Bookwitch bites #109

If my bites didn’t already have such an excellent title, I’d call today’s post Hoffman & McGowan. It’s got a nice ring to it. Solicitors. Or television cops. Yes, that’s more like it.

Ladies first, so we’ll go to Mary Hoffman who has a new website design. Again, you could say, but that’s OK. Mary has been writing books for a while, and needs to go through a few web designs. They are like shoes. You must have them. They wear out. And with so many books, Mary simply has to be able to organise all the information sensibly. And beautifully. Like the shoes.

We’re not leaving Mary yet. Earlier this month she wrote this beautiful blog post on the History Girls blog about her mother-in-law. I find it fascinating to read about the lives of ‘reasonably ordinary’ people. Because once you start looking at an individual, you soon discover that many people have something special or exciting in their past.

On to Anthony McGowan, who is excited about his upcoming film. Or more correctly, the upcoming film of one of his books; The Knife That Killed Me. I gather it’s just appeared at Cannes, which in itself is pretty exciting. I’m a little wary of knives, so I don’t know how I feel about watching the film. I found the build-up in the book almost unbearable. Well done, but hard to cope with.

And from the topic of knives, it’s a short step to bullying, and to another couple of ‘solicitors/cops;’ Morgan & Massey.

Nicola Morgan blogged about cyber bullying on the Huffington Post. And about teenage stress, also on Huffington. (I suppose I need to find out how to get blogging there…)

Finally, awards time! You remember how I mentioned David Massey a couple of weeks ago? Like, he was at the Chicken House breakfast, and I helped myself to a copy of his book Torn? Now he’s just gone and won the Lancashire Book of the Year, which just proves I move in the right chicken circles. The ceremony isn’t yet (can’t find when…), but the announcement came yesterday.

Blame My Brain – the review

I can safely say I have never felt the urge to crawl into a supermarket trolley. And doing so with vodka, would appear to make it more crowded, so I don’t really think I will bother. While on the subject of trolleys and supermarkets, I enjoyed visualising Mr M and his wife out hunter gathering in their local Sainsbury’s. (Wine and cheese hunted down by Mr M, and porridge oats successfully gathered by the wife, as she’s been programmed to do. Or so I imagine.)

Mr M’s wife, Nicola Morgan, has written a book about brains, as humorously as ever. It’s a bit of a trademark of hers; humour and wit. And lots of it. There is a new edition out of Blame My Brain, which contrary to what I’d imagined has actually been written for the teenagers themselves. Those with the brains in question.

It explains a lot, including why I was a perfect teenager (as elaborated on here by Nicola yesterday), and why I am also such a perfect parent. It’s not easy (actually, it is) but someone has to be.

BMB is very interesting, and should be extremely helpful to those in need. Teenagers with teenage brains, and their parents who have already forgotten what it was like to have one.

There is science to base almost every fact on, and the best thing is that even if you don’t fit the stereotype, it doesn’t matter. The world has a use for all sorts of people; the perfect ones, and those temporarily a little bit odd. (I believe that’s the one with the vodka in the trolley.)

I can’t decide who will benefit the most from reading BMB. The young person who needs reassurance that they are totally normal, or the unsympathetic oldies who don’t think they are. Both probably.

And seeing as you not only get better at something by doing it – repeatedly – but you can learn to do quite a bit of it by watching someone else do it, I’d say us oldies have a duty to perform, and to do it well. That way we will be looked after by someone in our even older age. Someone looking after us as well as we do our own oldies.

Or some such theory.

(At no time when chased by a lion have I felt so depressed that I have fallen asleep. Which could be why I’ve made it this far.)

Guest blogger Nicola Morgan on the perfect Bookwitch

In which I delve inside a witch’s psyche and answer the important question “Why was Bookwitch such a perfect teenager?”

I’ll come to Bookwitch in a minute. Oh yes, I will.

It’s very important never to forget that all teenagers are different. They get a terribly negative press, but many are not emotionally volatile, risk-taking, sleep-crazed creatures; some are extremely focused on achievement and others are just calm and outwardly unaffected by the turmoil in their brains, quietly moving towards sedate adulthood as though their mortgages and slippers were waiting.

Teenagers differ from each other because of a combination of genes, experience, environment, health and personality; but they also share a range of biological and psychological changes that must take place to turn them into independent adults. As a group they are special and share significant similarities.

Now to Bookwitch. *rubs hands*

Bookwitch claims to have been a “perfect teenager”, by which I assume she means that she caused Mother-of-witch no grief and has no memories of being emotional, risk-taking, rebellious etc.

Here are some possible reasons – and, of course, what I’m really saying is not what I think about Bookwitch and her paragonosity, but the reasons why any individual teenager might give her or his parents such an easy ride:

• Bookwitch may have had less to fight or rebel against, fewer triggers for anger. She had no siblings to argue with or be jealous of and describes Mother-of-witch as being liberal. Being either liberal or authoritarian don’t necessarily make sufficient difference but the combination of liberal parent plus adolescent with no inherent need to kick is a potentially easy one.
• Bookwitch may have a sanguine personality. A placid child is more likely to be a placid teenager and adult.
• Bookwitch may have had any number of subconscious reasons for being undemanding. Leaving Bookwitch aside, things that could influence teenagers not to succumb to the storms of adolescence include: a difficult external situation (such as war), the serious illness or difficulty of a close relative or friend, economic or other social reasons for the need to conform and mature quickly rather than rebel. None of those would guarantee smooth adolescence, but combined with certain personality traits could affect behaviour either positively or negatively.
• Bookwitch may have been lucky that the changes in her brain happened in ways that did not cause the turmoil that many teenagers face. All brains are likely to change differently, at different speeds, and it’s logical to suppose that this might have different outcomes.
• Bookwitch may have amnesia. I would not dare suggest this if she were anywhere near me and actually I’m sure it’s not true. However, it’s fair to say that many adults do forget what they felt like and even what they did as teenagers.
• Bookwitch may have had lots of emotional turmoil but have been able to internalise and control it and not cause Mother-of-witch or her teachers any grief. Since she has no stories of rebellion to rehearse over dinner tables, she has forgotten much if not everything she felt. In other words, amnesia…
• Bookwitch’s personal narrative may include the statement, “I am a calm and measured individual who behaves decorously and maturely; emotional volatility is not my style.” This personal narrative, when filtered through confirmation bias theory, could lead Bookwitch to remember herself as a calm and measured teenager, which may also be true, but is at least theoretically filtered by memory and memory is not perfect. Amnes…

So, you’ve not exactly seen Bookwitch on the psychiatrist’s couch but you’ve seen some reasons why some teenagers can go through the same range of brain upheavals and yet not conform to the norms or stereotypes.

I’m endlessly fascinated by this stuff and I’m so pleased that Blame my Brain has a sparkly new edition to bring it bang up to date. Thank you for letting me invade your blog!

Bookwitch, can I draw your readers’ attention to my ongoing competition? There are books and things to be won and brainy questions to be answered!

Bookwitch bites #100

For my 100th bite I am donning my gossip magazine disguise, and we are going royal. Admittedly, the combination of authors and royals in the news has been somewhat unfortunate this week.

But all is rosy chez BWB! Earlier this week Nicola Morgan casually dropped the bombshell that she was agonising over what to wear for a dinner at The Palace. She’s in Edinburgh, so that would be Holyrood. I’m not sinking low enough to deal with the garment situation, because I’m all excited knowing someone who dined with the Princess Royal!

‘It was a dinner to spread the word about a charity she’s Patron of, Opportunity International, and I was very impressed indeed by how she spoke about it so intelligently and passionately,’ Nicola said afterwards. It seems everything went well, forks and other implements behaved themselves, Nicola was suitably covered and Hilary Mantel was only mentioned ‘very quietly.’ Ms Morgan ‘found the whole thing really interesting and it was amazing being inside the palace.’

So now you know. The rest of us can only dream.

Further good news is that Celia Rees has won the Coventry Book Awards 14+ category for This Is Not Forgiveness. Well done!

More good news for Michael Grant fans. The last Gone book – Light – will be here in just over a month. So will Michael himself, and Dublin fans will be delighted to hear he is actually coming to Ireland this time. Hang on for more details.

Finally, a big WELL DONE to all of you who bought/downloaded The Storm Bottle last week. Nick has reported back that it was a resounding success, with sales both sides of the Atlantic taking his book to seventh and sixth place respectively, and a lovely fourth place in the free children’s action and adventure category.

So you see, pulling together does help!

Today

So, how are we? All present and correct?

I’m not one to buy into this end of the world stuff. I had actually managed to escape the latest ending of our world until quite recently, when I read in Vi magazine what was happening. Their reporter had been to France and was amused by the restaurant he came across, that offered a spectacular last night meal with entertainment.

Perhaps he has not read Douglas Adams? I suspect the restaurant people might have, unlikely though it sounds.

But it set me thinking apocalyptic thoughts. There is Tim Bowler’s Apocalypse; bleak, but not quite the end of everything. (Unless I got it all wrong?)

There is/was – or maybe not – Nicola Morgan’s novel which tried to be Apocalypse, but changed into The Passionflower Massacre ( a much better title, now that I stop to reflect) in deference to Tim.

Most likely there are apocalypses everywhere with our taste for dystopias and horror. (Quick search in online shop only netted a couple more, surprisingly.)

Some years ago the Resident IT Consultant returned home and mentioned he’d seen a film while away. I asked what film. He said it was called The Day Before Yesterday. Or something. Personally I find his a more interesting title than The Day After Tomorrow (which is what he did see.)

Let’s get on with today…

Hello, is anyone there?

Anyone at all?

Maybe it was a mistake to set this blog post to appear automatically?

The brain talk

Blame My Brain. Yes, I will, if it turns out I made inadequate notes that don’t help me blog ten days after The Talk. That’s Nicola Morgan’s excellent talk on young brains, Monday last week, at the Royal Terrace Hotel.

As she pointed out, this is all about explaining why young people are the way they are. It’s no excuse. But it does help, realising why teenagers are so peculiar, and how they still manage to grow into quite normal adults after a while. For the purposes of the talk, Nicola reckoned a teenager is anyone between the ages of eight and thirty. Seems fair. We all know stroppy pre-teens and some of us have children who are still teenagers in their twenties.

Generalising is unfair, but can still be helpful. It’s worth working out if someone has ADHD/OCD or is just suffering from adolescence. The latter is something even rats and monkeys go through, although it is over a lot sooner for them.

There is peer pressure stress. They don’t care about their parents’s opinions the way they do their peers. And they get told off all the time. This is not good.

Neurons – grey matter – grow/multiply when girls are about ten and boys eleven. (I think it might have been 150 billion of the little things, but I could easily be wrong on the number of zeroes.) And then between ages 13 to 15 they start losing the neurons again, but that’s not as bad as it sounds. They use them, thereby strengthening connections. It’s a use it or lose it situation. And you really can’t be good at everything. Really.

The third stage is where you suddenly find you can’t do things you were previously able to do. You need more sleep than both before or after. Your emotions go haywire, and you take more risks, especially in the company of peers.

(I believe it is around here that we have the explanation as to why the young Seana merely grunted at her sisters, and how despite this they get on these days. It’s pure chemistry. Nothing – much, anyway – to do with what you’re told or taught.)

Depression for teenagers is easy to understand, while their prefrontal cortex is developing (this comes last, unfortunately). Part of the risk-taking is to use drugs, while at the same time the young brain is less able to cope with the effects of drugs.

Adults need to model good behaviour. We should remember, too, how we feel when we are criticised. We need to be their prefrontal cortex for them.

And something I’d never even thought of, is being younger than the rest. Nicola said she was among the younger ones in her school year. That can easily put you out of step with your peers when they have started accumulating neurons, or shedding them again. The little witch started school a year early, and classmates were between 12 and 18 months older. Maybe I was never as weird as I thought. Just not on the same neuron levels as the others.

For anyone who now needs a copy of Blame My Brain, the happy situation is that before Christmas (=now) Nicola will personally sell copies of all her books and sign them and post them to you. And do it cheaper than the shops.

I’m afraid I was so taken with the cakes and the tea last week, that I forgot to look at the copies of Blame My Brain they had for sale. Post-tea I only thought of my train and whether I’d get lost on the way to the station. But I am sure the book is as interesting as Nicola’s other non-fiction books. Last orders 16th December! (And since I’m not sure I’ve given you a terribly useful summary of the talk, I’d say getting a copy of the books is A Totally Good Thing.

XL

How large is your stocking? I don’t want to get too personal, but isn’t this stocking business getting out of hand? Out of foot?

Having not grown up with this quaint custom, I am adapting as well as I can. I put the odd clementine in while Offspring were small. Then I took it off their piles of junk before it developed mould. But it’s the principle. I admit to putting some things into stockings that were more expensive than a clementine, or a small packet of raisins. But what went into the stockings was always small. Something suited to stockings.

I have in my inbox two emails offering me wonderful stocking fillers. Never mind that they are pricey, but I’d have thought the woollen jumper too big to go in. (They could have offered woollen stockings?) And as for the fantastic shoe shop we actually have in town, it’d feel wrong to put shoes or boots in a stocking, even if size was not an issue. Stockings might go inside boots. Not the other way round.

iPods would make expensive, but nicely small, stocking fillers. But I hope we’ll never be quite that crazy at Bookwitch Towers.

Saturday’s Guardian Review suggested Christmas gift books. Not for stockings, I think. Just for under the tree in general. The children’s section was suitably small, the way you expect. And I feel that however lovely a 30-year-old BFG is, or how classic and sweet is Peter Rabbit, that they could have come up with something more recent (helping living authors put presents under their own trees).

In fairness, Julia Eccleshare had half a page of suggesting picture books, which she did as well as she always does.

I will suggest two rather sweet and slightly different books. Both are reissued (40 or 50 years on) and I had heard of neither before. Palmer Brown’s Something For Christmas features a young mouse who wants to give something special to a special person in his life. And Rhoda Levine’s He Was There From The Day We Moved In, with illustrations by Edward Gorey, tells the story about the dog who needs something. But what?

Me, I don’t suggest books for Christmas. A book is for life, and all that. The books I have reviewed over the years will fit right in under any tree. (Not in the stocking.) Any time.

So get them for yourself, or get them for someone you don’t know. Nicola Morgan is yet again supporting Edinburgh Blackwell’s Christmas Book Tree. I can think of many favourite books that would be welcomed by any child.

Authors, authors everywhere

I already had two authors, plus one Son, on the go for Monday, when a third one said she wouldn’t mind meeting up. But that was not to be. The afternoon could only be stretched so much, and I was already overstretched.

First on the agenda was lunch with yet another Perthshire author. Elizabeth Wein left an incinerator meeting in Perth in order to eat a corned beef sandwich with me in Stirling, telling me all about her most marvellous book Code Name Verity, and showing me pilots’ stuff from the war and secret silk maps and everything. And I learned that Maddie lived just round the corner from me.

It’s as if it was meant.

We had a nice, if noisy, lunch in a traditional café (because of the war) and we talked, talked, talked. Elizabeth admitted to an interest in vintage underwear. Just so you know.

After lunch I had to hop on the train to Edinburgh, for some freshly baked cookies at Son’s and Dodo’s. The Lapsang Souchong was so smokey it set the smoke detector off. Or it might have been the cookies in the oven.

Grabbing my M&S sandwiches (sorry, I seem to talk a lot about food) I got on the 49 bus to the Royal Terrace Hotel, where Nicola Morgan was going to talk about brains.

I had been looking forward to sitting in the bar with Nicola and the other two people there, but contrary to Nicola’s modest expectations, her event sold out and I had to share her with loads of other people who also wanted to learn about the teenage brain. Pardon, the adolescent brain.

As it was, I sat at the back (Nicola had reserved me the most perfect seat in the corner, with my name on it and everything) munching goats cheese sandwiches as discreetly as possible, listening to Blame My Brain, which was so much more interesting even than I had expected. (I almost felt the Resident IT Consultant should have come too, and not just been used as a taxi service at the other end.)

There is an explanation as to why teenagers appear to be unable to be more articulate than to say ‘uhh’ at all times. Even old Shakespeare noticed this.

I will return with more details on the prefrontal cortex front later this week. Just now I will leave you with a brief mention of the dainty little cakes Nicola had on offer afterwards. Some of us drank tea and ate cake (oops, eating again) while others bought books.

It was a nice walk back to Waverley, passing a pretty old church at the end of the cobbled street, and with a lit up path meandering up Calton Hill. If I’d known what I was doing, and if I had not had a train to catch, I might have investigated some more. As it was, this turned out to be my second foray into unknown book related territory at night in one week.

Bookwitch bites #90

I’m very grateful to my faithful and hardworking commenters here on Bookwitch. Hence Seana’s link yesterday to a profile of Hilary Mantel in the New Yorker, was most welcome. I was going to say it was surprisingly timely, as well, but I’m guessing it was actually in the paper because of Hilary’s second Man Booker win.

Congratulations! I’m not a Hilary Mantel reader (yet) but I gather she is marvellous. The profile was a thorough and interesting one, and Seana suggested it on account of similarities she could see between Hilary and J K Rowling. Perhaps J K will win the Man Booker at some point in the future. Personally I hope for more children’s books from J K, but you never know.

Somewhere to rub shoulders with great names in the book world, is at next year’s Crimefest in Bristol. I have been reminded that if you book a place before October is out, you can buy it with a discount. And once you have your pass booked, you can also have the hotel booking cheaper. Win-win situation, in which you get all those lovely professional murderers. Just imagine; you too can meet Søren Sveistrup, the man behind Forbrydelsen (The Killing).

What goes on in people’s brains could be interesting, too. Sorry, not people. Teenagers. Slight difference. Nicola Morgan is going to talk brains in Edinburgh next month. She’s good on brains. I was feeling all nice and safe from this lovely event, until I realised I could probably actually be there. But it will be fine. Interesting, and not gruesome. That’s when Nicola operates on people without anesthetics. I pass out and that’s that. This will be most civilised.

The Royal Institution is also about brains. They are making it easier, or more accessible for smaller brains perhaps, with a series of one minute videos. On real subjects!

And to usher in the weekend, here are a pair of almost identical interviews with Swedish singer Lena Andersson. You might prefer the one in English. But should you be feeling adventurous, the Swedish one is here. (They are not identical. Obviously.)

The YouTube clips should have you singing.

Troublesome cats and other airborne coincidences

I own two books bearing the title Cat’s Cradle. One is Nick Green’s soon to be published final Cat Kin book. The other is by Julia Golding, in her Cat Royal series. No, I lie. I believe I also have a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle somewhere.

I don’t mind. If there are only seven original plots, it stands to reason there are only so many book titles as well. Obviously more than seven, but anyway. I doubt Nick or Julia are about to sue each other.

Nicola Morgan has told us about her first novel, Mondays Are Red, which features synesthesia, and its main character Luke. It was published almost simultaneously with Tim Bowler’s Starseeker. Same topic. Same character name. They didn’t sue, either. But when both proceeded to write novels with the fabulous title Apocalypse, one of them changed it. Great minds think alike.

Adèle Geras wrote an adult novel with a similar plot to one by Marika Cobbold. I asked if she knew Marika’s book. She didn’t. It was another of those ‘it must be something in the air or the water’ coincidences. Happens all the time. It’s not plagiarism. Zeitgeist, maybe? (We have to keep in mind the number of plots available in this life.)

When I read Lee Weatherly’s Angel I half thought that she might have been after ‘the next Twilight’ by going for angels instead of vampires. But Lee had the idea 15 years ago, before the world was gripped by vampire fever, and well before all the other angel books we now see in bookshops.

Some writers do jump on bandwagons, because it’s what publishers want. The next wizard, another vampire. And now it’s dystopias. Julie Bertagna barely got the OK for Exodus, because back then dystopias weren’t in. Now they are. And not all of them could possibly have got the idea from reading someone else’s book first.

It takes time to make a book. From author’s idea to bookshop is usually a lengthy process. People don’t plagiarise on a whim. Coincidences happen. Recently I mused about the number of wolves I had reviewed in a short time. There are also several books out now with the name Grimm somewhere in the title.

Coincidence.

What I am working towards here, is a troublesome cat. He is causing considerable concern for Debi Gliori. She has a picture book soon out, featuring a cat in Tobermory. The title will be Tobermory Cat. At least it will be if someone in Tobermory stops being unpleasant about it. Debi, who is one of the kindest and most fairminded people I know, has been accused of all manner of things by the ‘owner’ of the name. Not the owner of the cat, mind you.

The links to this public argument can be found on Wikipedia, so I might as well add them here. Link 1. Link 2. Link 3 with a reply from publisher Hugh Andrew of Birlinn. TC even has its own facebook page, but I don’t recommend a trip there if you value your blood pressure levels.

I am really, really against bullying.

Apart from the books and coincidences above, I am reminded of another touristy cat at the opposite end of the country, in another picture book; The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber and Nicola Bayley. I imagine that book has not exactly damaged the tourist business for Mousehole. I also imagine this was the idea for Tobermory. The new book could have been called something else. And then the tourists could go there instead.

Co-operation is a good word here. Not that I’d want to co-operate with TC’s ‘owner’ if I had a choice, but before this argument began, just think of the effect they could have had together, for Tobermory.

Could there be more than one Bookwitch? Unfortunately, yes. There are. There were some before I went public, and more have popped up over the five years you and I have known each other. But the point about it is that I sat down and thought long and hard about what to call this blog, and once I’d arrived at the answer, I went online and found I wouldn’t be alone. But I am a Bookwitch, so couldn’t – wouldn’t – have picked another name.

I can co-exist.

Will leave you with one more cat. In fact, I give you a book idea for free. Here is the Linköping Lynx. At this point I must point out I’ve not checked* if there are any other LLs out there.

The more the merrier? Surely one of the seven plots must fit? It’s my firm belief that Lynxes are the next big thing. Remember that some time in 2014 or 2015.

*Oops.