Prizes, television, travels and other news

Philip Ardagh is officially funny, having been awarded the Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2009 on Tuesday. I understand Philip is fairly pleased with the outcome, and he will be on BBC Breakfast this morning, if anyone’s up early enough to catch him. I will have to put my trust to iPlayer or Facebook friends.

I had assumed that Philip would have a cupboard full of prizes by now, but it seems not. So here’s a particularly big, witchy ‘Well Done, Mr Ardagh!’ from all of us at Bookwitch. Champagne receptions! I don’t know what the publishing world is coming to.

This is slightly late, I’m afraid, but I hope people are watching the television series Jinx? It’s based on Fiona Dunbar’s books about Lulu Baker, which I haven’t read (sorry, Fiona!). I enjoyed he first two episodes which were on CBBC at Halloween. The next two have been recorded for when this witch has a spare moment. I think there are 13 episodes in all, broadcast Saturdays and Sundays at 10.30.

Liz Kessler has been blogging about her US tour, at long last. The happy snippets of information that had reached me earlier weren’t enough, so this very long tale of what it was like, swanning around America as the successful author she is, makes up for it. I think I really must try and write some best-selling books so that I, too, can have an experience like hers.

Though I have a dreadful suspicion that I was invited to the National Book Festival in Washington, as well. I just remember thinking that someone was mistaken if they thought I could just hop over to Washington like that. I think maybe I should have hopped. It sounds good. Please invite me again!

Some witchy developments last. A witch can never have too many blogs, so on Saturday night my third witchy blog saw the light of day, except it was well past midnight, and only the kitchen lamp shone, but never mind tiny details. I had come to the rather sudden conclusion that an all-Swedish book blog from moi would be a good thing, and then I went looking for a name. You wouldn’t believe how many combinations of witch and book and reading there are out there. So I’m simply Bookwitch på svenska.

And then, you know how easily a witch gets carried away. Monday morning I set up a fourth blog. Quite quick that time, since I’d not had the opportunity to forget what I did 36 hours earlier. This one is not mine, however. It’s for the church which is still being threatened with closure. As Son said on Skype, what is there not to understand in ‘you are not allowed to sell this building?’.

(Photos; hmm, the one of Philip is by H Giles. Fiona supplied hers, of her own free will, and Liz’s I stole. Sorry!)

More on Stieg Larsson’s millions

This week even the Guardian reported on the state of Stieg Larsson’s money. They didn’t have much to say that I haven’t already blogged about, except that Stieg’s father and brother have now offered his partner Eva some money. Of course, neither I nor the Guardian know all that much. We recycle facts and come up with clever guesses as to what’s what.

We’re all guessing, because Stieg can’t tell us a thing. So it makes a change reading this blog post, written by Annika Bryn, who is a Stockholm based crime writer, and who knew Stieg.  I met Annika over on Sara Paretsky’s blog, and she has previously left a comment on Bookwitch saying it’s true that Lisbeth Salander has Asperger Syndrome because Stieg said so.

This week Annika wrote about her own feelings and ideas as to how all this mess over the Millennium money happened. She says that ethically it should have been Eva who inherited the money, and that it ought to be she who’s in the position to be able to offer the Larsson men 20 million kronor, out of the 130 million total so far, instead of the reverse. Annika says that Eva wasn’t just ‘a part of Stieg’s life’, as his father and brother put it, but he always referred to Eva as his wife, and he felt they had ‘grown together’ and he could never leave her.

Stieg’s brother has said to Annika that the fact there was no will must have meant Stieg didn’t want Eva to inherit him. (But most of us don’t consider our mortality soon enough, do we?) Another thing that is easily forgotten, is that when Stieg died, he had no more money than most people. He didn’t know there’d be millions to fight over. And Annika reckons he also thought the three people in his life would get on better than they do.

She feels that although the offered 20 million is a lot of money, it’s not enough, and that a fifty-fifty share would be the fair way to do it. They should also cooperate over the intellectual property Stieg left behind. She mentions a dispute over the English translation, too. So it seems nothing is easy in this sorry saga. As for anyone finishing the fourth book, Annika reckons this would be wrong, unless it’s practically all finished anyway.

There was a very early will, in which Stieg left his money to a communist organisation. So it doesn’t seem as if he’d intended his father and brother to enjoy whatever he had to leave.

Annika’s blog usually has many, and friendly, comments left by her visitors. This time feelings have run high, and people have left some much more strongly worded comments than usual. Not all are on Eva’s side, and some don’t manage to comment politely, whatever their opinions.

Y is for yay!

Unsolicited books get shorter shrift than the ones I ask for. But there can be real gems, that I didn’t even know I wanted. This is one such occasion. There is a pop-up book out to celebrate that Sesame Street is forty years old.

Generally I am more of a C is for cookie kind of person. Offspring and I watched Sesame Street with our lunch for years, and then out of necessity we had to stop. I wouldn’t mind watching it again, but I get the impression it’s no longer on in Britain. Why not?

A Walk Down Sesame Street is some consolation. Elmo walks round, meeting some of the regulars, and doing a little educating as he meets and greets. Good Elmo! There are even pull-thingies to make Grover fly and Cookie stir his cookie mixture. Big Bird is really an awfully big Big Bird.

Ernie has put down his duckie, believe it or not, and Oscar and his trashcan are very much in-your-face, popping out. If only they knew of the agony suffered at witch headquarters over the elephants Oscar keeps. I thought we were heading for a major bin phobia at one point.

As Daughter walked in through the door after college, she jumped on this book. Maybe 17 isn’t too old for pop-ups after all? She made Elmo dance, which was something I had missed.

Oh, now I want to get out all my Sesame Street videos again and watch…

Hitchhiker history

Who needs it? The history. The background to one of the funniest ideas in – well, in what? – literature? Broadcasting? Television? Film?

I started at the wrong end, if there is one. I read the books first. Though, come to think of it, since the radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a lot better than the books, it would have been more disappointing to go the other way. OK, maybe I did it the right way. In fact, I have a feeling I may even have watched the television series before getting to the radio. It was on just as I met the Resident IT Consultant, and I recall us watching it in the early days.

I looked on in fascination as the trilogy grew to five books. That’s British humour for you. It’s why I like my adoptive country so much. It has stuff like H2G2.

Fast forward to the unfashionable end of the last century, when I came across the radio series on audio cassette in the mobile library, and borrowed it for Son. I thought he might like it. He did. It wasn’t exactly news at the time. Nobody much – other than nerds – talked about it, so Son was educated in something vaguely historical and dated. Who cared, as long as he laughed and learnt a few new good quotes. It turned out useful, too. How his leaders at Pilots at the local church could even begin to think that children his age would be able to answer any questions on this subject in their fun quiz, is beyond me. Old-fashioned Son could, but his friends had never heard of it. Very handy, too, when it came to dressing up for World Book Day at school. We just needed to send Son to school in his dressing gown, holding a ‘book’ which said Don’t Panic.

From then on I’d say that H2G2 woke up again. More stuff on the radio, a film, and now the sixth book, written by Eoin Colfer. He is not Douglas Adams, but since we can’t have him, Eoin is a good second. I hope.

Anyway, that history. Who needs to know? I mean, who doesn’t already know about it? There was a long description/history thing in the Guardian a week ago, and I just wondered what the point was. As a fan, I do like reading about what I like, but there was something not quite right about this article. And I don’t just mean the fact that facts were wrong. Ford and Arthur did not hitch a ride with Zaphod when Earth was demolished.

The point of the new book is surely to educate a new generation of readers, and anybody old who happened to miss it the first time?

V I is back

This great t-shirt has been specially thought up by Sara Paretsky to mark the return of V I Warshawski. V I has been away for a while, and rumour has it she went to Italy. Today sees the publication of Hardball, although only in America. UK readers have to wait until February, I think.

As a special treat for particularly bothersome bloggers, Sara sent out a few t-shirts a couple of weeks ago, which was really kind of her. You’d think that having books to write, book tours to go on and video recorders to set to record NCIS as it starts this evening, would be more than enough.

It’s not just her books we love.

Why Pingu can be hard to read

This isn’t a good place to be if you need cheering up today…

We liked Pingu on television as much as the next family with young children. We had some Pingu books, too. But there is one, the title of which I’ve forgotten, which I always found almost impossible to read. It’s the one where Pingu and his friend go walking and fall down a crevasse. They have to slowly work their way out again, and show a lot of bravery. And as it’s a book for toddlers, they don’t slip to their deaths.

Today it’s fifteen years since a friend of mine and her husband had a very similar experience, the difference being that their falls were fatal. They were climbing in the Canadian Rockies, and when I say climbing; think ice axe and all other gadgets on the most advanced slopes and ‘paths’. I’ve kept the cuttings from all the major papers, where they made the front pages, but find I still can’t read about it.

I just felt that Eva and Luke and their unborn baby needed to be mentioned again, somehow. It feels strange to think how soon the years pass.

And I continue to find climbing and ice adventures hard to read. Geraldine McCaughrean’s The White Darkness was a borderline case.

Do others have similar reactions to seemingly ordinary topics?

Millennium millions

Men who hate women. That’s the ‘real’ title of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and last night I found people that fit the description quite well. Swedish television had a documentary on, about Stieg Larsson and his money and the feud over who inherits.

On the one hand are Stieg’s father and brother, and on the other his partner Eva, who he was with for over thirty years. When asked, the Larsson gentlemen didn’t seem to know when they had last seen their beloved Stieg. The year he died, or maybe the year before. Hard to say. Oh yes, his parents had farmed Stieg out to live with his grandparents for nine years when he was a small boy. So between sending him away and having him back and him leaving home as an adult, there was precious little time for them to get to know him.

But clearly they know him better, and love him better than the woman Stieg lived with. They didn’t think much of Eva. Painted her as mentally unstable, because there are standards to live up to, even when you’ve been bereaved. They both knew this, having lost wives themselves. Larsson junior even suggested that Larsson senior should marry his brother’s partner, to keep ‘things’ in the family. Well that sounds sane.

Eva and Stieg didn’t marry because he was the target of Nazis, and it was easier for him to remain alive and safe by Eva being the owner of the small flat they lived in. And as long as they weren’t married he couldn’t be traced this way. Funny then that the Larsson gents inherited half the flat and offered to turn Eva out of her home unless she handed over the laptop with book four in the Millennium series on.

That laptop, which by now is over five years old, was also avidly sought by Stieg’s former colleague on the magazine he wrote for. They felt they could do with another computer. This despite the Larssons giving them one million kronor of Stieg’s money. That’s one million out of an estimated eighty million.

At this point the television people, who had until then seemed very much on Eva’s side, demanded to see the laptop. She just looked at them and refused.

The brother and the father struck me as anything but literate. But they feel they are the best placed people to look after Stieg’s writing. The spineless publisher agrees.

It almost makes you think that boycotting the books would be the best thing. How could such an intelligent and caring man come from a family like that?

Torchwood, the book

Time to break with bookwitch tradition here. I generally don’t bother blogging about books that aren’t up to scratch, and I tend to have read them myself first. Not this time.

Daughter is very keen on the Doctor Who books. I can’t wean her off them, so have decided that it’s fine for her to read those books, even to the exclusion of so much else. I don’t think they are bad. (Maybe I ought to read one?) I just think of them as being more formula books, as they are written by a number of different writers. But, one of them is Steve Cole, who is an excellent writer. So as I said, it’s not all bad.

Recently, Daughter moved on to trying the Torchwood variety of BBC books, so while waiting to catch up with the new Torchwood on television this week, she read Another Life. When we like formula books, we tend either not to notice, or at least to overlook, poor writing, because there is something there that is satisfying and good. And Daughter never ever mentions bad writing, or bad editing.

This time she did. It must have been pretty bad for her to repeatedly say how badly written the book was, and to note how the proof-reading left something to be desired.

At £6.99 it’s not cheap for young fans, and I’m sure the BBC sell quite a respectable number of these books. They have certainly never responded to my requests for review copies, which tends to be a sign that someone reckons they don’t need reviews. They have never even bothered to reply to say no. But that’s up to them.

I do wish they’d provide young readers with better quality stories, though. Daughter has often wished she could write Doctor Who books. Maybe she could. Maybe she should.

The Man From Pomegranate Street

Caroline Lawrence brings back one of Flavia Gemina’s old boyfriends in the last book of the Roman Mysteries, and then she adds old Floppy for good measure. We have known for a long time that Flavia was going to get married off in the last book, but to whom? Two suitors make for more complications than one, and besides, Floppy was engaged to someone else when we last saw him. Or might Flavia find a third candidate for marriage?

Whatever happens on the romantic front, Flavia decides she isn’t very good at this detecting business, after all. So, seventeen mysteries on, she hangs up her detectrix hat. In The Man From Pomegranate Street the child detectives look for Emperor Titus’ murderer, and bark up a good many trees. They also need to clear their good names with Domitian, who has been known to double cross before. There is quite a lot of double crossing in this story, and you just don’t know where you are with anyone.

Nubia needs to find happiness, too, but her beloved Aristo has had his eye on so many women, that it’s hard to know what will happen. And now that some of them have found Christianity, will they be any happier?

Back in January Caroline promised me that she’d tie up as many lose ends as possible in this book, and she has tied pretty well. I hope that she can continue tying a little more in her planned trio of books, set in the future, relatively speaking.

Caroline has taken the reader from Enid Blyton to Mills & Boon in seventeen steps, and I mean that in the best possible way. Few authors claim to have been inspired by romantic fiction, whereas many crime writers do mention Blyton as an early inspiration. Add a good dollop of history, and you’ve got the whole series of the Roman Mysteries. Personally I have learnt a lot about the brief period that the books cover, and I was never one for Roman Emperors. My geographical knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean countries has improved, too.

If I didn’t have Caroline’s new series to look forward to, now would be a good time to howl with frustration. I’ll just hold on for a bit and see.

Haggis goes to Sweden

The witch is more Haggis-like than ever after a day on trains and planes and buses, but mostly after dragging and lifting her suitcase while also carrying the weight of laptop baby and all its feeding and changing paraphernalia on her back. Knee did not like that. At. All.

Maybe I won’t need all twenty books? But better safe than sorry.

Instead of paying £1.55 for her Buxton water at Manchester airport, she paid £1 for same water and the Independent. But then all of you knew about this ridiculous way of buying water already. This was from WHS, who have gone global. When she had dodged JP from Mordkommissionen at Kastrup airport (nah, he wasn’t there today, either, but I always look for him), she found that someone has had the temerity to totally rebuild the railway station end of said airport. It has a WHS, now. Bet the Danes think that’s progress. (Sorry, Dorte!) And no toilets. And few seats.

But, they do now have signs pointing to platform one for trains to Malmö, and Ystad. Five bonus points for anyone who can guess why.

The train which is generally more of the cattle or sardine variety, was blissfully empty. As the only person to board through the door where the guard was standing, I didn’t block anyone’s way while hoisting and hoisting like mad, and barely getting the suitcase up. This being the land of equality, the guard felt no compunction to help, even though there was nothing else for him to do.

Cup of blackcurrant tea on the train was far better than the rubbish earlier at Starbucks. And the trolley lady takes all kinds of payment, including foreign currency. So with my language police hat on, I will forgive her for suggesting that we should all clear the way for her approaching trolley by removing other people’s luggage from the aisle. Grammar is hard. Or else she was doing a straight translation from Danish.

For those of you who don’t know, I can tell you that carrying a take-out mushroom pizza vertically for an hour or so, makes the mushrooms slide down one end. But it still tastes good.