon Sherrill

I can't deny that I really enjoyed reading this - I raced right through it in a few hours. At the same time, however, I think it is a little disappointing. I love the concept - the Minotaur of Knosses, still alive and now living within society somewhere deep in the American South. The possibilities promised by such an premise are endless: unfortunately, Sherrill simply fails to deliver. Here is no exploration of immortality or historicity, no hilarious misunderstandings, very little plot and absolutely no use of the dynamic between fantasy and reality which itself should have been able to sustain the novel. The Minotaur is a an engaging character, and the picture of his loneliness and isolation elegant and touching. His friends and work colleagues are well-drawn and interesting characters - no one could fail to be repelled by Shane and his sidekick Mike, or the way in which they exploit the Minotaur's insecurity - but it's not enough to raise this engaging and easy to read novel above the average.

If you'd like to read this book, I'll send you my copy. You can request it through either Bookcrossing or Bookmooch. Strictly first come first served. This book has now been given away.

Ok, so I've taken my eye off the ball a little and am somewhat late with this, but the sequel to The White Masai, Reunion in Barsaloi is now available in the shops!  Corinne Hofmann's account of her obsession with a Masai Warrior and her attempts to live with him in Kenya caused quite a stir last year...and now the next installment is ready and waiting for those eager to follow her exploits as she returns to Kenya.

It must be my week for books with odd titles. I read 'Death and the Penguin' earlier this week. Next up on (or perhaps I should say next off) mount-to-be-read is 'The Minotaur Takes and Cigarette Break' - a book grabbed from a fellow bookcrosser at a recent meet purely for the title. Intriguing, hey? Well, I'll tell you about it when I've read it.

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Kurkov’s understated humour and perfect, deadpan style makes this quirky little story, full of quirky characters, a gem.  Death and the Penguin is the nectar of booklovers and Misha, a penguin rescued from a struggling zoo, is one of the most animated, engaging and touching characters in contemporary fiction. But there’s more to Kurkov’s writing than a sideways laugh at human foibles. Death of Penguin shows many pictures of loneliness and human isolation.  Viktor is an aspiring writer but lacks the energy to follow his dreams and, by settling to bread today and giving up on the idea of jam tomorrow, finds himself drawn into a mafiaesque world of crime and assassination in the chill starkness of post-Soviet Kiev.  Misha comes to live with him when the local zoo can no longer afford to feed him. Both are lonely, Viktor isolated from human society and Misha alone amid it.  Yet it is Misha who seems able to make strong relationship – first with Sonia, a little girl who comes to live with Viktor when her father is swept away into oblivion by his life of crime and then with the reader: who cannot fail to adore the quite, reliable, predictable animal, or to delight in his pleasure in fish and cold bathes, or sorrow over his inability to adjust to life in a climate so much warmer than his native land.

Here too is a stark, if one-sided, portrayal, of life in the former Soviet state of Ukraine. And it’s not a nice life. It’s cold, it’s hard and seemingly pointless. Deprived of the structure of the state, each seems to struggle to embrace with vigour the concept of democratic freedom. What Death of a Penguin amounts to is a strong indictment of a political reform which has left a population, bereft of communism community, without any societal fabric at all: without hope, without security and unable to realise the promise of liberty. This book is very funny. It’s very sad. And it’s very, very good.

Pure co-incidence that I'm posting this on a Sunday... does moral philosophy allow for co-incidence?

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

A light and gentle mystery, engagingly written in an easy and accessible style. Isabel Dalhousie, editor of a philosophical journal, witnesses a young man fall to his death. Haunted by the memory of a young life wasted, she begins to inquire about his life and friends and finds herself drawn into a tangle of insider dealing and sexual entanglement, while her beloved niece becomes engaged to the wrong man and Isabel herself develops inappropriate feelings for the right man!

This is an enjoyable read - I particularly liked the way it evoked Edinburgh New Town: reading the novel was like walking around my memories of this glorious city. But the mystery itself is understated throughout the novel, and I found the interspersement of philosophical jottings pretentious and distracting rather than complementary.

BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage carried a feature on Jane Austen this morning, talking particularly about her travel habits, the places associated with her and how those placing where captured or reflected in her writing. There's a little bit about the programme on the website, and for the next fortnight you can download the programme and listen to it at your leisure:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/excessbaggage/

The Bewitching of Anne Gunter - a horrible and true tale of football, witchcraft, murder and the King of England by James Sharpe

In recounting the events surrounding the alleged bewitchment of a young girl, living in a quiet, rural village in Berkshire in 1604, Sharpe provides a fascinating depiction of medieval life from an unusual perspective.  The Bewitching of Anne Gunter is, in some ways, a very personal account of a small incident in the vastnesses of history.  Sharpe however succeeds in demonstrating its connections with contemporary life and its consequences in the spheres of high politics, theology and cultural development that an incident which many have glossed over as an aside becomes a pivotal in both typifying and determining the early years of the 17^th century.

Sharpe has a great story to tell as well. A young, seemingly attractive, girl, who suffers at the hands of her murderous and oppressive father, eventually finds release and, it is suggested love. Along the way, the reader finds football and murder, malefic witchcraft, satanic connections and an audience with the King at his glamorous Court in London.  So far, it sounds a little bit like popular fiction.  But this is, in fact, just what a history book should be: well-researched, well-written, enlightening and material.

Sharpe touches on so many aspects of medieval culture and society that it is difficult to encompass them all briefly. Those which stood out for me were his treatment of the distinctiveness of the phenomena of widespread belief English witchcraft in contrast to contemporary experiences in Europe and North America.  He discusses in some details the psyche of medieval society, placing witchcraft firmly in a cultural context which, for the uneducated and half-educated at least include a belief in fairies and phantoms, demons and devils, and sympathetic and image magic sitting quite comfortably alongside a devote if irrational adherence to Christianity.  The discussion of the emergence of printed material as an influence upon popular culture dates the phenomena to an earlier period than many histories, but Sharpe provides good evidence to support his case and convincing evidence of the impact of printed material in the case at hand. His treatment of the widespread perception that accusation of witchcraft was predominantly a manifestation of misogyny amounts to a debunking of conventional interpretations, making the book all the more refreshing and challenging.  Perhaps of most interest to me however is the argument running through the books that the witchcraft phenomena of the middle ages was as much a response to religion as it was step away from it.  Sharpe links closely the rise in belief in witches in England, and especially the emergence of a seeming connection between bewitchment and satanic possession, to the Reformation and its impact on the contemporary psyche.

So much was knowledge of witchcraft and possession inculcated in the folklore of the times, Sharpe argue, that those moved to feign bewitchment knew how they were expected to act and those that witnessed such bewitchment knew how to respond.  Sharpe, of course, rejects outright any suggestion that witches actually existed. Yet Anne’s particular case provokes a reassessment of that conviction.  There can be little doubt that she was a victim and suffered horribly. Her violent and painful fits, the swelling in her stomach which drove her to suicidal thoughts, her passing and vomiting of pins and other objects, amounts to an horrific account of cruelty and abuse.  Her sufferings were not brought about by the three women she accuses of bewitching her but, according to Sharpe, by her father who was seeking to further a bitter village feud by having his enemies convicted of witchcraft.  If a parent were guilty of inflicting such pain and suffering on their offspring they would be guilty of child abuse of the most horrific and unforgivable kind: is there a case for arguing that Anne father, Brian Gunter, was, after all, the ‘witch’ who plagued her?

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes

There’s no denying that Julian Barnes’s Before She Met Me is an absorbing, even compelling, account of one man’s descent from jealousy into obsession and ultimately to insanity.  Graham, happily and then unsatisfying married, falls for Ann, for whom he leaves his wife and daughter. With Ann, a sometime bit part actress seems to offer him the solace and companionship which Graham has just discovered that he’s been lacking all these years. By then, through the offices of his bitter ex-wife, he happens to see a film featuring, albeit briefly, Ann.  He becomes obsessed with her past, convulsively gathering evidence of her former liaisons and boyfriends and even passing acquaintances. But he can’t leave it there: and what he imagines his wife did before she met him becomes worse that what she actually did. Sad, funny and disturbing, Barnes’ prose is as always, well-measured and quite elegant. Yet there is something just a little unsatisfying about this novel. Never quite convinced that Graham’s descent is totally self-driven, the reader is left wondering about the machinations of his friends and his ex-wife particularly: the questions surrounding their role are never quite resolved and yet too closely drawn to remain provocatively ambiguous.  Barnes has done a lot better.

I've hardly put my nose outside my front door tomorrow - and every time I did, it got frost bitten. But yesterday I had half an hour to kill around Victoria. What better way to spend the time that to release a few more books into the wild. Here's what you might find if you go hunting around the train and bus station (paritcularly as none have been journalled yet). Four of five books are science fiction, so a real treat for fans of that genre of fiction.

Undercover Aliens by A E Van Vogt

As Time Goes By: A Biography of Ingrid Bergman by Laurence Leamer

The Mind Cage by A E Van Vogt

The Net by Loren J Macgregor, and

War Against the Rull by A E Van Vogt

Not sure what any of this means? Want to take part in a fascinating experiment in serendipity? Or just want to get more fun out of your books? Visit bookcrossing.

Time was when Alibris was a sound selling venue for UK sellers. Yes, they marked up our stock above that of US competitors, and told buyers that it would take at least three weeks for the book to be sent out to them, let alone delivered. But with Alibris' strong marketing and its deep penetration of the US market, it was still a good venue for UK booksellers offering interesting and well-described books. Add to that the once a week consolidated shipping, paid for by Alibris and the fact that Alibris almost always absorbs returns, it site provided a stready flow of sales and the 20 per cent commission, although painful, could be justified. Even on the tiny inventory we had on line in 2003, some 5,000 books, we regularly shipping 20 to 25 books to Alibris each week.

All that changed during 2004 and the early part of 2005. First UK sellers were removed wholesale from the link up between Alibris and Barnes and Noble. That hurt. Our sales via Alibris halved over night and from conversations with colleagues I know others suffered even more.  Then came Alibris's abortive public offering which damaged their reputation and in turn resulted in another dive in sales. The change in fee structure earlier this year was another kick in the teeth, especially for UK sellers. By insisting on a monthly subscription as well as commission per sale, albeit at a slightly reduced rate, Alibris seemed to be sending a message that it really didn't welcome sellers with small stock and that it was setting itself up to be all about turnover and quantity. But in a passing gesture to those who swim the seas of the rare and antiquarian book trade, a low level scheme was introduced for those with an inventory of less than 1,000 which allowed them to opt out of the monthly subscription if they agreed to an additional per sale fee. We tinkered with this option for a month, but the tiny number of sales did not justify the enormous data management required to send just a small proportion of our inventory.  Some UK sellers stuck with this model, a few, like us, have kept their entire inventory at Alibris, but many left the scheme although.

And now Alibris have announced that even the low level scheme will come to an end in the new year without any similar replacement. I predict that for many UK and other European booksellers this will be final nail in the coffin of their relationship with Alibris.  Apparently, the scheme was too confusing. All those poor little booksellers out that - they just couldn't get their heads about a commission only agreement. What utter bosh! If you sell books on line, believe me, you understand commission and subscriptions in the same way that an bookmakers understand odds. It's in the blood. More likely that Alibris found that it was not worth their while to adminster a separate scheme for a small number of booksellers, especially when their sales are declining in the same way as snow melts in the sun. So Alibris delivers another kick in the teeth to booksellers operating outside North America while it positions itself as an  exclusively American site for Americans. This may keep the corporate accountants and city fund managers happy but it will not bring sales for Alibris. They have taken a major step to remove some of the most disintinctive, most interesting and, in the US, some the hardest to find inventory. 

I suppose the writing was on wall, if perhaps only in pencil, with the initial change in fee structure. This latest move puts in in ink. Alibris is no longer a truely international site for international trade. And with out I doubt it will last long as a site for book collectors in the ultra-competitive internet bookselling marketplace.  Unless there are some real and quick changes in their business model, that ink will be replaced with inedible marker pen.  Move over Alibris. Move on up Biblio.