Super Thursday

How super is it? I’ve been considering having a good long moan about this for a while. About today, and all the books that are published on this one day. I suppose it’s rather like moaning about your family; you love them, but something is driving you demented.

Even while being ruthless about what I want to read – and let’s face it, that’s hard to be – Super Thursday has got me on my knees, and they weren’t very good knees to begin with. For weeks I’ve been muttering a prayer that ’surely after early October there will be only a very small number of books being published for at least three months’. Please?

They started arriving in early summer with Jacqueline Wilson in the lead, and at that point I felt there was plenty of time. Just a few August and September books to read. Not too bad. Months turned to weeks and then there were days and then there was nothing.

Anyway, if I don’t end up reading a particular book, that doesn’t mean it’s bad or that I wasn’t interested. A large number of books lie waiting; either for a little love and attention a month or two late, or maybe hoping to become the surprise read next summer, or at the very least that I will love it in my retirement in the far off future.

As I didn’t start this blog just to review books, or to write exclusively about new books, I feel the time has come to have rules about how I read. On the basis that many books will have to wait for me to read while baby-sitting the great grandchildren one day, I will allow myself to read old books, and books for purely personal pleasure on a more regular basis. I just can’t decide whether to have a monthly plan, or whether to go for four of one category followed by two from another?

This way I could soon be reading I Capture the Castle and Harriet the Spy and Nesser and Theorin and all the Adrian McKintys. I have three interesting looking story collections by Chris Priestley sitting looking hopeful. Plus all the rest. Oh yes, I understand I must read The Secret Garden. Black Beauty. And one or two more.

Shorter and less frequently published books will always be appreciated.

Marmite is truly horrid

We have a cellar full of Marmite. Luckily it’s fully contained in those nice jars that Marmite comes in. It’s only unlucky, because we don’t really need to buy any more Marmite for the foreseeable future.

I don’t like Marmite. Neither does Horrid Henry, which rather surprised me. Silly of me, as I’ve already mentioned what a sensible boy he is. Why should he fall for that ridiculous notion that Marmite really is much nicer than its smell would lead you to believe? That’s for his silly brother to do. Perfect Peter does like that foul-smelling, dark brown substance.

By now the people at Marmite and at Orion will be up in arms, and probably Philip Ardagh, too, although he has nothing to do with Henry. But I will admit that Marmite and Orion have come up with a good idea. You buy Marmite – if you must – and then you can download a total of five free Horrid Henry audiobooks. If you buy five jars, that is, which sounds a little OTT.

There has been no end to Horrid Henry in these parts. As if the story collection I mentioned the other day wasn’t enough, Marmite-hater Henry has an annual, too. Naturally.

Horrid Henry’s Annual 2010, illustrated by Tony Ross as usual, has a lot in it. I’d say that any Henry fan would enjoy the tricks, jokes, quizzes and whatnot. Even an old witch feels all twitchy when eyeing the wordsearches and the things to make.

It seems it’s laureate week

OK, so this is my second blog this week about laureates. It won’t come as a surprise that today it’s about Carol Ann Duffy, our new Poet Laureate. The papers are full of the news, but bandwagons are there to be jumped on, so why not?

I am as you well know, not into poetry. But I do own a Carol Ann Duffy. And it’s signed. In fact, we have two, because Daughter insisted on a poetry collection when we met this great poet a few years ago. Mine is Another Night Before Christmas, which I suppose is apt for someone named for Christmas.

Carol Ann Duffy probably qualifies as ‘children’s literature’ more than many other adult poets, seeing as you read her for GCSEs, along with people like Benjamin Zephaniah. I quite liked meeting her at the local bookshop, because she was surprisingly unsmiley, which is rare at signing events. (So are you more genuine if you refuse to smile?)

In today’s Guardian Review Carol Ann has chosen poems by other current female poets, and the non-poem-reading witch has to own up to actually possessing a volume of  poems by one of them, Imtiaz Dharker. Also signed. Something about terrorists, which I carried with me on planes a few times, wondering what would happen. (Nothing, is the answer.)

Now that everyone has exclaimed over the choice of a female, and gay, Poet Laureate, to prove how lacking in prejudice we all are, the question is who we can give the bottles of sherry to next time. A Martian?

Being charitable

It was only as I got to the Guardian Money pages late on Sunday, that it occurred to me how charitably I’d been behaving all weekend. I had been looking forward to a quiet weekend doing nothing but rest and read. (Well, as some people know, I had actually hoped for a very different weekend, but since that couldn’t be…) Then I was hi-jacked by Daughter, who after months and months, and in some cases years, had decided to clear out. And would I help? So I sat in her armchair and directed her as she cleared. Hard work directing, but someone has to.

So, the bookcases are dusted. Books have been put in alphabetical order, excepting the colour co-ordinated Jacqueline Wilson shelves. (Less sure what Dumbledore is doing there.) Books have been re-discovered. But above all, books have been packed into bags for Oxfam. A few books have also, unfortunately been handed back to me, but now that I see some spare space on Daughter’s shelves, I may have to sneak some back. Because I have no room.

Videos have been, not so much got rid of, but been put further out of reach. We simply must keep all those old Disney films, and the Friends episodes, but not for everyday consumption.

And a great number of audio books have been consigned to new ownership. We were once very big customers at Cover-to-Cover, but there comes a time when even Daughter has finished with some of her beloved stories. They have all been heavily used.

But I’ll be interested to see how long those gaps will last, and how soon the Harry Potter figure will have to give way. And someone will have to traipse to Oxfam with the book bags.

So, if I don’t want to read this?

I tried a new way of dealing with the big question of what to read next. I read a page or a chapter or two of my already sorted and prioritised books. Plus a new one that looked promising. A kind of literary ‘just jump straight into the – possibly – cold water, witch! And don’t dither!’

It wasn’t cold, as much as lukewarm, which means that every single book I tried I could have continued reading. But I thought to myself, ‘what is the point?’ Several books were OK, but no more. I could see piles of very tempting ones, that I know for a fact will be good, and I just felt so depressed and jumped straight to the new (to me) Sara Paretsky.

Bliss. I feel so much happier now. (No, now is not a good time to suggest more chocolate.)

I think these books I’ve just rejected will be very satisfying reads to many children. Just not to this overgrown child. But too many of the books feel like pedestrian stories, put together competently enough, but with no extra oomph. They all think they could be the new Harry Potter, but for all HP’s shortcomings, I had fun with him from the word go. Very little humour in this recent batch. I need fun.

Publishers have the right to publish what they like, but could we have a little more new “new” stuff please? One successful author has told me what he/she would like to write next. The publisher thinks not. And I happen to think the idea sounds really good. It would be different, and I assume written with his/her normal flair. The faithful fans are sure to buy the new book, just because it’s by X.

And then there are Nick Green’s books, again. They have everything that I’ve been missing in what I just gave up on. And to move on to adult crime, I will yet again mention Declan Burke, who had his The Big O published in the US in the autumn. Thanks to the financial crisis the publisher has dropped the sequel (it has yo-yoed back and forth under two titles, and I no longer feel sure which is the current one), which is a very short sighted thing to do with such a marvellous story. It, too, has everything I want in a book.

Tidying up

Have you too been concerned about the state of Son’s room? He’s not had time to tidy up for the past couple of years, at least. He’s been in and out over a weekend here and there, and the mess had grown and the dust had reached unspeakable levels.

So, we have had some quality time this Christmas, with me watching him tidy up and lending moral support in his time of need and all that. Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust took on a new meaning as we tackled the bookcases, but now they are orderly and not overflowing, and less dusty for a short while.

Son’s desk has emerged again, and things look pretty good. The rest of the house looks worse, as the excess had to go somewhere else, but I trust it’s nothing that a trip to a charity shop won’t cure.

A good way to start the new year.

How to ruin a book with a sticky label

As I understand it, Oxfam staff are meant to write the price of the used books they sell, in soft pencil, inside the book. Many branches of Oxfam do, and all I need to do post-purchase is to get my eraser out, and the book will look fine.

Some of my local branches, like the big one in central Manchester, use sticky labels. You know, the kind that divides into three or four pieces, in order to prevent shoplifting. The ones they use are particularly sticky, and for good measure they use two per book. One on the outside, front or back. One on the inside where the soft pencil should go.

Some book covers are strong enough and glossy enough to allow removal of the label without too much damage or difficulty. The inside is another business, and I’ve torn a good many books that way. The very worst is when the book cover is soft or has a matt finish. Then the outside label can’t be removed. The worst I’ve ever had was a really old copy of an Arthur Ransome, where the label ruined the dust wrapper completely.

Oxfam could argue that with used books it doesn’t matter, but I just don’t want an ugly label stuck where it doesn’t belong. If the books were still sold for 20p, my case would be weaker, as it would be really good value (though I still don’t think it’s OK to ruin books), but Oxfam are expensive. Sometimes the books are not much cheaper than the big online bookshop. And if I’ve found an old book, it would be good to have it free from both labels and damaged covers.

Horace and the paperback

I read my previously mentioned house magazine over lunch, and it wasn’t so much inspiration, as anger, which came over me. And I’m sorry if I’m repeating this ad nauseam, but what is wrong with paperbacks? And how come some people really can’t see that keeping books has to come to an end some time, unless something changes?

They had pages of the most wonderful bookcases, but they forget that ordinary people run out of floor space for more bookcases, or money for some of the more expensive ones. And even if that doesn’t happen, there will always be one book, sooner or later, that won’t fit, because it’s full. I cleared the worst excesses before Christmas, by handing some books over to Oxfam, but mainly by brushing the problem under the carpet on a temporary basis. (Yes, I know. Fairly bulky and uneven for a carpet.)

But for people who aren’t ordinary, like Horace Engdahl of the Swedish Academy, books are a hygiene problem! He’s the one who tells the world each year who gets the Nobel prize for literature. I’m still working on the hygiene aspect of books. One of the magazine’s standard questions, which drives me mad every time (do they know, and do they do it on purpose?), is “Do you keep paperbacks?” Horace keeps them “if they have something sensible in them”.

Why would paperbacks have a less worthwhile content? They may not look good enough to some, but the contents? Even Nobel prize winners have books out in paperback. In fact, when I bought my Pinters years ago, I saw nothing but paperbacks in the shops. His silences are equally powerful without the hard cover.

The next page in the magazine then goes on to show bookshelves for paperbacks. Do they need to be separated? Segregated. Discriminated against. I don’t get it.

Used presents

This year’s charity shop Christmas presents have been unwrapped, and I did quite well. Only two books, thank goodness, and one of them a Sara Paretsky I didn’t already own. Daughter will soon have her buying down to perfection, which is why I’m going to hark back to the Stephen Booth Christmas present book running  joke.

I’m a bad mother. Before we gave up on new gifts and went for used ones (which nobody minds if they go back to Oxfam by the end of the week), I used to write a wish list, just to give people a vague idea of my needs. Four years ago I asked for the first Stephen Booth novel, Black Dog. Then I decided to ask the local bookshop to get one signed for me when Stephen did an event there in December, which I couldn’t attend.

So I ticked the book off the list by the time Daughter arrived home with one she’d just bought. Despair.

I suggested getting it changed for the second book, Dancing with the Virgins. Done.

Then I was given that very book, signed to me, by the school librarian, for services rendered. Oops.

By this time Daughter was ready to ask to be adopted by someone nice and lovely and normal.

A year or so later she came home from the local charity shop, very excited. She asked where I keep my Stephen Booths, and went to have a look. This satisfied her, and all was explained on Christmas Eve with the arrival of One Last Breath, the fifth book, which I actually needed at that point.

So it has a special place in my heart, and it was the one I asked Stephen to sign this summer when we met. And I try to behave around present buying times these days. I’ve not been forgiven yet.

…and for Christmas night

I borrowed this beautiful short story from Lucy Coats. No need to say any more.