PETRONA

Seven questions for Harry Potter

Nobody has asked me to do this meme, but I can't resist. I saw it on Scholar's  Blog, where Michele was tagged by Sheila of Wands and Worlds [no link as there is none or it is broken on the source post].

1. Butterbeer or pumpkin juice?
Pumpkin Juice. (Cabernet Hogwarts might have stood a better chance.)

2. What House would you most likely (or want to) be in in Hogwarts?
Ravenclaw.

3. If you were an animagus, what animal would you turn into?
Red squirrel (but knowing my luck, I'd end up as a Lethocerus).

4. What character do you empathize with, or resemble best?
Sirius. And strangely, I related to him in this way in book 3 before further similarities were revealed in 5 (he barely comes into 4).

My favourite character is Lupin, though of course I have a very soft spot for Harry.

5. What position do you play at Quidditch?
Chaser.

6. Which teacher is your favorite?
Lupin (especially his boggart lessons). Mad-Eye Moody's Dark Arts lessons were pretty cool, too.

7. Any Harry Potter 7 predictions?
Yes. ;-)  In common with many of my acquaintanceship, I have worked out what I think is likely to happen in book 7, but I have great faith in J K Rowling outwitting us all.

Your go.

Musings on scientific celebrity

From "The Dark Ages" column in the Times, by Kate Muir:

"I saw this cartoon the other day: two kids in their school careers office standing before a rack of brochures for future jobs: Celebrity Chef, Celebrity Gardener, Celebrity Painter and Decorator, Celebrity Antiques Dealer…and Celebrity Rodent Exterminator. And it would be funny if a huge swathe of children didn’t think these options were true, for the telly has told them so.

For instance, there’s not a Celebrity Scientist on the list. Children don’t value science as much as they used to. “One of the things that makes people choose a particular career is the chance of becoming a celebrity,” claims Professor Edwin Southern of Oxford University. “Children are not seeing science as a place to go.”

Fame by association, or even transient celebrity, seems far more attractive than hard work, even for the most able children. A survey by Fame Junkies author Jake Halpern of US schoolchildren gave them about ten choices of future careers: 23 per cent wanted to be head of a great university, 13 per cent wanted to be a politician, 9 per cent wanted to be director of a huge company – and 43 per cent wanted to be a “celebrity personal assistant”...."  In another of Halpern's surveys, "650 schoolchildren [were asked to] to choose their perfect dinner companion from a list that included President Bush, Jesus, 50 Cent, Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton and Einstein. The kids selected J-Lo as their top choice, followed by Jesus – proof that celebrity is the new religion for teenagers. Paris beat Einstein, of course."

Professor Ed Southern, by the way, achieved fame for inventing the Southern Blot. I kid you not. His paper in the Journal of Molecular Biology describing how he made it is probably the most cited paper in biology, after one by a man called Laemmli, who discovered SDS-PAGE (sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis). This is a tongue-twister and may sound boring, but the Wikipedia link I've provided in the previous sentence leads to a Hollywood-like "demystifying" video of life in the scientific fast lane (sorry about the pun). Laemmli's 1970 paper describing SDS-PAGE is far and away the highest cited Nature paper ever. Why this should be is another story for another day. But one thing is for sure, Profs Southern and Laemmli did the work first and got the celebrity later. As intimated by Ms Muir, though, scientific celebrity isn't the same as other types of celebrity: probably nobody outside science has ever heard of Profs Southern or Laemmli, and probably neither gentleman owns a Malibu beach house or a private jet. Yet modern biology depends on the techniques they invented.

P.S. If you are really interested, here's the abstract of Laemmli's paper, in its entirety: "Using an improved method of gel electrophoresis, many hitherto unknown proteins have been found in bacteriophage T4 and some of these have been identified with specific gene products. Four major components of the head are cleaved during the process of assembly, apparently after the precursor proteins have assembled into some large intermediate structure."

Wall Street Noir from Akashic Books

Via Akashic Books: ... Wall Street Noir. "at the rotting heart of corporate America, Peter Spiegelman collects disparate, darkly humorous voices that shed light on the seedy underbelly of the financial world, providing an alternative and honest look at life on the Street. A starred review in Publishers Weekly endorses Spiegelman as “the ideal editor for the Wall Street entry in Akashic’s noir anthology series, assembl[ing] a stellar cast of 17 crime genre luminaries, many with financial backgrounds,” showing how Wall Street has spread its insidious reach far beyond the boundaries of lower Manhattan. Through cautionary tales from the likes of former Merrill Lynch securities analyst Henry Blodget, ex-finance lawyer John Burdett, and renowned author and Wall Street Journal writer Jim Fusilli, these stories showcase a side of Wall Street previously restricted to convicts, criminals, and newspaper headlines."

Er, wow! Enthusiastic blurb. Peter Spiegelman is one of my favourite authors: here's my review of his latest, Red Cat. Of the other authors listed above, I have only read Fusilli, but he's good too.

Akashic Books is dedicated to "reverse gentrification of the literary world". As well as Wall Street Noir, their other newest title is Tango for a Torturer, apparently a "long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Adios Muchachos!".

How will history judge Blair?

Link: BBC NEWS | Politics | How will history judge Blair?.

I could get quite into this politics thing. I wonder if the world of politics could possibly be as argumentative as that of science? Having written that I didn't think I'd ever be writing about Tony Blair et al. on this blog but finding myself doing it, I received an email the other day (from my husband, using a civilised method of spousal communication), containing the BBC link at the top of this post. There, you can read accounts by three historians of the Blair era. The MP read the articles because he's enjoying reading a book (on Wellington and Napoleon) by Andrew Roberts, one of the three historians.

Roberts starts out: "Before 11 September 2001, Tony Blair was set to go down in history as a second-division prime minister, one of those who stayed in power for a long time but without having any appreciable effect on the story of his times."

By the end of his article, he concludes: "Prime ministers are not judged by posterity on issues to do with transport, health, education, or even - most of them - on economic indicators. They are judged by the One Big Thing that happens during their premierships. That is why Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement, Anthony Eden's Suez Crisis, Edward Heath's Three-Day Week, and John Major's ERM debacle have left them branded as failures. Equally, Winston Churchill's Blitz orations, Margaret Thatcher's saving of British capitalism and Tony Blair's vigorous prosecution of the War against Terror will leave them noted by history as highly successful prime ministers. "

Special offers from Waterstone's

I am too tired to blog (or do anything ) tonight, so will just quickly draw attention to today's Waterstone's e-newsletter. ...." two fantastic offers. First up, is the chance to buy The Living Planet DVD for just £5 (RRP £34.99)! Filmed on five continents, The Living Planet examines each of the earth's environments, seeing how living organisms survive and thrive in conditions ranging from the Arctic to the tropical. To get this four-disc DVD for £5, simply add it to your basket with your other shopping, and as long as your total spend (excluding the DVD) is over £25, you will receive the DVD for just £5.

And if that's not generous enough, we'd also like to give 1,000 customers a free book! The Lies of Locke Lamora is something of a mixture between Hustle and Oliver Twist, with a hint of The Pink Panther and a dash of Ocean's Eleven. Part historical novel, part revenge thriller, part crime novel and part fantastical adventure, this is a brilliant debut novel from a hugely talented first-time author. Our booksellers think it is a great book that deserves a much wider audience, and they asked us if we could tell everybody about it. We agreed, and decided to give away 1,000 copies! Find out more and enter the draw for your free copy now."

Apologies for the lack of original content. I hope normal service will be resumed some time over the weekend.

Spinebreakers reading network

Penguin books (UK) will launch in September an online book community for teenagers, called Spinebreakers. "Spinebreakers.co.uk will be a stimulating and entertaining portal into the world of books, run by teenagers themselves. Editorial control of the site will be in the hands of a core editorial team of nine teenagers aged between 13 and 18 years, supported by a large network of contributing teen editors from across the UK."

The company has done a survey which it says shows that:

• three in four teenagers get their information on books from the internet and wished there was more information on books available to them on the internet.
• Nearly 44% of surveyed teens never or rarely visit a chain bookshop and 68% never or rarely visit an independent bookshop.
• 69% of teens think they will be doing more reading online in the future.
• Teens who rate reading as cool are the most frequent visitors to social networking sites.

Anna Rafferty, Penguin's Online Marketing Director, said: "Publishers and the book trade are failing to reach teenagers via traditional methods of marketing and have been slow to create a space on or off line where teenagers can interact with books. Penguin is taking the lead, making books a far more attractive proposition in a crowded teen market place, harnessing their creativity, getting them involved in the creative process and hopefully making them readers for life."

The teen team will have the opportunity, says the Penguin press release, to discuss, debate and interact with Penguin's rich source of publishing from contemporary titles such as Meg Rosoff's Just in Case, Nick Hornby's first book for teenagers Slam, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation to classics such as J.D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Kerouac's On the Road.

Well, we shall see. I can understand that it seems to make business sense to Penguin to try to get the readers to their site, rather than to establish a group in one of the current social networks popular with teens. As has been said previously (not by me), what most people, teens or not, want is probably to have the ability to do all of their social networking in one place. Hence I am not sure how successful a single-publisher social site will be, unless they broaden it to non-Penguin authors. Time will tell.

100 blogs PC World loves

If you are short of online reading material, try PC World - 100 Blogs We Love, "our favorite stops in the blogosphere, covering everything from high tech to low comedy and all manner of pursuits in between". Of these, I've looked at about 10, subscribed to three or four in the past, and subscribe to one currently. But don't let me stop you from checking out the list! There are categories to suit everyone, and each recommended blog gets a brief one-liner of description.

Several nice sides to Tony

I never thought I would write anything about Tony Blair (et al.) on this blog, but I have just read the most wonderful post about him on Material Witness. As Typepad ate my comment over there, I will provide a link to the Material Witness post here. It is a lovely story and shows several sides, charming ones, to a leading politician -- the likes of some of which I have read nowhere else.

Tony Blair, Nicole Kidman and the unfavourable comparison.

I'm smiling.

I know I said this already, but...

I am so glad that Pundy is back.

"I guess Hitler, a master of propaganda, would have been a brilliant blogger. George Bush, well, maybe his grasp of the English language has prevented him from using this means of attack. He is obliged to use more direct action. Soldiers with guns are more loquacious, though not necessarily more persuasive, especially when they don't speak the language, in any sense of the word, of the people they are trying to convert."

Just read on, and keep reading. (Warning, there's a novel there too so you may not be back for some time.)

Another nice blog you got me into

Writer, rejected kindly came over to comment on my post of the other day, The Book Depository on POD. Here's the comment: "Thanks for the infor. POD certainly does bypass the long and nauseating period of getting a whole lot of rejections. Check out a humorous take on literary rejections at Literary Rejections on Display."

Never one to ignore good advice, I did just that. Here's a sample post, Sour grapes of wrath: "Wow! An anonymous reader posted the following searing comment on my blog today: "Two words for you, my friend--sour grapes. Aren't you just a little embarressed [sic] to put these up on your blog, removing your info (how convenient) but not the agent/editors?With your poor me attitude, if I were an agent, I wouldn't touch yo [sic] with a ten foot barge pole. Grow up--you make other writers look bad. Getting published is hard. Whining, I guess, is easy." I haven't been told off like this in a long time. Probably ever."

You can see (but if you are like me, not read very well) lots of rejection slips (which authors can send in if they like), posted by "a published, award-winning author of fiction and creative nonfiction--but whatever. In the eyes of many, I am still a literary reject. Remember this: someone out there will always say no."

Crazy, doomed, but slightly hopeful

This description could be applied to me, but on this occasion it is how Anthony Cheetham (chairman of Quercus and The Friday Project) is applying it to a publishing system out of touch with reality and inefficient, in his Bookseller column (15 June page 22).

He asks why booksellers aren't making more money (in the UK). The chain stores are getting as good a deal as is possible from the suppliers (60 per cent discounts, return of stock for credit, and shelf space, as we know, billed to the publisher). The way Mr Cheetham sees it, there is too much attention given to the 1 per cent of books that are mass-market. "The industry's big players are relentlessly focused on seeking out that fraction of 1 per cent, piling them high, and discounting them as deeply as they dare".

The craziness of this is that readers are not a homogeneous mass market, he writes, but a "complex series of layered and overlapping communities with different tastes and interests." It can't last (hence the "doomed"). The internet is fostering special interest communities at an exponential rate; in the USA, mass market sales are greatly reduced, and in the UK, Borders is now looking at ways to restore autonomy to branches rather than to control from the centre.

Under the skin by Michel Faber

Melanie Stacey of Thames and Hudson is the guest in the Bookseller's "reading for pleasure" column for 15 June. She chooses Under the Skin by Michel Faber. She writes that the book is based around a woman called Isserley, who drives through the Scottish Highlands in search of male hitch hikers to pick up. "The atmosphere is strange from the outset, and the reader knows that something is not quite right, but the shock that Faber introduces around 20 pages in is completely unpredictable. This is a beautifully crafted and disturbing book.........It's not like anything else I have ever read......as a piece of truly imaginative fiction, it is a cumulatively stunning work. I've loaned or recommended this book to so many people now, who have all loved it."

I'm going to have to read this book. You can read an author profile and interview here, at BookReporter.com , and a review of the book here, at the same site. Here's the Guardian review, from the year 2000 (how come I've never come across this book before? Or, rather I wonder why it has never stuck in my mind -- as it is apparently on those "1000 books you must read before you die" lists, its title must have passed before my eyes a few times). One final alternative, the Powell's review is here.  For fear of spoilers, I haven't read any of these reviews, but shall enjoy doing so after I've read the book (one of my life's little pleasures).

Short short stories at normblog

Do you remember last year's normblog short short story competition, where the maximum number of words per story was 250 ? Well, now Norm (Norman Geras) is doing it again: see normblog: Short short story - second series. He writes:

"I must do what I can to encourage you all in the path of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, Cormac McCarthy and... er, Salman Rushdie. It's the same deal as last time. Your story must be...

... no more than 250 words, excluding your title - for which, however, you may not use more than 10 words. I will post a selection of the stories sent (and sending one will be taken as giving your permission to post it); and if there's enough of an entry, I'll put them before a panel of judges, not including myself and to be announced in due course, for selection of the best three. There will be prizes.

All I need add is that, whatever its quality, your story will be received at normblog as a vote in favour of the glory of literature."

So, do give it a go! Here is where to go to enter, and here are last year's winners, with judges' report and links to the stories. From there, you can also find all of last year's entries. I can't find the deadline, but the normblog's email address is here for entries and competition-related enquiries.

The Book Depository on POD

Mark Thwaite of The Book Depository posts about the POD discussion we have been having on Petrona, and others have been having elsewhere. Mark writes:

"Print on Demand (POD) technology is getting better all the time. And it is going to keep getting better (smaller, faster, cheaper, as well as simply giving a look and feel that is as good as anything traditional printing can offer) in the coming years. Indeed, the time frame for when great (as opposed to adequate) POD books will be the norm for the majority of backlist titles is shrinking all  of the time.............

With POD an author need never fear that her book will be unavailable. With 10,000 books published every month, books are rarely given enough time to enter book-buyers’ awareness before they are taken off the bookshelves to be replaced, just a week or so later, by the next bunch of hopefuls. (The advantage of an internet bookshop like The Book Depository is, of course, that we can hold millions of books on our virtual shelves.) At least with POD, a book doesn’t have to have itself rushed quite so quickly through the bricks and mortar bookshop and onto the remainders pile."

If you don't know it, do check out the Book Depository, "founded in 2004 with the aim of making "All books available to All" through pioneering supply-chain initiatives, republishing and digitizing of content. It is a continuing project, still in its infancy and one of the most ambitious ventures in the Book Industry." You can order books, read Mark's "editor's corner" blog, read publishing news, interviews and reviews, and so on.

I hope no-one reads this

View From The Pundy House: I hope no-one reads this. Yes, Pundy is back! Break out the Champagne.

All I need now is for Sand Storm (Steve Clackson, but the link is defunct) to return and the blogging part of my heart will be content.

Great to see you in the RSS neighbourhood, Pundy. It's been too long, even though it only took you about 5 minutes to start writing about sex.

Google acquires Zenter

Google Docs&Spreadsheets continues to improve, but I am not sure if it can yet compete with the dreaded, ubiquitous Microsoft Office. Google is always adding new features, and of course the big advantage to the user over Word and Excel is that with Google you can work on the same document with your online collaborators, wherever they are. Google apps can sometimes be a bit flaky, however, and I am still unconvinced of the stablility and functionality of the Google "office suite". Now, via this link: paidContent.org: The Economics of Content , Google has acquired Zenter, a small company that makes software for creating online slideshows. According to the paidcontent post, Google also bought Tonic Systems, another presentation-creation service, back in April. So expect some PowerPoint-like function to be added to GD&S soon, increasing the similarity to the MS Office suite.

I never used to worry about using MS Word, it does what it says on the can, and although there is lots of spurious code in it, you can strip that out pretty easily while retaining your formatting before pasting it in anywhere on the web or in a print publishing/typesetting mode (use "notepad" or "wordpad" from the accessories menu). But that was all before Word 2007, which is incompatible with, well, too many things. I wonder if GD&S will ever be good enough for commercial applications, or perhaps I should rephrase that to asking whether GD&S will ever tempt anyone, given how wedded they (businesses) and their systems are to Office?

There is more information about the Zenter purchase at the official Google blog, which states:  "when you create a document -- whether it's a text document, a spreadsheet, or a presentation -- you usually want to share it, collect feedback, or communicate about it in some way. We on the Google Docs & Spreadsheets team focus on making this experience easier and more powerful for you. In particular, we're working to add presentation-sharing capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and we're excited about the addition of Zenter's technology and team to that effort."

Local Explorer maps new horizons

The Washington Post has taken map mash-ups to the next level. Google Maps have redefined the ways in which we find out about local events, holiday or business destinations, and more, by location. In Local Explorer, WashingtonPost.com has now connected this mapping to city-based information, and is displaying it in ways that make the searching and finding useful and intuitive.

To get an idea of what it is all about, here is a sample page from Alexandria, Va.The dots include restaurants, shops, hospitals, libraries, cinemas, museums, places of worship, post offices, recent home sales, schools, crime statistics and bus/train stops. Visitors can use the basic Google map as a point of departure for all that information, some of which has been created by the Post. You can click from the map to the Post's review of a restaurant, for example. You can see the commercial sense (if it works!) of bringing readers more directly in touch with relevant local information, whether buying second-hand goods or looking for houses and schools in the area.

For other news-oriented mapping trends, take a look at "Cool Google Map Uses".

Big Brother is full of juice

Somewhat old news that I haven't found time to report, but I just have to do so: French government officials have been ordered not to use handheld Blackberry devices amid fears that foreigners could spy on them. According to a report in Le Monde (via the BBC, link above), France's SGDN security service is worried because Blackberries use US- and UK-based servers.

But some officials are flouting the ban and using them in secret. "They tried to offer us something else to replace our Blackberries but it doesn't work," one unnamed official told Le Monde.

Here's the Le Monde article, if you read French and have a subscription.

If you really want to know more about Blackberries, you can go here.

Your autumn paperback reads

Paul Henderson has selected the paperbacks due to come out in the UK in the second half of 2007 that he thinks will sell the best (Bookseller's Paperback Preview, Autumn). He defines "giant" as a book that will be in the top 100 paperbacks of the year and sell more than 100,000 copies (total consumer market); "bestseller" as in the top 10 for at least a week and sell more than 50,000; "bubbling under" as not quite top 10 but selling around 30,000; and a few "breakthroughs", either an author who is making a mark or one who is selling at a higher level than previously. He points out that his predictions are by volume, so he hasn't included books from many small publishers. He also made his selection before the Richard and Judy summer reads were announced, which will have a huge effect -- last year's six sold 2.5 million between them and were in the charts for many weeks.

I am picking out just a few of Paul's selections that I recommend, either because I've read them already or because they are on my list to be read, or because they just look good.

July

Giants: The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin It's Rebus, possibly for the last time (I don't believe that myself, but others do). Can't wait.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson A second outing for Jackson Brodie of Case Histories. Being repackaged to look more like a crime novel.

Bubbling under: In the Evil Day by Peter Temple. A standalone, not a Jack Irish novel.

August

Giants: Atonement by Ian McEwan. His masterpiece. The film is due for UK release in September. A deeply wonderful book.

Bestselling: The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. I enjoyed her Crow Lake. I didn't know she'd written another until I read a discussion on a blog the other day. Sounds good from that.

Bubbling under: The Moment you were Gone by Nicci Gerrard. Can't wait! One, or should I say two?, of my favourite authors. I keep gazing at the hardback when I'm in a bookshop, but am enforcing self-restraint.

The Judas Heart by Ingrid Black. I read her first novel, which wasn't what I was expecting (not that I was expecting anything, but it was a bit different). I haven't read the second yet, though I do have it, somewhere. So I'll keep an eye on this one, pending my verdict on number two.

September

Giants: Echo Park by Michael Connelly. The wait for this one seems interminable. I'm desperate to read it, especially as his next is now being advertised (in hardback). He is one of the very few authors I usually buy in hardback as I just have to read his books the instant they are published, but the size and quality of my bookstacks has put the brake on this time round.

Breakthroughs: Blood Ties by Sam Hayes. Said to be in the style of Harlan Coben so might be worth checking out.

Sharp Objects by Gillan Flynn. I recently bought this via Amazon after reading a very good review of it on Material Witness. Amazon said that the format was paperback, and the price was a paperback price, but when it arrived, it was a hardback. They've done this to me before several times when a book is about to come out in paperback, getting rid of overstocks I suppose. So this is one I won't have to wait for.

Bubbling under: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo. I've read The Devil's Star, which I liked but not as much as other Scandinavian noir I've read this year. The Redbreast is set before the events of The Devil's Star so I'm not sure if I'll read it, but it certainly comes highly recommended by my favourite crime-fiction blogs.

Let the Northern Lights Erase your Name by Vendela Vida. Another one I have recently bought from Amazon in paperback format, though the large format rather than mass market, I presume (good price, though). This book received fantastic reviews when it was first published.

November.

Giants: The Woods by Harlen Coben. Like the Michael Connelly, I seem to have been waiting forever for this. I'm so impatient.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Stetterfield. I have got this in hardback but not read it yet. I must do so before the paperback is out! The cover of the hardback is lovely, but apparently this is being held responsible for the book not having met its expectations (code for marketing budget?) in hardback, so the jacket will be receiving a lot of design attention for the paperback. It has been reviewed by Frank Wilson in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Books, Inq. (liked it), and by Debra Hamel of the deblog (not so keen). (Sorry not to provide links to the reviews but you can find their blogs in the favourites section on the right.) [Later correction and addition: Debra was keen on the book. She's provided the link to her review in the comments to this post, or you can go to it here. The Philadelphia Inquirer page for Frank Wilson's review states that the article was online only for seven days, but you can see an extract here.]

Breakthroughs: In the Woods by Tana French. Confusingly, out in paperback the same month as the Coben. Lots of people have recommended this since Adele Geras first tipped me off to it, so it has been in my Amazon list for a while. I'll definitely be reading this one.

December

Giants: Not Dead Enough by Peter James. I've read this, and reviewed it on Euro Crime. Plot-wise, not quite up to the standard of his previous two, but just as much of a rattling good read.

Bubbling under: The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. This is one you simply must read. Brilliant. More on that later.

I have missed out lots of temptingly good books: the above is about 10 per cent of the whole, the "whole" being just the books that Paul thinks will sell at high volume, and restricted to the UK. Would that there were more time in the world.

July hardbacks in the UK

Catching up on a bunch of Booksellers (which are like buses), I have lost count of the number of books that will be coming out in the UK over the next few months. I will highlight a few here that I think will be good reads. I'll split the posts and because there is a blogger's rant at the end of this one so it has got a bit long.

July hardbacks.

The Adversary by Michael Walters. Second instalment of the Mongolian crime series from Quercus, my favourite publisher (I think). I haven't quite started on the first yet, but am looking forward to it.

Damnation Falls by Edward Wright (see this note by Sarah Weinmann).

Dying to Sin by Stephen Booth. I can never decide whether to go back to this series after reading the first three or four and then stopping. I just wish Fry and Cooper would get on with it.

The Past is a Foreign Country by Gianrico Carofiglio, from Bitter Lemon press. According to the Bookseller, the author is visiting the UK in the summer to promote this book and Reasonable Doubts, being published in paperback in July. Based on the first two books by Carofiglio that have been translated from Italian into English, these will be wonderful.

Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard. Another author I did read avidly but have given up on for his past few. On the basis of Frank Wilson's Philadelphia Inquirer review of this one, I should return to him.

Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell. Not a Wallender (father or daughter) one, but a thriller set in Mozambique about an archaeologist who refuses to believe her son committed suicide.

A bit off-topic, but another July hardback is Snapshots from my Life by Helen Mirren. I recall that she was the second actress in my life whom I adored from the moment I discovered her at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre many years ago (the first was Julie Christie).

There's also a new Nigella Lawson, Nigella Express (inevitably for her these days, a TV tie-in), which according to the Bookseller blurb is the "answer to every working mother's dream, supplying quick-to-prepare recipes, tips on keeping the store cupboard stocked, and the freezer and fridge stacked, thereby leaving time for a bath, a drink or to help the children with their homework." Blood-pressure alert: what are the working fathers doing during all of this domestic squirrelling? At business meetings or down the pub I presume. Much as I like Nigella, will she please shoot her publicists?  They seem to come from a land where a "working mother" is envisaged as a person who helps out at the local playgroup for a couple of hours in the morning. And, by the way, if you want to save yourself £25, the answer is to live off pasta, fruit and salad, and/or do your shopping via the internet's large store cupboards, fridges and freezers. You can also get your drinks, bath oils and homework guides there too, by the way.

POD for authors and publishers

If you are interested in print-on-demand (POD) technology, you might be aware of the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference last week. A posting on the company's blog, O'Reilly Radar, here describes a relevant day of the conference. The post, by Sarah Milstein, links to presentations such as "digitizing your backlist" and "incorporating POD into a profitable publishing strategy", as well as to twenty more. Here are some highlights provided by Sarah from the talk by Niko Pfund of Oxford University Press:

" * Authors are often resistant to POD, fearing that pirated copies of their books will wind up on the Web, and they'll lose control over their material. OUP has hit on an analogy that helps authors embrace the new: the editors point out that nobody cares how wine is bottled; similarly, POD is just another system for creating a familiar package. And for many authors, POD means that OUP can now offer eternal life for their books.

* POD has, in some cases, inverted the traditional publishing model. Previously, the company spent a lot of time trying to figure out if a book was selling well enough to keep in print. Now OUP sometimes finds titles that are bringing in enough revenue through POD to justify bringing them back onto store shelves.

* OUP, like every publishing house, has had a history of tense and lengthy meetings over the size of print runs. No longer. POD has given them the flexibility to standardize their print runs without jeopardizing sales, freeing them from negotiating the numbers for every title. Niko referred to those as "among the meetings he misses least."  "

Also on O'Reilly Radar, Peter Brantley writes a post on localizing print on demand. "Publishers maintaining digital files of the books in their catalog can use POD to print copies when individual or small batch orders come in, or when it appears that renewed interest in a title is mounting, without having to inventory expensive physical holdings against the vagaries of uncertain demand." This is the kind of project I was writing about in my post that was ripped to shreds by an unpleasant person called Mr Henry Winkler (I think that was his name, I'm not going back to his vitriol to check on that) and a couple of chimers-in.

Interesting also, that O'Reilly publishing itself is adapting the Apple Mac business model that made itunes and ipods such a commercial hit. The golden egg was the realization that the "unit" that people want to buy is not the album but the song [tune] and to turn that desire into a paying proposition. In similar vein, O'Reilly is now selling its books as individual chapters, as PDFs or other formats, as explained here by Tim O'Reilly himself. The company publishes technical books, for which this business model is, er, better suited than it is for fiction, as Stephen King can tell us.

An articulate, and relevant, creative fiction author's view is here, on the Charkin blog. I thought the author's letter is an excellent analysis of the current situation in publishing (the conventional way) from that particular perspective, and the response from the publisher spot on. Read the (16 at time of writing) comments that attempt to wrestle with the paradoxes and viewpoints.

I wanted to round off this post by mentioning an article on another blog about the subject, but I can't, for a bizarre reason. At the end of this post is a line stating that one cannot quote or cite (emphasis mine) from it without permission. In 32 years of being an author, editor and publisher, I don't think I have ever heard of this restriction before. Has anyone else? In my experience, everyone is only too delighted to be cited -- careers can depend on it, even. I am sure there is no legal reason why one should not cite someone's work without their permission, but I'll respect the writer's wish.

Market research 2.0 at Facebook

Facebook has enabled its 24 million active users to launch polls -- for a fee.  This move is said to be the start of a "new era" of social networking. According to the Facebook poll site, you can instantly find out what 25 million people think. "For as little as $6, Facebook Polls let you ask 18-24 year olds what's hip, ask people in New York who they're voting for, or even ask "Grey's Anatomy" fans if they'll actually watch the new spin-off." You can target polls by gender, age, location, favourite music, movies, TV shows, books, etc, and get answers in 30 mins. The "sample poll" they provide asks "Who did you vote for in American Idol today". The winner? "I did not vote" (50 %). (Jordin Sparks got 28% and Blake Lewis 22%, whoever they are -- please don't tell me). Of the 610 respondents, 423 answers were from women, 170 from men; 421 were 18-24 years old, etc. (I suppose all this assumes that you have set up your Facebook profile honestly in the first place.) You get the drift, anyway.

Facebook is one of the first large social networks to turn their membership into a real-time polling community: you can expect "other large consumer-oriented sites" (mentioning no names) to follow suit.

Whatever one may think about this (the results are not statistically valid), I had an interesting conversation with one of my neighbours this morning whom I met while taking a load of books and clothes down to the Oxfam shop. She told me which university her son has applied for: he's just done his A-levels and is waiting to see if he gets the required grades. She said that he's joined a Facebook group for this year's applicants. Isn't that nice? It makes such a change from "my day", when you just turned up on day 1, knowing nothing and nobody.

SNReview calls for submissions

Link: SNReview call for submissions.

SNReview is a quarterly literary e-zine created for writers of non-genre fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. It is edited and published by Joseph Conlin. You can submit short fiction, essays, creative non-fiction and poems: guidelines for authors are at the link above.

The spring 2007 issue came out a week or so ago, somewhat belatedly -- you can view it here and either read online or download articles as PDFs. It marks the ninth year of publication of this admirable e-zine.

More work for Margery Allingham

In a vague attempt to become highbrow and a proper litblogger instead of always featuring crime fiction and the like, a few months ago I subscribed to the TLS newsletter. Not much use, actually, the darn thing arrives in my inbox each week and when I read the toc, as we call it in the trade (table of contents), my heart sinks.  I struggle through some of the articles, but that is what it is -- a struggle.

Richard Morrison, the admirable Times (not TLS) columnist and music critic, thinks the Philistines were in fact a pretty cultured lot, but I expect he is in the minority, and that I am one, unreconstructed. I was slightly heartened, though to read this article: More work for Margery Allingham - TLS Highlights - Times Online among the astral planes of the rest of the offerings for the current issue. At least the TLS caters for the common man (or woman) now and again. I've never been a huge fan of Allingham, she does not endure as well as some of the older writers, but it is a nice review, built around the reissue of three of her books. It is a bit pretentious in the first half, but gets better (by which I mean I don't really understand the first half but I do the second).

Changing the world

From the History Bookshop. "Summer is here - albeit intermittently if you live in the UK - and we have some wonderful new paperback history books. We can recommend Lucy Moore's Liberty, a study of six women in revolutionary France, Carola Hick's history of the Bayeux Tapestry, and Robert Harvey's wonderful narrative account of the Napoleonic Wars.  See the full list below and at History Bookshop  - all at great discounts. "

"Fateful Choices: 10 decisions that changed the world" looks like a good one. Unfortunately, it takes rather a narrow timeframe, 1940 to 1941 to be precise. The author is clearly a specialist par excellence. Not just 10, but "He examines closely eleven episodes at the heart of the War where there was an immense range of options open to planners and decision-makers. From declarations of war down to operational priorities, choices were made that could have resulted in an almost unrecognisably different conflict."

Get your telescopes out

In common with many other London businesses and buildings, including Canary Wharf and Buckingham Palace, Macmillan's London building will have all its lights turned off for one hour (9 pm to 10 pm GMT) tonight, the longest day of the year in these parts. "London's iconic skyline will darken between 9pm and 10pm on the longest day as buildings, restaurants, bridges and homes switch off to raise awareness about climate change", according to Lights out London. One positive side effect of this initiative is that we've received an email telling us to vacate the building by 8.45 pm for health and safety reasons. Great, we can go home early tonight. ;-)

Again from the Lights out London website: "Following on from the success of Sydney's Earth Hour, Capital 95.8's Lights out London is set to break all records, calling on three million Londoners to support the campaign, and save enough electricity in one hour to power 3000 TVs for one year! " Londoners are being urged to "make the most of the dark with candle-lit dinners or watch the lights go out from on high on Hampstead Heath or the Oxo Tower." Or, as the title says, get your telescope out of your garden shed and do a bit of stargazing. Make sure you don't get up to any unedifying activities under cover of darkness. (Does anyone remember what happened nine months after that big power cut in New York around 50 years ago, subject of the movie "Where were you when the lights went out"?)

Let them eat cake (egg-free of course)

I suppose everyone has heard that the attempt to re-run the advertisements with the slogan "go to work on an egg" has been "scotched" (boiled or scrambled, even) by the UK's broadcast advertising clearance centre? The slogan was invented 50 years ago (hence the failed plan to have an anniversary campaign) and from 1965 to 1991 was used in a long series of TV advertisements, featuring Tony Hancock among others, exhorting us to have a healthy breakfast.

After "lengthy debate", the standards authority decided that the campaign failed to comply with its code: “Eating eggs every day goes against what is now the generally accepted advice of a varied diet. We therefore could not approve the ads for broadcast.” The egg information service offered to add a line to the adverts saying that eggs should be eaten as part of a varied diet, but the compromise was rejected.

The novelist Fay Weldon, who helped to create the campaign, is quoted as saying “I think the ruling is absurd. “We seem to have been tainted by all the health and safety laws. If they are going to ban egg adverts then I think they should ban all car adverts, because cars really are dangerous, and bad for the environment. It’s like banning any films that had actresses smoking cigarettes. Somehow I don’t think eggs are quite in the same category as cigarettes and other dangerous substances.”

You can see the adverts, and find out why eating eggs is good for you (as part of a varied diet, I add hastily), at the "Go to work on an egg" anniversary website. You can also sign an online petition to support the re-runs. The cynical side of me wonders how much of all this is a publicity stunt and how much of it is genuinely a result of a cracked, or even addled, decision.

Silksoundbooks and Bill Nighy

If you click here, you will be at Silksoundbooks, and be listening to the dulcet tones of none other than Bill Nighy, of whom this blog is a meta-admirer (you know who I mean) as well as an admirer (me). Silksoundbooks is an audiobook venture specialising in the classics, backed by Mr Nighy, who not only provides a message on the site's home page, but reads Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin mysteries for your delectation. Users of the service can download "unforgettable performances" for £7.95 in mp3 format, mainly unabridged classics read by West End and Hollywood actors: Timothy West for Treasure Island, for example; Toby Stephens (a recently admired TV Mr Rochester) for Heart of Darkness; and Samantha Bond for Lady Chatterley's Lover. See here for the complete library so far (but if you skip the home page you will miss the lovely voice of Bill), and see here for the impressive list of performers.

Source: a three-week old Bookseller that I read on the train home from work this evening announced the service, but because the story is three weeks old, I can bring you this news when the Silksounds site is actually live.

It's a local crime

Following on from the "Cash for books display scandal", I read the following poignant letter in the Times this morning:

Sir, The Waterstone’s perks-for-publicity affects more than the Christmas bestsellers (report, June 18). It hits the everyday mid-list author every bit as painfully. Seeing in my nearby Waterstone’s a space dedicated to “local author”, I suggested to my publisher staking a claim for my recent crime novel, only to be told that the modest noticeboard cost more than my everyday publicity budget could bear.

H. R. F. KEATING, London, W2

The bubbling blogosphere

Who said that bloggers are the self-regarding couch potatoes of the internet? Actually I don't know if anyone did level that particular assessment among the many unflattering accolades that one reads about the activity. The part of the blogosphere in my orbit is a bubbling with ingenuity and energy, as the following examples from my regular reads may show.

Susan Hill is inundated with people wanting to sign up for her (very generously, free) creative writing course. I hope that one of the applicants is Cathy, who yesterday finished her GCSE exams so now has lots of free time (?). Pertinently, her last exam was the Drama written paper -- one of the set plays being A Woman in Black.

Booksquare sent Ronin Kurosawa into Second Life to report on what book publishers are up to there. His excellent report is here. (I cannot immediately tell if Ronin is the same person who crops up in Bryan Appleyard's comments section as "Internet Ronin", but I expect I'll find out sooner or later.) One of the Nature Network blogs is called Science in the Metaverse, in which T. Troy McConaghy writes about how virtual worlds like Second Life are being used by and for the sciences. (Troy describes himself in his profile on Nature Network as helping "people and organizations use virtual worlds like Second Life. In particular, he develops science exhibits, helps manage community projects and produces science-related events.")

Jenny Davidson has become the blog with a bicycle. She's making a cautious start but I imagine it won't be too long before her cycling speed matches her reading speed (that of light).

Matt Brown visits Systema Metropolis, the new exhibition at London's Natural History Museum, a loosely Linnaean look at London's biodiversity through art and science. Matt describes how the artist Mark Dion created his largest ever exhibition of new work: four unusual field experiments in five well-crafted installations, each exploring the biodiversity of an iconic London location.

That's enough energy for now. My next post will be more laid back, or even soporific.

Cash for book display scandal?

I'm not sure why this counts as news, but The Times today has a large page 3 story about the "cash for book display" issue. According to a "confidential letter" it claims to have seen, the Times reveals that Waterstone’s has has set the rates that publishers will have to pay to promote their books in this Christmas. These range from £45,000 per title for the six "top selling" books; through to £25,000 per title to display at the front of each branch (45 books in total); £7,000 for inclusion as "paperback of the year"; down to £500 for a mention in Waterstone's gift guide. Other chain bookstores have their own, similar charges.

From the article: "Anthony Cheetham, the chairman of Quercus books, a small independent publisher, said: “It’s not a system you can opt out of. If Smith’s offer you one of these slots and you say no, their order doesn’t go down from 1,000 copies to 500 copies. It goes down to 20 copies.”  " He is trying to decide whether to hold out and to refuse to pay the "product placement" fee for Stef Penney's Costa prizewinner "The Tenderness of Wolves", and wondering what the consequences would be, according to the article.

Some shoppers interviewed by The Times for the article are quoted as being appalled by these revelations. I wonder if they also know that publishers have to pay to enter books for most of the presigious prizes and awards that one reads about?

Is the book publishing/selling industry going the way of some scientific journal publishing experiments, in which the articles are free to readers and libraries? The revenue model for such "vanity" publishing is to charge the author or the author's funding institution. Will the day soon be here when we walk into a bookshop and can pick up any book we like, for nothing, perhaps at the "cost" of a sponsor's logo on the cover? Only the other week a new-ish paperback by a "bestselling" author (whom I shall not name) was being offered to evening commuters at Waterloo for nothing. And I didn't see any takers.

All these promotional tactics apply only to a very small subset of books, of course. It is not a very edifying manipulation: in the long run, the booksellers will create a more enduring market by letting people browse through a more varied, larger, but admittedly more expensive, stock. Well, that's my opinion and I suppose that is what a blog is for.  I am sure plenty of people will disagree with me.

A double dose of Euro Crime

For no good reason that I can think of, I did not post the weekly Euro Crime reviews last week, and another batch has now appeared. So you have a bonus post from me today.

The current set of reviews include mine of Seth Garner's The Blood Partnership , my views of which are aptly summed up by Karen as "a good escapist read if you don't think too hard about the details". Other reviews are Terry Halligan on Gerald Seymour's The Walking Dead, Norman Price (Uriah Robinson of Crime Scraps) on Library of the Soul by Simon Buck, Fiona Walker on Asa Larsson's The Blood Split (one most definitely on my reading list) and Declan Burke (Crime Always Pays) on Bishop's Pawn by K. T. McCaffrey. Putting my own efforts to one side, the reviews in this week's collection are readable, focused and sparkly: I think they are informative about the books as well as convey why the reviewers are enthusiasts for the genre (that isn't to say that the reviews are universally positive). Norm, I am with you on your caveat.

Last week's reviews on Euro Crime included mine on Relentless by Simon Kernick. "A quick escapist read with maybe a twist too many" is Karen's summary of my review. Since then, the book has been chosen for the current Richard and Judy selection, which surprises me because although it is easy to read, pacy and enjoyable, it is somewhat casual, and nowhere near as good as many others I've read this year. Other reviews last week were Terry Halligan's of The Death List by Paul Johnston, Sunnie Gill on Sovereign by C. J. Sansom and Karen Chisholm (Aust Crime Fiction) on Shame by Karen Alvtegen.

And don't forget to check out the Euro Crime competitions.

Teens @ Duluth

Duluth, the virtual twin town of Petrona, has a new library blog, Teens @ Duluth. There they are currently discussing Harry Potter: is Snape good or evil; and is Dumbeldore really dead? Even though I am not a teen, I have put in my answers to these questions, I hope they don't mind. There is also a space where you can suggest books, so I've added Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill, and Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.

Thanks to Dave Lull for the link.

Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland

Adrian Hyland's first novel, Diamond Dove, is a tale of the Australian outback. The descriptions and atmosphere are so compelling that from page 1 the reader is jettisoned into the heat, the dry dust, the rocks, and the impoverished townships and itinerant camps of the Northern Territories, a place where Alice Springs seems as sophisticated, and indeed remote, as Paris or Milan. As soon as I started reading, I was absorbed in the author's world. The narrator is a young, motherless, half-white, half-Aboriginal woman; her lack of identity with either culture forms the basis of the book, as she is more of an observer than a member of any of the social groups or places so evocatively described. Emily Tempest grew up in a small mining community, running wild with the Aboriginal children. As a young woman, she went to university and started but did not complete three degree courses. At the start of the book, she returns to an Aboriginal community of her youth, but before too many pages have been turned, someone is murdered.

The rest of the book is about Emily's persistent attempt to find out who did it: whether the chief suspect, Blackie, or one of the many other characters who pass temporarily through the pages. The murder plot is the least successful part of this book: there are too many people who appear and disappear before they are properly fixed in the reader's mind. The book's enormous strength, however, is the sense of the communities and the land: how people live, eking out a life on the edges of the desert, their love for and knowledge of the rocks, the flora and fauna, and the easygoing yet shifting relationships between them. Emily is a charming and tenacious heroine: one never doubts she will get to the bottom of the mystery, but the telling of her story is more satisfying than the "who and why dunnit".

Diamond Dove was published in Australia last year, and will be published in the UK in a month or two by Quercus.

Bookshare on Facebook again

Some Petrona readers may have tried out Bookshare, an application on Facebook that a colleague at work created in his spare time. It does what it says on the can: lets you archive your books and see either your own library, the libraries of your Facebook friends, or those of all Bookshare users. You can put the books in subject categories, say if you liked them or not, and write and share reviews. Here are a couple of posts from "Stew" at his Flags and Lollipops blog, the first one describing why he chose Facebook as a platform to build Bookshare; and the second what happens to you when you tell a few friends about it and it is so popular that it gets 1.7 million users in a week. "A good problem to have? Maybe. Until you get your bandwidth bill (not a problem for images, luckily, as Facebook caches them locally, but still) or you want to use your server for anything else... ever." Read on at Stew's post.

(If you'd like to try Bookshare, and I recommend that you do, create a Facebook profile and enter Bookshare into the search window.)

Julie Christie is blogging

If you are "of a certain age", as I am, and are English (or British), the chances are that Julie Christie is your favourite actress. As a young person (too young, but I was good at sneaking) , I watched her uncomprehendingly in movies such as Darling and Farenheit 451. I didn't understand them, but knew I wanted to be there. Later, I adored her in The Go-Between, Dr Zhivago and Far from the Madding Crowd. Then there was Don't Look Now, and "that" scene in addition to her usual brilliant, empathetic performance. In her Warren Beatty phase I saw awful movies like Shampoo, or "flawed masterpieces" like McCabe and Mrs Miller, just for her. And in later years, it was great to catch a glimpse of her in gems like The Railway Station Man (BBC Screen 2), as she came out of "retirement" the odd time to make the occasional film that appealed to her. Wonderfully, she revealed herself recently as a Harry Potter person, even though the role she took was the relatively uninspiring one of Madame Rosmerta in "Goblet of Fire". (Wonder if she will reprise the role for "Half Blood Prince"?) But even more wonderfully, she's a blogger! See Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - theatre: Cries from the heart: the role I just couldn't refuse.

Marvellous. There are many film actresses I've admired since: Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Pfeiffer, Francesca Annis, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Keira Knightley and more, but who can hold a candle to the peerless Julie Christie? Nobody.

Borderlands is shortlisted

According to the Grumpy Old Bookman: Further to the former, "Brian McGilloway's Borderlands has been shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers Association New Blood Fiction Dagger. It is a Macmillan New Writing publication."

And so it should have been. It is a wonderful novel, in my opinion. My review is here, on Euro Crime. If you've never read any crime fiction before, this would be an excellent introduction to the genre. It's short, and epitomises many of the reasons why people find it a strangely compelling area in which to delve, or dabble.

Minutia part one

So how do you spend your day? Someone asked Scott Adams that question, and here is the answer: The Dilbert Blog: Minutia. This post starts at 0500 and gets to 1030. Busy guy. It is a fascinating glimpse of a day [sorry, first part of morning] in the life of the world's most famous [?] cartoonist.

More to follow later, he says. So, how do you spend your day? I could write a post along the lines of Scott, but for one thing, nobody would read it, and for another, I'd need two parallel days to do it.

On Inspiration, and Tolkien

My friend Henry Gee has a couple of typically well-written and imaginative posts on his blog End of the Pier Show: in On Inspiration, he describes inspiration as being nonlinear, multiply connected and highly recursive.

To be specific, what inspired the creation of the Ents? At first glance, the venerable Shepherds of the Trees that figure so memorably in The Lord of the Rings must count among Tolkien’s more original creations. But how original is ‘original’? Can we trace the things that influenced Tolkien’s seemingly unique fusion of people and trees?

Henry goes on to say that "Ent" is the old English for "giant", and that it is clear from Tolkien's drafts that the author wanted to write about a giant called Treebeard, but it was only when he actually put pen to paper that the character became a tree. Do read Henry's post, it is brilliant.

Earlier in his post, Henry hints that he'd not be averse to a copy of The Children of Hurin for his upcoming birthday. Well, the right fairies were reading his blog, because he was given the book. Here's his review.

A few more books

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, here are a few more links to posts about books. Just a few, though.

Sarah Weinman tells us that Edward Wright has found a US publisher for his praised book Damnation Falls. On his Amazon UK page, the author is paired with Fred Vargas and Declan Hughes. I have never read any of his John Horn series, but the books have been in my Amazon basket for what seems like forever, based on various recommendations.

One of my favourite crime-fiction reviewers, David Montgomery, is starting a "book of the week" feature. If it is as good as his blurb machine, as I'm sure it will be, it will be a joy indeed. First up is Volk's Game by Brent Ghelfi.

We definitely don't need no stinkin' trumpets, says Declan Burke, about his book The Big O (or "the embiggened O", the mind boggles). I can see a kind of inevitability about this: I'm just going to have to read it. Yes, Crime Always Pays.

Now all of the above may be rather old news to you, as it has been lurking neglected my Google Reader "shared items" for a while, so shoot me if you know it all already. Competing interests, or something like that, are to blame for the delay.