Pages & Proofs » Book review http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog A book blog from the staff at AbeBooks.co.uk Wed, 26 Aug 2015 20:56:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.4 Introducing The Alphabet Library: An A-Z of Forgotten Books http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2014/02/25/introducing-the-alphabet-library-an-a-z-of-forgotten-books/ http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2014/02/25/introducing-the-alphabet-library-an-a-z-of-forgotten-books/#comments Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:21:45 +0000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/?p=3232 As far as we’re concerned, a good book never dies. It’s just hard to remember them all. Now, some forgotten books are going to be returning to the limelight as the Daily Telegraph has just published the first installment of The Alphabet Library: an A to Z of forgotten books.

AbeBooks.co.uk is sponsoring this online series of columns as breathing new life into forgotten books is something close to our hearts.

The Telegraph’s Tim Martin has kicked off the series with Ariel by Andre Maurois – the first title published by Penguin, which helped launch the paperback revolution in 1935. Ariel is a biography of the poet Percy Shelley first published in 1923 in French.  

Tim also notes how Ariel was significant for its depiction of Shelley’s life.

When it appeared in 1923, André Maurois’s Ariel was one of a new breed of what reviewers of the time took to calling “romance biographies”. The trend was begun in 1918 by the acidulous Bloomsburyite Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, which treated the lives of Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning, Thomas Arnold and General Gordon with the irreverence, verve and gossipy enthusiasm of popular fiction.

This might sound odd but we love books with a good story behind them. Historical and social context means a lot when you are trying to single out books from the millions that have been published over the decades. So thanks to the Telegraph and we look forward to the rest of the series.

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10 reasons why 1984 matters in 2013 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/06/17/10-reasons-why-1984-matters-in-2013/ http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/06/17/10-reasons-why-1984-matters-in-2013/#comments Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:52:53 +0000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/?p=2652

All the concern about government surveillance inspired us to revisit 1984 by George Orwell. It’s been 20 years at least since I read that novel and I’d forgotten about just how scary and how relevant that book is. On Reddit, I saw an interesting debate where people were discussing whether the ending matters. It does not. The substance lies in the environment where Winston and Julia exist.

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Authors and their football teams http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/08/17/authors-and-their-football-teams/ http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/08/17/authors-and-their-football-teams/#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:08:55 +0000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/?p=870

The football season looms. So the Daily Telegraph gives us a slideshow of writers and their favourite football teams. Camus played goalie for Racing Universitaire Algerios, Arthur Conan Doyle was a goalie for Portsmouth, Salman Rushdie supports Spurs, J.K. is a Hammer, Roddy Doyle follows Chelsea, Julian Barnes supports Leicester City for his sins, Stephen Fry supports Norwich City, Michael Rosen and Melvyn Bragg are Gooners,

While we are talking football, I’ll give you five recommendations for football books.

My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes by Gary Imlach is an excellent read. I interviewed Imlach a few years ago. He recounts a period when footballers had to have another trade, such as being a mechanic or plumber, in order to make ends meet. His father, Stewart, was a fleet-footed winger for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup final and also represented Scotland four times in the 1958 World Cup – even though he was never awarded a cap as the appearances were not against ‘Home Nation’ countries.

AbeBooks: What prompted you to write the book?

Gary Imlach: “The realisation after my dad died that I knew scandalously little about his football life beyond the highlights of an FA Cup Final and a World Cup. I think growing up with those peaks of achievement as part of the family history handed down to me and my brothers lulled me into thinking that I knew far more than I did. And our conversations, like many I suppose between father and son, never got beyond the week’s football results and the state of his golf game.”

I also recommend A Season With Verona by Tim Parks, an Englishman who lives and teaches in Italy. Verona are a bit like the West Brom of Italian football, always struggling at the foot of the table. Parks goes everywhere with a bunch of bonkers fans but ends up delivering a fascinating account of what makes Italians tick. It’s more culture than sport. I didn’t want the book to end but the final few chapters are all football and truly exciting.

We are the Damned United by Phil Rostron is one of my more recent reads. It details Brian Clough’s 44-day tenure as manager of Leeds United between July and September 1974. You find yourself asking whether Clough is a genius or a nutter throughout this book. Lots of players from that mighty Leeds squad of that time chime in with their opinions. I tend to go for genius as he won with Derby County and Nottingham Forest, but just got it horribly wrong with Leeds.

I love Stan Bowles the Autobiography. Not because it’s well written, it isn’t, but because Bowles has such a remarkable story to tell. He gambled, he drank, he womanised, he played for England, he went to the games on the Tube with his boots in a plastic shopping bag. It’s a great insight into football in the 1970s when the stars shone brightly but everything was on a much smaller scale than today. I love the cover of Bowles reading the match programme as a corner is about to be taken.

Provided You Don’t Kiss Me by Duncan Hamilton is another insight into the wacky world of Brian Clough. Hamilton covered Forest for the local Nottingham paper and got to know Clough better than most. This is a brilliant account of how Clough built up that wonderful Forest team and won the Division One Championship and the European Cup, and yet remained a complete enigma. Hamilton’s description of Clough’s descent into alcoholism is a painful read.

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Winston Churchill’s real profession – writing books http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/06/04/winston-churchills-real-profession-writing-books/ http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/06/04/winston-churchills-real-profession-writing-books/#comments Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:24:43 +0000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/?p=377 There’s a new biography about Winston Churchill… but hold on. Before you turn away because it’s another book about this famous statesman, this one addresses his writing career – the profession that paid the bills as far as this man was concerned. Mr. Churchill’s Profession by Peter Clarke is receiving some decent reviews, including from the Financial Times.

Churchill wrote a two-volume biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and four volumes about the first Duke of Marlborough – another member of his illustrious family. His best known book is the four-volumes set of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which regularly crops up in AbeBooks’ monthly lists of expensive sales. He also penned five volumes about World War I and six more about World War II. And there was more besides.

Clarke – who seems to be a man of two homes (he lives in Suffolk and on Pender Island off the West Coast of Canada) – has a lot of writing to write about. Many people are unaware of the fact that Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.

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Video review of Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/05/22/video-review-of-moby-duck-by-donovan-hohn-2/ http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/05/22/video-review-of-moby-duck-by-donovan-hohn-2/#comments Tue, 22 May 2012 18:42:26 +0000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/?p=259

Earlier this year, I read Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn. Here is my video review of this non-fiction book about thousands of bath toys that fell into the ocean off a container ship and were washed around the globe.

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A book that celebrates the A303 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/05/09/a-book-that-celebrates-the-a303/ http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/05/09/a-book-that-celebrates-the-a303/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 20:33:19 +0000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/?p=127 To quote today’s youngsters, “OMG!” There’s a book about the A303 – one of my favourite roads in all the world – and the Telegraph just reviewed it. The A303: Highway to the Sun by Tom Fort is my next read without a doubt. I’ve always loved that road. I love the ups and downs, the scenery, the glimpse of Stonehenge, the sad Little Chefs and the fact that it’s not a motorway but yet gets you places at a reasonable pace. It’s 92 miles of heaven from Honiton in Devon (quite nice in a clotted cream sort of way) to Basingstoke in Hampshire (to be avoided like a dose of Slough).

One achievement of the book is to explain Jeremy Clarkson. Mondeo Man dreams of freedom, but finds himself everywhere in chains. The greater the number of people who can enjoy the personal liberation bestowed by owning a car, the less everyone can move around because the roads are clogged. But the BBC has licensed Clarkson to romp anarchically around, as though cars could still be driven at top speeds and adventure, rather than roadworks, lay around the next bend. He is a bull elephant in a safari park: a token survivor of the wild, representative of a species that cannot otherwise be accommodated in the modern world.

That’s quite an achievement. People should write more books about roads. What about the A34? There’s got to be a bestseller in that one.

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