PAST NEWSLETTERS

DECEMBER 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

It's time to offer you our seasonal good wishes again, and won't we all be glad when we reach the turning point of the year!
And as far as I know, it's the first time a book on punctuation has ever been a Christmas bestseller. Pleased to see you all giving semi-colons the attention they deserve.
Ever keen to promote cultural awareness, The Book Case is now stocking the bi-monthly music mag Muso, a classical music magazine aimed at the 16-30 group, combining informative articles with a light-hearted approach. It's published from Manchester. Find out about them at http://www.muso-online.com/
A nice anecdote in the autumn issue of Carousel, the children's books magazine: Chris Stephenson's report of Francesca Simon's visit to Hebden Bridge Little Theatre concludes with the story of a small boy who visited The Book Case to order her new book. "'It's not published yet,' he said proudly, the custodian of classified information. 'What's the title?' the bookseller enquired. The boy stared at the bookseller, frowned, turned to his mother, and asked, 'Am I allowed to tell him?'"
(If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box. If you would prefer to receivethe newsletter in Plain Text format, please click on Reply and type TEXT NL in the Subject box.)
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NEWS

Local Interest

Milltown Memories 6: the Upper Calder Valley captured on camera, £2.80
Cragg Vale features prominently with articles on the Hinchliffes and Cragg Hall; also covered are Wilson's Bobbin Mill in Cornholme, memories of Old Gate and Market Street in Hebden Bridge, Eastwood, two strange deaths, and icicles in Hardcastle Craggs.

Milltown: an Unreliable History - John Morrison, £5.95
Now in stock - the story of a small characterful community in the South Pennines. Can a small gritstone town have too many juice-bars? Latest in the infamous Milltown series, expected to do well over Christmas!

Halifax - John A Hargreaves, £20
The definitive history back in print, updated and expanded.

Martin Parr Postcards, £14.95
This nicely-boxed set of 45 postcards by the well-known photographer includes a number of black-and-white photos from his 1982 Calderdale Photographs collection, now out of print. There was a BBC programme about Martin Parr on 4th December. See his website at http://www.martinparr.com/

Nicholas Nickleby video, £12.99
Now in stock, the successful film with Jim Broadbent, Jamie Bell & practically everyone else, with views of Gibson Mill, Hardcastle Crags, and local lads suffering in Dotheboys Ball.
West Riding Steam 1955-1969 - a pictorial diary by Robert Anderson (£12.95)
208 previously unpublished photographs of 78 classes of steam locomotives around Halifax, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, and further afield in West Yorkshire.

Local Authors

Sing No Sad Songs - Christian Thompson (£15.99 at The Book Case)
Second in the PI Chris O'Brien series from ex-HB man. His first book That Which Does Not Kill You came out last year.

Sons and Lodgers - Jill Robinson (£6.95)
More comic relief from the author of Berringden Brow. All Jess wants is a quiet life. All her friends want is somewhere to stay ...

Local Publishers

Now in stock: The Fan - Hunter Davies (£9.99)
Collection of hilarious and well-observed pieces on football originally published in The New Statesman. Hebden Bridge publishers Pomona's Christmas lead title.

Northern Voices No. 2, £1.20
Locally published Northern anarchist magazine. This one includes an article on local windfarms by Harry Sculthorpe as well as contributions on Chomsky, Monbiot, Burnley, Bradford and Manchester.

Yorkshire Interest

No Coward Soul: the remarkable story of Bob Appleyard - Stephen Chalke & Derek Hodgson, £16.00
The story of the former England and Yorkshire cricketer from Bradford who took 200 wickets in his first full season, was diagnosed with advanced TB, but made a successful comeback.
Nearish Lancashire Interest
It's Burnley, not Barcelona - Dave Thomas (£12.95)
"The search for champagne with beer money" - for all the local Burnley supporters, an account of the rocky 2002-3 season. "The despair, the drenchings, the hypothermia ..." But they beat Tottenham Hotspur!

National Book Events

Big Read
There's an interesting article on the project by comedy writer Armando Ianucci, who also appeared on the launch programme, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/11/23/boarmando.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/11/23/bomain.html (sorry about that) entitled "You shouldn't judge people by the covers of the books they read". He deplores the "hooting and jumping" presentation and "fragmentary soundbites" but thinks the project has done a lot to bring classics to new readers and concludes that "the flaw in the Big Read is that it is scared of content ... Those who can teach and enthuse and explain ideas have got to re-connect with television, and ... re-explain why ideas matter ... otherwise the product of this debate will be empty and meaningless arts programmes and bitter but muted thinkers."
You can still vote for your favourite at http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/vote/. The result will be announced on 13th December.
Whitbread Category Shortlists

The five Whitbread Award winners will be announced on Wednesday 7 January 2004 and the Whitbread Book of theYear on Tuesday 27 January 2004.

WHITBREAD FIRST NOVEL AWARD

 

Buddha Da by Anne Donovan

An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

An Empty Room by Talitha Stevenson

 

WHITBREAD NOVEL AWARD

 

The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Heligoland by Shena Mackay

Frankie & Stankie by Barbara Trapido

WHITBREAD BIOGRAPHY AWARD

 

Margaret Thatcher - Volume Two: The Iron Lady by John Campbell

Martha Gellhorn by Caroline Moorehead

Orwell: The Life by D J Taylor

Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson

 

WHITBREAD POETRY AWARD

 

Minsk by Lavinia Greenlaw

Ink Stone by Jamie McKendrick

Landing Light by Don Paterson

Hard Water by Jean Sprackland

 

WHITBREAD CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD

 

The Fire-Eaters by David Almond

The Oracle by Catherine Fisher

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

Naked Without a Hat by Jeanne Willis

 

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Smarties Award Winners 2003:

 

Hardback only unless priced


Age 5 and Under

The Witch's Children and the Queen by Ursula Jones - Gold
Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis - Silver 
Two Frogs by Chris Wormell - Bronze

Age 6-8

Varjak by S F Said - Gold
The Last Castaways by Harry Horse (£3.99) - Silver
The Countess's Calamity by Sally Gardner (£4.99) - Bronze & Kids' Clubs Network Special Award

Age 9-11

The Fire-Eaters by David Almond - Gold (We have this in stock at £9.99) 
Montmorency by Elenor Updale - Silver

The Various by Steve Augarde - Bronze

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Guardian First Book Award

 

The winner, announced on 4th December, was Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane, a Cambridge Eng Lit don; it documents our fascination with mountains and describes his own climbing experiences (including whittling off bits of his fingers when he got frostbite.) (£20)

 

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Blue Peter Award Shortlist 2003: winners to be announced December.    

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Benjamin Zephaniah, the acclaimed poet who has performed to packed audiences in Hebden Bridge, has refused his appointment as an OBE from the Queen, describing it as a legacy of colonialism. His first novel Face was reissued in adult format last month, and his latest children's book We Are Britain, celebrating the diversity of British society, went into paperback earlier this year. Photographs by Prodeepta Das.


NEW TITLES
Not a huge number of new titles for December but we should mention in Fiction, a new novel in hardback by John Le Carre, and new paperbacks from McCall-Smith, Grisham, Francome (no Dick Francis this year), French and Goddard.
In Non-fiction, we're adding to our Fabrics section with a book on Headwraps, Carol Vorderman detoxes us in Food, Elland Road features in Sport, and American Nomads in Travel.
Highlighted:

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Colds in literature To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm  - and then click on This Month's Quiz.

For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Tunnels in literature, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes

If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
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What you've been buying: NOVEMBER BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

Two local books are riding high at The Book Case, plus a book on Yorkshire weather. The irrepressible We’Moon Diary is still selling well, punctuation proves surprisingly popular, two Top 21 novels were popular, Tove Janssen’s lovely story returned, and children wanted to read about a little cartoon fish. We won’t mention the other one.

1. Milltown Memories 6 (£2.80) The latest issue’s been selling briskly with articles on Cragg Vale, Market Street and Old Gate in Hebden Bridge, and Wilson’s Bobbin Mill in Cornholme.

2. We’Moon Diary 2004 (£14.99) Gaia Rhythms for Womyn (Power) maintain their position.

3. Old Stones of Elmet - Paul Bennett (£13.95) Higher this month for this guide to the ritual stone sites in an old Yorkshire kingdom - including those around Todmorden, Mytholmroyd, Luddenden, Hebden Bridge, Blackshawhead and the Halifax area.

4. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman (£6.99) One of the top 21 Big Reads, popular with children and adults alike, this powerful fantasy retelling Paradise Lost for the 21st century is about to be filmed.

5. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson (£6.99) Back to the charts for this unusual novel about an old woman and her granddaughter on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. Based on Tove Jansson's own mother and niece and a real island.

6. Royal Duty - Paul Burrell (£17.99) Yes, well.

7. To Kill a Mocking-Bird - Harper Lee (£6.99) Another Top 21-er; a lawyer finds himself defending an innocent black man accused of raping a white girl in America’s Deep South.

8. Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss (£9.99) "The zero-tolerance approach to punctuation" has promptly gone into reprint. Back soon.

9. Weather or Not! - Paul Hudson & Bob Rust (£9.99) Highs & lows of Yorkshire weather with dramatic pictures of storm, flood, drought and snow. Another blink-and-you’ve-missed-it title! Back soon.

10. Finding Nemo - the book of the film (£2.50) Ladybird version of the Disney story of the popular little fish.
 

Best wishes from your local bookshop,
The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

*
The
happiness of
mankind, the real
salvation of the world
must come about by
every person in existence
being taught to
READ and induced to
THINK.

Cole's Second Funny Picture Book, cover medallion. E W Cole was a gold rush immigrant to Australia; he opened an enormous Book Arcade in Melbourne in 1883 and published improving works for children. The shape of the above just happens to have come out seasonal!

November 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

The leaves are falling from the trees and the calendars are vanishing from our centre table so be quick if you want a good choice! Meanwhile we have the Nation's 21 favourite novels on display (see below), the Shortlist season is upon us (see below again) and we're happy to see a resurgence of local history books.  
The Book Case is sponsoring Mark Tillotson in this year's Italian Job Rally which raises money for children’s charity NCH. Driving a 1987 mini named ‘Gina,’ he and friend Rich will be joining a fleet of 100 other Minis in Italy on Saturday for the 10-day rally which takes them over mountain passes, ancient bridges and even a lap of the famous Longotti circuit - the ex-Fiat roof-top testing track. To find out more visit www.italianjob2003.co.uk.
 
We've received a request for the newsletter to be sent out in Plain Text format; we can easily do this for those who would prefer it. This would remove all colour, bold and italics and live links (the blue underlined ones). We very rarely use images but it would remove those too. Just send us an e-mail with the Subject "Text NL".
 
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NEWS  
Local Interest
 
Correction:  the "Walks around Calderdale" videos are £11.99, not £12.99. Sorry!

The Old Stones of Elmet - Paul Bennett (£13.95)

"A total guide to the archaeology, folklore and geomancy of the ritual stone sites in an old Yorkshire kingdom", foreword by Aubrey Burl. Catalogues with photos and sketches of many of the old stone sites of Elmet, including Todmorden, Mytholmroyd, Luddenden, Hebden Bridge, Blackshawhead and Halifax area.

Making of the West Yorkshire Landscape - Anthony Silson (£9.99)

How West Yorkshire's landscape has changed since the area emerged from under a sea some seventy million years ago.

Back in stock: Peter Brook in the Pennines (£12) and In and Out of the Pennines Even (£20): he "paints the Pennines in all their brutal beauty."

For Spring 2004, The Pace Egg Play in the Calder Valley - by Dr. Eddie Cass. We hope there'll be a local talk to launch it. Watch this space.

Local Authors

Wordsworth: a life in letters - Juliet Barker (£9.99)

Now in paperback, Wordsworth's progress from rebellious schoolboy to radical poet to revered patriarch - in his own words, from letters and autobiographical fragments selected by prize-winning local author.

The Women's Century: from Second-Class Citizens to "Having It All", 1900-2000 - Mary Turner (£19.99)

Praised as "a brilliant record of the century", with a foreword by Jenni Murray and featuring interviews with women all over the country, this is a decade-by-decade survey with mini-biographies of pioneering women such as Vera Brittain and Anita Roddick. Illustrated. The author's family lives in Hebden Bridge.

It Shouldn't Happen to a ... Christian - Gary Stevenson (£4.99)

From a Rochdale author, an account of 23 years of full-time Christian ministry at home and abroad.

Local Publishers

The Fan - Hunter Davies (£9.99)

From Hebden Bridge publishers Pomona, whose Footnote by Boff Whalley has done so well, a collection of hilarious and well-observed pieces on football originally published in The New Statesman.

Yorkshire Interest

Weather or Not! - Paul Hudson & Bob Rust (£9.99)

Highs & lows of Yorkshire weather with dramatic pictures of storm, flood, drought and snow.

Historical Atlas of North Yorkshire - ed. Robin A Butlin (£20 paperback)

Skipton is about as near as it gets to us, but very nicely produced with loads of maps covering everything from population change through geology, ancient woodland and managed rabbit warrens to lead mining and jet. Lots of photos too.

National Book Events

Big Read
As announced on Channel 4 on 18th October, the Top 21 titles are as follows, in alphabetical order. You're invited to vote for your favourite at http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/vote/ and the result will be announced on 13th December. 
1- 1984 by George Orwell 
2 - Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks 
3 - Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres 
4 - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller 
5 - Catcher In The Rye by J D Salinger 
6 - Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell 
7 - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 
8 - Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire  by J K Rowling 
9 - His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman 
10 - Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams 
11 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
12 - The Lion,Witch & The Wardrobe by C S Lewis 
13 - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 
14 - Lord Of The Rings by J R R Tolkien
15 - Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen 
16 - Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
17 - To Kill A Mockingbird  by Harper Lee 
18 - War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy 
19 - Wind In The Willows  by Kenneth Grahame 
20 - Winnie The Pooh by A A Milne 
21 - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
 
The project has been controversial - Catherine Bennett has an enjoyably virulent tirade against Jane Root at http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1068673,00.html - ["The whole, quite fabulously patronising presumption of Root's 'campaign to get the country reading' is that reading is such a painfully lonely and arduous business that we need generous dollops of celebrity, hype and audience participation to force the medicine down."]
 
David Sexton in the Evening Standard called the programme the "biggest insult to readers for years ... More deeply disheartening is the adolescent tone of the list as a whole." http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/entertainment/books/articles/7262143
 
Nevertheless the scheme's been good at reminding people about old favourites: J D Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mocking Bird" and George Orwell's "1984" have all sold 50% more copies in the period since being named on the Big Read 100 than in the whole of 2002. Bookies are variously tipping "Lord of the Rings", "Pride and Prejudice" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" as front-runners for the final prize. Current national sales, as reported by the Bookseller, show Philip Pullman, Joseph Heller and Sebastian Faulks in the lead - but buying isn't necessarily the same as voting behaviour.
 
In the meantime The Book Case has the Top 21 arranged along its bottom shelf to refresh your memory - the remaining 79 titles are now back on the main shelves (with purple stickers).  
Booker Prize
 
The Booker winner was of course Vernon God Little by D C B Pierre (£11.99) - a satirical novel about an American teenager whose life is changed when the town comes under media siege following a high-school massacre. The author, real name Peter Finlay, is now infamous for having swindled an elderly friend out of his house and money, but we probably shouldn't let that bias us.
 
Puzzlingly, although the Booker webpage has a site for voting for the People's Booker, I've seen no announcement of the result. At the Book Case, Brick Lane has been the best selling Shortlist title, closely followed by Oryx and Crake and Astonishing Splashes of Colour.
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2003 Winner . . .
was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - a quirky piece of fiction, appealing to both children and adults, narrated by an autistic boy. Christopher offers an insight into his world in which he can be shocked into violence by certain colours and noises, where people's faces and reactions make no sense to him and where every day he must try to unravel and understand the confusing messages his brain is giving him. (£9.99 at The Book Case where it has been selling strongly since publication in May.)

Smarties Award Shortlist 2003: winners to be announced December.

Age 5 and Under  
 
Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis (£9.99)
Two Frogs by Chris Wormell (£10.99)
The Witch's Children and the Queen by Ursula Jones (£10.99)

Age 6-8   

The Countess's Calamity by Sally Gardner (£4.99)
The Last Castaways by Harry Horse (£3.99)
Varjak by S F Said (£10.99)

Age 9-11   

Montmorency by Elenor Updale ( £12.99)
The Various by Steve Augarde (12.99)
The Fire-Eaters by David Almond (£10.99)
 
Blue Peter Award Shortlist 2003: winners to be announced December.    
   
"The Book I couldn't Put Down"  

Cool! by Michael Morpurgo (£4.99)
The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick (£4.99)
Firesong by William Nicholson (£6.99)
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (£5.99)
Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson (£10.99)

"The Best Book With Facts In It"   

Microlife by David Burnie (£4.99)
One Small Suitcase by Barry Turner (£4.99)
Pirate Diary by Richard Platt  (£3.99)
True Polar Adventure Stories by Paul Downswell (£3.99)
Who Was David Livingstone? by Amanda Mitchison (£4.50)

"Best Illustrated Book To Read Aloud"  

Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen (£6.99)
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson (£5.99)
That Pesky Rat by Lauren Child (£4.99)
Slow Loris by Alexis Deacon (£5.99)
Words to Whisper, Words to Shout by Michaela Morgan (£4.99)
 
Guardian First Book Award Shortlist: winner to be announced 4th December
 
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Into the Silent Land by Paul Broks
Stasilandby Anna Funder
Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane
Vernon God Little by D B C Pierre
 
For more info, go to: http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstbook2003/0,13840,1021848,00.html
 
And that is quite enough shortlists for one month.
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Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" online

The British Library has  published on its website the entire first two editions of the 14th-century classic, "The Canterbury Tales", to coincide with the anniversary of Chaucer's death on October 25, 1400. 

"With these digital copies users can explore (Caxton's) early editions in their entirety and study not only the text but the development of printing techniques and illustration," British Library spokeswoman Kristian Jensen said.

Find them at www.bl.uk

NEW TITLES  
A more literary month on the fiction front - in hardback we can expect works from Doris Lessing and Toni Morrison, plus a new Helen Fielding. New paperback fiction includes books from Dave Eggers, Keith Waterhouse, Jack Kerouac, Ralph Steadman, Anne Rice, Janet Evanovitch and Val McDermid, and some good reissues including Flann O'Brien, Benjamin Zephaniah, Jean Giono, Patrick Suskind, Joseph Roth, Cesare Pavese and Shusako Endo.
 
November's non-fiction includes
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming  
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
 
A Box of Thoughts - shiny aluminium tins of 100 aphorisms on circular cards - e.g. "In Chinese the word 'crisis' can also mean the arrival of an opportunity." (£7.95
 
BBC Big Read Book of Books - highly illustrated summaries of the Top 100 with author biographies. (£12.99)
 

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Tunnels in literature To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Cats in literature, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
 
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What you've been buying: OCTOBER BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

The eleven-plussers were still busy in October and the ever-popular We’Moon Diary leapt into the Book Case’s charts. Three local interest books sold strongly, local firms responsibly observed their legal requirements, Bush-bashing was popular, and two novels and a violin book made up the remainder.

1. Alpha Series for 11+ and Secondary Selection Portfolio Series (£3.99-£4.99): 11+ practice papers are still hogging the bestsellers list! This time SSP Maths and Alpha Verbal Reasoning 1 were joint top sellers, but the others were close behind.

2. We’Moon Diary 2004 (£14.99): As ever at this time of year, the Gaia Rhythms for Womyn astrological moon calendar is buoyant in Hebden Bridge. This year’s theme is Power. Choice of binding.

3. Cat’s Eye - Margaret Atwood (£7.99): The 2000 Booker-winning novel about a painter who is overwhelmed by memories of past bullying when she returns home.

4. Accident Book - HSE (£5.58): New design to allow for accidents to be recorded, while keeping personal details of individuals private, to comply with the Data Protection Act. Businesses must comply by 31 December. The strange price is because of the VAT.

5. Milltown Memories 5 (£2.50):Well, we’ve sold out! New one coming.

6. Dude, Where’s My Country - Michael Moore (£17.99): Hot in pursuit of more Stupid White Men. Especially Bush.

7. Luddenden Saga - Vikki Egerton (£7.99): Back to the charts for this Brief History of a Yorkshire Village, with photos.

8. Fiddle Time Joggers inc. CD (£6.50): The popular book for young violinists. Nice to see music in the top ten.

9. Old Stones of Elmet - Paul Bennett (£13.95): A guide with photos and sketches of the ritual stone sites in an old Yorkshire kingdom - including those around Todmorden, Mytholmroyd, Luddenden, Hebden Bridge, Blackshawhead and the Halifax area.

10. A Little Piece of Ground - Elizabeth Laird (£8.99): For older children, the story of a Palestinian boy longing to play football but trapped in Ramallah by the curfew.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

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

"Google searches 3 billion pages, but that’s now only half of the entire web. And most of human knowledge is still recorded in books."

- "The website that conquered the world," The Week 27 Sept. 2003.

 

October 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact, It's been a hectic month here supplying scholars of all ages! And you've also been taking some weight off our centre table, groaning under all our lovely new calendars. We're not reordering most of them, so hurry while stocks last!

Book Case leads the field again! We're now using Broadband to connect with our suppliers on the Internet. This greatly improves the information we can give you about the availability of the titles you are ordering as we now have instant confirmation of the availability of stock at our suppliers. We are very proud of our order service and now by using Broadband - which only became available to Hebden Bridge at the end of last week - we can give an even better service!  
Magazines new to us that we're trying: Prospect (£3.99) - "the most intelligent magazine of current affairs and cultural debate in Britain" (and a good read) for all our intelligent and cultured customers; and Salut France (£3.99) - a new bilingual English-French magazine with CD and including "Oulala", a bilingual magazine for children learning French with songs, puzzles and French tongue-twisters. Issue 1 includes articles on Paris, viticulture, Gerard Depardieu, the baccalaureat and lots more, with an article by local French teacher Angela Greenwood.
NEWS
Local Interest
Forgotten Landscape - Alastair Lee (£12.99)
From Burnley-born photographer and climber Alastair Lee, a books of colour photographs focussing on the stunning natural beauty found in the Burnley, Pendle and Ribble Valley areas. Gets as near to us as Widdop, "possibly the most beautiful place in the UK, if not Europe". For sample pics go to http://www.posingproductions.com/ where you can also watch a 360-degree panoramic view of bouldering at Widdop if your computer's up to it!
Now in stock again:
"Walks around Calderdale": from Pennine Country Productions, a series of four videos of historically-based local walks, 50 mins ea., £11.99 each -
1. Historic Villages and Hilltop Views (Mytholmroyd, Cragg Vale, Boulderclough, Luddenden, Midgley)
2. Woodland Crags and Secluded Valleys (Hebden Bridge, Hardcastle Crags, Crimsworth Dean, Pecket Well, Old Town)
3. Ancient Townships and Waterside Mills (Heptonstall, Slack, Colden Valley, Blackshaw Head, Jumble Hole Clough)
4. Pennine Town and Packhorse Trails (Todmorden, Langfield, Lumbutts, Mankinholes, Lobb Mill, Cross Stone, Whirlaw Rocks)

Gervase Phinn's Yorkshire: a Pictorial Journey (£14.99)
Lots of lovely colour photographs from all over the county (counties?), due end October.
 
Local Authors  
Ted Hughes:

Back in stock from former Halifax draughtsman Geoff Lee, One Spring: Romance, Rock 'n' Roll and Rugby League in the 1970s (£8.95) - "a vivid and humorous account of working class life at home, work and play" - set in an engineering drawing office with a main character from Mytholmroyd! The book was enjoyed by the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Yorkshire Evening Post and Stan Barstow and follows One Winter; in the pipeline is One Summer taking us into the 1980s. Also available at The Book Case are the same author's Bamford: Memoirs of a Blood and Thunder Coach, fondly remembered by Halifax Rugby League supporters (£9.95) and Wars of the Roses: a history of Lancashire v Yorkshire Cricket Matches (£16.95).

Local award-winning novelist and poet Glyn Hughes reports that an overgrown graveyard in the centre of Mill Bank has been restored as a garden through the hard work of a number of people. He has written a poem for this which has been etched and mounted in Welsh slate.  The new garden is to be opened by the Mayor and the poem unveiled by Sir Ernest Hall at 11 am on 25th October - everyone welcome!

Wintering - Kate Moses: fictional account of the last months of Sylvia Plath's life, based on the "Ariel" poems. Now in paperback. (£7.99)

Localish Singer
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Blackburn-born contralto's tragically early death, The Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier are being published this month at £25 (increasing to £30 so buy now!) Editor Christopher Fifield. Kathleen Ferrier "was a mix of extreme modesty and self-determined ambition, and a mischievously blunt sense of earthy Lancastrian humour".

National Book Events
Booker Shortlist
The winner will be announced on Tuesday 14th October and broadcast live on BBC 2. We have most of them in stock; "Astonishing Splashes of Colour" is reprinting.

Brick Lane by Monica Ali (£11.99) - the story of two Muslim sisters, one married off in her teens to an older man and living in a tower block in London's East End, the other finding heartbreak with a love-marriage back home in Bangladesh.
Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood (£14.99) - a post-apocalyptic survivor endures loneliness and isolation in the company of Oryx and Crake from his childhood.
Good Doctor by Damon Galgut (£10.99) - an naive and optimistic young graduate arrives at a dilapidated rural South African hospital and encounters disillusioned old hand Frank.
Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller (£12.99) - new teacher has an affair with a 15-year-old pupil and makes an older teacher her confidante. "Brilliantly gloomy study in obsession."
Astonishing Splashes Of Colour by Clare Morrall (£7.99) - novel about loss and lost children; bereaved Kitty, isolated in a large family, suffers from synaesthesia, a condition in which feelings are experienced as colours.
Vernon God Little by D C B Pierre (£11.99) - quirky and satirical novel about an American teenager whose life is changed when the town comes under media siege following a high-school massacre.

Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2003 Shortlist
The winner will be announced on October 4. We have the Almond and Haddon in stock.

The Fire-Eaters by David Almond - the story of 11-year-old Bobby Burns who has just started grammar school at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. (10+)  From the respected Tyneside author - see his website at http://www.davidalmond.com/

Lucas by Kevin Brooks  - Caitlin instantly falls for gentle newcomer Lucas - but why do her friends hate him so much? (12+) (£11.99)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - autistic Christopher can understand science but has major problems with emotions. He's a Sherlock Holmes fan and when he finds his neighbour's dog dead with a fork sticking out of its side he decides to investigates. This title has been selling very well to adults too at The Book Case. (12+) (£9.99) Read an interview with Mark Haddon at http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,944097,00.html

The Speed of the Dark by Alex Shearer - sinister novel about a vanishing scientist and some curiously real miniature sculptures. (11+) (£9.99)

Big Read
Voting for the BBC Big Read Top 21 is due to begin this month after a launch programme on BBC2. Voting from schools and libraries is to be controlled by a special "walled garden" method that prevents cheating!
Asne's Seierstad's "Bookseller of Kabul", an account by a Norwegian journalist of her life with the family of a forceful Afghan bookseller, is being challenged in the Norwegian courts by the bookseller himself, Mohammed Shah Rais. The book has sold well in Scandinavia and the UK, and portrays Mr Shah not only in his resistance to the communists, mojahedin and Taliban, but also as a cruel and tyrannical patriarch towards the women and children in his family. The issue is a complex one and involves the question not only of the lack of women's rights in Afghanistan, but also the ethics of first world authors writing about people from poor countries.

Philip Pullman writing in the Guardian worries that "the brutal, unceasing emphasis on testing and marking" is putting children off reading: "I am concerned that in a constant search for things to test, we're forgetting the true purpose, the true nature, of reading and writing; and ... forcing these things to happen in a way that divorces them from pleasure." For the full article go to http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1052646,00.html

Professor Edward Said has died of leukaemia at the age of 67. He was a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, and his books include Orientalism, "in which he claimed that false and romanticised images of the Middle East and Asia were used to justify Western colonialism and imperialism in the region.
J K Rowling is giving a boost to the German equivalents of Big Issue street paper sold by the homeless by allowing them to publish the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a few days before its first publication in book form in Germany.
 
Remember we mentioned Leeds poet Andrew Wilson's text-message poetry book a few months back? The texting of the poems to your mobile is about to start: send the message YES to 0778 148 6499. The Book Case has the book Text Messages in stock, price £4.99.
NEW TITLES
Fiction hardbacks for October include new novels from Terry Pratchett, Ruth Rendell, Quentin Tarantino and John Grisham. Meanwhile into paperback go Donna Tartt, Umberto Eco, John Mortimer, Terry Pratchett (last year's hardback), three Russell Hobans and lots more of interest.

September's non-fiction includes

For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
More Calendars: now we have in stock We'Moon Diaries & Calendars, a very striking black & yellow Moonwise Calendar from William Morris, and photographic calendars from Tushita, Tide-Mark and Willow Creek. See our centre table!

NEW CDs in October
There’s a fantastic selection of new classical music CDs from Naxos, Hyperion and Sanctuary Classics coming in this month with an additional bonus of 10% off all music CDs at The Book Case throughout October. On the Naxos label this includes chamber music by Toru Takemitsu with the flautist Robert Aitken who was a personal friend of the composer and in the Naxos World series a CD of seasonal carols from Slovenia (both £4.99). Hyperion are celebrating 20 years of Gramophone Awards with 15 re-issues of some of their greatest award winners (all £9.99). The Halle has brought out a CD of Christmas Classics on their new label (£9.99) and Sanctuary Classics has a fascinating new range of classics which includes Wind Music by Holst and Vaughan Williams, Ceremony of Carols by Britten and Piano Music of Argentina by Ginastera and Piazzolla (all £6.99). Don’t miss them during October when they will be available with 10% off!

Nostalgia time: remember Uncle Mac? The Runaway Train? Laughing Policeman? Four-Legged Friend? Even Arthur Askey being a Bee? (Don't admit to that one!) New in stock from Naxos we have Children's Favourites 1926-1952 (original recordings, remastered, £4.99, 1 CD, 65 mins) and Junior Classics: Sparky's Magic Piano, Tubby the Tuba & more (£11.99, 2 CDs, 2h 26m)
Essential Militaria - Nicholas Hobbes
Along the lines of "Schott's Miscellany" this fascinating collection contains items such as the top 10 writers on the Gestapo's 1940 hit-list if they managed to occupy Britain (Vera Brittain, Noel Coward ...), the eight wounds of Alexander the Great, and Tim Collins's famous pre-Iraq speech.(£9.99)
Children's Highlights from Hilary:
Reluctant teenager super-spy Alex Rider gets his own collector's edition slipcase this month with the four best-selling titles (Eagle Strike, Skeleton Key, Point Blanc and Stormbreaker) - and a metal grille - to keep out the sharks, bombs or assassins? A great Christmas present - especially for boys! (£19.99)
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NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
We now have all the local videos we stock listed on our webpages.

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Cats in literature To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Skylights in literature, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
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What you've been buying: SEPTEMBER BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

Book Case staff have been overwhelmed this month with requests for 11+ practice papers! Meanwhile we've also been selling a very mixed bunch of local books, fiction, a pink calendar and more on living in the moment.

1. Alpha Series for 11+ and Secondary Selection Portfolio Series (£3.99-£4.99): The demand for 11+ practice papers has been so large that we're making them all share a slot! Maths Set 2 was the overall winner ...

2. Pennine Saunter Round Hebden Bridge - Glyn Lee (£3.00): Local history in the form of a circular 7-mile walk with photos, illustrations and anecdotes.

3. Intermediate Mathematics for GCSE (£14.99): The 11-plussers aren't the only ones working hard! GCSE Social and Economic History has been popular too.

4. Milltown Memories 5 (£2.50): First birthday issue, with a "Where is it?" quiz and lots more.

5. Calendar Girls Calendar 2004 (£9.99): Very pink! Has a mixture of the original ladies and their film counterparts.

6. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson (£6.99): "A work of fiction, adventure, humour and philosophy" about an old woman and her granddaughter on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. Based on Tove Jansson's own mother and niece and a real island. Lovely book.

7. On Becoming a Fairy Godmother - Sarah Maitland (£7.99): Fifteen new 'fairy stories' breathe new life into old legends - what became of Helen of Troy, Guinevere and Maid Marion? And what happens to today's mature woman when her children have fled the nest?

8. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (£3.99): Marlow travels to the heart of Africa in search of the enigmatic Kurtz. It's the Penguin version with notes and Conrad's fascinating "Congo Diary" that's been selling.

9. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (£1.00): Local novel, local author, world famous!

10. Stillness Speaks - Eckhart Tolle (£7.99): 200 concise and illuminating entries arranged around twelve reflective themes from the man who practises what he preaches!

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
"She looked around at Harry, her face glowing, and he saw that the presence of hundreds of books had finally convinced Hermione that what they were doing was right."
- J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, ch. 18 "Dumbledore’s Army"

September 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,
We've been mixing our seasons during August by selling holiday reads and walking books and 2004 calendars. Our first major consignment of calendars and diaries (Pomegranate) has just been joined by those of Editions du Desastre and Lem of Italy with lots more gorgeous and unusual pictures. See our centre table and treat your friends, relations or yourself to a year's worth of delight!
 
We're now stocking two quarterly books magazines for young readers:
 
myBooksmag for younger children (£1) - this issue includes Rita the Rescuer, Ms Whiz, Jez Alborough and how to make a pizza, and
tBk mag for older children (£1.50) - this issue includes Jacqueline Wilson, the Harry Potter illustrator, Fighting Fantasy, Molly Moon and lots more! - nearly sold out
 
We're also now stocking the magazine Mslexia ("for women who write"), £4.75. This issue includes an interview with Ali Smith and a selection of new poetry and prose on Romance chosen by Sophie Hannah.
 
Last sad remnant of the great flood of June 2000: a water-warped copy of Hairy McLary Scattercat found down the back of the children's bookshelves!
(If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Local Interest
 
Milltown Memories 5: the Upper Calder Valley captured on camera, £2.50
First Birthday Issue!
Featuring a "Where Is It?" quiz. Articles include 100 years of Mytholmroyd parades, Temperance in the Calder Valley, a Heptonstall murder, Lady Royd's and Midgley Schools, George VI, Mons Mill and smallpox, a tribute to Colin Spencer, the 1912 Charlestown rail crash and more, including many photographs from the Alice Longstaff Collection.
 
NOW IN STOCK: A Pennine Saunter around Hebden Bridge by Glyn Lee, £3.00
Local history in the form of a circular 7-mile walk with photos, illustrations and anecdotes.
 
Canals of the Aire and Calder Navigation, £9.99
This pictorial history demonstrates how the Calder became one of the UK's most successful inland waterways.
 
Defend Todmorden! October will bring a book from "The Idler" magazine entitled (ahem) "Crap Towns - the 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK", currently being voted for. Todmorden and Halifax, I fear, are on the long list. Halifax has found a defender, unlike Todmorden. If you'd like to join in, go to http://www.idler.co.uk/html/frontsection/craptown/30_5/england.htm Don't even think about nominating Hebden Bridge. Or Mytholmroyd ...

Local Authors

Seen too late for last month's e-mailed newsletter, two major BBC TV programmes based on the work of renowned local author Juliet Barker, In Search of the Brontes, were shown in early August. Her two definitive books on the Brontes are available at The Book Case.
 
Clare Boylan completes a novel begun by Charlotte Bronte in 1855 with Emma Brown (£14.99) - expect mystery, atmosphere and page-turning suspense!
 
National Book Events
 
Booker LONG List
 
Shortlist to be announced 16th September and winner 14th October. We have a selection in stock and can order most of the others in for the next day. Judge D J Taylor commented "this year's roster leans heavily on the dense historical epic, with honourable mentions for survivors of wartorn 90s Europe, disillusioned young men and women living in metropolitan flats, and people over the question of whose parentage some mystery hangs." (Guardian, "Novel solutions", 14th Aug.)
 
Brick Lane by Monica Ali (£11.99)
Yellow Dog by Martin Amis (£14.99) - due 30/09
Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood (£14.99)
Turn Again Home by Carol Birch (£15.99)
Crossing The Lines by Melvyn Bragg (£15.99)
Elizabeth Costello by J M Coetzee (£12.99) - due 04/09/03
Taxi Driver's Daughter by Julia Darling (£11.99)
Schopenhauer's Telescope by Gerard Donovan (£13.99)
Good Doctor by Damon Galgut (£10.99) - due 11/09/03
Romantic by Barbara Gowdy (£13.99)
Curious Incident Of The Dog In Night Time by Mark Haddon (£9.99)
Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller (£12.99)
Nick Of Time by Francis King (£10.99) - NYP
Heligoland by Shena Mackay (£10.00)
Astonishing Splashes Of Colour by Clare Morrall (£7.99)
Jazz Etc by John Murray (£8.99)
Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson (£11.99)
Judge Savage by Tim Parks (£14.99)
Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips (£13.99)
Vernon God Little by D C B Pierre (£11.99)
Waxwings by Jonathan Raban (£13.99)
Light Of Day by Graham Swift (£14.99)
Frankie & Stankie by Barbara Trapido (£14.99)
 
Bookcrossing comes to Manchester
In mid-August, Urbis Museum, Manchester (near Victoria Station) joined the Bookcrossing urban phenomenon by placing "thousands of books - each bearing a sticker with a unique number registered on its official website - at shops, bars and bus stops, and in taxis and train stations. Anyone lucky enough to find one ... can then read it, log on to the website to look at its previous journey, update it or leave reviews before releasing it for others to enjoy" said Terri Judd in the Independent on 14th August.
 
"If people want to take the books on holiday and leave them in Geneva or the Costa del Sol that is fine," said a spokeswoman.
 
Read more about it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,898667,00.html
 
NEW TITLES
 
September over-compensates for a quiet August with a torrent of big new titles: in Fiction we have new hardbacks from Tracey Chevalier, Alan Garner, Martin Amis and Robert Harris amongst others and works by A S Byatt, Annie Proulx, Michael Faber, Barry Unsworth, Sue Townsend, Jostein Gaarder, Tibor Fischer and Mario Puzo, amongst many others, go into paperback.
 
There's also a new bargain hardback series of classic fiction, The Collectors' Library, nicely presented at £5.99 each. First series includes works from Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Flaubert, Woolf, Hardy and Poe.
 
September's non-fiction includes
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
 
The Classic FM Pocket Book of Music by Darren Henley & Tim Lihoreau - £2.99
 
A selection of the legendary Moleskine notebooks, sketchbooks and address books (as used by Van Gogh, Matisse, Hemingway and Chatwin!)
"Regime Change Begins at Home" - from Bookmarks a set of hard-hitting playing cards of the 54 "most unwanted" politicians and businessmen, imitating the US's pack of "most wanted" Hussain supporters cards. These are from Bookmarks and include not only US, UK and European politicians but also particularly lethal business leaders. £5.00.
 
Did I mention the calendars? The Lowry has produced a nice one of Lowry's Travels (£9.95) with the artist's views of places he visited in Britain and Ireland, so there are some you may not have seen before!
 
Children's Highlights from Hilary:
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NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
Milltown Memories 5: the Upper Calder Valley captured on camera, £2.50


LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Skylights in literature To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Dogs in literature, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
 
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What you've been buying: AUGUST BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

Tove Jansson's "The Summer Book" is proving to be a very popular title this summer at The Book Case and is at the top of the bestseller list for the second month running. Local authors and publishers are also well represented. Younger readers have also been buying during the holiday.

1. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson (£6.99): "Impossible to categorise," says Esther Freud, "a work of fiction, adventure, humour and philosophy" about an old woman and her grandchild on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. The creator of the Moomins wrote the book in 1972 after her mother died and it's regarded as a modern classic in Scandinavia.

2. Nature's Domain - Jill Liddington (£7.50): This latest book by local author Jill Liddington draws on Anne Lister's correspondence and diaries to track her intense courtship of Ann Walker and documents how she began redesigning the Shibden landscape as a result.

3 Shadowmancer - G. P. Taylor (£5.99): Bestselling children's title in which Obadiah Demurral, a sorcerer, is seeking to control the highest power in the universe but Raphael, Kate, Thomas and the mysterious Jacob Crane get in his way. Written by a vicar, the dramatic climax is set in the gothic church of St Mary's.

4. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (£7.99: Susie Salmon, murdered at the age of 14, watches from heaven as her friends and siblings grow up and do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But then she finds that life is not quite finished with her yet.

5. Footnote - Boff Whalley (£8.99): One of two titles published this summer by new local publisher Pomona in Hebden Bridge, this novel by a member of the pop group Chumbawamba is set in the world of rock music.

6. Tears of the Giraffe - Alexander McCall Smith (£6.99): This summer's most popular crime novel (everyone has to buy one to take away on holiday) is another story about Precious Ramotswe - sassy owner of Botswana's only detective agency.

7. Horrid Henry's Underpants - Francesca Simon (£4.99): The latest pranks by Horrid Henry were first related by the author herself at Hebden Bridge Little Theatre during the festival - now the book with the full story of how Henry gets caught with the wrong underpants is proving popular.

8. Olive Season - Carol Drinkwater (£7.99): In this sequel to "The Olive Farm" Carol Drinkwater continues her story about the abandoned olive farm she and her partner fell in love with in Provence.

9. Among Muslims: Meetings at the Frontiers of Pakistan - Kathleen Jamie (£6.99): An account of Kathleen Jamie's time spent living among the Shia and Ismaeli Muslims in Pakistan's Northern Areas.

10. Taxi Driver's Daughter - Julia Darling (£11.99 at The Book Case): In her latest novel Julia Darling tells the story of a family from the North East on the verge of collapse caught between the escape they crave and the imperfect reality that seems to be their lot.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

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

"You want to read something that is not chick-lit but sun-lit: something that is both literary and pleasurable, something that lifts the spirits while engaging the mind. Dr Johnson observed that 'the true end of literature is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it.' While practically every Booker shortlist ... is strong on endurance, it remains extraordinarily hard to find novels that celebrate life."

- Amanda Craig, "Against Grim-Lit", Mslexia Spring 2003 reprinted in newBOOKSmag 16. 

August 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

July saw the last of the Festival events - we have a few signed copies of books by Julia Darling and Jacky Kay - and then people were concentrating on choosing their holiday reading and audiobooks, especially long children's ones for nice quiet journeys! We're keeping our centre table full of summer fiction and a changing selection from the Big Read Top 100 best-loved books so you can catch up on that novel you always meant to get round to.

We're delighted that Fr John Gott, mentioned last month for his role in getting Ted Hughes to British Rail passengers, is going to stay with us after all, and long may he continue to have very good ideas!

(If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Local Authors
 
Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire

This new book on eccentric Halifax lesbian landowner Anne Lister by local historian Jill Liddington follows Anne Lister's return to Shibden Hall in 1832 with her dreams of high society shattered after she is betrayed by another woman. (£7.50)

And while we're on the subject of Anne Lister, news that writer Sally Wainwright is working on a major big-screen film about her. Look out too for the same writer's TV drama, The Bronte Myth.

Seen too late for the e-mailed newsletter: In Search of the Brontes on BBC1, Sunday 3rd August at 7pm, is based on the research of renowned local author Juliet Barker. Her two major books on the Brontes are available at The Book Case.

Sylvia Plath: a literary life - Linda Wagner-Martin

Examines the way in which she made herself into a writer, including the aftermath of her death. (£14.99; due 29 August)

A Man of Stone: his life and loves - Jack Wood

Novel set in Victorian Yorkshire, from former Haworth joiner, undertaker and builder, now aged 80. Foreword by Peter Harland, ex-Telegraph & Argus and Sunday Times. (£14.99)

Collected Poems - Ted Hughes
Advance notice of a big new compilation of the Ted Hughes's poetry in October, including all pamphlet and privately printed editions, as well as those children's poems that Hughes himself marked out for an adult readership. (£35 hardback)

Local Publishers
 
Pomona Books of Hebden Bridge have been enjoying a flurry of publicity for their first two books, Footnote by Boff Whalley of Chumbawumba and Rule of Night by Trevor Hoyle. Footnote tells entertainingly of the band member's Mormon upbringing in Burnley and escape to Leeds; Rule of Night is about a violent life in 1970s Rochdale. The books have been praised by Time Out, Big Issue, Metro, and The Yorkshire Evening Post as well as the local Halifax Courier, Hebden Bridge Times and Rochdale Observer and a number of Leeds and Manchester papers - and Footnote was the Sunday Express's Non-Fiction Read of the Week. Really! The Book Case also had an e-mail from Mike Harding at Radio 2 asking about Pomona ...
 
Future plans by Pomona's founder Mark Hodkinson include poems and lyrics from anarcho-punk band Crass and football stories from Hunter Davies. Watch this space!

Northern Voices: Our Urban Environment, No. 1 (Summer/Autumn 2003)

New Northern libertarian bi-annual journal, published in Hebden Bridge. First issue ranges from the on-site death of Simon Jones in Shoreham and urban decay in Burnley to art in Stalybridge. (£1.20)

Text Messages by Leeds poet Andrew Wilson from Huddersfield publishers Smith/Doorstop has come out early and is already in stock at £5.
 
National Book Events

Two Book Prize lists have been released - both aimed at older children and teenagers; they share a number of titles and also a Chairperson. At The Book Case, we've been selling The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time to an adult market.

Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2003 (longlist)

The Fire-Eaters by David Almond  (due mid-August in hardback at £9.99)
The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick
Lucas by Kevin Brooks 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Speed of the Dark by Alex Shearer
Bad Alice by Jean Ure
Where in the World by Simon French
Malarkey by Keith Gray

Judges are: Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo and popular children's authors Philip Ardagh and Malorie Blackman with Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare as Chair. The shortlist will be published in September and the winner announced on October 4.

For the new Booktrust Teenage Prize the shortlist runs: 

The Dungeon by Lynne Reid Banks
Lucas by Kevin Brooks
Doing It by Melvin Burgess
Caught in the Crossfire by Alan Gibbons
The Edge by Alan Gibbons
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Malarkey by Keith Gray (Red Fox)
Doll by Nicky Singer

Winner to be announced early November. Judging the prize are: Julia Eccleshare (Chair) - Children's Book Editor of The Guardian; Catherine Johnson - Author; Jo Klaces - English teacher; Tim Cross - co-founder of cool-reads.co.uk; and Julie Fernandez - TV actress and presenter.
For more info see http://www.bookheads.org.uk/   

www.cool-reads.co.uk is also well worth a visit! Books for 10-15 year old readers are reviewed by 10-15 year olds.

 
NEW TITLES
 
August is a fairly quiet month on the publishing front before we all get deluged in September! New fiction includes hardbacks from Pat Barker and Julia Darling (who visited us last month) and paperbacks from Alexander McCall-Smith and Minette Walters, plus from Vintage "12 classic works of 20th century literature" at £3.99 each. Worth bearing in mind for your beach read!
 
August's non-fiction includes
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
 
The Halle Orchestra has recently launched a CD label under its current conductor Mark Elder – all the titles in the series are now available at The Book Case and include recordings of Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Symphony No.1, Nielsen’s Symphony No.5 and a collection called English Rhapsody which includes songs by Butterworth, Delius and Grainger sung by the tenor James Gilchrist.
 
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell was one of the Big Read's Top 100. A version of the story told from the Black point of view, The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall, has been making waves in the US and is now in stock at The Book Case at £9.60.
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NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
Collected Poems - Ted Hughes (October)


LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Dogs in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Cooks in literature, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
 
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What you've been buying: JULY BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

This month the creator of the Moomins is the winner, beating three Festival authors, the great Harry Potter, three well-received novels and even John Morrison to Book Case customers' hearts. And very nice too.

1. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson (£6.99): "Impossible to categorise," says Esther Freud, "a work of fiction, adventure, humour and philosophy" about an old woman and her grandchild on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. The creator of the Moomins wrote the book in 1972 after her mother died and it's regarded as a modern classic in Scandinavia.

2. Sudden Collapses in Public Places - Julia Darling (£6.95): Poetry Book Society recommended book of funny and moving poems about breast cancer. Julia Darling appeared at the Little Theatre during the Festival and is the second winner of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award. Her new novel's out in August.

3. Why Don't You Stop Talking - Jackie Kay (£6.99): Short stories from the author of Trumpets, who also appeared at the Festival. Secrets and trauma in a disturbingly familiar world.

4. Horrid Henry - Francesca Simon (£3.99) Stinkbomb and Mummy's Curse still in the lead, but all the titles still selling well.

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J K Rowling (£12.99): What does Dumbledore have to tell Harry? And who is the casualty? (Don't tell me!)

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J K Rowling (£6.99): Prize-winning 636-page story of Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts. Harry's life gets even scarier in the paperback prequel to The Order of the Phoenix.

7. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (£6.99): Last year's Booker winner about a boy marooned on a boat with assorted wild animals.

8. Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (£6.99): "I was 14 when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighbourhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer."  Susie looks down from heaven and wants to be back with the people she loved. Orange Prize long-listed.

9. Shadowmancer - G. P. Taylor (£5.99): This story of history and sorcery is now selling to adults as well. And they're going to film it.

10. Dawdling through the Dales - John Morrison (£12.99): When the author decided that he was fed up with writing directional footpath guidebooks to pubs and tea-shops, he chose the Dales Way to vent his literary frustrations.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

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

"Go ahead and order the (expensive) book - if I divide the cost by the time spent reading it, it still works out cheaper (hour for hour) than most other activities :)"
Book Case customer

July 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

Booksellers' weather lore: When the pollen count is high/New Harry Potter do be nigh./When heavy rain begins to fall:/Second half of Festival. An overwhelming month all round, what with the now adolescent wizard AND the renowned Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. With the 100 Big Read novels still on display, it's been hard to know what to feature next!
 
Peter & Anne worked Friday evening to get the shop ready for the Harry Potter launch, and Peter opened the shop to an impatient queue at 8am Saturday: by the time reinforcements arrived he was worn out! Not least of his worries were two youngsters who turned immediately to the back page and wanted to tell everyone who the mystery casualty was. Anyway, despite all this, demand was terrific and we very nearly ran out of supplies. Guess what this month's bestseller is!
 
On Friday 27th the Junior Band, mayors and local MP were at Mytholmroyd Railway Station for the unveiling of the Iron Man Story Boards - Ted Hughes's story has been illustrated by local schools and put onto a number of weather-proof and (hopefully) vandal-resistant boards along both platforms, giving rail travellers something to look at and showing the pride the community takes in its local station. Father Gott of the Good Shepherd Centre was the moving spirit in this project as part of Royd Regeneration. Faber Publishers and Arriva Trains Northern both supported the project. The Book Case has sponsored the "Space-Being and the Iron Man" board (Chapter 4) which has some very exciting pictures! You can see photos of the event at http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm and soon also on the screen in our shop window.
 
If you would like our regular illustrated Adult Newsletter leaflet posted to you, please contact us with your name and address.
 
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NEWS
 
Local Interest
 
A Pennine Saunter Around Hebden Bridge by Glyn Lee. Expected mid-July, this £3.00 book will take you on a historic walk through Hebden Bridge, Hardcastle Crags, Crimsworth Dean, Pecket Well and Old Town.
 
Hebden Bridge Calendar 2004: twelve colour photos of the town and surroundings from Geoff Boswell (£3.95): now in.
 
Saddleworth Villages (£14.95): new from Saddleworth Historical Society, nicely illustrated hardback on Delph, Denshaw, Diggle, Dobcross, Grasscroft, Lydgate & Roughtown, Greenfield, Springhead and Uppermill.

Expected, a new Rochdale Canal Calendar 2004: with views of our scenic and increasingly popular canal, now open through from Sowerby Bridge to Manchester.

The film of Nicholas Nickleby opened in late June in London, featuring not only a wealth of excellent British actors, but also Gibson Mill in the role of Dotheboys Hall and local pupils as its hapless inmates. Book of course available at the Book Case.

Local Authors
 
Congratulations to Hebden Bridge poet, artist and educator John Lyons of Hour Glass Gallery: he's been named Arts Achiever of the Year in the annual Windrush Awards to honour people who are pioneers and role models in their field. Mr Lyons, whose book Voices from a Silk Cotton Tree was published in 2002, will be 70 later this year.
 
Moods of the Yorkshire Dales - John Morrison (£12.95)
 
Expected any day now, a sumptuous book of photographs from the author of the Milltown Quintet, who moonlights as a gifted landscape photographer. "A journey through the well-loved landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales and through all the varied moods and weathers."
 
The Death & Life of Sylvia Plath - Ronald Hayman (£7.99)

"Not a conventional biography, this book offers an explanation of Sylvia Plath's death in 1963. The author looks back on Plath's life in an attempt to offer an objective account of why she killed herself, and discusses her life with her husband Ted Hughes. This brand new edition will bring the story full circle, as it includes the publication of 'Birthday Letters', the death of Ted Hughes and Elaine Feinstein's biography of him, along with Erica Wagner's book 'Ariel's Gift', and the Al Alvarez autobiography which includes new material. Contains previously unpublished photographs."
 
Forget You Had a Daughter - Sandra Gregory (£6.99)

"Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton". Sandra Gregory of Halifax served seven years of a 22-year sentence imposed by a court in Thailand, after being caught smuggling 87 grams of heroin through Bangkok airport in 1993. Initially she faced the death penalty. She spent four and a half years in the notorious Lar Yao women's prison - dubbed the Bangkok Hilton - before being repatriated in 1997 to serve the rest of her sentence in Britain. She was freed in July 2000 after being granted a royal pardon by the King of Thailand.

Local Events 
 
Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, 20 June - 6 July 2003
 
Well-attended literary events so far include Blake Morrison's appearance at Linden Mill, Clive James with Peter Atkin at the Picture House, Francesca Simon at the Little Theatre and Jill Liddington at the Festival Shop. You can see photos of Francesca Simon with young admirers on the Children's page at http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm. Yet to come are:
Please check in the Festival brochure, available all over town, or on the Festival Website, www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/festival  Tickets are bookable at New Oxford House, on Albert Street, or by phone 01422 842684.
 
Local Publishers
 
Huddersfield publishers Smith/Doorstop have come up with an innovative idea - poems texted daily to your mobile phone. Aim is to describe one truthful moment in 160 characters or fewer. From September you'll be able to sign up by sending text message YES to 07781 486499, and the book itself, unsurprisingly titled Text Messages, will be published in October at £5. It's by Leeds poet Andrew Wilson. Here's a sample:
 
PALACE OF THE SNAILS
Big and stripey as boiled sweets,
crunchy underfoot on the path.
Leaving the silvery trails
of their time-lapse dances
in the moonlight.
 
We'll be stocking the book - sort out the texting side for yourself!
 
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Samuel Johnson Prize For Non-Fiction 2003
 
Winner is Pushkin by T.J. Binyon (currently £30, paperback coming out in September at £12.99)
 
 
NEW TITLES
 
Somehow I missed the new Bill Bryson title, A Short History of Nearly Everything, £20, being promoted under the slogan "It is big and it is clever." Anyway, it's now in stock and selling briskly!

July's new fiction includes books by Anita Brookner and Susan Hill in hardback, and amongst paperbacks, we'll see novels by Ben Elton, Ben Okri, Anita Brookner, Iain Banks and Ruth Rendell.
 
July's non-fiction includes
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
 
The Book Case is expanding its Talking Books section. We try to keep the main children's and adults' classics in stock in audio versions, as well as popular collections of poetry, but we're now including the national audio bestsellers according to the BBC. Let us know any special requests! We also try and keep video versions of the main Shakespearean plays in stock.
 
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NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
A Pennine Saunter Around Hebden Bridge (£3.00)(Local Guides)
 
The Death & Life of Sylvia Plath - Ronald Hayman (£7.99)

Saddleworth Villages (£14.95) (Local History)


LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Cooks in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Mirrors in literature, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
 
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What you've been buying: JUNE BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

The Festival made its mark as Book Case customers got their books signed by well-known authors, but the young wizard unsurprisingly beat all comers. John Morrison and three unusual novels still managed to make the top ten.

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J K Rowling (£14.99): Harry is now into his teens and the mood is darker. 768 pages-worth of suspense!

2. Horrid Henry - Francesca Simon (£3.99): All the titles were popular but Stinkbomb and Mummy's Curse led the field. The author talked to an enthusiastic young audience at the Little Theatre. You can see photographs of the event on The Book Case website.

3. Things My Mother Never Told Me - Blake Morrison (£6.99): The intriguing silent figure from his And When Did You Last See Your Father? (which also sold well during the Festival) emerges as a complex character in her own right, "a determined heroine for our times".

4. Always Unreliable - Clive James (£12.99): Bumper bind-up of his three outrageously funny autobiographical volumes Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England and May Week was in June. The first volume also sold well in its own right.

5. Pendle Witches - Blake Morrison and Paula Rego (£25): Poems by Blake Morrison are illustrated in Paula Rego's own subversive style. The originals are still on display at Linden Mill.

6. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer (£6.99): Award-winning novel about a young man who turns up in the Ukraine with a tattered photograph looking for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Partly written in the stunningly fractured English of his Ukraininan interpreter, it's been compared to A Clockwork Orange.

7. The Summer Book - Tove Jannson (£6.99): Life-affirming novel set on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland, from the creator of the Moomins. First published in 1972.

8. Shadowmancer - G P Taylor (£5.99): This novel of the occult for children written by an English vicar is getting a lot attention!

9. Dawdling through the Dales - John Morrison (£12.99): From Leeds to Bowness-on-Windermere in seven days! Watch out for this author in a different hat next month.

10. Eden - Tim Smit (£7.99): The story of the Eden Project, the conversion of a disused Cornish china clay pit into a living theatre of plants and people and their interdependence. The publishers came to Land Farm during the Festival to talk about the project.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

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

" .. I walked into the kitchen crying and Neil said ..., ‘What on earth is wrong?’ and I said ‘I’ve just killed the person’. .. He said ‘Well, don’t do it then’ ... and I said, ‘Well, it just doesn’t work like that.’ You are writing children’s books, you need to be a ruthless killer."
- J K Rowling on the demise of a key character in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

JUNE 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

What a soggy month! - enlivened by the BBC Big Read's 100 Favourite Novels and some summery weather at the end. 
 
Good news about Valerie continues - she's now working hard at her physiotherapy exercises.
 
We were very sorry to hear of the death of Colin Spencer, President for 33 years of the Local History Section of the Hebden Bridge Literary and Scientific Society, and author of The History of Hebden Bridge and other publications, including a major collaboration on A Century of Change, still a good seller.  He will be much missed.
 
A rotating presentation of new titles is now displayed onscreen in the shop window so you've got something to read in the evenings!.
 
And as if you could forget, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is published 21st June 2003. We'll be opening at 8am. We're taking reservations and as long as stocks last, you'll also receive a special Harry Potter bookmark, door sign, sticker set and bookplate!
(If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 
If you would like our regular illustrated Adult Newsletter leaflet posted to you, please contact us with your name and address.
 
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Local Interest
 
Milltown Memories No. 4, Summer 2003 (£2.50)
With a 1920s charabanc full of people in hats on the cover, this new issue covers Tommy Stansfield the Master Builder, the Nudger Inn that preceded the Woodman, Todmorden's & Gauxholme's railway viaducts, lark singing competitions, the 1947 mudslide at Cornholme, holiday fun at Slack, Hardcastle Crags and the Hawden Hall Holiday Camp (with a picture of Billy Holt with Trigger), Luddenden undertakers Patchetts, the late Jack Uttley (with a super photo of the Buttress), St. George's Square in times past remembered by Lloyd Greenwood, a visit to Hebden Bridge by Liszt in 1840, Eastwood and the chopping down of Callis Woods for the war effort remembered by Arthur Robinson, the story of Ashley House aka Linden House, now Angeldale, a recipe for roasted rhubarb - and the Pace Eggers and Moderna models of last season's issue named, plus much more, including many photographs from the Alice Longstaff Collection.
 
Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire
A new book on eccentric Halifax lesbian landowner Anne Lister by local historian Jill Liddington is being published by Pennine Pens during the Festival. Costing £7.50, it follows Anne Lister's return to Shibden Hall in 1832 with her dreams of high society shattered after she is betrayed by another woman. See below for launch.
 
Local Publishers

New Hebden Bridge publishers Pomona - also the UK's largest specialist regional pop representatives, with Robbie Williams and the Red Hot Chili Peppers amongst their clients - are publishing their first two books this month:
Arc Publications of Todmorden are bringing out a book of poetry about breast cancer, Sudden Collapses in Public Places, by Julia Darling (£6.95). It's not in the least bit morbid, nor is it aimed only at women, and it's a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Julia Darling is the second winner of the the UK's biggest literary prize, the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award and is well-known as a playwright and novelist (her book Crocodile Soup has been selling at The Book Case). She'll be talking about her work at the Festival on 5th July (see below).

Local Events 

Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, 20 June - 6 July 2003
 
Blake Morrison and Paula Rego have collaborated on a poetry and painting combination: The Pendle Witches:
Pendle Witches is on sale at The Book Case; we are hoping to have the Blake Morrison book in time for the event! His other books are on sale here.
Hope I've got all the above correct! - do check in the Festival brochure, available all over town, or on the Festival Website, www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/festival  Tickets are bookable at New Oxford House, on Albert Street, or by phone 01422 842684.
 
National Book Events

The Big Read
 
The 100 novels most nominated as personal favourites have been announced: click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm
and then on BBC BIG READ  or pick up a leaflet at The Book Case. We have them all nicely arranged along our bottom Fiction shelf - a decent number of classics, quite a lot of very recent children's fiction, Jeffrey Archer and Anya Seton, and of course Lord of the Rings. Nice to see Cold Comfort Farm there - but where is Three Men in a Boat?
 
To find out about reading groups and national events, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/ where there is also a literary quiz. Not a patch on mine, though.
 
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Orange Prize 2003
 
The winner is Property by Valerie Martin (£9.99): the property is a sugar plantation and a former slave who is now the owner's mistress and mother of his child.
 
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Samuel Johnson Prize For Non-Fiction 2003: winner to be announced 9th June.
 
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New Children's Laureate

Award-winning children's author Michael Morpurgo has been announced as the new Children's Laureate, taking over from Anne Fine. He has published over 90 books and prizes include Smarties and Whitbread. Michelle Pauli reported in the Guardian that he began writing while working as a teacher, and now keeps in touch with the concerns of children through his work with the Farms for City Children charity which he set up 30 years ago with his wife, Claire and for which the couple have been honoured with an MBE.  "His gift for narrative is widely acknowledged and he places himself firmly within the oral storytelling tradition, spending much of his time travelling round the country to read his stories in schools. He intends to continue this as laureate."

"Literature comes before literacy," he says. "We want more children, all children (grown up ones too) to discover and rediscover the secret pleasure that is reading, and to begin to find their voice in their own writing."

The laureateship was the brainchild of Morpurgo himself and Ted Hughes and the first laureate was awarded to illustrator Quentin Blake in 1999.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4669455,00.html
 
Nation's least favourite novel
 
Meanwhile the Independent has been investigating which well-known novels provoke the most dislike. At present Lord of the Rings is in the lead: "I've never understood the point. It's strange, weird and frightening, and makes me feel like I'm on the sidelines of a joke I don't understand." - Alain de Botton, with John Mortimer and John Walsh in agreement.
 
Also noteworthy are Anne Widdecombe on Jacqueline Wilson's Illustrated Mum: "It is a children's book about a drunken mother and her two children by different fathers. I thought these themes should not be promoted for children, and I disliked it intensely on those grounds."
 
and Ken Follett on Ian McEwan's Atonement: "a wildly implausible melodrama"
 
Find out more at: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/story.jsp?story=404252
 
NEW TITLES

Big names in June's hardback fiction include Melvyn Bragg and Anita Shreve. Amongst paperbacks, we'll see novels by Isabel Allende, Margaret Drabble, Kate Atkinson (stories), Will Self, Niall Griffiths and Jilly Cooper, amongst others, with two big-selling novels by less familiar authors, Everything is Illuminated and Across the Nightingale Floor also going into paperback. Plus new whodunnits from McCall-Smith, Evanovich and Lindsey Davis.
 
June's non-fiction includes
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
 
The Spoken Word: British Library archive recordings of Poets and Writers reading their own work: £9.95 on CD at The Book Case.
 
These amazing CDs include Tennyson reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (sound quality not terrific, but it was early days), Browning forgetting the words, Yeats with "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", de la Mare with "Nod", Frost with "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", John Masefield with "Sea Fever", Alfred Noyes with "The Highwayman" and many more on the Poetry CD, and Shaw, Kipling, Wells, Conan Doyle, Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, Tolkien (reading from Lord of the Rings), Forster, Wodehouse, and Priestley plus more on the Writers CD.
 
World Music in 2-CD boxed sets (£6.99) - including Chants from Hildegard of Bingen, Tibetan Monks and Rastafari and a new Anthology of Venetian Music which includes music by Vivaldi, Albinoni and Strauss and traditional mandolin (other new collections from different parts of Italy are available in this series)
 
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NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
Milltown Memories No. 4 (History page)
Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire by Jill Liddington (Anne Lister page)
 

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Mirrors in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Rabbits in fiction, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
 
Congratulations to Liz Kirkham, the first person ever to source all five quotations correctly!
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What you've been buying: MAY BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

Book Case customers clearly weren't deterred from their rambles by May's rain. Also of local interest, the new edition of "Milltown Memories" has been selling briskly, as have John Morrison's humorous recollections of a long walk! Two children's fantasy novels, the topical Dr Atkins, two novels and the memoirs of a young RAF pilot made up the remainder.

1. Seen on the Packhorse Tracks - Titus Thornber (£15.00) Yet again, high listing for this book on the local packhorse tracks by a well-known local historian. Colour and b&w illustrations, .

2. Milltown Memories 4 (£2.50). Latest issue, with a 1920s charabanc full of people in hats on the cover, and packed with local history articles; subjects include Jack Uttley, Hardcastle Crags, railway viaducts, the Nudger Inn and Ashley House.

3. Walking Country: Calderdale - Paul Hannon (£4.99) 25 local walks - woodland, moorland, canal paths and packhorse trails, with maps and instructions.

4. Dr Atkins' New Diet Revolution - Robert C Atkins (£7.99) Recently OKed by the experts, this low-carbohydrate high-protein diet that boosts your metabolic rate.

5. Shadowmancer - G P Taylor (£5.99) Highly praised dark-edged fantasy for young people; "Notting Hill with ghosts".

6. Eagle Strike - Anthony Horowitz (£5.99) Fourth in the Alex Rider series for teenagers - he has 90 minutes to save the world!

7. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (£7.99) Prize-winning novel about the Victorian underworld.

8. Dawdling through the Dales - John Morrison (£12.99) Well-known local author makes painfully slow progress through the Northern landscape!

9. First Light - Geoffrey Wellum (£7.99) Bestselling memoirs from a Spitfire pilot.

10. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon (£9.99) A 15-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome sets out to find out who killed his neighbour's dog. Highly praised.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

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

A wave is partially made of water from the wave before and partially by new water; it rises, then it disappears into the sea to contribute to the next wave. It may be that a poem rises, partly made up of words from a previous poem and partly by new words; it disappears to contribute to the next.

- Valgarthur Egilsson, Waiting for the South Wind, Ch. 4, "The Fjord Mother Moving"

MAY 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,
We hope you enjoyed the Easter break and fine weather, and found lots of new places of interest from our display of local walking, canal and history books. Or you may have been gardening organically, working with living willow, wood or stone in the garden or spotting birds, flowers, trees and wildlife, with the help of books from our gardening and nature sections.
 
Excellent news is that Valerie is now out of hospital and making great progress at home. She wants to thank everyone for their good wishes. A nice photo and article appeared in the Courier of 25th April.
 
The children's wheelbarrow competition was won by Dominic Bridge, and Patrick Evans-McClave aged 10 has sent us a lovely poem called My Tree, which you can find on our Children's webpage.
 
We've all breathed a sigh of relief at the survival of the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, endangered by Yorkshire Arts' sudden withdrawal of funding. And of the three major literary events we promised you for late April, two have been deferred till May (see below). Overwhelmed by the response? Did you nominate your best-loved novel on the BBC Big Read website? (Some of us did, if only to try and raise the tone a bit ...)
 
We have reduced our range of Jazz CDs but increased our range of Naxos CDs including the Naxos Legend and World series. We are continuing to stock a wide selection of classical music on CD from Naxos and Regis which are the two most popular budget range classical music labels selling at £4.99. We are also extending the range of classical music on CD with two new recordings from Helios (the budget label for Hyperion which sells at £6.99) Three English Ballets with English Northern Sinfonia conducted by David Lloyd-Jones and Sir Lennox Berkeley; A Centenary Tribute with the Nash Ensemble. If you are buying other CDs we suggest you try and order through Amazon - accessible through our main website at www.bookcase.co.uk
 
And, talking about our website, we will be setting up an exciting visual presentation of new titles in the shop window during May. You can see our initial ideas for this now on our website by visiting our This Month's New Titles page and clicking on see a presentation at the bottom of the page or try this link www.bookcase.co.uk/presentations
 
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: publication date 21st June 2003. Lots of you have already ordered your copies, and we'll be opening at 8am. Early birds will also receive a special Harry Potter bookmark, door sign, sticker set and bookplate!
 
(If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 
If you would like our regular illustrated Adult Newsletter leaflet posted to you, please contact us with your name and address.
 
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NEWS
 
Local Interest
 
The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play - Eddie Cass
A Social History. A detailed study of the origins of the different components of the Pace-Egg Play as we know it today and the different versions on record. Rochdale is the nearest place to the Calder Valley to be discussed; the Calder Valley version is mentioned, but there's a new book in the pipe-line about that! Published by the Folk-Lore Society. (£13.95)
 
South Pennine Ring map
New canal cruising map from Geoprojects showing the Huddersfield and Rochdale Canals and connecting waterways, with information for boaters including locks, bridges and warnings of difficult places, recommended craft dimensions, useful phone numbers, a history of the canals, local places of interest and cross-sections. (£4.75) (For more information on the South Pennine Ring, see www.southpenninering.co.uk)
 
Local Authors
 
John Morrison, he of Milltown Trilogy infamy, has a new humorous book, Dawdling Through the Dales - out. It details a walk from the house, in Leeds, where he lost his virginity, to the shores of Lake Windermere. On sale at The Book Case at £12.95.
(And there's a sumptuous photographic book, Moods of the Yorkshire Dales, on the way!)
 
Local Events 
 
Much to everyone's relief, the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival is back on course for June-July 2003, and we'll be seeing Blake Morrison, Clive James, Francesca Simon, Sophie Hannah and artist Paula Rego around these parts. The Book Case will be stocking their books and supplying events.
National Book Events
The Big Read
The BBC launched its quest for the nation's best-loved novel to an audience of  2.1 million people, with a two-week nomination period. The announcement of a Top 100 from these nominations has been postponed to early May (Top Ten to follow in the autumn). Keep watching this space! http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/ 
 
(But David Blow of Publishing News says dourly that Lord of the Rings will win because it always does; he reckons it would also win any competition for the nation's favourite car manual. And thinks the project would have been better presented on Radio 4 as the medium is more akin to reading than TV.)
 
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Orange Prize 2003
 
The shortlist for this prize for fiction written by women is:

Buddha Da by Anne Donovan (£9.99): no one takes Annie Marie's Dad seriously when he starts Buddhist meditation - but then his spiritual search comes into conflict with his wife's needs. (Canongate) British.
Heligoland by Shena Mackay (£13.99 at The Book Case); a woman of Indian-Scottish parentage comes to South London in search of her own Utopia. (Cape) British.
Property by Valerie Martin (£9.99): the property is a sugar plantation and a former slave who is now the owner's mistress and mother of his child. (Abacus) American.
Unless by Carol Shields (£6.99): All her life Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness with a loving family and growing success as a writer. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world to sit on a street corner, uncommunicative but for a sign around her neck bearing one word, "GOODNESS". (Fourth Estate) Canadian.
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (paperback £7.99 due late May; £14.99 hardback at The Book Case): Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. It is his business to give the people what they want: a little piece of fame. (Hamish Hamilton) British.
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (£14.99 at The Book Case): Harriet grows up haunted by the murder of her brother. One day she decides to find the murderer and take revenge. (Bloomsbury) American.
 
The Book Case has nearly all these books in stock. The winner will be announced on 3rd June. For more information go to http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/2003prize/
 
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Samuel Johnson Prize For Non-Fiction 2003
 
The shortlist for the UK's most valuable prize for non-fiction, sponsored by BBC Four, was announced on 1st May and follows below. Judges were Michael Portillo, science editor of The Guardian Tim Radford, historian Andrew Roberts, and literary editor of The Economist Fiammetta Rocco.
 
Pushkin: A Biography by TJ Binyon (£30.00)
Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes (£25.00) - a cultural history of Russia
The Devil That Danced On The Water by Aminatta Forna (£17.99) - a memoir of her father and political conspiracy in Sierra Leone
Dr Tatiana's Sex Guide To All Creation by Olivia Judson (£16.99) - the science behind sexual selection, entertainingly presented
Pepys: the Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin (£20.00) - award-winning biography
Nelson: Love And Fame by Edgar Vincent (£25.00)

Again, we have some in stock and can order the others. For report, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2993203.stm
 
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Reading is Fundamental
 
As part of the "Reading is Fundamental" project of the National Literacy Trust, actor Samuel West has been explaining on BBC Radio 4 the importance reading has for him and appealing for support for the project. He likes The Dark is Rising, The Phantom Tollbooth and the Moomins so he's clearly a good egg. You can read about RIF at http://www.rif.org.uk/aboutrif/index.htm, and there's a transcript of his comments at http://www.rif.org.uk/donate/Samuelwesttranscript.htm
 
NEW TITLES
May's traditionally a quiet time in the book trade but you wouldn't know it from the novels being published this year. In hardback we are expecting books from Margaret Atwood, Don De Lillo, Joanne Harris and Rose Tremain - plus there's a Gunter Grass that came out earlier than we expected. In paperback, there's fiction from Yann Martel, Jean Auel, William Trevor, Zadie Smith, John O'Farrell, Tony Parsons, Martina Cole, Tove Jansen and many others. It's never too soon to buy your summer holiday reading! There are also two neglected novellas from Charlotte Bronte and Mrs Gaskell.
May's non-fiction includes
biographies of John Wesley, Barbara Castle and Hunter Thompson
cookery from Delia Smith
Simon Schama in paperback, coal, White Mughals and Soviet Labour Camps in History
Coronation Street, British Hit Singles and Victorian Popular Music in Music & Media
poetry from Simon Armitage
and lots of new Travel guides
For a fuller listing, click here:
http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
Highlighted:
 
This month we have two new Nordic novels: Waiting for the South Wind by Valgarthur Egilsson (£11.99). Published in Iceland, but written in English by an Icelandic doctor/poet, this is a powerful evocation of life on the North coast of Iceland during WWII, seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. Hard work is ceaseless, even for the children, and so is observation of the natural surroundings, interpreted with an eye to survival. Mutual support is strong, old family roots known and discussed, and local supernatural beings (huldu-folk and elves) form as important a part of many people's world view as God and Fate. Finally manmade progress intervenes with destructive results. The author comments with knowledge and dry humour. An unusual and fascinating book. For full review, go to http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/wordswordswords.htm#Words, click on Reviews and then on Egilsson
 
The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen (£12.99) is translated from the Norwegian, won the Nordic Prize for Literature 2002 and is a mighty doorstop of a book at 764 pages. It tells the story of four generations of a far-from-ordinary family in an Oslo flat during the postwar years.
 
From India we are experimentally stocking Tara Publishing's handprinted children's books on handmade recycled paper: lovely to handle and brightly coloured, we have the award-winning In the Dark, a traditional Sufi story presented in a special handmade bag, Tiger, Tiger on a Tree ("Is it true? Can it be?) and Anything but a Grabooberry (letters and words used as images from India's pioneering nonsense verse writer). Shrinkwrapped and £9.99 each.
 
And from Ethiopia via the US, Notes from the Hyena's Belly by Nega Mezlekia, a memoir of growing up during the fall of the Emperor Haile Selassie and the rise of the communist Red Terror (£11.50). "Mezlekia crafts a world elegant in its aridity, extreme in its absurdity, and vast in its ironies." The author now lives in Toronto.
 
______________________________________________________________________
 
NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play by Eddie Cass (History)
South Pennine Ring canal map (Guides)
Dawdling Through the Dales - John Morrison (Humour)

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Rabbits in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Marches in fiction, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
___________________________________________________
 
What you've been buying: APRIL BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

The Easter holidays saw local guides and history selling briskly at the Book Case and an award-winning novel and an attack on the behaviour of the current US government continued popular. Other good sellers were two children's books, an investigation into how women's position is changing worldwide, and a little inspirational book.

1. The Hours - Michael Cunningham (£6.99) Taking its inspiration from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, this excellent novel explores the days of three women in different decades. Now a film.

2. Stupid White Men and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation - Michael Moore (£7.99) An assault on the fraudulent behaviour of the US "great and good".

3. Over the Hills and Back for Tea - Christine Delves and Mary Atkinson (£4.99)  Little guide to old moorland tracks in the Haworth-Hebden Bridge area. For horse-riders, cyclists and walkers.

4. Milltown Memories 3 (£2.50) We've now got the technical wherewithal to record sales of this quarterly pictorial local history magazine. This issue covers the Midgley Pace Egg Play, Moderna, the postmen Uttleys of Heptonstall, Slack Cricket Club, the eccentric Curate Crabtree of Todmorden and world roller-skating champion Arnold Binns, completes the series about Alice Longstaff, and has articles by Bill Marsden and Lloyd Greenwood.

5. Seen on the Packhorse Tracks - Titus Thornber (£15.00) Third month in the charts for this spiral-bound history of the local packhorse tracks with colour and b&w illustrations.

6. Duck’s Day Out - Jez Alborough (£1) Bright picture book with joggy rhythm and rhymes.

7. Soul Bird - Michael Snunit (£5.99) Little book which can be read as a book about feelings for children or on a deeper level for adults.

8. Atlas of Women - Joni Seager (£12.99) An Economic, Social and Political Survey - showing graphically the changes in women's position globally in the last ten years.

9. Calderdale Biking Guide - Paul Hannon (£2.99) Rides around Hebden Bridge, Hardcastle Crags, Mankinholes, Ogden Water and Luddenden Dean, with details, sketchmaps, line drawings and points of interest.

10. Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident - Eoin Colfer (£5.99) Sequel to the prize-winning children's book Artemis Fowl. Old enemies Holly Short and Artemis Fowl are working together for the first time.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
 
"Books don't exist unless you read them. And it's a two way process - you write the book as you read it and you fill in the gaps. You discover it and you put the marks together and without you doing it they're just marks. I also think it's very important for people to see things from other points of view." -  Actor Samuel West on why "Reading is Fundamental"

April 2003

Dear Book Case Customer or Contact,

We're delighted to be able to tell you that Simon is now back at work following last month's accident and Valerie is making excellent progress and will hopefully be home by the end of April.
 
Pauline Stephenson is in the meantime working on Mondays and Saturdays; she has a special interest in creation spirituality, Tarot (especially Jungian), energy work and psychology.
 
We've had a hectic month exchanging children's World Book Day vouchers; a nice picture of Hilary plus young reader appeared in the local press. Watch this space for the winner of the children's wheelbarrow competition!
 
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Local authors

Winter's Edge - Lorenzo Dali

Novel from Halifax-born author, set on present-day Haworth moors, with echoes of Wuthering Heights. (£4.95)

I Haven't Unpacked - William Holt

Autobiography of the famous self-educated Todmorden character who saw active service in the First World War at the age of 16, travelled through Spain, Canada, Japan and China, sold coal in Yorkshire, tried to start a new religion, became a revolutionary, organised the unemployed, was imprisoned after a mass-march on Leeds Town Hall, started motor libraries in England, ran the Franco naval blockade, and returned to his looms. He then rode his horse Trigger through Europe for over a year, sleeping in the open. This book was first published in 1939, but these editions are 1960s, with covers to match! (Hardback £3.00, paperback £1.50)

Semi-local and attracting a lot of attention is Bradford postman Robert Craig's novel Cover to Cover. It's about a cynical young woman who buys a book only to find out it's about her life. In stock at The Book Case, £9.99.

Bad news is that Penguin has done a deal with a large bookselling chain giving them exclusive rights to the newly-discovered Charlotte Bronte novella Stancliffe's Hotel until July when independent booksellers will be allowed a look in. Penguin claim that this is "not symptomatic of anything underhand".  Since we aren't going to be allowed to sell it, we might as well tell you that you can read the whole thing online, starting with chapter 1 at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6044-609616,00.html (you may get irritating little cartoon characters running about in front of it, but a pop-up stopper might take care of them). For Juliet Barker's article on Stancliffe's Hotel in the Times Online, go to http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6044-609565,00.html

Times Online readers voted two of the Brontes' novels into the top ten "classics of classics" (see below).

Local Interest

Over the Hills and Back for Tea - Christine Delves and Mary Atkinson

From the South Pennine Packhorse Trails Trust, a guide documenting a maze of ancient tracks and highways within 30 miles of Hebden Bridge and Haworth. (£4.99)

Supernatural Pennines - Jenny Randles

Now in paperback, this colour-illustrated look at strange phenomena at work in the moors and valleys of the Pennine hills - "one of the most haunted places on earth". (£11.99)

Yorkshire Interest

Yorkshire Encounters - Lin Watts

The author has chosen seven of the landscapes of Yorkshire and devotes one chapter to each, travelling from North Yorkshire via Haworth and Wensleydale to York. Colour illustrated. (£15.99)

Local Events

Ted Hughes's early life and local scenery which featured in his poetry were discussed by his childhood friend Donald Crossley at an atmospheric meeting of the Hebden Bridge Lit & Sci Local History Section in Hope Baptist Church on 27th March. A series of colour slides illustrating a number of his poems was followed by a short film "Ted Hughes and the Lost Culture of the Calder Valley" by Nick Wilding, which also put several of Ted Hughes' poems into context.

Still with Ted Hughes, there's an "Iron Man Project" under way in Mytholmroyd; local school children have illustrated the book and each chapter complete with illustrations will be put up on Mytholmroyd railway station platforms to give rail travellers something to read while they're waiting. Intention is also to advertise the new Ted Hughes centre. They're looking for sponsors: contact the Project Enabler, c/o The Good Shepherd Church, Royal Fold, New Road, Mytholmroyd, West Yorks., HX7 5EA

From History to Her Story - Yorkshire Women's Lives On-line, 1100 to the Present

This major project to make archive material about Yorkshire women through the ages available to all on the internet is holding a colloqium on Saturday 5th April 2003,  10.00am to 4.00pm, Canalside West, University of Huddersfield, to which you are invited. Contact Liz Trayle, l.trayle@hud.ac.uk or go to http://wwwcls.hud.ac.uk/cls/archives

Not a local event, but a local cartoonist participating in a national event! Well-known cartoonist Fran Orford has offered to do a fun promotional cartoon for anyone who will sponsor him to run in the London Marathon to raise money for the charity Children With Leukaemia. Contact him on 01422 845359 and see his work on www.francartoons.com

"**********************************************************

National Book Events

We are what we read:

Winners of the competition to find the book that best represents the national character of the English were Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island (£7.99) according to the bookseller-related poll and George Orwell's 1984 (£6.99) according to listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Nigel Reynolds of the Telegraph concluded that "self-loathing is a way of life for the English".

The Welsh polls respectively chose Work, Sex and Rugby by Lewis Davies (a "four-day odyssey through the pubs, bedrooms and building sites of Wales" and Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, and Scottish voters went for Me and Ma Girl by Des Dillon (an entertaining account of childhood) and Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song.

"***********************************************************

The Big Read

The BBC will be running a series of programmes asking the public to vote for their best-loved novel, with a launch programme on 5th April, followed by a two-week nomination period - then the announcement of a Top 100 from these nominations towards the end of April. (Top Ten to follow in the autumn.) Watch this space!
 
*************************************
Orange Prize 2003
 
The longlist for this prize for fiction written by women, set up in 1995 in response to the 1991 Booker shortlist which consisted entirely of male authors, was announced on 17th March as follows:
 
Special by Bella Bathurst
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
English Correspondence by Janet Davey
Buddha Da by Anne Donovan
Dot in the Universe by Lucy Ellmann
What the Birds See by Sonya Hartnett
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
War Crimes for the Home by Liz Jensen
The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel
Heligoland by Shena Mackay
Property by Valerie Martin
In the Forest by Edna O'Brien
Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Unless by Carol Shields
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh
Water Street by Crystal Wilkinson
 
We have a number of these books in stock and can quickly order the others. The shortlist will be announced on 28th April and the winner announced on 3rd June. For more information go to http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/2003prize/
 
**********************************
 
Samuel Johnson Prize For Non-Fiction 2003
 
The longlist for the UK's most valuable prize for non-fiction follows. The shortlist will be announced on 29th April and the winner on 9th June.
 
Albion: The Origins Of The English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd (£25.00)
Pushkin: A Biography by TJ Binyon (£30.00)
The Lost King Of France by Deborah Cadbury (£18.99)
White Mughals by William Dalrymple (£20.00)
Stranger On A Train by Jenny Diski (£15.99)
Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes (£25.00)
The Devil That Danced On The Water by Aminatta Forna (£17.99)
The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes Of the Holocaust by Martin Gilbert (£25.00)
A Corner Of A Foreign Field by Ramachandra Guha (£20.00)
Rosamund Lehmann by  Selina Hastings (£25.00)
Dr Tatiana's Sex Guide To All Creation by Olivia Judson (£16.99)
Virgins Of Venice by Convent Mary Laven (£20.00)
Byron: Life & Legend by Fiona MacCarthy (£25.00)
A Rage For Rock Gardening by Nicola Shulman (£9.99)
Pepys: the Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin (£20.00) -
The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow (£25.00)
 Nelson: Love And Fame by Edgar Vincent (£25.00)
 Revenge: A Story of Hope by Laura Blumenfeld (£14.00) 
 
Again, we have some in stock and can order the others.
 
**********************
Times Online Classics Poll:  Top Ten

1 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
2 Hamlet, William Shakespeare
3 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
4 Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
5 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
6 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
7 Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
8 The Odyssey, Homer
9 The Iliad, Homer
10 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

The Book Case has all of these in stock!

**********************
 
New Virginia Woolf title: Carlyle's House and Other Sketches (1909) discovered in a recently-surfaced notebook given to one of Leonard Woolf's typists: to be published by Hesperus in July, with an enthusiastic foreword from Doris Lessing.

NEW TITLES

New novels in hardback include one from Michelle Roberts, and April's new paperback fiction includes works by Thomas Keneally, Rohinton Mistry, Maeve Binchy, Ann Patchett, Joan Barfoot and Iain Pears - and a wide range of interesting fiction from lesser-known authors, including the award-winning Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.

April's non-fiction includes

For a fuller listing, click here:
http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
- or see below for how to be e-mailed monthly news of the subjects of your choice.
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
______________________________________________________________________
 
NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
Over the Hills and Back for Tea - Christine Delves and Mary Atkinson - see above
 

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Marches in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz. Next month's theme is Rabbits.
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Dust in fiction, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
___________________________________________________
 
What you've been buying: MARCH'S BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

The Book Case's display of children's World Book Day titles kept us busy during March and adults bought lots of Jamie Oliver's Red Nose Day recipe book. In terms of local interest, two books on upland tracks proved popular and Billy Holt made a surprise comeback. Meanwhile customers are still agreeing with Michael Moore's assessment of the US President, and an excellent novel made it to No. 4, probably helped by capacity audiences for the film at Hebden Bridge Picture House.

1. Duck’s Day Out - Jez Alborough (£1): All the World Book Day £1 specials were very popular, and we're not going to list them all! This picture book with its bright illustrations, joggy rhythm and rhymes was far out in front in the number of children who chose it.

2. Funky Food - Jamie Oliver (£2.00): Now out of print, this little book of recipes helped raise money for Red Nose Day.

3. Stupid White Men and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation - Michael Moore (£7.99): Michael Moore's crusade against the US powers that be continues.

4. The Hours - Michael Cunningham (£6.99): Beautifully-written novel about the days of three women in different decades. Now an excellent film.

5. Seen on the Packhorse Tracks - Titus Thornber (£15.00): Still selling well, this spiral-bound history of the local packhorse tracks. Colour and b&w illustrations.

6. I Haven't Unpacked - William Holt (£3.00 hb, £1.50): These are 1960s versions of the well-known Todmorden character's autobiography, left from his estate. Selling briskly!

7. Horrid Henry and the Bogey Babysitter - Francesca Simon (£3.99): World Book Day Recommended Read. One of the popular Horrid Henry series for 5-8-year-olds. Watch out for Francesca Simon's visit to the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival in late June!

8. Terrible Tudors - Terry Deary (£3.99): World Book Day Recommended Read and one of the Horrible Histories for children "with the nasty bits left in!"

9. What Did I Look Like When I Was a Baby? - Jeanne Willis & Tony Ross (£4.99): World Book Day Recommended Read. All the little animals want to know what they looked like - but the bullfrog is horrified when he finds out!

10. Over the Hills and Back for Tea - Christine Delves and Mary Atkinson (£4.99): Tells how many of the old moorland tracks in the Haworth-Hebden Bridge area have been reinstated and gives guides to routes for use with an OS map. For horse-riders, cyclists and walkers.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
 
"Sure the poore woman is a little distracted, shee could never bee soe rediculous else as to venture at writeing book's, and in verse too, if I should not sleep this fortnight I should not come to that." - Dorothy Osborne writing about Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673, quoted by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own.

MARCH 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

Local customers will probably be aware of the dreadful accident outside the shop on Saturday 15th February when a van mounted the pavement and ran into two of our staff. Simon was thrown against the van and suffered cuts, bruises and severe shock. He is recovering at home. Valerie was trapped under the van and sustained severe injuries to her pelvis and legs. She has subsequently had her right leg amputated but is making a remarkable recovery in St. James Hospital High Dependency Unit, Leeds. She is expected to remain in hospital for several months.
 
Valerie has worked at the bookshop for more than ten years and Simon joined us last year. We're happy to receive cards to deliver to both Valerie and Simon on your behalf and are also keeping cards to both of them available in the shop for your messages. We are moved and impressed by the overwhelming amount of care and concern shown by our neighbours, friends and customers - our sincere thanks to all. We're proud to be the local bookshop in such a wonderful town!
 
The shop remained closed until Wednesday 19th while the windows were replaced and shards of glass cleared up. We regret that in Valerie's absence, The Book Case will not open on Sunday afternoons for the time being.
 
In early March we welcome back Pauline Stephenson, who will work on Saturdays and Mondays until Valerie feels ready to return. Pauline also works as a psychotherapist/hypnotherapist (among other things) and will be re-establishing her practice locally.
 
We'd like to thank the customers who put us forward for the Daily Mail Independent Bookshop of the Year Award. We made it to the front-runners but not the final shortlist!
 
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Local authors

Juliet Barker's first book The Tournament in England 1100-1400 will be re-published in March in paperback with eight new pages of colour plates. (£16.99)

Sir Bernard Ingham has a new book due in March, The Wages of Spin, about spin-doctoring, £18.99. Signed copies will be available.

We were sorry to hear of the death of local historian Jack Uttley. He had written several booklets about the area including "The History of the Colden Valley", "The Hinchliffes of Cragg", "James Maude - Wood Turner and Clog Sole Manufacturer" and "The Ratcliffes of Mytholmroyd". The remaining copies of "The Colden Valley" are on sale at Hebden Bridge TIC. For an account of Jack Uttley's life go to http://www.mytholmroyd.net/news1.html

On 21st February Radio 4 transmitted a recording of Glyn Hughes's chilly ramble around Mill Bank and the moors in a gale. It was the first time the presenter had had to cut short a walk for fear of freezing!

Big Issue readers will have noticed that John Morrison's View from the Bridge is now being serialised on the last page.

Local Interest

The third Milltown Memories has just arrived in stock. This issue covers the Midgley Pace Egg Play, Moderna, the postmen Uttleys of Heptonstall, Slack Cricket Club, the eccentric Curate Crabtree of Todmorden and world roller-skating champion Arnold Binns, completes the series about Alice Longstaff, and has articles by Bill Marsden and Lloyd Greenwood. As always, there are splendid old photos.

Seen on the Packhorse Tracks by Titus Thornber came into stock just too late for the last newsletter. With colour and b&w illustrations, it tells the history of the packhorse tracks and how they coped with different kinds of terrain, and examines the features still visible today - bridges, causeways, guidestoops and marker posts. £15.00 paperback.

A new edition of the Nicholson Guide to the Waterways 5: North West & the Pennines is out this month (£9.99)

Local Events
 
On 1st April Rich Hall will be appearing at Hebden Bridge Picture House in his alternative persona of Otis Lee Crenshaw, a redneck jailbird from Tennessee. His humorous book Things Snowball is on sale at The Book Case. (£9.99)

"***********************************************************

WORLD BOOK DAY, March 6th 2003

Children's:

Every school child in the UK and Ireland will receive a £1 World Book Day Token, which can be exchanged for one of the special World Book Day books as follows:

Duck's Day Out by Jez Alborough
Tough it Out, Tom! by Jenny Oldfield
The Last Polar Bear by Harry Horse
Showstopper! by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Secret Princess by Meg Cabot
An Eye For An Eye by Malorie Blackman

The token can also be used towards any of the World Book Day Recommended Reads:

Picture Books

Oomph! by Colin McNaughton (£4.99)
Room On The Broom by Julia Donaldson (£5.99)
What Did I Look Like When I Was A Baby? by Jeanne Willis (£4.99)

Age 5 - 8

Horrid Henry & The Bogey Babysitter Francesca Simon (£3.99)
A Cartoon History of the Earth: Life Finds Its Feet by Jacqui Bailey (£4.99)

Age 7 - 9

Puzzle Adventures: Lost Idol PB by Gaby Waters (0746052553, Usborne, £2.99)
Friendly Matches by Allan Ahlberg (£4.99)
The Last Wolf PB by Michael Morpurgo (0440865077, Random House, £4.99)
Six Storey House PB by Geraldine McCaughrean (0340852143, Hodder, £3.99)

Age 8 - 12

Unlikely Exploits: The Fall Of Fergal by Philip Ardagh (£4.99)
Horrible Histories: Terrible Tudors by Terry Deary (£3.99)
Journey To The River Sea by Eva Ibbotson (£4.99)
Midnight For Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo (£4.99)
Parvanna's Journey by Deborah Ellis £4.99)
Raspberries On The Yangtze by Karen Wallace (£4.99)
Saffy's Angelby Hilary McKay (£5.99)

Age 12 plus

Dancing In My Nuddy-Pants PB by Louise Rennison (£6.99)
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (£5.99)
Remembrance by Theresa Breslin (£4.99)

The voucher can also be used individually towards the cost of any other children's book priced £1.99 and up.

Adult's:

"We are what we read"

On 12th February the shortlists of books thought to best represent the national characters of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish were announced. The English one has been accused of "portraying England as a nation gripped by pessimism":

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson: the American travel writer's tour of English eccentricities (£7.99)
Shameless by Paul Burston: comic romp through London's gay scene (£6.99)
What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe: satire divided between affection for England's past and rage at Thatcher's Britain (£6.99)
Manchester, England by Dave Haslam: traces the city's musical heritage from the early 19th century to the Madchester years (£7.99)
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby: football's special place in the psyche of one Arsenal fan - and the nation (£6.99)
Captive State by George Monbiot: an indictment of the 'corporate takeover of Britain' under New Labour (£7.99)
1984 by George Orwell: austerity England re-envisaged as a totalitarian dystopia (and Norman Tebbit's favourite) (£6.99)
The English by Jeremy Paxman: a portrait of a people caught in a post-devolution crisis of national identity (£7.99)
Whispers in the Walls: New Black and Asian Voices from Birmingham, edited by Leone Rosse and Yvonne Brisset: 17 Midlands-based short stories for the new century (£7.99)
White Teeth by Zadie Smith: three interconnected London families, one white, one Indian and one mixed race (£6.99)

Meanwhile in cheery mode, on the Radio 4 website, someone has nominated P G Wodehouse's Code of the Woosters. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/vote/worldbookday_votes.shtml

The winners will be announced on March 6th.

"***********************************************************

Comic Relief Day, 14th March 2003

Jamie Oliver has written a Funky Food book with lots of recipes and colour photographs, on sale at The Book Case (£2.00). All proceeds to Comic Relief.

NEW TITLES

Authors of fiction new into paperback this month include Michael Frayn, Carol Shields, Janice Galloway, William Boyd, Edna O'Brien,  Mario Vargas Llosa, Stephen King, Donna Leon and Haruki Murakami amongst others.

March non-fiction includes

For a fuller listing, click here:
http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
- or see below for how to be e-mailed monthly news of the subjects of your choice.
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
 
If you'd like to be e-mailed regularly with more detailed information on new books to be found at The Book Case from any of the following categories, please let us know:
New fiction - Children's Books - Biography - History - Politics - Science - Philosophy - New Age - Health - Sport - Local interest
_______________________________________________________________________
NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
Milltown Memories 3 - see above
 

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Dust in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz. Next month's theme is Marches.
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Dragons in fiction, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
___________________________________________________
 
Back cover blurbs: The Bookseller lists author Sarah Harrison's version of what they really mean: for example, "Thoughtful" - tedious; "Thought-provoking" - tedious and hectoring; "Haunting" - set in the past. For the full list, go to http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Commonplace.htm#Commonplace and click on Latest
___________________________________________________
 
What you've been buying: FEBRUARY'S BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

Titus Thornber was No. 1 at The Book Case in February, and a new generation of readers seems to be starting on John Morrison's local humorous series. Bush and trivia continued to be topics of interest, two new overseas-based memoirs joined Duende, children enjoyed Wild Things and Unfortunate Events and people have been reminding themselves about Virginia Woolf, probably in association with an award-winning film.

1. Seen on the Packhorse Tracks - Titus Thornber (£15.00): Cliviger historian tells the history of the packhorse tracks and how they coped with different kinds of terrain, and examines the features still visible today - bridges, causeways, guidestoops and marker posts. Colour and b&w illustrations.

2. Stupid White Men and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation - Michael Moore (£7.99): things being as they are, this will probably continue to sell briskly for some time to come.

3. Schott's Original Miscellany - Ben Schott (£9.99): this entertaining collection of trivia continues popular. It includes a dictionary of emoticons, the structure of military hierarchy and an analysis of poker hands amongst much other minutiae.

4. Where the Wild Things Are Pack - Maurice Sendak (£7.99): not only the classic picture-book, but also a furry Wild Thing toy!

5. Duende: a journey in search of flamenco - Jason Webster (£12.99): second month in our charts for this account of how an English academic became down-and-out in Spain in his pursuit of "duende".

6. View from the Bridge - John Morrison (£5.95): first in the Milltown series and now being serialised in Big Issue!

7. Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket (£5.99): first in his "Series of Unfortunate Events" for children. In this story, the Baudelaire siblings encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune and cold porridge for breakfast. The seventh in the series, Vile Village, came out late last year.

8. Don't Let's Go the Dogs Tonight: an African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller (£6.99): a memoir of the author's childhood in war-torn Rhodesia. "Mum says, 'Don't come creeping into our room at night ... We might shoot you.'"

9. Rabbit-proof Fence - Doris Pilkington (£7.99): true story of three young girls who crossed the Australian desert on foot to return home, following an Australian government edict in 1931 that black and mixed-race aboriginal children should be confined in "assimilation" settlements. Now a film.

10. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (£1.00): events of one day in central London, seen largely through the impressions and impressions of Clarissa Dalloway, who is planning a party. Michael Cunningham's award-winning book The Hours, also an award-winning film, were based on it.

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
 
 
"One of the first things you learn about reading is the amazing exterior invisibility of all the rush of event and image which narrative pours through you."
- Francis Spufford, The Child that Books Built, ch. 1 "Confessions of an English Fiction Eater"

February 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

In common with most other booksellers, we're having our annual 
SALE!
Starts Saturday 1st February - call in and take your pick!
 
And an early warning - we'll be closed Monday 3rd March for stocktaking.
 
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Books of local interest

Wintering by Kate Moses
Based on Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" poems, this is a fictional account of her last months of life, beginning with her initial elation at moving from Devon to London following Ted Hughes' departure and ending as she prepares optimistically for spring's rebirth. (£13.99 at The Book Case)

Local authors

More in the pipeline from John Morrison: including a humorous look at walking the Dales Way, and a new photographic book! Due in May; we'll keep you posted.

Yorkshire Interest

The Yorkshire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore will feature on a BBC Radio 4 programme on Monday 10th Feb 2003. (£8.95)

Don't Cry Nanna - Heather Coupland
A family's struggle to survive the harsh Pennine winters (Marsden) and daily life of 1950s Yorkshire, seen through the eyes of a child. (£7.99)

"***********************************************************

WHITBREAD WINNERS

Whitbread Book of the Year & Biography category winner: 
 
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin takes a new look at the life and work of Samuel Pepys, focusing on his relationships, personal conflicts, thoughts and feelings as well as his great works. (£20.00).
 
Best novel: Spies by Michael Frayn 
The story of two young boys who become convinced that their neigbourhood harbours a German spy. A poignant tale of children coming trying to understand the complexities of the adult world. (£13.99)

First Book Award: The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Beginning in wartime London, describes the friendship which develops between two young boys, and their chance meeting again after 40 years of separation. (£11.99) (Reprinting)

Poetry Winner: The Ice Age by Paul Farley
Farley has been described as one of Britian's most talented contemporary poets. Farley finds and describes the beauty in simple, everyday things like childhood games, dental records and dog-eared field guides. (£7.99)

Children's Winner: Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay
An adopted girl searches for her identity, her place in the world and a relationship with a quirky family. A warm, funny and touching read about a teenager taking her first steps into the adult world.  (£5.99)

"***********************************************************
BBC's "Big Read" project

The National Reading Campaign is working with the BBC on its flagship arts project for 2003 - The Big Read. Designed to match the scale of the Great Britons series last autumn (and let's hope, a bit less silly), the aim is to get the whole nation voting for its favourite novel. It will work as follows:

"1 The First Vote - A Famous Faces' Top 100 on BBC Two in the spring will initiate a major national vote - online, by phone or text.
2 Between the Votes - A summer of reading activities to get people swapping and talking about their favourite reads. 
3 The Final Vote - In the autumn, BBC Two will run a 90-minute special to reveal the Top Ten books. Voting will begin again, galvanised by ten individual films over the next few weeks, culminating in a final showdown for the winning book."

Watch this space!

*********************************************************

WORLD BOOK DAY 2003

Children's:

Will take place on March 6th 2003, with the usual World Book Day Book Tokens sent to every school child in the UK and Ireland, via their schools, redeemable between 3rd and 29th March. Special £1 books by popular children's authors are being published, with six different age categories, and there's also a list of recommended reads.

Adult's:

"We are what we read"

Apparently there's been a leak via The Evening Standard of the English shortlist for this event. Plan had been that the Today programme on R4 would have announced all the shortlists on 17th February and organised a vote. It may yet happen ...

NEW TITLES

Novels by Joanna Trollope, Sarah Water, Sandor Marai and Val McDermid amongst others go into paperback this month.

Amongst non-fiction February will see

and poverty in Britain, haiku poetry, Jenni Murray wondering if it's hot in here and what it's like to be in a plane crash.
 
For a fuller listing, click here:
http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
- or see below for how to be e-mailed monthly news of the subjects of your choice.
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
 
If you'd like to be e-mailed regularly with more detailed information on new books to be found at The Book Case from any of the following categories, please let us know:
New fiction - Children's Books - Biography - History - Politics - Science - Philosophy - New Age - Health - Sport - Local interest
_______________________________________________________________________
NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 
 
Sylvia Plath - Wintering by Kate Moses (see above)

LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Dragons in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz. Next month's theme is Dust.
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Schools in fiction, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
___________________________________________________
 
What you've been buying: JANUARY'S BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

A nice mixture of books sold at The Book Case in January, with new entries for a collection of trivia, the life of a Blackburn man, flamenco and two novels. We are still concerned about Bush and our quality of life, and two popular local books have continued to sell well.

1. Schott's Original Miscellany - Ben Schott (£9.99)

Entertaining, unpredictable and addictive collection of trivia.

2. Beyond Nab End - William Woodruff (£6.99)

In this sequel to The Road to Nab End, Blackburn-born William Woodruff finally arrives at Ruskin College, Oxford, via bad times in the East End of London.

3. Stupid White Men and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation - Michael Moore (£7.99)

More relevant than ever, a hilarious no-holds-barred look at Bush and his cronies.

4. Duende: a journey in search of flamenco - Jason Webster (£12.99)

Jason Webster abandoned academic life in search of "duende", the intense emotional state - part ecstasy, part desperation - intrinsic to flamenco.

5. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (£7.99)

Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign. The devil and his entourage, which includes 2 demons, a naked girl and a huge cigar-smoking black cat appear in Moscow to wreak anarchy and havoc. Being read by a local book group.

6. Carol Vorderman's Detox for Life (£10.99)

Post Christmas, the new updated edition of this 28-day detox diet is selling well.

7. Power of Now - Eckhardt Tolle (£7.99)

Word-of-mouth local bestseller about living in the present moment.

8. Coastliners - Joanne Harris (£6.99)

A young woman returns to her home island off the Atlantic coast of Brittany.

9. Mill, Murder and Railway - Peter Thomas (£3.00)

Back in the charts, the story of Gibson Mill, the Hawden Hole Murder and Hardcastle Crags Railway, by local author.

10. Todmorden Book of the Dead - John Morrison (£4.95)

Author comments he hasn't been beaten up by anyone from Tod yet!

Best wishes from your local bookshop,

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

"She will read one more page. One more page, to calm and locate herself, then she’ll get out of bed."
Michael Cunningham, The Hours, "Mrs Brown" (first)

JANUARY 2003

Dear Book Case customer or contact,

A Happy 2003 to you, and we hoped you enjoyed your Christmas break and are enjoying the snow. When you get in from your energetic walk, settle back with a good book or make an expedition to Market Street to spend your book tokens. If no one gave you any calendars, our remaining stock is at 50% off and selling fast!
 
If you would like our regular illustrated Adult Newsletter leaflet posted to you, please contact us with your name and address.
 
________________________________________
 
NEWS
 
Books of local interest:

Out soon, Seen on the Packhorse Tracks by Cliviger historian Titus Thornber published by the South Pennine Packhorse Trails Trust. With colour and b&w illustrations, it tells the history of the packhorse tracks and how they coped with different kinds of terrain, and examines the features still visible today - bridges, causeways, guidestoops and marker posts.  £15.00 paperback.

Local Authors:

Television and theatre director and writer, Freda Kelsall has had published her play Bethany, performed in Sheringham in September 2002 to mark the first anniversary of September 11th 2001. The play covers the last weeks of Jesus's life and his relationship with the two sisters and brother living at Bethany outside Jerusalem. (£6.00)

Yorkshire interest

Songs of the Ridings: the Yorkshire Musical Museum, collected by Mary and Nigel Hudleston, transcribed, compiled and annotated by Mark Gordon & Richard Adams with Nigel A. Hudleston. (£25.00)
Chunky A-4 spiral-bound collection of Yorkshire songs (words and music) converted from recordings of up to 50 years ago ("some of the singers were practically drowned out by mooing cows and bleating lambs!). with 22 categories ranging from "Farming and the Land" and "Work and Industry", to "Folk and Calendar", "Political" and "Women's Revenge", and including songs from Todmorden, Bradford and Burnley.

"***********************************************************

Whitbread Shortlist
 
Category award and Book of the Year  winners to be announced this month. Watch this space! 

"***********************************************************

Nestlé Smarties Book Prize 2002

5 years and under

Lucy Cousins Jazzy in the Jungle (hardback, £11.99)

6 - 8 years

Lauren Child That Pesky Rat (hardback, £9.99)

9 - 11 years

Philip Reeve Mortal Engines (£5.99): highly praised debut novel about a world where entire cities are on the move, consuming and attacking each other.

**********************************************

 Winners of Blue Peter Book Awards 2002

Announced mid-December, overall prizewinner and winner of The Book I Couldn't Put Down category was Nicky Singer for her book Feather Boy (£4.99): Robert's victimised at school but a mad old lady in a nursing home encourages him to find his inner strength and outface the school bully (10+). Debut children's novel.

Best Book To Read Aloud: Crispin, The Pig Who Had It All by Ted Dewan (£4.99) Rich little pig Crispin finds less is more one Christmas.

Best New Information Book: Ada Lovelace by Lucy Lethbridge (£3.99): about the "computer wizard of Victorian England" - the collaboration between Byron's daughter and Charles Babbage.

NEW TITLES

New fiction in January includes works by Annie Proulx and Ursula Le Guin (stories) and into paperback go novels by Joanne Harris, Elizabeth McCracken, Jackie Kay and Douglas Adams' last unfinished book.

In non-fiction we have autobiographies from Marge Piercy and Terry Eagleton, two BBC books on food and dieting, a reinterpretation of the British Empire, a book of comic strips about Palestine, Joe Simpson and other climbers and people having a bad time in Mongolia and an open rowing-boat in the Midlands in a wet October.

For a fuller listing, click here:
http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/Forthcoming.htm#Forthcoming
 
- or see below for how to be e-mailed monthly news of the subjects of your choice.
 
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles. A colour leaflet is available at the shop.
 
If you'd like to be e-mailed regularly with more detailed information on new books to be found at The Book Case from any of the following categories, please let us know:
New fiction - Children's Books - Biography - History - Politics - Science - Philosophy - New Age - Health - Sport - Local interest
_______________________________________________________________________
NEW ON OUR WEBPAGES 

Local interest: Songs of the Ridings (see above)

Seen on the Packhorse Tracks by Titus Thornber (see above)


LITERARY QUIZ: this month it's on Schools in fiction. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/thebookcase.htm - and then click on This Month's Quiz. Next month's theme is Dragons.
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Foxes in fiction, click here: http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
If you'd like the printed version of the quiz (and short version of last month's answers) posted to you, please e-mail or fax us your address.
___________________________________________________
 
What you've been buying: DECEMBER'S and 2002's BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

Milltown Memories 2 led The Book Case’s December bestsellers, with Michael Moore, We’moon, Colemanballs and John Morrison still with us. Two Christmas bestsellers on school reports and fashion were enjoyed locally, as were photographic books on the natural world, and one novel made it to the top ten.

1. Milltown Memories 2 (Winter 2002-3) (£2.50)

The second issue covers Alice Longstaff's early years, Lloyd Greenwood and Hebden Bridge Station, cinemas of the Upper Valley, snow, hippies, Home Rule for Mytholmroyd, a death on the moors and more, and includes photos of the original Stoodley Pike, the demolition of Bridge Lanes, and Stansfield View.

2. Stupid White Men and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation - Michael Moore (£7.99)
From the director of the film Bowling for Columbine, a hardhitting look at the current US government.

3. We’moon Diary 2003 - Gaia Rhythms for Women: Great Mother (£14.99)Astrological moon calendar, date book and daily guide to natural rhythms.

4. Could Do Better: School Reports of the Great and Good, ed. Catherine Hurley (£7.99)
"Tormented, frazzled teachers have the last word" on the likes of Judi Dench, Jeremy Paxman, A. A. Milne, Michael Foot and Jung.

5. What Not To Wear - Trinny Woodall & Susannah Constantine (£12.99)
Surprise national bestseller to accompany the TV series. Not everyone agrees with the approved attire either.

6. Colemanballs 11 - Private Eye (£3.99)
Perenially popular gaffs.

7. Todmorden Book of the Dead - John Morrison (£4.95)
Which is also the local year’s bestseller!

8. Earth from the Air Postcard Book - Yann Arthus-Bertrand (£7.95)
Magnificent and unusual aerial photographs of a wide variety of natural habitats and ecosystems.

9. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen (£7.99)
International bestseller about an American family’s breakdown.

10. Meetings with Remarkable Trees - Thomas Pakenham (£16.99)
Return to the charts for this lovely colour illustrated book of British tree portraits.

Bestsellers of 2002

Attentive readers will notice that four of the top slots are taken by high-profile visitors to the Hebden Bridge Picture House - leaving us detoxing, living in the present moment, not feeling entirely happy about George Bush & pals and getting our Gaia rhythms right. The Book Case’s bestsellers for the year are topped and tailed by local books led by the fifth in John Morrison’s wry Milltown series.

1. Todmorden Book of the Dead - John Morrison (£4.99);
2. Mi Revalueshanary Fren - Lynton Kwesi Johnson (£6.99) (poetry);
3. One Hit Wonderland - Tony Hawks (£10.99);
4. Detox for Life - Carol Vorderman (£10.99);
5. McCarthy’s Bar - Pete McCarthy (£6.99);
6. The Power of Now - Eckhardt Tolle (£7.99);
7. Armada - Brian Patten (£6.99) (poetry);
8. Stupid White Men - Michael Moore (£7.99);
9. We’moon Diary 2003 (spiral)(£14.99);
10. Little Book of Yorkshire (£1.99)

Best wishes from your local bookshop,
The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
 
"It is the act of reading itself I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already." Nick Hornby, How to Be Good, ch. 15

To order any of the above books, PHONE 0800 69 89 666 (free - UK only) or +44 (0)1422 845353, FAX +44 (0)1422 844295, or E-MAIL bookcase@btinternet.com

Main page

Link to 2002 Newsletters

Link to 2001 Newsletters

The Book Case, 29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 6EU, UK