The Book Case

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

March is a busy month in the world of books - publishers get their top Spring titles out, and it's World Book Day too: see below for both.

In addition, we expect the forthcoming film (however inaccurate) and TV documentary about Anne Lister to spark interest in her diaries, published in I Know My Own Heart, edited by Helena Whitbread, and in Jill Liddington's books about her. We don't have a transmission date yet, but BBC2's The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister will open the 24th BFI London Lesbian and Gay Festival on 17th March. More info at the BBC and Screen Yorkshire.

Already under way is the Totally Locally Fiver Fest Fortnight from 26th February to 14th March. "If every adult in Calderdale spent just £5 per week extra in our local shops & businesses it would mean an extra £40 million a year going into our local economy!" For the duration of the event, The Book Case will be offering for £5 each (and offering you the opportunity to brush up your local history at the same time):

• Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area by Peter Thomas
• Gold Pieces by Phyllis Bentley
• Ned Carver in Danger by Phyllis Bentley
• The Adventures of Tom Leigh by Phyllis Bentley

Our lovely new cards and stationery have been very well received - we've lost track of the number of compliments we've received. Go to our Facebook page to see some samples of the cards! And Mike Barrett's wonderful quirky postcards to celebrate Hebden 500 will soon be available here too.

Speaking of Hebden 500, The Book Case has produced a small bookish celebration of 500 years of Hebden Old Bridge, which can be downloaded here in pdf. Some of the publication dates are slightly "circa" - like the bridge. More about Hebden 500 soon!

We have fresh stocks in of Beano, Dandy and Gruffalo mugs and we're keeping in a few of the classic Penguin mugs too.

We now have in stock the Royal Society of Literature's Review journal for 2010, £5.00. Lots of good articles by well-known authors, including Philip Pullman, Jenny Uglow, Frances Wilson and Anna Stein discussing e-books.

Since last month, readers have commented favourably on our opinions board about Maggie Gee's My Driver, Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father (but not Audacity of Hope?- it's unclear), Niall Murtagh's Blue-Eyed Salaryman, Arturo Perez-Reverte's Seville Communion and Queen of the South and Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes.

On a more environmental subject, the two shops on Market Street deliberately kept semi-derelict have long been causing annoyance and frustration and there's a petition at the shop asking the Council to do something about them - please come and sign! More info on Hebweb.

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: Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (£8.99). 'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.' Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009.

Adult Non-fiction: Do They Think You're Stupid?: 100 Ways of Spotting Spin and Nonsense from the Media, Celebrities and Politicians - Julian Baggini (£8.99). Aka "The Duck that Won the Lottery", another entertaining selection of examples of bad argument.

Children: Lord Sunday by Garth Nix (£5.99). In this seventh and last book of "The Keys to the Kingdom", the mysteries of the House, the Architect, the Trustees, the Keys and the Will are revealed, and the fate of Arthur, our Earth, and the entire Universe is finally decided. Ages 8 -12yrs+

CD: Secret Songs of Birds: The Hidden Beauty of Birdsong Revealed (£9.99). Many songbirds, such as the Skylark, Icterine Warbler and Grey Fantail produce songs that astound us with their complexity and speed of delivery. Though these songs never fail to impress, it is almost impossible for the human ear to distinguish the wealth of hidden notes and surprising melodies that make up these remarkable compositions. On this disc original recordings are played alongside digitally mastered versions where the natural speed has been specifically altered to reveal the subtle intricacy of each song in its full splendour.

NEWS

Local Interest

Weird Calderdale - Paul Weatherhead (£8.50)
Back in stock, an expanded and updated edition of this collection of strange local legends.

The Pennine Way - Paddy Dillon (£12.95)
The Pennine Way was the first long-distance path to be created in Britain, back in 1965. It traverses the 'backbone of England', striving to stay high on the moors, yet dropping down to delightful little towns and villages each evening. It has always been a popular trail, rightly regarded as a challenge, running higher and wilder than any other National Trail. This title presents detailed description of the official route, with variants. It is illustrated with photographs throughout the seasons and OS map extracts with full information about accommodation, public transport and other facilities available en route.

Local Authors

Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes - Ehor Boyanowsky (£19.95)
Ehor Boyanowsky became friends with Ted Hughes through their shared passion for fishing, and this is a portrait of Ted Hughes the outdoorsman via their joint fishing expeditions in British Columbia.

Gaza: Beneath the Bombs - Sharyn Lock; Sarah Irving (£12.99)
Hebden Bridge-based Sharyn Lock's eyewitness account brings home the horror of life in Gaza beneath the bombs. Sharyn went to the Gaza strip with the Free Gaza Movement, thinking the greatest danger she faced was making it past the Israeli sea blockade in a fishing boat, but soon after her arrival Israel attacked Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants by land, air and sea. With others from the International Solidarity Movement, Sharyn volunteered with Palestinian ambulances, assisting them as they faced overwhelming civilian casualties.

Local Event

Locally-based poet Simon Rennie will be having his Hebden Bridge launch of his first collection of poems, Little Machines, on Thursday 11th March from 8pm onwards, upstairs at the Hole in t'Wall (just by the old Packhorse Bridge) and reading with him is another fantastic poet from Hebden Bridge, John Siddique.

NATIONAL BOOK EVENTS

World Book Day

This year’s World Book Day falls on Thursday 4th March, and the theme is 'Read to a Million Kids'. This year’s 11 £1 books are as follows (please note that the age ranges given are for appropriate content and not reading age), and we'll have them piled up ready for the influx of young readers with their special £1 tokens:
:
Picture book - Thomas & Friends: Thomas to the Rescue

And five special two-books-in-one - double the fun!

Age 5+ flip books
Kitten Chaos by Anna Wilson with Magic Ballerina: The Magic Dance by Darcey Bussell
The Charlie Small Journals: Valley of Terrors with Dinosaur Cove: Battle of the Giants by Rex Stone

Age 7+ flip book
Grubtown Tales: The Great Pasta Disaster by Philip Ardagh, illus. Jim Paillot with Pongwiffy and the Important Announcement by Kaye Umansky, illus. Nick Price

Age 9+ flip book
Jamie Johnson: Born to Play by Dan Freedman with Young Samurai: The Way of Fire by Chris Bradford

Age 11+ flip book
Walking the Walls by Chris Higgins with Medusa Project: The Thief by Sophie McKenzie

And for adults, we have a good range of Quick Reads at £1.50.

"Lost" Man Booker (1970)

Because of a change of rules in 1970, a number of possible winners for that year were never considered. There's now a plan to select a shortlist of six from 22 of those books which would have been eligible and are still in print, as listed in last month's newsletter.

The shortlist will be announced this month but, as with the Best of the Booker in 2008, the international reading public will decide the winner by voting via the Man Booker Prize website. The overall winner will be announced in May.

Read more at http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1317

NEW TITLES

March is traditionally one of the big months in publishing, and this one is no exception. In fiction, we’ll have new novels in hardback from Ian McEwan, Alexander McCall Smith, Sophie Hannah and Delphine de Vigan. In paperback, there will be Hilary Mantel and Colin Toibin (the Booker and Costa winners), Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula Le Guin, Salley Vickers, Fay Weldon, Maggie Gee, Val McDermid, Donna Leon, Nicci French and many many others. And lots of promising reissues too: Oxford anthologies of short stories, Gaskell, Philip K Dick, Alfred Bester, Terry Pratchett, Nancy Mitford, John Wyndham and a whole lot of Hilary Mantel and Val McDermid.

March's Non-fiction includes:

• Calligraphy, craftsmanship, knitting and the Roma in Art & Craft
• Mary Tudor, Margaret Drabble, William Fiennes, Gervase Phinn, a check-out girl and an ambulance control phone answerer in Biography
• schools for girls in Afghanistan and an unlikely cross-border friendship in Israel in Current Affairs
• a Malawi boy who built windmills for his village in Environment
• Pam Ayres and a British miscellany in Humour
• good English food over the centuries, vegetarian cookery and vegan cookery in Food
• gardening in schools in Gardening
• the Celts, British rebels, the Arab golden age, Tower beheadees, English childhood 1600-1914, the Hellfire Clubs and how to fly a Spitfore in History
• small everyday problems and a 9-5 jungle survival skills in Humour
• the God debate and post-hoc fallacies in Ideas
• David Crystal and reading and writing in Language
• ironing really flat in Lifestyle
• labyrinths, babies, panic attacks, sleep, shaking, witchcraft, angels and cosmic ordering in MBS
• trees, chickens, horses, swallows, bees, quite a lot about birds, Richard Mabey, snow geese and living in Nature
• the SAS survival guide and Himalayan Mountaineering in Outdoor Activities
• BBC CDs of The Country Wife, The Importance of Being Ernest, Private Lives, Time and the Conways and The Norman Conquests, and Classic FM Favourite Poems, international poetry and love poems in Plays and Poetry
• post-war Britain, local money, less stimulation for children and our relationship with work in Society
• the Pennine Way, the Lake District, North Britain, camping, back roads in Britain and Europe, Middle England, natural navigation, 18th-century India, US railroads, train travel, exploration and reissues of Dervla Murphy and Wainwright in Travel
• and ladybirds, warrior sheep, Percy Jackson, the final Keys to the Kingdom and the Titanic in Children's books

For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
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What you've been buying: FEBRUARY's bestsellers at The Book Case

The Calder Valley factor made itself felt again at The Book Case, with two books of local interest and four more by local authors. In addition, two books looking at present-day society, one wry and humorous and the other scientific, were popular, and a ghostly novel and love poems made up the remainder.

1. The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas, £4.99. Mark Thomas toured the country to find out what people really wanted. There are some really good ideas in this thoroughly entertaining little book!
2. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. Peter Thomas’s account of the history of our area continues popular. A Royd Press publication
3. Falling through Clouds - Anna Chilvers, £7.99. This first novel from a Hebden Bridge author is a contemporary retelling of the medieval English tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight via the story of a young man plagued with nightmares after being held hostage in Iraq and his relationship with 22-year-old student Kat as they summer in Cornwall.
4. Little Stranger - Sarah Waters, £7.99. A chilling ghost story set in a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire. A doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, home to the Ayres family for over two centuries. Our Fiction Book of the Month for February.

5. The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone - Richard Wilkinson, £9.99. This groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them - the well-off as well as the poor. Almost every modern social and environmental problem - ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations - is more likely to occur in a less equal society. Our February Non-Fiction Book of the Month.

6. Hammy the Wonder Hamster - Poppy Harris, £4.99. Hammy: the cleverest hamster the world has ever seen! But there's something different about Hammy, something very special. Not only is he super cute, he's got amazing brains and an incredible secret. By a local author.

7. Life Class by Glyn Hughes, £13.95. A magnificent poem by a major poet, notable for its keen attention to the natural world and accounts and circumstances of a life lived to the full. Glyn Hughes lives locally and is a prize-winning author and poet.

8. Memories of Dolphin - Tom Greenwood, £11.99 inc DVD. Still selling well, this book from a Hebden Bridge author commemorates the great Baildon climber Arthur Dolphin who died tragically young in the Alps in 1953 and includes a DVD of black and white footage showing Dolphin in action in the Lake District in 1950 and 1951.

9. Summat A'Nowt - Steve Murty, £9.95. Steve Murty's well-illustrated history of the Calder Valley and surrounding area, last year’s bestseller, makes another appearance.

10. 10 Poems About Love, £4.95. Well, it was Valentine’s Day! This is one of Candlestick’s little pamphlet-card anthologies.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
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url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"It is fair to say that book publishing is more than a business. Without the contents of our libraries - our collective backlist, our cultural memory - our civilisation would collapse."