Me And My Big Mouth

Did Somebody Say Cake?

Time to rustle up some interest in the next Firestation Book Swap. This is the monthly book event hosted by the fragrant and delightful Marie Phillips and my good self. For November we will be joined by novelists Richard Asplin and Robert Hudson.

Richard Asplin is a stand-up comedian when he isn't being a novelist. His first book, T-Shirt and Genes, was described by Tony Parsons as 'the funniest debut novel since The Rachel Papers' but we won't hold that against him. He followed that up with Gagged which was a 'thriller with jokes' and has just published Conman, about a bloke who allows his comic memorabilia store to be used as the site for an elaborate sting when he finds himself in need of some readies. Suffice to say, it doesn't go terribly well. The sting, that is. The book's great.

Some of you may remember Richard from his guest blogger appearance here back in the summer. He is a very funny chap and I am sure he will embrace the somewhat shambolic Book Swap format with gusto.

Robert Hudson's debut novel, The Kilburn Social Club, is all about football. Only it isn't. It is set in an alternative present day, one where a football team made up of opera singers, gay freedom fighters and university lecturers all take equal pay and have to undertake charity work as part of their contract. Hmm, that doesn't really help to explain things does it? One reviewer called it ‘Reminiscent in places of Iain Bank’s The Crow Road and Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up!' which is certainly more of a pointer.

I guess you'll just have to come along and let him explain it for himself.

But don't just come for that. Come for the free cake (provided by my wife and various members of the audience). Come for the surreal questions from the Question Jar. Come for the chance to swap a book you no longer want for one you do. Come for the opportunity to meet up with a variety of Twitter celebrities such as @bahtocancer, @benjohncock, @essiefox, @cbarlowmarrs, @magicnose, @EmmaB4 and many others.

All of the Book Swaps have been great fun so far. This one should be a cracker.

It only costs a fiver to get in. You can book in advance from the box office or pay on the door on the night.

We'd love to see you.

Free Toilet Books

You may well have seen the guest blog post by Phil Norman last week. He is the author of Closet Reading, a thoroughly entertaining history of man's obsession with reading on the loo.

Well, today I have three copies of said book to give away. As usual you just need to promise to make it the next thing you read and to review it online as soon as you can to help spread the word.

Leave a comment below if you want one.

A Song For Sunday

It's Hard To Be Alone by Soko.

Guest Blogger: Charlie Campbell

It’s a pity that the people you’d most like to go on strike rarely do. City bankers, boy bands, those people who stop you in the street wondering if you’d like a free stress test… they keep working away, helping make the world a slightly worse place. Personally, I would love to have a month when publicists downed tools and allowed us, all too briefly, to know just what was really going on in the heads of their noble masters. Remember when Lee from Blue spoke out in the aftermath of 9/11, asking how we could care about events in New York when so many elephants were suffering? I think you’ll find his publicist had flu that day.

Something similar has happened with Martine McCutcheon’s first novel The Mistress. You get that same sense of seeing someone as they truly are, without the polish provided by publicists, agents and careful lighting. I would love to tell you that this book was a triumph – a poke in the eye for literary snobs who think that celebrities and writing should not mix. But I can’t. It is, quite simply, one of the worst books I have ever read.

The reason for this is, I think, that the author wrote it herself. Up until now, I thought nothing could challenge ghosted celebrity novels for sheer awfulness. They represent publishing cynicism at its worst – the idea that the writing is the least important component in a book. Find a famous person, add a ghostwriter, and then sit back and watch the money roll in. This started with Naomi Campbell’s Swan, which attracted nothing but derision on release. Then came novels by Jordan, Kerry Katona, and Pamela Anderson, with more on the way from Sharon Osbourne, and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. The only man I can add to this list is Saddam Hussein who had four titles to his name. (One of his ghosts aptly commented, ‘He lost touch with reality. He thought he was a god who could do anything, including writing novels.’)

Now I can see how all this happened under the Ba’ath Party, but why is it happening here? Why are we so in thrall to these ludicrous people? And why do so many people buy their horrible books? I’m curious as to where the law stands on them. Surely the way in which they are sold contravenes the Trades Description Act. They are so clearly not what they say they are. What is the point of a novel where the actual author is not deemed important enough to have their name on the cover? Using celebrity to peddle second-rate fiction is hardly a good long-term strategy for the book industry.

But – going back to The Mistress – I now realise that this might be preferable to letting the celebrities write their novels themselves. It is clear that Martine McCutcheon has not used the services of a ghostwriter. I’m not aware of any industrial action from that profession, so assume it was a rational decision on the part of the author, agent and publisher. I have to say this was a mistake. I wasn’t expecting great things here, but this isn’t even passably written, and it groans with cliché, banality and excessive use of adjectives. No self-respecting ghost would produce this – and only the greatest satirist ever reaches these heights. This book is that rare thing – something that’s so bad, it’s almost enjoyable. We experience it with films from time to time, but I’d never come across it in literary form. As Mandy, the heroine of The Mistress, puts it:

‘Reach for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.’

So, for two reasons, we must celebrate the absence of a ghostwriter. Firstly, because he or she would not have given us unintentionally hilarious sentences like this:

‘The man looked up at Mandy. His eyes were beautiful, and despite being tired they sizzled, full of knowledge, some sadness but most of all, kindness.’

And secondly because this might be the final straw, that wonderful Ratner moment, where the public feels they’ve had enough of this particular brand of patronizing rubbish. I’m not deluded enough to think that this will herald a golden age of publishing – good and bad books have always co-existed. But hopefully this particular vein has been exhausted.

It’s not the quality of the writing that saddens me most about this – it’s the fact that this book is being published at all; that professionals suspended their judgement and taste so willingly. When publishers were bidding for McCutcheon’s novel, one senior editor described her as writing like an angel. Really? Then God is crueller than I’d thought. Agents and editors are supposed to act as gatekeepers, to stop writing like this from ever being published. We should encourage these celebrities to turn their creative energies elsewhere, giving them musical instruments, sketch books, embroidery kits, anything to prevent more novels like this.

The most hateful thing about celebrity is not the celebrities themselves, though God knows I have no great love for them. Rather, it is the sense of witnessing a ritual sacrifice – first we raise these people up, and then we cut them down. But I fear that publication of The Mistress is only going to accelerate the second half of that process.

---

Charlie Campbell is a literary agent. I am guessing that he doesn't look after all that many celebrity novelists.

The Great Book Clearout: The Results

As many of you know I decided to have a bit of a book cull. Once the decision was made I had to formulate some sort of criteria and then actually start throwing stuff out.

The clearout was put on hold for a few weeks when my wife had her Open House day as part of the Windsor Fringe (we opened our doors to the general public to show off her ceramics). I had to remove most of the books from our ground floor to make room for the pots and tiles and bits and pieces. They ended up forming bloody great structurally unsound piles in our bedroom and it was definitely a breach of all manner of Health & Safety rules to attempt to weed through them while they were like that.

But over the past couple of weekends I have, with the help of my slaves children, been slowly putting things back in order and deciding which books to cast off in the process.

To give you an idea of the progress we have made, this is what the downstairs bookshelves looked like before the clearout.

And this is what they look like now.

One of the big changes is that the books downstairs are mainly our 'keepers'. The books we have read and loved and want to hold on to. They used to be in the bedroom. The bedroom shelves now have all the unread stuff. Much better all round.

But what difference has all this made to the title count? I hear none of you ask.

Well, allow me to enlighten you.

Excluding the kids' books, cookery books and several boxes hidden in the eaves I did have about 3,000 titles on various shelves and piled up around the house.

I now have just over 2,000.

That's right, the Great Book Clearout has killed off nearly 1,000 volumes.

May they rest in peace.

Most have gone off to the charity shop. Some have been passed on to friends. A few of the rarer tomes from my collecting days will be appearing on eBay shortly.

And you know what? It didn't hurt a bit.

I feel decongested. Uncluttered. Less clogged.

And the whole thing, the simple process of looking at every book in the house and forcing myself to make a decision on it, has got me all excited about my collection again. I have spotted lots of stuff I want to read soon and can't wait to do so.

Get rid of 1,000 books. I recommend it. It will do you good.

Free Berlin

As has now become traditional every time Oxygen Books publish a new volume in their City-Lit series I give some copies away on my blog.

This time we are off to Berlin with a collection of writing on, about or set in the city from writers as interesting and diverse as Christopher Isherwood, David Bowie, Ian McEwan, Joseph Roth and John Simpson. You can read a sampler here.

It is a really neat idea and I have five copies to hand out to the first five of you to leave a comment asking for one. If you miss out but are intrigued by the concept then do support this small indie publisher and buy a copy from your favourite book emporium. If you are one of the lucky five then please review it on Amazon or your blog or somewhere else online as soon as you can.

Berlin is published today and joins London and Paris in the series. Future volumes include Dublin and Amsterdam.

Lit Drift

Check out this interesting new bloggy literary magazine thing called Lit Drift.

I have only just been pointed in its direction but it looks good. They have creative prompts, daily short stories, free book giveaways and they welcome submissions from readers.

Lovely stuff.

I have bookmarked it and will be checking in regularly. Hope you like it.

Free Time

To celebrate the launch of the new travel guide 24 Hours: London by Marsha Moore the publisher is giving away five copies to readers of this blog.

In this interesting variation on the normal travel guide, Mason picks out the best things to do in London at various times of the day. She covers, as you might expect, the full 24 hours and comes up with some interesting hidden treats as well as the more well-known attractions. 

Boris Johnson loves it, calling it 'a nifty guide for Londoners and tourists alike'.

Marsha will be embarking upon a 24 hour tweeting marathon today, posting tips and suggestions from the book every hour. Actually she started at 5am this morning. You can follow her on Twitter here. Or visit her website for more information on the book.

And if you want one of the five free copies just leave a comment here and one will be posted off to you. The catch, for there is one, is that you must agree to review it online as soon as you can.

Guest Blogger: Simon Key from The Big Green Bookshop

la librairie grand vert

Aren’t Gallic Books brilliant? Launched in 2007, they publish English language editions of the very finest modern French literature. We love ‘em, and so do our lovely customers. We even have customers (that’s a plural) who buy everything they publish, they trust them so much.

Most publishers can only dream of this kind of brand loyalty. Now being the groundbreaking pioneers that we clearly are (we also have lustrous hair), we thought to ourselves, ‘How can Independent booksellers work more effectively with publishers?’

We generally pooh-pooh those ‘independent bookshops only’ offers that some publishers try and tempt us with. If it ain’t good enough to stock then we won’t stock it. It’s as simple as that really. So, we got in touch with Jane and Ali from Gallic Books and we had a bit of a chat. With their proven track record at the bookshop, we thought that a slightly more formal team up made lots of sense.

So we’ve kind of adopted each other.

If we were a town there would be a sign as you entered that said ‘Welcome to The Big Green Bookshop, twinned with Gallic Books. Please drive carefully’. Essentially we’ve come up with an agreement that suits us both.

The bare bones of it are;

• We’re going to dedicate a window to Gallic Books throughout the year. There’s a pretty picture of it on our blog at the moment.
• We have a bookcase in a prime location in the shop that has all their titles in.
• We’ll review (at least) one of their titles on the website and on our blog each month
• Gallic Books will feature on the front page of our website.

And in return

• All online sales from the Gallic Books website will now go through the Big Green Bookshop (free postage and packing too)
• The bookshop has been supplied with a number of complementary copies of each title
• The bookshop will be the venue of choice for all Gallic Books events
• The bookshop will feature on the Gallic Books website front page

We’re also running a competition to celebrate this entente cordiale, where anybody who buys a copy of any title published by Gallic Books through the website or at the shop between now and Christmas will be entered into a draw with a chance to win 2 return tickets to Paris on Eurostar.

Oh my goodness me, yes.

This is all new to both of us, so we’ll tweak it as we go along, but I think it’s all rather exciting. We’re happy with the way things are and have decided to trial this for a year.

Our customers already enjoy reading titles published by Gallic Books, and we’re delighted to have our name associated with such a fab publisher. We hope that other independent bookshops and publishers are finding similar ways of working together. It seems to make a lot of sense.

A bientôt.

Guest Blogger: Phil Norman

“Why?”

That's the reaction it's odds on you'll get when you tell someone you want to write a history of toilet books.

“Well,” goes the hopefully polished and not-at-all shrill reply, “it's an area of literature that's been completely ignored, sells millions every year, and tells more about us than any list of the 'nations favourite classic novels'. Plus it's filthy. What's not to like?”

“Yes, but... just... why?”

You can't win sometimes. It's fine for scientists to grow a pig's ear on the back of a Cadbury's Crème Egg but start making notes on the life and times of Gyles Brandreth and people will queue up to tell you you're wasting your time. As you sink reluctantly into the third Wicked Willie sequel, you find yourself dangerously close to agreeing with them.

Fortunately history proves to be well up to the task. History never disappoints, especially not the history of what desperate people will do for an easy shilling. The story of the toilet book contains as much sex, intrigue, stupidity, jealousy and backstabbing as you can swallow, along with considerably more in the way of swearword-bargaining summits with the staff of WH Smith.

So by way of an answer to “why?”, here are ten momentous dates in the 500-year history of the Great British Toilet Book every lavatory academic should know.

1526: John Rastell publishes A Hundred Merry Tales, widely regarded as the first English language joke book, crammed with randy wenches, randier donkeys, daft Welshmen, goose strangling, upended toilet seats and copious farting. Shakespeare pinches gags from it and Queen Bess calls for it on her deathbed. Lavatory literature has arrived.

1600-1699: The golden age of the chapbook - cheap penny pamphlets sold by travelling hawkers to the semi-literate, with tempting titles like Funny Dick's Grinning Made Easy, The Merry Pranks of Roger the Clown, and Concerning Some Men Who Have Had Wonderful Great Genitals. No-one mentions "dumbing down".

1700-1780: The heyday of Grub Street, a motley assortment of writers turning out populist fluff to scrape a living. Among the throng are the first collection of toilet wall graffiti (1731) and the first surreal comedy spin-off book written by Cambridge students in drag (1751). Looking for a bit of extra cash, Jonathan Swift dashes off The Benefit of Farting Explain'd, then spends most of the rest of his life pretending he didn't.

1731: The freshly-minted middle classes get hot and bothered about all this bawdy silliness, and retaliate with the Tatler, the Spectator and hundreds more moralizing publications, which quickly descend into libellous gossip about whose daughter's been copping off with whose footman. Still, they mean well.

1806: Meek Leicestershire rector the Reverend James Beresford writes The Miseries of Human Life, a collection of grumpy one-liners such as: "In the depth of winter, trying in vain to effect a union between unsoftened butter and the crumb of a very stale loaf." Is it just him?

1825: Publication of the most ambitious trivia book ever, William Hone's Every-Day Book. Published as two 1700-page volumes, it's heralded by the author as "a literary kaleidoscope to annihilate both space and time". Said author spends the rest of his life in enormous debt.

1925: First recorded moan about Christmas books published in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs: "For nearly a quarter of a century English publishers have confronted us with masses of illustrated books such as they would never have dreamt of letting us see at any other time of the year."

1953: Britain's first celebrity toilet book published by Britain's first bona fide TV celebrity. The Gilbert Harding Treasury of Insult sees the grim one from What's My Line? guide suburban housewives through the dying art of brusqueness: “Good robust insult needs red beef; a man cannot storm on tinned Danish loaf!”

1971: Monty Python's Big Red Book starts the TV comedy tie-in market rolling, amusing readers, offending the professionally offended and confusing booksellers with its bright blue cover, Victorian nudity and pull-out Radio Times section printed on authentically waxy paper. Eric Idle reads Marshall McLuhan and declares the toilet book's medium more important than the message. Michael Palin worries there's too much smut in it.

2002: Schott's Original Miscellany arrives, giving toilet books a leg up the respectability ladder from the bin of faded paperbacks to the smart shelf of nifty hardbacks with their own bookmark. The toilet book finally makes the move from Radio 1 iniquity to Radio 4 respectability. Then Michael O'Mara publish Shite's Original Miscellany and it's back to square one.

---

Phil Norman is the author of Closet Reading, presumably the world's first history of toilet books. I have read it. It is very funny and, perhaps surprisingly, genuinely fascinating. He has unearthed some real historic gems and shows a flair for combining the absurd with a real love of books. I would politely suggest that it would make the perfect Christmas gift for the person in your life who likes to read on the loo.

Another Song For Sunday

I am enjoying Hello Saferide so much here is another song from them/her. I downloaded the album yesterday and am playing nothing else.

A Song For Sunday

The Quiz by Hello Saferide. Best lyrics I have heard in a while.

Some Seriously Spooky Shit

It is easy to get overwhelmed by the landslide of candy and lose sight of the true meaning of Halloween.

To scare the shit out of your children.

And if you wish to embrace this beautiful notion then might I suggest you check out the Tales of Terror series by Chris Priestley.

These are seriously scary books. We loved them in our house. I read the first two to the kids as bedtime stories earlier in the year. The third is waiting for us when we finish the new Mr Gum.

In each of the books some young waif is entertained with a series of stories from a peculiar adult - whether it be Edward visiting his weird Uncle Montague or the two children of an inkeeper listening to a young sailor taking refuge on a stormy night or a mysterious woman in white chatting with a small boy when the train they are travelling on gets stuck in a tunnel - and the stories they hear are dark, gruesome and haunting.

You have flesh eating snails, creatures hiding in trees waiting to murder small boys, vampire ships, ghosts with grudges and many other unpleasant goings on.

Think Edward Gorey. Think Edgar Allan Poe. Think H.P. Lovecraft. Even Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. For kids.

My two are 10 and 8 and have a robust constitution when it comes to nerves. They thought these were great fun. Any younger than that, or a bit more sensitive, then you will have nightmares on your hands.

And what better night to do that than tonight?

What Would Joe Strummer Do?

My mate Leza works at Nippaz With Attitude, purveyors of fine clothing and accessories for babies and toddlers who know who their mofo is. If you haven't seen any of their stuff then check out this rather awesome babygrow.

 

Or this fetching t-shirt for children obsessed with heavy machinery.

My favourite is this inspired My First Real Alphabet poster (check out what they have down for the letter X) but I am also very fond of the Love Hate mittens.

Anyway, Leza has kindly said that anyone reading my blog can have 20% off any order with Nippaz With Attitude. Simply enter the code Big Mouth at the checkout and the discount will come off your order. If you have any kids you need to buy for this Christmas then you could well find something for them among the fine items on display.

But they also do some limited edition t-shirts for grown ups as well. I might get myself a What Would Jor Strummer Do? one.

Every now and again I like to reward my loyal readers, and my disloyal ones, with something nice. If you are in the market for some of this trendy gear then why not save 20% with my best wishes.

If not, then ignore all the above and carry on as you were.

But remember, fight the power.

Interview: Helen Rappaport

Helen Rappaport is an acclaimed historian specialising in Russia and also the role of women in history. I thought her account of the last days of the Romanovs, Ekaterinburg, was a remarkable book when I reviewed it a while ago. I recently finished reading her latest hardback, Conspirator, an account of Lenin's seventeen years in exile and reviewed it earlier in the week.

Here is an interview with Helen conducted via email while she was in the Black Sea recently.

SP: So, why did you decide to focus on a slice of Lenin's life rather than the whole thing? And why this period?

HR: The problem with all major historical and political subjects like Lenin is that so much has already been written and I was determined to find something new to say, and particularly from a woman's perspective. When I looked at his overall biography I soon came to the conclusion that the emphasis had been mainly on the years in power and not much said about his early years in exile and what made him the man he was.

My basic approach to writing history is finding a new way into an old story and once I started digging there was a lot about those lost 17 years in exile that had not really been explored. It's also a fascinating period generally in terms of the Russian revolutionaries in exile - that whole world Conrad explored so brilliantly in The Secret Agent.

SP: What is it about Russia and Russian history that appeals to you so much?

HR: My love of Russia and all things Russian springs from a rather corny but true first love experience when I read Chekhov's exquisite short story The Lady with the Little Dog and then graduated to Doctor Zhivago - a wonderfully poetic and moving work of literature but not an easy read aged 15! Thereafter I read and consumed everything and anything I could find by Russians and about Russia.

I think at heart it is a very romantic passion for a country and a language that I find totally beguiling and intriguing. And the langugage, for me, is so melodic and beautiful and I consider myself hugely lucky to be able to speak it. What appeals to me in particular as a historian is the incredible Russian capactiy for enduring, for suffering - that powerful sense of resignation you find in the Russian Orthodox, which came through to me very strongly writing Ekaterinburg.

SP: Do you think there is a gender split or territory when it comes to historical authors? Put very crudely, do men write about wars, generals and kings and woman about queens, art and places? If you look at the bestsellers on Amazon you have Antony Beevor on D-Day, Andrew Roberts on WW2, Max Hastings on Churchill and Alison Weir on Anne Boleyn, Amanda Vickery on Georgian households. I know there are expections but am I talking bollocks?

HR: Well this is a very interesting point Scott which I have been pondering ever since David Starkey raised the issue that in his opinion there is far too much 'feminisation' of history going on with some women historians attempting perhaps to overpromote the role of some women in histroy (Starkey's particular bugbear being the six wives of Henry VIII). I personally feel there has been an increasing 'ghettoisation' in history and biography writing over the last ten years or so since Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire with a lot of women historians etc. rushing to find 'another Georgiana' but I personally am getting very bored with all the books in the 'wives, lovers and mistresses of' genre.

You are quite right - certainly in terms of war, military history and big male political figures there seems to be an overemphasis of men writing on men and male topics and women sticking to the women. That is one of the major reasons why I felt so passionate about taking on Lenin. When you look at the Soviets in particular - all the major figures: Stalin, Trotsky, and, till now, Lenin have all been tackled almost exclusively in trade publsihing by male historians - e.g. Prof Service's huge new tome on Trotsky just out.

I felt one way forward for women historians such as myself in the absence of enough good female subjects was to offer a female perspective on these male figures that might perhaps have something new to say. Also in Conspirator I set out to give a higher profile to Lenin's extraordinary and dedicated wife Nadya who is so often marginalised in books about him. I can't make claims for Nadya as a power player in his story but I do feel I have given her her due, which many Lenin biographies do not do.

SP: What were your favourite discoveries when researching Lenin's time in exile?

HR: I guess fundamentally that he would not have made to to 1917 without the back up of a lot of people. Finding out what a coward he was and how much he depended on the protection of others - at two partciular points in the story his skin was saved by foreign nationals - the Finns and the Poles - but they never get any credit in the Soviet produced hagiographies.

Going to Finland and Poland and researching the stories on the ground gave me a whole new perspective on his real life in exile and the people who helped him survive. Walking the streets of London in his tracks was fun too and I did winkle out some fascinating eye witness testimony on that time. In fact there was quite a wealth of 'I was Lenin's landlady' stories out their waiting to be found. Some of the indpendent, non Soviet eye witnesses I found in Europe were extremely revealing.

SP: One of the most striking things in the book was what a miserable bastard Lenin was all the time. What was it like 'living' with him while writing the book?

HR: I wouldnt quite describe him as a miserable bastard - he did have a sense of humour that flashed through now and then but he so rarely let go that the flashes of a more relaxed man are hard to find. But god yes what Nadya had to put up with: a monomaniac, control freak with the mentality of a head master who I think today would be analysed as compulsive obsessive. I found him utterly infuriating most of the time, and I particularly was repelled by his amorality and ruthlessness and the way in which he had no scruples about using people to his own ends.

Overall I found him compelling to work on - but in the end I came away with any remaining thought I might have had that he was the 'good guy' to Stalin's 'bad guy' completely flattened. They were two of a kind - totally driven and merciless when it came to achieving their political ends. And now from what Bob Service says in his book on Trotsky it would seem that he was just as bad! The cruel streak in all these men is unuttterably chilling.

SP: Another was that he had a bit of an eye for the ladies. What would have attracted them to him?

HR: Power power power. I think a lot of women are drawn to clever compelling men as Inessa was - although maybe simultaneously at times also repelled by their ruthlessness. An eye for the ladies - not sure if that is the right way to describe it. Lenin was from evidence I found in Paris voracious sexually but spent a lot of time repressing his sexuality for the sake of his more important political pursuits. But I think he went over the edge in Paris and that is where the key to this all lies. But the trouble is of course that no Soviet or Russian source ever says a single honest word about that side of his life.

SP: I must ask you a question about Ekaterinburg, which I loved. I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the princesses but not remotely for their parents. As a historian, do you have to remove yourself from such emotion or do you realy get involved with the characters you are writing about?

HR: I have to say that try as hard as I could to like Alexandra she was a tough call. Nicholas I could see as a fatally weak and henpecked man but one who did at least have a hugely positive side - his charm, his kindness and his total and utter adoration of his children. He was an exemplary family man but a lousy monarch and that is his tragedy.

But yes the children - I could not but get hugely emotionally involved with them. Much like you I felt for them and not for their parents in the end - who largely brought the catastrophe of their demise on themselves. But none of them deserved to die like that. It was hideous and that was the hardest part of the book to write. I talked at length to a forensics expert before I started and wrote that chapter from several differenct perspective, adding the layers - i.e. first a totally dispassionate blow by blow account of what happened; then seeing it from the point of view of the family, then the guards, then adding the narrative line last.

Lots of people have told me that reading that chapter made them cry. I felt drained at the end of it. And yes, it was very hard for me to let go of the Romanovs - I felt very deeply involved with them by the end and would like to return to the story some time.

SP: What is coming next?

HR: A change of direction for a couple of books - back to my other great love, the Victorians. Out next March with Susan Hill's independent imprint Long Barn Books is Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer. It's a Victorian true crime history all written from - I have to say - stunning primary sources. I guess you'd say it is in the Mr Whicher category. It's a compelling story - which is why I love writing history. Real people and real lives never cease to fascinate me.

Then in 2011 I will be bringing out a book currently titled Memorial about the death of Prince Albert - a sort of countdown along the lines of Ekaterinburg taking a close up look at the circumstances of his death and its impact on the monarchy and British social history - the fetishism of Victoria's cult of mourning etc.

SP: And can you recommend my readers a jolly good book?

HR: Well although I don't usually read much fiction I have been totally absorbed in Victorian pastiche while doing Beautiful For Ever and I absolutely loved Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night.

---

I thought Helen beautifully handled some of my more flippant questions and I hope her fascinating answers have made you want to read some of her work. She was one of our guests at the second Firestation Book Swap and had the audience enthralled at her tales from Russia.

A Wicked Idea

They've only gone and done it again.

Concord Free Press have published another book.

So, what's the big deal? You might well ask.

The big deal, dear reader, is that they give all their books away for free. They are true publishing revolutionaries. That's right, they print brilliant books in beautiful packaging and then give the blighters away.

All they ask is that you make a donation, not matter how small, to a charity or worthy cause of your own choosing. And that you pass the book on to someone else once you have finished.

It is a fucking beautiful publishing model.

They have just released their third book, The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire. Yes, that Gregory Maguire, the bloke who wrote Wicked. A new novel from him would normally be published as a hardback and sell millions. Instead it is being given away for free.

I have written about Concord Free Press before and I have interviewed the founder, Stona Fitch. If there was any justice in this world they and he would be walking away with all manner of Publisher of the Year awards but I am guessing they won't. Not that they give a shit. They are doing this for all the right reasons.

There are 2,500 copies of The Next Queen of Heaven available. Due to overwhelming demand they are releasing them in batches of 100 every day. To stand a chance of getting your greasy mitts on one you need to check in at the website.

I've got mine and will be reading and reviewing it soon.

Till Tales

Next time you are in your local bookshop you may spot two books written by former supermarket checkout girls.

The Checkout Girl by Tazeen Ahmad is published by the imprint I run, The Friday Project. The author spent six months undercover in a branch of Sainsburys and has collected her experiences in a remarkable all-human-life-is-here account of what it is really like behind the till in a major supermarket. It is not quite what you would expect and the stories she tells range from the heartbreaking to the hilarious.

Anna Sam was a French checkout girl, working and blogging about it for eight years. Checkout: A Life on the Tills tells her story which is very different to Tazeen's but with many amusing and enlightening parallels.

I thought it would be fun to get Anna and Tazeen to interview each other. The results are below.

First up, Anna quizzes Tazeen.

AS: The reason I wrote my book was to raise the profile and increase the prestige of checkout girls. What message did you want your book to give?

TA: Hi there Anna. I wanted to give an insight into how British people were coping during the recession, observe people's shopping habits and their quirks and most importantly take a look at what life is really like inside a supermarket - taking the reader into a fascinating parallel world.

AS: Was your experience as a checkout girl as you expected or were there any major surprises?

TA: There were lots of surprises. I didn't realise I had walked onto the set of a great big riveting soap opera with friendships and love affairs and family dramas playing out on a daily basis. I also didn't expect to turn into an Agony Aunt for so many customers several times a day with them off-loading their shopping and their fascinating personal woes at the same time. I was also stumped by how difficult customers could be. By and large most customers were really friendly and easy-going but at least once a shift I'd get shouted at - I was horrified that people could be so rude and obnoxious and over the most insignificant of things for instance if I was having technical problems with the till, a dressing down was pretty much inevitable. It turned out to be a real slice of life, a window on the world, if you will.

AS: Do you think that attitudes towards checkout girls might improve in the future? In other words, will it be possible to raise the status of the checkout girl?

TA: I really hope both of our books will help change perceptions of Cogs (as I call checkout guys and girls) in some small way and make customers behave better at the tills. They are after all the cogs in the supersonic wheel of the supermarket - they keep it going. Cogs work hard and tirelessly and deserve some recognition for what they have to do for hours on end.

AS: And one more question, if you want or are able to answer it: In France there is a lot of discussion about whether automated checkout points will put paid to supermarket cashiers. What do UK employees and customers think?

TA: Certainly in the supermarket I was at checkout staff were really essential not just in terms of the function they fulfilled but also the customer service they provided. They ensured the customers who had been in the store had had a good enough experience to make them want to return. I've noticed the level of frustration that customers experience dealing with self service machines. I'd be very surprised if checkout assistants were replaced by them and think it would go down pretty badly with both supermarket staff and customers alike if the move was to take place here in the UK. Long live the Cog!

And now Tazeen interviews Anna.

TA: Whilst working at the supermarket I often felt like I had a role in a highly entertaining soap-opera - with the lovers tiffs, family dramas and the friendly banter I witnessed everyday amongst my colleagues and especially the customers. Was it the same for you?

AS: Exactly the same. I often likened life behind the tills to having a part in a play, because of the varied, incongruous, surprising and astonishing things I witnessed. Every day brought to light another facet of society. Which is one of the reasons I wanted to tell my till tales, since each incident reflects a different aspect of human behaviour and how we all interact.

TA: I worked at the supermarket just as the recession kicked in late last year and observed the penny pinching and money saving tactics British customers were employing. I put it down to the recession but I did find myself wondering - has it always been like this at the tills?

AS: Customers have been careful about how much they spend for some time now. Over the eight years I worked in a supermarket I noticed that customers became progressively more penny pinching. The economic crisis at the end of 2008 certainly accelerated this trend, but it was noticeable long before that. In my book I have a chapter on money-back guarantees, an important part of supermarket shopping in France for several years now.

TA: There was a real camaraderie amongst the supermarket staff especially at the checkouts - a sense that we were all in it together. At other times the managers and the supervisors were watching us with a disconcerting eagle eye ready to pounce if we put a foot wrong. I wondered if a French supermarket was any different?

AS: In most supermarkets there is, as you say, a real camaraderie amongst the cashiers. We all know what our colleagues have to put up, because we have all the same things to deal with. This draws us together and we help each other out whenever we can. The relationship with managers and supervisors depends really on what the managers are like. I have known some superb ones but also some who are only interested in their own advancement and pay no attention to the needs of their cashiers. The quality of the manager has a huge impact on the wellbeing of the cashiers. A good manager makes the working environment pleasant, but a bad one can make it very stressful.

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Checkout: A Life on the Tills by Anna Sam is published by Gallic Books.

The Checkout Girl by Tazeen Ahmad is published by The Friday Project.

Both books are out now and should be available in all good bookshops but not, perhaps unsuprisingly, many supermarkets.

The Revolutionary Traveller's Wife

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died in 1924 at the age of 53. According to Helen Rappaport in her new book it was syphilis, contracted while in exile in Paris, that killed him.

He was in exile for seventeen years, nearly a third of his life. And he moved around a bit during that time. Siberia, Munich, London, Geneva, Brussels, Finland, Capri, Paris, Krakow, Bialy Dunajec, Poronin, Nowy Targ, Berne, Zurich. That's a lot of travelling.

And yet he still found time to study Marx, organise a political party, create rifts in that party, write hundreds of thousands of words of politcal theory, read vociferously, write dozens of letters every week, evade the Russian secret police, and have the occasional affair.

Busy chap, that Lenin.

Conspirator is not a birth-to-death biography. It focuses instead on his seventeen years in exile. It is such a fascinating and rewarding area of study that I am amazed no one has tackled it before. Rappaport does top and tail the book with a summary of the stuff that came before and after (which is very helpful to a non-expert like me) but the bulk of the narrative trails Lenin across Europe. And he was pretty much on the run for all that time, checking in to boarding houses under various aliases, travelling incognito, being smuggled across borders.

But he wasn't alone. For most of those seventeen years he was accompanied by his wife, Nadya, and her mother. Lenin was the thinker, the leader, the debater and orator but he simply would not have been able to do all that without the help of these, and other, women in his life. Given Helen's background in writing about women's issues it is perhaps unsurprising that she credits them in this new work but as they have been pretty much sidelined and ignored by many previous biographers, especially the Soviet hagiographers, it is about time this was redressed.

Conspirator isn't just a study of Lenin during this crucial period of his life, it also offers a look at the early days of a major politcal movement. The clash between the Bosheviks and the Mensheviks casts a cloud over much of Lenin's time in exile and it is a wonder that any of them were able to stop arguing for long enough to actually take power.

It is also remarkable that Lenin himself was able to avoid getting caught, or bumped off, or voted out during his extended absence from Russia. His sheer determination, and some very good luck at a couple of crucial moments, seems to have seen him through. How very different the world may have been if that had been different.

And then there's the syphilis. Rappaport has unearthed evidence that a) Lenin was not entirely faithful to his wife during their time abroad. She makes a good case for at least one long-term misstress and hints at another. There is also the suggestion that, especially in Paris, he would occasionally fancy his chances with some young woman or other. And b) that the real cause of his death was covered up by he Soviet authorities at the time. It is pretty convicing stuff.

Helen Rappaport is carving out a nice little niche by approaching well-known historic subjects from an unusual angle. Her previous book on the last days of the Romanovs, Ekaterinburg, explored at the final few weeks of their lives and has become a real word-of-mouth hit. Conspirator looks at a more complex story and covers a much longer period but is no less enjoyable or interesting. Pretty much essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history.

The author will be along later in the week to answer a few questions for the blog. Watch this space.

Stuff

Some links and pieces and things and stuff.

I will be reviewing Conspirator by Helen Rappaport next week but to tide you over here she is talking about her revelation that Lenin died from syphilis he contracted while living in Paris during his exile.

My most recent Bookseller column talks about eBook pricing. At The Friday Project we have decided to set the RRP of our eBooks significantly lower than the print versions. Might sound like an obvious thing to do but most publishers are avoiding making any decision on the matter and that means that loads of new eBooks are on sale for £10+. Seems daft to me. Feel free to leave a comment under the article, there is a good discussion going on there.

I deliberately didn't blog about the whole Jan Moir/Daily Mail/Stephen Gately thing as other were doing it much better than I could have done but it was nice to see this Guardian write up credit some of us on Twitter who helped to get the ball rolling.

Combining The Bookseller and Twitter themes is this rather odd suggestion that people don't use Twitter for book recommendations. Worth pointing out that the survey was commissioned by a book recommendation website which does make me wonder who they asked and what they actually asked them. One great way to get reading suggestions on Twitter is to check out the #ilovethisbook hashtag. Do please add your own favourites there.

And finally, an interesting take on the closure of Books Etc from Telegraph retail editor James Hall.

A Song For Sunday

Kongulo by Hafdis Huld.

Saturday Round Up

A quick wander through the books I have been flicking through this week.

I saw Magazine on Later With Jools Holland recently. That show seems to have a reformed band from the 70s on nearly every episode. Has there ever been a comeback like that that didn't disappoint? I suppose it is a nice bit of nostalgia for the fans.

Which is pretty much how I feel about this new biography of the band by Helen Chase. Some rock biogs transcend fanbase by capturing the mood and feel of the time. I am not a huge New Order fan but Hooky's new book about the Hacienda is very entertaining. I had to admit to Stewart Copeland that I didn't like The Police but his memoir Strange Things Happen is a cracking read (especially when he rants about Sting). I was hoping for Magazine to win me over in similar fashion but it was written in such a serious, almost academic, style that I think this is one for fans only.

The cover of Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier is all very Clannad and I expected the contents to be somewhat away with the fairies. Actually it proved to be one of the more straightforward and readable fantasy books I have been sent for a while. A runaway woman takes refuge in a cursed town where she befriends the chieftan and uncovers long hidden secrets. It is probably closer to a historical romance than some of the more hardcore fantasy that is out there but she seems to have a strong following and I can see why.

I have published my fair share of humour books - hell, I have even written one - and most of them are destined to eventually gather dust and unpleasant splashbacks in the toilet library of memory (or be sold for £1.99 in The Works). But we all know this before we start. What we hope for is that we will flog a decent amount before that happens. To do that you need one of two things, and ideally both.

1. A concept and title strong enough that people will pick it up on impulse.
2. It needs to be funny.

My book managed to sell quite a lot of copies before it wound up in The Works for £1.99 and I am more than happy to admit that it was more down to number 1 than number 2.

Whether 100 Facts About Pandas works for you really depends on whether you find 100 completely made up facts about pandas funny or not. Here is a sample entry:

#7 BOO HOO

All pandas are born female. They will only turn male if they get a fright within their first 48 hours of life. It is for this reason that zoos with a high female bear population often employ a panda spooker to surprise newborn girls into manhood.

If that made you laugh, or you think it would tickle someone on your Christmas gift list, then they are on to a winner. I must confess that it didn't raise as much as a titter from me.

I finished reading Helen Rappaport's excellent Conspirator, an account of Lenin's 17 years in exile. I will post a full review next week but I am not giving anything away when I say that I really enjoyed this approach to historical biography - taking a chunk of the subject's life and really delving in to it.

And I started Jah Wobble's Memoirs of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem. Very much in his own voice this is a first-hand account of the tail end of punk and one of the most diverse musical careers in modern rock. I will polish this off over the weekend and hope to interview the author soon.

And be warned, after moving all my books out of the living room to accommodate MOTC's pottery show I am going to be rearranging my library which inevitably means I will be dipping into all sorts of weird and wonderful books in the week ahead.

Guest Blogger: Danny Rhodes

Later this month I’m taking part in an event with the Canterbury Festival. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy will be there so it’s relatively high profile for an author like myself. It’s one of several I’ve been invited to take part in over the next 18 months and another in a line of many since I had my first novel published back in 2006. But what difference will it make to my sales?

Recently I contacted Neilsen Bookscan [the company that tracks all books sales and publishes the weekly bestseller charts] to ask them about their subscription packages, if they had a system for authors, one I could use to measure the impact of events like the one mentioned. I made it clear what I was looking for, to be able to access a site on a regular basis that gives me clear information on what books I have sold, where and when. I could see what events create interest in my work and what don't.

It seems Neilsen have floated the idea of such a product before but deemed it to be unfeasible. They feel that their standardized product would not work for authors, all who would require an individually tailored system that would be too large an undertaking for their technical team.

Personally, I think Nielsen might be missing a trick here. There are 8500+ members of the Society of Authors (to name just one organisation) and they all have to rely on the rather vague Amazon Sales Ranks as their real-time reference point for Sales. I have noticed Scott monitoring Friday Project Sales in the same way on his blog. I know one Publisher (SnowBooks) that did publish their sales figures on a weekly basis which was great for their authors but my experience so far is to receive sales figures and royalties on a six monthly basis and this is always in retrospect. While I understand the business of authors working with publishers to keep up with sales that is just not practical in a real sense, not if the author wants to try to influence sales directly and in real time. If I could just log-in, stick in an isbn and see how a book is selling I could do it in an instant and be done with it.

If a publisher is paying a subscription of several thousand pounds to Neilsen, why don't Neilsen consider running a similar scheme for authors who pay a much smaller fee, say £100 a year to get true, reliable data on sales? There are far more authors than publishers...

I'll wager a good percentage of authors would be interested in paying a subscription to be able to track sales as and when they desired. I know several who visit Amazon every day to see if their titles have gone up and down and none of us actually understand how those rankings truly work!!!

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Danny Rhodes is the author of Asboville and Soldier Boy, both of which are really rather good. I think he makes a reasonable case and such a service would do rather well. Nielsen could charge a small fee per ISBN and give authors access to only those books. A nice little earner.

Fuck Off You Toad

Thomas Wogan is naked. In a waiting room. Alongside a cuckoo, a bat, a natterjack toad, a sea urchin, a fish and an egg.

We've all been there. Don't pretend you haven't.

One by one this peculiar bunch of creatures reveal the events leading up to their arrival, and a more delightfully absurd, foul mouthed collection of tales you'll be hard pressed to find.

With Thomas Wogan is Dead, David Hughes has created a graphic novel full of black humour and uncanny observation. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it becomes a cult classic but it deserves a wider readership than that, and at a very reasonably priced £5.99 I hope it does.

It is worth the asking price alone for the sight of a furious cuckoo telling a natterjack toad to FUCK OFF!

A Tale Of Two Ditties

One of my pet hates with poetry, and I have many, is when lines are broken up and positioned

                                            across the page.

It must be done for a reason (other than to annoy me) but I have no idea what that reason

                                    is.

As a result it forms a barrier between me and my understanding of / caring about the poem.

Carol Ann Duffy's Mrs Scrooge, a short quirky take on the Christmas Carol story, is full of that sort of thing so we were never likely to get along.

Mrs Scrooge is an environmental do-gooder handing out leaflets about the sorry plight of farmed turkeys on Christmas Eve. Unsurprisingly she fails to convert any last-minute supermarket shoppers and returns to her home, empty except for Cratchitt the cat (Mr Scrooge has been 'doornail dead' for some time).

That night she is visited by the usual three ghosts and treated to a whistle stop tour of her life with a bunch of green and anti-consumerist messages rather clunkily shoehorned in. And then it is over.

Mercifully short, I am not enitrely sure why this exists. It strikes me that Duffy wasn't sure whether she wanted to do a slightly off-kilter update of the story, which could have been fairly entertaining, or a poetic satire on modern culture which may have made for a genuinely alternative Christmas message. She tries to do both and delivers neither.

What we end up with is a book that will sit on tillpoints in posh bookshops and end up in the stockings of TLS subscribers, to be read once and probably never read again.

By way of contrast, The Best of Times by Michael Morpurgo is a rather sweet and endearing Christmas fairy tale. A prince and princess marry on a wave of love and goodwill from the whole kingdom but the princess soon falls into unexplained melancholy. The prince tries everything to make her happy but she is just wasting away. As Christmas approaches he makes one last attempt to save her, inspired by a group of travellers he meets one cold winter night.

This is a book that you could read to the whole family around the Christmas fire, and one that could well become a festive tradition for many. Lovely illustrations from Emma Chichester Clark and a dinky little hardback format make this an ideal and worthwhile stocking filler.                                 

More Wildebeest, Vicar?

Jeanette and Rachel run a wonderful business from a farmhouse in Shropshire. The Alternative Meats Company sells exotic and unsual meat online. You can order some zebra today and get it delivered to your door a few days later.

Sounds great, you say, but I don't know any good zebra recipes.

Well worry no more for The Exotic Meat Cookbook: From Antelope to Zebra is here.

With over 100 simple and delicious recipes for all manner of unusual and lesser-used meats this is the perfect cookery book for the adventurous home chef.

You will find recipes for Thai-style dynamite chilli kudu, Blesbok and chocolate sauce, Springbok Wellington, Buffalo stroganoff, Simple camel with all-spice, Coronation crocodile cocktail, Slow-roasted mallard, Goat in paper, Kangaroo escalopes in tipsy cream, Braised mutton and caper cobbler, Ostrich and prune casserole, Caribou roast, Zebra teriyaki and many more.

All of them are really very easy to make and the authors have a wonderful conversational style that is most endearing. The book is beautifully designed with lots of background information on the various animals and cuts of meats and every recipe offers a more traditional meat as an alternative.

But don't take my word for it, why not try it out for yourself? I have three copies to give away to the first three people to leave a comment asking for one. The catch is that you have to review the book online as soon as you can. If you are a blogger and want to try out a recipe and then post the results then so much the better.