The beginning

It’s coming up for twenty years since the Once New Librarian came to stay at Bookwitch Towers for a couple of months. She was only a wannabe librarian at the time, and she joined me briefly in Offspring’s school library, as well as doing stuff in the local bookshop. She liked reading ‘horrible’ books. Or that’s what I remember thinking of her style as.

So I put Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses in front of her. That had sad and horrible enough things happening in it. I believe the book passed muster. And for some reason I sent a copy of the book to the crime reviewer at Dagens Nyheter.

And now that trilogy has come to an end, by which I mean not exactly ‘now’ but a couple of years ago, and it’s not a trilogy but six books. But you knew that already.

I took my time reading the last book, Endgame, because when you reach the end, it’s the end. Possibly I waited too long as I was really grateful for the family tree in the book, reminding me of how the characters connect with each other. I’d even forgotten some of the names.

But I remembered how Troy and Libby ended up where they were in the last book. And I never trusted xxx, because… Seems I was right not to. Also XXX. Not everyone is good. And not everyone is alive at the end.

If I was going to say one thing, and I say it as a white person, almost two decades was too long in respect of how we’ve gone from our world being almost all right, to it not being terribly OK at all. Malorie’s world being a bit the other way round, is both the same and not. I like to feel when the end has been reached, that much is now ‘fine’ except for the obvious plot needs. Now though, it feels like nothing is right in either that world or ours.

But it’s a strong series of books. Not just anyone could have come up with it, or written it. And we have to have hope.

Guardian Angel

I hadn’t really understood what kind of street VI Warshawski lives in. Not until this last/latest [to me] Sara Paretsky novel, Guardian Angel. In fact, I still don’t totally get it, but around twenty books in I have more of an idea. I suppose I should really ask Sara about the street. I had imagined more of a ‘tenement’-filled street, if not with very tall buildings. More ‘outer inner’ city than sleepy suburb. But we seem to encounter single dwelling houses here, with fences and some bit of garden. Good for the dogs, and this is all about dogs.

More street issues where VI chases the bad guys, and the roads also have a say in how it all ends. Travel broadens the mind, and had I not recently been driven along US roads, I’d have been more puzzled about these ones around Chicago. Could be, of course, that without my mind having been broadened, I wouldn’t have realised I didn’t know anything.

As for the dogs, at least I now know where Mitch came from, and how he got his name.

It was thanks to one of Sara’s posts on social media that I woke up to the fact that I hadn’t read all the VI books, when I thought I had. And that Guardian Angel wasn’t the only one I neither owned or had read. I’m glad I was able to rectify these shortcomings, and it’s always, well, often, interesting to travel to another time; this one the early 1990s. You forget what life without mobile phones was like. And whereas VI is often a little short of money, here she badly needs new running shoes, but can’t afford them. Would obviously have helped if she hadn’t bought herself a fancy car she didn’t have the funds for, or that would prove a hindrance when chasing the bad guys.

But yes, Guardian Angel is about dogs. And crookedness in places where you don’t expect it. VI also gets together with Conrad Rawlings, which I’d only ever known about as a ‘historical’ fact. He’s quite nice, really.

Though it’s the roads I think of when I think of this book. Time for me to travel some more.

The Wonder Brothers

Do you need some magic in your life? I know I did. Frank Cottrell Boyce has written just the book for us. (After all, it must require some sleight of hand to persuade the Queen to request to jump out of a helicopter.)

I have to admit, I’m not big on magic. And by magic I mean the top hats and rabbit kind of magic, not Potter magic. But now I am sold. It’s not just anyone who can steal the Blackpool Tower and then write a whole book about it while not saying a word about how it was done. Magicians never tell.

In fact, there are an awful lot of things I can’t tell you about either, or the book will be ruined for you.

The thing about Frank’s books is that he puts very nice, and almost normal, children into them. It’s like it could be you, or me. Here we have cousins Middy and Nathan, and Nathan’s brother Brodie and his giant rabbit Queenie. Middy and Nathan are The Wonder Brothers and they are practising hard to learn perfect magic. When Perplexion – the greatest magician in the world – retires by magicking away the Blackpool Tower, Nathan rather rashly promises the world The Wonder Brothers will get it back.

Because that will be easy.

What follows is a soothingly hair-raising adventure, and you are left feeling that as long as you have a huge rabbit with you, all will be well.

And it is. I don’t suppose that’s giving away too much. Besides, I’m no magician.

It didn’t hurt that the book is purple. I sort of needed a purple book in my life just then.

Magic illustrations by Steven Lenton.

I should really learn to write lists

Panicked again when I realised I’d gone into Waterstones, and out again, having bought four books without any sort of list to support my behaviour.

I shop so rarely. And in this case we were in the Stirling branch; the one where I don’t go upstairs. But I felt sure I’d find ‘stuff’ on the table displays. Well, the first thing to remember is not to attempt to support myself on them. The first table almost went down when I touched it.

I began by rearranging a couple of books to give one I love a wider spread. No doubt someone will tidy up after me, but worth a brief try. But then, well, I didn’t feel the books came rushing at me, exactly. But as I felt I needed, wanted, to buy books, I did.

And when I got home and looked at them, they weren’t too bad. Considering there was no list, or great plan, or anything. Found Doug Johnstone’s The Space Between Us on the sci-fi table. I like Doug, despite never having read more than a short story by him. Remembered, with some difficulty, that I had planned to get Val McDermid’s 1989, so walked out with 1979, on the grounds that I ought to start at the beginning.

Kirkland Ciccone’s Sadie, Call the Polis was a definite. Wasn’t sure if he’d be general fiction, but he was. I even remembered where in the alphabet one finds the letter C. It was signed! A last minute brainwave reminded me I want to read Ali Smith’s Companion piece. Except, what was her name? Not Ali as a surname. That became clear. After a massive effort I made my way to S for Smith.

Basically, you shouldn’t let me loose in shops. Daughter instructed me to write lists. On my phone, or something. On the whole, though, I wasn’t disappointed in me.

The Diary of a Bookseller

It wasn’t as funny as I’d hoped, or expected. And I hope Shaun Bythell who is responsible for this diary as a bookseller, doesn’t mind. After all, he can be quite acerbic about both customers and staff, and somewhere there seems to be a competition running in how to insult him the most. I wouldn’t dream of joining in.

So, there was some disappointment. I can’t deny that. But it’s also interesting in a lowkey sort of way, and towards the end I was enjoying the lack of pace and good manners. And who wouldn’t want a bun that has had its icing licked off by a member of staff? Shaun, apparently.

I think the thing is, I felt he was/is living the kind of slow life I am increasingly wanting for myself. He stays in his shop, day in and day out, except for when he leaves it in the capable hands of the bun-licker, so he can drive off and look at [often dead] people’s book collections with a view to buying. To sell on.

I’ve never been to Wigtown. I always used to see it as a place I needed to visit. Now, I’m not so sure. It could be that it’s better as somewhere that is elsewhere. With a grumpy bookseller. (I do believe I have met the man who drives him crazy by leaving his shoes in the middle of the room when he visits. And he seemed so nice, too.)

And to be quite frank, which seems only right as Shaun himself is into frankness, I take issue with his comment on shoppers in December; ‘the few people who give second-hand books as gifts for Christmas are usually eccentric, though, so it is worth opening purely for the entertainment these characters afford.’ Ah, I see he goes on to say ‘they are the most interesting customers.’ Well, of course we are.

So yes, it was more a comfortable grumpiness I enjoyed than laugh out loud cheer.

Early admin; or late

‘I’ll just put it there’, I think, and several months later it has rather added up. The it is my admin, which I do a lot less of these days.

So whenever I decide to keep that copy of The Bookseller or that cutting or handwritten note, I put it in the trolley by my desk. Because I will find it there. Soon. Today I actually did some admin, and a day early, too, as I’ve got plans for the dentist tomorrow. Tomorrow, Thursday, being my usual admin day.

Old press releases, which by now are really quite old and refer to nothing that needs keeping, have been turned into ‘note’ paper. A couple of actual books will be going to Oxfam. And my holiday plans and possible events at book festivals are now easier to find.

That’s without mentioning the photos on my mobile. I do fewer cuttings and notes now that I have discovered I can photograph what I found in the paper, leaving them languishing on the phone rather than with their friends in the trolley.

I will leave you – after this most riveting post – with Frank Cottrell Boyce, who I saved off Instagram in my effort to prove he is not hyphenated. But you can’t win. Books appear with and without the hyphen. Here at least Frank seems to have signed without. But who’s to say that will last?