A week of joy and happiness in the book arrivals department, a lovely gift parcel of books and contained within Passion by Jude Morgan.This got rave reviews and must-read epithets at the recent Mary Shelley book group evening, so its unannounced arrival was timely.Also My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell and The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin.I knew of all these but missed them when they were published.Lovely books.
I read about Salt Publishing over on the Snowblog and dashed over to check out the Salt website (which Snow books are very envious of) and then a penny dropped, that I'd heard about Family Connections by Chrissie Gittins in an e mail drop a few weeks ago and had added it to my wish list.
Drat, drat and a bucketful of more drat, subliminal marketing, I've been had.
But it worked because eventually I joined up all the bits of the jigsaw and ordered the book.These are short stories but the ones I've read so far are unusual, clever and funny.Some original twists to traditional plots.
On the subject of small publishers, I love the way the Indies support each other like this and generously signpost us around to them all. I'm not sure you'd ever see a large publisher promoting a potential rival.
Perhaps I'm being naive and really they are all married to each other and best friends and live in the same street, have dinner together, share the school run and offer to say nice things, but that doesn't actually matter to me.
If someone doesn't tell us they are there we don't know, or I certainly wouldn't and I can make up my own mind when I get there.Yes, I'd be envious of the Salt website too.
A sub to The Bookseller was £179 last time I looked. I'll let you into a secret, each time I get tantalizingly past the first sentence of an interesting piece and then hit the log in page I keep trying to get in via the back door at www.bugmenot.com to no avail. Have no fear Bookseller, you are a well-defended fortress impenetrable to us poor book bloggers.No worries, I think the blog world is now starting to tell me most of what I want to know, except I would like to have read the rest of this because according to The Guardian, book bloggers get a mention
A Way With the Web
"That old marketing chestnut "word of mouth" continues to be among the
most effective drivers of book sales, with a quarter of people thought
to base their reading choices on personal recommendations. With the
average..."
Talking of which, Susan made me spend 19p on To Noto by Duncan Fallowell when I'd been cutting back on book expenditure but she has done it proud over on her blog and this will comfortably fit the bill for the Travel themed evening at the Endsleigh Salon for me in a couple of month's time.
I'm now quite excited about the discovery (for me) of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, and I suppose the Luis is just there to stop us saying Jorge Borges and enjoying the rhyme.I've gone for two anthologies, Fictions and The Total Library : Non-Fiction 1922-1986 and dipping in I see plenty in there to enjoy.
I shall forge a Jorge Borges gorge soon.
