London for the day yesterday and as I had a spare  half hour or so before a lunch appointment, I took a cab down to Waterloo and a street I had never, so far as I remember, been into - Lower Marsh. Traffic-wise it is hell to get there because of all the demolition/rebuilding works round the area but once you do you find yourself in the sort of old-fashioned street London had a-plenty when I was a student there with street-barrow selling fruit and veg and a caff with the best coffee in London. And two bookshops, one a second-hand one I did not penetrate as I do not, on the whole, care for the breed. And opposite a smart new one with a spanking sign. CROCKATT AND POWELL. I know of them via their blog and because I buy books from them which they kindly pack up and send to darkest Gloucestershire. Now I`ve been in and met Crockatt - Matthew, and Marie, who is the ampersand between the two chaps, but not, alas, Powell (Adam.) I did not meet Matthew`s fairly new son Finn either, but I felt as if I had. I also went to their loo, which was a bit like ascending a wobbly stage set without handrails. I also looked round their two rooms which are bright, airy and well-shelved. They have a good stock - though I am convinced they could double it and make far better use of their lovely space. They don`t try to compete with 3 for 2 or cut-price Jamie Oliver, though they have some good standard fare. But they have tried to bring the offerings of some of the small independent publishers to the attention of their customers - Eland Books, Snow Books, Pushkin Press and, lo and behold, even some Long Barn Books.

It was altogether a most positive visit and I commend not only  C and P to you but also Lower Marsh - not to mention the best coffee in London  which the nice guys in the bookshop will point you to if you ask. Hell getting there but heaven when you do.

I had a smashing lunch in Green`s, the excellent restaurant in Duke Street, St James where Long Barn Books always has its Editorial Board meetings. I was the guest of the proprietor, Simon Parker Bowles, who is going to write 2 books for LBB - and if you are feeling like a treat, do go there and have the crab salad - best I have ever eaten, and I should know, coming from the seaside and having been practically weaned on crab.

I had another window in my diary so I popped into the huge Waterstone`s in Piccadilly. It used to be Simpsons  and oddly, it still feels like it. You expect to walk up the stairs and into the great hall from Jermyn Street and find gentlemen`s canary yellow cashmere jumpers and a sign saying Cruise Wear. Instead, you find books. It`s a great building but better as you ascend floor by floor. I think the ground floor is a wasted opportunity. Too much space not enough stock. Bit like Crockatt and Powell really only with less excuse. ( I imagine Waterstone`s cash flow is a bit better than that of a new small bookshop in Waterloo run by two  young chaps.)

In C and P I bought quite a few books. In Waterstone`s I bought a copy of Private Eye to read on the train. Not sure what that tells you about any of us.

I always like to do a quick poll of train-readers. On the way home yesterday in a packed carriage I jotted down a list of books by the following authors in which travellers were deeply absorbed.

JODI PICAULT (2)

TOLSTOY

LEE CHILD

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

CELIA AHERN

A Psychology textbook by an author whose name I could  not see.

ROGER HARGREAVES (THREE MR MEN BOOKS BEING READ TO A SMALL BOY)

and a biography of TRUMAN CAPOTE being read by me.

Yesterday`s post about the small work of  genius called MR THUNDERMUG by Cornelius Medvei  called forth the most comments of any post since this blog began (and including the old blog ). I wonder if that had anything to do with the offer I made out to send a copy free to anyone who asked. No, probably not.

Let me tell you a story first. Last year I was looking for the first First Novel Long Barn Books would publish and somewhat in despair. Submissions were pouring in and I had found nothing remotely publishable. Then came a letter and a short typescript. We ask for the first 4 chapter by e-mail only to begin with but the nice letter explained that the author did not do anything electronic and that he, a friend who was acting as the author`s agent, sort of, did not have an electronic copy either. I sighed slightly but by the end of the first paragraph, I had forgiven all. By the end of the short book, I knew a. that I had found the novel and that nothing else would come close and b. that this was a book of genius - quirky, strange, like nothing else I had ever read, but the  sort that makes you shiver. I knew in that moment that the author would one day win the Booker prize and everything else going. I rang the friend-acting-as-agent and said I wanted to publish the book. He was in France on holiday and we had several excited conversations. I offered, of course, exactly the same terms as everyone gets from Long Barn and he said they sounded fine. When he was back, though, he wanted to bring the author to meet me - it was imperative that we got on. So he did. I met a withdrawn, unbelievably shy, awkward young man who I took to straight away - and his unbelievably confident, un-shy, smooth and self-possessed friend-turned-agent. (There is a very very odd bit of coincidence attached to the  latter about whom I turned out to know something which happened to him in his teenage years and which few people could possibly know. I`ll the story sometime but suffice it to say this only made me more sure that  the book was meant to come to me.)

I made my offer. At which point there was great excitement but a hardly-uttered thrown-off remark that it was actually with another, mainstream publisher - who was sure not to want it. The friend-turned-agent would tell them that I did.

I immediately smelled a rat. Multiple submission is common agent-practice and it may work when they want to get big publishers to move or to fight with one another so that the advance-price goes up., But it is not a practice I care for and it is one I absolutely will not and cannot get involved with. My contract is universal and non-negotiable. I can`t get into bidding wars. I try to read and respond on manuscripts very quickly so that no one has to wait months and months.

I said I would publish the small book but that there was no chance at all of my joining in a competition for it. I got  some holding-e-mails from the friend-agent. Then a letter saying that  Fourth Estate had offered 20,000 for the book so...

I was absolutely bloody furious. What had happened, of course, was that my enthusiasm had been used as a lever to get the mainstream publisher to offer, and to offer far more than I could or would. I felt used and cheated and it took me a long time to forget about it. I also felt, trying to be objective, that the author would have done better with me because in a large firm he might slip between the cracks. He would have had my whole attention and publicity and marketing push. Still, to be honest if I had been him, advised by my friend-agent, I would have gone with the big publisher with my first book.

BUT. A year has gone by. I don`t bear grudges for more than half an hour unless the harm has been done to one of my family, not to me. And it had not.

The little book has just come out from 4th Estate. And I am telling you - not suggesting, TELLING, that it is a small work of genius and that you must go out and buy it now. If you are a bookseller you must stock it. I have bought 10 copies myself and I am happy to give one to anyone who asks. I am as confident about it as that. When those 10 have gone I`ll buy some more. Just ask, Your only obligation is to spread the word if you like it. I know that the author has another story like it in the pipeline and after that more and more. I also know that he took 2 years out to go to art college and learn litho-printing because he wanted to illustrate the book himself.

I am telling you now that you will not read a small work of genius like this not only this year but for a long time to come - probably until his next one comes out.

Oh, sorry. You want to know what it is ? I am not telling you anything about it. You need to read it.

MR THUNDERMUG. by Cornelius Medvei. Fourth Estate £10.

I`m sticking my reputation on this one. I`m only sorry I am not also its publisher.

The shortlist for the LONG BARN BOOKS first novel - to be published in 2007 - will be decided on SEPTEMBER 14th and announced the following day. The shortlist will be posted on this website, this blog, and the Long Barn Books website. There will also be a press release.

The purpose of the shortlist is not to create excitement and suspense. It is because there have been some good submissions this year - more than last - and LBB can only publish one novel. But all of those on the shortlist will be, in my judgment, well worthy of publication by someone so that I hope other publishers may pick them up.

The chosen first novel will be announced on SEPTEMBER 30.

The Cistercian World. Monastic Writings of the 12th century

The Monastic Theology of Aelred of Rievaulx

Kalooki Nights. Howard Jacobson.  On the Booker longlist, and very very very very funny. Winner ? Nah. TOO funny. They`ll go for something solemn.

READ. EITHER SIDE OF WINTER. Benjamin Markovits. Recommended by the boys at C and P. Did not like it one bit. Non-people doing non-things in New York (that was the good bit.) Just about got to the end.

ABOUT TO READ.  OUR MUTUAL FRIEND again again again again again again. 2 years since I read it last though so there will be new discoveries, as ever.

and after that SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER. Lolly Willows. Recommended her 'er over at Dove Grey. Glancing inside, I see that it has words like bureau, eiderdown and chilblains. I think  I feel about right for a novel with words like bureau, eiderdown and chilblains.

Because the Shakespeare Prof has had such wall-to-wall wonderful reviews everywhere for his latest tome SHAKESPEARE AND CO. that his head will not fit through the door, his book is shooting up the amazon ranks, and I have commissioned him to write a book for Long Barn, the lucky fellow. It is called IS IT TRUE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT SHAKESPEARE ? ( oh come on, you remember it.. 'just replace Shakespeare with 'Dixie ' - got there ? Good.) And it will give you the answers to all those  regular boring questions asked by the conspiracy theorists, the Baconians, the Marlovians, the Earl of Oxfurdians about who wrote the plays, scotch rumours, confirm facts, and generally do it wittily, amusingly, soundly, elegantly and lucidly - as the SP, although the world`s leading Shakespeare scholar, believes in writing so that Everyman can follow him.

One to save up for - though, for all that it will be a nice neat hardback, it will cost less than a tenner - well, a penny less anyway.

Following on from the bit about being overweight...Younger D and I went for coffee to our favourite caff. As it is Bank Holiday, it was busier than usual, with visitors to the town, including a family of five next to us - mother, father, three sons aged between 7 ish and 11 ish. Mother and father, in their 30s, were smiling and friendly and enjoying the company of their lovely boys - and both were what the doc above would have called in his politest manner 'grossly and grotesquely obese.'  I would call them plump. The boys were thin as pins. They were all having breakfast. Our caff does lovely breakfasts - organic eggs, best back bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, wholemeal toast and home-made marmalade. But they were all having hot chocolate, scones with butter, jam and cream, and fat slices of double-layer chocolate gateaux. I`m only surprised Social Services weren`t called in.

Let`s have a book-break. And as I like lists..

TEN FAVOURITE T.V PROGRAMMES

Rowan and Martin`s Laugh-In

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads

Upstairs Downstairs

ThirtySomething

E.R. WITH George Clooney

The Pallisers

Morecombe and Wise

TEN FAVOURITE MUSICALS

Guys and Dolls

Oklahoma

Annie Get your Gun

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

South Pacific

Oliver

My Fair Lady

Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat

TEN FAVOURITE FILMS

Casablanca

Ocean`s Eleven

Gosford Park

Notting Hill

Easter Parade

Flying Down to Rio

Some Like it Hot

BEST BLOG EVER

From the woman in San Francisco who tells you how to make fun-shaped boiled eggs for your child`s lunch box.

1. First you buy 3 ice-cream sandwich moulds in cute shapes from a shop called Williams-Sonoma in SF.

2.Wet the moulds.

3. Boil 3 eggs and pop them into the wet moulds.Now here comes the clever inventive bit.

4.Because these moulds weren't originally designed for eggs, they don't have little latches to keep everything closed tightly around the egg while it chills in water, improvise by looping a thick rubber band around the plunger & mould to apply even pressure.

5.To make the eggs even more exciting dye them- they have come out in star, pig and cow-face shapes. I fill a couple of ramekins halfway with cold water and mix in a little food coloring (blue and red). Leave them in for a few minutes until they get to a colour you like. 

From ebay you can also buy a rubber mould in the shape of an octopus. With this you can make sausages into octopus shapes.

Off you go.

Description

I have moved the nominations page up to today so that people can read the titles of the latest nominations. Please keep them coming. To remind you and for new visitors- this is a trial run - ie. no actual prize -for the book bloggers  best novel of 2006. In English, published in the UK. To nominate a title you need to have a book or book-related blog. Publishers and authors are welcome to nominate but NOT their own books, or books published by them.

Now see the sticky post for the list so far.

All the same.. what he says today on his Good Library Blog is so important that I am putting it up here too.

about one quarter of the money given by Government to run the public library service is wasted on inefficient practice. That is £250m per annum, which if divided equally between more books and more redecoration of buildings would provide a wonderful public library service. The inefficient practices were identified last year by PKF in a government report and not one jot of action has been taken to correct them.

Secondly, since there was a rush of competitive activity between current library suppliers in the last 18 months has meant that that the savings of £10-20m on discount of which PwC talks is fully available now to councils who take up the better terms on offer. Very little extra saving will be available by buying direct from publishers, because library books need to be processed for lending and publishers don't do that.

Thirdly: In many councils NOW, there is an urgent budget crisis for the library service which means that, unless they work with the suppliers in order to reduce the costs of their backroom operation - there will probably be 300-500 library closures next year. Book puirchasing is probably already down to 7% of total spend and will fall to 6% within 12 months. Libraries have allowed themselves no money to buy books.

The PwC (Price Waterhouse Cooper..) report on supply is totally irrelevant to this emergency and will do nothing to address the long term problems. By the time they begin implementation in 2008, the library service in many councils will be almost closed.

The Library Service does not need more Government or Taxpayers money- it needs to learn how to spend properly the money it has

Buying books direct from publishers will not improve the range or selection of books in libraries.

We are walking over the cliff edge and NOBODY is doing the right things. FOR GOODNESS SAKE, WILL SOME POLITICIAN PLEASE HAVE SOME COURAGE AND CALL FOR URGENT ACTION AND DO THE RIGHT THINGS INSTEAD OF THE WRONG ONES.

My heart is breaking with frustration

The following e-mail was sent round all the offices of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It was forwarded to me by the Shakespeare Professor, to make me laugh. As research has shown that laughter keeps you fit, I pass it on in the interests of your health.

 " In an internal reusable envelope, someone may get a surprise.  I have had samples of 'Bat Droppings' sent to me and by mistake these have been put in with the empty envelopes in the post room. 

Inside will be a small plastic bag with my name on it.  The contents being 'Bat Droppings'.  Could I ask whoever 'finds' this to let me know and I will come and collect it.  Just in case it goes missing again.

Regards
Rena McKenzie

Museum Assistant"

It cannot have escaped your notice that  this month sees the John Betjeman Centenary. There are all-day broadcasts, television tributes, special train journeys, a Gala performance in front of the Prince of Wales, larky celebrations down in Cornwall. And a lorra lorra books, including the new biography of JB by A.N. Wilson, a small, neat 'Selected Poems' and a large new edition of the Collected Poems. Not to mention the contribution of Long Barn Books in the shape of the special facsimile edition of JB`s only children`s book, Archie and the Strict Baptists.

Apart from Archie, all the other books are published by John Murray, Betjeman`s original and official publishers. The three of them are in the top 50 on amazon and have had masses of press coverage in their own right, as well as spin-off publicity from the events.

And guess what ? They are all three out of stock and will not be available for another 2 weeks. Which takes us into September and the end of the junketing.  This weekend in Cornwall there is a special red tent with willing helpers ready to sell hundreds of books to the eager hordes. Only they will have no books. They will have some ARCHIE but this is a limited edition at £50 - not within the pockets of everyone.

It is the kind of thing that makes strong men weep. The strong woman who has masterminded the entire centenary - Betjeman`s daughter Candida Lycett Green, has had to go and lie down.

I know, I know, I know that the hardest part of publishing is getting the print run right but in this case, for heaven`s sake, could they not have taken one swift look at the sheer volume of publicity that was approaching like a tidal wave and jump on it with their surf boards ? This was not a time for underestimates. Hey Ho.

A catalogue of books used to come from New York, sent by a firm called The Common Reader. It has not landed through the letterbox for some years so I presume the firm has closed - which is a pity as via it I discovered some wonderful books. I bought them purely on the very persuasive descriptions and recommendations of the editor, which is how I came to discover May Sarton, and THE HOUSE BY THE SEA.Sarton died in her nineties some ten years or so ago. She was European by birth, American from childhood. She was a not very good poet who took her poetry too seriously, am OK novelist, ditto. She was a lesbian, a woman of meteoric emotions, often hysterical and prone to rages. She was a sexual predator who tried to dominate the women she  fell for. All of this I discovered from a sharp biography. But she was a genius at one thing. Writing journals. There are a number, beginning with Journal of a Solitude, and ending with At Eighty. But by far the best is the one I read first, The House by the Sea. I have just been re-reading and it has given me much pleasure. I has also made me wish I had found out nothing at all about May Sarton other than what I found in the journals, and this one especially. It does not matter if she concealed many aspects of herself; it does not matter if she puts her best foot forward for the journal reader and if not everything is word-for-word true. This is a wonderful evocation of May Sarton`s life in a house she moved to in her sixties, on a promontary off the coast of Maine,  a large house in which she lived alone, save for a dog, a cat, many birds and numerous visitors, both invited and unannounced, 'persons from Porlock.'  It describes the moods of the sea, the ever-changing New England weather,  which assumes such importance in this sort of environment;  Birds, flowers - she was a passionate and expert gardener - current events, visits to give lectures and readings, people, the past, thoughts about growing older. It is a rich mixture. I could quote from it ad infinitum. But in fact one of the best things about the book is the writers Sarton quotes from in her turn. She finds just the right line or paragraph to illuminate and reinforce something she has been saying. Here are two, one short, one long.

In talking about the way good people are those who are ot consciously trying to be saints, she quotes an Archbishop of Canterbury (I have a feeling it was William Temple). ' It is a mistake to believe that God is primarily concerned with religion.'

And in writing about Virginia Woolf, who she knew slightly in the 1920s when she lived for a short time in England, she finds an article about her by Margaret Drabble ( in The Listener, sometime in the early 1970s.) It is one of the soundest and fairest things ever written about Bloomsbury.

"Reading Virginia Woolf`s letters is a deeply moving experience and one of its most moving aspects is the glimpse it provides of a circle which, despite death, madness and suicide, was indeed charmed. Such loyalty, such friends, such love, such conversations and correspondences and journeys, such kindness; who would not envy them their solidarity ? Most writers are solitary and do not move in circles but there cannot be many of them who do not feel stirred by the image of a golden age where a circle was possible. Bloomsbury provides such an image."

I do not think THE HOUSE BY THE SEA is published in the UK but it should be obtainable from America, where May Sarton is still something on an icon, especially to the older generation of feminists. It is worth the effort.

This morning in, I think The Sunday Times, there is a long interview with Mark Haddon, author of  THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG...

Now Mr Haddon has had a mega sales success with this one novel, his first, and he is a multi-millionaire on the back of it. GOOD FOR HIM. It`s a terrific book and the success is well deserved. It was also, for a long time, a word-of-mouth book. Before it started to win prizes, people who read and talk about what they are reading, were muttering to one another about this. I remember that Adele Geras and I exchanged e-mails about how much we admired it and hoped it would win the Whitbread first novel award.

But now Mr Haddon has a new novel out and it does not make the Booker long list and he is sad. A lot of people have obviously been siren voices, telling him he was bound to be on it, and he has believed them. He now says he is cast down, has had a reality check (I am quoting him from memory - the paper is downstairs and I am too lazy to go and get it but this is in essence what he says.)

I have several words of cheer for Mark Haddon. The first are. IT DOES NOT MATTER ONE JOT. If people like your new book, as they loved your first, they will buy it and tell others about it. Those people are the real readers, the ones who matter. If they do not like it, do not think it any good, or as good as the first, they will tell one  another that too. In fact, both things will happen because book readers do not always agree any more than Booker Judges. But the longlist, or the shortlist or whatever, while nice to have, don`t matter. They really do not. They bring a flicker of the spotlight on a few writers for a short time. One will emerge into the full limelight for half an hour and sell a lot of books. Nothing like as many as Mark Haddon sold with his first novel though.

The second worry he has is that he is afraid of being a one-book wonder. On the face of it this looks like a more serious worry. But he can relax so far in that he has actually written book 2. Harper Lee never did. (To Kill a Mockingbird.) And why does that matter ? Better be the author of one world wide, long-lasting, classic success of a novel than the author of twenty mediocre ones, or of one great one and a dismal second. There are plenty of dismal second novels around.

I haven`t read Mark Haddon`s new novel yet so I cannot comment on it but if it is not very good and if he dries up and never writes another, SO WHAT ? He has written one great book. That is not a gift given to many. It also made him a lot more money than most people ever earn. So he can just enjoy it. Why not ?

Above all, I hope he doesn`t fret for another minute about the bloody Booker long list. I have been a Booker Judge and I know that there is a lot of arguing, a lot of horse-trading, a lot of fighting-your-corner and winning - or losing. The judges are honest and passionate and they love books. But they are only a handful of people - I was one of four, the panel is usually a bit bigger now but there are still only half a dozen. What do half a dozen book judges count for when multi-thousands of people may love and buy and re-read Mark Haddon`s new book ?

I have one caveat there though. A novel of mine was shortlisted for Booker and won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction. It was a book I have never rated. I don`t think it works, though there are  a few good things in it. I don`t believe in the characters or the story. Nevertheless, I can still sing myself to sleep at night knowing that three judges thought differently - thought well enough of it to shortlist it. (There was no longlist in those days.) The judges were Elizabeth Bowen, George Steiner and Cyril Connolly and I can hardly pretend their opinion did not count for anything.

But far far better novels of mine were not shortlisted for the Booker and they have sold far more copies, been loved by far more readers and still sell and sell.

I hope Mark Haddon - and anyone else who may have hoped, or even expected, to be on the longlist but was not - will take heart, but not take it all too seriously. The book will make its own way.

When my aunt retired from being Head of English at a school in Cardiff, she  and a group of friends started what we would now call a Book Group. A few days ago, turning out a cupboard, I came upon the notebook she had kept about it. In the front she wrote 'Cardiff Association of University Women.. British Federation of University Women. Literary Circle.' When she died in 2000, my aunt, aged 92, was the last surviving member of the Circle and she was still reading - Girl with a Pearl Earring - in Hospital on the day she died.  She has kept a record of the books they read over the years and very impressive it is too. Let me reproduce the first three pages. How many members of Book Groups - or for that matter how many Book Bloggers, have read these in the last, say, 5 years.

George Eliot. Middlemarch Felix Holt. Daniel Deronda Silas Marner. The Mill on the Floss

Thomas Hardy. The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Woodlanders. The Return of the Native. Poems. Far from the Madding Crowd.Tess of the D'Urbevilles.  Under the Greenwood Tree

Susan Hill. Strange Meeting.

Elizabeth Bowen. The Death of the Heart.

Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Between the Acts

Iris Murdoch. The Bell. The Black Prince.

Camus. The Plague

Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea.

Shaw. Heartbreak House. The Doctor`s Dilemma

Flaubert. Madame Bovary

Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives Tale.

R.L. Stevenson. Weir of Hermiston

Mrs Gaskell.  Wives and Daughters. North and South Sylvia`s Lovers. Mary Barton.

Dickens.  Bleak House.  Hard Times. Little Dorritt, Edwin Drood. David  Copperfield. Martin Chuzzlewit. Great Expectations. Our Mutual Friend.

That was at the rate of two a month. They met in one another`s houses in the evenings and not only discussed the books, they wrote a essay of appreciation each and these were shared round.  As the members of the Circle died, and the numbers  were 6 and then 5 and then just 3.. they met just once a month, I remember my aunt ringing me one night and telling me that a Head Mistress friend had died, and saying 'So now I am meeting with myself.'  Until she could no longer manage it, about a year before her death, she still wrote the Essay of Appreciation for every book she read. Often she would ask me to choose her next book. I never knew her fail to buy or borrow it, and there was not very much that she did not enjoy, as she put it, 'to some extent.'

I see that on the last couple of pages, her handwriting has grown a little shaky but she records the reading of

Bruce Chatwin. On the Black Hill

Margaret Attwood. The Handmaid`s Tale

Ishiguro. An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day

Peter Carey.  Oscar and Lucinda

and very last of all, which I remember she loved, Beryl Bainbridge`s The Bottle Factory Outing.

I hope you`ll agree that even the pages I have copied add up to a pretty impressive list for a group of ladies between 65 and 92.