Thursday, November 30
THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 30 Nov 2006 18:54 GMT
CHAPTER TWO
THE STONE GETS UNDER OLLY`S FOOT
He didn`t know what he thought about Gullywith because he hadn`t actually seen it. Mum and Dad had seen it, twice and Lula had seen it because she couldn`t be left behind but when they had travelled up, first to view the farm and then to attend the auction, it had been term time and Olly had gone to stay with Jamie Coombes on the other side of Wigwell Avenue, at number 115. He sometimes did. He liked it, and the fact that his parents had gone 300 miles first to look at a house and later to bid for it at an auction had not made a very strong impact on his mind. If he thought about it at all it was to assume firstly that it was just another of his Dad`s mad ideas, secondly that they wouldn`t like the place and, when it seemed that they did, that they wouldn`t succeed in buying it.
When they came back the first time they had brought a DVD which the agents had made, ‘for serious prospective purchasers,’ Mum said. Olly had turned the thin plastic box over in his hand. Coopers, Arch and Dunne, Estate Agents.
Gullywith Farm was written on the label in green ink.
‘Want me to put it on ?’
‘Can I look at it later ?’
‘Why don`t you want to look at it now ?’
Olly had not been able to say why he didn`t but he didn`t. He needed a particular time to look at it and when that came he would know.
It came in the middle of the night.
Number 58 Wigwell Avenue was quiet and still and the minute Olly woke, he knew that it was because the right moment had come. He slid out of bed and very carefully down the stairs. He didn`t need to put on any lights until he had got into the den where the television was, and closed the door.
The quality of the DVD was not very good and it only lasted for eight minutes but it was enough. He saw everything. The lane leading down. The broken gate. The muddy track. The yard. The derelict cowsheds. The barn with the door swinging open. The empty chicken run.
In the background you could just make out the face of a steep hill.
The house had a wavy roof and looked as if it might collapse in on itself any minute. When the camera went inside it was difficult to make out much. It was dim and spidery and empty and the stairs tipped to the left. The windows were scummed over with greenish dirt.
Olly watched the DVD twice right through and when he had finished and turned off the television, he sat thinking for a long time. He was pretty sure they would never actually move to Gullywith, just as they had never moved to Brighton or Norwich or the small and remote Scottish island.….
He knew what he would feel about leaving 58 Wigwell Avenue if they ever did, because that feeling was the same whenever his mother came up with one of her mad ideas. This was home, it had always been home, everything he knew was here, he never wanted to leave it and if he had to he would miss it. He would not cry or throw a tantrum but he would feel lost inside, as if a bit of him had been cut out.
But what he would feel about another place, wherever it was, he had no idea and he didn`t try to guess or imagine it. It wasn`t going to happen anyway.
He put the DVD back into its sleeve, left it on the top of the television where he had found it and went quietly out into the hall but as he did so he felt a sharp pain in the sole of his foot, which made him let out a yelp. Olly froze. The yell sounded bloodcurdling through the whole house but to his surprise, no one seemed to have heard it. The doors stayed closed and the lights stayed off. Olly hopped about, holding his foot. Then he bent down to see what he had dug into it.
On the hall floor was a small round stone. Olly picked it up. He did not notice the odd marks scratched on its surface. He went very cautiously back up the stairs to his bedroom, where he put the stone down on the table beside his bed and forgot all about it.
Wednesday, November 29
THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH. CHAPTER ONE
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 29 Nov 2006 21:04 GMT
THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH
CHAPTER ONE
TWO EMPTY HOUSES AND A SMALL STONE
Number 58 Wigwell Avenue was disappearing.
Olly Brown looked out of the back window of the car as they moved away from it, further and further, until they were almost at the end where Wigwell Avenue joined North London Road.
Now he couldn`t see the front door of their house. Now he couldn`t see the gate. Now he couldn`t see the roof. Now…
“That`s it, ’ Pete Brown said. ‘Goodbye, 58 Wigwell Avenue and goodbye London.’
‘Yaay’ Helen Brown raised her arm.
‘Bye-bye, bye-bye.’
Olly`s baby sister Lula waved at the windows.
Olly went on looking as they left everything behind. Now the supermarket. Now the newsagent. Now the bus shelter. Now the library. Now the gates of the M.L.P, short for Muddy Little Park.
The car picked up speed and he turned round before he started to feel sick. But he kept his eyes closed and behind his eyes he saw Number 58 Wigwell Avenue, the house he had lived in for his whole life. It looked the same in the picture behind his eyes. But it wasn`t. It would never be the same again. Their furniture had gone. Lula`s finger paintings had been taken down from the kitchen walls leaving tiny bits of blue tack, and some fluff from what had been the space under his bed had rolled up against the skirting board. The old rabbit hutch and Lula`s broken buggy were on the skip outside.
Number 58 Wigwell Avenue was empty. When Dad had banged the door shut for the last time it had sounded weird and hollow.
Empty. It would be empty until the Mackenzies arrived to live in it.
‘Bye bye,’ Lula was leaning over to poke Olly in the ear. ‘Bye bye.’
He couldn`t go on pretending to be asleep for much longer but he knew that when he did open his eyes, something would have happened- something would have gone click and that would be that. Number 58 Wigwell Avenue would no longer be part of his life or of him, not even as a picture behind his eyes.
He opened them.
In the empty house called Gullywith, three hundred and nine miles away, things were the same as they had been for a very long time, except that a small window in the attic which had been slightly ajar was now closed, the door on the barn which had always swung open was now shut and padlocked, the old water trough which had been full of black rainwater topped with green slime was now empty and a tap on the wall which had always dripped did not drip any more.
Little things like that.
There was something else, too, something you could not quite put your finger on. The house seemed to be listening, and watching out and waiting. The empty kitchen waited. The staircase waited. The grey slates on the roof waited. And every so often the house made a slight sound, like the sound of a person who has been deeply asleep and is beginning to stir.
It was a grey, dull, still sort of day, but from time to time, a mean, warning wind came from nowhere to blow through the rooms, in and out of each one by turns
Then, a small stone, scratched with peculiar marks, appeared on the attic landing. It was still for a moment, and then it began to roll towards the staircase and then to drop down, step by step, making a series of hard, purposeful, little sounds which echoed through the house. When it reached the first landing it rolled again and descended the second staircase, the one with the treads that tipped to the left, and so on until it dropped down the last step onto the floor of the dark hall. The flags were uneven and broken in a couple of places, with deep cracks, but the stone rolled on across them as if it were rolling over silky smooth marble, until it reached the kitchen door, which was closed.
Almost all the doors in Gullywith had spaces beneath them to let the draughts in, but the kitchen door was pressed tight to the ground, too tight for water or a draught to get underneath.,
The stone lay flat and still. It seemed to be gathering itself.
SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 29 Nov 2006 19:34 GMT
I said I would write about Joseph Roth again and I will, but not tonight. There is something else. Amusingly, I was accused by a writer in The Observer of being 'so prolific as to be positively incontinent' which I have taken as a compliment. (Think of Mozart and Bach..) But I do occasionally get very stuck. I dislike the expression 'writer`s block' - which is often worn as a badge - being stuck will do fine and I have been stuck over the latest Simon Serrailler crime novel for a while now, mainly, I think, because I set myself a particularly complicated task and am now in the middle of it and trying to get out of a roll of barbed wire without any cutting equipment. Thrashing around does no good, you only cut yourself... But a very good tip I have applied for years is that when you are stuck, you don`t struggle on with whatever it is, you start something new, something completely different. By the time you have finished that, you may well come back to the barbed wire entanglement and discover that it has smoothed itself out in your absence.
So I have set Simon Serrailler aside. I have started something else.
When my daughters were young, I wrote a dozen or so children`s books for them, mainly picture books and stories for children up to about 6 or 7. But although they grew up I did not.. in that, I never thought of writing a children`s book for 8 or 10 or 12 year olds. I don`t know why.
But now, with the girls safely out of the way at 29 and 21, I have begun one, for, roughly, ages 7-11 or thereabouts. And I decided to do something different with it, at least initially.
I am going to put the first four chapters, one by one, up here on the blog. And then no more. And I would love feedback, not from adults, but from 7-11 year olds - even though some of them may send their comments via their grown-ups.
I would like answers to the following questions.
1. Have you enjoyed this chapter ?
2. Would you like to read more ?
Reasons why, whether yes or no, would be helpful too.
The aim is to do some market research, to give the story a test-run.. but also, I confess, to whet some appetites.
The book is called
THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH..
and Chapter One will be posted later tonight. Feel free to print it off and pass it round.
BRAINSTORMING DAY
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 29 Nov 2006 08:51 GMT
It is what we are having today. Three of the Long Barn Books Editorial Board and I are here in the Gloucestershire rural wilderness having a day planning and thinking ahead. People are to come up with bright ideas so that other people can demolish them, suggestions as to entirely new things never been done before in the history of the book will be bandied to and fro and generally we hope to come out of it, after an excellent pub lunch, with grand plans. All of which means that I won`t write the blog proper until later this evening, when my hot, exhausted brain has recovered from being stormed.
I am going to write again about the man I am so often writing about.. Joseph Roth. I was delighted to see that in The Spectator Books of the Year, Anita Brookner, another of my favourite writers, chose a new edition of some of Roth`s journalism from the 30s. The same book is on my own list, to be written about here. He is such an important figure, one of the greatest of European writers from the 20th century, that I will never apologise for returning to him because I am on a mission to persuade everyone to buy him and read him and enrich their lives.
I will be putting my money where my mouth is again and buying some of his books to give away, so intent am I on making converts.
More after the brains have stormed.
Tuesday, November 28
LITERARY PAGE REVIEWERS AND BOOK BLOGGERS.. THE LAST WORD
by
Susan Hill
on Tue 28 Nov 2006 08:55 GMT
I hope. For anyone who has been following this rather protracted debate, there is a piece of excellent good sense - as you would expect - written by the Blogger-guru Norman Geras, over on normblog.typepad.com today. He is eloquent, sensible and .. right.
But maybe we should all shut up now and get on with something constructive, like reading books and reporting on the best of them.
Or, as the saying is, 'move on.'
But do read Norm, whose blog I recommend in general, though it is often about world events and international politics, which do not greatly interest me. He writes on other things sometimes though, as today - and as we speak is in Australia for 7 weeks, following the Ashes around. As he supports Australia, he`ll be enjoying himself.
http://normblog.typepad.com
Monday, November 27
THERE`S RUDE AND THEN AGAIN..
by
Susan Hill
on Mon 27 Nov 2006 12:20 GMT
there is as rude as this. There are times when I am sorely tempted to break my rule about not naming and shaming.
thanks to your book i had some wondful sleep in the...what? 8 weeks it took me to read 1 dull chapter. without doubt the most boring book ive read and i look forward to you sending me some money for the time of my life you have wasted thx
Sunday, November 26
FOR THE STUDENT CALLED CAMI..
by
Susan Hill
on Sun 26 Nov 2006 22:53 GMT
A student signing in as Cami wrote a question in the comments section of the student area n I`M THE KING OF THE CASTLE, on November 3rd but for some reason I didn`t pick up on it until tonight. I have now put up a reply and apologise for the delay.. I always try to answer and don`t usually take 3 weeks about it.
BOOKS OF THE YEAR CONTINUED
by
Susan Hill
on Sun 26 Nov 2006 21:48 GMT
Still with non-fiction, I buy everything new about Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury except the more way-out American academic theses, so VIRGINIA WOOLF AND VANESSA BELL. REMEMBERING ST IVES by Marion Dell and Marion Whybrow, was a must. It is a most handsome book with a glorious painting not by Vanessa but of St Ives by Claude Berry from 1910. On the front flap, Helen Dunmore has written in praise of the book and sums the whole up perfectly in a brilliant observation that 'St Ives was always Virginia`s Land of Lost Content.' It haunted her throughout her life and runs like a thread through her work, reaching its culminating portrayal in To the Lighthouse.
I hope that those who may still be doing the Woolf for Dummies night class will read this book - it will enrich their reading, fill in some background, answer some questions and provide some explanations as well as give the most enormous pleasure.
JUST THE SORT OF BOOK I NEEDED
by
Susan Hill
on Sun 26 Nov 2006 21:37 GMT
This bronchitis has taken its toll and the mega-strength antibiotics which have finally seen it off have extracted most of the fizz and buzz out of me so that I have felt like something flattened against the pavement. I have slept for England during the last few days but today I felt like reading a good book. And of course my general state of irritability meant that nothing would do. Then I remembered Richard Russo. I had never read any and various people had told me that I must, so I bought two or three, more or less at random and this morning, picked up NOBODY`S FOOL. It is exactly right. I have a taste for novels about small-town America, ditto films. Russo writes with wonderful empathy and wit which is never scouring about the inhabitants of New Bath, which has given way in popularity and importance to somewhere called Schuyler Springs and is now generally faded and fading more. The characters are what make the book. There is plot but it ambles and you are not reading it as you read a thriller. It is a warm book but it is not sentimental, easy to read but extremely well written, sharp where it needs to be but ultimately firmly on the side of the small people.
I will be reading more of Richard Russo though I think he is someone to be taken occasionally, not a book-after-book read. If you have not yet tried him, do. If he is already your best friend, forgive me but isn`t it good to find a brand new-to-you writer with a row of as yet unread books to which to look forward ?
Saturday, November 25
UPDATE ON SOMETHING MORE SERIOUS
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 25 Nov 2006 21:36 GMT
The Michael Mayne books are now here so I am going down the list of those who asked for one and sending them off next week - until I run out. But I bought 20 so we should be fine.
IL DIVO. ALMOST FORGOT
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 25 Nov 2006 21:35 GMT
They sounded absolutely fantastic.. but I really don`t like those Mafia-looking Italians.. too greasy. But they turned that song into something else.
X-FACTOR RESULT
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 25 Nov 2006 21:33 GMT
I think that was about right. I loathe Ben but I can see that he may be to other people`s liking and he certainly has some talent. Eton Road had fallen apart and Louis is all talk - he`ll find some way of wriggling out of signing them. So we have
Ben
Leona
Ray
and OMG, the Macdonalds.
Final =eeek. I just wouldn`t like to call it.
THE X-FACTOR UPDATEPhew
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 25 Nov 2006 19:57 GMT
Phew. Dancing to the jailhouse rock makes you puff.
OK. I`m sorry but Ben is truly awful. One of the worst things is that he is ugly, really ugly, with that nutcracker profile and the hair, but the most worst, as the children used to say, is his voice and the way he all but swallows the mike. I had to turn him down. I hope he goes.
Eton Road.. why did they start off so well at the beginning of this contest and then start to come apart ? They came aparter tonight - lots of wrong notes too.
Leona. I knew they give her that song sooner or later and she did it well. But it`s a Dolly Parton song, she made it, and anyone who knows me knows what I think about DP... think Heroines. I liked Leona tonight but she didn`t have the Wow factor.
The Macdonalds.. well , eat, my and words spring to mind because they suddenly moved up several notches. They are still not winners but they were so improved, more polished, less stiff and dull.
and little Ray. Bless. I mean how could you not love him ? And who was it said, he was fearless.. it`s true. Both those songs could have finished him but he took them on and won. He`s little and sweet and I can`t see him winning but it was great.
I think Eton Road and Ben should be at the bottom tonight and E.R. have gone as far as they can and should do off with them.
HELP ! LOOK AT THE TIME. LOW BROWS GATHER ROUND, IT`S THE X FACTOR
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 25 Nov 2006 18:57 GMT
Sorry, sorry, what was I thinking ?
OK, if the Macdonalds don`t go tonight I.. no, I won`t, they`ll probably stay, why bother with idle threats.
I`m off to see. More anon.
Friday, November 24
IN CASE YOU THINK I NEVER PUT UP THE NICE ONES...
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 24 Nov 2006 18:29 GMT
In among the 67 e-mails from students today came this one. Not entirely sure what he means by the book being self-centred but never mind, it makes a change ...
Hi Susan, Im from Argentina and Im 18 years old. I red your book (Im the king of the castle) and it was so good, very interesting, I found a little sad and self-centered, but I liked it. Now I have an oral exam and I have to explain this book and other 3. Congratulations for the book. Goodbye.
THEY COME FROM ANOTHER PLANET
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 24 Nov 2006 18:20 GMT
I was looking up the details of a book for older children on amazon, which is handy for all the facts and figures, and I then trawled down to the reviews of said book. I don`t rate all amazon reviews by any means and I think they need to keep a more careful check on them but they can be helpful.. I have more often been put on by an enthusiastic review from a reader on there than I have been put off by a bad one.
The reviews for this book are all bad, so all-bad that I think it really must be the book not the one-sided reviewers. But I came upon one which I copy below, and which makes me despair about the paranoia of some would-be but so far unsuccessful writers. We have all heard that it isn`t what you write it is who you know, who you`re married to, de blah de blah which will get your book to the attention of/taken on by an agent/publisher. It`s always rubbish and we are all saying so constantly but the belief that you can only get published if you have 'contacts' will never go away.
This one though was pretty laughable. Read it carefully, you aspiring writers in order to understand that what you have to do to get published by a smart firm is, ahem, know PERSONALLY one of their retired employees. So cultivate those men in the packing room at HarperCollins, buy that Random House receptionist lunch, give a lift to that chef in the canteen at Canongate, so that the nano-second they retire you can hand them your so-far failed manuscript and Bob will be your uncle.
If it were not so depressing it would be hilarious. It`s probably both.
I found it beyond my comprehension that Faber published it at all - until I read that a retired Faber employee is personally known to the author. Eureka!
The best thing that I can say about this book is that it has encouraged me to return to my own writing with renewed optimism!
Thursday, November 23
GOOD THINGS IN SMALL PACKAGES
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 23 Nov 2006 16:50 GMT
I hope Helen Simpson never writes a novel. I think I mean that. If she had mean to be a novelist she would have done it by now though I am sure she has been under publisher-pressure for a long time. But she has resisted. She goes on doing what she started by doing so brilliantly and continues to do ditto, even if short story collections never sell as novels sell. Hers probably do fine but as I know myself, the sales are way down the half-yearly Royalty Statements, below the full-length things. Yet there is nothing more satisfying to write, nothing at all -no, probably poetry is, but I have never written that so in my book, it is a short story. They are hellishly difficult. Why everyone starts by writing them when they are so hard and there is precious little market for them beats me but maybe the think they`re easy because they`re short - like picture books for children. Ha.
Constitutional is the latest Simpson collection and it is not as consistently good either as her last and very best, Hey Yeah Right, Get a Life.. tone or two lack an edge, the opening story lacks an ending. It just stops. I read it three times. It builds up beautifully, everything is pinned down in a few, perfectly chosen words, there is far far more bubbling below the surface than we are told - you have to work when reading a good short story. And then it just stops and I cannot work out quite why. Otherwise, this collection pins down life as it is, life as it is for women, ordinary and usually younger middle class women, with husbands and houses and children and trips to Waitrose and other similar women to meet for coffee, and it pins them down mercilessly and yet tenderly. It pins them down to deal, in the midst of the organic meat aisle and the large Lattes, with death. This book is full of death, stalking behind the woman with the shopping trolley, sitting between the children in the back of the 4x4 on the school run, death from cancer, death from casual accidents, slow death, quick death. And the rest. This is true, you think, this is what it is like. Her writing is never flashy but occasionally you come upon something breathtaking. ' My mind had been behaving like a bonfire, feed it a dry and crackling little worry and it would burst into flame.'
I don`t know anything about Helen Simpson, which means she gets on with it and doesn`t waste time on the froth. I have no idea what she looks like or what her opinions are. I just have her stories.
Which is fine. Absolutely, completely, totally and utterly fine. Better than.
SCHOOL STUDENTS PLEASE READ THIS.. AND ANYONE ELSE COME TO THAT
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 23 Nov 2006 10:28 GMT
It may well be because I am recovering from bronchitis and feeling rough but I really lost it this morning. I think I am usually patient with students and try and help when I can. BUT this was one e-mail too far. I am copying it here and copying my reply. I know very well that a lot of you are polite, work hard and try and I am happy to both encourage and give information and guidance. But please take on board what I have said here. If people write to me in this rude and casual way as if I were some sort of slave, I will cease to reply to any student requests or to run the sections on my website for students and set books. There is a limit.
Iam doing my Gcse's and the assignment I have to do it is based on the women in black. I would be grateful if you cound answer my question. Could you please tell me what was the difference and common thing in women in black compared with other writer's ghost stories?
Hello
Just stop and re-read at what you wrote to me. I am the author of the book and you are asking me to do your school work for you ! No, I could not do that, You do not impress me from the start by getting the title of the book wrong.
Go away and read it. Then read as many other ghost novels/stories as you can - and I mean READ, not flick about Google trying to find synopses. Select, say, three and read them, Then look to see what they have in common with The WOMAN in Black, and what is different. Make a list as you go along.
I am sorry if I seem harsh but how on earth are you going to receive any form of education and benefit from it if you simply ask someone else by a casual e-mail, to do your work for you ? How are you going to get on in life come to that ?
It would be a courtesy if nothing else to address me by my proper name and to make sure you have the title corectly down. I know an e-mail is not a formal letter and that`s fine but you show an impolite attitude. Now go and do some work yourself !!
Good Luck
Susan Hill
THE WORDS THEY USE
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 23 Nov 2006 09:37 GMT
My friend Philippa, who pops in here from time to time, has a rising 16 year old son and occasionally updates me on the ever-moving stream that is the words used by the young. Just about everybody over 40 now know that 'wicked' does not mean wicked when you are between, what, 8 and 18 ? (when does it start and stop ? Grey area...) But we cannot keep up with the new uses for old words among the young and by the time we have taken them over everything has moved on. It fascinates me. I am not a pedant about language or punctuation - so long as, especially in the case of the latter, the meaning is not made obscure or confusing by the way something is spelled or punctuated, I think there are other more serious things to worry about. Especially in e-mails, texts and other rapid forms of informal communication short cuts and so forth are fine - we generally understand. In printed books and papers it is a different matter. Don`t ask why, it just is.
But the young.. I often think about this. What else could pass so rapidly round thousands of young people as a new meaning for a word unless it is a new tune ? It`s like fire. Who first used the word wicked to mean 'wicked !' and how did it move with the speed of light from this one person to every young person in the country ? Why did it ? Why did another new use of a word not do the same? I love it. It is amazing. Language is the most extraordinary, flexible, creative, complex, malleable, living thing we have apart from life. Words. Sentences. Phrases. New meanings. Language as in linguistics can be a dead and a cold dull subject, like statistics. But look at language another way and it is one of the wonders of the world. No - THE wonder.
The latest new use of an old word Philippa told me about was for 'Rinsed.'
What does 'rinsed' now mean among the young ? Answers on a postcard.
Wednesday, November 22
DOWNLOADS FOR I-POD NOW AVAILABLE
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 22 Nov 2006 09:27 GMT
STUDENTS in particular. You can now purchase I`M THE KING OF THE CASTLE and THE WOMAN IN BLACK for download onto your i-pod. They are available from audible.co.uk and any moment now there will be a direct link to click from both of my websites which will take you straight to the site. I have been asked for these so many times over the last year and here they are. Both books are well read by Paul Ansdell and I think listening to them, especially for those students who do find it difficult to take everything in from the text itself, is very helpful. When I was doing A levels I had a tape recorder and taped myself reading a lot of my set poetry and some key chapters of novels and by listening often, as well as reading, I found it especially helped me to remember quotations and to imprint things deeply onto my mind - so much so that I can still remember quite a lot of it ! This is not just a case of me trying to make money by selling you things - I will make a tiny bit of course. It will go to pay for the upkeep of the website. I do think it will help a lot of students doing the books. Listening is not a substitute for reading, it`s an extra. But for dyslexic students in particular listening will be especially useful and it was the parents of some with dyslexia who first asked if the books could be made available in this way.
THE WOMAN IN BLACK is also available as a CD version - but not I`M THE KING OF THE CASTLE.
Tuesday, November 21
DON`T YOU JUST LOVE THEM...
by
Susan Hill
on Tue 21 Nov 2006 18:59 GMT
I sometimes fantasise about what would have happened if I`d been able to send e-mails to Thomas Hardy or Keats or John Donne or my other O level set-book authors - and how they would have replied.
Here`s the latest. (They always assume I`m able to work out which book they mean by some psychic process..)
Your books a hard one to chew! But it was worth it, if i didn't have to analyse every word i would have thoroughly enjoyed it! Well done, quite thought provoking.
A COUGHING, SNEEZING, ESSAY WRITING SILENCE.
by
Susan Hill
on Tue 21 Nov 2006 17:55 GMT
The essay is about the 12th century Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx and whether he was primarily a monk or a man of affairs and it is well under way, punctuated by the coughs and sneezes of a miserable cold, so there is radio silence for the nonce. I started to read WINTER IN MADRID and couldn`t get on with it, started to read EMPIRE FALLS and couldn`t get on with it but when I started to read RIGHT HO, JEEVES and couldn`t get on with that either, I decided the fault, dear Brutus, lay not in the books but in ourself.
Monday, November 20
LATEST BOOK-BUYING SPREE
by
Susan Hill
on Mon 20 Nov 2006 14:30 GMT
I had better omit the titles of 3 of them as they are Christmas presents and you never know who might be trying to find out what they are getting from this blog.
Otherwise, these are all for me, me, me. Bought from two independent bookshops, Crockatt and Powell and Mr Nic`s Book Emporium, Amazon and Gardners wholesalers - I like to spread my credit card around a bit.
In no particular order.
Constitutional, the latest short story collection from the brilliant Helen Simpson. People keep asking her to write a novel. I hope she never does. This what she should be doing.
The complete Jeeves and Blandings titles in the Everyman Wodehouse.
David Hockney. Portraits. Accompanies the exhibition. I buy every Hockney book.
Writing your Dissertation.( It`s coming up next year )
The Scotland Yard Files. Milestones in Crime Detection by Alan Moss and Keith Skinner.
Wasting Police Time by PC David Copperfield
Winter in Madrid C.J Sansom
The Life of Kingsley Amis. Zachary Leader
Those should help while away the time.
FREE BOOKS - THE ETHICS.. ( IF THERE ARE ANY.)
by
Susan Hill
on Mon 20 Nov 2006 14:18 GMT
There has been an inter-bookbloggers storm in a teacup so I may as well add my two penn'orth. If book bloggers receive free books from publishers, are they bound to review them, bound to review them favourably, guilty of accepting bribes and..
I have been a reviewer since 1960, and since 1960, as well as receiving the books I am being asked to review by the Books Page editors, I have received many and many an unsolicited book direct from the publishers. Often they are asking for a quote, sometimes the books just appear. I don`t really see the free book as any form of a bribe - it is a sample, a piece of PR and marketing and publicity and i send those out myself - not my own books but those I publish. It is a good way of advertising inexpensively. I may like the book and tell others about it. Or not. I may like it and write a blog about it. Or not. Nothing is new.
I think there are some over-sensitive souls out there. And remember all those doctors who accept everything from bottles of whisky to theatre tickets to holidays from the drug companies who want them to prescribe their products. The odd free book is neither here nor there.
Sunday, November 19
BOOKS OF THE YEAR - PART 3
by
Susan Hill
on Sun 19 Nov 2006 18:19 GMT
THE PERFECT SUMMER. DANCING INTO SHADOW IN 1911. by Juliet Nicolson
Books which record the events of a year in history - or in this case, just one season, are always enjoyable because reading them is like looking through a keyhole to a small, lighted world beyond. 1911 was one of the hottest summers ever in this country - no mention of global warming though. Society danced together with Nijinsky, Lady Diana Manners later Cooper, was the Belle of every Ball, Winston Churchill was Home Secretary and newly married to Clementine and the men and women who worked in appalling conditions for worse wages in factories and elsewhere, began at last to band together and protest here and there at least. George V and Mary were crowned and the Kaiser visited England. Osbert Sitwell went to boarding school, accompanied by the butler, Henry Moat, of his own volition, because he felt sorry for him and servants in country houses continued to light coal fires in bedrooms before dawn and lug buckets of hot water up flights of stairs so that the upper classes could bath. But it was one of the last summers before the dark and the shadow of the Great War is cast over the book, which also ends with a mention of an exciting new ship called the Titanic.
It is very slightly a so-what book. It has no especial focus or historical purpose. But it presents a portrait of a vanishing world and of both individuals and social groups which is beautifully and intelligently written and lingers in the memory. Definitely a Book of the Year.
Saturday, November 18
THE X FACTOR UPDATE
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 18 Nov 2006 20:04 GMT
Oh dear Oh dear. This sorted out the men from the boys, as it were - (interesting that there is only one girl left by the way.)
Marks for choice of song out of 10 - 1
Robert was dire.. really out of his depth now. Little Ray can wiggle and jiggle and has a great time up there and the Mums all love him so I think he will stay another week.
Ben. How could I ever have thought he stood a chance. He looked awful, sounded awful and I thought he might swallow that mike.
Eton Road. Not good. Better than last week, quite lively but.. no.
Macdonald Brothers.. Simon has to be right that this is a boring pop song. Bo.... ring. I went to sleep and had a dream and they still hadn`t finished. And I wish Louis would just shut up, shut up, shut up.
Simon is talking sense there and little leprachaun has to pop up from behind his shamrock leaf. They are beyond bad. But I have a nasty feeling..
It was a real risk giving Leona Bridge Over Troubled Water, one of the great songs of all time... and of course she made it her own. She is like one of those racehorses that streaks ahead by 2, then 22, then 200 lengths... she is outclassing the rest by so much. She gives it everything. If she doesn`t win there is no justice.
Oh, and I only thought this afternoon, I wonder if Simon has ever torn a tie in his whole life and what happens ?
Still gorgeous though.
MORE BITS AND PIECES... IT`S BAZAAR TIME !
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 18 Nov 2006 12:30 GMT
My Aunty Elsie (do you spell it Aunty or Auntie ?) had a lot of sayings and one of them was 'Eee, I love a good bazaar..' So do I. So when I saw the blackboards and posters for not one but two this morning, I had a go in each. The first was a church one and it was fine. I bought 5 stripts of raffle tickets, won a tin of baked beans and a suspicious bottle of Portuguese wine on the tombola, had a weak coffee but no biscuits as they were only custard creams and I really, really hate custard creams. I guessed the name of the doll and the number of sweets in the jar and then moved three streets away to bazaar number 2 which was a much bigger affair and absolutely crammed. Tickets for the raffle were more expensive so I only bought 2 strips and I don`t want to win the oil painting though I`m happy to have the basket of fruit even if the pears looked over-ripe. I guessed the weight of the turkey but I was a bit surprised that it was sitting out there on an unrefridgerated table under warm lights - but we don`t let elf and safety people into our bazaars. I won nothing on the tombola which was an exceedingly well-stocked one and I have a suspicion that they were keeping back the tickets for the litre bottle of brandy and the cashmere scarf until later. The coffee was still weak but you got a slice of chocolate cake or jam sponge and I bought an apple cake. My bargain was a big box of Duchy Original chocolates on the £1 stall. I bet the person who gave those would have been sick as much not to see them as a star raffle prize. There was no doll but there were some good games - treasure hunt, that thing so beloved of the SP where you try and get a wand along a wavy wire without touching it so that it buzzes, and a strange matchstick game which I never understood but at which I won 20p. The place was buzzing with chat but I like to be alone at a bazaar so I can concentrate.
I`m waiting for the phone to ring to tell me that I have won the oil painting of A Woodland in Autumn.
BITS AND PIECES...
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 18 Nov 2006 12:20 GMT
THE LOW-BROW BIT FIRST.. THE X-FACTOR
Yaay, it`s Saturday again. I have nothing against Children in Need, of course I haven`t, but the programme which takes over the entire Friday night, is awfully boring so I watched a DVD of a very good episode of Judge John Deed instead...but I digress.
Tonight we have the beginning of the end. Well, I hope it`s the end for the Macdonald, who are becoming embarassing. I can`t see Robert staying in either. And if Eton Road, who started off so well, get a song and dance routine like last week`s they`ll be off faster than ferrets on an ice rink. Has Louis a death wish for them ? If I`d been them made to do that routine last week I`d gave sued him.
Leona. Yes, well, the general concensus round the country seems to be that she should and possibly will win but for goodness sake, if you think so, VOTE. You know what can happen - you think your favourite is so secure they don`t need your vote and ... remember what happened to the lovely Brenda ?
Not long to go. The SP is going to cook himself a partridge and listen to Radio 3 in the kitchen while I indulge with a vegetable curry on a tray (well, on a plate first, I may be a slut but...) and watch the beautiful Simon.
Oh and mentioning Judge John Deed..
PEOPLE I AM IN LOVE WITH. UPDATE.
Martin Shaw as the aforementioned Judge, though not as Adam Dalgliesh, he`s quite, quite wrong for the PD James detective.
He was lovely in a past hospital soap called A and E though, in which he starred with
PEOPLE I AM IN LOVE WITH update
Michael Kitchen.. in absolutely anything.
and
did I mention
George Clooney ?
Friday, November 17
BOOKS OF THE YEAR - 3
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 17 Nov 2006 18:16 GMT
THE YEAR OF THE JOUNCER by SIMON GREY
Those of you who loved his first THE SMOKING DIARIES, will have snapped this one up. It is possibly not quite as achingly funny - there is a lot more about his childhood and, though I have no idea why - chidhood is often a rather serious business. But wait until you get on holiday to the hotel in Barados and starts sending back postcards to Harold and Antonia, who are to join them later...
Simon Gray is a natural diary writer and he does what diarists should which is reveal himself without showing off, if you follow. He emerges as a lugubrious character with a mordaunt wit and a jaundiced eye - what a lot of cliches - for his own foolishness. The foolishness of the rest of the human race is in there too but Gray is never unkind, never mean, never point-scoring though he has not a gram of sentimentality in his body either.
How can you not love a man who always goes to bed just as the rest of the world is getting up, not because he is on night-shift but as if it is a perfectly normal thing to do ?
I love this book. Love it, love it, love it. I have re-read it, right through not just in snippets, three times and I daresay that I will read it again often. Perfect.
WELL, WELL, WELL !
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 17 Nov 2006 14:05 GMT
As regular readers here will know, this blog never names and shames... the only names mentioned are the authors of books which have been admired and the livers of lives ditto. So I will allow the author of the following, which came to me by e-mail this morning, to remain anonymous. But don`t you think it speaks volumes ?
'Dear Susan Hill
After reading your Blog about Book Review pages, I would like you to know that no book either published or written by you will in future be reviewed on our Literary Pages.
In the light of your expressed views, I am sure you will neither be surprised or distressed.'
Yours etc.
X
Thursday, November 16
BOOKS OF THE YEAR PART 2
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 16 Nov 2006 20:16 GMT
The next non-fiction choice is easy.
"Books are, let`s face it, beter than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art forn had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time.."
Yes, it`s Nick Hornby is the wonderful THE COMPLETE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE, being funny, provocative, thoughtful, original, stimulating, interesting, informative and infuriating. No one else has made me think so much about books and reading lately, nor given me such a long list of must-reads, many of which I would never normally go for, some of which I will buy and probably never read - but what a book full of delights. You could give it to man or woman, older or younger, anyone who loves reading, and be sure they would delight in it, argue with it, and come in for a lot of surprises.
SOME WONDERFUL CHILDREN`S BOOKS
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 16 Nov 2006 12:02 GMT
I have just, I hope, added the Fidra Books Blog to the side panel of recommended sites. Do go to it and to their excellent website. FIDRA BOOKS are doing what a tiny bit of Long Barn Books is also doing - bringing back fine children`s books which have gone out of print but which thoroughly deserve re-issuing for a new generation and which will also be enjoyed by adults.
The Fidra Blog refers to Amanda Craig`s piece in THE LITERARY REVIEW in which she wonderfully referred to a lot of the junk which is being published by just about every company, as 'Turkey Twizzlers for the Mind.' and my God she is right. I would rather they read a comic tan some of the junk on offer between hard covers. I was brought up on the Beano and I still get the annual every year and there is nothing Turkey Twizzler about it. But just cast your eye along the shelves of rubbish about stinky history, the yards of sub-standard witchery, and the gritty realism about disfunctional families and ask if you would want your child, grand-child, or indeed ANY child to read any of it. And don`t say 'but it`s what they want,' They want Turkey Twizzlers don`t they ?
Back to Fidra. There is nothing dull worthy and boring about their books, please do not think that because they were first published in the past they are what the SP calls wholemeal scones - 'penitential.' No hessian and soya milk about these books...eye-catching, bright, wonderfully well designed and printed, fun, great stories, lovely altogether.
Pukka, as Jamie would say.
Fidra
DON`T FORGET NOW...
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 16 Nov 2006 09:21 GMT
Jessica Ruston is on LBC for an hour today - 1-2, talking about HEROINES, THE BOLD, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, with ANNA RAEBURN and if you are not in the area you can hear it online.
You can also phone in or e-mail in your own favourite HEROINES. I know she`d love to hear from some of you for moral support.
And while we are all hitting the airwaves today, well done Scott, on the TODAY programme, which we know is listened to by the great and good of the land, including the Queen. Great stuff.
Wednesday, November 15
DOING THEIR HOMEWORK FOR THEM
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 15 Nov 2006 21:45 GMT
Another bright spark who thinks that is what I am here for.
hello. on monday i want to say something about your book "I'm the king of the castle" for our english teacher. can you send me the summary of this book? please! you will help me very much. greets, r.
BOOKS OF THE YEAR
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 15 Nov 2006 21:42 GMT
NON-FICTION.
The non-fiction list of my Books of the Year is a little more mainstream than the fiction will be.
My first choice is
THOMAS HARDY. THE TIME-TORN MAN by Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin is arguably the finest biographer we have. She is scholarly but not academic, if that makes any sense. Her research is always deep and wide and her scholarship entirely reliable but she writes for a general audience. Hardy was a extraordinary man, a great novelist, a greater poet, a quintessentially English figure, the last of the great Victorian novelists. He was an unprepossessing little man whose fairly plain exterior concealed a passionate heart. He loved not wisely but too well and his emotional life was stormy. There have been a number of fine biographies of Hardy and this does not supersede any of them, it adds more richness to our understanding of and sympathy with him and above all, as ever with this writer, it is perspicacious and acutely intelligent. I have half a dozen long bookshelves devoted to Hardy, his books and books about him and his work and this will take an honourable place. Highly highly recommended.
8.45 ON RADIO 4 TODAY PROGRAMME - TOMORROW
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 15 Nov 2006 21:32 GMT
Scott Pack is on, talking about John Sutherland`s article on the literary pages versus the Book Bloggers - though it ought not to be any sort of Contest or Comptition. Still, Scott is on our side so it should be interesting.
UNFAIR TO LIBRARIANS
by
Susan Hill
on Wed 15 Nov 2006 14:05 GMT
I think I have been. In an earlier blog I had a rant about the public libraries which have allowed their book stocks to dwindle, their buildings to become delapidated and their opening hours to shorten.. and those things are still true. But they are not the whole story and I think maybe I should right the balance, on behalf of all the dedicated and hard working library staff and their managers. Because some things are good. My own small local library in Gloucestershire is good. But I was thinking of other places.
Many of us go on about what libraries, with books to borrow free, meant to us when we were children and growing up, and then students and it is all true. A lot of people were educated in public libraries. In those days not only could people not afford to buy many books - they were not so readily available on every High Street.
But I think many libraries have gone a long way to ridding libraries of the old, forbidding impression they gave to people who did not find them user-friendly.
They have installed computers and given people access to far more information than any one library could hold in print. They have also made many buildings brighter and more welcoming. They use redundant space for other things and they have, occasionally, put in coffee shops which welcome everyone.
So many more people will come through the doors of libraries if they look light, bright, welcoming and unforbidding. BUT, if only, once they were in, they also found among the coffee and newspapers and computers, really well-filled shelves of bright new books, a wide choice of them, readily replenished.
And as librarians are supposed to be committed to multi-culturalism, they really really must, where applicable, have books - new books and plenty of them - in the languages used by the citizens of their area. There was a sad plea by a member of a community group in a London Borough, wanting to know why there were no books in Somali available for those who live there and whose language this is. Books can be bought in Somali in this country, that is not the problem. But it`s important to people trying to find their way in a strange country to have access to their own language above all - probably along with access to their own foods and a place of worship, this is the most important thing of all. If I moved to a very very strange new country and could not find English books and papers to borrow, I would feel very cut off and isolated.
So, let`s applaud those libraries and their staff and managers - and the councils who supply them with the money - which have come up to date and become more welcoming. The figures of new people coming to their buildings will speak for themselves. But all of this should be as well as not instead of, the provision of new books, many new books, for all ages and tastes and in all the relevant languages. Only then will libraries be completely, not partially, fulfilling their role in the community.
It cannot be that they don`t WANT to do it. And the money is there, unless councils are diverting it to provide bottle banks. The shelves need to be full to overflowing, so that the book areas are as vibrant and exciting and busy as the coffee shop and the computer rooms.
Tuesday, November 14
BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2006
by
Susan Hill
on Tue 14 Nov 2006 19:25 GMT
I will be putting up my Books of the Year here fairly soon. Usual sort of thing, choices in various categories, with reasons. Be prepared for the un-obvious.
Or, not.
BOOK BLOGGERS BOOK OF THE YEAR - TEST RUN
by
Susan Hill
on Tue 14 Nov 2006 19:24 GMT
Please remember this, fellow bloggers. We are awarding a dummy prize this year to our Book of the Year.. the nominations so far are on the dedicated thread but we need more of you to put up yours. If you do not and the list is unrepresentative and so it doesn`t work, we can`t do it for real next year which will mean someone will not win the £1,000.
So please e-mail your nominations - any book published between 1 January and 31 December 2006 in English and published in the UK. Those are the only rules.
Monday, November 13
BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS
by
Susan Hill
on Mon 13 Nov 2006 18:10 GMT
The bad news is that 100 independent booksellers got together to improve their buying power with wholesalers/publishers and have ordered a total of 35,000 books for Christmas. The idea is to give them some clout to match that of the big chains/supermarkets and it was a great idea. How sad then that the buying is of titles all sooo obvious, all heavily promoted by the chains, all going-to-sell-anyway. What a missed opportunity ! They could have bought in some books which are not advertised everywhere, and done some real good not only for less up-front titles but for themselves, in showing that they are DIFFERENT. That independents will survive by NOT doing the same old thing as the chains and trying to discount the up-front best sellers. Their chosen titles are, sadly, the following.
Jacqueline Wilson's Starring Tracy Beaker, The Dangerous Book for Boys, Stephen Fry's QI, Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother, Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie, Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith and Gordon Ramsay's Humble Pie.
Pathetic.
But the good news is that the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, for writers under 35, includes two wonderful first novels, Peter Hobbs THE SHORT DAY DYING, which you may remember I gave away from here, and another lovely novel which was one of the Richard and Judy unpublished writer winners. It`s called GEM SQUASH TOKOLOSHE by Rachel Zadok. Do read it. She has a most original and distinctive voice and writes like an angel.
JUST WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE ?
by
Susan Hill
on Mon 13 Nov 2006 14:00 GMT
I think I am turning into an anarchist, at least of the book world.
I have been growing more and more sure that the traditional book pages of most of the national newspapers are largely irrelevant. The TLS is not because it caters for a different and largely academic readership, but the rest spend yards of column inches reviewing books few people will buy/read and arrogantly ignoring what is going on in the world where the real dedicated and committed readers live.
I was a reviewer of fiction and non-fiction for 40 years but I will not review any more for money and for papers. There are a number of reasons. Firstly I have my blog, of which more in a moment. Secondly, I am tired of people associating me with the politics and general stance of the journal for which I happen to be reviewing. No, because I review sometimes in The Spectator or the Guardian does not mean I am a packaged, fully-paid up member of either. I am independent. My opinions are independent and I do not now want to be paid and therefore beholden to either editors or literary editors.
But I do want to respect the readers of my blog just as I hope I respected those who may have read my reviews in the papers. If I am writing about a new book or an old book for that matter, to recommend it, I hope I am taking as much care in writing the blog as I would have taken with a sub-editor breathing down my neck.
The Bloggers – by which mean the true Bloggers, the independent ones, not the side-kicks of the press – are quietly, slowly but very surely, gaining power. And a lot of people do not like that one bit.
John Sutherland, writing in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, was pouring scorn on us all – though to be exact, he was pouring more scorn on the often anonymous and usually un-edited, reviewers of books on Amazon.
(I have never reviewed on amazon.)
Sutherland writes, “There are those who see web-reviewing, whether independent bloggery or commercially hosted, as a ‘power to the reader’ trend – the democratization of something traditionally associated monopolized by literary mandarins. And there are those who see it as a degradation of literary taste.’
The idea that those of us who blog about books and reading might somehow be degrading literary taste is a patronizing and ridiculous one. We are writing about books we love. Why on earth should we not do that in a blog, as anywhere else, and improve literary taste, whatever ‘literary taste’ means ? I may write a long review of a new book in the Spectator ane be paid for it, or the same long review here and do it for nothing, for everyone who wants to read it for nothing. Where is the difference ?
Those of us who belong to this new literary democracy write about all manner of books and cover a far far wider range than the weekly bok pages of the broadsheets and journals. How dare one of these ‘literary mandarins’ feel they are above us and by implication, above book buyers and readers ? Who do they think they are to lord it over us ? They have university degrees in English ? So do I, from King`s College, London. They have written books ? So have I, almost forty of them.
The fact is that the tide has turned and the people have power now. Not that we do it in order to have ‘power’, we do it because we love books and want to recommend a wealth of them to others, so that they may enjoy them and for no other reason. We do it for nothing and for fun and for the book/literature. And to demonstrate that the many – with honourable exceptions – arrogant, lazy, stuck-in-the-mud, cliquey little set of literary editors, and/or ‘mandarins’ are now almost totally irrelevant.
One day, their editors will wake up to the fact and give over their space to Curling, or Dominoes.
One day.
Sunday, November 12
SOME MORE THREADS IN LIFE`S EMBROIDERY
by
Susan Hill
on Sun 12 Nov 2006 18:49 GMT
It was all sorted. Maisy, the first foal we bred and who is now a 3 year old, was being transported back this morning from Caroline`s yard, where she has been broken in and backed and generally moved up a rung in her progress. She was to be turned out to relax in the field until the beginning of March. In turn - and this is where I want you to follow me closely, Jeeves -Daisy, the second foal we bred, was to be taken back to get her first taste of work with the horse-genius. We had to give Daisy some calming tablets half an hour before, as she is young and fizzy. The YD was going back to London to resume term after reading week but before then, would be on hand to help with the horse loading and unloading. My role is to lean on the gate, chewing a straw.
But poor Caroline did the sort of thing we all do in nightmares and en route filled up her horse box with Petrol instead of Diesel. She just about staggered here but then had to leave the box behind, to be sorted by trusty village-garage men tomorrow. As luck would have it, the YD would go past her gate on the way to London so could offer a lift and Daisy gets another day slouching about in the field, being vile to her newly-returned half-sister, pushing her out of the way of the food, refusing to play with her and generally behaving as minging little girls will.
Having waved the humans off at last, I went down to the village to get the papers and as I turned on the car radio, realised with relief that it was 11.45 and the Remembrance Day silence and local parade would be over.
Not that I do not wish to join in but I did my 2 minutes silence yesterday and I wasn`t dressed for the part.
Only, as I parked and got out I heard the unmistakeable strains of the bugle.
Now why Chipping Campden has its last post and 2 minutes silence at ten minutes to twelve I have absolutely no idea but it does. So I had to stand in the sun in silence. It is, of course, always incredibly moving and I always think of my great-Uncle Sidney, killed on his 19th birthday in the First World War, only son, only brother of 9 sisters.
It was as golden a morning as it so often is and the leaves fluttered down onto the assembly beside the War Memorial as they always do. I`m glad I was there, not least because the new Simon Serrailler novel has a very significant and dramatic scene at the Lafferton Remembrance Day Parade, in which Simon plays a major role. First-hand research after all, though ours was considerably smaller than his Parade will be.
Not to mention that it was at ten minutes to twelve.
Rural Gloucestershire is another country. They do things differently there.
Saturday, November 11
ON WRITING
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 11 Nov 2006 21:57 GMT
Not tonight, head too full of the X Factor but people keep e-mailing me for advice about writing novels. They e-mail about getting published too. And for some reason I have just had a little flurry of questions about that famous illness 'Writer`s Block,' or, as I prefer to call it, just Getting Stuck.
So I`ll start something on this here tomorrow, then those who have e-mailed can read it and it may mop up some who might have e-mailed about it all but did not.
Not that I`m any sort of Guru but I can tell it how it is for me after about 1,000 years being a writer and unqualified to talk about anything else, except how to rid two Border Terriers of in-depth mud.
THE X FACTOR UP-UP DATE
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 11 Nov 2006 21:53 GMT
Those useless Macdonalds should have gone of course but given that they didn`t, I think the judges got it about right tonight.
Getting tense but I really agree with the judges that for the first time a girl could win this.
THE X FACTOR UPDATE
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 11 Nov 2006 19:53 GMT
I take it all back, though giving them a Beatles song was a bad, bad idea and not theirs. Still, they were dire tonight and there`s such a star who stands out a million miles from the rest.
All bets now on
LEONA.
Little Ray is sweet but not up to it, Nikita is so-so, the Macdonalds are a joke, Ben was dreadful tonight and I think he can`t sustain good songs at all. His voice isn`t up to it.
No, it`s gotta be
LEONA !
THE X FACTOR.. HIGHBROWS LOOK AWAY NOW
by
Susan Hill
on Sat 11 Nov 2006 16:45 GMT
I`m so excited. This is when it really starts hotting up. I`m still pretty much 100% for ETON ROAD. They are seriously good.
I`m thinking of topping up my bet on them.
How people can go out on a Saturday night beats me.
Friday, November 10
WHAT`S A TABLECLOTH DOING IN A PUB ?
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 10 Nov 2006 21:28 GMT
Our local isn`t a gastro-pub, thank goodness, there are enough of those about. Good ones, but they`re- well, gastro pubs. Our local has been through many changes since we moved to the village 15 years ago and at one time you`d take your life in your hands if you ate there. Then it went up market, sort of, and acquired a menu with about 100 dishes containing things like Coriander and Coulis, none of which had been made on the premises. Now though, it`s shank of lamb, home baked ham with two eggs and chips and puddings that consist entirely of cholesterol.
So, it being wet and dismal and just the Younger Daughter and me in, we went there. I had the home baked ham with two eggs and chips, she had the home-made burger with chips and, yuk yuk, coleslaw. There`s the bar at the front, which is everything a bar in a country pub should be. Or the chi-chi`d up back room where there are tablecloths. I mean, honestly.
The bar is smoking and round here, the lads smoke. There were five of them next to us, in from work as carpenters and ploughers and hewers and drawers of water, drinking, not eating, and were a perfect example of the Weak Willedness of the Male.
'No, I ent having another, I`m drivin.'
'Oh go on.'
'No, I ent, I said I`d be home early.'
'Oh go on.'
'Oh all right go on then.'
Two silver-rinsed ladies wearing those strange fleece jerkins from Lands End were playing each other at a very serious and slightly acrimonious game of darts. Pity. I fancied a game. I`m rather good at darts. But there was no getting near the board tonight.
The ham and eggs were great and the chips properly irregular in shape but the veg were truly terrible, tinned carrots and undercooked frozen peas.
I`d have been sort of disappointed if they hadn`t been.
I did resist the chocolate and cream with ice cream and sticky toffee sauce cholesterol pudding though.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT WOOLF FOR DUMMIES..
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 10 Nov 2006 18:51 GMT
Have you lot finished reading NIGHT AND DAY yet ?
TIMOTHY
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 10 Nov 2006 18:51 GMT
The copies of this I offered to everyone have arrived, not before time... but having dealt my own laptop a mortal blow and being on the SP`s, I don`t have the list of those who asked for one, with addresses. Please e-mail me -mail@susan-hill.com and your copy will be on its way.
Perfect little stocking filler.
How many times do we say that ?
WORDS AND PICTURES
by
Susan Hill
on Fri 10 Nov 2006 15:58 GMT
I have been having a delightful time looking at photographs. Last year, some very good ones went up in the Post office window, framed and for sale. I bought one, then went back for another two. Then I phoned the photographer. She turned out to be Betty, who with Jim, used to keep the antique jeweler in the High Street until they retired.
Betty, a countrywoman by birth and upbringing, turned her pastime into a new business and began to take photos of the local area, the country and the people who work in it, the local villages, the churches, the shops, the familiar faces behind counters, the dawns and the dusks.
It was an obvious next move for me with my Long Barn Books hat on, to commission a book from her. I did write the text to a beautiful book of photographs of the Cotswolds twenty years ago and it reprinted numerous times but it is out of date now and besides, I wanted to concentrate on the five square miles not the fifty, around my home and the small market town known to all of you as Candlewick Green, better known to the wide world as Chipping Campden.
Betty has been taking pictures for a year. The seasons, the changing landscape, the different weather, the local events, small and large, that mark the year as it turns and I now have hundreds of them, on CD and in print, to make a book from. Some choose themselves, a very few eliminate themselves but after that, faced with 10 wonderful pictures of the church tower, eight of fields and sheep in snow, half a dozen of the annual Scuttlebrook Morris Dancing, it`s a hard task to get the numbers down/
But I have been struck again and again by how much that people continue to say has vanished, actually still exists, and not in some sort of cosy past Heritage England, either. The dry stone walling team, Jem the thatcher, the hunt, the butcher standing proudly in front of his rows of hanging game and rabbits, the church fete, the Queen`s birthday street party, the bakery, the red letter box, the sheep shearing, the Autumn Show, people worshipping at the Catholic Church, the Baptist church and the Quaker meeting room, children from two schools dancing round the maypole, the old steam tractor ploughing…. So much is still here, there are still hedgerows and apple orchards, small shops and the Good Friday procession, the cakes and pastries in the Friday WI market. There are blossom and snow, there are berries and hay wains.
You will see it all, and it is all real and all part of my everyday world. The book will be launched in the Town Hall –where else ?- and we hope the whole town will come. Locals will get a handsome discount, on presenting proof of address.
Betty`s photographs record times and places and a way of life which are living and breathing and very much ongoing.
It is a great pleasure to create and produce a book like this. Words are all very well but sometimes, you need the pictures.
Thursday, November 9
MICHAEL MAYNE BOOK -UPDATE
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 09 Nov 2006 22:33 GMT
I have heard from the wholesaler that the 20 copies of THE ENDURING MELODY I ordered will be in next week. That may be a good sign. The publisher may be reprinting. Let`s hope so.
Meanwhile, to those people who asked for a free copy, there will be a slight delay. But it is so well worth the wait, I promise you.
LOOK I AM REALLY SORRY BUT..
by
Susan Hill
on Thu 09 Nov 2006 22:31 GMT
I am using the SP`s spare laptop while my own is STILL at the mender and the keyboard is quite different from that on mine. It sticks and then it slips and generally does weird things and twice tonight I have done a long blog, almost finished, something has happened and the whole damn thing has disappeared. Whether it is me or the keyboard or gremlins I do not know but I can`t face trying again tonight. If it happened again I should burst into tears. So I`ll close down and try again tomorrow.
You wouldn`t want me to be in tears would you ?
Wednesday, November 8
NO NAME NO SHAME BUT I THOUGHT I`D SHARE THIS E-MAIL WITH YOU ALL
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