Dear Book Case customer or friend,
Stand by for an eventful month with some superb authors attending Hebden Bridge Arts Festival (see below) and the ongoing celebrations of the the 500th anniversary of the Old Bridge. Entries to our two quizzes about bridges in books close on 19th June. The adult prize is a £20 Book Case book voucher, and there are five £10 book vouchers as prizes for children; the winning pictures will be on show in the window. Our 500 year literary time line leaflet with quotations from books published around the 10th year of each century is available to take away from the shop - or it can be downloaded here.
Linda Green signed copies of her new novel Things I Wish I'd Known (partly set in Todmorden) for customers at The Book Case - and we have a few signed copies in stock if you missed it."The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister", starring Maxine Peake, finally went out on TV and has been well-received, with a rush on Anne Lister's diaries in I Know My Own Heart - more stock is expected in soon. We' ve also sold out of Jill Liddington's book about Anne Lister, Female Fortune - also expected back in stock soon. We do have Jill's other two books about Anne Lister in stock (Presenting the Past and Nature's Domain, both with extracts from her diaries) - and we now have more copies of the Spring issue of the women's history magazine Herstoria which featured Anne Lister.
The summer issue of Herstoria is now in stock and it includes a big illustrated article by local journalist Issy Shannon on the history of women's magazines, an interview with Sarah Dunant, medieval nuns, a 12th-century female scribe, baby farmers, lady plant collectors and Warwick the Kingmaker's sisters.
From next Tuesday 8th June, we'll be opening on Tuesday afternoons again: 2.00-5.30pm
A reminder of our new Mr Men and Little Miss mugs, Gruffalo milk and biscuit set (a mug and a plate) in a sturdy carry box with cord handles and stylish retro Charles Buchan Football Mug.
Our Readers' Opinions board shows signs of revival, and people report enjoying Vendela Vida's Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and her Vacant Possession (very funny), Winifred Holtby's South Riding, David Mitchell's Ghostwritten (twice), Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Jacqueline Wilson's Love Lessons and David Mitchell's Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. NOT enjoyed were "fiction" (says someone sweepingly) and Cornelia Funke's Inkheart Trilogy. (If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.
Adult fiction: Troubles by J G Farrell (£7.99). In 1919 Major Brendan Archer travels to the Majestic Hotel in Ireland and the fiancee he acquired on a rash afternoon’s leave three years ago. ‘Lost Booker’ winner and the first of Farrell’s memorable and entertaining Empire Trilogy.
Adult non-fiction: Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay (£14.99 at The Book Case). In this revelatory and redemptive book, with characteristic generosity and humour, Jackie Kay tells her own story. 'I was adopted by warm-spirited Scottish communists. When people ask me if I've ever found my "real" Mum and Dad, it is them I think of.’
Children's book: The Museum Book by Jan Mark and Richard Holland (£6.99). From the late lamented Jan Mark and a talented new artist, a brilliant and thought-provoking book for children about visiting museums.
CD: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, read by Dan Stevens (£15.99). The best-selling and riveting fictional account of the life of Thomas Cromwell during Henry VIII’s long-drawn-out divorce of Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn. Six CDs.
NEWS
Local Interest
Yorkshire in Watercolour - Les Packham, £14.99 paperback, £19.99 hardback
From the Pennines to the coast, over the North Yorkshire Moors and through the Wolds to the industrial south of the region, this book encompasses everything to please lovers of this remarkable county, portraying the Yorkshire landscape through the eyes of one of the county’s most versatile and best known watercolourists. There's an exhibition of the paintings in Huddersfield and we'll be hosting a signing session at The Book Case on Saturday 26th June, 11.00am-12 noon.
Local Authors
Ted Hughes and Nature: "Terror and Exultation" - Keith Sagar, £9.50
Keith Sagar takes discussion of Hughes' relationship with nature onto a deeper level by relating it to paganism and Christianity, myth, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and the whole tradition of nature poetry in English. He traces Hughes' painful journey from terror in the face of nature in his first three collections, through the transitional works from Crow to Cave Birds, to the transformation in Moortown and Remains of Elmet, culminating in the exultation of River.
Happy Holiday, Hammy the Wonder Hamster! - Poppy Harris, £4.99 From a local author, another of the popular books about Hammy the very special hamster. Hammy is very excited about his first trip to the seaside and he can't wait to dig lots of hamster tunnels deep down in the sand! But it's far too easy to lose a little hamster on a very big beach and Bethany isn't the only person who wants to find Hammy.
Leg before Wicket by Colin Goodwin, £6.99
From a Burnley-based author, a first novel about dodgy goings-on involving a local cricket club and property deals, in the style of Tom Sharpe.
Walking in Purbeck - Andrew Bibby, £6.95
From the local author and journalist, a second edition of this guide to 15 circular walks in this lovely area in Dorset.
Locally-based poet and playwright Amanda Dalton's new play for everyone over nine, Powder Monkey, will open at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester today 3rd June and continue to 19th June. Powder Monkeys were the children on ships' gun crews in the 1600s. Stella's brother is away fighting for freedom. She has his collection of soldiers - and Worm - but weird things are starting to happen.
Local Publishers
Royd House has just published a new collection of offbeat verse and prose from Helmshore-based historian Chris Aspin, entitled The Owl and the Pussycat: new light on an old legend (£4.99). Well-known poems take an unexpected turn, great figures of history are pithily portrayed in verse, weird and wonderful things happen to assorted animals, while there are strange goings on in the world of the KGB. Meanwhile Simple Simon continues to outwit cleverer folk! The delightful cartoon on the cover from Dick Graham, formerly the Manchester Evening News editorial cartoonist, shows the Owl and the Pussycat unhappily in the grips of Hokusai's Great Wave.
Local Events
Hebden Bridge Arts Festival
What a line-up! (With particular reference to dodgy Tudor goings-on.) And what a great Festival picture! As well as our stock at the shop, most books will be available from the Festival Box Office from 12 June, as well as at the actual events.
Monday 28 June: John Morrison presents his inimitable Milltown series at aj's Restaurant, Hebden Bridge, 8pm-9.30pm. We stock John's Milltown series, and also some of his splendid photographic books
Tuesday 29 June: Martin Parr talks about his time at Albert Street Workshop and his photos of everyday life in the Upper Calder Valley at Hebden Bridge Picture House, 8pm-9.30pm. We're stocking Val Williams' book which includes these early black and white photos. There'll be an exhibition of them at the Festival Box Office during the Festival.
Wednesday 30 June: Louis de Bernieres and Mavis Cheek talk about their work at St Michael's Hall, Mytholmroyd, 8pm-9.30pm. We're stocking a selection of their books, including the most recent - de Berniere's Notwithstanding and Mavis Cheek's Amenable Women (about Anne of Cleves) and Truth to Tell.
Friday 2 July: Hilary Mantel talks about her work at Hebden Bridge Picture House, 8pm-9.30pm. We stock most of her books, including the phenomal Wolf Hall about Thomas Cromwell.
Saturday 3 July: Long Nose Puppets present Penguin at Little Theatre, Hebden Bridge, 11.00-11.45am. We're stocking the book Penguin by Polly Dunbar.
Sunday 4 July: Going the Distance: Novel Writing Workshops with Anna Chilvers at Hebden Bridge Library, 10am-12.30pm, 2.00-4.30pm. We stock Anna's successful novel Falling through Clouds.
Monday 5 July: Alison Weir and Suzannah Dunn: In Search of Henry's Women at Little Theatre, Hebden Bridge, 8pm-10pm. Two historical novelists (Alison Weir is also a popular historian) renowned for their work about the Tudors discuss Henry VIII's hapless wives. We're stocking the Tudor ones (as well as others we have in stock).
Sunday 11 July: Trinidadian poet, artist and cook John Lyons returns to Hebden Bridge for a Cook Up in the Trades Club Kitchen, Hebden Bridge Trades Club, 12.30-2pm. Janet Oosthuysen will be supplying a 3-course meal from John's Trinidadian recipes - and we have Cook-Up in a Trini Kitchen and his latest poetry book No Apples in Eden in stock.
Sunday 4 July - Sunday 15 August: Paula Rego Recent Prints Exhibition at Artsmill, Wed-Sun., 11am-5pm.
Crime Writers Association Event at Hebden Bridge Library, Friday 4th June
Crime writer and scriptwriter Cath Staincliffe will be talking about her new novel The Kindest Thing at 7.30pm at the Library. It's a love story, a modern nightmare and an honest and incisive portrayal of a woman who honours her husband’s wish to die and finds herself in the dock for murder. More info about Cath here and contact Anna Turner 01422 392606 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it about the event.
NATIONAL BOOK EVENTS
Orange Prize shortlist
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
Born in the US and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social- climbing flapper mother, Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution. (£7.99)
Black Water Rising - Attica Locke
On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife's birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora's Box. (£7.99)
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. (£8.99)
A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
With America gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a 'half-Jewish' farmer's daughter from the plains of the Midwest, escapes to university and takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious and glamorous. (£7.99)
The Very Thought of You - Rosie Alison
31st August 1939: the world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate which has been opened up to evacuees. (£7.99)
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle - Monique Roffey
When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life, but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill at ease with the racial segregation and the imminent dawning of a new era. Her only solace is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad's new national party.(£7.99)
"Lost" Man Booker (1970)
And the winner, by a big majority of the popular vote, was Troubles by J G Farrell, set in Ireland in 1919, just after the First World War, and the first of his Empire Trilogy. We have all three books in stock. Troubles won 38% of the votes by the international reading public, more than double the votes cast for any other book on the shortlist. More info at http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1418 This is our June Novel of the Month.
The Manchester Poetry Prize 2010
Judges: Simon Armitage, Lavinia Greenlaw and Daljit Nagra. First prize: £10,000. Deadline for entries: 6th August 2010. Entry fee: £15
Under the direction of Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University is launching the second Manchester Poetry Prize – a major international literary competition celebrating excellence in creative writing. To find out more about the Manchester Poetry Prize, and enter online, go to: www.manchesterwritingcompetition.co.uk
Picador Poetry ...
is launching an exciting competition to find the very best new, previously unpublished poetry in the UK. The winner will have their collection edited by their own prize-winning poetry editor Don Paterson and published onto the Picador Poetry list, where they’ll join some of the finest contemporary poets.
The judging panel will be chaired by Don Paterson and will include poets Jackie Kay and John Stammers and the Guardian’s Sarah Crown.
Entrants should submit ten pages of their poetry via the Picador website. The closing date is 1 September 2010. For more details, including full terms and conditions, please go to http://www.picador.com/Poetry/prize/picadorpoetryprize.aspx
Puffin of Puffins
Puffin are celebrating their 70th birthday and want people to vote on their favourite modern classic from the following; one has been chosen from each decade:
The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett – 1940s: a gentler classic of life in a simpler time, at home with the Ruggles family where there is never a dull moment.
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White – 1950s: the story of a little girl named Fern who loved a little pig named Wilbur and of Wilbur's dear friend, Charlotte A. Cavatica, a beautiful large grey spider.
Stig of the Dump by Clive King – 1960s: a solitary little boy falls into a chalk pit and lands in a sort of cave, where he meets 'somebody with a lot of shaggy hair and two bright black eyes'.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl – 1970s: Charlie Bucket loves chocolate - and Mr Willy Wonka, the most wondrous inventor in the world, is opening the gates of his amazing chocolate factory to five lucky children.
Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian – 1980s: the story of young Second World War evacuee Willie Beech and grumpy but kind Mr Tom.
The Hundred Mile-an-Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong – 1990s: Streaker is no ordinary dog, she's a rocket on four legs with a woof attached!
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer – 2000s: an explosive blend of action, comedy and fast-paced adventure.
You can vote from tomorrow, 4th June, until 16th June, at http://www.puffin.co.uk/static/puffinminisites/puffin70/vote.html
June's hardback fiction will include a new novel from Yann Martel and there's paperback fiction from Barbara Kingsolver (already out), Terry Pratchett, William Boyd, William Nicholson, Caryl Phillips, Barry Pilton, Maeve Binchy, Jodi Picoult, Nick Cave, Michele Roberts, Adam Thorpe and more. Reissues include Colette, A J Cronin, Regency Romance, stories for night reading, Jane Bowles, William Boyd and P D James.
June's non-fiction includes several books with unusually long and comprehensive titles (try Media and Science. Particularly impressive is Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If it Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority).
- a colour-it-yourself graphic novel of Frankenstein in Art
- James Herriot, Aeronwy Thomas (daughter of Dylan), Brian Keenan, Vince Cable, Frank Gardner, Rachel Cusk and Jackie Kay in Biography
- a Dutch reporter in the Middle East in Current Affairs
- Rose Elliot, student cooking, ale (Indian Pale and Real) and how cooking civilised us in Food and Drink
- wartime allotment methods in Gardening
- Time Team Britain, Anne Boleyn, the English Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Israeli national myth and the women who invented the 20th century in History
- dads making things, reconstructing a Halifax bomber and the Oxbridge questions in Hobbies, Practical Craft and Puzzles
- parodies from Sebastian Faulks, lethal games in the recent past and unsuccessful dairy farming in Humour
- the new Writers and Artists Handbook, the Arvon on biographic writing, beginning Theory and Shakespeare and Zadie Smith on writing in Language & Literature
- spoilt children, baby names, miracles, dying gently, angels and Rose Fyleman fairies in MBS
- Zizek on Hitchcock (and possibly Lacan) in Media
- cows, birds, waves, landscape and salmon in Nature
- surfing, walking, swimming and camping in Outdoor Activities
- Marvell, Herrick, Ralegh, Blake, Thoreau, Fitzgerald and Judy Dench in Poetry
- Tony Benn and Andrew Marr in Politics
- Dalrymple on India and green men in Religion
- opinions of Darwin and historical studies of science in Science
- superfreakonomics, drug barons and holiday camps (we like to be diverse) in Society
- the North of England, Wainwright through the Pennines and across the country, the Dales, Purbeck, free attractions, Scotland, India, Iceland, Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian coast, Naples and the Amalfi coast and London in Travel
- and icebergs, Milly-Molly-Mandy, museums and teenage Sherlock Holmes in Children's books
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
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What you've been buying: MAY's bestsellers at The Book Case
Novels again made up half the total in The Book Case’s May bestsellers - one of them by a local author. Three other books were of local interest, a children’s sticker book was popular, and Mark Thomas’s entertaining book of political ideas continued to sell briskly.
1. Things I Wish I’d Known - Linda Green (£6.99). Successful Todmorden-based author Linda Green signed her new novel for customers at The Book Case. Set partly in Todmorden, it’s about a woman realising how far her present life is removed from her teenage dreams. Warm and funny with a dark edge.
2. Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver (£7.99). Chunky new novel from the author of The Poisonwood Bible about a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Making himself useful in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and Trotsky, he inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
3. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas (£5.99). Back near the top is Peter Thomas’s account of the history of our area. A Royd Press publication.
4. Last Voyage of the Olivebank - Len Townend, ed. Elvin Carter (£9.99). Len Townend’s diary of one of the last Great Grain Races on the tall ships of the 1930s, with wonderful black and white photos. Len Townend lived locally and still has family in the area.
5. The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas (£4.99). Inspiring to downright hilarious ideas for sorting out the country's political chaos and taking back power for the people. It’s kept selling post-Election so can it be that the new government doesn’t have everyone’s unquestioned support? For shame!
6. The Ted Hughes Trail in Crimsworth Dean - the Elmet Trust, Donald Crossley, Nick Wilding & Lesley Alston (£2.50)
This colour illustrated booklet with sketchmap takes you on a circular walk from Midgehole visiting places significant in some of Ted Hughes' poems, many of them from Elmet. (Which is still inexplicably unavailable.)
7. Ultimate Truck Sticker Book (£3.99). Lots of trucks to identify and place, with a bit of info about each.
8. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (£8.99). The Booker-winning and bestselling story of Thomas Cromwell - political genius, briber, charmer and bully - as Henry VIII’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn shakes the kingdom. The audio version is our current CD of the Month and Hilary Mantel is attending the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival.
9. The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt (£7.99). This novel about a famous Edwardian writer and her children (based on E Nesbit) holds its place at No 9.
10. Brooklyn - Colm Toibin (£7.99). Costa-winning novel about a girl emigrating from Ireland to New York in the 1950s.
Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,
The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email:
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url: www.bookcase.co.uk
So found Reading the Future, The Bookseller's third annual survey into what readers and book buyers are thinking. More info at http://www.thebookseller.com/in-depth/feature/119078-reading-the-future-2010.html
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