26Treasures at the NMS

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What can you say about a rock in 62 words?

That was the challenge set by the 26 Treasures Scotland project, a collaboration between the National Museum of Scotland and 26, a not-for-profit group that champions the cause of better writing in all areas of life. The creative response was to an object included in a treasure trail (of 26 objects)

that span Scotland’s story, from its geological roots to its technological future, taking in iconic objects and hidden gems along the way.

The plan is that visitors will use the 26 Treasures as a guide to wind their way around and through the museum galleries. Beside each object and interpretation panel a QR code plays an audio clip of the writer reading their creation piece. My object was the Lewisian Gneiss, the oldest treasure in the collections of NMS, Edinburgh.

On Saturday we went ‘live’ with performances and readings. Listening to each writer introduce their creative pieces and say a bit about their creative process brought another dimension to the project. It was like looking at a painting for the thirtieth time and finding something new. Some of the creative pieces had interesting back-stories, some of the writers made emotional connections to their objects – sometimes, both. It wasn’t so much a case of bringing history alive, but rendering Scottish history anew – looking at it through a fresh angle of perspective and revealing ideas and information long known yet little discussed.

So. Thank you Sara Sheridan, for introducing me to 26 and, with Jamie Jauncey, for sorting out the Scottish strand; thanks also to the NMS staff who worked hard to pull it all together, especially to Claire Allan for ensuring a smooth and well-planned day.

• You’ll find photos on BookRambler Flickr-stream  and the NMS Flickrstream

• You can read the blogposts and listen to readings on the 26 Treasures section of the main NMS website.

The 26 Treasures project this year involved three museums – National Museum of Scotland, the National Museum of Wales and the Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland – together they appear on the 26 Treasures Website.

What has this to do with books, dear Bookrambler, I hear you say…

Breaking News! An exciting development is the proposal to publish all the creation pieces from 26 Treasures 2011 as a collection with Unbound. John Simmons introduces the proposal and the project on the  Unbound website where you’ll also find details about how to vote and lend your support.

Why It’s a Great Time to Be a Reader – The Atlantic

books

Peter Osnos’s recent article in The Atlantic (link below) on books and bookselling flags up the positive results of digital and looks at the publishing world from a reader’s perspective – which makes a refreshing change from all the messages of doom and gloom and ‘death of the book’ that circulate on a daily basis.

Why It’s a Great Time to Be a Reader – The Atlantic.

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Book Launch: How to Make a Golem (and Terrify People), by Alette J. Willis – 2011 Kelpies Prize-winner

Thursday was the launch for this year’s Kelpies Prize-winning book: How to Make a Golem (and Terrify People), by Alette J. Willis (Floris Books)- you might remember, I met Alette at Linlithgow Book Festival.

Imaginatively hosted by Floris Books, the launch was quirky, informal and good-humoured. Importantly,  it was really well-attended.

Well, who could resist the Golem-themed food & drink?

How to Make a Golem (and Terrify People) is Edinburgh-based Alette’s first children’s book. In her introduction, Alette talked about how she’s been writing for ten years working with a critique group online and via skype, but that it was working to the deadline of the Kelpies Prize – from September to February, that gave her the impetus to complete the typescript in just five months.

The story ‘came to her’, she said, while she was sitting with her dog under her favourite tree on Corstorphine hill’ – where some of the action takes place.

How to Make a Golem (and Terrify People) fuses Scottish legend and European folklore and taps into Alette’s academic research on story, identity and ethics as well as her work as a volunteer Talking Trees Storyteller at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Chani McBain of Floris Books said that Golem

won the judges’ hearts with its quirky storyline, engaging voice, sparkling sense of humour — and giant mud monster!

The book is thoughtfully illustrated by  Nicola L. Robinson, who found it  ’very funny’.

Here’s the tempting taster in the publisher’s blurb:

“You think you’re a fairy godmother or something?” I asked.
“Or something,” Michael agreed.
Edda is tired of her nickname, “Mouse”, and wants to be braver. But when her house is burgled on her twelfth birthday, Edda is more afraid than ever. That is until new boy Michael Scot starts school. There’s something peculiar — and very annoying — about know-it-all Michael. He claims to be a great alchemist who can help Edda overcome her fears by teaching her to build a golem.

But surely they can’t bring a giant mud monster to life? Can they?

Check out Alette’s author website for more information about her work with story and as a storyteller.

NOTE: The Kelpies Prize for 2012 is now open for entries. See the website for full details and terms and conditions.

How bookshops can save the world

I was waiting in teen-taxi last night and it was too dark to read so I flicked through the radio stations looking for a distraction, and stumbled across James Daunt spouting forth about bookshops and the physical book. I found myself agreeing with most of what he said.  I started scribbling down words and phrases and getting goosebumps when I realised the truth of what he had to say and how this might connect with my own thoughts about bookshops, libraries, book festivals and reading.

Daunt talked about how chain bookselling had lost its way, been driven by the cheque book and had crushed individuality for the sake of profit. In the long run, he said, this is what had actually driven their customers away. He thought it was time to  restore individuality and engage with local communities. While I didn’t agree with his thoughts on children’s reading, I found points of commonality in what he said: about how some niche bookshops can be intimidating and how supermarkets as bookshops provided a good introduction to books for those people who might never otherwise enter a bookshop.

There’s no denying the appeal of digital, but there’s no human connection involved in one-click book-buying. Because there’s also no denying that people like talking about books, sharing books and meeting authors. Book Festivals and author events are hugely popular for more than just literary bookish folk. So I wondered, what if there was a way to combine selling and reading? What if you could open a space within supermarkets and bookshops and libraries (which are now so much more than simply a place for books) as reading rooms? A space that was open to all to enjoy a book and pass on good reads, somewhere to share the pleasure of reading? And by all I mean EVERYONE, even those who enjoy celebrity hardbacks and trashy novels and for whom kindle means literally to start a fire.

Combine Daunt’s talk with the appalling unemployment statistics and it’s worth exploring how bookshops, libraries and supermarkets can combine somehow to restore a sense of community. Perhaps they could provide commercially-sponsored places where people can test and try books, buy books, read and share stories and even, perhaps, create their own stories.

By this I don’t mean a return to eighteenth-century subscription libraries or circulating libraries where access to books was according to class, wealth and gender, but something more accessible, which will benefit booksellers and readers and also their communities.

I haven’t worked out how this can be done or who might do it or fund it and I know I’m just thinking aloud and probably annoying half the really good, community-based independent bookshops who do cater to all their readers. But I’m sure even they would admit they’d enjoy a return to a time when bookshops were busier and trade was stronger.

Anyway, enough ‘thinking’ – have a listen to JD.

I’ve put  link to the podcast below and in case this doesn’t work I’ve added a link to the BBC4 Four Thought website where you can scroll down and find the James Daunt Podcast.

Intro – “Recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.”

James Daunt issues a ringing defence of printed books, and argues that libraries and local bookshops – the ‘purveyors of the written word’ – are vital social and cultural spaces. Brought in to turn around the Waterstone’s chain of bookshops, he argues that book chains should continue to play a vital role in introducing readers to books, but will only succeed if they re-connect with their communities.

James Daunt Podcast on Bookshops

BBC Radio 4 – Four Thought Website - scroll down to ‘James Daunt’ and play.

 

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PS – I’m sorry about these unruly ads – they’re random and from wordpress not from me

Linlithgow Book Festival

So I’m a bit of a Book Festival Obsessive, as you know. It’s a disease. And when there are two on AT THE SAME TIME and teen-taxi is booked out, well, life gets a bit complicated. What’s a girl to do? Lennoxlove or Lithgae? [or Linlithgow to be correct]. I spent Saturday trying to get away and then finally, set out on Sunday afternoon, hoping to take in a bit of both, to be fair and all that, to get a flavour, a jist of them.

But I was early and dropped into Linlithgow for a plate of soup and ended up staying for the day. So Lennoxlove – sorry – I’ll see you next year.

As book festivals go, Linlithgow is different. It’s not heavily sponsored by big corporations or banks but by local companies and the local council. Run by volunteers, it’s intimate and friendly, open and unstuffy.

The Scotsman profiled the festival ‘curator’, Roy Dalgleish, before the events kicked off on Friday evening. They relate how and why Roy,  a microbiologist, came to inaugurate the book festival. It’s a touching, inspiring story. And one that flies in the face of ”experts’ who’ll tell you that you need a degree in event management and literature to run a book festival. Do read it.  Anyone who’s been to an author event will empathise completely with his description of listening to Doris Lessing at the Edinburgh Book Festival – the place that sparked the idea to bring the experience to his home town.

Originally, I’d planned to bypass Lithgae and come back for the final event – after all, the first two events were for children.

However, best laid plans ‘gang aft agley’… and storytelling is timeless and ageless … and Jill Pattle had set out a tempting selection from The Linlithgow Bookshop and Little Owls Bookshop.

I missed Allan Burnett’s “wickedly entertaining” event – but did catch him signing books in his costumery >>

Lari Don gave an enthusiastic, energetic talk about her newest book, Storm Singing and Other Tangled Tasks. It’s the third in a series of Scottish-set fantasy books about the adventures of Helen, Rona the selkie, and other magical creatures and fabled beasts. An accomplished storyteller, Lari’s talk covered a lot of information about how she wrote, where she found her ideas, the different books she writes and how her fictional stories occupy a space between myth and fable. The audience asked oodles of questions, and she signed lots of books.

Of course, one of the pleasures of book festival-going is that you never know who you might bump into.  I discovered that I was sitting next to Alette Willis, author of How to Make a Golem and Terrify People (Floris Books), and winner of the 2011 Kelpies Prize.

But the main event I was here for and that surpassed all my expectations, was with storyteller  Jess Smith and ‘national treasure’ Sheila Stewart. Well, the hour stretched to an extra half hour of highly entertaining but also powerful balladry mixed in with cheeky anecdotes of the tinker life and memories of the Stewarts of Blair.

So I’d missed the big event at the big house in East Lothian, and I’d missed the ‘big’ authors on Saturday’s programme [Janice Galloway, Tam Dalyell, Christopher Brookmyre, James Robertson AND Kelvin Sewell & Stephen Janis]… but I didn’t feel I’d missed out.  I’ve never been to a book festival quite like Lithgae. 

CFP: Missing Texts Conference, Birkbeck (UoL)

The ‘Fac Simile’ of a manuscript page of the sinner’s memoirs reprinted in the front matter of James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)

I’m tempted by this recent CFP…

MISSING TEXTS: A Conference organised by the Material Texts Network at
Birkbeck, University of London
Saturday June 2, 2012

Call for Papers
The Material Texts Network at Birkbeck convenes and encourages
innovative work on the materiality of texts. We invite 300-word
proposals, from scholars working in any period and discipline, on the
theme of ‘Missing Texts’. Papers might consider

* Texts or works that have been erased, over-painted, defaced,
cancelled, or destroyed
* Missing works that exist only through photographs or other archival traces
* Texts or works that are better known through photographs, and are
themselves rarely on display
* How do we know a text is missing? How do archives record missing
texts? If a missing text must leave a trace to be felt as missing, are
texts ever really missing?
* Texts or works overlooked for ideological, or other, reasons, in
catalogues, inventories, & canons
* The role of missing texts in literary works
* The fetishisation of the ‘missing’ ur-text in textual studies and
editorial procedures
* Pages torn from books, lost quires, blanks, unfilled miniatures,
incomplete jottings on fly-leaves
* Letters, in which only one side of the correspondence is preserved
* The use by authors of the topos of the lost text, the
text-in-the-making, the text-never-finished (‘all this will be
properly explained in our forthcoming masterpiece…’)
* What happens when we find a long-missing text or work? How do we
identify and read it?
* How do scholars address the loss of archives when writing, for
example, histories of African and
Asian nations where there are more Western texts than local ones? What
kind of scholarship develops around these gaps?
* How do missing texts relate to redactions?
* Why do texts go missing in archives? What are the historical moments
of great archival loss (for example, the archives destroyed in the
1755 earthquake of Lisbon, or the losses in German libraries during
the World War II)
* Are texts more likely to go missing in particular media (manuscript
more than print? Print more
than digital?)
* Can a text ever go missing in the digital world?

Please send 300-word proposals (for a 20 minute paper) and a brief CV
to Dr Adam Smyth (adam.smyth@bbk.ac.uk) and Dr Gill Partington
(g.partington@bbk.ac.uk), by 1 February 2012.

Dead Money by Ray Banks

Review: Dead Money, by Ray Banks (Blasted Heath)

ISBN: (epub) 978-1-908688-04-0 (Kindle) 978-1-908688-03-3

“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”  — Paul Newman

Alan Slater is an affront to double-glazing salesmen everywhere. Alongside the usual display of dubious sales techniques, he physically abuses potential customers, takes drugs, drinks to excess, gambles, cheats on his wife; you’d like to think he gets everything he deserves. He definitely deserves Les Beale, his worse than bad friend who hooks him into a shady poker game which turns into a real-life game of truth or consequences. Trying to out-cheat the cheaters, as Paul Newman could have told them, is a fool’s game and these two are Class ‘A’ fools.

Dead Money is a highly entertaining, quick read; a noir-dime novel updated for the 21st Century. The opening fizzles under Slater’s gaze around the ironically-named ‘Palace’ interior:

I turned to ARFour, which had been doing its spuds all night thanks to the man sweating at the end of the table. He was two-belts fat and he had a habit of pushing his long grey hair back until it was slick to his head. When the dealer spun up, the fat man’s eyes went from ball to layout and he became a child deep in thought, the tip of his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. Deliberating, digesting and cogitating, just like they used to do on Masterchef.

But, just as the luck of the fruit machine turns with the nudge of the wheel, poker on the turn of a card, so Slater’s luck turns. His mood changes as his role of spectator turns to hunted man and his ability to crack one-liners gets lost in the rising panic. The outcome and how we feel about Slater also changes with his luck. Banks pulls off quite a feat. In creating an anti-hero with whom we side, even as we abhor what he does and everything he stands for, he dispels the oft-repeated nonsense that you need a likeable protagonist to enjoy a story.

It’s not perfect, by any means. It could be tighter and ten pages shorter but it rings so true in character and atmosphere that you’ll be unsticking your sole from the carpet as you press the button two stops after you were supposed to get off.

Dead Money by Ray Banks is one of five titles released [as e-book and Kindle version] under the new digital imprint Blasted Heath which launches on 1^st November.

And while you’re clicking that mouse, check Ray Banks’s blogpost over at The Saturday Boy on what Lee Childs thinks of Dead Money

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UPDATE – SORRY ABOUT  THE POP-UP ADS – THEY’RE NOT CONNECTED TO BOOKRAMBLER 

The Literary Tourist

I tripped over  Literary Tourist , Nigel Beale’s website at the weekend – do take a look. Full of interesting bookish links to talks, bookshops and events, fairs and writers’ workshops, with a flickr photo-stream of bookish pics, it opens up the literary landscape.

It’s not afraid to put it out there that books are worth talking about, reading and preserving, not just conserving or selling, though that’s there too.

I love the unstuffy but knowing tone; the sheer pleasure of bookishness oozing out is intoxicating. I want to hop on a plane this morning and go to Boston to browse the bookshelves and wallow in the atmosphere of Brattle Books.

The listing of UK [English] bookshops is pretty sparse just now as the focus is on US and Canada, but it’s exciting to imagine a global literary tourist and the possibilities open to small presses and virtual presses to make fruitful connections with bookshops and readers …

The Sense of an Ending

The sun is glorious today. Almost as if it’s the last bright showing before late dark mornings and early dark evenings squeeze it to wintry dullness. An autumnal gold, which, in a few days will turn to rust.

There’s a sense of an ending in the air…

… a day fit for ManBooker Prize-winner Julian Barnes to contemplate his fourth-time-lucky-overnight success and cheque for £50,000.

Anita Brookner, who won the Booker Prize in 1984 with Hotel du Lac, has the best review of The Sense of Ending to be found online.

A master on a master, Brookner writes:

It would be a mistake to dismiss this as a mere psychological thriller. It is in fact a tragedy, like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which it resembles. [...] Its effect is disturbing – all the more so for being written with Barnes’s habitual lucidity. His reputation will surely be enhanced by this book. Do not be misled by its brevity. Its mystery is as deeply embedded as the most archaic of memories.

A worthy winner then, in the end, after all the huff and puff and stramash around whether the judges had ‘dumbed-down’ the prize with their short-list of popular and populist fiction.

It’s worth reading the whole review to get a sense of how Barnes controls his fiction. Worth seeking out the book too, in hardback.  In his acceptance speech, Barnes praised his book designer and drew attention to the physical quality of it as object and textual delight: a thing of beauty, he said.

Brookner’s review is in  The Telegraph.

Q & A with Ian Rankin

Q & A with prize-winning Scottish author Ian Rankin

Writing professionally since the 1980s, there’s not much we don’t already know about Ian Rankin or his writing. His best-selling Inspector Rebus novels are published in 22 different languages across the globe and more recently he’s started writing about a new kind of crime-fighter in DI Malcolm Fox of The Complaints (Internal Affairs).

You can find all you need to know about Ian on his Official website: biography, the books that inspired him, his writing life and love of music – you can even follow a map to ramble around Edinburgh in Rebus’s footsteps.

There’s a nice Q&A on Waterstone’s author page too:  where we find out that Ian’s favourite word is ‘lacrosse’…

… so, it’s almost impossible to find out something we don’t already know.

Or is it?

I caught up with Ian between events on the book-launch tour for The Impossible Dead.

J:-      The Impossible Dead is set in contemporary Scotland with much of the plot looking back to the social and political scene of the 1980s, the same time that you published your first novel, The Flood. If you could travel back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self?

IR:-    Don’t drink so much.  A lot of blank spaces back then where memories should be.  Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember all the domestic Scottish terrorism that was going on.  A lot of the period 1980-85 seems to have passed me by.

 

J:-       Who would you invite to your Come Dine with Me Dinner and what would you serve them?

IR :-   I watch that show.  I’m not a great cook but I do have a few ‘bankers’.  Maybe a rich beef and wine stew.  Or a chilli con carne.  Plenty of good white and red wine.  To start: smoked salmon.  Cheese and oatcakes for afters.  Around the table would be arranged Robert Louis Stevenson (so I can ask him about the first draft of Jekyll and Hyde – the one he’s supposed to have thrown on the fire), Frank Zappa (he might even play a few licks – I never got to see him in concert), and Billie Holiday.       

 

J:-        Your house is on fire! Your family and record collection are safe but you only have time to save one book – what is it?

 IR:-    My 1st edition hardback of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. My wife bought it for me when I was doing my PhD on Spark.  Many years later, I met the lady herself and she signed it for me.  (At the risk of getting a hand singed, I might also grab my signed and dedicated copy of Keith Richards’ Life in passing…)

 

J:-      The Impossible Dead is set outside of Edinburgh and nicely opens up the possibility of taking the Malcolm Fox series across Scotland. You’ve visited bookshops and book festivals in all the major Scottish towns and I wonder, which Scottish town have you always wanted to visit but haven’t yet found the time?

IR:-    I’ve visited most of them, at one time or another.  But I’ve never been to the Outer Hebrides… so maybe Stornoway.  Also, I visited Falkland once (when I was in primary school) and I keep meaning to go back.  Johnny Cash claimed he had roots there, you know.

 

J:-        I love the new covers! The whole back catalogue has been rebranded. How much input did you have on the final result?

IR:-     I once tried designing my own book jacket  -  it was for the original hardback of Strip Jack.  Orion went along with it and it was terrible (basically a Lion Rampant flying from the Houses of Parliament).  I’m useless at that kind of thing, so I usually go along with the opinion of people who are paid to come up with the right visual treatment.  It is frustrating that if you get a really great look, it only stands out from the crowd for a year or two, because people start to copy aspects of it.  Orion showed me various possible jacket looks, and we did discuss it a little.  I’m happy with the outcome.

J:-       If you were paper what would you fold yourself into?

IR:-    I’d fold the paper in half, then in half again, and cut the edges to make an eight-page blank book, ready to be filled with cartoons, drawings, and lines of text.

 

The Impossible Dead (Orion) is published on 13^th October