Juxtabook

The Last Bookshop

"One day, a small boy's holographic entertainment fails, so he heads out to explore the streets of abandoned shops outside. Down a forgotten alley he discovers the last ever bookshop... "

The Last Bookshop is a charming short film (20 mins) that imagines a future where physical books have died out. There are some really delightful moments: when the boy first sees the massive wall of books, when he gets lost amongst the shelves, and when he tries to open the book using touch screen movements! What are stories? What are customers? What is money? The boy asks.

I was also amused to see that bookselling attire clearly is not anticipated to change much in the next fifty years! Of course I sit here everyday in tweeds, a tie, and pince-nez!

After a strangly balletic start, the dystopian future plays out in a bookshop ignored by the giant multinational corperation who now owns all the rights to all written words. Provided no money changes hands, the shop is permitted to exist, and the owner becomes oddly threatened by the enthusiasm of his new customer.

The message, I guess, is that we'll get the bookselling and retail future we deserve.

More on Swallows and Amazons and Bunloaf

Having mentioned recently that I had still not read Swallows and Amazons but that I was familiar with the bunloaf mentioned therein, I found myself standing in front of a copy in the town library whilst I was waiting for my daughter and pounced!

I have finally read and thoroughly enjoyed Swallows and Amazons and I have reviewed it on my YA book blog here.

I was glad to see bunloaf mentioned so often but a bit disappointed that there was not a description of it at all. Ah well, you can't have everything...

Much though I loved the book, I do wonder what modern children would make of it, and I muse along those lines in my review. If you've experience of reading with a child or a children's book group, or know a teen who has recently read the book, I would be grateful for any feedback as to its genuine enjoyability for 9-14 year olds, rather than its appeal for middle aged booksellers! The comments are open over there.

Books out and about

My books went for a day out to have their photos taken, just before Christmas. You can see more here in a blog post by the photographer Kathryn on her website. The images will be used for business cards, bookmarks and possibly some cards and postcards. Customers will start seeing them in parcels quite soon!

Janeites

" ‘Jane? Why, she was a little old maid ’oo’d written ’alf a dozen books about a hundred years ago. ’Twasn’t as if there was anythin’ to ’em, either. I know. I had to read ’em. They weren’t adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you’d call even interestin’—all about girls o’ seventeen (they begun young then, I tell you), not certain ’oom they’d like to marry; an’ their dances an’ card-parties an’ picnics, and their young blokes goin’ off to London on ’orseback for ’air-cuts an’ shaves. It took a full day in those days, if you went to a proper barber...'"

The Janeites by Rudyard Kipling

A Beautiful Annotated Edition of Moby-Dick

This is nothing whatsoever to do with my business but I thought the publishing idea so innovative, and the academic worth so tremendous, that I'd share this with you. I know academic Chris Routledge only from twitter and the blogosphere but he has done something quite remarkable in attempting to use Kickstarter to bring a beautifully produced annotated edition of a literary text into being. There is a film about the whys and wherefores of this, and you can pledge funds toward the publication (and receive copies of the book at certain levels of donation) on the Moby Dick Kickstarter page here. I am tempted by the limited edition hardback! I love the cover painting that first appears to be just sky ...

If other academics have similar projects, or new editions coming out with smaller presses that don't have the big publicity machines, then please let me know  and I'll flag up the books in the newsletter. If you're interested in such book news you might want to like my Facebook page where I highlight such things, or sign-up to get my books newsletter.

Booksellers should note that there are a couple of multiple purchase tiers (paperbacks, and limited edition hardback and paperback combo) that are priced for reselling and include a bit of free advertising for indie booksellers who support the project.

 

Best Bib and Tucker

I have recently, for the first time in 12 years, taken some marketing advice about my business. I have, in the way of many second-hand book sellers, muddled through with a mixture of sales on my own site, on the sites of several large household names about which the less said the better, and on smaller multi-seller indie sites like Antiqbook and Biblio (I recommend these latter two). And generally what I did worked. Customers usually responded to what I did and pootled their way towards buying my books. How hard can it be I thought, I used to teach media for heaven's sake! However the downturn combined with the stranglehold of said household names and a chat with, believe it or not, my pilates teacher, sent me in the direction of a wonderful lady called Kathryn who is going to help me make C L Hawley a little sprucer and more able to compete in this big, bad cut-throat world of bookselling, where pootling will sadly no longer work.

Kathryn is not full of marketing speak, she is rather more in the real world, in fact she used to work in two very well known arts organisations, one of which was connected with an author's birthplace museum, and I felt right away that she understood my business. She also takes wonderful photographs. So as part of an image refresh I am having some professional photographs taken of my books for the very first time so that I can supply bookmarks and the like with my books. This is quite an odd feeling as my books are on the whole bought and sold for their content not their looks, however, with much excitement in the bookroom a selection of my more glamorous tomes, plus some of their work-a-day booky relatives have been picked. Whilst I do clean books on their arrival, the photographing meant that an extra spruce was required:

 

The whole process has not been unlike the morning of your child's school photograph! Making sure there's no toothpaste on the cardigan and no cereal on the teeth!

Another local family business, Eastburn Country Furniture, has kindly loaned their premises for the photo-shoot. I shall let you see some of the results when they arrive.

Bunloaf and Swallows and Amazons

My mother is making bunloaf today. We always have bunloaf at Christmas and my mother took over making it from my grandmother about ten years ago. The recipe we have was one my great-grandmother used at home in Liverpool and my grandmother remembered having to carry the heavy loaves on a wooden board to the bakers where they would be cooked. I assume their domestic oven was not big enough.

I thought everybody had bunloaf at Christmas until I grew-up and got about a bit more! Then I realised hardly anyone had heard of it. Every so often I google the term to see if I can find anything else about its origins and today happened across this piece which talks about its presence in Swallows and Amazons, a book I shamefully have never read. Is it true? I do hope so! It would seem from the article's references to the Cumberland coast and the Isle of Man, and my family acquiring the recipe in Liverpool that the Lancashire/Cumberland coast seems to be its main location. Has anyone else heard of it? My mother's version is very similar to the recipe quoted in the article: no eggs and definitelyy no tea or beer.

I have written about (and photographed) bunloaf in the past when writing about J L Carr and edible archaeology.

A Cacophony of Gabble

I've just pootled across this diatribe against blogging book reviews:

"...in our present climate of criticism — a climate in which the Net has spawned a cacophony of gabble impersonating literary comment, palaver and vulgate enough to warp you. Literature has always had its leeches, except now the Net has given every one of them a bog to wiggle around in. This wouldn’t be any more of an issue than it is to ignore the wastrel on the corner dispensing pamphlets on anarchy, but as respectable print publications either prune their space for book commentary or else go extinct altogether, more and more criticism — like more and more of everything else — is migrating to blogs and social media sites. Young or new book readers looking for literary analysis are going to have an increasingly arduous chore of dividing the shit from the serious. Worse, the biddable and ovine will gravitate to the shit because that’s where all the buzzing is. If you’ve ever attempted to read a review on Amazon or on someone’s personal blog, you know it’s identical to seeking relationship advice on the wall of a public restroom."

If this is the best level of analysis the pro-critic can manage, no wonder they're being left behind.

The article is otherwise very good on the subject of The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock. Lubbock's book is so good that I actually stock it (paperback, hardback) - a service probably more useful to Literature than many a bit of jargon laden, theory ridden waffle by a 'critic'!

I shouldn't allow myself to be wound up, but critics are supposed to have high levels of discrimination, and that's what you do online as you should do with print: you discriminate! I have no desire to lump all critics in the same group, and I know most are much more generous and balanced in their assessment of what goes on in the 'cacophony of gabble', indeed, there is probably someone beginning a PhD thesis on the subject of the influence of bloggers on literature as I write!

Juxtabook's Classics Revisited Bookclub

Juxtabook's Classics Revisited Bookclub is a venture that I've been planning for quite a while. I now have an account with a book wholesaler so I can sell new books too. I wanted to combine this with my knowledge of the very long tail of publishing (the one that still swished 100-200 years ago) and offer a subscription Bookclub aimed at solving life's present buying problems!

So, the first Bookclub is one that will focus on less well-known classics: the sort of thing that if you like the Brontes or Dickens will be just your cup of tea, though needless to say those authors won't be on my sending list as their books are too well known. All the books will have had their first publication before 1960. All copies will be new paperbacks.

I'll be offering a choice of 12, 6 or 3 months' subscriptions and the emphasis will be on the fact that this is a present. All the subscriptions will start off with a literary themed present in the parcel along with the book, and with the option of a handwritten card (card not tag) in an envelope with your message, and all the books will be beautifully wrapped, month after month, and then securely packaged. The aim being that your recipient really feels that they are experiencing your present throughout the whole year (or part year if you opt for a shorter subscription).

If you're interested you can see the UK prices here. For other countries I will have to do a quote based on the increased postage. Let me know if you are interested and would like to know the international postage.

There is still time to order a subscription as a Christmas gift and have the first book and literary gift arrive before the big day within the UK. You can of course order for other events and have the gift start in any month of the year. You're also welocme to have the parcels addressed to a couple, not just one person, which can make it more economic.

If you have suggestions that you'd like to add, please let me know.

 

**Edited to add: just in case it isn't 100% clear, although I am best know as a seller of secondhand books, these books supplied through the bookclub will be brand new shiny paperbacks: the contents will be old classics but the books themselves will be new.

Small Kindnesses by Fiona Robyn - free download

Awhile ago I reviewed the utterly charming The Blue Handbag by Fiona Robyn. It has just been re-released with a new title, Small Kindnesses and a lovely new cover.

For today and tomorrow (26th and 27th November) the download is free for Kindle reading click for Amazon UK and Amazon US. You can read more on Fiona's blog. It is well worth getting hold of, as it is the perfect fireside read in this dark, damp weather.

There is a paperback version coming soon too and it will appear here .

Bookselling coincidences

Books of like feather often seem to be sold together. Sometimes the reasons for this are obvious. In January 2006 I found myself selling every copy of a compilation of 'Peter Simple' columns that I had. I then realised that the creator, journalist Michael Wharton, had just died. A writer's death often increases the interest in their work so that is not that surprising. Neither was selling out of copies of Gowk Storm by Nancy Brysson Morrison (excellent Canongate edition introduced by Edwin Morgan) after a particularly good radio adaptation, as such serialisation is bound to bring interest.

What is more odd are the days when I seem to sell on a theme. On one occasion every book sold that day had Marx (or Marxist) in the title, and that kind of thing seems to happen more often than you'd think. The oddest was selling, over the course of 24 hours, three different books on different subjects that all had part of the same painting on the cover: "Coalbrookdale by Night", by Philip de Loutherbourg. You can see it here on one of those books, The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age by E. P. Thompson.

 

Another funny one was selling a book to my childhood home village and a few moments later another book to my husband's childhood home village. Neither village is near here, or near each other.

I suppose a mathematician would say that I am misunderstanding coincidence; that books are complex objects, with so many facets (contents, author, themes, illustrators, design, publisher, country of origin, etc), and the customers too, have lots of features, and that in some of these large lists coincidence is more likely than not amongst the many features. And I guess that's true.

So it is very much a moment of folk wisdom when I look at a day's sales and think, 'How odd!' But it happens a lot.

Hanging on in there

Yet another post apologising for my blogging silence. This last year has not been good for the booktrade. I know of a number of dealers bringing forward their retirements or otherwise moving away from bookselling. C L Hawley is still here and will live to fight another year, but only because I've spent most of the last year fighting for it, and that has sadly left little room for reading, never mind blogging.

Anyway, catching my breath, I finally have time for a few reviews, so November should see some new posts. First up will be a review of Blue Friday by Mike French which is out very soon.

In the meantime it is easier to find time to tweet or add a few lines to the business Facebook page than write a full post on here. You can always catch-up with me there.

A last word should go to my books newsletter - this is now going out once a month with new stock news and discounts, and we also have a book of the month email with a book discounted for one day only. You can sign up here. It goes without saying that your details will never ever be passed on.

Quebec’s Garden of Decaying Books

I imagine many people will have mixed feelings looking at this, a garden where, "As time passed, the some 40,000 books and wood plates making up the walls of their garden have decayed and dissolved, while new life has also found its way in to the space."

In truth booksellers throw out very many books all the time: over-productions, book club editions, the broken spined, the missing paged, etc. I can see no better use for such books than this natural decay that provides both a work of art and a great environment for insects. I know some people can't bear the thought that books should be thrown out (probably the second most thing common customers, who are selling books to me, tell me) and not everyone will like it but I think it is rather charming. What do you think?

You see read more here.

I can across this via my Facebook timeline but I am afraid I can't remember who to thank!

Reading Lists

I came across this great post on "Reading lists and how to wrangle them". The writer said we could share her great flow chart - very useful if you have just received your first reading lists for uni. Hopefully if you click you can enlarge it. You can read the original post here and follow the author on twitter here.

Keeping Up

For the last couple of months we have had our old website still running in tandem with the new one. The time has come to shut the old one for good so if you haven't done so already you might like to bookmark the new one which is here. I am keeping my old email address but apparently something happens behind the scenes as hosting moves which might mean there is a bit of a break in service so if I don't reply to an email please either try again, or contact me via the blog here or twitter or through the new site.

A reminder than you can also like C L Hawley Books on Facebook. Like the Juxtabook blog it is not full of me selling my business (she says, whilst talking about her business!), rather it is hopefully a useful mix of book news and views. As I mentioned on my post about my writing I find writing very hard so it is easier to find time to fit in a tweet or a Facebook post than a full blog post.

And finally to keep with with news on my business (and this is very focused on my bookselling and on literary criticism and biography rather than general news or reviews) you can sign up for my bookshop newsletter here.

What to read over summer

I can across this amazing flowchart via a Facebook post by The London Library. From teach.com it intends to help teens find quality fiction to fit their tastes and help stem the academic regression that happens during the long summer break from school. Anyone feeling the need to brush up on classic or contemporary literature, fiction or non-fiction, might find it useful.

Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online

A New Bookselling Website and a Reading Round-Up

Well, it has been rather a while... and I have really missed blogging. The business has been keeping me busy and one of the reasons for this you can see here - ta daa!!... the new Clhawley.com. This is my new bookselling site thanks to Daniel at Eviam. Most indie booksellers in the world of used and out-of-print books have online shops powered by an American company that used to be independent but is now owned by A... well you can guess who. I have one of those sites too, but I have been looking for something brighter and speedier and easier to use for sometime. My new site is by an independent British developer which, as I am sure you'll agree, is rather more in keeping with being an indie bookseller in the first place! It seems to be running very nicely so far, but if you notice any niggles please let me know.

Whilst working I have of course been reading so by way of a catch-up here are a few thoughts on some of my recent favourites:

The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth is subtitled 'A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language' and that is exactly what it is.  We potter along with Forsyth teasing out the meanings, origins and associations old and new for each word before progressing to another word, like a word-association game with a PhD. Part linguistic treasure chest and part history book it is a delight from start to finish, not that you ever do really finish. I keep picking it up and going round again. I know quite a bit about words, in part because of my academic background, in part because my father collects them like other people collect stamps (actually he collects stamps too), but there was plenty new to me here. Having waded through Paradise Lost as an under-grad I closed my eyes and my mind, I think, to the linguistic richness, and the section on new words by Milton was the one that amazed me the most. How did I miss all that!

I am delighted to see from Icon's catalogue that plopped through my door last week that Mark is doing it all again in the The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language . As many of you no doubt know you can follow Mark via his blog and on twitter.

I have been reading some really good crime fiction recently. Favourites include the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson. Some of the titles have been filmed recently for the ITV series with Stephen Tomkinson , which I enjoyed, but I wish I had found the books first as they are so much better. They are set round here (Yorkshire Dales) and I am very much enjoying the local flavour.

My favourite crime fiction read so far this year though is The Stepmother by Simon Tolkien. Strangely out-of-print I thought this was an utterly engrossing book on both plot and character levels. An MP's second wife is accused of conspiring to murder his first wife setting her husband and his son against each other at the trial. Part conventional detective story, and part coming of age novel, I think The Stepmother captures the difficult relationships perfectly. Tolkien is a lawyer and much of the novel is courtroom based giving it a 'Witness for the Prosecution' layer, but it is so much more than that. I will be hunting down Simon Tolkien's other books. And, yes, he is of that family.

Edited to add: Simon Tolkien is the grandson of J. R. R. Tolkien, and the eldest son of Christopher Tolkien. I've discovered that the reason that The Stepmother appears to be out of print is that it has been renamed Final Witness and it is very much still available in that edition. There are two subsequent books too and you can read more on the author's own website here.

Last up for this little round-up is Promised Land: A Northern Love Story by Anthony Clavane. This is a wonderful book that I can see myself reading and re-reading. It is about football, but that is not the half of it and you should not let the football put you off. Promised Land is a tripart history telling, in lovely old-fashioned narrative style, the story of the arrival and rise and then dispersal of the Jewish community in Leeds; the arrival and rise of Leeds as a large commercial centre and newly minted city and its subsequent fall into depression with the other industrial towns of the north of England, and then its further yo yo economic fortunes; and the arrival and rise (and fall), (and rise), (and fall...) of Leeds United FC.

The author is a former history teacher turned sports reporter so he is well qualified on all counts. He is also a Leeds fan, which if you support any other club can prove to be irritating when he lauds the club known to the rest of us as 'Dirty Leeds'. In that sense the non-football-fan will enjoy the read more! It is however a pretty balanced account, often funny as it details the peculiarities of the managers (Don Revie getting a gypsy in to pee on the corner flags to lift a curse??), and quips that the Jewish support was so large that the Rabbi had them in the morning and Revie in the afternoon, and that's before we start on Brian Clough.

Overall it is a wonderful piece of history covering families, industry, and the wider socio-economic ups and downs of Britain. Much of what happens in football - racism, financial mismanagement, social cohesion, urban planning, stadium architecture - parallels important parts of British life as a whole. I found the chapters on the late Victorian and early twentieth century especially engaging, and if you find the social history of novels of that era fascinating then there is much here for you. Important and interesting, this is definitely not a book to ignore because you don't like football.

The Composites

I've just come across this site The Composites via SimonNRicketts on twitter and I thought you might like it. It is images created using law enforcement composite sketch software and descriptions of literary characters. Which is to say the author's physical description of the character is fed into the software and the resulting image published. I rather liked Tess from Tess of the d'Urbervilles but Edward Rochester (scroll right to the bottom) looks like the missing link. Pinkie Brown and Keith Talent are good ones. You can suggest characters for inclusion too.

Newly in for the TBR pile

My biggest influx of books for my own use (as opposed to stock) is always in December and January. Despite living in a bookshop my favourite presents are still books and with a birthday and Christmas in those months the TBR pile is always teetering at this time of year. I thought I'd share a few of the titles with you.

Firstly, in honour perhaps of Euro 2012, Mr J had a football theme to his present. I do love football (this is not one of those examples of weird male present buying) and these come highly recommended:

J. L. Carr is a favourite with many bloggers I know and I've wanted a copy of How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A.Cup for ages. This is the lovely Quince Tree Press editon. Quince Tree was Carr's own publishing firm and is these days run by his son.

Dirty Leeds is Robert Endeacott's fictional account of the life of a long suffering Leeds United fan and the history of the club through the Don Revie era. This is the first of a trilogy and I am looking forward to it. I know Leeds, the city, well and very much enjoyed David Peace's The Damned Utd . I am NOT a Leeds United fan though and it will be interesting to see if this book can hold the attention of someone whose footballing heart lies at the far west of the M62.

Promised Land: A Northern Love Story by Anthony Clavane is also about Leeds United and strictly speaking it is no longer on the TBR pile, except that it was so good I want to read it again! Fascinating throughout you don't have to like football, and you certainly don't have to like LUFC, to think this is a cracking read. A review will follow soon.

Mr J received one football book of his own The Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches by Jonathan Wilson and I might be having a read of that once he's finished. There'll be plenty of reading time once England are knocked out of the Euros early... I have had a sneaky peak and I loved Wilson's description of trying to finish a finals paper on Old English at super speed so he could make it to watch a match. Rushing your Anglo-Saxon translations, now that's dedication!

Away from football much pleasure is anticpiated from these:

Spurious by Lars Iyer was a present from an old friend Anna from 6th form days. Lars Iyer is a philosopher and this is his first novel though he has another, Dogma out later this year too. Anna reminded me that I met the author over 20 years ago when she brought him to my parents' house for a meal. She and I cooked the meal, my first ever entertaining, and I still have a photograph somewhere of our 18 year olds selves and me with long black hair as opposed to the mid-length stripy badger coloured version I sport these days. A lovely present to get, though a bit nerve-racking in the 'I hope I like it' sense.

The next two I dropped hints for (Mr J is very good with book hints). Steampunk? Well why not? There's a time for everything and this year seemed as good as any for steampunk.This anthology inventively titled Steampunk is edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer.

The Richard Russo, Straight Man, is one I read a glowing review of on someone's blog and now I can't remember where. The majority of my bookbuying is stimulated by Cornflower, Gaskella and ShelfLove but I can't find the Russo reviewed on those sites, so I am afraid I don't know who to credit for this. I remember leaving a comment on whichever blog it was so if you know it was your review please let me know so I can link to it.

Next up are a couple of review copies. I don't get many review copies: 90% of the books that I review I buy new, have in stock secondhand, or borrow from the library. These two I am pleased to get however.

Of the two I am most drawn to The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott. Described as "Little Women meets Water for Elephants" it is the story of three sisters making their way in the world of vaudeville before and during the First World War. It makes me think of the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? though that's not very Little Women.

Another comparision strapline is being bandied about for Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway, in this case "Dickens meets Mervyn Peake", and again how appealing is that? A sneaky pre-read suggests it is going to be just as frenetic, exciting and inventive as other reviews suggest.

And lastly this is a book I bought myself as a birthday treat.

The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 compiled by Carmen Callil and Colm Toibin was reviewed by Dovegreyreader last week. She made it sound very tempting so I let myself be tempted. Despite two degrees and twenty years working with books and readers there are still many, many books in here that I've not read, or thought of reading, or read so long ago I've forgotten. The page per book format feels very luxurious and I enjoyed all the reference sections at the back - gosh it used to feel like this before blogs and wikipedia, browsing a reference book by the fire with a cuppa... I shall be returning to this frequently and it is NOT going to help my ever growing TBR pile one  bit. To be honest though, that's how I like it!

Juxtabook talking Charles Dickens and favourite books on Radio Leeds

I was taken aback by a phone call at 8.20 this morning asking me to go on Radio Leeds to talk about Dickens and my favourite books. With the school run to do before my allotted timeslot I didn't have time to worry about it too much. I had just scampered back through the door when the producer rang and we were off.

So here, in an internet first, the dulcet tones of Juxtabook are available to listen to for the next 7 days on the show dated 07/02/2012 here- I am on after about 24 minutes. I was more nervous listening to it afterwards than during the chat but apart from thinking that I say "lovely" too often it is not too bad for my first ever live interview. I fluffed my opportunity to publicise my website by stumbling over the words at that point so in case you missed it, my site is here!