DECEMBER 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
Our last year's bestseller, Rebel Girls, about
Northern suffragettes, by local historian Jill Liddington,
gets an airing on Christmas Eve, 8pm on Radio 4, as
part of Michael Portillo's "Things We Forgot to Remember" series - with a
particular focus on suffragettes appearing in the dock before judge
and jury in the Leeds courtroom. We have the book in stock of
course!
Hot off the press is a new book of nonsense
verse from historian Chris Aspin. The poems deal
with, among other things, a ban on comic socks, a boy arrested for throwing a
sausage, post-smoking-ban ashtrays, palindromes, anagrams and much more,
including a short story about the Devil's visit to Rochdale. There's also a
specially written poem about Liszt's breakfast at Hebden Bridge's White
Lion pub on December 15th, 1840.
The story of how Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist of all
time, had breakfast (ham and eggs) in Hebden Bridge, was told in the Summer
2003 issue of Milltown Memories: Liszt was on a concert tour of
Britain and arrived by train one December morning in 1840. The line to
Littleborough was not then open, so the pianist, while waiting for a
coach, broke his fast at the White Lion, the White Horse having
refused him. There is a move to commemorate the event with a plaque on the
White Lion ...
The title of the collection is The Jingle Book
and the price is £4.99. It's published by Royd Press
at The Book Case.
We're busy here at The Book Case, and current favourites include
Gold Pieces, Linda Smith, Pies and Prejudice, Ted Hughes, Northern
Lights, the Eagle Annual, Rebel Girls,
We'Moon and local Folk Tales. Our remaining
calendars are selling fast too!
Best wishes and a Happy Christmas from your local bookshop.
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
You only have till closing time on Monday 3rd
December to take advantage of our 20% reduction
offer! Any books ordered from any of our Christmas
catalogues catalogues will be charged at 20% off retail price and
will be available for collection from 5th December. Leaflets are available
in the shop for listing your orders. The discount is not available on purchases
of the selected titles from stock.
Until Christmas, we are opening on Tuesdays,
from 10am to 5pm.
New in are intellectual stocking-fillers from the
Unemployed Philosophers’ Guild. On display are cuddly
dolls and finger puppets-cum-fridge magnets of great
literary, historical and other figures including Jane Austen,
Shakespeare, Buddha, Darwin, Einstein, Elizabeth I, Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo,
Nietzsche, Munch’s Scream (it does), Napoleon Buonaparte,
Charles Dickens, Freud, Ganesha, James Joyce, Lao Tzu, Karl Marx, Mozart, Sir
Isaac Newton, George Orwell, Pavlov’s Dog, Pablo Picasso, Plato,
Schrodinger’s Cat, Shiva, Tolstoy and Leon
Trotsky, while stocks last. We've sold out of Virginia Woolf ... The
dolls are £10.95 and the finger puppets £3.50.
And of course lots of books, diaries, calendars
and Christmas cards. Have you seen Kate's
selection of Wynstone Press's colourful and unusual
Advent Calendars?
The winter issue of The Oldie Review of Books
has just come in, with comments on and reviews of a wide range of books -
collect your free copy from The Book Case.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book,
plus a CD.
Adult fiction: Man in the Picture by Susan
Hill (£9.99). Atmospheric ghost story about a picture of
masked Venetian revellers, in the style of M R James.
Adult non-fiction: A Pig with Six Legs and other
clouds - ed. Gavin Pretor Pinney (£10). From the Cloud
Appreciation Society, a delightful little book of colour photos of cloud
formations that look like something (with captions).
Children's book: Moby Dick - pop-up version
(£14.99). Melville's epic saga of Captain Ahab's obsessive quest
for the white whale comes vividly to life in this three-dimensional graphic
novel, the first of its kind. This phenomenal work is the creation of
multi-talented artist Sam Ita, apprentice to Robert Sabuda--one of the worlds
master paper engineers. Full colour.
CD: Family Christmas: Read by
Philip Madoc, Jenny Agutter, Benjamin Zephaniah and others. (2 CDs,
£10.99). The tree, the fireside, the
candles, the presents and the festive food may be the main features of the
traditional Christmas, but so were the stories, the poems, and the traditional
tales. Includes A Child’s Christmas in Wales, The
Nutcracker (with Tchaikovsky's music), The Little Match Girl, The
Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, ’Twas The Night Before Christmas, The
Three Kings, King Frost, A Kidnapped Santa Claus, The Thieves Who Couldn’t
Stop Sneezing and Talking Turkeys.
Price
Promotions
We do have quite a lot of good
books at silly prices around the shop, but we've no room to display them
separately. You'll find them on the general shelves.
NEWS
Local Interest
Todmorden Hippodrome : 100 Years of Theatre, 1908-2008 -
Freda and Malcolm Heywood, £19.95 hb, £14.95 pb
Celebrating the first hundred years of this popular Edwardian theatre! The
book is packed with narrative, information, pictures, production photos and
reproduced advertisements and programme covers telling the theatre’s story
from the glory days of music hall to the present day. More than 200 pictures,
many of them in colour.
The Best of John Hartley: an account of his life and
"The Clock Almanack" - John Waddington-Feather, £6.99
Born in Halifax in 1839, John Hartley was
well-known for his Yorkshire dialect poetry and prose, published in his "Clock
Almanack". This book includes some of the best as well as a biography and a
glossary of Yorkshire words.
The Yorkshire Church Notes of Sir Stephen Glynne, ed.
L.A.S. Butler, £30
Architectural descriptions of 400
Yorkshire churches and abbeys compiled during the many visits of Sir
Stephen Glynne (1807-1874). Interesting in their own right, they also provide
an extremely accurate and valuable record of the fabric and fittings before
their removal in restoration or the total demolition of churches. From
the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.
Calder Valley OffcutsNo. 10: Agitation against the New Poor
Law Act 1834 and the Todmorden Riots, 1838 (£2.50)
The last in the present series based on Leslie Goldthorp's historical
lectures in the 1970s and transcribed by Mrs Irene Mallinson.
And a play by Phyllis Bentley, "Yellow Pieces" about
the Cragg Coiners, is being performed at St John's
Centre, Cragg Vale, on Friday 7th December at 7.30pm
and Saturday 8th December at 2pm, 4pm and 7.30pm. Tickets are
£3 adult, £1.50 children, with pie and peas available at evening
performances. Phone Doris Hurst on 882509 or Ann Kilbey on 882858.
Local
Authors
Well-known local author Glyn Hughes's new book of
poems, Two Marriages, will be launched on Saturday 8th
December, 2.00
- 4.00 pm at Artsmill.
John Siddique has several poems in a
forthcoming book, Pendulum, the Poetry of Dreams
(£10.99).
Infamous Yorkshire
Women - Issy Shannon (£12.99)
This popular and
well-illustrated book from the well-known local journalist has a three-page
illustrated review in the current issue of Yorkshire Life!
National
(and international) Book Events
The Daily Mail Book Club
I'm sorry, we were misinformed. November's Book of the Month was
Clever Girl by Brian Thompson (£7.99)
December's choice is: No! I Don't Want
to Join a Book Club by Virginia
Ironside (£7.99). Too young to get
whisked away by a Stannah Stairlift, or to enjoy the luxury of a walk-in bath
(but not so much that she doesn't enjoy comfortable shoes), Marie is all the
same getting on in years - and she's thrilled about it. The Book Case will
accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this
month's recommended title.
An Abu Dhabi-based project, Kalima ("word" in Arabic)
is undertaking the translation into Arabic of a range of international
literature, with 100 books in its first year and 500 per year by 2010. Books to
be translated include those by Stephen Hawking, Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami,
Nadine Gordimer, Khaled Hosseini, Albert Camus, George Eliot, Albert Einstein,
Jacques Lacan and Spinoza. A report four years ago noted that that the number
of books translated into Arabic over the last 1000 years was the same as Spain
translates in one year, so this is a welcome move. (Source: Guardian)
NEW
TITLES
There are never very many new books coming out in December, but
we should mention Susan Hill (see above), the
late Norman Mailer (winner of this year's Bad Sex in Fiction
award) and a reissue of Barbara Pym in Fiction -
as well as a new translation of stories written during WWII by the
Head of the BBC's Turkish Section.
- Moro East in Food
- "Home Truths" in Media
- happiness, liver detox, anorexia and
cholesterol in MBS
- Female Genital
Mutilation in Politics
- and Schott, writing essays and getting out
of debt in Reference
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Spiders in literature, click
here.
If anyone would like to send in a quiz with quotations from
reasonably well-known books on specific topics, I'll be delighted to host it.
The books should be in print, and please send the answers; if you could explain
the context of the quotation as well, that would be much appreciated.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been buying: NOVEMBER
2007 BESTSELLERS at The Book Case
Another good
month at The Book Case for items with local connections - seven again if we
include a book of poems by a local author! With two hardback novels, unusually,
and the ever-popular We’moon Diary.
1. Gold Pieces -
Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. Selling fast, our reprint of the exciting
1968 children’s classic about the Cragg Vale Coiners from the well-loved
Halifax novelist.
2. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris
Aspin, £6.95. An eyewitness description, with interviews, of the
conditions of textile workers around West Yorkshire in 1849. Our first
publication
3. We’Moon Diary 2008: Gaia Rhythms for Womyn,
£15.99. The theme of next year’s edition of this popular and
colourful astrological moon calendar and datebook is "Mending the Web".
4. Infamous Yorkshire Women - Issy Shannon, £12.99.
Well-known local journalist’s colourful collection of remarkable women
with Yorkshire connections - ranging from Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes to
Mary Newall of the Cragg Vale Coiners. Got three pages in Yorkshire Life!
5. A Village Childhood - Gertrude M. Attwood, nee Ogden,
£12. A personal recollection of Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge in the
1920s and '30s. Gertrude looks back at those early years and describes how they
influenced her life. Lots of fascinating detail about everyday life and
contemporary illustrations.
6. Hebden Bridge Calendar - Geoff Boswell, £4.50. The
colourful collection of well-chosen local scenes is as always selling well.
7. The Gathering - Anne Enright, £10.99 at The Book Case.
The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake
of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although
that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his
grandmother's house. Booker Prize winner and still selling well.
8. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan, £10.99 at The Book Case.
A honeymoon couple at a seaside hotel in 1962. A story about how the entire
course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
9. Over the Land - John Killick, illustrations by Alison McGill,
£10. Hebden Bridge-based John Killick is best known for his work on
communication with people with dementia. This collection contains 23 poems
inspired by the Scottish landscape with images from pastel drawings and oil
paintings by a young Edinburgh artist, Alison McGill.
10. Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid,
£30 (now £25 at The Book Case). This selection begins when Ted
Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of his resolutely private life.
Recently read on Radio 4.
Festive seasonal greetings and Happy Christmas
in advance from your local independent 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
Oxfam is now
Europe’s biggest high-street second-hand book retailer. -
www.oxfam.org.uk
NOVEMBER 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
The Christmas season is rumbling into gear and our centre table is now
directed hopefully at the purchaser of Christmas gifts. Seasonal cards
are now in from the Bodleian Library, the Fitzwilliam
Museum and the Sierra Club (ecological), and back in
stock are Amber Lotus's and Brush Dance's
benevolent and inspirational calendars. Other calendars and diaries include
We'Moon, John Muir Trust, Redstone, New Internationalist and
Greenpeace, as well as our usual wide selection of artistic,
photographic and humorous calendars from Pomegranate, Editions du Desastre,
Catch and many others.
We have a range of Christmas
catalogues for you to take away and browse through, and we are
offering an astonishing 20% off retail price for any books ordered and
prepaid from any of the catalogues before 3rd December, to be available for
collection from 5th December. Leaflets are available in the shop for listing
your orders. The discount is not available on purchases of the selected titles
from stock.
The latest edition of The Book Magazine is now in,
featuring interviews with Ian Rankin, Alan Titchmarsh, Mike Rosen - the new
Children's Laureate - and Kathy Reichs, and with articles on Alan Bennett's
Uncommon Reader (about the Queen getting involved with a travelling
library), Jeanette Winterson, Alasdair Gray, Jonathan Coe, natural history
books including Collins New Natural series, WWI - WWII books, John Mortimer,
John Stuart Mill, Graham Greene, Shakespeare and his wife, historical
bestsellers, rock, British weather, apples, cookery, writing your own Jane
Austen (?), this Christmas's humour books, potted plants, children's picture
books, sporting biographies and "best of the year" from reading groups. Free to
Book Case customers!
Being enjoyed in October, according to our comments
board, have been Tove Jansson's Moomin series, Everything is
Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, C J Sansom's Tudor novels Dark
Fire, Dissolution and Sovereign, Harry Potter, John Irvine, Diana
Gabaldon, Celia Lyttelton's Scent Trail, Bill the Galactic Hero by
Harry Harrison, Machinery's Screw Thread Book (1957 and
sadly out of print, but we could get you A Guide to World Screw Threads
if that is your enthusiasm), Halldor Laxness's Independent People,
Malcolm Bradbury's Soldier's Return and Jane Austen's Sense
and Sensibility. NOT being enjoyed were Martin Amis and
Terry Goodkind, who is chided for his obsession with leather-clad women.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book,
plus a CD.
Adult fiction: The Railway - Hamid Ismailov
(£7.99). 'In the steppe near Tashkent they came upon a
never-ending ladder with wooden rungs and iron rails and that stretched across
the earth from horizon to horizon. Whistling and thundering, a snake-like
wonder hurtled past them, packed both on the inside and on top with infidels
shouting and waving their hands. "The End of the World!" thought both
Mahmud-Hodja the Sunni and Djebral the Shiite.' Set mainly in Uzbekistan
between 1900 and 1980, "The Railway" introduces to us the inhabitants of the
small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route.
Adult non-fiction: Letters of Ted Hughes, ed.
Christopher Reid (£30, but £20 at
The Book Case while stocks last)
At the outset of his career Ted
Hughes described letter writing as 'excellent training for conversation with
the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art which combines
writing and talking. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and
documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned
to other lives (including both adults and children): a life pared down to
essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly
controversial.
Children's book: Snakehead - Anthony Horowitz
(£12.99) The teenage spy Alex Rider enters the violent criminal
underworld of the Snakeheads. A new breathtaking adventure from this most
popular children’s writer Age: 10+
CD: Handel's Messiah (1751 Version)
(£10.99 for two CDs). From Naxos. Handel’s most popular and
joyous oratorio, a work of unfailing melodic invention and dramatic
expressiveness, has become almost a British national institution.
See above for our Christmas catalogue promotion, and our
£10-off Ted Hughes
offer!
We still have a few of the following Bloomsbury 21
Great Reads for the 21st Century at £2 off.
Cat's Eye - Atwood; Easy Riders, Raging
Bulls - Biskind; English Patient - Ondaatje;
Frankie & Stankie - Trapido, Fugitive Pieces - Michaels;
Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone - Rowlings; Holes - Sachar; If
Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things - McGregor; Jonathan
Strange & Mr Norrell - Clarke; Kite Runner - Hosseini; Little Friend -
Tartt; Map Of Love - Soueif; Marrying The Mistress - Trollope;
Middlesex - Eugenides; Prayer For Owen Meany - Irving; Snow
Falling On Cedars - Guterson
NEWS
Local
Interest
Looping the Loop DVD and video - Peter Thornton and Ray
Riches, £12.99
A journey on the
Mary Towneley Loop in the South Pennines, a 48-mile circular spur off the
Pennine Bridleway. Using ancient packhorse trails and bridleways, it visits
hidden villages and hamlets, taking you through spectacular scenery, across
wild moorland and into green wooded valleys. 78 mins.
Lost Railways of South and West Yorkshire - Gordon
Suggitt (£10.99)
The story of the railway age in South and
West Yorkshire, beginning in 1755. Includes Bradford and Oxenhope.
Calder Valley Offcuts
These pamphlets are based on Leslie Goldthorp's historical lectures in
the 1970s, transcribed by Mrs Irene Mallinson, and are £2.50 each unless
otherwise stated. The following titles are now available, £2.50 unless
otherwise stated, with one to come.
1. The Normans and Medieval Times
in the Calder Valley
2. Law & Order: Constables,
Punishments and Prison
3. Overseers of
the Poor - Paupers, Doctoring, Apprentices, Bastards and Workhouses; &
Churchwardens
4. Overseers of Highways - Roads and Turnpikes
5. John Wesley's visits to the area (£1.50)
6. The Cragg Vale Coiners
7. The Rochdale Canal and the Coming of the
Railway
8. Conditions in the Textile Factories in 1833, Part
1
9. "Tyrants and Hypocrites" - the local fight against child
labour (Conditions in the Textile Factories Part 2); Interview with a Handloom
Weaver; the Typhus Epidemic in Heptonstall Slack 1843-4.
Local
Authors
Letters of Ted Hughes, ed.
Christopher Reid (£20 at The Book Case while stocks last)
Ted
Hughes's letters from the age of 17, being read on Radio 4 throughout this
week.
Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of
the Visual - ed. Kathleen Connors; Sally Bayley (£25)
A side of Sylvia Plath that is scarcely
known: her serious involvement in the visual arts from a very early age. She
moved between art-making and writing constantly, integrating their elements
with ease and pleasure. It was only at the age of 20 that she decided to leave
fine art behind her as her chosen career, and opt for the written word. Eye
Rhymes presents a magnificent range of Plath's art, most of it seen in print
for the first time: childhood sketches, illustrated diaries, portraits, rich
modernist and expressionist paintings, fashion images, photographs, and more.
National Book
Events
The Daily Mail Book Club
November's Book of the Month is No! I Don't Want
to Join a Book Club by Virginia
Ironside (£7.99). Too young to get
whisked away by a Stannah Stairlift, or to enjoy the luxury of a walk-in bath
(but not so much that she doesn't enjoy comfortable shoes), Marie is all the
same getting on in years - and she's thrilled about it. The Book Case will
accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this
month's recommended title.
December: Clever Girl by Brian Thompson
(£7.99)
Booker Prize
Winner
The Gathering by Anne Enright (£10.99 at
The Book Case). The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in
Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that
killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a
boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968.
NEW
TITLES
Hardback fiction
in October includes
Jane Gardam, Nadine
Gordimer, Ali Smith, Elina Hirvonen and
Maria
Tatar's new annotated version of
Hans Christian Anderson.
Things are quiet in
paperback fiction this month
but we have
Setterfield, Carvalho, Baldacci,
McCaffrey, Steel and
Francome, with
reissues including
Dickens and
Dumas.
Non-fiction:
- Ted Hughes and Andrea Gore
Vidal in Biography
- pottery and porcelain, silver and Sheffield
plate and wristwatches in Collectors
- starvation and obesity in Current Affairs
- houses & gardens and water and
energy in Environment
- voices from the World Wars in History
- lots of jollity in Humour, Activites and
Puzzles including John Ronson,
Jilly Cooper, QI, literary cookery parodies, rude placenames, school
howlers, unwanted advice on child-raising, a D-I-Y Xmas tree
and building contraptions
- more tingo in Language
- babies' names and knitting for
men in Lifestyle
- blessings, fairies, angels, women who worry, the power of
intention, emotional intelligence, emotional healing, flower
remedies and brain training in MBS
- a goshawk and the Countryman
in Nature
- Ted Hughes, Maya Angelou, women in WWII, Adrienne Rich,
Beowulf and poems for life in Poetry
- Whitakers, Pears, DIY
and laptops in Reference
- the Dalai Lama in Science
- fishing and sporting
answers in Sport
- Ribble buses and Manchester
trolley-buses in Transport
- more new guides and
maps, including Manchester and Central America,
surviving in the wilderness, close shaves
and two
Victorias in Travel
- and Nutbrown Hares, a pop-up Moby Dick, chocolates
and snakeheads in Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Eyes in Mirrors in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What
you've been buying: OCTOBER
2007 BESTSELLERS at The Book Case
We aren’t complaining, but half
of October’s bestsellers at The Book Case are the same as
September’s, just in a different order. Seven have local connections, and
the remaining three are novels, including one from the ever-popular Mark
Haddon.
1. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents -
Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. Our own first
publication, an eyewitness description, with interviews, of the conditions of
textile workers around West Yorkshire in 1849.
2. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. A
reprint of the exciting 1968 children’s classic about the Cragg Vale
Coiners from the well-loved Halifax novelist. Our second
publication!
3. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper
Calder Valley, £5. Still selling well, this colour-illustrated
pamphlet from Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre with the history of
watermills in the area.
4. Island of Lost Souls - Martyn Bedford, £7.99.
From a West Yorkshire author, a novel about a draft dodger on the run and the
effect war can have on individuals and communities. Martyn Bedford recently
talked about his book at Halifax Library.
5. Infamous Yorkshire Women - Issy Shannon,
£12.99. Still selling well, this collection of remarkable women with
Yorkshire connections - ranging from Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes to Mary
Newall of the Cragg Vale Coiners. The author is a well-known local
journalist.
6. A Village Childhood - Gertrude M. Attwood, nee
Ogden, £12. A personal recollection of Mytholmroyd and Hebden
Bridge in the 1920s and '30s. Gertrude looks back at those early years and
describes how they influenced her life. Lots of fascinating detail about
everyday life and contemporary illustrations.
7. Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon, £7.99. The
"dignified man trying to go insane politely" remains popular. From the author
of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'.
8. The Gathering - Anne Enright, £10.99 at The
Book Case. Booker Prize winner. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan
gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the
drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened
to him as a boy in his grandmother's house.
9. Calder Valley Offcuts Series, £2.50. This
series of pamphlets based on local history lectures by Leslie Goldthorp and
transcribed by Irene Mallinson has been selling well and has now reached No. 9
and the nineteenth century. One to come!
10. Scent Trail - Celia Lyttelton, £15.00. From a
Hebden Bridge-based author, one woman's journey across the world as she
explores the magic and history behind the ingredients of her own bespoke
perfume. Celia Lyttelton recently spoke at an event organised by Halifax
Library. Tied with We’Moon Diary 2008.
Best wishes from your local independent 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
"Can the
library ... mirror the culture at large ... ? Can the library define
itself as a particular personality through the sum of its holdings? Can the
library make visible the community's overall personality based on the books
currently circulating?"
- George Legrady, on his huge LCD
display boards in the posh new Seattle Library, which continually show which
books are being taken out. There are approximately 22,000 items circulating per
day.
"Making Visible the Invisible" - Seattle Library Data Flow
Visualisation,
www.archimuse.com/publishing/ichim05/Legrady.pdf
OCTOBER 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
The community has been sorry to hear of the death of Hebden Bridge
writer and teacher
Elaine Connell on 1st October after a long
illness which she met with her characteristic humour and obstinacy. Elaine was
a co-founder of the Hebden Bridge web and probably the UK's leading authority
on Sylvia Plath. Testimonies and details of her funeral can be found on the
Hebweb at
http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/
This month our local publishing highlight is Gertrude Attwood's
fascinating memoir of of Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge in the 1920s and
'30s: A Village Childhood, published by Milltown
Memories. See below for details.
As its contribution to the town anti-plastic-bags campaign, The Book
Case is offering its splendid, capacious, long-handled cotton
eco-bag free with purchases over £20 as an alternative to the
usual £1 book voucher throughout October. Thereafter we will charge
£1.50, which is a bit less than cost. Like other shops, we also have
corn-starch biobags available at 5p.
On our comments board, customers have recorded ENJOYING Diana Wynne
Jones's Year of the Griffin, Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers,
Arthur Ransome's Great Northern?, Christopher Priest's
Prestige, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, James Robertson's
Gideon Mack, Ruth Padel's Tigers in Red Weather, all Lee
Child's books, Tove Jansson's Fair Play, Mavis Cheek's Sex Life of
My Aunt and Jane Tomalin's Time-torn Man (about
Hardy). NOT being enjoyed were Drowned World (Ballard)
and Tobias Hill's Cryptographer - but someone else had really liked
it!
As well as lots of wonderful calendars, and some very high-class
Christmas cards (unobtrusively as yet) on display, we now have the
colourful We'Moon Diary 2008 on the theme of Mending
the Web - and a posh Bodleian Library Advent Calendar
featuring old-fashioned gold-encrusted book covers at £6.00. We
don't know what is behind the "doors" ...
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: The Good Companions - J B Priestley
(£14.99 at The Book Case). A new hardback edition of this 1929
classic, including biographical details, images and information on the music
hall scene of the 1920s. Three unhappy characters flee from their old lives to
seek adventure on the open road and find themselves in a broken-down theatrical
touring company.
Adult non-fiction: I Think the Nurses are Stealing
My Clothes: The Very Best of Linda Smith - ed. Warren Lakin
(£8.99) A collection of her material from her early stand-up
to her radio days.
Children's book: Stuff of
Nightmares - Malorie Blackman (£12.99) A fantastic
spine-tingling read for older readers from the outstanding Malorie Blackman.
Kyle has always been afraid of things, especially dying. But when he gets on
the train that is taking him and his class on a school trip, he has no idea how
close to death he is going to come. Age: 12+ yrs
CD: The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
(£12.99) It was the corgis' fault. When they strayed through the grounds
of Buckingham Palace, the Queen discovered the City of Westminster travelling
library. Double CD, 2h30m.
The 3-for-2 Summer
Reads are being phased out - you'll still find a few
on the shelves - and have been replaced with a
while-stocks-last £2-off on
the following Bloomsbury Great Reads:
Cats Eye - Atwood
Easy Riders Raging
Bulls - Biskind
English Patient -
Ondaatje
Frankie & Stankie - Trapido
Fugitive Pieces
- Michaels
Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone - Rowlings
Holes -
Sachar
If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things -
McGregor
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Clarke
Kite
Runner - Hosseini
Little Friend - Tartt
Map Of Love -
Soueif
Marrying The Mistress - Trollope
Middlesex -
Eugenides
Prayer For Owen Meany - Irving
Snow Falling On
Cedars - Guterson
We ALSO have another great selection of books -
including the likes of Kate Adie and Philippa
Gregory - and a wide range of Mind-Body-Spirit books - at silly
prices, while stocks last!
In the children's section, we have a Ladybird
promotion with 3 for 2, including fairytales, phonics and non-fiction
titles.
NEWSLocal
Interest
A
Village Childhood - Gertrude M. Attwood, nee Ogden
(£12)
A personal recollection of
Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge in the 1920s and '30s. Gertrude looks back at
those early years and describes how they influenced her life. Well
illustrated, with lots of fascinating detail about everyday life.
Local Authors
Hebden Bridge author Mark Hodkinson has been
shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year with
his book Believe in the Sign, about his devotion to Rochdale
FC. In stock, £9.99.
The Deafening Sound of Silent Tears: the Story of Caring for
Life - Juliet Barker, £8.99
From the renowned local historian and biographer, a celebration of
the 20th anniversary of the Leeds-based charity Caring for Life, who help
vulnerable young adults make a new start.
Over the Land - John
Killick (£10)
Hebden Bridge-based John Killick is best known
for his work on communication with people with dementia and has broadcast on
BBC Radio. This collection contains 23 poems inspired by the Scottish landscape
with images from pastel drawings and oil paintings by a young Edinburgh artist,
Alison McGill. Exclusively available in Hebden Bridge from The Book Case, and
post free.
I Did a Bad Thing - Linda Green
From a local author and
featured at Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. Sarah Roberts used to be good. Then
she did something very bad. Now, years later, she's living a good life, until
Nick reappears. And suddenly, what's good and bad aren't so clear to Sarah any
more. (£6.99)
Local Publishers
Gardening with Tortoises - P D Aspy (£9.99)
From Hebden Bridge publishers Bluemoose, nature,
naturism and naturalism in Europe - a selection of letters from Pippa to her
sister, as she moves from Devon to France to Spain with an entourage of
husband, tortoises, parrots and plants!
National Book Events
The Daily Mail Book Club
October's Book of the Month is Two Caravans
by Marina Lewycka (£7.99). An idyll of the
English countryside: a beautiful summer's evening in a Kent field, and around
their two caravans a little group of strawberry pickers is getting ready to
celebrate a birthday. But who picks our strawberries these days? The
Ukrainians. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against
one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.
Booker Prize
Shortlist
Darkmans by Nicola Barker (£17.99)
The Gathering
by Anne Enright (£12.99),
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by
Mohsin Hamid (£14.99),
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (£10.99
at The Book Case)
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
(£10.99 at The Book Case) and
Animal's People by
Indra Sinha (£11.99).
We're keeping Chesil Beach and Mr
Pip (the two favourites) in stock and can order the others overnight
usually. Winner to be announced 16 October.
NEW TITLES
Hardback fiction
in October includes Alexander McCall Smith,
Nick Hornby (teenage actually), John Mortimer
and The Tain in a new
version; and amongst paperback fiction we have
Sebastian Faulks, Martin Amis, Irene Nemirovsky,
Marina Lewycka, Charles Frazier, Douglas Coupland and Sarah
Maitland amongst others, with
reissues including J B Priestley, Bulgakov, Barbara Trapido and Susan
Hill.
Non-fiction:
- Plath's art, a year's worth of art, natural architecture,
Dales barns, spinning, jewellery and the tango
in Art,
Architecture, Craft & Dance
- Kafka, Che Guevara, Hutner Thompson, John Mortimer, Katharine
Whitehorn, Hannah Hauxwell, Tony Benn, Desmond Tutu and Andrea Ashworth in
Biography
- geopolitics and oil in Current affairs and
politics
- going green and surviving
global warming in Environment
- the British
eating, cheese, apples, wild food, slow cooking, toasties,
toddlers and curing a hangover
in Food and
Drink
- the naming of plants in Gardening and husbandry
- the Caesars, great English tales, the Crusades, the Black
Sea, the vicious Plantagenets, railway history and Britain
at war in History
- lots in Humour, Games and
Quizzes including Christmas round robins, not
having a clue but having news for you, Private Eye, John O'Farrell
(twice), Linda Smith, Spike Milligan, Tove Jansson, parking
tickets, spammers, lose-lose decisions, Garrison Keillor, Tigger psychoanalysed
and an Eagle annual and other delights of yesteryear
in Nostalgia
- Manguel on Homer,
Bestsellers and Nobel literature
lectures in Literature
- backs, pagans, the Bible, spirituality, parenting, angels,
crystals, medicine wheels, chakras, meditation, unreligious
prayers and psychometric tests in MBS
- Strictly Come Dancing, the Archers, DVDs, film, the
internet and Derren Brown in Media
- Joe Boyd and a family
songbook in Music
- narratives of trees, quite a lot of
weather and wartime country
diaries in Nature
- Grayling in Philosophy
- Edward Thomas, Betjeman, Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage
(twice), Carol Ann Duffy
(ed) and Paul
Durcan in Poetry
- Whitakers, Pears, DIY
and laptops in Reference
- the void, statistical analysis and
more zoological and biological curiosities in Science
- young Wisden in
Sport
- more new guides and
maps, including the Pubs, Hotels, Manchester, Japan, Languedoc, Europe
and France, and Wainwright, the silk road,
surviving in the arctic and Thesiger in Arabia and
Iraq in Travel
- and the little mole, Odysseus (Hugh Lupton), Molly
Moon and the Malorie Blackman in Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Monkeys in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been buying: SEPTEMBER
2007 BESTSELLERS at The Book Case
Yorkshire and the Calder Valley are
flavour of the month again! Sales of local history titles and guides to walks
have been high with six titles in the top ten at The Book Case. Two novels and
two 2008 diaries made up the remainder.
1. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. A reprint of the exciting 1968
children’s classic about the Cragg Vale Coiners from the well-loved
Halifax novelist. Published by Royd Press at The Book Case.
2. Infamous Yorkshire Women - Issy
Shannon, £12.99. From the
well-known local journalist, a collection of remarkable women with Yorkshire
connections - ranging from Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes to Mary Newall of
the Cragg Vale Coiners. Nicely presented and well illustrated.
3. A Village Childhood - Gertrude M. Attwood, nee Ogden,
£12. A personal recollection of Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge in the
1920s and '30s. Gertrude looks back at those early years and describes how they
influenced her life. Sumptuously illustrated, with lots of fascinating detail
about everyday life.
4. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy
Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. A pungent account of the
conditions of textile workers around West Yorkshire in 1849, published by Royd
Press at The Book Case - still selling briskly.
5. Atonement - Ian McEwan, £7.99. Multi-layered novel
stretching from a 1935 country house to Dunkirk and beyond; an
exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement
and the difficulty of absolution.
Now a film.
6. Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon, £7.99. Again! A
disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane
politely. From the author of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time'.
7. Walking Country: Calderdale - Paul Hannon,
£5.99. 25 local walks, compact format, full
details, maps and line drawings.
8. Gone Walkabout - Anna
Carlisle, £6.00. Popular
locally-published collection of 24 walks in the Upper Calder Valley.
9. Moleskine Pocket Diary, 2008, £10.99. All this
high-quality range of diaries, notebooks and sketchbooks sell well - this is
the current leader.
10. We’Moon Diary 2008: Gaia Rhythms for Womyn,
£15.99. The new edition of this popular and colourful astrological
moon calendar and datebook is on the theme of "Mending the Web".
Best wishes from your local independent 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
Perhaps
fiction can help us make sense of science in ways purely factual reports
cannot. ... the freedom of fiction allows authors and readers to grapple with
complex abstract concepts and to look at the universe in a richer, more human
way than "straight" science can."
Editorial, New Scientist, 25 August
2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
Just into stock is a new book of poetry from John
Killick - Over the Land, with illustrations by Alison
McGill.
John Killick is perhaps best known for his work on communication with
people with dementia – work which has resulted in presentations in a
number of countries, broadcasts on the BBC’s Radio Three and Four and the
World Service, and numerous articles and books. Amongst the latter are the two
high-selling poetry collections You are Words and Openings.
His latest publication, however, returns to his first love, poetry,
which comes from his own imagination and word-store. Over the Land
contains 23 poems inspired by the Scottish landscape with images from
pastel drawings and oil paintings by a young Edinburgh artist, Alison McGill.
Alison is only 31 but she has already had three one-woman exhibitions at
Edinburgh’s prestigious Scottish Gallery. John first saw her work there
and was deeply impressed, so much so that he proposed writing a sequence of
poems in parallel with some of her landscapes. This has proved a genuine
partnership, and this volume is a first collaboration.
John comments on Alison’s work "She paints the skin of the land,
and in her best pictures gets beneath the skin and shows us the bones too. Many
of her paintings look as if she has been up in a plane to sketch and photograph
what she sees. The first thing that strikes you when you look at one of
Alison’s works is the colour: they are vibrant, and draw you in to
confront the geology and the vegetation that clothes the contours. I’ve
tried to match these qualities in my verses, as in the lines:
The spirit is launched on thermals,
surrenders to the swirl
of
pigment, the birl of space."
‘Over the Land’ is published by Fisherrow, a new
imprint launched with this publication. The book is exclusively available in
Hebden Bridge from The Book Case, price £10. The book is available post
free. Telephone 01422-845353 for details.
***************************
NEW MAGAZINES
Also new into stock is the independent peace journal,
Peace News, now relaunched as a newspaper with colour
illustrations, monthly, price £1.00. Launched in 1936 but right up to
date with coverage of Iraq, Palestine, global warming, Jordan, Islamic
environmentalism and non-violent action, it's full of interesting news items,
interviews and articles.
AND on a customer's recommendation, we are trying the magazine
The Mother, bi-monthly, £3.50. Birth and bonding
-"uncompromisingly holistic"! This issue covers breastfeeding, waterbirth,
TV-free living, living in community, and much more.
***************************
The Book Case is rather chuffed to be the subject of a
full-page article in the Bookseller of 7th September. It covers our
publishing initiative and the Harry Potter midnight party, and concludes, "The
community is at the heart of the Book Case, and the shop is at the heart of its
community." We're always grateful for your support! The article is on
display in the shop.
Best wishes from your local independent
bookshop
SEPTEMBER 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
It's been a busy month because of the amazing reaction from
Huddersfield to our first published book -
Fabrics, Filth and Fairy
Tents - a reprint of pungent 1849 newspaper reports on local
textile workers' conditions. The
Huddersfield Examiner gave it a very
nice
full-page
review and the phone hasn't stopped ringing since. Our first
reprint is now in. The
Batley News also reported with enthusiasm
on the ghastly appearance of female Batley shoddy workers under the heading "
A Filthy
Story". We are waiting hopefully for reviews from Halifax,
Bradford and Leeds - Reach is just as graphic about their textile
workers!
We're also very excited about our first Phyllis
Bentley title, now in stock - an exciting and well-written
story about a boy who unwittingly gets involved with the Cragg Vale
Coiners. The book's called Gold Pieces and costs
£5.95. We only have the rights for five years so grab it while you can;
it's well worth a read and although written for children, goes down equally
well with adults - Phyllis Bentley of course knows her local history (she
makes the development of the textile industry real and fascinating) and her
local geography - spot all the local places as you read! It was first published
in 1968 and was later reprinted by Puffin. There are two more "Tales from the
Tops" in the pipeline - one about the Luddites and one about an 18-century
weaver's apprentice who solves a crime.
On our comments board, people report enjoying
Peter Rex's English Resistance (to the Normans), Diana Wynne
Jones's Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin,
Nicholas Evans' Horse Whisperers, Markus Zusak's Book Thief,
Fanny Trollope's Jessie Phillips (good on the effects of the Poor
Law Amendment Act), Philippa Gregory's Boleyn Inheritance, anything by
Jasper Fforde ("great fun!"), Que es la globalizacion (no author
given) and Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More than You. The only
complaint is about Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans.
A reminder that we have many of our great selection of 2008
calendars now in stock and they're selling. A lot of them will not be
restockable when gone. You have been warned!
8th September marks
International Literacy Day and
a good way to help is to join the
Reverse Book
Club where you pay £5 a month for four books to be sent to
readers of all ages in Africa and beyond.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: The Ruby in Her
Navel - Barry Unsworth
(7.99). The Court of King Roger in 12th-century
Sicily simmers with the volatile passions of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Latins
and Greeks. Among them, a young Norman finds employment under Yusuf, a Muslim
who holds the Christian king's purse strings. Barry Unsworth is known for the
depth and realism of his historical fiction.
Adult non-fiction: Infamous
Yorkshire Women - Issy Shannon (£12.99). From the well-known
local journalist, a collection of remarkable women with Yorkshire connections -
ranging from Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes to Mary Newall of the Cragg
Vale Coiners. Nicely presented and well illustrated.
<
Children's book: Outcast -
Michelle Paver. Eagerly awaited fourth book in the
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series. Torak now faces his fourth
adventure in his quest to vanquish the terrifying Soul-Eaters and finds himself
cut off from his clan and even from Wolf and Renn. The combination of Paver's
meticulous research into prehistory and her storytelling skill have made this
series an undoubted hit with readers Ages: 10+yrs.
(£9.99)
And also of course, Phyllis Bentley's "Gold Pieces"
about the Cragg Vale Coiners! A must for every local child. Hilltop
handloom weaver's son Dick Wade is pleased to find a boy of his own age to play
with, but is he a true friend? Whose is the injured dog found on the moors? And
who is flooding the area with clipped and forged coins, bringing the London
authorities in with their questions and house
searches? (£5.99)
CD: An Introduction to Ralph Vaughan Williams
(£6.99). From Chandos - Overture to "The Wasps", Fantasia on
"Greensleeves", "The Lark Ascending" and "A London Symphony". Total time 78
mins.
See below also for a new venture,
antiquarian Yorkshire Books on
CD-rom.
You all seem to like our
3-for-2 Summer Reads selection so much, we're
keeping it running for the moment. It's a choice of our previous
bestsellers, fiction and non-fiction, and can be found on our centre
table.
In the children's section, we have six Malory Towers
titles by Enid Blyton with strange Manga covers
(why?) for £2.99 each, and a range of Tony Ross's Little Princess
not wanting to do things at £1.99 each. Hurry if you want to
take advantage of the 2-for-1 Lemony Snicket promotion - there
aren't many left!
NEWS
Local Interest
Power in the
Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley
(£5)
Colour-illustrated pamphlet
from Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre with the history of watermills
in the area. 48pp, colour and b-&-w illustrations, nicely produced.
plus CD-Rom
(£3) and DVD (£4) to
accompany the above - 17 mins of a well-presented visual journey through the
Colden Valley tracing the existence of water-powered mills as seen through past
and present-day photographs, which merge into each other. Produced by Jim Strom
and narrated by Ursula Holden-Gill. 50p off the price when combined with a
book.
Fabrics, Filth and
Fairy Tents: the Yorkshire textile districts in 1849 - Angus Bethune Reach, ed.
Chris Aspin (£6.95)
An eyewitness account of textile workers'
conditions in Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Batley, Halifax, Bradford and Leeds in
1849 by a Scottish investigative
journalist.
Antiquarian Yorkshire Books on CD-rom
A new venture - a selection of
Colin Hinson's CD-roms which contain rare and expensive antiquarian books of
local interest. He says you must be sure to press the button in the middle to
get them out of the case! We have the following in stock and can order others:
"The History and
Antiquities of Halifax", "Ancient Halls in and Around Halifax"
and "Halifax Courier's Almanack 1937" - 3 books on one
CDrom - Rev. John Watson, Arthur Comfort and Halifax Courier -
£15
"Todmorden" 4 books on one CDrom - John Travis -
£12
"The Yorkshire Coiners & Old and Pre Historic
Halifax" - H. Ling Roth - £12
"The Northowram
Nonconformist register", "Oliver Heywood's Diaries" (4 Volumes) and
"Northowram, its History and Antiquities" - 6 books on one
CDrom - J Horsfall Turner and Mark Pearson - £20
"The History
of Brighouse, Rastrick and Hipperholme" and
"Independency at Brighouse" - 2 books on one CDrom - J
Horsfall Turner - £15
"Halifax, Families and Worthies",
"History of Halifax" and "Halifax Guardian Almanack,
1908" - 3 books on one CDrom - J Horsfall Turner, John Crabtree and
Halifax Guardian - £15
Local Authors
Infamous Yorkshire Women - Issy
Shannon (£12.99) - now in stock!
Our
Non-fiction Book of the Month - see above.
National Book Events
Richard and Judy
Summer Reads
Now finished, and they're not the draw they used to be. Is this to
do with the phone-in scandals? The bestseller amongst them was the first one,
Kim Edwards' Memory Keeper's Daughter.
The Daily Mail Book
Club
September's Book of the Month is Over by Margaret Forster
(£7.99). The summer of 1911 was one of the high sunlit meadows of
English history, but on the horizon lurked a gathering storm. The Book Case
will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of
this month's recommended title.
Future titles:
October – Two
Caravans by Marina Lewycka (Penguin)
Booker Prize
Longlist
This
was announced in early August and can be found
here. Ian
McEwan's Chesil Beach is selling well and we can order the others on
request but are remaining cautious as sales in hardback of little-known authors
are not encouraging. The shortlist is due on 6th September and we'll keep
an eye open for signs of interest.
NEW TITLES
Autumn is nearly upon us and the seasonal
lists are walloping in. In hardback fiction in September we
have Alan Bennett, Jeanette Winterson and a Jack
Kerouac, and paperback
fiction includes Margaret Atwood, Barry
Unsworth, Alice Munro, Thomas Pynchon, Conn Iggulden, Howard Jacobson,
Jodi Picoult, Paul Auster, Susanna Clarke and Terry Pratchett amongst
others, with reissues of Biggles and Janet and
John.
Non-fiction:
- Martin Parr, woodwork, bags,
tea-cosies and toilet-rollholders
(sorry) in Art and
Craft
- Thomas Bewick, E. Nesbit, Kipling, MacNeice, Betjeman,
Hunter S Thompson, David Blunkett, truckers, Doris Stokes, V S Naipaul, Blake
Morrison and a
runaway Asian girl in Biography
- ethnic cleansing in Palestine, royalty, the occupation in
Iraq and global slums in Current affairs and
politics
- being green, especially with
babies in Environment
- head gardeners and poultry in Gardening and husbandry
- migration, world history, British blood, Xenophon, Ann
Hathaway, steam, railways, dancing before Waterloo
and WWII reprints for British
troops in Germany, German invaders of England and
American troops in Iraq in History
- exit strategies, Giles, aunts, dangerous boys, Beadle's
brainteasers, Pam Ayres, Ladies of Letters and an early
Dr Seuss in Humour, Games
and Quizzes
- feeding well on limited time and
resources in Lifestyle
- the creative spirit, the enneagram, angels, water, John
Humphrys being agnostic, Freud, postmodernism, feminism, psychology,
personality and women spiritual
teachers in MBS
- the Royal Exchange, Penguin covers and
banned books in Media
- birds, mountains and
mushrooms in Nature
- ecopoems, Anne Stevenson,
Stephen Fry and cats in Poetry
- lots of new guides,
including the Good Food Guide, and Michael Palin,
Howard Marks, Wainwright and online eco-tourism
in Travel
- and a tiger, a rabbit, elephants, the
4th Chronicle of Ancient Darkness and the 2nd in the
Noble Warriors trilogy in Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Fire in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: AUGUST 2007 BESTSELLERS at
The Book Case
The five "local interest" books in
The Book Case’s bestsellers in August included two from our own stable,
with folktales, watermills and walks making up the rest. Three of our promoted
novels were especially popular, one classic children’s book sold well, and
customers were still intrigued by the little 1913 marital harmony
books.
1. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy
Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. A pungent account of the
conditions of textile workers around West Yorkshire in 1849. Our first
publication as Royd Press has been racing off the shelves!
2. Folktales from Calderdale Vol. 1 - John Billingsley,
£7.50. Another month near the top for local folktales. The Witches of
Eagle Crag, the Cliviger Boggart, the Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley
Pike, Great Rock, Tom Bell's Cave, the Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are
included.
3. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
£7.99. Holding third position. In the context of the 1960s Nigerian civil
war, a young houseboy, a university lecturer and her professor lover, a shy
Englishman and the lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and thrown together.
This year’s Orange Prize winner and a 3/2 choice.
4. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper
Calder Valley, £5. Colour-illustrated pamphlet from Hebden Bridge
Alternative Technology Centre with the history of watermills in the area. 48pp,
colour and b-&-w illustrations, nicely produced. Now accompanied by a DVD
and CD-rom.
5. Don’ts for Wives, £2.99. An
entertaining little book from 1913 full of good advice for a harmonious
relationship. There’s another one for husbands!
6. Gone Walkabout - Anna Carlisle, £6.00. Popular
collection of 24 walks in the Upper Calder Valley, holding sixth position.
7. Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon, £7.99. Another 3/2
choice holding the same position as last month. A disturbing yet very funny
portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely. From the author of
'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'.
8. Silver Sword
- Ian Serrailier, £4.99. Alone and fending for themselves in a Poland
devastated by World War Two, Jan and his three homeless friends cling to the
silver sword as a symbol of hope. As they travel through Europe towards
Switzerland, where they believe they will be reunited with their parents, they
encounter many hardships and dangers.
9. Calder Valley Offcuts Series, £2.50. This series of
pamphlets produced by Royd Press on various aspects of local history since
Norman times has been selling well.
10. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell, £7.99. Charts
thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, set
against the sunset of an agrarian England still overshadowed by the Cold War. A
3/2 choice.
Best wishes from your local independent 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
"Please do not read whilst waiting
for a train. Thank you for your cooperation."
- sign in Halifax station waiting room.
(An explanation is close by, but you'll have to go to Halifax to find
it.)
AUGUST 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
We're delighted to announce that our first book, Fabrics,
Filth and Fairy Tents: the Yorkshire textile districts in 1849
is now available and on sale at The Book Case, at a price of £6.95.
The book is an eyewitness account of textile workers' conditions in
Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Batley, Halifax, Bradford and Leeds in 1849
by Scottish investigative journalist Angus
Bethune Reach who toured the textile areas of the West Riding to
report for the Morning Chronicle (which also published Mayhew’s
famous London reports). He praised some employers
(Holdsworth’s in Halifax - still in operation and making fabrics for road,
rail and sea transport; Marshall’s in Leeds whose glass cupolas are the
"fairy tents" of the title) but also found filth, squalor, extreme poverty,
lethal working conditions and official apathy. His reports and the words of the
people he spoke to bring to life how the glory days of the textile industry
felt from the underside. A sample of his style: “The streets of Halifax are disgracefully neglected …reeking
with stench and the worst sort of
abomination."
The editor, historian Chris Aspin, is the
author of the popular Shire Albums on The Wool Industry and The
Cotton Industry, as well as a large illustrated work on the early
cotton trade (The Water Spinners), histories of Helmshore and several
collections of light-hearted poetry and prose which are now on sale in the
shop. He also edited a companion piece by Reach on conditions in
the textile districts around Manchester, which we'll be publishing soon.
The book's striking cover was designed by our
Children's Buyer Kate Claughan.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
Well, the final Harry Potter was given a
rousing welcome at the shop at one minute past midnight of 20th July when
around 140 people packed the shop, some in fancy dress, with more out on the
street! A fiendish quiz on the minutiae of the books kept people busy until the
countdown. Thanks to Kate for her hard work in organising it and Peter (in a
topper) for supplying the nibbles and drink. You can see photos in our window.
We're now selling the book at £12.99, and you also get the
usual 50p voucher. Congratulations to Hannah Hope-Collins for winning
the Countdown to Harry Quiz! She gets a £10.00 Book
Case voucher.
If you've already finished Deathly Hallows and are having
withdrawal symptoms, may we recommend the excellent and highly original
Diana Wynne-Jones?
Our comments board has been rather squeezed out
recently, but it's now back and people say they are
enjoying Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, Robert
Westall's Machine Gunners, Made in Bradford edited by M Y Alam,
Married by Anne Roiphe, Iris Murdoch's Good
Apprentice, J G Ballard's short stories, A Twist in
the Coyote's Tale by Celia M Gunn, Michael Morpurgo's Escape from
Shangri-La - and of course, J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows. Not being enjoyed are Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance, Bash the Rich by Ian Bone and the
Harry Potter books (didn't know we'd had Will Self in).
Sorry about the scaffolding all over the building - has to be done,
and should be over in a couple of weeks.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: The Road - Cormac McCarthy (7.99). A
father and his son walk alone through burned America, heading through the
ravaged landscape to the coast. "An exquisitely bleak incantation - pure poetic
brimstone ... illuminated by extraordinary tenderness" - New York
Times.
Adult non-fiction: Forgotten Household Crafts - John Seymour
(£12.99). Rediscover the lost world of traditional household
crafts with 'the grand master of self-sufficiency'. Master tried and trusted
methods that have been honed over the centuries and learn to make butter and
cheese, embroider, keep bees, decorate your home, and more.
Children's book: Woodenface - Gus Grenfell
(£5.99). The author is aka ex-Hebden Bridge resident Gus
Smith. Meg is a Maker, pouring life into the wooden dolls she carves. Accused
of witchcraft, she flees to Halifax, only to find her father in jail, facing
death by the gibbet. Desperate to save him, she must first learn what being a
Maker really means. Local history and folklore combine in a compelling debut
novel full of magic and suspense. Ages: 9-12 yrs
CD: The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham
(£12.99) A 90-minute full-cast radio dramatisation of the
classic sci-fi novel. Widespread flooding and social and political collapse
follow an alien invasion. Also available is The Day of the Triffids
in a 1968 recording (£15.99)
Our Summer 3-for-2
promotion will continue through the season and has proved very
successful. This is your chance to catch up those books you've been meaning to
read all year!
In the children's section, we are offering 2-for-1
on the first six of the gloomy Lemony Snicket Series of
Unfortunate Events - read them at your peril!
Special bargains continue to be offered on
selected MBS titles and assorted fiction and biography - have a look at our
shelf above History and Biography!
NEWS
Local
Interest
Curiosities of West Yorkshire - Robert Woodhouse
(£12.99)
A guide to the remarkable and curious sites to be
seen in West Yorkshire, including a few around our way.
Chelp and Chunter: how to talk
Tyke - Ian McMillan (£5.99)
From the Brontes and James Herriot to the
Arctic Monkeys, Yorkshire has a rich culture reflected in its dialect. Discover
the origins of many well-known phrases and learn a few more!
Local Authors
Infamous Yorkshire Women - Issy
Shannon (£12.99)
From the well-known local journalist, a
collection of remarkable women with Yorkshire connections - ranging from Queen
Cartimandua of the Brigantes to Mary Newall of the Cragg Vale Coiners. Nicely
presented and well illustrated - due in August.
The Scent Trail - Celia
Lyttelton (£15)
“A Journey of the Senses.” A
travel memoir and vividly-drawn portrait of today's exotic world of perfume.
Entering the heady, exotic world of oils and essences at a bespoke
perfumer’s, the author (who lives in Hebden Bridge) was transported from a
leafy London square to a place of long-forgotten memories and sensory
experiences and felt compelled to trace the origins, history and culture of the
many ingredients that made up her unique perfume.
Woodenface - Gus Grenfell
(£5.99)
See our Children's Book of the Month,
above.
National Book
Events
Richard and Judy
Summer Reads
We're continuing to display and sell these popular titles, and the
promotion continues through most of August.
Wednesday 25th July 2007 - Salmon Fishing In The Yemen
by Paul Torday
Follows fishery scientist Dr Alfred Jones's journey
as he attempts to realise the dreams of a Yemeni Sheikh to bring salmon fishing
to the Yemen.
Wednesday 1st August 2007 - Getting Rid of Matthew by
Jane Fallon
After four years Helen’s boyfriend, Matthew
leaves his wife, only to find she no longer wants him and is going to
ridiculous lengths to get him back with his wife.
Wednesday 8th
August 2007 - The Savage Garden by Mark Mills
Set in 1958, it
follows a brilliant but lazy Cambridge student, Adam Strickland as he uncovers
the mysteries of an Italian garden and the murderous secrets it hides.
Wednesday 15th August 2007 - How to talk to a Widower by Jonathan
Tropper
30-something Doug Parker reclaims his life after the death
of his wife. Moving and laugh-out-loud funny.
Wednesday 22nd August
2007 - The Other Side of The Bridge by Mary Lawson
A story set in
rural Canada, dealing with war, families, love and dark secrets.
The Daily Mail Book
Club
August's Book of the Month is The Perfect
Summer by Juliet Nicholson (£7.99). The summer
of 1911 was one of the high sunlit meadows of English history, but on the
horizon lurked a gathering storm. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National
Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended
title.
Future titles:
September – Over by Margaret Forster
October – Two
Caravans by Marina Lewycka (Penguin)
NEW
TITLES
There's a
dearth of hardback fiction in August, but paperback
fiction includes Margaret Drabble, John le Carre, Ben Okri,
Peter Ackroyd, Alexander McCall
Smith, Julie Walters, Ismail Kadare, Charles Frazier, Ruth Rendell and
Frederick Forsyth amongst others, with Cormac
McCarthy's Road already in stock. Reissued are a
Marquez and a Margaret Irwin.
Non-fiction:
- Monty Don, Leslie Phillips, Judy Marks and a
sheep farmer in Biography
- Chomsky, Umberto Eco, Al Qaeda, world-changing
facts and sisterhood in Current affairs
- the Spartans, Louis
XIV and industrial
revolutionaries in History
- Pam Ayres, life's smaller challenges, pretentious
postulations, strange inventions, and crazy
crimes in Humour
- the new Writers' Handbook, Children's Writers &
Artists' Yearbook, Concise Oxford
Companion to English Literature and infuriating
phrases in Language and
Literature
- forgotten household crafts, organic homes, flatmates and
how to survive them, ditto universities, helping children do well at school,
children's parties, babies' names, 101 things to do in wartime (1940), a new
Driving Manual and Highway Code and how to waste
office supplies in Lifestyle
- lunchbox letters, planting by the
moon and astrological and cosmic wish
diaries in MBS
- a celebration of Radio 4 and a Rough Guide
to Film in Media
- children birdwatching in Nature
- multicultural Britain and bats
in Poetry
- classical mythology, Deepak Chopra on the Buddha, the
Koran and uncommon prayer in Religion and Mythology
- outdoor girls (1915) and the Playfair
football annual in Sport
and Outdoor Activities
- weird signs,
dumb American laws, Daniel O’Donnell’s
Ireland, seasons on Harris, Palestinian walks, new Lonely Planet and Rough
Guides and the attractive new Michelin road
atlases in Travel
- Pomegranate 2008 calendars
- and meerkats, goblins, accusations of witchcraft in
Halifax and another scary Garth Nix in
Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Breakfasts in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: JULY 2007 BESTSELLERS at
The Book Case
Harry Potter went through the roof at The Book Case in July, but
local titles and "3 for 2" novels and biographies were still strong. Other
popular books included advice for husbands in 1913 and prayers for
peace.
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J K
Rowling, £12.99. No prizes for guessing what was top of the
charts in July! Will there be anyone left to buy the paperback?
2. Folktales from Calderdale Vol. 1 - John
Billingsley, £7.50. Nudged off top spot by the mighty Harry, but
local folktales are still high. The Witches of Eagle Crag, the Cliviger
Boggart, the Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley Pike, Great Rock, Tom Bell's
Cave, the Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are included.
3. Half
of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, £7.99. Again a front
runner. In the context of the 1960s Nigerian civil war, a young houseboy, a
university lecturer and her professor lover, a shy Englishman and the
lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and thrown together. This year’s
Orange Prize winner and a 3/2 choice.
4. Pennine Perspectives - Midgley History Group,
£18.00. Comprehensive and beautifully illustrated history of this
ancient township.
5. Don’ts for Husbands, £2.99.
An entertaining little book from 1913 full of good advice for a harmonious
relationship. There’s another one for wives!
6. Gone Walkabout - Anna Carlisle, £6.00.
Popular collection of 24 walks in the Upper Calder
Valley.
7. Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon, £7.99. A
disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane
politely. From the author of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time'. A 3/2 choice.
8. Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai,
£7.99. In the north-eastern Himalayas, the life of an embittered old
judge is complicated by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and the
son of his chatty cook. A 3/2 choice and Booker Prize winner.
9. Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill
Bryson, £7.99. Bill Bryson travels back in time to explore the
ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s America. A 3/2
choice.
10. Peace Prayers, £2.99. One of our bargain
MBS titles - a collection of meditations, affirmations, invocations, poems and
prayers for peace.
Best wishes from your local independent 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
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's
best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho
Marx
JULY 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
It's an eventful month
coming up, with not only the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, but
also the new and final Harry Potter book - Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows - on 21st July.
So as not to keep you in suspense a
moment more than necessary, there will be the opportunity of finding
out at "What Happens to Harry" at midnight! - the Book Case will open
at 11.30pm on Friday 20th
July for the countdown to midnight when the first box of the new Harry
Potter can be opened and the first copies will be handed out to customers. The
book is embargoed until then. For the customers who have ordered the book in
advance there will be celebratory drinks and refreshments, prizes for the best
Harry Potter fancy dress costumes and entertainments until 12.30am.
We'll open early again at
8.00am on Saturday 21st July specially for customers
who have ordered the book in advance.
We're also running a
Countdown to Harry Quiz. Guess the answers to 3 questions
about the plot of the new book and the person with the answers judged to be the
most correct will receive a £10.00 Book Case voucher. Answers must be
received by The Book Case no later than 11.59pm on Friday 20th July. The
answers will be judged no later than Saturday 28th July and the winner notified
by phone or email. If there is more than one set of correct answers, the winner
will be chosen in a draw.
Advance orders are
available at £10.99 at The Book Case. RRP is £17.99. The normal
Book Case price will be £12.99.
Hebden Bridge Arts
Festival:
Malorie Blackman talked to a full audience at the
Picture House on 30th June about her Noughts and Crosses series (about
to be staged) and her anthology on slavery, "Unheard Voices". The
first Ted Hughes Festival was a great
success and the Calder High event with Yorkshire poet and novelist
Simon Armitage was packed out - see our Bestsellers
list!
Other literary events in the Festival so far include
Vera
Brittain's "Testament of Youth", poems by
Clare Shaw, Tony
Curtis and Carola Luther, and
Clive Stafford Smith's
talk on his book
"Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons". Yet
to come are
Louis MacNeice, Beowulf, local author
Linda Green, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Lucy
Popescu's voices-of-conscience anthology
"Another
Sky", and a
Harry Potter parody. More info at
the Festival website -
http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/festival/2007/index.html Currently, according to the board on
the centre table, our customers are enjoying
Chandler's Big Sleep, le Guin's Gifts, Maggie Gee's The
Blue, Golding's Close Quarters, Carey's Theft,
Amis's Experience, Le Carre's Absolute
Friends, James Wilson's Bastard Boy, Bacharach by Michael
Brocken, Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones and
Conversations with God by Walsch. This month the only complaint
is about someone's mother-in-law ... Keep us posted (though not necessarily
about the mother-in-law).
Congratulations to ex-Book Case worker
Pauline Stephenson whose wry poem on a particularly
uninspiring Muse won an award in the WEA's "Create '07" festival.
And farewell and a very happy
retirement to Steve Hirst who has been keeping our windows
sparkling for decades!
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: Sacred Games by Vikram
Chandra: 947-page epic from the masterly Indian-born novelist, set in
Mumbai, where a fading Sikh police inspector confronts the most wanted gangster
in India. Compared to the classics of nineteenth-century fiction. (£7.99)
Adult non-fiction: Pennine
Perspectives: Aspects of the History of Midgley: see below for details
of this major new local history hardback. (£18)
Children's book: Starring Tracy Beaker - Jacqueline
Wilson. Tracy Beaker is desperate for a role in her school play.
They're performing 'A Christmas Carol' and for one worrying moment, the
irrepressible Tracy thinks she might not even get to play one of the unnamed
street urchins. But then she is cast in the main role. Can she manage to act
grumpy, difficult and sulky enough to play Ebenezer Scrooge? Ages: 8+
yrs.(£5.99)
CD: Best of British - a two-CD set of Stirring Music by
the the Best of British Composers. Includes Elgar, Bridge, Rubbra,
Arnold, Britten, Walton, Holst, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Stanford, Elgar, Bax,
Ireland, Stainer, Finzi, Rutter, Tavener, Harty and Delius.
(£10.99)
DVDs: Rivers and Tides - Andy
Goldsworthy: Working with Time. Shot in four countries across four
seasons, and show the sculptor's painstaking creative process and the elusive
quality of his intricate and often ephemeral works. (£19.99)
Into Great Silence - A Meditation on
Life; a Contemplation of Time; Silence, Repetition, Rhythm. A two-CD
Collector's Edition of Philip Groning's documentary on monastic life in the
Grande Chartreuse, almost silent except for the chants in the monastery. The
viewer is invited to watch the films as part of a meditative experience. 162
mins. (£22.99)
A Prairie Home Companion - as seen at
Hebden Bridge Picture House, Robert Altman's final, quirky and
highly enjoyable film. (£15.99)
Price Promotion
Our Summer 3-for-2
promotion will continue through the season and has proved very
successful. This is your chance to catch up those books you've been meaning to
read all year!
NEWS
Local Interest
Pennine Perspectives: Aspects of the History of Midgley
- Midgley History Group, ed. Ian Bailey, David Cant, Alan Petford and
Nigel Smith (£18)
Launched at Midgley Pageant
on 30th June, and two-and-a-half years in preparation, this magnificent book
covers many aspects of Midgley’s past, from pre-history, through to
medieval times, the Victorian era and the early twentieth century. Topics
include religion, railways, Murgatroyds’, quarrying, farming, self-help,
housing, pubs, leisure, riots, geology and folklore. The whole of the ancient
township of Midgley is covered, including Midgley Moor, Luddenden,
Luddenden Foot and Mytholmroyd as well as the village. It has 352 pages,
hardback with over 160 illustrations of photos (including colour), maps &
archive documents.
A Laureate's
Landscape: walks around Ted Hughes's Mytholmroyd - John Billingsley
(£4.50)
Engrossing and informative illustrated booklet that takes us
around the area in which the ex-Poet Laureate grew up and which inspired some
of his most memorable work. The relevant poems are referred to (but not quoted!
- the copyright is closely guarded) in the text. Local historian John
Billingsley has led many Ted Hughes walks around Mytholmroyd, and here is a
permanent memento - or a good substitute if you are unable to take
part.
The Bronte Connection - Ann Dinsdale
(£6.95)
From the Collections Manager at the Bronte
Parsonage Museum, a collection of 43 photographs associated with the Brontes'
lives and works, with dates and information.
A Guide to the Historic Haworth
& the Brontes - Mark Ward, Ann Dinsdale and Robert Swindells
(£5.99)
A new edition of an entertaining and
informative guide to Haworth and the surrounding moor, written as a series of
four walks with illustrations and lots of historical information.
Romantic Wycoller: a haunt of the
Brontes - E W Folley, photographs Charles Green (£2.99)
At a special price, a facsimile reprint of a
book first published in 1949. Covers the history of Wycoller Dene and Hall, the
arrival of the Cunliffes, the Bronte connection and local legends, with a
surmise that Ferndean Manor of "Jane Eyre" was based on Wycoller. Many b&w
illustrations.
Local Authors
NW15: the anthology of new
writing No. 15 - the British Council (£9.99)
Including Hebden Bridge-based poet John
Siddique! See his website at http://www.johnsiddique.co.uk/
Mind Control: the ultimate
revelation - David Shuttleworth (£7.99)
From a Keighley
author and publisher, "the book Derren Brown wanted to ban!" Highly praised
book with twelve mind control effects as used by stage hypnotists.
National Book Events
Richard and Judy Summer
Reads
Wednesday 4th July 2007 - The Memory Keeper's Daughter by
Kim Edwards
How one man's decision to send away his daughter, born
with Downs Syndrome, affects the rest of his and his family's life.
Wednesday 11th July 2007 - Relentless by Simon Kernick
Consultant Tom Meron's world is turned upside down following a phone call
from an old friend, and it’s a non-stop chase from start to finish.
Wednesday 18th July 2007 - The House at Riverton by Kate
Morton
An old-fashioned upstairs-downstairs saga set in the first
half of the twentieth century, but with a mystery at its heart, that will keep
you guessing to the end.
Wednesday 25th July 2007 - Salmon Fishing
In The Yemen by Paul Torday
Follows fishery scientist Dr Alfred
Jones's journey as he attempts to realise the dreams of a Yemeni Sheikh to
bring salmon fishing to the Yemen.
Wednesday 1st August 2007 -
Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon
After four years
Helen’s boyfriend, Matthew leaves his wife, only to find she no longer
wants him and is going to ridiculous lengths to get him back with his wife.
Wednesday 8th August 2007 - The Savage Garden by Mark
Mills
Set in 1958, it follows a brilliant but lazy Cambridge
student, Adam Strickland as he uncovers the mysteries of an Italian garden and
the murderous secrets it hides.
Wednesday 15th August 2007 - How to
talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper
30-something Doug Parker
reclaims his life after the death of his wife. Moving and laugh-out-loud funny.
Wednesday 22nd August 2007 - The Other Side of The Bridge by Mary
Lawson
A story set in rural Canada, dealing with war, families,
love and dark secrets.
The Daily Mail Book
Club
July's Book of the Month is The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie
O’Farrell (£7.99). The story of Esme, a woman edited out of
her family's history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years
later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great
aunt she never knew she had. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book
Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.
Future titles:
August – The
Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson
September – Over by Margaret Forster
October – Two
Caravans by Marina Lewycka (Penguin)
Orange Broadband Prize for
Fiction
The winner was Half Of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie. In the context of the 1960s Nigerian civil war, a young
houseboy, a university lecturer and her professor lover, a shy Englishman and
the lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and thrown together.
NEW TITLES
July's hardback fiction includes Pat
Barker, William Trevor, Alexander McCall Smith and Alan
Massie, and paperback fiction from John
Updike, Robert Harris, Kate Atkinson, Vikram Chandra, Richard Ford, J G
Ballard, Stephen King, John Mortimer, Irvine Welsh, Geoff Ryman, Rob
Grant, Haruki Murakami, Michael Dibdin, Ian Rankin and Roddy
Doyle amongst others, including a fantasy grunge Russian bestseller
and a modern Russian classic, a story set in 1920s Anatolia and another ranging
between 1920s Ukraine and Argentina.
Non-fiction:
- the new Miller's in Art and Antiques
- Thomas Hardy, Anna Massie, a WAAF, Peter Kay, Alan
Titchmarsh, Alan Bennett, Michael Palin, a Rwandan survivor and George Alagiah in
Biography
- Barbara Kingsolver on seasonal
eating and Bill Buford trying to be a
professional cook in Cookery
- the infantile West and everyday
rudeness in Current
affairs
- stone-scaping in Gardening
- girls being rather less dangerous than the
boys in Gifts
- Greece, Egypt. Rome, King
Alfred and the
Templars in History
- the new Writers & Artists' Yearbook, Lynn Truss
and where English really came from in Language and Literature
- UFOs, PaGaian Cosmology, Rudolph
Steiner and Paulo Coelho in MBS
- Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy
Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Joe Oliver (all in one
book) in Music
- thought experiments, animals feeling
good and why everything is just
right in Science
- scent,
Connemara, the Spanish Civil War, Iran, the hippie trail,
pub-crawling, smuggling hashish in the '20s
and explorers in Travel
- the first of the 2008 calendars
- and Ladybirds, Horrid Henry, Tracey
Beaker and a samurai in
Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on False Teeth in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: JUNE 2007 BESTSELLERS at
The Book Case
It was
a photo finish between local folklore and the Orange Prize winner but the local
book pulled ahead on the last day! The first Ted Hughes Festival which included
an appearance by Simon Armitage made its mark, and so did our popular "3 for 2"
offer which continues over the summer. Our customers went on "searching for the
North" and others were interested in how their blood type affected their ideal
diet. Our popular bargain nature guides still sold well but just slid
off the Top
Ten.
1. Folktales from Calderdale Vol. 1 - John Billingsley, £7.50. For the second month, local
folktales top the list. The Witches of Eagle Crag, the Cliviger Boggart, the
Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley Pike, Great Rock, Tom Bell's Cave, the
Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are included.
2. Half of a Yellow
Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, £7.99. In the context of the 1960s Nigerian civil war, a young
houseboy, a university lecturer and her professor lover, a shy Englishman and
the lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and thrown together. This
year’s Orange Prize winner and a 3/2
choice.
3. Life and Times of the
Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson,
£7.99. Bill Bryson travels back in
time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s
America. A 3/2 choice.
4. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Simon Armitage,
£12.99. The strange tale of a green knight who rudely interrupts King
Arthur's Christmas festivities - a retelling of the medieval poem. Simon
Armitage appeared at Calder High for the Ted Hughes Festival.
5. Progressive Patriot - Billy Bragg, £7.99. What does
it mean to be English? What does it mean to be British? An urgent, eloquent and
passionate response to the events of 7 July 2005. A 3/2 choice.
6. Ted Hughes’s Poems
selected by Simon Armitage,
£3.99. With the well-known Fay Godwin photo of the path above Lumbutts on
the front cover.
7. Pies and Prejudice - Stuart Machonie,
£10.99. A northerner in exile, stateless
and confused, goes in search of
the new North. I keep seeing people reading this on trains
...
8. Book of Dave - Will Self, £7.99. Novel based around the rants of Dave Rudman, a
disgruntled East End taxi driver, who writes his woes down and buries them only
to have them discovered 500 years later and used as the sacred text for a
religion. A 3/2 choice.
9. Inheritance of Loss - Kiran
Desai, £7.99. In the
north-eastern Himalayas, the life of an embittered old judge is complicated by
the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and the son of his chatty cook.
A 3/2 choice and Booker Prize winner.
10. Eat Right 4 Your Type -
Peter D’Adamo,
£7.99. Your blood type (A, B, O, AB)
plays a part in losing weight, avoiding disease and promoting fitness and
longevity. This book provides a set of blood type-specific diets so you can
choose the food that suits you.
Best wishes from your local
independent 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
Demolish ... Every bookies,mobile phone
shop,poundshop,nail parlour,fast food outlet and replace them with BOOKSHOPS!
of which there is not one! its annoying no matter where you go in tooting there
is absolutley NO bookshops and at least 6 mobile phone shops yes 6 not one two
or three but SIX phone shops and NO bookshops. Worst things about
Tooting: NO BOOOKSHOPS WE REALLY NEED A BOOK SHOP
PLEASE SOMEONE
OPEN ONE I LOVE READING!!!!! AND SO DO MANY PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN
2TIN!!!!!
- Tooting Knowhere
JUNE 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
The renowned
Hebden
Bridge Arts Festival begins at the end of this month; and one of the
earliest events is a talk by
Malorie Blackman at the Picture
House on 30th June. She will be presenting her anthology on slavery,
"Unheard Voices". More info at the Festival website -
http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/festival/2007/index.html -
and in the meantime The Book Case has a display of books by this always popular
author.
You can also find in stock other Festival-related literary items -
Vera Brittain, Louis MacNeice, Beowulf and of course
Ted Hughes - we have some of his books on
special
offer at the moment. The
Ted Hughes Festival will be
running from 22nd - 24th June: go to
www.theelmettrust.co.uk for
details.
Speaking of special offers, see below for our
Mind-Body-Spirit promotion!
We're gingerly testing the water for local interest
publishing at The Book Case - it's a steep learning curve for Felicity
and Kate! - and hope later in June to offer you a new edition of energetic
Victorian journalist Angus Bethune Reach's reports on the
textile workers of West Yorkshire in 1849, edited by historian
Chris Aspin - who amongst many other publications wrote the
Shire albums on Wool and Cotton. It's a fascinating read. More details
later.
Our customers' literary likes
and dislikes list continues to grow: currently people are
enjoying the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series,
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, The Crossing by
Cormac McCarthy, Edward de Bono's Thinking Course, Robin Jarvis's
Oaken Throne, Eric Brown's Helix, G K Chesterton's autobiography,
Maeve Binchy's Nights of Rain and Stars, Paul Magrs'
Exchange, Charlotte Mendelson and Hiroshima Joe by Martin
Booth. They don't like the sixth Harry Potter, Graham Swift's
Waterland, Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses - or anything by
Ian McEwan! More please ...
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: Helix by Eric Brown
(£7.99). :p>An
epic space opera tale from one of the genre's greatest authors – and a
local author! Colony vessel Aurora is forced to land on a polar section of the
Helix, and the surviving crew members proceed up-spiral in search of a
habitable section. Combines scientific mystery, high adventure and depth of
characterization.
Adult non-fiction: Seed to Seed
by Nicholas Harberd (£8.99). A narrative of the changing
seasons, focussing on one tiny thale-cress plant in an East Englian churchyard
- part field notebook, part sketchbook, part diary.
Children's book: Alone on a Wide Wide Sea by
Michael Morpurgo (£5.99). When six-year-old orphan Arthur
Hobhouse is shipped to Australia after WWII he loses his sister, his country
and everything he knows. Can family love stretch across time and the vastness
of oceans? Will the threads of Arthur’s life finally come together?
Price Promotion
Our May price promotion of
Tolkien's Children of Hurin at £13.99 has gone down
well, and our range of the excellent Collins Nature
Guides in a pocket edition continue to sell fast at £2.99
each!
During June, while stocks last, we are selling A
Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (author of "The Kite
Runner") at £11.99, a saving of £5.00 - and on our centre table and
around the shop we have a splendid assortment of newly-arrived
Mind-Body-Spirit books at knock-down prices - as well as
gardening and nature books! They're selling
fast so get them while you can.
NEWS
Local Interest
A Laureate's Landscape: walks around Ted Hughes's
Mytholmroyd - John Billingsley
Due out 23rd June - price to be
announced.
A History and Guide to the Parish Church of Hebden Bridge,
St James the Greater (£2)
Members of the Church and Local History Society produced this little
nicely-illustrated booklet with a history of the church, built in the 1830s,
and guide to some features still to be seen. The 1933 centenary booklet was
used as a basis. Profits to the church.
Three Waymarked Walks from Hebden Bridge
(50p)
A colourful folded leaflet with instructions and maps for visiting
Hardcastle Crags avoiding the road, Heptonstall and Stoodley Pike.
Spirit of Yorkshire - John Morrison
(£4.99)
From the well-known ex-local author and photographer, a neat
little hardback book of colour photographs from all over Yorkshire. No
pictorial book about Yorkshire is complete without a picture of Stubbings
School and this one is no exception! To be published in June.
Pennine Way: Edale to Kirk Yetholm - Keith Carter
(£11.99)
Second edition of this Trailblazer publication. Includes
itineraries for all walkers, whether walking the route in its entirety over one
or two weeks or sampling the highlights on day walks. To be published in
June.
Local Authors
Local writer John Siddique's collection of poetry
for young people, "Don't Wear It On Your Head, Don't Stick It Down Your
Pants" has been shortlisted for the UK's only award for children's
poetry, the CLPE Poetry Award from the Centre for Literacy in Primary
Education. Previous winners include John Agard, Grace Nichols and Roger
McGough, and this year's winner will be announced on 13th June.
Helix - Eric Brown (£7.99)
From the
acclaimed SF author and Guardian columnist, a new SF adventure.
See
our Fiction Book of the Month above.
Rune
- Michael Conneely (£8.99)
Another magical and visionary
novel from the local spiritual teacher - Cathal decides to seize the magic of
the Runes on his 14th birthday and together with Lucy sets out to save the Nine
Worlds. A powerful re-telling of Norse spirituality and Ragnarok.
The March and the Muster - Frank McManus
(£7.99)
From Todmorden Labour Councillor Frank McManus a
daybook and commonplace book with thoughts, observations, quotations or poems
for each day of the year.
National Book Events
The Daily
Mail Book Club
June's Book of the Month is Thunderbolt Kid by
Bill Bryson (£7.99). Bill Bryson's first travel book opened with
the immortal line, 'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.' In his new
memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, and
the curious world of 1950s America. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail
National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended
title.
Future titles:
July – The
Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie
O’Farrell
August – The
Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson
September – Over by Margaret Forster
October – Two
Caravans by Marina Lewycka (Penguin)
Orange Broadband Prize for
Fiction Shortlist
Half Of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie. .
Arlington Park - Rachel
Cusk.
Inheritance Of Loss - Kiran Desai.
Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers - Xiaolu
Guo.
Observations - Jane Harris.
Digging To America - Anne Tyler.
We have all these on display and the winner is to to
be announced on 6th June.
Guardian & Pilsner Urquell
"50 books you must read"
This recently
launched promotion aims to list the books that define the decades of the 20th
century, running from Conrad, Doyle and Kipling through to Ted Hughes, Nick
Hornby and Helen Fielding in the 1990s. You can see the whole list at
http://www.bookmarketingsociety.co.uk/decade50books.htm (or
pick up a listing from us) and Guardian readers have voted the following their
top 10 - all of course in stock at The Book
Case:
1900s – Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
1910s – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert
Tressell
1920s – The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
{1930s – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
{1930s – The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
{1940s – 1984, George Orwell
{1940s – The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
1950s – The Catcher in the Rye, JD
Salinger
1960s – Catch 22, Joseph Heller
1990s
– Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
NEW TITLES
May's hardback fiction includes Rose
Tremain, Haruki Murakami and Don Delillo, plus a
Wodehouse compendium, and there's paperback
fiction from Kiran Desai, Alexander McCall Smith, Tove
Jansson, Jan Morris, Meg Rosoff, Peter Carey, Douglas Coupland, Maeve Binchy,
Ben Elton, Mark Haddon, Jackie Kay, Lian Hearn, Andrew Martin, Susan Hill
and Dick Francis amongst others, and
reissues from Doris Lessing and
Robert A Heinlein, plus from Penguin six cracking
end-of-empire
adventure tales from the likes of Rider Haggard and Erskine
Childers: which sorts your Father's Day problem nicely.
Non-fiction:
- silk, Emily Carr and pop
art in
Art and Textiles
- Hunter Davies, John Betjeman, Paulo
Coelho and
Gervase Phinn in Biography
- British yobs and stopping the planet
burning in Current
affairs and Politics
- shade-loving
plants and the
Tradescants in Gardening
- Homo Britannicus, Islamic imperialism, the early crossings
of the North Atlantic, the Templars, Spanish and British empires
in America, Chartism, true
adventure and Kristallnacht in History
- Nick Hornby, John Humphreys and the right
thing to say in Language
and Literature
- being free, exhaustion, emotional
abuse and 2008 horoscopes (as well as
our centre table display) in MBS
- sounds from the coast and
sea in Nature
- summer dangerous things for boys in Outdoor Activities
- childhood, Alice Oswald and Auden
in Poetry
- Dawkins on God, bad science and mentoring
young mathematicians in Science and Mathematics
- hair-raising
gap-year travellers' tales, classical music in unusual circumstances,
olives, Scottish canals, places to hide, African phrases, the Pennine Way, the
Lakes and new guides to Belgium & Luxemburg,
Crete, Africa and volunteer work in Travel
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Doctors in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been buying: MAY 2007 BESTSELLERS at The Book
Case
As expected, well-known local
historian John Billingsley’s new book on local folklore sold briskly at
The Book Case in May, and local poet John Siddique had two recent books in the
Top Ten - one currently up for an award. A humorous book "in search of the
North" also did well, the bargain nature guides went on selling, our
Children’s Book of the Month was popular. Apart from that, it was all
novels. Nothing like a good book to take your mind off the weather which was
pretty dire in
May!
1. Folktales from Calderdale
Vol. 1 - John Billingsley,
£7.50. Our May Non-fiction Book of the Month - a collection of tales from
the moorlands of the Upper Calder Valley. The Witches of Eagle Crag, the
Cliviger Boggart, the Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley Pike, Great Rock,
Tom Bell's Cave, the Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are included.
(£7.50)
2. Collins Nature Guides: Trees of Britain and Europe -
G. Aas and A. Riedmiller, £2.99. One of the our extremely popular
pocket illustrated nature guides - and most of the rest of the range also sold
well. Still at this very low price while stocks last!
3. Rebecca -
Daphne du Maurier, £7.99. A reading group chose this 1938 classic.
Daphne du Maurier was born 100 years ago last month.
4. Pies and
Prejudice - Stuart Machonie, £10.99. "In search of the North" - a
riotously funny journey in search of where the cliches end and the truth
begins, from a northerner in exile.
5. Artemis Fowl and the Lost
Colony - Eoin Colfer, £5.99. Has the teenage criminal mastermind finally met
his match? A second juvenile genius has discovered that fairies do exist and
she is determined to trap a demon, the most human-hating species known to
mankind.... This was our May Children’s Book of the
Month.
6. Poems from a Northern Soul - John Siddique, £6.95.
From the local poet, a powerful collection of "poignant homecomings, cinematic
street scenes and candid portraits".
7. Book of Dave - Will Self,
£7.99. Novel based around the rants of Dave Rudman, a disgruntled East
End taxi driver, who writes his woes down and buries them only to have them
discovered 500 years later and used as the sacred text for a religion.
8. When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro, £7.99.
Another reading group choice: in 1930s England, a celebrated detective tries to
solve the puzzle of his own parents’ disappearance in old
Shanghai.
9. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini,
£13.99 at The Book Case while stocks last. From the author of "The
Kite Runner", a riveting, and haunting novel about
the bond between two women in Afghanistan who are brought together by war,
loss, and fate. On special offer
at present.
10. Don’t Wear It On Your Head - John Siddique,
£13.95. ... Don’t Stick It Down Your Pants! A book of poems for
young people with a great cover - currently shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry
Award.
Best wishes from your local
independent 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 plug in, beep or suddenly
produce pop-ups. They are pleasingly silent and dignified, there when needed,
discreet and patient."
Andrew Marr, "Curling up with a good
e-book", Guardian Weekly, 25 May 2007 (he thinks he can find room in
his life for both - with certain necessary refinements of the
e-book)
MAY 2007
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
The big news of the month promises to be John
Billingsley's new book Folk Tales from Calderdale Vol. 1, now
in stock and already selling briskly. We've made it our non-fiction book of the
month (see below).
We now have in stock the April-June
2007 issue of THE Book Magazine, with interviews with
children's authors Philip Reeve, Jacqueline Wilson and
Emily Gravett, articles on the new editions of
Shakespeare's plays from the RSC and Macmillan, women
travellers, a reading group's response to Marina Lewycka's "Two
Caravans", Leni Riefenstahl, a "Muslim Adrian Mole",
an interview with Dorothy Rowe on her new book on siblings,
one with Dr Oliver Rackham on woodlands, Ramachandra
Guha and Mark Tully on India, and much more. The magazine is priced at
£2 but is available free to our customers.
Customers' literary likes and
dislikes continued to be recorded on our clipboard. Currently
being enjoyed are Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen,
Peter Robinson's Piece of My Heart, Haru Kunzru's
Transmission, Victoria Hisslop's The Island, Ian McEwan's
Chesil Beach, Ian Baker's The Heart of the World, Megan
McDonald's Judy Moody, Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry, Barry
Unsworth's The Ruby in her Navel, Conn Iggulden's Wolf of the
Plains, Rosamund Pilcher's Shell Seekers, Evelyn Waugh's
Vile Bodies, War and Peace, Stef Penney's Tenderness of Wolves,
Beowulf, Ken Wilbur's One Taste and Sarah Hartley's Mrs P's
Journey.
Not being
enjoyed were War and Peace (again), Eckhart Tolle's
Power of Now, Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits and
Crank's Cookery Book! We await your further comments.
We now have in stock the 2007 edition
of the Royal Society of Literature Review, price £5.00.
Contents include articles by Rory Stewart on writing about
places, Romesh Gunesekera on London, a conversation about the
Silk Road between Colin Thubron and Tash Aw, Michael
Holroyd on anger, Selina Hastings on Sibyl Bedford,
Peter Kemp on Muriel Spark, Hilary Spurling on students who
can't express themselves clearly, Vernon Watkins' friendship
with Philip Larkin, V S Naipaul and John
Carey, Victoria Glendinning on Leonard Woolf, Sara
Wheeler on writing biography - and much much more, including a mention of
The Book Case as a favourite independent bookshop, recommended
by Juliet Barker - for which we thank her!
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click
on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are
of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa
Gregory (£6.99). Three women, one
prize: the crown of England. It’s 1539 and Henry VIII must take another
wife: Anne of Cleves senses a coming trap, Katherine Howard is flirting her way
to the crown - but her kinswoman Jane Boleyn is haunted by the past.
Adult non-fiction: Folktales
from Calderdale Vol. 1 - John Billingsley (£7.50).
The eagerly-awaited collection of tales
from the moorlands of the Upper Calder Valley - the first of a projected series
on the folklore of Calderdale by the well-known local historian. The Witches of
Eagle Crag, the Cliviger Boggart, the Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley
Pike, Great Rock, Tom Bell's Cave, the Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are
included. (£7.50)
Children's book: Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony
- Eoin Colfer (£5.99) The stunning new Artemis Fowl adventure - the fifth in
Eoin Colfer's number-one mega-selling series. Has the teenage criminal
mastermind finally met his match? A second juvenile genius has discovered that
fairies do exist and she is determined to trap a demon, the most human-hating
species known to mankind.... Ages: 10+ yrs.
Price Promotion
Our April price promotion on
the Freedom to Roam guides edited by Andrew Bibby and Dorling
Kindersley’s Nature Activities series has been extremely
popular.
For May we are discounting Tolkien's Children of
Hurin at £13.99, a saving of £5.00, and we have a wide
range of the excellent Collins Nature Guides in a pocket
edition, reduced from £8.99 to a staggering £2.99 each!
For our younger customes, we are promoting the popular
Jeremy Strong titles and Enid Blyton's Malory Towers
series at £1.00 off each.
NEWS
Local
Interest
Folk Tales from Calderdale Vol.
1 - John Billingsley (see above).
Rambles of a Pennine Way-ster -
Richard Pulk, £9.99
One man's account of the Pennine Way,
which of course includes the local section - he's not very enthusiastic about
our gradients.
Drive and Stroll in West
Yorkshire - Ron Freethy, £7.99
20 short walks, incorporating eating
places, that you can drive to, with b&w photos.
National Book Events
The Daily
Mail Book Club
May's Book of the Month is The Story of You -
Julie Myerson (£7.99). Rosy has just lost a child in a
terrible, careless accident, and Tom, her partner, has taken her to Paris to
forget about things, to start again. But there is her lover from 20 years ago,
sitting in a cafe ... We are waiting for stock of this title. The Book
Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost
of this month's recommended title.
Future titles:
June -
Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
July
– The Vanishing Act of Esme
Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
August – The
Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson
September – Over by Margaret Forster
October – Two
Caravans by Marina Lewycka (Penguin)
Orange Broadband Prize for
Fiction Shortlist
Half Of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie. In the context of the 1960s Nigerian civil war, a young
houseboy, a university lecturer and her professor lover, a shy Englishman and
the lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and thrown
together.
Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk. Juliet is
enraged at the victory of men over women in family life. Amanda is warding off
thoughts of death with obsessive housework. Solly is confronting her own buried
femininity in the person of her Italian lodger. Maisie despairs at the
inevitability with which beauty is destroyed. And Christine's troubled,
hilarious spirit presides over Arlington Park and the way of life it
represents.
Inheritance Of Loss - Kiran Desai. In the
north-eastern Himalayas, in an isolated and crumbling house, there lives an
embittered old judge, who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with
the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and the son of his chatty cook
trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from
easy.
Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers - Xiaolu
Guo. What happens when a Chinese woman falls in love with an English
man and realises that learning the language doesn't necessarily lead to
understanding? Funny, sexy, romantic and terribly sad - a love story for a
global age.
Observations - Jane Harris. Original,
funny, intriguing story, set in 1863 Scotland, of Irish Bessy Buckley who, in
an attempt to escape her not-so-innocent past in Glasgow, takes a job as a maid
in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella.
Digging To America - Anne Tyler. Two contrasting
families are waiting at Baltimore Airport in 1997 for their adopted Korean
babies - one family solid, organic and American, the other Iranian-American.
Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families
celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive
parties.
All available at The Book Case. Winner to be announced 6th
June.
Carnegie and Greenaway
Medals
The Carnegie shortlist for this year has been announced and
is as follows:
The Road Of The Dead - Kevin Brooks
A Swift Pure
Cry - Siobhan Dowd
The Road Of Bones - Anne Fine
Beast - Ally Kennen
Just In Case - Meg Rosoff
My Swordhand Is Singing - Marcus
Sedgwick
The Kate Greenaway shortlist is:
The Elephantom - Ross Collins
Orange Pear Apple
Bear - Emily Gravett
The Adventures Of The Dish & The Spoon - Mini Grey
Scoop - John Kelly
Augustus & His Smile - Catherine Rayner
The
Emperor Of Absurdia - Chris Riddell
Last year, the public were invited to vote for their
favourite Carnegie and Greenaway winners from 70 years' worth, and the top
ten of these were as follows:
CARNEGIE (public vote)
1. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
2. Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
3. The Owl Service by Alan Garner
4. The Borrowers by Mary Norton
5. A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly (some say this is
an adult book)
6. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
7. Skellig by David Almond
8. The Last Battle by C S Lewis
9. Tamar by Mal Peet (some say this is an adult book,
too!)
10. Granny was a Buffer Girl by Berlie Doherty
- and the first winner of all, Arthur Ransome's "Pigeon
Post" came in at No. 11
GREENAWAY (public vote)
1. Each Peach Pear Plum - Janet Ahlberg
2. Dogger -
Shirley Hughes
3. Father Christmas - Raymond Briggs
4. I Will Not Ever
Never Eat a Tomato - Lauren Child
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -
Helen Oxenbury
6. Mr Magnolia - Quentin Blake
7. The Jolly Christmas
Postman - Janet Ahlberg
8. Mr Gumpy's Outing - John Burningham
9. Can't
You Sleep Little Bear? - Barbara Firth
10. Wolves - Emily
Gravett.
Carnegie favourites over 70 years (as selected by
CILIP):
A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly, 2003
His
Dark Materials: Book 1 Northern Lights - Philip Pullman, 1995
Junk - Melvin
Burgess, 1996
Skellig - David Almond, 1998
Storm - Kevin
Crossley-Holland, 1985
The Borrowers - Mary Norton, 1952
The Family from
One End Street - Eve Garnett, 1937
The Machine Gunners - Robert Westall,
1975
The Owl Service - Alan Garner, 1967
Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa
Pearce, 1958
Kate Greenaway favourites over 70 years
(as selected by CILIP):
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Illustrator: Helen Oxenbury, 1999
Borka: the Adventure of a Goose with No
Feathers - Illustrator: John Burningham, 1963
Dogger - Illustrator: Shirley
Hughes, 1977
Each Peach Pear Plum - Illustrator: Janet Ahlberg,
1978
Father Christmas - Illustrator: Raymond Briggs. 1973
Gorilla -
Illustrator: Anthony Browne, 1983
I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato -
Illustrator: Lauren Child, 2000
Mr Magnolia - Illustrator: Quentin Blake,
1980
The Highwayman - Illustrator: Charles Keeping, 1981
Tim All Alone -
Illustrator: Edward Ardizzone, 1956
Guardian & Pilsner Urquell
"50 books you must read"
This recently
launched promotion aims to list the books that define the decades of the 20th
century, running from Conrad, Doyle and Kipling through to Ted Hughes, Nick
Hornby and Helen Fielding in the 1990s. You can see the whole list at
http://www.bookmarketingsociety.co.uk/decade50books.htm and
we've got most of them, though not "Valley of the Dolls"
...
NEW TITLES
May's hardback fiction includes
Sebastian Faulks, Joanne Harris, Khaled Hosseini and
Lionel Shriver, and there is paperback
fiction from Philippa Gregory, Lionel Shriver,
Monica Ali, James Herbert, Jon McGregor, T C Boyle, Jilly Cooper,
Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew Martin, Alan
Warner and Ismail
Kadare amongst others, and reissues from
Fanny Trollope (hurrah!), Vikram Chandra, Spike
Milligan and Alain-Fournier.
Non-fiction:
- tribal and village rugs and a
graffiti calendar in
Art and Craft
- Joan Bakewell, Bill Bryson, Billy Bragg, Gordon Ramsay,
an isolated shepherd and memoirs
from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan in
Biography
- green advice and
analysis in Environment
- grow-to-eat, pots, vegetables,
hens and self-sufficiency in Gardening &
Small-holding
- Cathars, Victorian engineering, the Russian revolution,
Dunkirk, PoWs and cover-ups in History
- internet dating, the Idler and Spike
Milligan in Humour
- lots of new foreign language
packs in Language
- Mars and Venus colliding, Dorothy Rowe on
siblings and a mini-yoga
pack in MBS
- Nick Cave's complete lyrics
in Music
- ponds, birds and wild
flowers in Nature
- Frieda Hughes's new book (Poetry) is now delayed to 2008
- fair trade, the American fiasco in Iraq, the current
political spectrum, an Islamist and the principles of the
modern economy in Politics
- James May on
the hard shoulder, a new compact Times World Atlas and new local maps
and guides from the AA and
Berlitz in Travel
- and pants, intergalactic buses, summer camp and
Artemis Fowl amongst others in Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Hairstyles in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: APRIL 2007 BESTSELLERS at
The Book Case
It was back to a more characteristic mix of
bestsellers at The Book Case in April - on the local interest front, the Rebel
Girls were ahead of local walks, the Pace Egg Play and standing stones.
Customers were also out identifying wild flowers, interested in a "boy with an
incredible brain", worried about global warming - and relaxing with three
novels.
1. Rebel Girls: How Votes for
Women Changed Edwardian Lives by Jill Liddington, £14.99
Young Northern suffragettes still lead
the field! This detailed account of the local fight for women's suffrage was
our overall bestseller for 2006 - and includes Lavena Saltonstall of Hebden
Bridge.
2. Collins Nature Guides: Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe
- W. Lippert & D. Podlech, £2.99
One of the pocket illustrated
nature guides we have on special promotion this month. Also popular in the same
series was "The Night Sky". The promotion runs throughout May.
3.
South Pennines and the Bronte Moors - Andrew Bibby, £7.99
The most
local of the Freedom to Roam walking guides produced in association with
the Ramblers' Association, by local author and journalist Andrew Bibby, with 12
free-range rambles. The Freedom to Roam guides were on special promotion in
April. "Pennine Divide" and "Forest of Bowland" were also popular.
4.
Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet, £6.99
"The Gift of an
Extraordinary Mind." Daniel Tammet has the extremely rare condition Savant
Syndrome, but despite his amazing gifts and limitations, he is capable of
living a fully functioning, independent life.
5. Six Degrees - Mark
Lynas, £12.99
"Our Future on a Hotter Planet." An eye-opening and
vital account of the future of our earth and our civilisation if current rates
of global warming persist
6. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
- Marina Lewycka, £7.99
Entertaining novel about two Ukrainian
sisters, their father and his new wife in Peterborough makes it to the Top Ten
yet again.
7. Children of Hurin - J R R Tolkien, £13.99 at
The Book Case while stocks last.
Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's
manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous story, the
epic tale of 'The Children of Hurin'. One of this month’s special
offers.
8. Pace Egg Plays of the Calder Valley - Eddie Cass,
£6.99
The history and revival of the play in the Calder Valley. Texts
of both the Midgley and the Heptonstall versions are included.
9.
Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney, £7.99
This year’s Costa
winner, an atmospheric mystery thriller set in the Canadian
tundra.
10. Old Stones of Elmet - Paul Bennett,
£13.95
The old stone sites of Elmet, including Todmorden,
Mytholmroyd, Luddenden, Hebden Bridge, Blackshawhead and Halifax area.
Best wishes from your local
independent 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
"Literature takes a habit of mind that
has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained
concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing." - Philip Roth, quoted in
David Remnick's Reporting.
[Do we agree that it's
disappeared?]
APRIL
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
For your instruction and delight, Peter has set up a couple of
screens - one in the window - featuring bookish and CD
highlights of the month, so you now have something to watch in the
evening. On the screen inside the shop, we're also running some of the
DVDs we stock, including local walks and the
astonishing Full Moon/Beard contact juggling DVD.
As the annual Pace Egg Play on Good Friday approaches, a reminder
that we have in stock Eddie Cass's Pace Egg Plays of the Calder
Valley (£6.99) with the historical background of the play and
full text of BOTH versions. Also available are his The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play: a social history
(£13.95) and on special offer, our remaining copies of
The Calder Valley Pace Egg Play on video (sorry, we don't have
a DVD version). This very informative video was produced by Calder High School
students, runs for nearly an hour, and comprises a documentary
introduction and both the Midgley and Heptonstall versions of the play.
Currently on offer at £6.00.
We're introducing a
monthly price promotion
at The Book Case - see "This Month's Featured Books" below.
Harry Potter: we'll be
opening at 12.01am on Saturday July 21st so you can be the first to have
the latest and final instalment - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
We are offering a special price of £10.99 if ordered and paid
for in advance - and you also receive a £1.00 special voucher to spend at
The Book Case at any time!
Our clipboard on the central table has
been filling up nicely with your comments on books you are enjoying or
otherwise. Currently being enjoyed are
Bennett's Untold Stories, Memoirs of a Geisha, Tenderness of Wolves
(twice), Oliver Twist, Homeward Bound (Diana Wynne-Jones),
Hardy's Woodlanders, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Billy Morgan,
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, Wicked (Cooper), Queen's Fool
(Philippa Gregory)(twice), The Long Way Round (Ewan McGregor),
Scarlet Lion (Elizabeth Chadwick), Ghostwritten (Mitchell),
Fall of Troy (Ackroyd), Time Traveler's Wife, Dead Souls, Johnny
Come Home (Arnott), John Wyndham, The Steep Approach to Garbadale
(Banks), On Cape Three Points (Wakling), Agincourt
(Barker), Sea Room (Nicolson), Bluebeard's Castle
(Steiner), David Harsent, Elizabeth Bishop, Marina Benjamin, Mary Oliver,
Pattiann Rogers, Lemony Snicket (twice), We Need to Talk About Kevin,
the Brontes, Louise Rennison, Harry Potter and
Paolini's Inheritance Trilogy
It was thumbs down
however to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (again), Love for
Lydia, White Teeth, Suitable Boy, Wicked (again), Tristram Shandy,
Life of Pi, Suite Francaise (twice), Pratchett, Chatwin, House of
Orphans (Dunmore) and Affinity (Waters). Keep 'em
coming!
April will see the announcement of this year's Carnegie
and Greenaway Medals for children's literature, and we have in stock
free time-line leaflets celebrating 70 years of the Carnegie Medal, with
illustrations of some of the front covers: beginning with Arthur Ransome's
Pigeon Post in the 1930s.
New into stock are boxes of cards of Judy Chicago's Dinner
Party - a symbolic history of women in Western civilisation,
which some of you may remember from the 1970s.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and
a CD.
Adult fiction: Two Caravans – Marina
Lewycka (£14.99 at The Book Case) It is a beautiful
summer's evening in a Kent field and around their two caravans a group of
strawberry-pickers celebrate a birthday. But what lies behind the
buy-one-get-one-free offers at your supermarket, and who picks our
strawberries? From the author of A Short History of Tractors in
Ukrainian.
Adult non-fiction: Born On A
Blue Day – Daniel Tammet (£6.99) “The Gift of an
Extraordinary Mind.” Daniel Tammet has the extremely rare condition Savant
Syndrome. He can perform extraordinary maths in his head, and learn to speak a
language fluently in three days; and has a compulsive need for order and
routine. But virtually unique amongst those with severe autistic disorders, he
is capable of living a fully functioning, independent life.
Children's book: Hugo
Pepper - Chris Riddell (£4.99) Part of the
"Far-Flung Adventure" series, this is the tale of a small boy, Hugo Pepper.
Raised in the Frozen North by reindeer herders, his parents eaten by polar
bears when he was just a baby, Hugo discovers that the sled they arrived in has
a very special compass - one that can be set to 'Home'. The third in an
excellent series from this award winning childrens author. 7-9yrs
CD: Bela Bartok: A Portrait (£10.99)
His Works - His Life - two CDs with over 2 1/2 hours of music. Well over 50
years after his death, Bartok is recognised as one of the 20th century's great
musical modernists - but he was never an iconoclast. Rather he sought ways
forward by turning music back to its primal natural roots before the forces of
urbanisation and mechanisation cut them off. Includes music from Out of Doors,
MikroKosmos, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the string quartets,
the Miraculous Mandarin, Concerto for Orchestra and more.
Price
Promotion
In addition to our recommended
list, from April we’re also promoting a selection of titles at discounted
price, beginning on the first Monday of every month. This month we’re
discounting the Freedom to Roam guides edited by Andrew Bibby to
encourage you all to get out there! Hebden Bridge is the first official Walkers
are Welcome town.
The children’s discounted titles this month are from
Dorling Kindersley’s excellent Nature Activities series -
Nature Ranger, Bug Hunter, Birdwatcher, Stargazer, Weather Watcher and
Rock & Fossil Hunter.
NEWS
Local Interest
Ariel: the restored edition - Sylvia Plath,
£9.99
The draft of "Ariel" left behind by Sylvia Plath when
she died in 1963 is different from the volume of poetry eventually published to
worldwide acclaim. This facsimile edition restores the selection and
arrangement of the poems as Sylvia Plath left them at the point of her death.
In addition to the facsimile pages of Sylvia Plath's manuscript, this edition
also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of the title poem
"Ariel" in order to offer a sense of Plath's creative process, as well as notes
the author made for the BBC about some of the manuscript's poems. Pre-amble by
Frieda Hughes.
Local Authors
L. S. Lowry: A Life - Shelley Rohde,
£25.00
To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Lowry's
death, this fascinating biography includes extracts from private letters which
have come to light since Lowry's death and facsimile reproductions of major
exhibition catalogues. Shelley Rohde is an author, journalist and broadcaster,
and lives in Cragg Vale. Also in stock are her delightful card games based on
the works of Lowry.
Farewell Britannia: a family saga of Roman Britain - Simon
Young, £14.99 at The Book Case
From a former Hebden Bridge
man who "wears [his] considerable learning lightly", a historical novel telling
the dramatic story of 400 years of Roman rule in Britain via a Roman-Celtic
family saga.
I Did A Bad Thing - Linda Green,
£19.99
"Sarah Roberts used to be good. Then she did something
bad. Very bad. Now, years later, she's living a good life, working as a local
newspaper reporter and living with her saintly boyfriend Jonathan. ... Until
Nick walks back into her life. And suddenly, what's good and bad aren't so
clear to Sarah any more." The author, a freelance journalist, lives in Walsden
with her husband and young son.
And a plug for local author Kevin Duffy from Scott
Peck, the buyer for Waterstone's and "the most powerful man in the book trade"
- he comments on Anthills and Stars, set in a place very like Hebden
Bridge in the 1960s, that it is "a beautiful and warm comedy ... a great debute
and a very funny book which is as good as anything the big boys are publishing
at the moment."
National Book Events
The Daily
Mail Book Club
April's Book of the Month is Black Swan Green by
David Mitchell (£7.99). It's a dank January in the
Worcestershire village of Black Swan Green and thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor
anticipates a stultifying year in the deadest village on Earth. But he
hasn't reckoned with a junta of bullies, simmering family discord, the
Falklands War, an exotic Belgian emigre, a threatened gypsy invasion and the
caprices of those mysterious entities known as girls. The Book Case will
accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this
month's recommended title.
2007 Galaxy British Book
Awards
Awarded on 28th March, the category winners were as
follows:
Author Of The Year - Richard
Dawkins
Biography Of The Year: The Sound of Laughter –
Peter Kay
Book Of The Year: The Dangerous Book for Boys
– Conn and Hal Iggulden
Children's Book Of The Year:
Flanimals of the Deep – Ricky Gervais
Crime Thriller
Of The Year: The Naming of the Dead – Ian
Rankin
Newcomer Of The Year: The Island – Victoria
Hislop
TV & Film Book Of The Year - The Devil Wears
Prada – Lauren Weisberger
Writer of the Year: Jacky
Kay (I Wish I Was Here)
Richard & Judy's Best Read Of The Year
- Interpretation of Murder – Jed Rubenfeld
We've got most of the above displayed on our centre table.
Orange Broadband Prize for
Fiction Longlist
Formerly the Orange Fiction Prize this celebrates
"excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing", and is open to
any woman writing in English, whatever her nationality. The longlist for 2007
was announced on 19th March and can be seen at
http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/opf/news.php4?newsid=25 with
20 novels from seven different countries, including eight first-time
novelists, six longlist veterans, a Booker winner and the prolific Margaret
Forster. The shortlist is due 17 April.
NEW TITLES
More high-profile hardback fiction
in April from authors including J R R Tolkien, Ian McEwan,
Primo Levi, Blake Morrison, Isabel Allende and Paulo
Coelho, and paperback fiction
from David Peace, Philip Roth, Ian Rankin,
Christopher Brookmyre, Andrew O'Hagan, Matt Haig, Jodi Picoult
and Gautam Malkani amongst others
Non-fiction:
- Lowry and basketry in
Art and Craft
- a British autistic savant, a Welsh allotment-holder, a
singing molecatcher and Jane Tomlinson in
Biography
- the Church of Stop Shopping, dry rivers and
an ecological manifesto in Environment
- allotments
and plant-finding in Gardening
- megaliths, Jesus's tomb, dancing, the British-French
relationship, Robespierre, a slave trade captain, the last Great Mughal, men's
place in Victorian England, the Edwardians, Mr Punch on WWI, the
Somme, WWI lunatics, revolutionaries and
royal weddings in History
- the new Organic Directory in Lifestyle
- David Crystal
(again) and Reading
Women in Language &
Literature
- memory, the brain, manliness and
bereavement; Celtic prayers, "mirror images", becoming a saint,
Mary; and practical psychology books
from Sheldon in MBS
- wild foods, birds, magic mushrooms, dogs and
weather in Nature
- Mike Rosen, Louis
MacNeice, Sylvia Plath and some of
Faber's mini-editions in Poetry
- preserving civil liberties, the inner logic
of al-Qaeda in Politics
- the Earth in Science
- the Yorkshire
Dales, Britain through the eyes of an immigrant, the Australian desert, "evil"
countries, arms traders, 1920s Tibet, polar journeys and
conflict in the Islamic world in Travel
- and a shared shell, a small boy in the frozen North,
wildflowers, snot and other matters and the
latest Anthony Horowitz amongst others in
Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Bicycles in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: MARCH 2007 BESTSELLERS at
The Book Case
What with World Book Day and three Richard &
Judy titles, local books didn’t get much of a look-in in March at the Book
Case, but the doughty northern Rebel Girls got into the top ten and so did a
book about the local packhorse tracks. Two other children’s books were
popular, one gardening book topped the gardeners’ league and a novel about
a bereaved middle-aged woman going to Venice made up the
total.
1. WBD: My Sister’s Got a Spoon
up her Nose - Jeremy Strong, £1.00. This was the most popular of the World Book
Day titles, and no wonder, with a title like that! The other titles also all
near the top.
2. Half Of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
£7.99. In the context of the 1960s Nigerian civil war, a young houseboy,
a university lecturer and her professor lover, a shy Englishman and the
lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and thrown together. A Richard &
Judy choice.
3. The Interpretation Of Murder - Jed Rubenfield,
£7.99. Ingenious historical thriller - Sigmund Freud is drawn into the
mind of a sadistic killer. A Richard & Judy choice.
4. Horrid
Henry’s Big Bad Book - Francesca Simon, £7.99. Ten favourite
Horrid Henry stories, all about school. He gives the class nits, encounters a
demon dinner lady, does his best to sabotage the school sports day, finds
ingenious ways to get round doing his homework and reading books, and is
publicly mortified by a pair of pink underpants. Horrid Henry is always
popular!
5. RHS: Grow Your Own Veg - Carol Klein, £16.99.
Our gardening section has been very popular, with allotment holders and organic
growers especially, but this TV tie-in has topped the list.
6. Miss
Garnet’s Angel - Sally Vickers, £7.99. A middle-aged woman goes
to Venice when her great friend dies. A story of the explosive possibilities of
change in all of us at any time.
7. Rebel Girls: How Votes for Women
Changed Edwardian Lives by Jill Liddington, £14.99. This detailed
account of the local fight for women's suffrage was our overall bestseller for
2006. Jill will be giving her popular talks around the area from
mid-April, beginning in Mythomroyd on 13th April.
8. Semi-Detached -
Griff Rhys-Jones, £7.99. Griff Rhys-Jones’s own account of his
ordinary suburban childhood, and how he got from there to here. Richard &
Judy choice.
9. Each Peach Pear Plum - Allan & Janet Ahlberg,
£4.99. The board book edition of this classic book finding nursery rhyme
characters hidden in the pictures. Don’t miss the Ahlberg exhibition at
the Piece Hall.
10. Seen on the Pack Horse Tracks - Titus
Thornber, £15.00. 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.
Illustrated.
Best wishes from your local
independent bookshop,
"A bookshop is a sanctuary for the mind"
- seen in a secondhand bookshop window in Covent Garden.
MARCH 2007Dear Book Case customer or friend,
The big news
this month is the tenth anniversary of World Book Day on
Thursday 1st March, and The Book Case is celebrating with the launch of a
new book club for children. Members of the
new club will be able to enter competitions, write book reviews, receive
exclusive offers, and earn money-off vouchers with a reward points scheme. Any
child under 12 years old can join and it is free.
Building on the success of
the Book Case Reading Prize, which has proved immensely
popular with local schools, we are giving children in local primary and junior
schools all the exclusive World Book Day titles, specially written by popular
children’s writers like Antony Horowitz and Julia Donaldson. Every child in full time education will also receive a
special one pound voucher through their school to spend on a book of their
choice. As well as the ten specially created £1 books, The Book Case
has the latest titles for children of all ages offering an exciting
choice.
And an early word
about the seventh and last Harry Potter title to be
published on July 21st. We will be open at midnight on July 21st to supply the
book to local fans of Harry Potter. There will be a special offer price on this
title and we're already taking orders!
Hebden Bridge Walkers' Day was a very successful
event - the hall at Riverside was packed out, and The Book Case was present
selling walking books and maps.
A reminder to you gardeners that we have lots of gardening
books in stock - advice on allotments and organic gardening
especially.
For those of you who enjoyed Victoria Wood's Housewife, 49
on television recently, we now have the DVD in stock; price
£12.99. The play is based on the book Nella Last's War,
also in stock; it's the Mass Observation diary of a WWII housewife, trapped in
a difficult marriage and finding support in work with the WVS.
Seismic shifts are occurring in the book trade, with the purchase by
Woolworths/EUK of two of the three major book wholesalers, THE and Bertram.
Sadly it looks as though the Total Home Entertainment site in
Newcastle-under-Lyne may close and we extend our thanks and sympathy to the
staff. Apparently it is thought by the people who control things that CDs and
DVDs are on their way out as a source of profit and books are the answer. Let
us hope all this is not too damaging to the independent book sector!
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and
a CD.
Adult fiction: The Death of Achilles by Boris
Akunin (£7.99) Fourth in the series of novels about dashing
19th-century Russian detective Erast Fandorin, 'genius, gentleman, polyglot,
kickboxer, and all-round inordinately lucky bloke'. In this one, he returns to
Moscow to discover his old friend General Sobolev - the famous
'Russian Achilles' - has been found dead in a hotel room.
Adult non-fiction: Cloudspotters
Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (£7.99): A journey through our
cloudscape, drawing on science, art, literature and personal obsession.
Children's book: Lady Friday by Garth
Nix (£5.99) In the fifth instalment of the "The Keys to the
Kingdom", the race is on to find the secret of the Middle House and Arthur
Penhaligon's adventures in the House get ever more perilous.
CD: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (£5.99).
With its mixture of funny, bawdy and hedonistic texts taken from anonymous
poets of the Middle Ages, twentieth-century composer Carl Orff created a choral
work of powerful pagan sensuality and direct physical excitement. The pulsating
rhythms, colourful orchestration and dynamic choruses, contrasted with moments
of sensuous innocence, have taken Carmina Burana into the world of 'pop
classics'.
NEWS
Local
Interest
Hebden Bridge
Treasure Hunt on Foot, £2.99
An attractive new version of
this quirky walk around town. There's also a chance to win "buried treasure" by
solving the baffling puzzle inside the front cover!
Local
Authors
Wordsworth: a Life in Letters -
ed. Juliet Barker, £12.99
Reissue as a Penguin
Classic of this selection by award-winning local author from the poet's letters
and autobiographical fragments, showing him as a rebel, a radical, a devoted
family man and a revered patriarch.
National Book Events
The Daily
Mail Book Club
March's Book of the Month is Mother Country by
Jeremy Harding (£7.99). This literary memoir evokes a magical
childhood spent in transit between Notting Hill Gate and a decrepit houseboat
on the banks of the Thames. It is a detective quest, as Harding searches
through the public record for a clue about his natural mother, and a rich
social history of a lost London from the 1950s. The Book Case will accept
Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's
recommended title.
April's title will be Black Swan Green by David
Mitchell.
Richard and Judy Book
Club
Each of the books below will be featured on Richard &
Judy, at 5pm every Wednesday until 21st March. The winning best read
will be announced at the 2007 Galaxy British Book Awards on 28th
March
7th March: This Book Will Save Your Life - A M
Holmes, £7.99
An L.A. stock-trader working from home is
so out of touch with the world that his life has slowed to a standstill. A
sudden excruciating pain begins a thaw, a relationship with doughnuts and
more.
14th March: Half Of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie, £7.99
In the context of the 1960s
Nigerian civil war, a young houseboy, a university lecturer and her professor
lover, a shy Englishman and the lecturer’s sister are pulled apart and
thrown together.
21st March: The Testament Of Gideon Mack
- James Robertson, £7.99
If the Devil didn’t exist,
would man have to invent him? A Church Minister has vanished to an almost
certain death, and then re-appears, claiming to have been rescued by the Devil.
Booker shortlisted.
Costa Book of the
Year (ex-Whitbread)
Stef
Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves, £7.99
"The Tenderness of
Wolves stood out from a very strong shortlist. We felt enveloped by the
snowy landscape and gripped by the beautiful writing and effortless
story-telling. It is a story of love, suspense and beauty. We
couldn't put it down."
NEW TITLES
There's some
high-profile hardback fiction in March from authors
including Marina Lewycka, Thomas Keneally, Alexander McCall-Smith,
Margaret Forster and Tracy Chevalier, and
another good range of paperback fiction
from Margaret Atwood, Sally Vickers, Hilary Mantel, Alessandro
Baricco, Robert Harris, Will Self, Margaret Forster, Nicole Krauss, Romesh
Gunesekera, Neil Bartlett and more -
and new editions of Philip K Dick.
Non-fiction:
- Wordsworth, Fred Dibnah and an
exceptional pig in
Biography
- Chomsky, Pilger, Londonistan, corrupt Italy, Branson
and young citizenship in Current Affairs and
Politics
- difficulties of being green, an eco farm in Sri
Lanka and fast food in Environment
- organic gardening, children, allotments, native plants
and nettles in Gardening
- an ancient explosion of religion, 1492, slavery, the
violent 20th century, Greek-Turkish ethnic
cleansing and Agent Zigzag in History
- the new Organic Directory in Lifestyle
- David Crystal, Brewer's Phrase and Fable and
British Language & Culture in Language
- April Fools, Woman's Hour and Derek
Acorah in Media
- clouds in Nature
- Feinstein, Rumi and Plath in Poetry
- Dawkins vs Gould and the genetic
identity of England in Science
- the Co-operative Correspondence Club
in Social
History
- survival, small
talk, buses, Spain, Jenny Diski, B&B pubs, and new guides to
Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany
in Travel
- and Egg & Bird, a tiger's smile, Bucephalus, yoga,
Jacqueline Wilson and the latest Keys to the
Kingdom amongst others in Children's books
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Handkerchiefs in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: FEBRUARY
2007 BESTSELLERS at The Book Case
As expected, Richard
& Judy have made several dents in The Book Case’s often locally-based
bestseller list. February saw no fewer than four novels in the top ten - three
of them promoted by the R&J Book Club, which is "credited as having a
massive effect on the sales of the books it features". Of the remainder, two
were local walking books - Hebden Bridge was launched as the first "Walkers are
Welcome" town in February; two were autobiographies from writers with local
connections; and Todmorden buses and Northern suffragettes continued
popular.
1. The
Interpretation Of Murder - Jed Rubenfield, £7.99
Ingenious
historical thriller - Sigmund Freud is drawn into the mind of a sadistic
killer. Our most popular Richard & Judy choice so far.
2. Gone
Walkabout: 24 Walks in the Upper Calder Valley by Anna Carlisle,
£6.00
The most popular local walking book from Hebden Bridge
publishers Pennine Pens.
3. Todmorden Buses: a Century of Service by
Ralph Wilkinson, £8.95
The history of Todmorden's passenger
transport over the last hundred years. Nice front cover!
4. The Girls
by Lori Lansens, £7.99
In twenty-nine years, Rose Darlen has never
parted from her twin sister, Ruby. Yet she has never once looked into Ruby's
eyes – they are joined at the head. R&J choice.
5. Believe
in the Sign by Mark Hodkinson, £9.99
From a respected national
sports writer based in Hebden Bridge, a collection of pieces taking an in-depth
look at football, with interviews (including Paul Gascoigne), the darker side
of the game and his love-hate relationship with Rochdale FC. Published by
Pomona of Hebden Bridge.
6. If You Fall: It's a New Beginning by
Karen Darke, £9.99
Karen Darke's inspiring account of how she made
a new and active life for herself, following her loss of movement from the
chest down after a fall while climbing. Karen is an ex-pupil of Calder High
School.
7. The Testament to Gideon Mack by James Robertson,
£7.99
If the Devil didn’t exist, would man have to invent him? A
Church Minister has vanished to an almost certain death, and then re-appears,
claiming to have been rescued by the Devil. Booker shortlisted and an R&J
choice.
8. South Pennines and Bronte Moors (Freedom to Roam) by
Andrew Bibby, £7.99
From the locally-based journalist and
countryside campaigner, a set of twelve free-range rambles around our area,
with maps and information, produced in association with the Ramblers'
Association.
9. Rebel Girls: How Votes for Women Changed Edwardian
Lives by Jill Liddington, £14.99
This enthralling account of the
local fight for women's suffrage was our overall bestseller for 2006. Includes
Lavina Saltonstall of Hebden Bridge.
10. A Short History of Tractors
in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka, £7.99
Entertaining novel about two
Ukrainian sisters, their father and his new wife in Peterborough, which is
never far from the top ten. Look out for the author’s forthcoming novel,
due in hardback at the end of
March!
Best wishes from your local
independent 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
"But for the
average western child who must deal with the strange goings-on of the adult
world, stories are a window into sanity."
Gaynor McGrath, letter about Beatrix
Potter, to Guardian Weekly, 19-25 Jan. 2007
FEBRUARY 2007
Dear Book Case customer or contact,
Apologies for the lateness of this newsletter; eye now on the mend and
thank goodness for audiobooks!
Juliet Barker gave a fascinating talk on
Agincourt at St John's in the Wilderness, Cragg Vale while the
rain pelted down outside; she said the weather was similar to that endured by
the dysentery-stricken English army before the famous battle. Her book, full of
engrossing detail, is available at The Book Case.
The new edition of THE Book Magazine is now in stock,
free to customers. This quarter's issue includes an interview with
Simon Armitage about his new version of "Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight", Joan Bakewell's choice of books, Robin
Hanbury-Tenison on great journeys in history, Libby Purves
on student life of 30 years ago and much more, including a discussion
on "How Novels Work", a review of the new Beatrix Potter biography, the history
of housing, sequels to classics, and more.
A reminder about the
Hebden Bridge Walkers' Day
on
Sunday February 18th, 10am - 4pm in Riverside
School. The intention is to celebrate and launch Hebden
Bridge as the first "Walkers are Welcome" town and plan for the future,
including the maintenance of footpaths and displays of short walks. There will
be a range of activities on the day, including short walks (the Nutclough,
Riverside to Redacre, updating the Town Trail) and talks (safety, John
Billingsley on local legends, legal questions, local fauna and flora). Find out
more at
http://www.hbwalkersaction.org.uk/launch.htm
- and there are some nice photos at the homepage
http://www.hbwalkersaction.org.uk/index.html
The Book Case supports this initiative, and will be present selling
walking books.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: The Night
Watch by Sarah Waters (£7.99). Moving back through the
1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual
adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, this Booker and
Orange-shortlisted novel tells the story of four Londoners - three women and a
young man with a past.
Adult non-fiction: Rough Patch by
Richard Bell (£10.95). "A sketchbook from the wilder side of the
garden." Full of sketches and watercolours of the local flora and fauna,
handwritten observations, comments, advice - an delightful, absorbing,
practical book.
Children's book: Darkling Plain by Philip
Reeve (£5.99) Now in paperback, this is the breathtaking
conclusion to the Mortal Engines quartet. Natsworthy is enjoying life as
an aviatrix, but the truce between the Green Storm and Traction Cities
splinters and war breaks out again. 'An extraordinary imaginative achievement'
The Guardian. Ages: 11+ yrs
NEWS
Local Interest
Transactions of the
Halifax Antiquarian Society 2006 (Vol. 14, new series) - (ed.) John A.
Hargreaves, £15.00
This year's issue contains: The
landscape history of Erringden Park from the 12th to 20th century - J A
Heginbottom; A History of Cripplegate - John H Patchett; James Crossley
(!800-1883) in Halifax: 'The learned boy', 1800-1817 - Stephen Collins; Chapel
Culture: Methodists at King Cross, 1803-2007 - Lewis Burton; Joseph Horsfall
(1818-1889): transformation from handloom weaver to cotton manufacturer,
1857-1873 - W L Horsfall; The People's park (1857-2005) - J G Washington;
Halifax houses between the wars, 1919-1939 - Merial Evans; Halifax and the
Second World War: the prelude to war and defensive precautions, 1937-1940 -
Derek Bridges; The Twentieth Century Remembered: a 1920s and 1930s boyhood -
Eric Webster; Reviews: "Images of England, Brighouse and District" by C. Helm
& "Seeing It Through" by Peter Thomas (see below) - John Hargreaves;
Enquiry & research; Reports for 2005; Obituary: Eric Webster.
Ideas Above Our Station - ed. Ian Daley,
£8.99
Someone is waiting for a train - or a bus, or an
aeroplane. They are alone. For company, they are carrying a book of stories:
what would be the perfect read for them to find there? Fifteen writers have
risen to the challenge, including two local authors, Penny Aldridge and
Daithidh Maceochaidh.
Exploring Oxenhope: where to go and what to see - Reg
Hindley, £9.99
Nine walks or rides around the former milltown
in its surprisingly varied "highland" setting, with much detailed historical
information along the way. Maps and b-and-w photos.
Local Authors
Poems from a Northern Soul - John Siddique,
£6.95
Through poignant homecomings cinematic street
scenes and candid portraits, this poetry collection aims to take the reader to
the limits of human experience.
Heart in My Head - John S
Peart-Binns, £16.99
A Biography of Richard Harries. The first
biography of the Bishop of Oxford, written with his full approval, using
personal papers and interviews. 'Throughout his life, ministry and episcopate,
Harries has explored the reasonableness of Christianity. He has not abandoned
orthodox belief to fit the current climate, and presents a mature vision of
Christian faith which can meet contemporary criticism.'
Heartsease - Judith Blaydes,
£15.00
From an ex-Halifax librarian, a family saga set in the Calder
Valley against the backdrop of the moors, Sowerby Bridge and the Great War.
National Book Events
The Daily
Mail Book Club
February's Book of the Month is The Boy Who Fell Out
Of The Sky by Ken Dornstein (£7.99). On
December 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded on board Pan Am Flight 103,
causing the aircraft to crash onto the Scottish town of Lockerbie and killing
all 259 people on board. One of the victims was Ken Dornstein’s
25-year-old brother, David. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National
Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended
title.
March's title will be Mother Country by Jeremy
Harding, and April's Black Swan Green by David
Mitchell.
Richard and Judy Book
Club
Each of the books below has been or will be featured on Richard
& Judy, at 5pm every Wednesday from 31st January – 21st March. The
winning best read will be announced at the 2007 Galaxy British Book Awards on
28th March
31st Jan: The Interpretation Of Murder - Jed
Rubenfield, £7.99
Ingenious historical thriller - Sigmund
Freud is drawn into the mind of a sadistic killer
7th Feb:
The Girls - Lori Lansens, £7.99
In twenty-nine years, Rose
Darlen has never parted from her twin sister, Ruby. Yet she has never once
looked into Ruby's eyes – they are joined at the
head.
14th Feb: Restless - William Boyd,
£7.99
Eva Delectorskaya, a beautiful Russian emigree living in Paris
in 1939, was recruited for the British Secret Service and became the perfect
spy, Now she has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and
mother. Costa Novel Award Winner.
21st Feb: Love In The
Present Tense - Catherine Ryan Hyde, £6.99
Teenage mother
Pearl drops off her 5-year-old son with a neighbour and never returns. Is it
possible to love people who aren’t there?
28th Feb:
Semi-Detached - Griff Rhys-Jones, £7.99
Griff
Rhys-Jones’s own account of his ordinary suburban childhood, and how he
got from there to here.
7th March: This Book Will Save
Your Life - A M Holmes, £7.99
An L.A. stock-trader
working from home is so out of touch with the world that his life has slowed to
a standstill. A sudden excruciating pain begins a thaw, a relationship with
doughnuts and more.
14th March: Half Of A Yellow Sun -
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, £7.99
In the context of
the 1960s Nigerian civil war, a young houseboy, a university lecturer and her
professor lover, a shy Englishman and the lecturer’s sister are pulled
apart and thrown together.
21st March: The Testament Of
Gideon Mack - James Robertson, £7.99
If the Devil
didn’t exist, would man have to invent him? A Church Minister has vanished
to an almost certain death, and then re-appears, claiming to have been rescued
by the Devil. Booker shortlisted.
Costa Book Awards
(ex-Whitbread)
2006
Costa First Novel Award winner
Stef Penney - The Tenderness of
Wolves, £12.99
"The Tenderness of Wolves stood out from a
very strong shortlist. We felt enveloped by the snowy landscape and
gripped by the beautiful writing and effortless story-telling. It is a
story of love, suspense and beauty. We couldnt put it
down."
2006 Costa Novel Award winner
William Boyd -
Restless, £7.99, in stock
"Restless remains in the mind long
after you finish it. Its scenes of wartime tension, the smell of espionage and
the consequences of deceitful lives. Double cross, double bluff - all written
with effortless clarity resulting in an unputdownable
read."
2006 Costa Children's Book Award winner
Linda
Newbery - Set in Stone, £12.99
"As beautifully crafted as one
of the statues adorning the house in the story, this emotionally charged
narrative will thrill all lovers of intelligent
fiction."
2006 Costa Poetry Award winner
John Haynes -
Letter to Patience, £7.99, in stock
"John Haynes Letter to
Patience was the judges unanimous choice and a clear winner; a unique long poem
of outstanding quality, condensing a lifetime of reflection and experience into
a work of transporting momentum, imaginative lucidity, and consummate formal
accomplishment."
2006 Costa Biography Award winner
Brian
Thompson - Keeping Mum, £7.99, in stock
"This vivid,
life-affirming and deftly-written book is a perfect antidote to the 'misery
memoir'. We defy anyone not to enjoy it."
The
Costa Book of the Year will be announced tonight.
NEW TITLES
New hardback fiction in February
includes monologues from Lynne Truss, and two interesting
novels from less well-known authors, and a good range
of paperback fiction from Sarah Waters,
Irene
Nemirovsky, Helen Dunmore, Alexander McCall-Smith, Christopher Hope, Maeve
Binchy, David Nobbs, Niall Griffiths, Jay McInerney, Manda Scott - and
new editions of the Sherlock Holmes books.
Non-fiction:
- Billy Bragg, Naomi Wolf's father, Rageh Omaar, Frank
Gardner, Christa Wolff, Subrata
Dasgupta and
Mukhtar
Mai in Biography
- Gaia's revenge and helpful
suggestions in Environment
- Delia's kitchen garden, growing your own
veg and allotments in Gardening
- the English Civil War, the bombing
of Hamburg and modern
soldiers in History
- the new Organic Directory in Lifestyle
- world-changing British books, rhymes and
writing in Language and Literature
- men, toxic
childhood and self-affirmations in MBS
- Sixties Cool and Pirates of the
Caribbean in Media
- insects in Nature
- Shakespeare, Blake, Brian Patten, Helen Dunmore and
John Siddique in Poetry
- facts about Europe, Unspeak, Vonnegut on Bush, a British
Muslim in Guantanamo, and Ayaan
Hirsi Ali on Islam and women's rights in Politics and Current
Affairs
- Gould, the universe and
the Fermat's last theorem in Science
- and Morocco,
Oxiana, Crete, great journeys, 2007 maps and new guides to
Morocco, Eastern Europe
and Spain in Travel
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on New Years in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been
buying: JANUARY 2007 BESTSELLERS at
The Book Case
1. Rebel Girls: How Votes for Women Changed
Edwardian Lives by Jill Liddington,
£14.99
This detailed account of the local fight for women's suffrage
was our overall bestseller for 2006.
2. Gone Walkabout: 24 Walks in the Upper
Calder Valley by Anna Carlisle,
£6.00
24 local walks from Hebden Bridge publishers Pennine
Pens, and another consistent bestseller.
3. Reading "Lolita" in Tehran: A Memoir in
Books by Azar Nafisi,
£7.99
The inspirational tale of eight women who defied the
confines of life in revolutionary Iran through the joy and power of literature.
4. The Testament to Gideon Mack by James
Robertson, £7.99
If the devil didn't exist, would man have to
invent him? Faithless minister Gideon Mack one day falls into a gorge and is
rescued by someone who might just be Satan himself.
5. Millstone Grit - Glyn
Hughes, £4.95
We still have some copies of this classic
account of the Calder Valley by prize-winning local author Glyn Hughes.
6. Elmet by Ted Hughes with
photographs by Fay Godwin, £14.99
A partnership of the local ex-Poet Laureate and
well-known photographer to give an atmospheric impression of the local area.
The cover photograph showing Heptonstall Church and Stoodley Pike from Oxenhope
Moor was recently shortlisted for Britain's most iconic photograph
7. Todmorden Album 4: People Places and
Events by Roger Birch, £20.00
229 black and white
photographs from private collections, family albums and picture archives, with
detailed and informative captions, showing a century of life in
Todmorden.
8. If You Fall: It's a New Beginning
by Karen Darke, £9.99
Second bestseller for
2006, Karen Darke's inspiring account of how she made a new and
active life for herself, following her loss of movement from the chest
down after a fall while climbing.
9. Double or Die (Young Bond
3) by Charlie Higson, £6.99
A tale for young people of kidnap, violence,
explosion and murder in the popular Young Bond series.
10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Simon
Armitage, £12.99
The strange tale of a green knight who
rudely interrupts King Arthur's Christmas festivities, retold by Yorkshire poet
Simon Armitage.
Best wishes from your local independent 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
"Reading is the
perfect way to wind down at the end of the day. Anxiety levels will drop as it
provides a gentle distraction, pushing any worries out of your mind which will
ultimately help you relax and fall
asleep."
Travelodge's Director of Sleep, Wayne
Munnelly, GMTV, 5 Feb.
JANUARY 2007
Dear Book Case customer or contact,
A Happy New Year to everyone, and thanks for your custom over
Christmas - special thanks to those of you who nominated us for
Independent Bookshop of the Year.
Juliet Barker on "Agincourt", 8th January 2007 at Cragg
Vale
A major event
of this month will be respected historian Juliet Barker
talking about her ground-breaking book on the battle of
Agincourt to the Yorkshire Countrywomen's Association Cragg
Vale Group at 7.30pm at St John's Church,
Cragg Vale, on Monday 8th January. Open to all,
£1 entry including refreshments. The Book Case will be selling the
paperback and hardback editions of Juliet Barker's Agincourt.
Local historian John Hargreaves will be leading a WEA
course in Hebden Bridge on Yorkshire History Makers for ten
weeks starting 11 January - Thursdays 2-4pm at Hope Baptist Church, Cheetham
Street entrance. The Book Case stocks John Hargreaves' books on Halifax and
Benjamin Rushton.
Some of Michael Peace's pictures of local scenes are
now displayed on our walls and are available for sale. We are also stocking his
cards.
Local juggling star
Jago Parfitt of Full Moon
Performers has directed a new Contact Juggling DVD,
In
Isolation, a unique collection of inspirational modern contact
juggling, shot in beautiful local landscapes and including 30 minutes of
condensed instruction, plus interviews and rare footage. The DVD was produced
by Beard Enterprises of Old Town Mill and is being stocked by The Book Case,
135 mins, price £20. See more at
http://www.fullmoonperformers.com/isolation/index.html and
for an enthusiastic review by European Juggling Magazine Kaskade, go to
http://www.fullmoonperformers.com/isolation/kaskade.html.
Jago has appeared at Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, and performed at the
Edinburgh Festival in 2006.
We are now stocking the magazine Green Parent,
£2.95.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on
Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject
box.)
THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's
book.
Adult fiction: The Cleft - Doris
Lessing (£14.99 at The Book Case). A mythical society free
from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society
free from men. Confronts the themes of how men and women, two similar and yet
thoroughly distinct creatures, manage to live side by side in the world, and
how the specifics of gender affect every aspect of our existence.
Adult non-fiction: Six Impossible
Things Before Breakfast - Lewis Wolpert (£8.99). Why does every
society around the world have a religious tradition of some sort? This book
investigates the nature of belief and its causes, its psychological basis and
its possible evolutionary origins in physical cause and effect, and the
different types of belief - including that of animals, of children, of the
religious, and of those suffering from psychiatric disorders. Is it possible to
live without belief at all?
Children's book: Slawter by Darren Shan
(£5.99) "Never trust fairy tales. There are no happy endings.
There's always something new around the corner. You can overcome major
obstacles, face great danger, look evil in the eye and live to tell the tale -
but that's not the end. As long as you're breathing, your story's still going!"
Latest in the popular author's Demonata series.
NEWS
Local Interest
A reminder of some late arrivals:
Todmorden Buses: a Century of Service by Ralph
Wilkinson, £8.95
To mark the centenary of the establishment
of Todmorden's municipal bus service, this book covers the history of
Todmorden's passenger transport over the last hundred years, with links over
the Pennines to Bacup, Burnley, Keighley, Littleborough, Oxenhope and Rochdale,
and with particular emphasis on the all-Leyland fleet with its dark green and
cream livery. The author is a native of Todmorden. This book has been so
popular that the first edition has sold out and we are waiting for a
reprint.
Benjamin Rushton, Handloom Weaver and Chartist by John
Hargreaves, £4.50
From well-known local historian Professor
Hargreaves, the story of a Halifax local hero who struggled for justice for the
handloom weavers from the time of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 until the final
years of Chartism in the 1850s.
Heptonstall: A Village of Memories - Nick Wilding, DVD,
£14.99
Following the success of "A Tale of Two Towns" and "A
Race through Time", Nick Wilding and Excalibur have produced a DVD about the
history of Heptonstall just in time for Christmas. Who is the strange and
beautiful carving in the far corner of the old St Thomas-a-Becket Church, and
what disturbing discovery was made in the loft above it? How did the old
dialect affect communication with those from the south, and how did the
original Church organ survive the anti-popish onslaught by soldiers of
Elizabeth I? "Heptonstall, Village of Memories" embarks onto a fascinating
journey into the past and brings to life many tales from long ago, with the
usual mix of strange facts, quirky reminiscences and archive stills and video.
Valley Shadows:
short stories by Bill Marsden, poems by Peter Coles, £5.00
The latest in the
entertaining Shadows series with photos, poems and anecdotes.
Local Authors
The Backpacker's Guide to the New Spirituality by Michael
Conneely, £9.99
A magical child has been conceived in the
modern west. A new spiritual form has been born out of Hinduism, Buddhism, the
Pagan religions of Northern Europe, Shamanism, utopian community and astrology.
This reforging of ancient traditions gives us new spiritual tools: ritual,
meditation, tantra, body-energy-work, trance and vision; we find new beauty and
power in what it means to be a woman or a man. Local astrologer and counsellor
Michael Conneely reports on this spiritual revolution, based on the findings of
a five-year field study in Glastonbury, now a world-wide centre of pilgrimage.
(£9.99)
Believe in the Sign - Mark Hodkinson,
£9.99
From a respected national sports writer based in Hebden
Bridge, a collection of pieces taking an in-depth look at football, with
interviews (including Paul Gascoigne), the darker side of the game and his
love-hate relationship with Rochdale FC.
National Book Events
The Daily
Mail Book Club
January's Book of the Month is One Life by
Rebecca Frayn (£7.99). Rose and Johnny are a modern couple,
a career couple. But suddenly - unexpectedly - Johnny's desire for commitment
and a child brings them to an abrupt and painful crossroads. Currently
unavailable, stock expected soon. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National
Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended
title.
NEW TITLES
New hardback fiction in January includes a new
novel from Doris Lessing, with paperback
fiction from Joanna Trollope, Richard Yates, Jodi Picoult,
Sarah Dunant, T C Boyle and Fred Vargas amongst many
others.
Non-fiction:
- Mozart's librettist, Mao and Malcolm
Bradbury amongst others in Biography
- Litvinenko on the KGB, China, Jaffa and the
media in Current Affairs
- a pocket carbon counter and Nature's
revenge in Environment
- the WI being wise about the home, garden and
kitchen and on the road in Lifestyle
- the new spirituality, the basis of religion, dark
fairies, brain workouts and La
Rochefoucauld in MBS
- rocks, birds and whales in Nature
- Simon Armitage's Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight in Poetry
- chaos and the universe in Science
- and camping,
Turkey, Amsterdam
and France in Travel
For the full answers to last month's quiz,
on Owls in literature, click
here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What you've been buying: DECEMBER & 2006 BESTSELLERS at The Book
Case
Six books of local interest in The Book Case's
bestsellers meant that our list was (as often) unique! Karen Darke’s
extraordinary story headed photos of old Todmorden and local walks,
weirdnesses, sculpture and suffragettes. Scientific enquiry, two diaries, a
much-loved Daleswoman and two works of fiction made up the rest. See below for
our bestsellers of the year.
1. If You Fall - Karen Darke
(£9.99) Local woman Karen
Darke stayed at the top with her inspiring account of how she came to
terms with her loss of movement from the chest down following a fall while
climbing, and made a new and active life for herself.
2. Todmorden Album 4 - Roger Birch (£20.00) This
long-awaited fourth album provides a further fascinating insight into a century
of life in Todmorden. The book contains 229 black and white photographs
selected from private collections, family albums and picture archives, with
detailed and informative captions.
3. Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? and 114 Other
Questions - Mick O'Hare (£7.99) A compilation of readers'
answers to the questions in the 'Last Word' column of "New Scientist", one of
the world's best-selling science weekly.
4. Gone Walkabout - Anna Carlisle (£6.00)
Still buoyant, a collection of 24 local walks from Hebden Bridge publishers
Pennine Pens.
5. We'Moon Diary 2007 (£15.99) It
wouldn't be Christmas without We'Moon somewhere in the Top 10. Gaia Rhythms for
Women on the theme “On Purpose”.
6. Weird Calderdale - Paul Weatherhead (£7.99)
Another book that feels at home near the top. A lot of people like their
Calderdale weird.
7. Sculpture Trail at Hardcastle Crags - 1995-2005 - Liza
Blezard and Paula Chambers (£15)
Colour photos of the best of
the (sadly now finished) annual sculpture trail at Hardcastle Crags, with
artists' statements. Limited edition.
8. Hannah Hauxwell's Winter Tales DVD (£12.99).
Combines "Too Long a Winter" and "A Winter Too Many" when Daleswoman Hannah
was living alone at Low Birk Hatt Farm in North Yorkshire. Our November DVD of
the month.
Tying for 9th place:
- Rebel Girls - Jill Liddington (£14.99)
Our bestseller
for 2006, the story of the young campaigners who took their fight for the vote
for women across the north of England. Local author and historian Jill
Liddington is now taking a well-earned break.
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka
(£7.99)
Entertaining novel about two Ukrainian sisters, their father
and his new wife in Peterborough, which has been near the top for most of the
year.
- Wild Nature Yearbook 2007 (£12.95) From the John Muir
Trust, a spiral-bound diary full of wonderful nature photos from Scotland.-
John Muir Diary
10. Winter Book - Tove Jansson (£6.99)
A collection of
some of Tove Jansson’s best-loved stories, drawn from youth and older age.
Our November Fiction Book of the Month.
BESTSELLERS FOR 2006
1. Rebel Girls - Jill Liddington; 2. If You Fall - Karen Darke; 3.
Weird Calderdale - Paul Weatherhead; 4. A Short History of Tractors in
Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka; 5. Passage to Africa - George Alagiah; 6.
We'Moon Diary 2007 - Gaia Rhythms for Women “On Purpose”; 7. Gone
Walkabout - Anna Carlisle; 8. Dangerous Book for Boys - Conn Iggulden; 9. South
Pennines 1:25000 map; 10. Tie: Kite Runner - K Hosseini; Winter Book -
Tove Jansson
Best wishes from your
local independent 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
"There must have been a thousand books in the sitting-room by
the end, each a doorway leading somewhere I had never been
before."
Romesh Gunesekera, The Reef,
1994
Links to previous Newsletters:
2006
2004