Warning: Wardrobe May Contain Lion And Traces Of Snow

I've just read a book that reminded me of how I used to feel when I was around 11 and YEARNED with all my heart for life to be less real than it is. It was (or, at the time of writing, will be, as not in fact published till September 15th) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I won't do any of that smug "I've got a proof copy" stuff, or indeed add any spoilers, so if I say it's AS GOOD AS "JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL" you will know what I mean, and if you don't you probably aren't a huge fan of Wardrobe literature.
Wardrobe literature, since you ask (yeah yeah), is anything that lets you believe that somewhere, if you can only find it, there is a door to somewhere amazing, or a box that contains something amazing, or a tiny odd shop that sells something amazing, etc etc, that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the boring old tax-paying workaday hangover road-rage noisy-neighbour Real World is just a waiting room for somewhere much better, where anything is possible. Wardrobe literature introduces the real world and then dismisses it. It doesn't bamboozle you by throwing you headfirst into Middle Earth or Earthsea, like a travel brochure for somewhere exotic you will never visit and don't speak the language anyway. Devotees of wardrobe literature get excited by antique shops and libraries. They feel a prickling of the hairs on the back of their necks when they see, you've guessed it, a large old wardrobe, or a hidden door, or dusty attic steps. They stop telling people how excited these things make them because they worry that it sounds a bit childish, but the feeling never goes. The phrase "based on a true story" makes them sigh heavily and switch off.
I have attached a very sketchy reading list below. If I have glaringly omitted anything, please let me know...

Suggested Wardrobe Literature for adults:

The Solitudes, Little Big - John Crowley
Declare, Last Call - Tim Powers
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susannah Clarke
The Twelfth Enchantment - David Liss
The Magicians - Lev Grossman
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
Waking The Moon - Elizabeth Hand
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Rivers Of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Farundell - L R Fredericks
The Glamour - Christopher Priest
The Book Of Skulls - Robert Silverburg
Mockingbird - Sean Stewart
Time And Again - Jack Finney
Prospero's Children - Jan Siegel
Weaveworld - Clive Barker

Suggested Wardrobe Literature for children:

Anything by the extraordinary and unmatchable Diana Wynne Jones
The Dark Is Rising series - Susan Cooper
The Perilous Gard - Marie Pope Osborne
Marianne Dreams, Thursday - Catherine Storr
Castle Of Bone - Penelope Farmer
Elidor , The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen, The Owl Service - Alan Garner
A Traveller In Time - Alison Uttley
The Giant Under The Snow - John Gordon
Mistress Masham's Repose - T H White
The Children Of Green Knowe - Lucy Boston
Stravaganza: City Of Masks - Mary Hoffman

The House Of Arden - E Nesbit
Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce
And, it goes without saying, the Narnia books by C S Lewis.

The unpronounceables

I come from a family to whom second languages are a breeze, and often third/fourth languages (if you count Swiss-German/French dialect as a language and not just a dialect). I will just say here that my pathetic contribution is French, and that's it. I once had a lengthy conversation while Interrailing, sitting outside the umpteenth cathedral I refused to go into, with a charming ancient Italian bloke in my A-level Spanish. We understood each other perfectly. It helped that the girls and I had had some wine at lunch, also that he was slightly deaf. And at the point where it turned out he was trying to set me up with his son (not present) I feigned a sudden lack of interpretation skills.
Having a facility for languages, however, is actually no help at all in the world of bookselling. Many customers, and this is not at all a criticism, don't know how to pronounce the names of foreign writers, and frankly nor do we most of the time. I know in theory that Houellebecq is pronounced Wellbeck, but prefer to pronounce it Ooouelleblablablabecque. Ditto with Chuck Palahniuk, who is now officially Plalalalalalaniacccchhh. Or maybe it's easiest to say "It's in paperback fiction under H. Just before Elizabeth Jane Howard." - all of which brings back to me the early days of Salman Rushdie's fatwah, and how suddenly it was The Done Thing on the BBC news to refer to him as SoolmAAhn RooshdEE.
Certain words are also a minefield - I mean we all know in theory how to say "genre" but tend not to, as you end up sounding like a Saatchi underling trying to sell Tracey Emin's used pants to an awestruck art novice. Especially if you add the unforgiveable word "oeuvre" which, if not considerately and inclusively pronounced "hoover", marks you out as so pretentious you need shooting. I love Nabokov (sorry), and wouldn't dream of saying "oeuvre" about his body of work.
We recently invented some incorrect pronunciations (it was a quiet afternoon) for use on the more studiedly poncey customer : my personal favourite was Alain-Benet (to be pronounced like JonBenet), although he was run a close second by Dan Brun and Jean Greeshamm.

A brief rant

So the bookselling world rejoices in the extremely well-deserved Booker win of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. A marvellous and thoroughly absorbing read (as opposed to "absorbent" - Dan Brown's entire oeuvre springs to mind). And once again, a situation arises that any bookseller out there will be wearily familiar with. What, I ask the rest of you, would most people do on hearing that a book has been given a prize? Why, they may wish to buy it, or if not actually buy it, to pick it up and leaf through a few pages. So what do the publishers do, with distressing and lemming-like regularity, in the face of this sudden burst of publicity and interest? They re-issue the book with the words "Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize" on the front cover. And while the book is being thus reissued, it is usually impossible to get copies. Which means that a good percentage of people who might otherwise have bought the book in a frenzy of literary good will, unable to get a copy right now this minute, may change their minds and not buy it at all. Seriously, has no publisher ever thought that it might be a good idea (and a huge financial saving) simply to print rolls of stickers saying "Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize" and send them out to bookshops/distributors etc? I can't possibly be the only person who's had this idea...

Dummies' Guide to the Booker longlist

(with grateful thanks to Mr Fishwife for his contributions)
So many books, so little time. I present here the easy crib notes for the vast quantity of (some of them also vast) books on this year's Booker longlist. Yes, I know it's the Man Booker really, but I hate calling it that, and I have actually been asked twice "Is there a Woman Booker prize too?". So don't bother reading them: amaze your friends and astound your colleagues with these nuggets of information*.

A S Byatt "The Children's Book" : Not many people know that A S Byatt was approached to continue Enid Blyton's much-loved Noddy series. This book is about Noddy and his desperate but hilarious attempts to find Big Ears's lost teaspoon! (warning: contains scenes of incest and sniper action).

J M Coetzee "Summertime": Reproduces faithfully the first school essay J M Coetzee (or "Johnny" as he was then) wrote about wot he done in the school holidays. Apparently his father's sandcastle-building skills weren't up to much, but the ice creams were delicious. He got an A-.

Adam Foulds "The Quickening Maze": Honestly, the faster you try to get out, the more lost you get. Just keep turning left.

Sarah Hall "How To Paint a Dead Man": It's a doddle. They don't fidget like live models do. Just make sure you keep the windows open and the central heating off.

Samantha Harvey "The Wilderness": Could really do with a pergola and some radical pruning to those brambles, otherwise fine. Maybe a water feature?

James Lever "Me Cheeta": Yu lose tu me at cards. I taik yur money.

Hilary Mantel "Wolf Hall": Hotly tipped to be this year's winner. The prequel to her spellbinding "Who Let The Wolves Out?"

Simon Mawer "The Glass Room": Lovely to look at, nice to hold, but if you break it, we say "sold"!

Ed O'Loughlin "Not Untrue And Not Unkind": true, and kind.

James Scudamore "Heliopolis": The renaming of Sun City has almost doubled its tourist income!

Colm Toibin "Brooklyn": Not a lot of people know that Brooklyn is a bit like Hoxton. Bit of a schlep on the Metro though. If I were you I'd stay in the Village.

William Trevor "Love And Summer": See above, for Coetzee. Billy Trevor was a little older, though, and as a result this touchingly ill-written account of wot he done on his summer holidays with next door's Dutch au pair contained language the teacher felt it better not to read aloud. He got a D.

Sarah Waters "The Little Stranger": "Darling? Darling? I thought all Saffy's party guests had gone home? Hmm? ...No, he says he's waiting for his mummy. Well we must have invited him, he's got a party bag and everything..."

*Disclaimer: some of the information contained in this post may be (wildly) inaccurate and is not for quotation or press distribution until a finished copy is issued.

It's all terminology, innit.

I may already have shocked and horrified thousands (or, let's be realistic, mildly amused tens) by quoting Mr Fishwife : "I don't see the point of fiction, myself." I should point out here that, in his defence, Mr Fishwife is an intelligent, articulate, well-read person. It's just that his idea of a good read tends to be the breeze-block-sized tome entitled Stalingrad, The Somme, or Hitler: The Dancing Years (... Obviously I made the last one up - far too frivolous). "Why would I want to read books about a bunch of people having nervous breakdowns in Islington?" was his initial defence; fair enough, I thought, me neither, although to consider this tiny tiny microcosm of the genre as representative of the whole of Fiction is to consider Betty Blue representative of all subtitled movies. The point of these books is not the plot development (surely everyone knows the name of Hitler's hairdresser by now?) but the nerdily desperate hope that this particular historian may have new material. No twists, no turns, no denouement.

HOWEVER.

Over the weekend, I enjoyably worked through not one but three works of fiction*. None of them, I might add, set in Islington. Every now and then I would look up at the television and it took me a while to notice that he was watching the same rugby match for the third time. "Haven't England already played Argentina?" I said. "Oh all right, all right," he replied defensively "You know how you like to reread a book for the style and the language? Same thing." My conclusion is that there is a frustrated literary stylist in all of us. In some people it only reveals itself as a love of the finer points of a rugby match.

* The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - excellent, very creepy in a postwar Daphne du Maurier kind of way, and unusually not a Sapphic interlude in sight.
Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler - I do like her. And found myself distressingly identifying with the slightly tetchy 60-year-old male main character.
Turbulence by Giles Foden - Actually still only halfway through this one so will have to reserve judgement until I've finished. Beats Ladysmith into a cocked hat though. Up there with The Last King Of Scotland so far.

Guilty Pleasures (not technically a meme)

Lovely Foxy emailed me a link to a Guardian article about how top chefs secretly love crisps/salad cream etc. Actually quite fun (and secretly reassuring) to read, although I say Spot The Pseud. I don't think homemade blueberry pancakes count as guilty - doesn't a REAL guilty pleasure have to have a brand name in front of it? So as a tribute (mostly to Angela Hartnett - I think I love her) I am giving you a selection of guilty pleasures. Not really guilty pleasures, because obviously I'm too embarrassed to admit to them (lard! Marion Zimmer Bradley! "Clouds Across The Moon" by The Rah Band! Aaaaaaarghh!!!) but the socially acceptable ones...

Food : BabyBel cheese. Walker's Prawn Cocktail crisps. Fanta. Findus Crispy Pancakes. Hellmann's Mayonnaise. HP Sauce. Lemon barley water. That horrible (yet compulsive) tinned chicken supreme you can get from M&S. The chunky peanut butter KitKat. Cheap shish kebab in limp pitta with hummus and extra pickled chillies, hold the salad. Bearing in mind that I'm on a very low carb diet, most of these are things I have feverish withdrawal dreams about (as are pasta, roasties and toast).

Books : How dangerous is it when you work in a bookshop to admit that while you do mostly read interesting and worthwhile literature, sometimes you crave the book equivalent of a bag of crisps? To which end:

"Gone With the Wind" - a pot-boiler, true, but the absolute queen of pot-boilers. It has transcended its pot-boilerdom in the same way that Bizet's "Carmen" has.

-anything by Jilly Cooper - to be read behind the adult equivalent of a bikeshed, chewing your hand so you don't shriek out loud with delighted schadenfreude as she blithely describes inner-city comp school children as "black and terribly sweet really", and play Spot The Hero (he's inevitably the one with a dog - also English, posh, charmingly slobbish) Or Villain (foreign, greasy, cruel to animals, into kinky sex).

And. With a deep breath, I will admit that I am currently sniggering in secret over "Fools Rush In" by Anthea Turner. It was notorious in my W*terstone's days as the book that sold about 47 copies nationwide (well, in W*terstone's, anyway), never even made it into paperback, and ended up mostly pulped. It is, nonetheless, an object of awful majesty. It cost me 1p plus p+p on Amazon. Not only is it a testament to the most hilariously twee, self-congratulatory personality I've ever come across, but it is also ghostwritten - and even that didn't stop it being compellingly terrible. Only a genuine fool would ask a very very bad chick-lit writer to ghost her autobiography. Some choice phrases: "My little hand strayed to the chocolate box" (she's in her 30s at this point), "My eyes filled with tears as I watched him drive away in his Jaguar" (good to know that as your One True Love drives out of your life you can appreciate a fine automobile) , "The gentle British holidaymakers (this is in Magaluf! - ed.) were devastated by the news of Princess Diana's death. I gave them what comfort I could." She also has a disturbing tendency to refer to her more successful sexual encounters with the phrase "It was good to be in experienced hands". I am torn between recommending it (seriously, it's a whole Fray Bentos steak 'n' kidney pie of awfulness) and really not wanting to give it any more press than this. Examine your consciences. 1p on Amazon. I will say no more.

Music/TV/Film: - I think I'll do that next time. I'm exhausted by the literary equivalent of a binge on salad cream and tinned pineapple rings.

Gong-Tastic

It's awards season again and the marvellous Tania Kindersley of Backwards In High Heels has very kindly passed on a gong to this blog. The award exists to be passed on (as they all should) so below are the rules:

1. You have to pass it on to 5 other fabulous blogs in a post.

2. You have to list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.

3. You must copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post.

Instructions: On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them. When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. To add the award to your post, simply right-click, save image, then “add image” it in your post as a picture so your winners can save it as well. To add it to your sidebar, add the “picture” widget. Also, don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by emailing them or leaving a comment on their blog.

Alors – the 5 fabulous blogs.

If you have been left out, it’s only because there are so many of you whose blogs I enjoy and want to spread around.

1) The lovely Rol at Sunset Over Slawit. Rol is an astonishing fount of knowledge on music, (especially if it's Morrissey), and ways to cope with being unable to scratch your arm when it's in a cast. He also writes (novel on the way), and nobody seems able to explain how he fits a day job in.

2) The excellently red-haired Laura at The Poet Laura-eate. She is fab. The Wendy Cope of Blogger. Poetry, Oxford current affairs, and a lovely fleur-de-lis backdrop. Plus she knows how to do those Flickr slideshows.

3) The genius that is JRSM at Caustic Cover Critic, a blog whose raison d'etre is to celebrate (or, where necessary, ridicule) the art of the book jacket. An invaluable guide to the beautiful, the unimaginative, the unusual and the derivative. Just lovely, and always funny.

4) Usedbuyer2.0, at the blog of the same name. A bookseller of many years' standing, his blogs are a delight to read; in the last few alone I found references to Cavafy, Edward Lear, Auden, AND quotes, AND room for wonderful digressions on bookshop life in all its strange and peculiar splendour. Also many, many, wonderful clerihews, an artform that is unjustly neglected at the moment.

5) Last but not least, Jonathan at Bookseller Crow. What more can I say than - there is no intentional bias towards the booksellerish in my choices, but Jonathan always makes me laugh.

My Five Fabulous addictions:
It's not like I'm particularly secretive about my addictions, so you probably know all this already, but here are a few of the more socially acceptable ones (the Gitanes and their ilk will be glossed over).

1) Obviously books! Unable to leave a bookshop with fewer than three, usually more. My job and subsequent perks/discount mean I very rarely buy anywhere else, especially since I get free proof copies of many many things, and am on good enough terms with most of the publishers' reps that I can ask them for freebies; under most other circumstances (old, out of print, etc) I recommend Abebooks - worlds superior to Amazon and a bigger range - plus more of your money actually goes to the bookdealer than on Amazon.
2) Perfume. Sorry, I know I'm a bit nerdy on this point but I consider it as important as clothing - ie wearing different ones to suit your mood, the weather, the time of year etc. As a result I have rather a lot. I have nothing against people who have a "signature scent" - in fact I admire their tenacity. But I like the fact that the larger your range, the more you can make olfactory jokes with yourself (nobody else is likely to get it) - like wearing "Rain" by Marc Jacobs when it's raining, or "Rousse" by Serge Lutens because you have red hair. My absolute Mecca for this (apart from, in The Real World, Liberty's) is The Perfumed Court, who will sell you tiny tester-sized bottles of pretty much any perfume so you can try before you commit. Invaluable.
3) COFFEE. Enough said. In an ideal world espresso all the time, but sadly I'm over 25 and can't sleep if I drink it after lunchtime.
4) My/our thick quilted mattress-topper (John Lewis). I have never slept so soundly.
5) If I have an alcoholic addiction here, please note that while I would find life very drab without alcohol, I am by no means an alcoholic. Apparently considering the number of boozehounds and manic-depressives on both sides of my family, this makes me quite unusual. But I do like a nice Calvados.

Wot I done on holiday

Hurrah! Back at last. I only brought home 8 of the books I took with me, thus freeing up suitcase space for red/green curry paste, cheap fags, a bottle of Maekhong whisky (which, like Metaxa, ouzo, Fernet Branca, slivovitz and the totally indefensible Vanna Tallinn, is nice on holiday but not at home - but do we ever remember this?). Imagine my surprise when there didn't seem as much space as I was anticipating. I can only assume that my clothes expand and thicken mysteriously over the course of a fortnight. Something to do with humidity I expect. Or large amounts of curry paste.

You'd think at my advanced age (ahem) I'd have learnt a few things about holidays, but here are some I seem to have forgotten. Maybe the advanced age has, in fact, something to do with it.

1) When your accommodation is next to a "lagoon" (landscaped, hence the inverted commas, or not), you can bet your bottom dollar there will be mosquitoes. Therefore, when stepping outside to admire the sunset or have a fag, you should really consider use of repellent spray, or not be surprised when you get relentlessly bitten.

2) Just because you haven't ever had a stomach ailment on holiday before, there is no reason to get complacent. God made Imodium for a purpose. That freshly-grated green papaya salad may have seemed a good idea at the time, but its reappearance will be more rapid than you can predict. Mostly unchanged due to speedy transit. On the plus side, it was delicious, at least the first time round.

3) If the management of your hotel deems it necessary to inform all guests, on a more or less daily basis, that IT IS NOT HOTEL POLICY TO ALLOW GUESTS TO PRE-RESERVE SUNLOUNGERS, then you probably have a pretty fair idea of the predominating nationality in the resort.

4) Never underestimate the fun you can have with a badly-translated menu. Classic comedy menu items I failed to order included Caption Morgan rum, cream de mont, fritted ice cream, and pork fitter (presumably what you put under "Occupation" on your passport if you are in fact a porn star). Once in France I was tempted to order "Small Chirttling Savage", but since it was a starter portion of andouillette I gave it a miss.

On a lighter note (I actually had a lovely time!) I have never seen as much wildlife in one go as I did on this holiday. Part of the charm of being further away from built-up areas is the sudden appearance on your verandah (oh yes) of things like kingfishers, mynah birds, black swans, giant snails (5 inches across, damn, I didn't have any garlic butter), a monitor lizard 2 feet long, and on one memorable evening outside a bar, an aptly named Slow Loris taking half an hour to cross 10 feet of telephone wire.

Photograph courtesy of the National Geographic as my camera is appalling. Apparently they are an endangered species, so look your last on all things lovely every hour.

Tune in later for a further instalment, in which I unravel the mysteries of unseemly holiday clothing, how to be completely British on holiday without resorting to tattoos, sunburn and bad behaviour, and unfortunate names for Thai kickboxing champions.

"I was a holiday vampire" confesses local bookseller

Hurrah for the hols, as the Famous Five were prone to saying with irritating regularity. I have 22 books, factor 50 sunblock and a selection of garments that more or less approximate a burkha. All I ask is a profoundly shaded seating area with an ashtray the size of a bucket and a relentless stream of waiters bearing ice-cold Chang beer. Yes, on Saturday Mr Fishwife and I will be struggling to Heathrow with our gigantic and overweight suitcases (mine = books, his = diving gear). In our separate and characteristic ways we have been preparing for this departure for weeks. I panic-buy local currency, usually at a vastly inferior rate of exchange to the one I'd have got at the Bangkok airport ATM, and fill my suitcase with books so I'm not tempted to read them before the holiday. Mr F spends every night poring over the long-range weather forecasts, establishes that there will be heavy thundershowers DIRECTLY OVER OUR HOTEL for the entire duration of the holiday, and sulks. And this is before he decides that we are heading into an area of Political Unrest and will be unable to get home due to coup-related airport closures (suits me fine). Invariably I forget my nuclear-blast-proof sunblock and have to buy it locally (you'd have thought with my leprous pallor I'd be forewarned, but this has in fact happened twice).

HOWEVER. All of the above being equal, I am looking forward to two full weeks of blissfully uninterrupted reading. Eating things with indecent amounts of chilli in/on them. Not feeling guilty about drinking cocktails midweek. Getting up early with a smile on my face because I can devote my whole day to deciding what to read and where to have a huge plate of Pad Thai for lunch. My only obligation being to vacate the room for a polite length of time while somebody else makes the bed. Wandering about barefoot or in flip-flops. WARMTH. Seeing the joy of Mr Fishwife as he slowly turns the colour of Ikea Billy shelving (beech veneer option).

Below please find the song that will be on a permanent loop in my head. I apologise for the unnecessary nature of George Michael's white Speedo. I hope you're all thoroughly jealous. I hope our hotel isn't full of people like the ones in the video...

I should just point out the fact that it says "Pat Sharp's House of Fun" in the top right-hand corner. How far back does that take you - and would you rather not have gone there...?

Songs on the brain

Songs this week that have ricocheted irritatingly around my head (due to their sharing a title with a book I can see from where I'm sitting) include the following:

"American Boy" - book by Andrew Taylor, song by Estelle
"Almost Blue" - book by Carlo Lucarelli, song by Elvis Costello
"Angel" - book by Elizabeth Taylor, song by Gavin Friday
"Thieves Like Us" - book by Steve Cole, song by New Order


Equally annoying and more contrived are the ones that suggest a song - I've been singing "Revelation" (by C J Sansom) to the tune of "Isolation" by Joy Division, "Holes" (by Louis Sachar) to "Gold" by Spandau Ballet, and most annoyingly of all, "Two Caravans" (by Marina Lewycka) to "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond. Don't bother telling me you love Neil Diamond, I don't care. This is torture. I've resisted having an iPod for years, partly because the length of my commute hasn't warranted it since 2001, and partly because I quite like hearing the world as I go home (how else would I be finding the karaoke pub in Hammersmith such good auditory value?). But I think I may need one, as a kind of homeopathic remedy for the earworms. Because it's either that, or become one of those strange book-industry people who lurks in the stock room singing hymns really loudly to drown out The Voices, and I'm definitely not ready for that.

A couple more snippets because you all seemed to like them (honestly, I bet you're the sort of people who could live on unlimited snacks):

The TV advert for a thrush remedy (yes, the fungal infection, no not the bird) which said "It will leave you feeling yourself again" - possibly unwise on the basis of "If you pick at it it'll never get better"?

The rugby match I wish I'd watched = Nancy vs Nice. I bet that was amazingly civilised. And well-dressed.

Overheard on Saturday night from lovey-dovey couple holding hands over champagne glasses: "..and outside the laundrette I just puked pure water."

Am I being unreasonable?

So I'm at work, and I'm on my own. An irony is that it's easier for me to have a swift cigarette (5mins) (and yes, sorry again) than go to the loo (25 seconds) - having a cigarette means waiting till the shop's empty, then standing outside. I can see people come in, I can hastily fling my smouldering dog-end down the drain in the gutter in front of me (don't worry, full of water), and rush in to be helpful or well-informed or whateverrrr. Going to the loo is another matter, as the loo is out at the back of the shop, which means I have to hope nobody comes in (while I am soundproofed behind two doors) and shoplifts/robs the till. AAAAAAAnyway. So, after 20 minutes of no customers (which is why I have time to write this!) I race out the back, and on my return find a woman standing accusingly at the till.


"There wasn't anybody to serve me!" she says crossly, having been waiting all of 10 seconds.


"I'm sorry," I say, "I'm on my own today. How can I help?"


"Can you tell me where Brookford Road is? "


"I'm afraid not, I don't live round here. Maybe if you ask in the café next door?"


"Don't you have an A to Z?"


"Yes, downstairs in the travel section."


"I don't do stairs." she says crossly, glares at me, heaves a heavy wounded sigh at my unhelpfulness, and leaves before I have a chance to say anything (or even offer to fetch her an A to Z she won't be buying, just cracking the spine and leaving).


Now IS IT JUST ME or is that fairly unreasonable behaviour? We're a bookshop, not a tourist bureau - and while I sort of understand what makes people think that libraries are a place where, to paraphrase Robert Frost, when you go there they have to take you in (untrue and unfair though that is to libraries), where's the logic with bookshops? Is it a backhanded compliment ("You're a temple of intellect and information, so your priorities can't be anything so vulgar as making money")? Or what?? And even if she hoped that I (the person, not the bookseller) might personally know where Brookford Road was, why get grumpy with me for not knowing?


Sorry, not enough coffee.

Just a quick one.

I was serving a customer yesterday. As she was paying she was chatting cosily to her beloved on her mobile (I presume that's who she was talking to, as she had suddenly adopted a startlingly twee ickle-girly voice and kept calling him "Baby" - presumably not her bank manager then, although in this financially unstable day and age who knows? Whatever gets you that overdraft). Her attention was caught by a pile of Mr Men bookmarks on the till - she picked up the one saying "Mr Perfect" and said "What's this?" "It's a bookmark." I replied. She put it back. "Oh no, he doesn't read." she said, and left. To which all one can say is: Well, he isn't Mr Perfect then, is he?????

Or am I being overly subjective?

Time after time after time

(This one's not about perfume!)

I'm re-reading the strange and deeply wonderful "Time And Again" by Jack Finney, whose take on time travel is this: if you put somebody into the clothes of, for example, 1890, in a room authentically furnished and gas-lit as it would have been in 1890, with a view that is exactly what one would have seen in 1890, then a combination of self-hypnosis and "spirit of place" will send them back to 1890. When they get up from the chair they are sitting in and walk out of the front door, they will indeed be back in 1890. Or 1410, or 1972, or whatever date they're trying to get to.

I love this idea - after all, when are you ever going to be able to disprove it? You may be in a National Trust property where a Tudor bedroom has been lovingly recreated, but how likely is it that you'll be alone, wearing Tudor clothes and not seeing a National Trust van or gift shop outside the window?

I had lunch with my family last week, and was reminded once again that my grandmother and I share the same (somewhat naive) view, which is "Isn't it great that science hasn't yet disproved everything?" (ie ghosts, the afterlife, some form of deity, etc) - my stepdad, on the other hand, is a fervently rational atheist and was just starting to (mildly) use words like "twaddle" when I reminded him that of course he would say that, because he's an Aquarius.

Enraged marine gastropods

One of the great joys of a bookshop, as opposed to buying books on t'internet, is that you can have a bit of a trial flick before you commit. Obviously I'm talking about brand-new, un-road-tested, speculative buying, rather than re-acquiring old loves that you lent foolishly to a friend, and which promptly went out of print shortly after the friend went off round the world with no mobile phone. I know, I know, a certain online book site allows you to "see inside!!" but when you buy a book there are many factors that affect your choice. Everybody in the book trade will tell you most people do judge a book by its cover - as anyone knows who has bought a copy of "Pride and Prejudice" with a nice 19th century watercolour on the jacket as opposed to a BBC publicity shot of Colin Firth in a wet shirt. I personally never buy the film tie-in edition of anything - do you really want people to think you're reading a novel by Hugh Grant? Some people like a nice high gloss finish on a paperback cover, some like that rather subtle buffed matt finish we're seeing more and more of these days (and is a right sod, because it's actually almost frictionless and if you pick up a pile of 5 or 6 of them, they fly in all directions like a school of bars of soap). Hardbacks are generally considered a treat, or for presents, or for the diehard nailbiting author-junkie who can't wait for the paperback - I personally hate them because they cost at least three times as much as a paperback for the same amount of print, and when you're reading in bed they leave a nasty red three-cornered dent in your knee.

HOWEVER to my main point. When you're considering buying a book, the "see inside!!" feature is near enough useless, as it doesn't tell you anything about size of print, or more importantly font - I went through a phase in my late teens of only reading Picador books because after reading two or three that I loved, I found I had a Pavlovian response to the font they habitually used and would have read the Yellow Pages if they'd been printed in it. And most important of all - the sample paragraph. I like a cursory flick through a book. Nothing so crass as reading the last page; after all a book is a journey to another world, and would you start a holiday by already anticipating your sweaty return trek through Heathrow baggage claim at 7am? A quick glance will tell you a lot about a book, however, in much the same way as a travel guide will whet your appetite for your eventual destination. A friend lent me a novel the other day that I had heard nothing but good reviews of, and I was quite looking forward to giving it a go. It was an American import, and I have to say the Americans are streets ahead of us in cover design, and the cover was that lovely soft matt finish I hate at work but love in my hands (although interestingly American paperback covers tend to curl really badly - excellent cover design but cheaper laminate?).

I opened it, I had a flick, and the phrase "angry red whelks ran across his back" sprang out at me. What can I say? There's no way I can read it now. What should have been a nailbitingly dramatic scene about priestly abuse became a positive fiesta of grumpy seafood.

Room Lovely (with apologies to Stephen Fry)

Watching a very old repeat of "Room 101" last night - most of the time the things the guests choose strike a chord (thongs, lateness, lads' mags, Anne Robinson etc), but of course Stephen Fry went one better, picking "Room 101" itself as one of his choices. His argument (or one of them) was that there is something fundamentally depressing about sitting around discussing what you hate (I personally can't get enough of it, but I am a lesser mortal). Another point he made was that there is nothing more destructive to the human spirit than looking at the, in the main, grotesque mess we have made of the world and realising we are part of a species that makes things ugly wherever it goes - although I think he made that point in connection with the Limited Edition Collectable Plates to be found in Sunday colour supplements ("White Wolf's Spirit Brother", "Adela's First Ball", "Waiting For Santa" etc etc). Aaaaaaaaaanyway - he suggested a TV programme called "Room Lovely", although I would recommend fancying up the name a bit, in which guests talk about what they find wonderful and indispensible about the world. I attach above a little collage of things that make me happy. Sadly I won't be including a picture of Mr Fishwife as he is in fact either a hugely famous film star or a high-profile wanted criminal, take your pick - can't remember which excuse he'd prefer, although what it boils down to is that he's read too many articles about identity fraud and is convinced it will happen to him. Tchuh, Virgos.

Those of you who read this by subscription (you know who you are, Ma) will have to look at this actual page to see the pictures...!

Escapism from the midsummer heat.

There are times when you really want nothing more than to climb into a whole different world for a while and get away from your normal life. OBVIOUSLY books are the answer - every book on your bookshelf is a door which opens somewhere else. I always thought the perfect analogy was the Wood Between The Worlds in The Magician's Nephew; a forest full of pools which, jumped into, take you to another world a million miles and years away. It also has to be fiction - I love my comics, and there are superb series I read over and over again (Sandman and The Invisibles for starters) but written prose has the advantage that your mind provides the faces and places, which is all part of the self-hypnosis of escapism. Being greedy, and (as I may have mentioned) an addict, sometimes one book isn't enough and I need a trilogy (His Dark Materials re-reads very well, especially now there are Lyra's Oxford and Once Upon A Time In The North to flesh it out, and Lewis's The Cosmic Trilogy). Worse, sometimes I need more, a bigger series, although by the time a series gets that large the pickings are lean. I have to leave a sizeable gap between re-reads of The Chronicles Of Narnia and The Dark Tower as I know them too well. Occasionally I toy with the woefully underappreciated Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard, whose drossy TV adaptation ruined it. I did read the entire Niccolo series by Dorothy Dunnett - mock me as a tweedy old bat if you want (it'd be inaccurate, for a start, on at least two counts, and the "old" is debatable too) but it managed to be historically accurate, fascinatingly detailed, and gripping. Also the joy of it being a series meant that, like The Sopranos, a small and seemingly unimportant story line that seemed to peter out in book 2 became a major plot point in book 4. Not sure why the Renaissance appealed more than the Napoleonic wars... but there it is. Also it had far more in the way of female characters (the book series, not the Renaissance). I keep being recommended the Patrick O'Brian series, which would keep me going for a fair while, but I have to admit that two things put me off - one is the relentless blokedom they seem to encourage (war, ships, all-male camaraderie, rum, Napoleon, etc) and the other is Russell Crowe. I apologise to any fans thereof (therewhom?) but if I'm going to invest time and imaginative energy on a whole new world I don't want to be tripping through it hand-in-hand with a tiny-eyed soap-dodger with anger management issues. But let other pens dwell etc etc. So there we have it - I need some large-scale escapism. Please don't suggest Proust or Anthony Powell - otherwise I'm open to suggestions. Hurry before I melt...

An Ethical Diversion

I may have expressed my pathological love for the unparallelled genius of Nabokov before (hey, who hasn't?) so I can only describe what follows as deeply subjective...
I recently read that an unpublished novel (that he emphatically wanted destroyed) is to be published by his son. Hmmm, a tricky ethical question. I can't think of anything I want more, under normal circumstances, than a new novel by an author I love - especially if I was no longer expecting them to write one. When an author dies, Robertson Davies as a prime example, your first thought (because readers are addicts, and their first thought is always of their addiction) is "Oh no! No more new things to read!" and then, belatedly and guiltily, "How awful for their family, of course..." HOWEVER, and this is a big however, the finest authors are their own harshest critics, and Nabokov more than most; one can only assume if he wanted it destroyed he didn't feel it was of a quality worth publishing. On the other hand, a second-rate Nabokov would still be a million times better than a million other authors at their best. As always, the addiction wins out and, unable to boycott it on principle, I know I'll be the first in the queue to read it. The only consolation is that if it does turn out to be less good than the books published in his lifetime, I can tell myself he knew that would be the case...

Fear of the Nerd Ghetto

"I'm looking for a copy of The Hobbit, please." "It's in the Science Fiction section under T." "Science Fiction?? Why on earth would you put Tolkien under Science Fiction???" ... To which the obvious answer is, wearily, where else is there? One could argue that he (and HG Wells, and Jules Verne) invented the genre of science fiction/fantasy. It is possible for a book to be, technically, science fiction, and yet, simultaneously, a work of litrachoor. Great science fiction works masquerading as "acceptable" literature include 1984, The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy, the Gormenghast trilogy, and many books by Margaret Atwood, J G Ballard, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, yadda yadda yadda. I've had to argue the case for the prize-winners Persepolis and Maus being "worth reading", despite being graphic novels. "Literary Fiction" is my least favourite publisher-invented category, the implication being that any other kind of fiction is somehow less worth reading, or only as "a holiday read". People often ask for a recommendation for something to read, or for a book group, adding hastily "Literary fiction, you know, something good." I have always believed that you have to have everything in your literary diet; how can you judge what's trash unless you've read it? How can you appreciate the marvellousness of Jane Austen without having read Georgette Heyer (far lower brow but actually historically spot-on and immensely good fun)? How can you spot the unashamedly enormous chunks of dialogue and plot Jilly Cooper* has plagiarised wholesale without having read Alison Lurie's Love and Friendship, Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado, or Cyra McFadden's fabulously funny The Serial? And some of the greatest and most enjoyable pieces of potboiler have survived multiple reprintings - Gone With The Wind, for instance. I can't think of anything more enjoyable for a book group than the 1956 bonkbuster Peyton Place - after all, it has a fabulously racy plot and, these days, it's a very interesting insight into the way small towns in the 50s reacted to issues of adultery, illegitimacy, abortion etc. Any takers? ...

* Just realised I got that analogy the wrong way round and inadvertently compared Jilly Cooper to Jane Austen. Probably a first in the world of fiction. What I meant was - while enjoying the very lightweight charms of Ms Cooper, spare a thought for the considerably greater talents of Lurie, Dundy, McFadden and particularly the excellent Tey...

Wot I lurn from boox

"How do you KNOW that?" - "I read widely." - a sample conversation that I have had, ooh, every day for most of my life. I make a great pub quiz team member (not that it's my favourite way to spend an evening, but I'm always willing to help out) , since I know all kinds of stupid and pointless facts like the collective noun for geese (it's different if they're in the air or on the ground), the capital of Mauritania, why shops selling jet jewellery have higher insurance premiums than other jewellers, etc... One of the best things about reading is the vast floating plankton mass of trivia you drift through, like a whale with its mouth open, and accumulate, if you're not bogged down by petty considerations like the plot or the characters. The fantastic John le Carre has taught me how to spot someone following me and how to put them out of action if necessary without actually killing them - I'm unlikely to ever need to use this but there you go, it's all useful information. The problem is that the magpie instinct is self-defeating - you acquire the knowledge for its own sake, because it's SHINY, but the chances of it being put into use are few and far between. If I ever read a novel whose central point involved balancing a cheque book or how to drive a car, my life might well have been easier and more efficiently organised. But if I ever get attacked by a shark or the KGB, I'll know exactly how to react, and that goes for not ordering Bushmills in a pub full of Rangers supporters too.