Firstly, another plug for my giveaway – if you’d like to win a signed first edition copy of Philip Pullman’s new story The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ then please click here to visit my post on Pullman’s appearance at the Oxford Lit Fest, and leave a comment telling me which creature your ‘daemon’ would be. The comp closes at noon GMT on Good Friday and my daughter will pick a winner from the slips in the hat.
Just in case you haven’t seen the clip of his answer to the last question, here a link to it Click here. On the BBC news on Sunday night, they played an extended version and I could see myself in the audience, which was fairly horrifying – it put pounds on me, but exciting at the same time. I haven’t been on telly since I was in a quiz show called Connections on Granada with Richard Madeley back in the late 1980s – now that was an experience!
Staying on me for a moment, Kimbofo who blogs at Reading Matters invited me amongst other bloggers to join in a new guest feature called ‘Triple Choice Tuesday’, in which guests choose three books to recommend: a favourite, one that changed your life, and a book that deserves a wider audience. Little did I know that I’d be first up in this spot and you can see my three choices here, please do comment!
*****
Now I’d like to link to a wonderful blog post by Simon Savidge – click here to see it. Simon raises the topic of bookblogging ethics in terms of where we get the books that we write about. With bookbloggers being increasingly targeted by publishers to help spread the word of mouth, it is a timely piece. Thank you Simon.
You can see my blogging guidelines under my ‘Info and Stuff’ tab at the top of the page, but to summarise, I will always say if a book is a freebie and how I got it – Maybe I should say if I bought a book too… Also, I am affiliated to Amazon. All the title links do go there, and I may earn a small commission if you then buy after clicking through – although in a year and a half of blogging, I’ve yet to earn enough to trigger a single payment from them – so it’s pocketmoney stuff only.
*****
-
And finally as usual here are a few of the latest titles to arrive at Gaskell Towers:
The Queen’s Gambitby Walter Tevis, about a young girl chess player in an orphanage.
-
Looking for Enid: The Mysterious and Inventive Life of Enid Blyton
by Duncan McLaren. Having seen the BBC’s rather good film Enid
again the other night, I pounced on this unconventional biography while browsing in Oxford’s £2 bookshop waiting for the park and ride bus on Sunday.
- The Moldavian Pimp
by Edgardo Cozarinsky. Apart from the wonderful title, the blurb on the back of this short novel says ’Imagine a mixture or Borges, Thomas Pynchon, South American tango and Yiddish musicals and you begin to get the flavour of this extraordinary book’. – For £2 again, I was hooked!
Thanks for the link Annabel. Just to make clear though I wasnt attacking publishers for sending stuff, more just explaining my personal ethics and then venting a little bit, we need to every now and then don’t we?
Lovely to see you on Kim’s blog, Flowers for Algernon is brilliant so am in complete agreement with you on that one.
Hmm I am about to read the PDF of Pullman but always like a proper copy so I will enter… my daemon would be a sabre toothed tiger.
Agree absolutely, but it was a very timely piece and certainly made me think.
My other book choices for Kim’s blog were a bit more off the wall! I tried to pick things that I’d not seen on other blogs. Hope to see you on there soon …
Now choosing an extinct animal for your daemon … is there something I should know? (just pulling your leg)
Interesting choice of books and I must read the Moneypenny books and Flowers for Algernon which I have heard of but knew nothing about. Funnily enough I have a very early copy of the Brewer’s that had belonged to a great-great uncle who was the editor of a newspaper in the North-East in the 19th century. It’s very fragile now as it was obviously well used and I haven’t used it in a while. Maybe time to buy a modern copy!
As for my daemon …I think it would have to be my tabby cat Minerva who is small, fluffy and very, very bossy as her three male housemates (who are all much bigger than her) would testify!
Liz – I tried to pick books for that feature that hadn’t been around the blogosphere so much.
I am a huge James Bond fan. I know it’s slightly unfashionable to be so un-PC, but I don’t care. However the Moneypenny Diaries do redress the balance a lot.
Brewers is so wonderful – no other single volume book comes close to it. I’m currently using the Millenium edition which was either 16th or 17th. I’m hoping that someone will give me the new one for my birthday!