Lucinda's Reading Challenge: Philosophy Section

I'm blogging from a secret holiday
location and although poolside

might not be the most appropriate

place for a heavyweight piece of
political philosophy, I can't deny

that there are advantages to

reading this book in an environment
isolated from media bombardment.

John Gray's Black Mass is a thought
provoking and serious examination

of historical (Bolshevik Revolution)
and contemporary (War on Terror)
examples of Utopian ideology driving flawed policy.

Eh? I did warn you it was a dense read. He sets out his stall in very convincing manner: human societies across the globe have repeatedly sought a post-apocalyptic Utopia with generally disastrous consequences. This is more than a simple 'the grass will be greener over the hill' doctrine - the idea that we are wedded to thinking that the old must be swept away and obliterated first is a scary prospect and yet John Gray provides ample back up to his claim that left and right, religious and secular movements all appear doomed to follow this hopeful path into folly. I like the fact that Gray tries very hard to remain impartial and even when he does offer a more polarised position (such as some of his assertions about the motives and consequences of the Iraq invasion) a lot of it has probably drifted towards mainstream thinking anyway! More crucially, I managed to follow all his arguments pretty easily - with one caveat - being a piece of highbrow thinking, knowledge of political history is assumed along with some expert terminology (thank goodness for internet dictionaries). Well worth the challenge - and I hope that upon my return, I shall be able to turn a more informed eye to any Chilcot Enquiry editorials! Oh - more good news: the positives I took from Karen Armstrong's 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life can co-exist quite happily alongside this piece. Her approach calls for individuals to change - not for any political or institutional directive to impose a regime. Next up: Richard Sennett's The Crafstman, which may turn out to be the perfect holiday read...'what motivates us to work'. But right now, I'm off to catch a water taxi to the beach.

Mr B's 2011 Reading Journey Book 3 (Texas) - End Zone by Don DeLillo

As Chris Rea once said, "Warm winds blowing, Heating blue sky, And a road that goes on forever, I'm going to Texas". Aaah. What warming thoughts for a January evening with a violent and chilly wind blowing into Wiltshire fresh from the Russian steppe.

Fans of high literature will be delighted to learn that I opted to go beyond the Road to Hell liner notes for my Texan read, instead going for an early novel by American literary behemoth Don DeLillo. End-zone is a novel set at a West Texas college - the side of Texas characterised by colossal skies and military bases and test-grounds. The story is narrated by (American) football player Gary Harkness who has started and abandoned studies at various other colleges before attempting to settle down at the r

emote and comparatively minor Logos College. Gary's life consists of playing football, having somewhat bizarre pseudo-intellectual conversations with his teammates and worrying about his obsession with nuclear conflict. Sound like a bizarre and slightly impenetrable basis for a story? You betcha.

Here's what I liked about End Zone. First, I liked the dark and often oddball humour, particularly through the gradual development of the peculiarities and neuroses of Gary's team-members (one of whom wets the bed, another of whom is named after a fridge).

Secondly, I liked it as a piece of sports-writing (a genre I like and which I think is often under-rated and wrongly regarded as incompatible with great literature) . Most of the novel could be enjoyed by anyone with no knowledge of American Football whatsoever (other than the basic idea that the team dynamic is crucial and that, at its messiest, its brutal and warlike) and it's certainly not about sport per se. However the 35-page "Part 2" consists of a description of the team's crunch match and would be tough to endure if you had absolutely no knowledge of or interest in the sport.

But for me the downsides of End-zone outweigh the upsides. The characters seem subordinated to the wider game of drawing endless parallels between on-field and on-battlefield combat, which culminates in teacher Zapalac's damning conclusion "I reject the notion of football as warfare. Warfare is warfare. We don't need substitutes because we've got the real thing".

In the latter stages of the novel the conversations between the characters become too oblique and filled with subtext that even they don't seem to have any handle on - at least for simple me with my preference for at least one of plot or compelling characters. Much of the overly intellectual chatter is no doubt intended to be amusing, but it bored me and took away from a novel that in any event doesn't head towards any great plot climax.

End Zone is an interesting novel and will be enjoyed by the more philosophically and militarily minded, but it says something of DeLillo's monolithic later works that this is considered one of his most accessible. Nearly everything he has written sounds great in summary and I really want to like his writing. I'd love to know which others of his people have enjoyed so I can give another one a go.

Cover Notes: End Zone is published by Macmillan and a new edition comes out in March. That's the lovely new nuclear-football yellow and black cover. I read the first cover on this post which is the outgoing edition now out of stock at the publisher. I found a copy in Foyles on a rare treat to myself - a genuine browse as a book-buyer in someone else's bookshop.

Soundtrack: I've mostly been listening to Paul Heaton's brilliant "Acid Country" album whilst reading End Zone. Highly recommend it.

Nic's 2011 Reading Journey - Book 2 (a first diversion)

Having made the decision to head West in my Reading Year journey, from Tim Gautreaux's Louisiana into Texas, I then spent far too long mulling over an appropriate Texan read. While I was thinking about it, I made my first permitted diversion - to read a book about journeying. The way I see it, any time I fancy reading a book about journeying this year as an interlude to my round the world journey, then that's just fine. And let's face it. I can make the rules as it's only me playing.

The book in question was "Roads" by Larry McMurtry. It came to mind because McMurtry is a Texan book legend in various guises. First and foremost he is the author of many novels and screenplays many of which are set in Texas (and many of which are now out of print in the UK sadly). His masterpiece is the epic Pulitzer-Prize winning Texan novel, Lonesome Dove which spawned a similarly epic mini-series starring the likes of Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Angelica Huston. Secondly he is the owner of a colossal bookshop in Archer City, Texas where he still lives and works.

If I picked Lonesome Dove for my Texan book, I'd still be there in months, but I realised I had an unread copy of "Roads" in my bookcase, so I thought I'd honour Texas' most celebrated author by reading that.

In "Roads" McMurtry sets out to enjoy America from its interstate highways - eschewing the standard "backroads" approach and deliberately limiting his numerous 2-3 day trips to bombing down the length of the country's major arteries. It's a bizarre concept for a travelogue and it threatens to give a very rushed and blinkered view of the States.

The saving grace is McMurtry's open and self-effacing attitude towards the comfortable and infinitely achievable journeys he has planned, "I have been impressed by the extraordinary stamina of the real explorers, from Mungo Park to Wilfred Thesiger. In contrast I hardly feel my little spurts along the interstates deserve to be called travels at all". He goes on to explain his attitude to roughing it in the great travel writing tradition, "Hardship is not something I seek, or even accept. I cheerfully confess that if the Hotel du Cap in Cap d'Antibes were a chain, I'd stay there every night".

"Roads" is thin on geographic description - other than some beautiful accounts of the prairie landscape. But McMurtry's journeys are brought alive by the author's anecdotes and memoir pieces - most of which are book or film related. There's lots of entertaining name-dropping and the book doubles-up as a guide to the literature of many of the American states (which is handy if you're a bookseller planning a reading journey across the Continent). Here's one of my favourite moments:

"My bitter dislike of Arlington goes back ten years, to a day when I embarrassed myself by getting hopelessly lost in it while attempting to take the world-famous globally traveled author Jan Morris to lunch. Not long after this I complained about Arlington in a novel called "Some Can Whistle", but nobody read that novel so no one heard my complaint".

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed "Roads" even if I wouldn't personally stick to McMurtry's straightline routes. It's certainly made me want to read more of McMurtry.

(And seriously, he has written A LOT - here are a few more names to conjure with in case you fancy digging some out - The Last Picture Show, Streets of Laredo, Terms of Endearment, All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers, Moving On, Brokeback Mountain (screenplay)).

Long Lost Friends

When you spend a lot of your time recommending books, you tend to focus on recent books the may not yet have seen, or else you delve into your brain to recall great reads from the past. Inevitably though, I forget some of the fantastic books I read many moons ago. So last night I had a good rummage into the dustier corners of my bookshelves and pulled out a handful of old friends I never remember to recommend but which I will endeavour to from now on. Here they are:

1. Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. A extraordinary, original, grotesquely funny novel set in 19C Tasmania at a time when all the convicts were being shipped over. Beautiful writing, intense and fairly crazy in parts.

2. A Passage to India by E.M Forster. A classic but one I often forget to recommend. Superb novel set in 1920s India against the backdrop of the British Raj where a young British lady accuses an Indian Physician of attempting to assault her on a day trip out to the Malabar caves. A hot and dusty tale of prejudice and racial tension amid setting suns and rickshaws.

3. Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner. Also a classic - this time one for younger readers. A tale of smuggling in the 19C off the English coast. Storms, diamonds, castles, shipwrecks and a teary ending. Who needs Harry Potter?

4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. A brilliant Nigerian novel (written in English) set in late 19C within a group of villages focusing on their leader, Okonkwo and his family and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on their traditional way of life. A very powerful book which has really stayed with me.

5. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. This was one of those books I was vaguely aware of but didn't really know anything about until a couple of years ago and was then surprised at how much I loved it. The story of a very young German soldier in World War I and all the horrors and psychological trauma he endures. Sounds pretty intense and it is, but it is also poetic and beautiful and thought-provoking and tender and human. Ah. Just superb.

Mrs B

Customer tip No.2 "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" by Tom Franklin

Well, so far, so very good with customer recommendations. This book is a gripping read and I have no nails left to prove it. It fits into the increasingly popular "literary crime fiction" genre - not one I am hugely familiar with, although I have read a few recently (my favourite so far being "Black Water Rising"). Set in deepest rural Mississippi, yall find it real hard to put down once you've gone picked it up. Yall also be talkin to yoselves in southern drawl for days to come.

The story centres around an oddball loner, Larry who locals suspect was involved in the disappearance of a young girl ten years previously. Focus comes back onto him when another girl goes missing and he is found bleeding from a gun wound in his own home. Local cop Silas knew Larry from school and his investigations lead to him confronting his own past, as the story flashes back to their days as young boys growing up in the woodlands - one a middle-class white boy, the other poor and black. This is the real beauty of the book for me - the journey it takes back through their lives in a tough, rural landscape with its rednecks and its racial tensions, as mistakes are made that resonate long into the future.

The prose is delicious, it really is. His sense of place is incredible - I was completely immersed in the humid summers of the south - the dust-track roads, the mosquitos, the greasy diners, the squawking chickens and lonely road-side motels. For all the harshness of the backdrop though, it has a warmth and humanity it could easily have lacked - a deep sense of goodness and ultimately of love. His rich characters remind me of something from an Annie Proulx or Cormac McCarthy novel.

So thank you Mr W and Mrs S for the recommendation. A big thumbs up from me and one of those rare books that are likely to be just as popular with men and women. It's been shortlisted for the Edgar Awards in the states and will be keeping my fingers crossed for it.

Vlashka isn't around tonight to help me choose my next read from my "customer tips pile" so I will get back to the brilliant "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen - a hefty tome that lives by my bedside being slowly digested in between customer tips.

Please keep the suggestions flowing.

Night.

Mrs B

Lucinda's Reading Challenge: Short Detour

Black Mass is dense enough to have its
own gravity field - which is my speak for
"I'm having to read it s-l-o-w-l-y".
I shall be reporting back shortly...but
for some lighter Philosophical relief, I
have been dipping into Roland Barthes'
Mythologies, a selection of essays written
in the middle of the 20th century. The
spotlight is thrown onto a diverse selection
of icons, signs and behaviours surrounding
the development of mass culture. The essays are
succinct, thought provoking and often witty. My
favourite thus far is his observation of how a margarine
advertising campaign worked by appearing to slate the
product, before adding a resounding 'but' right at the end.
Barthes shows how the same strategy can be used to create
positive feeling towards institutions like the French Army.
And then you get to thinking that this idea of appearing to 'tell it like it is' to promote something is actually ubiquitous in our media heavy culture. It's always refreshing to be given a new view of the world and its workings and I can certainly recommend Barthes as
an entertaining guide. Right, now back to the serious stuff.

Kate's Reading Challenge 2011: Book Four

4. "True Things About Me" by Deborah Kay Davies (Canongate, 2010)

I can't honestly say that I enjoyed reading this book, but then I think you'd have to be a pretty strange person to enjoy a sickeningly up-close and personal account of an abusive relationship and consequentially a mental breakdown!

This novel is told from the perspective of its unnamed protagonist, a girl who in terms of background information we are told very little about. In the opening pages she meets an ex-con fresh out of prison and impulsively goes to a car park and has sex with him. In doing so she opens up her whole life to this man whom she knows nothing about (he too remains unnamed throughout and we don't find out much information about him either)! The result is a dark spiral in the mindset of a woman who has put her family, her job and her home in the hands of a terrifying stranger.

This is a very disturbing novel but the writing is compelling and the manner in which the author withholds any tangible information about so many of her characters is really effective in making the protagonist's decline seem particularly disorientating. I wouldn't read it at bed-time but if you don't mind a fair bit of trauma then check it out!

Vlashka picks out customer tip No.2.

To add a little drama to my reading plan, here's how the choosing process worked. I picked out a bunch of dog biscuits, nominally gave them each a book title from those suggested by customers and lined them up on the floor in the lounge while Mr B kept hold of Vlashka in the next room. I called her through and after some initial hesitation, presumably not believing her eyes, she went straight for the one on the end first...which was...."Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" by Tom Franklin. Will let you now how I get on. Looks like should be a good literary crime novel. I love the first page which explains the strange title...."M,I crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, humpback, I. - How southern children are taught to spell Mississippi."

Thanks for the recommendations. Keep adding to them please and I will continue to collate them and add them to the biscuit pile.

I have a train ride to London today and back tomorrow am so excited as it means some precious reading time without any interruptions, although I suppose I may occasionally have to chat to my husband sitting opposite me!

Mrs B

Customer tip No.1 "All My Friends are Superheroes" by Andrew Kaufman

So, thank you Mr R for your fantastic recommendation. I loved it. It made me smile. A lot. More of a novella at just over 100 pages, this is a quirky, funny, bonkers little book - perfect for a (shortish) train ride or a (longish) bath. An off-the-wall, uplifting (but not remotely slushy) tale of love. All of non-superhero Tom's friends are superheros, but not in the way you might think......you have "The Stress Bunny" "The Blue Outcast" "The Shadowless Man" "The Couch Surfer" to name a few, all with hilarious powers linked to their personality traits. He marries "The Perfectionist" but on their wedding night, her ex (Hypno) hypnotizes her into believing that Tom is invisible - to her, he has simply disappeared. Despondent after months of waiting for him to "return", we see The Perfectionist taking a one way flight to Canada to start a new life with an invisible Tom by her side, desperately trying to find a way for her to see him again.

The story jumps back and forth which I felt rather added to the quirky nature of the book. The snapshot descriptions of his superhero friends were, for me, the highlight of the book really. Here's a taster, talking about Mistress Cleanasyougo "..the most powerful superhero of all, the one everyone wishes they were...At the end of the day, she folds her clothes. She never leaves scissors on the table, pens with no ink are thrown in the trash, wet towels are always hung up, dishes are washed directly after dinner and nothing is left unsaid".

So if you want to cheer up a rainy January and you're not afraid to try something a little bit different, treat yourself to this little pick-me-up. And if you like it, share it with someone you know who you'd like to make smile!

I've collated my customer recommendations for my next read (including from Snow Geese, The Long Song, The Handmaid's Tale, And the Land Lay Still, Under Fishbone Clouds, Three Cups of Tea, The File and a few others), and, as suggested by Susanne on my last post, I am going to give our dog Vlashka a choice of biscuits each allocated to a particular book and whichever biscuit she eats first will be my next read. Watch this Bonio!

Mrs B. x

Libby's Reading Challenge: Book One

Well, it looks like its time for me to start blogging. This is very exciting for me, a so far blogging novice! Here is the first of many many blogs reviewing books from my reading year.

I have decided to start what I like to call my reading digression. I’m intending on reading books that are related in some small way, whether it be a theme, setting or writing style; basically anything that particularly interests me in the book I am reading I will learn more about in my next. I’m hoping this journey will take me to all the different sections of Mr B’s and stop me comfort reading solely in the fiction section. Saying that, I hope you will all forgive me for easing myself in gently with a novel that I plucked from our shelves more or less randomly in the section of authors beginning with ‘A’.
And my first book of 2011 is…(drum roll)

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany

This novel is set in Cairo during the first Gulf War in a once grand apartment block. The large cast of characters range from an aristocratic womanizer to a homosexual magazine editor and a Muslim extremist. The intricately woven plot jumps from character to character, describing episodes in their lives and giving a multi layered insight into modern day Egypt. It is essentially a portrait of the ambitious Egyptian people; each of the characters seems to sacrifice important things in order to move up the social ladder.

I can see why this book was such a massive bestseller in Egypt and also why it was so controversial when it was released in 2002. It shows a darker, grittier side to Cairo that I have never really encountered before. It is definitely worth keeping track of the multiple characters and their stories, (luckily there are character descriptions in the first few pages!) I found this book rewarding, funny, poignant and very insightful.

For my next book I will be delving into the, more or less unexplored, depths of the Mr B’s basement with The House by the Thames, and the people who lived there by Gillian Tindall which is about a building in a very different setting. Having browsed the British History section for this one I’m hoping, that in my next blog, I’ll be able to wow everyone with my knowledge of London through the ages. I had better keep my notebook handy!

Well if everyone else has a 2011 Reading Challenge....here's Nic's

As many of my regular customers know (and anyone else could figure out from the rather sporadic 2010 blog entries) my bid to read classics that everyone would have assumed a bookshop owner had already read lost all its momentum in mid-March at the hands of Wuthering Heights. Suffice to say, I was not a fan.

This year I've gone for a reading challenge that has more flexibility in terms of book type, so I'll be able to keep on top of lots of new writing as well as digging out lost gems.

I'm going to gradually read my way around the world starting in Louisiana

- the setting for the book that I've just finished and which I blogged about yesterday Tim Gautreaux's "The Missing". Not too many fixed rules but I'll try and move from one country to the next (and state-to-state in the U.S.) without leapfrogging any. The books should either be about a given country, set there or by an author from there.

Here's my first chunk of reading map.

I'll fill the states in as I go. I might pootle around in the U.S. a bit to begin with because "small-town American" fiction and travel writing is my big thing and I have spent the last few years purposefully diversifying ... and I'm in the mood to go back to it. I might also throw in a few broader travelogues in between specific locations...to inspire me on my reading trip.

I'm headed West..any great Texan recommendations?

Kate's Reading Challenge 2011: Books one, two and three

This year all of the Mr B’s Team have taken on different reading challenges, so here’s my plan. For every four books that I read I will make sure that one is a non-fiction book, in a bid to address my deep-seated fear of factual reading.

So without any hesitation here are my first three reads of the year…

1. The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin (Penguin, 2010)

If you missed Mr B’s gorgeous 2010 Christmas Catalogue then you may not have spotted Olga Grushin’s fabulous novel about a never-ending queue, which quickly forms at a mysterious booth in chilly Russia.

When the queue begins, its members have no idea what they are queuing for, but nevertheless Anna, a schoolteacher, takes a place and waits… At last it is announced that tickets for a one-off concert by a famous exiled composer will be sold and each of Anna’s small family takes their turn in line minding the family’s place. But the wait is far from over and as time goes on the queue operates later and later into the night and each of the family begin to develop their own obsessions and plans for the lone ticket.

I loved the way that Grushin gradually wound the stories of each member of the family closer and closer together creating a really claustrophobic and cleverly interlaced plot. An absolutely fantastic start to my reading year.

2. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham (Profile Books, 2010)

My first non-fiction read of the year. I’ve had my eye on this for some time but I’ve been distracted by so many great novels I’ve only just got round to it. Wrangham puts forward a really fascinating and well-argued theory that suggests consuming cooked food has played a vital role in our evolution.

He looks at the evidence from raw-foodists who live predominantly on a diet of raw or slightly heated meals and notes how this kind of extreme eating pattern affects our bodies. Time and time aga

in research finds that the amount of energy that our bodies can take from raw food is significantly lower than that acquired from cooked foods. Wrangham then considers the cook’s body and analyses how some of the key changes that evolution has brought about (smaller blunter teeth, a smaller gut, a larger brain) can be explained by the introduction of cooked food into the diet. He also finds evidence from changes in our social behaviour that supports his theory.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Wrangham’s theory is his chapters on the way that cooked food has shaped our social behaviour and defined the roles of the sexes in such an enduring manner that these gender-specific behaviours are still evident in most homes today.

This book made my new journey into the world of non-fiction seem easy, it really was incredibly interesting and the arguments were so logically described that I found it an easy and rewarding theory to follow.

3. Caroline: A Mystery by Cornelius Medvei (Harvill Secker, 2011)

It may sound bonkers but here it is… a middle aged man finds a donkey, is taken in by her doe-eyes and calm demeanour, walks her the many miles back to his inner city home, installs her in his garden, takes her to work and teaches her to play chess!

This crazy little novel really made me laugh, the description of Mr Shaw’s relationship with Caroline (the donkey) is so cleverly presented, and Caroline is brilliantly portrayed as a graceful, intelligent and hugely enigmatic character. The story is studded throughout with photographs, character reports and articles from Mr Shaw’s collection, which chart his research and growing obsession with donkeys, lending further authority to this surreal and yet entirely conceivable story.

A genuinely hilarious and wonderfully told story.

Kate’s Reading Challenge 2010: The Result

Somewhere in the blur of bookselling summer I stopped blogging… but I didn’t stop reading, so here in a few of sentences are the rest of my reads from 2010:

No.23. City of Thieves by David Benioff (Sceptre, 2009)

This book sat on the shelves of Mr B’s for some time before I decided (based on rave reviews from some friends and family) that it might be worth a look. The story throws together a naïve young Jewish boy and a charismatic chancer who must find a dozen eggs in depraved Russia during the siege of Leningrad. This book really gripped me in a completely unexpected way, it’s a fast paced adventure story with really memorable and well-drawn characters and I think it would be difficult to find a customer who I couldn’t happily recommend this book to!

No.24. Fists by Pietro Grossi (Pushkin Press, 2010)

Three coming-of-age short stories, written in a style that oozes Hemingway. My favourite is the central story in the collection, which follows two brothers, who are each given a horse as a gift from their father. The animals send the two men on completely different paths: one brother rides into the town, escaping his family and his usual day-to-day life in favour of freedom. The other brother works hard at a local stable to give his horse the best care possible. Grossi’s male characters are underpinned by some wonderfully sensitive writing that makes this book a standout set of short stories.

No. 25. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint (Vintage 2002)

Dark, tough and in places very funny – this novel about a boy who survives having his head run over by a mail van (in the first few pages) reminded me of John Irving’s, “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. After the accident, Edgar finds himself the adored centre of attention in a hospital ward of grumpy old men, but life outside the walls of hospital proves much trickier…

No. 26. Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin (Faber & Faber, 2002)

I read this novel in preparation for Russian Night at Mr B’s and I’ve got to say it’s not really the kind of book that I would choose myself. Set in the era of the great space race in Russia, the story is narrated by a boy who dreams of being an astronaut. Omon successfully enrols in an air force academy where he is trained for space exploration. What ultimately comes across is how the Soviets exploited the dreams of young men in order to present “heroes” to the rest of the world. Political, edgy and dark.

No. 27. Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones (John Murray, 2010)

I was really excited about this new novel, which I read a proof of in October last year. The story of an African lady who we come to know as “Ines” is at initially pieced together from various accounts of passers by and acquaintances who encounter the young woman at differing points during her tale. The story is thus coloured by the array of personalities and how their relationship with Ines effects their telling of her narrative. In the second and third parts of the book narration falls more reliably to only two people. At times I found the structure of the book enigmatic and clever, but for me it did teeter on seeming contrived. This is a really fascinating story but I wasn’t ultimately convinced by the way it was told.

No. 28. Wildtrack and Other Stories by Rose Tremain (Full Circle Editions, 2010)

For me, this book boasts a winning combination: Rose Tremain’s smooth, dark prose coupled with some great albeit rather creepy paintings by Jeffrey Fisher, a fantastic Independent publisher and a setting of East Anglia (my homeland!) The stories in this collection are wonderfully unnerving and sparse feeling, following on perfectly from Tremain’s eerie thriller “Trespass”. The title story “Wildtrack”, which appears last in the collection is my favourite. It follows a boy who grows up unable to hear, before an operation repairs his ears. He then becomes fascinated by a rich world of sound, recording noises for radio plays. This is a beautifully produced book in every possible sense.

No.29. The Elephant’s Journey by Jose Saramago (Harvill Secker, 2010)

Set in 15^th century Portugal an elephant must travel by foot (how else would you transport an elephant in 15^th century Portugal?!) from Lisbon to Vienna to be received as gift bythe Archduke Maximilian from the King of Portugal. Solomon (the elephant) takes with him a convoy of carers and protectors, a particularly opinionated bunch of travellers, all of whom seem to want to have a say in they way that their pack should travel. I love Jose Saramago’s witty and reflective style of comedy and this (based on a true story) is really exceptional.

No. 30. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Little Brown, 2011)

Due to be published in March this year, I can’t wait to start selling this fictional biography of Ernest Hemingway told from the perspective of his first wife Hadley. From the opening pages describing smoky, jazz era Paris, where the Hemingways set up house I was totally enthralled by McLain’s wonderfully evocative writing and ability to portray such a well-known literary figure with both poise and originality. “The Paris Wife” is an unashamedly romantic tale of a woman who devoted herself to her husband and his career, despite the strain this placed on her own desires. Rich with travel and literati, the Hemingways flee to Spain to watch bullfights, ski in Austria and mingle with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. This is undoubtedly one of the best books that I read last year.

No. 31. Tepper Isn’t Going Out by Calvin Trillin

The quirky story of Tepper, a man who delights in finding a fantastic parking space in New York and then enjoys sitting in that space and reading his paper, much to the outrage of the numerous drivers passing by in desperate search for a prime car parking spot! A very strange novel to end my reading year on, but a very funny one!

So… 31 books, which means I failed… quite epically in fact! Oh dear!

So moving on swiftly… next year’s reading challenge will be…

Lucinda's Reading Challenge: Book One

OK, so 2011 is going to be a basement odyssey for me:
I'm working my way clockwise round the lower ground
floor shelves of the shop, section by section.
First up is The Case For God author Karen Armstrong's
new offering Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.
This probably knocks most New Year's Resolutions
into a cocked hat, given that it is a global call to er....
whatever the opposite of 'arms' is. The premise is
simple: individuals have the power to bring the world
back from its current 'dangerously polarised' state,
by overriding their instinctive aggressive, protectionist
tendencies and adopting a compassionate stance. For
such a mammoth aim, the prose is very easy to read.
Karen Armstrong's use of 'we' throughout the book is
both coaxing and beguiling. She is also very good at
casually dropping in some pretty big statements
about the development of world religion. Bearing in mind
this is my first foray into the Religion and Spirituality shelf,
I feel as though I've learnt some key aspects of religious
history (and am even inclined to read more in this area at
some stage). The daily mind exercises and suggestions
for group activities are perhaps a step too far for sceptical
readers - but I guess the proof will be in whether
colleagues and customers can discern a change in my attitude!
The big test for my post-Armstrong rosy outlook has probably
arrived in the shape of my Philosophy shelf choice: John Gray's
Black Mass, arguing why we are misplaced in thinking we can
make the world a better place...here goes...

And now Mr B gets off the mark for 2011

Just finished my first book of the year but commenting on it is a tough task. The book is "The Missing" by Tim Gautreaux which has become a "Mr B's legend" over the last 12 months despite not being on the bestseller lists elsewhere.

My colleague Ed read "The Missing" this time last year and began recommending it like mad. It was his favourite book of the year and various other members of Team B have since joined the bandwagon. As a result we've sold several hundred copies with an astonishingly high rate of positive feedback from customers. It's been No.1 in our fiction chart for 20 weeks. It's the Bryan Adams of our chart.

And so I finally got round to reading it and am very glad that I have done so. The novel is set in 1920s Louisiana and Mississippi and tells the story of a New Orleans shop security guard, Sam Simoneaux, who loses his job when a little girl goes missing on his shift. Sam takes a job on a colossal paddle steamer pleasure boat heading up-river for the season to give himself the chance of tracking down the girl's abductors. His quest to find the girl is just part of what keeps the reader turning the pages though - the various nagging demons of Sam's past are the other draw.

For me what is particularly brilliant about Gautreaux's book is the sense of place he creates. He paints a vivid picture of the South in the early 20th century and of life on and around the Mississippi river.

And I'll say no more, as anyone who's been in Mr B's at any point in the last year may have heard it all before from Ed. BUT if you're reading this and are involved in selling books rather than just reading them, then I urge you to stock, read and recommend "The Missing" because it really does deserve championing.

Your Bookseller Needs You! Mrs B's 2011 Reading Plan

Everyone at Mr B's has an exciting new reading plan for the year and I'm going to join in, even if I am at home looking after Baby B most of the time.

My first day back in the New Year and a customer (Mr R) came in to collect a book he had ordered, a wee little book called "All My Friends are Superheros" by Andrew Kaufman. It had just arrived in a big delivery which we hadn't yet unpacked and as sod's law would have it, it was at the very bottom of the very last box I opened (5 years as a bookseller should have taught me to always open the bottom box first!). The name and cover of the book looked entertaining and as I handed it over to Mr R he said "You really should read this, it's fantastic. This is the nth copy I have bought for friends and everybody just loves it". Not only is it immensely frustrating being surrounded by fabulous looking books all day, knowing I will never have the time to read everything I want to read, but double that frustration by adding to that the number of times I am told by a customer that I really MUST read something. So this year, I will make a dent in my recommendations list and read mostly customer suggestions, starting with Mr R's and will let you know how I get on.

I am in the shop most Wednesdays and will be on the listen out for some more tips on what customers think should be my next read. I've already been given a tip on twitter by @LaurenJJones called Under Fishbone Clouds which may well be next on my list - I will collate "must-reads" and flip a coin. So do let me know about any book you think I should be reading.

And to return the favour at the end of each book I will add a recommendation of my own. Today's is the grotesquely, darkly funny "Gould's Book of Fish" set in Tasmania at the time when we were sending all our convicts over there. Fantastic. (not for the convicts).

Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras. A random read by Mrs B over Christmas

We WILL all be better at blogging this year. We really will. And to kick start the year here are a few words on a thoughtful (and very well translated) novel I read over Christmas this year.

Set in 1970’s Argentina, a young boy is whisked out of school by his parents fleeing to a safe house to escape the new military ruling power. I was expecting a high octane, suspense-filled novel and was at first disappointed by the lack of pace. However, I found it ultimately much more fulfilling as a look at where we look to escape to when reality becomes too painful - all through the eyes of a boardgame-loving, Houdini-obsessed young lad trying to make sense of a world closing in on his family.