Just surfacing after a lovely bookish day in London yesterday, Long Barn Editorial Board meeting and then a meeting about the publicity for the Tinker's book which is all starting to build and soon he'll be donning the disguise he has at the ready so he doesn't get mobbed in the streets...he's actually very easy to clock as he insists on wearing his glasses on a luminous pink dangly chord so that he can find them easily.
Talking of glasses, if you're going to lose a pair then I think losing my Specsavers buy one get one free pair in the Groucho Club (name-drop-moment) is probably top notch.I had to go and buy some off the peg to get me back to Exeter, imagine that train journey and just having to stare at the cover, lovely though it is, of The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies. As it was I managed a hundred or so pages of my first official Bookerthon 2007 read inbetween tea and snoozing.
I did my usual little run around the bookshops,and once I'd done Piccadilly I concentrated my efforts on the Charing Cross Road end of town.I just like to get a picture of what's front of store and what's hiding round the back.
Now I'm happy to report that Marie Phillips is the buzzword of the moment.The Gods are Behaving very Badly fantastically everywhere, just everywhere and it's so exciting. Books just flying out of the doors and Marie up into the twenty-somethings on the best seller lists with a first novel in hardback, that is amazing.
Every single shop I went in, Waterstone's, Hatchard's, Foyle's, Blackwell's and Borders had prominent displays and posters catching my eye the minute I walked in the store.All had diminishing stock of signed copies, so I what I want to know is, who is Ma Phillip?
I think Ma Phillip must now be nursing that very welcome trophy, the Author's Ailment.A repetitive strain type injury, possibly a tenosynovitis of the wrist, even having opted for the abbreviated signature that must have meant marathon sessions everywhere but I'll bet Ma Phillip is not complaining.


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