Mark Sarvas's debut novel, Harry, Revised, has been published by Canongate in the UK and will appear in a dozen languages around the world. He is the host of the acclaimed litblog The Elegant Variation (a Forbes Magazine Best of the Web pick and Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog) and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. His criticism has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Threepenny Review and elsewhere.

Mark Thwaite: What first drew you to blogging?

Mark Sarvas: I was fascinated by the early litblogs like Maud Newton's and The Literary Saloon, where there was an exciting conversation unfolding, a conversation I wanted to be part of. I also thought that I offered a few things -- a focus on the Los Angeles literary scene, a less NY-dominated sensibility -- that I hadn't really seen elsewhere. 

And, of course, I wanted to champion some of my favorites, writers I hadn't seen discussed elsewhere -- Johns Banville and Berger, folks like that.

MT: What do you most get out of it?

MS: Stimulating exchanges and an ongoing conversation with smart, literate people from all around the world. I've gotten to know novelists I admire, I've emailed and argued with critics I esteem, and I've created an online space -- as the biggest litblog with an open comments policy -- for people to come discuss and disagree. I continue to learn as much from my readers (if not more) than they learn from me.

MT: What are your favourite blogs?

MS: Gosh, that seems to change depending on the day. But there are the stalwarts -- the aforementioned Maud Newton and the Literary Saloon; I admire what Dwight Garner has done with Papercuts at the NY Times. (I feel like the Guardian blogs are still sort of finding their way, but coming along.) 

My current favorite is Wyatt Mason's Sentences over at Harpers -- it's a fascinating window into the mind of a smart and gifted critic and it's become an essential read. 

In the UK, I have always been partial to ReadySteadyBook, of course (and anyone who's read me knows I'm not just saying that), as well as This Space and Splinters.

MT: What are you reading right now?

MS: I've actually devoted my summer to a targeted reading project, which is to take in as much of Philip Roth's backlist as I can get to. (There's a post about it here on my blog) It's actually a response to something Mason wrote about a few weeks ago, to do with how much of a prolific author's work is a reviewer obligated to know. Since I've just been assigned the new Roth to review, it seemed an opportunity to weigh in on the question, and to pull the curtain back a bit on my own reviewing methods. Beyond that, I am reading some books in preparation for my appearance at the Melbourne Writers Festival, where I will be moderating a panel including David Francis and Hannah Tinti.



MT: What book(s) that you have read recently do you most recommend?

MS: Netherland. It is an exceptional book, one that I suspect will pass that most elusive test: the test of time, of lasting value. It is a post 9/11 meditation on exclusion and otherness, an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion brilliantly illuminates the question of belonging. I can't recommend it highly enough, and have not stopped thinking about it -- or dreaming of it -- since I put it down weeks ago.

 

(If you would like to see a particular book blogger up here on our What on a Wednesday slot, just email me at editor AT bookdepository.co.uk and let me know who you'd like to see featured. You can even nominate yourself!)

 

 

P.D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of the Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award. She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991.

It is a huge thrill today to present P.D. James's Tuesday Top Ten:

It is impossible to name my ten absolute favourite books, so much depends on my mood at the moment of choice. A full list would almost certainly include biography and autobiography, but here are ten novels which I continue to re-read with great pleasure:



Emma by Jane Austen

A brilliantly-constructed novel which is my favourite book by my favourite writer. 



Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

This is comfort reading -- witty, funny and taking me into a fascinating world grounded in the author's personal experience.



Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers remains one of my favourite writers of detective stories and this novel, set in an advertising agency, is very much of its age.



Tragedy at Law by Cyril Hare

Cyril Hare was a judge and his elegantly-written detective stories all feature some aspect of the law. Tragedy at Law (sadly, out of print) is overwhelmingly his best book and I return to it with great pleasure.



The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

This novel, which T.S. Eliot described as the first, the longest and the best of modern detective stories, has had a profound influence on the genre and holds its power.



The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

Graham Greene is one of the writers who influenced me as a novelist. It is difficult to choose my favourite of his books, but this is one I particularly admire.



A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh is a supreme craftsman of prose from whom I have learnt a great deal and, again, it has been difficult to make a choice among his works.



The Small House At Allington by Anthony Trollope

In all his novels, Anthony Trollope provides a distinctive world into which we can enter for our solace and pleasure and I return to this novel frequently despite the fact that I find its heroine, Lily Dale, rather tiresome.



The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

This was among the first books I read as a child and it was immensely reassuring. No matter what childhood fears beset me, I could mess about with Rat on the river and, with Mole, take refuge in his riverside sanctum, secure from all the dangers of the Wild Wood.



Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

It seems appropriate to include a favourite detective story by a modern writer and C.J. Sansom, a historian of the Tudor period, has created a memorable character in his lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake. The sights, smells and sounds of a fascinating but terrifying age seem to rise from the page. 

Ooh, very, very exciting times here at The Book Depository ... and The Bookseller have more news on our ongoing plans for world domination!!

The Book Depository is planning to expand internationally with country-specific websites, following the appointment of former BookRabbit m.d. Kieron Smith as its new managing director.

The Book Depository c.e.o. Andrew Crawford told The Bookseller: "We really want to become a world bookseller, and will be working in this direction over the next three to four years."

He said the retailer, which has annual sales of £40m, planned country-specific websites, with country-specific pricing, product and content. "The primary focus for the next three to four months will be on getting a new commercial website up and running for the UK and US."

The company has also employed the six other BookRabbit employees made redundant from the ArgentVive-owned online retailer last month.

Social networking books site BookRabbit launched in March, backed by Charles Denton's ArgentVive group, but in July it made six staff redundant, including Smith, saying that it needed extra investment and had an "unproven revenue model".

Smith said he hoped to launch "lots of exciting ideas" over the next 12 months. Crawford founded The Book Depository in 2004.

Each week, here on Editor's Corner, I quickly run through the latest issue of the Bookseller magazine and pick out the bits and pieces of book industry news that catch my eye.

This week The Book Depository's plans for the future were announced in a couple of articles in the Bookseller, including the news that 7 new staff have joined our ranks. Check out last Thursday's blog. Here is a quick round-up of other book stuff culled from the pages of last Friday's 22nd August issue:

• "Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl have been named the nation's best-loved writers, beating J K Rowling into third place."


• "Since launching in January 2004, the 82 titles featured on the 10 "Richard & Judy" Book Clubs and Summer Reads have had sales of more than £158 million through Nielsen BookScan, 2.1% of the total UK book market."


• Rankin knocks Barclay off number one: "After six consecutive weeks at number one, Linwood Barclay's No Time for Goodbye has been dethroned by Orion compatriot Ian Rankin's Exit Music".


• "Faber's UK and US arms have made their first joint acquisition, obtaining the world English-language rights to a collection of short stories and a novel by Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah."


• "W H Smith has become the second bookseller after Borders to stock the iRex iLiad e-book reader. The device is on sale on W H Smith's website for £399 and comes with 50 books preloaded."


• "The success of Stephenie Meyer's fourth Twilight series novel, Breaking Dawn, stands to tilt the balance of power in the publishing industry in India and bring release dates in the country in line with global standards."


• "Waterstone's is to take control of eight Books Etc stores in London from Borders UK, increasing its presence in Greater London to nearly 50 branches."


• "Ian Rankin, Kate Mosse and Gervase Phinn are among the big names due to write Quick Reads for World Book Day 2009 (5th March)."


• Lonely Planet "is to make its books content available via Nokia Maps. The move means travellers can purchase and download the publisher's city guides for £5.99 on their Nokia phones".


• "The inaugural Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition was awarded to Kate Miller for her poem "After the Ban" at the Edinburgh International Book Festival."


• "The authors of On Her Majesty's Service - a book which claimed that Salman Rushdie was nicknamed "Scruffy" by his police protection officers - have admitted there were falsehoods in the manuscript and have made amendments accordingly, according to Rushdie's lawyer. The publisher, John Blake, hopes to release a revised version of the book next week."


• "For the first time, UK mobile phone users will be able to download free extracts from titles selected for this year's Man Booker prize when the shortlist is announced on 9th September."

 

If this gorgeous book doesn't inspire you to get back into the kitchen, find some flour, yeast, water, and start baking then I really don't know what will:

In an age of convenience-driven shopping habits, The Baker explains how and why we should take the time and the care to select, make and use the best-quality ingredients for baking. Recipes cover a whole range of baking, including delicious breads, muffins, cakes, pies, tarts and biscuits.

Today's Guest Blog is by Jon Smith. Jon is the Managing Director of Espressio Ltd, part of The Book Depository Group and author of The Bloke's Guide To Pregnancy and Get into Bed with Google.

Jon: Due to incredible growth, The Book Depository is expanding. Our ranks have been swollen by not one, but seven new members of staff who have joined the Windsor, UK, office this month.

Kieron Smith, previously MD of BookRabbit, Head of Online at Waterstone's and GAME Stores Group, with over 12 years' book industry experience working for WHSmith Retail, Ottakar's and BCA, will be taking the position of Managing Director of The Book Depository, reporting to our CEO Andrew Crawford.

Will Jones, previously IT Director of BookRabbit, IT Solutions Manager at Waterstone's and worked at Internet Consultancy Conchango, will be taking the role of IT Director of The Book Depository.

Kwen Wan, previously Design Director at BookRabbit, Lead Designer at GAME, with a huge amount of design experience will become Design Director for The Book Depository.

Steve Potter, who was Commercial Trading Manager at BookRabbit, and before that at EUK in DVD buying and WHSmith Travel, will be joining as Commercial Trading Manager of The Book Depository.

Also joining are Developers Rob Johnson, Tony Dillon and Jason Merry.

Andrew Crawford, CEO, commented that: "The Book Depository has seen fantastic growth in customers and sales over the last three years and we need to expand to support both new initiatives and push forward the sales and marketing of BookDepository.co.uk."

 

Victoria Hoyle and Nic Clarke are two of the main bloggers behind the popular Eve's Alexandria.

Victoria is currently training to be an archivist at the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research, and is as surprised as everyone else by her sudden vocation. She lives in York with her partner and two guinea pigs. She does not believe in word limits. 

Nic Clarke lives in Oxford, where she is using the dwindling remnants of her DPhil funding (medieval Islamic history, if you were wondering) to assemble the world's largest pile of books to be read.

Mark Thwaite: What first drew you to blogging?

Vicky: I'd kept a personal blog for several years while I was a student but hadn't heard of dedicated 'book blogs' until I found Book World. I stumbled on it while searching for intelligent, non-mainstream comment about books. I was so tired of the same old print media and was on the hunt for a good online forum for literary debate. Straight away it struck me as a brilliant idea: ordinary bibliophiles speaking out. Why not? At the same time I was also missing my best friends from university. We'd spent many a day discussing books and visiting bookshops together, and it seemed a shame to stop just because we'd scattered to the four corners of Britain. Eve's Alexandria came into being as a place to keep up with each other's reading, opinions and literary foibles. It turned into a review blog quite by accident.

Nic: Sometimes I suspect it's simply because I like the sound of my own (virtual) voice! I kept a personal blog for some years in an effort to preserve my university experience (and, undoubtedly, for procrastination), but found myself moving more and more towards more general discussion and reviewing. There are only so many ways you can talk about "Last night, in the pub..." after all. When Vicky suggested the blog it seemed obvious: I love books and I love holding forth about them.

MT: What do you most get out of it?

Vicky: Firstly, I'm a far better reader when I pick up a book with a review for EA in mind. Blogging forces me to read with intent. All the time I'm reading I'm keeping quotes and themes in the back of my mind; I'm truffling through the book for the good, the bad and the not quite right. I don't suppose this is for everybody. Some bloggers are actively against this sort of literary dissection, but I like nothing better than really digging about in a text. I want my posts to combine my personal response with a more formal critique, and I feel that I get far more from the reading experience because of it.  And then there is the very high standard of debate around posts. Being a book blogger is like taking part in a top-class literature seminar, the sort you always dream of having at university.

Nic: Books, holding forth, and -- as Victoria says -- being a much better reader. I had reviewed books before, in print, but soon found the great virtue of writing online: I didn't have to squeeze my views into 300 words. Blogging about books gives scope both to go into more detail -- which, of course, made me read in more detail -- and to let my discussion range more widely, bringing in more context, for example. As a historian, I'm all about context, particularly since I regularly talk about Classical and medieval works.

MT: What are your favourite blogs?

Vicky: There are too many excellent book blogs to name them all, but there are six that I visit most days: A Work in Progress, dovegreyreader, Other Stories, Of Books and Bicycles, So Many Books and Torque Control (the latter to keep me up to date with all the SF genre news). I can always guarantee that there will be something interesting and provocative to read at each of these blogs. I only wish that I had the time and the energy to produce their output! I also very much enjoy and respect John Self's reviews at Asylum, and I go to Bookslut on a weekly basis to pick through the acerbic Jessa Crispin's links. 

Nic: I love reading other blogs when I get the time, because they so frequently prompt me to look at the books under discussion in a fresh way. I'll second all Vicky's choices, particularly Bookslut and Torque Control, plus The Elegant Variation and ReadySteadyBook for links to great things I wouldn't otherwise come across. I also really enjoy the ever-insightful and perceptive Tales from the Reading Room, the razor-sharp Asking the Wrong Questions (not exclusively concerned with books, but always a compelling read), and the frighteningly well-read Larry's OF Blog of the Fallen. Aqueduct Press has an excellent blog about books, feminism, and politics.

     

MT: What are you reading right now?

Vicky: I just finished Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of a Marriage and, unlike our esteemed host, didn't think it was all bad. Cliched in parts, yes; mawkish, occasionally; contrived, absolutely; but also rather beautifully written and tenderly expressed. I've moved on to something entirely different now, The Book of Love by Sarah Bower, an extremely sexy historical novel set in the fifteenth century papal court ruled over by the Borgias and Diane Purkiss' The Civil War: A People's History. The jury is currently out on the latter, while I'm unabashedly enjoying the former. Also, I'm now eighteen pages into my second attempt at James Joyce's Ulysses. Eeep! is all I have to say on that score.

 

Nic: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, the first of three giant historical fiction tomes, collectively known as The Baroque Cycle. As the title would suggest, the setting is late 17th/early 18th-century Europe (and America); the central concern is the rise of empirical, rationalist science, but the narrative ranges across politics, social change, eating habits, travel, piracy, war and much else besides.

Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, is a collection of short stories that play with the conventions of genre and register - aiming to be art, as the editors put it, "between the cracks". I love short fiction, and some of my favourite writers of it, like Catherynne Valente, are here.

 

MT: What book(s) that you have read recently do you most recommend?

Vicky: For non-fiction: Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, because we should all try to eat with a cleaner conscience, and Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream, because the erosion of women's status in the media industry in the last decade is too shocking to ignore.

For fiction: I urge people to try the science fiction of Elizabeth Bear. I've just read several of her novels for review and was mightily impressed by the likes of Undertow, which demonstrates once and for all that, yes, women can write hard SF, quantum theory and all. I also recommend reading some Patrick O'Brian, post-haste, for about the millionth time – his Aubrey-Maturin novels are the works of a master, fictional indulgences that really are good for you. And finally, because I've already gone over my word limit on this question and may as well, I'd like to throw Anthony Trollope into the mix because, honestly, what is life without a fat Victorian tome to haul around. I read Can You Forgive Her? earlier this year and was instantly converted to the Trollopian cult. Phineas Finn, here I come.

Nic: I recently(ish) finished Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, and I'm still in awe. Just the best historical fiction I've ever read: fiercely intelligent, beautifully written, rich in detail without ever getting bogged down (or sentimental), and uncompromisingly committed to telling a great story that arises from the mores and modes of the setting, rather than imposing a modern story on the past.

Peter Brown's The Body and Society is a dazzling, dizzying survey of Late Antique (that is, roughly, 3rd-7th centuries) thought on sexuality and physicality in the eastern Mediterranean. A fascinating portrait of a world in continual flux and re-negotiation, rather than the straightforward transition of 'Roman' to 'Christian', 'Classical' to 'Medieval', that we might expect.

 

Fiona Dunlop is the author of the critically acclaimed New Tapas in which she explores Spain’s best tapas bars and, more recently, Medina Kitchen, which features the best of home cooking in North Africa. For her latest book Viva La Revolucion!, she spent many months travelling in Mexico, tasting the food and talking to the locals. She writes regularly for the Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph, Observer and Olive magazine and has written several books, including many travel guides.



Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh

These "notes on a vanishing landscape" paint a shocking picture of the occupation of the West Bank over the last few years. The writer, a Palestinian lawyer in Ramallah, describes how the landscape, people and their lives have been radically effected in an unemotional yet incisive tome.



The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

An incredibly moving book, dictated by the author, a former magazine editor, after he suffered a massive stroke. Although "locked-in", Bauby was completely compos mentis and with his left eye-lid only, laboriously blinked this autobiography to a patient assistant. An example of the force of the human spirit, with humour and lucidity.



Kandahar Cockney by James Fergusson

An Afghan flees to London, helped by a journalist he met in his home country. This true story is a delight, deftly mixing humour and the plight of immigrants into an engaging narrative. The author is not out to prove anything, just to describe the ins and outs of survival and some typical characters in this most multi-cultural of cities.



Golden Earth by Norman Lewis

He's the consummate travel-writer: self-effacing, incredibly observant, dryly funny, ever informative. I could recommend almost every one of his books, but this is the one I travelled with most recently, to Burma. His late 1940s descriptions of places and characters still hold today.



In Light of India by Octavio Paz

This little known book by the great Mexican author-poet-essayist, Octavio Paz, brings together my two favourite countries: Mexico and India. While Mexican Ambassador to India in the 1960s, Paz delved deep below the surface and, a few decades later, in 1995, produced this brilliant analysis of history and spirituality.



Justine by Lawrence Durrell

I revisited this pre-war classic recently and was bowled over by Durrell's scintillating literary style - pure joy to read. 1930s Alexandria comes alive together with the social and sexual shenanigans of a cosmopolitan community, including the superbly ambivalent character of Justine. The first, and many think the best, of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.



Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

When someone is dubbed "brave" it's often a euphemism for "well tried". This book is far more, both courageous and brilliant. Time becomes elastic in these stories of four sisters at different points in their lives, set against a changing, violent background of West Africa (the author is from Sierra Leone). Forna has immense depth and empathy as well as beautiful style.



The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle

A tale of Mexican wetbacks - illegal immigrants - trying desperately to achieve the good life, that illusory American Dream, only to find rejection and hardship. In the opposite court is a liberal middle-class American couple making a somewhat obvious social juxtaposition. But Boyle cleverly manages tears and laughter and a sense of the authentic.



Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

A Scottish cabin-boy is washed up on the coast of 19th century Queensland and taken in by an Aboriginal community. His subsequent confrontation with white settlers brings up deep questions of communication, language and the nature of civilisation, set in the stillness of the outback. Malouf, an Australian writer of Lebanese origin, subtly explores the essentials of life.



We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I couldn't put down this gripping and controversial book. Seering, moving, perceptive, it looks at how a child killer a la Colombine Massacre came to be. In simplistic terms it's nature versus nurture. But Shriver is far more subtle than that, showing us, through the mother's perspective, how life is never black and white. At a second level, it's about women's choices.

 

Each week, here on Editor's Corner, I quickly run through the latest issue of the Bookseller magazine and pick out the bits and pieces of book industry news that catch my eye.

This quick round-up of book stuff is culled from the pages of last Friday's 15th August issue:

• Transworld’s Giles Elliot "has bought a book by British cyclist Mark Beaumont, who earlier this year became the fastest person ever to cycle around the world. The Hard Way Round is scheduled for publication in June 2009".


• Amazon's Kindle e-book reader "will sell more than 380,000 in 2008, according to analysts at CitiGroup", reports The Register. Analyst Mark Mahaney added that "a Kindle is going to be the must-have item for this Christmas".


• Cambridge University Press "has acquired history publisher Archive Editions for an undisclosed sum".


• US presidential candidate Barack Obama is publishing another book. Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise, will be published on 9th September.


• Russell T. Davies, Jenni Murray and Penny Jordan are among the speakers lined up for this October's 11-day Manchester Literature Festival.


• Print costs in China "have reached "unprecedented" levels, raising concerns that new titles could be delayed or cancelled".


• Miramax Film "has sued British writer and Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson for breach of contract for failing to deliver a promised novel".


• Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, "has been voted the book of the year by reading groups, reports the Guardian, with his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, in second place".


• Waterstone's "is top of the online specialist booksellers, according to the Retail Bulletin's latest rankings of 100 online retail sites".


• A judge in America "has started to hear motions from Amazon and Booklocker in the class-action suit that Booklocker filed against Amazon".


• "The owner of London Docklands based independent The Riverside Bookshop, Sylvia Ridgewell, has retired after 21 years in the trade".


• A new literary review website, LitMob.com, has entered the scene. "It will only review books that the founders feel "their readers will enjoy", books for the "discerning reader"".


• Nielsen Book "is to exclude e-books from its database that do not comply with the International ISBN Agency standard that each different format of an electronic publication has a separate ISBN".


• New York-based writer Ceridwen Dovey "has picked up two South African literary awards in the same weekend. Dovey, who grew up in South Africa and Australia, won the 2008 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the 2007 University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing for her debut novel Blood Kin".


• Efforts are under way, reports the Times, "to return the short story to its former status in the UK" with two short story awards already in place.


• Sainsbury's is set to target book buyers "unlocking the "massive potential" of its customer footfall in order to increase the number of people buying books".

The price of food just keeps on going up and up -- what to do!?

Well, if you don't fancy foraging around the local forest for free food, and if becoming a freegan seems a step too far, perhaps you should try John Harrison's down-to-earth guide that takes you through the vegetable year:

Whatever the size of your garden or allotment, you can grow your own vegetables. Even if you only have a balcony or a small paved area outside your kitchen, you can grow more than you ever thought possible in pots, containers and raised beds.

Experienced vegetable grower, John Harrison takes you through the entire vegetable year so that, for all the main vegetables, you’ll know exactly when you should sow your seeds, dig your plot and harvest your crops.

Choose the most appropriate vegetables for your particular soil and select the right position so that they flourish. Discover how to make your own compost and organic fertilisers, as well as the best methods of controlling pests. Find out how to extend the season by buying or building your own cloches and cold frames.

Put an end to worries that your shop-bought vegetables contain chemical residues or to concerns about the air miles such vegetables have flown en route to your table!

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, they have announced the launch of the Diagram of Diagrams - a public vote to find the oddest book title of the past 30 years!

I was quite disappointed to learn that Cheese Problems Solved lost out in this year's prize to If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs, and that The Joy of Chickens, the 1980 winner, is no longer in print. Shame. A special book covering the history of the Diagram Prize entitled How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books will be published in September.

The winner will be officially announced on Friday, 5th September, and anyone and everyone can vote online here.

Philip Stone, Charts Editor at The Bookseller said:

"The Diagram Prize seems to be getting bigger each year. There's something joyfully fascinating about the public's own fascination for something unique and quirky, and our annual prize is just that. We received more votes for the award earlier this year than the recent "Booker of Booker" poll. I think that tells its own story."

"It's overwhelming; incredibly emotional to dig through my substantial archive of press cuttings and public correspondences regarding the prize. To look over the last thirty years of the prize - has it really been that long? - I am reminded of so many of my personal favourites; both the winners and the nearly made-its, including our first ever winner, Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

"In fact, in 1993, I arranged a 15-year "Oddest of the Odd" prize, which was won by Nude Mice. Given Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children picked up another "Booker of Booker" prize, perhaps Nude Mice is the early favourite.

"The public will decide. Although, let it be known, I'm still not entirely convinced about opening up the prize up to the public. Their debased vulgarity has been responsible for electing many a nudge-winker a winner in recent years, most notably High Performance Stiffened Structures in 2000, and The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories in 2003."

The prestigious prize was first conceived by The Diagram Group's Bruce Robertson as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Run by Horace Bent, the first ever winner was the aforementioned The University of Tokyo Press' Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, in 1978.

Earlier this year, the prize received extensive coverage in the media, both nationally and internationally, and after a close-run contest and 8,500 public votes cast, Cheese Problems Solved and I Was Tortured By The Pygmy Love Queen were beaten by If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs (by "Big Boom").

Prime Minister Gordon Brown opened the 25th Anniversary Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday. Held in the Charlotte Square Gardens, just off the West end of Princes Street, the event runs this year from 9 - 25 August.

Calling itself "the world's biggest public celebration of the written word", the Book Festival hosts a "concentrated flurry of cultural and political talks and debates, along with its well-established children's events programme... offering 750 events featuring over 800 authors this year, from the profound to the light-hearted there truly is something for every taste and age."

 

Marcia Jarnell aka Lizzy Siddall originates from Lancashire and her blog is Lizzy's Literary Life.

After a decade in Germany, she has been based in Scotland for the last 20 years. Marcia works in IT and says her "well-deserved leisure time is mostly spent with her nose in a book - the paper and ink kind. No e-books for me!"

Mark Thwaite: What first drew you to blogging Marcia?

Marcia Jarnell: I started keeping a reading diary when I began participating in on-line discussion forums. All my notes in one place; an invaluable memory-jogger which allowed me to write more than the "I love it, I hate it" types of comment. The inevitable happened and I lost my notebook. So, using the alliteration enabled by my online identity, Lizzy's Literary Life was created as a reading journal it would be impossible to lose - with weekly backups, of course. It would be a sin to let all that IT training go to waste! 

MT: What do you most get out of it?

MJ: My family are all non-readers.  Blogging has introduced me to a community of people who love literature as much as I do. I no longer feel alone ... or weird!

The format of the blog allows me to write longer pieces and thus, I gain a clearer understanding of what I enjoy and why.  I do enjoy the interaction with others, particularly when we don't agree.  (More of which later ...)

MT: What are your favourite blogs?

MJ: I don't surf much, spending enough time online as it is. Thus the bookblogs I visit frequently tend to be those of other What on A Wednesday interviewees. 

It struck me the other week that during the 4 years of my German degree, all the literature I studied was written by men. Apart from Christa Wolf, I couldn't name another German female writer. Anyway, thanks to lovegermanbooks, I now have a list of contemporary German authoresses.

Germany is also the subject of my favourite non-bookish blog Planet Germany. It brings back many good memories.

I find reading challenges great for flushing forgotten books to the top of Mount TBR and so visit novel challenges fairly frequently. 

 

MT: What are you reading right now?

MJ: With the Edinburgh Book Festival just around the corner, I'm reading books to prepare for the events I shall be attending. Hence Dominique Manotti's Lorraine Connection. It's early days yet but what I can say is that reading her novel is nothing like reading Fred Vargas, her compatriot French partner-in-crime-fiction. I'm also reading Andrew Greig's Romanno Bridge. I always enjoy his work. This is no exception.

     

MT: What book(s) that you have read recently do you most recommend?

MJ: Do you really want to ask me this when we're so at odds regarding Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of A Marriage, which I - er - loved?! Actually there's no other word for it. I found it beautifully written and I really appreciated the tightness of the structure, the timing of the revelations. I simply lost myself in the story.

On a less controversial note, I shall recommend Cathy Dobson's Planet Germany, the book of the blog, to all British expatriates and to all British ex-expatriates for that matter. No, in fact to everyone. It's hilarious.

Devotees of historical crime fiction should make a beeline for R. N. Morris's A Gentle Axe and A Vengeful Longing. Resurrecting Porfiry Petrovich, the detective from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment was a brave move, but he has succeeded magnificently in fleshing out both the character and the city of the time.

 

   

I interviewed Daniel Kalder, author of Lost Cosmonaut and Strange Telescopes, a few weeks back ... And now here is Daniel's Tuesday Top Ten.

Daniel says, "As I discussed Diary of a Loser in the interview I've skipped it here. The top six are pretty much permanent features in my personal pantheon, the last four open to rotation..."



The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

The late Philip K. Dick wrote far too many books, and if your first encounter with his work is, say, The Zap Gun, you will probably wonder what all the fuss is about. The Three Stigmata however is Dick at his best, writing in his golden period, before God invaded his mind with a pink laser beam (though some of the books written after that experience are great too). How can I even begin to describe what it's about? A group of settlers on Mars in the near future escape their dreary lives by meditating on a set of Barbie type dolls while under the influence of a hallucinogenic that allows them to collectively "become" the dolls. Then Palmer Eldritch returns from deep space with a new drug which allows the user to become God in his very own cosmos in a hallucination that never ends. The only problem is that Eldritch starts infiltrating these new creations, which become infinite nightmares. Much weirdness ensues in a masterpiece of social satire and metaphysical speculation. It also features literature's only talking robot psychiatrist suitcase. 



The Devils by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky is about as good as it gets in my view: profound, but also exciting and eminently readable. This wild book makes the work of his British contemporaries look like very thin gruel indeed. The tone radically shifts about 200 pages in as Dostoevsky abruptly stopped writing a satire on Russian liberals to go on the offensive against the destructive forces he (accurately) believed were massing on the horizon. What emerges is a scabrous book, full of vicious but often hilarious personal attacks on his enemies, that also contains terrifying depictions of human evil, and insights into the totalitarian personality that are unmatched today. Dismissed as reactionary ranting by his contemporaries, his awful predictions were proven correct. As a study of radicalism and terror it remains absolutely pertinent today. 



Soul by Andrey Platonov (translated by Robert Chandler)

Platonov is considered by many to have been the greatest Russian writer of the 20th century, though he died in obscurity and remains much less well known than (say) Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov today. Dzhan (the horrible title Soul was applied to the book by a publisher convinced that British readers fear foreign words) is set in Soviet Turkmenistan in the 1930s and is the tale of a young man who returns to the desert from Moscow to lead his abandoned tribe to happiness. Needless to say, he struggles. The translator, Robert Chandler, is a hero of literature for bringing this exceedingly non-commercial work to a public that largely ignores his efforts. He renders Platonov's famously unique Russian into eerie, dislocated English that is very powerful. Apparently many Central Asian authors consider this one of the best books ever written about the region, even though Platonov spent mere months there.  



The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol (translated by Pevear/Volokhonsky)

The Nose and The Overcoat are the best short stories ever written. Nobody has ever come up with anything like them: weird, slippery, funny, tragic, baffling, manic and surreal 100 years before the term was invented. I used to live near the house where Gogol burned the manuscript of Dead Souls II and would visit occasionally to pay homage to an authentic mad genius.

 



Labyrinths by Borges 

There's not much to say about this book as it is very famous and very, very good. Borges' ability to suggest an entire alternative reality in a few pages is unparalleled; I also like his mythical, metaphysical books and libraries. He was extremely erudite, but never dull or tedious. And, like Kafka, he has an excellent surname. 



Lobster Boy by Fred Rosen

An accidental classic, this grim little book tells the tragic, tawdry, true tale of Grady Stiles Jr., a sideshow freak who was murdered by his own wife after a lifetime of inflicting cruelty. Fred Rosen peers into the dying world of the travelling carnival and exposes a hitherto unknown realm of bizarre characters and misery. Along the way he shows us squalid landscapes and lives we never see described in "quality" literature. The turgid prose only heightens the effect. You will want to shower after reading. 



The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (translated by Robin Buss)

For sheer storytelling pleasure The Count cannot be beaten, even if it is a terrifying 1200 or so pages long. Robin Buss' Penguin translation offers the full unexpurgated text in highly readable English, restoring all the perversion and sadism cut from the 19th century editions. Prisons, trapdoors, secret chambers, plots, revenge, opium dreams, history, humour, terror, madness... Dumas constructed a monumental labyrinth of story. The films are awful, though. 



Siberia by Nikolai Maslov

Every now and then the newspapers discover graphic novels and single out a few for tremendous praise either wrongly (Jimmy Corrigan) or rightly (Persepolis). I wish more people knew about Siberia as it belongs in the latter camp. Siberia was the first Russian graphic novel ever translated into English and it's a phenomenally bleak tale of life in the provincial Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. At the same time it's very beautiful and poignant. The author, a night watchman at a Moscow warehouse, drew it in soft pencils over several years. I read one review by a pampered American critic who felt Maslov's world was so unremittingly nasty, it couldn't be real. Then I gave it to a friend who had grown up in the Russian provinces. She took one look and said "I know these people." Maslov retrieves from oblivion a world unrecorded elsewhere.

 

Among the Believers/Beyond Belief by V.S. Naipaul

I grouped these two books (which record Naipaul's journeys in the converted non-Arab Islamic countries of Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia) as one as they're better read together. The first book was written just after the Iranian revolution, and then he revisited the same places about fifteen years later, in some cases meeting the same people. Both books are truly illuminating - and the story in Beyond Belief of the unrepentant Pakistani Marxist revolutionary who accidentally destroys an entire culture is terrifying. Naipaul is a ferociously original, ruthlessly honest writer. While many authors are careful never to express an opinion that would get them barred from metropolitan dinner parties, Naipaul always follows his thought to its logical end point, and does not shy away from drawing extremely contentious conclusions, no matter how unpopular they might make him. 



Satan Wants Me by Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin is an Islamic scholar who has written several highly acclaimed tomes on aspects of Arabic culture. He is also an excellent novelist who explores the nature of storytelling, and the power (or danger) of dreams and the imagination. I recently re-read all of Irwin's novels and would recommend any of them. Satan Wants Me is his most recent offering: set in the late 1960s, it is the witty, fictional diary of an aspirant occultist and sociology PhD candidate who is also interested in rock music, drugs and young ladies. The book is also notable for reminding us of the existence of the once ubiquitous, now entirely forgotten black magic expert Denis Wheatley. It's almost ten years since Irwin produced a novel: I wish he would write another one.

 

Each week, here on Editor's Corner, I quickly run through the latest issue of the Bookseller magazine and pick out the bits and pieces of book industry news that catch my eye.

We will pass over the scary fact that it is August already -- was it not just January, like, five minutes ago!? -- and get down to the quick round-up of book stuff culled from the pages of last Friday's 8th August issue:

• UK publishers "are beginning to set out their e-book prices in the run-up to the launch of the Sony Reader in September, with only Hachette looking likely to price their digital titles below the price of the printed book"


• John Blake "intends to go ahead with the publication of the biography of former Special Branch officer Ron Evans" -- despite the likelihood of upsetting Sir Salman Rushdie


• booksellers are "preparing themselves for an unexpected Harry Potter extravaganza after the boy wizard's creator J K Rowling decided to publish spin-off title The Tales of Beedle the Bard"


• wholesaler Entertainment UK "has moved to reassure small and independent publishers that it 'continues to be a financially stable business' after some publishers had credit insurance cancelled"


• all 11 of the "published books longlisted for the Man Booker Prize increased their sales in the week of the announcement"


• a "fantastic" fourth quarter "has helped HarperCollins UK grow its full-year sales"...


• ... the publisher is also "eyeing a number of strategic acquisitions"


• BBC Magazines is "to launch a Lonely Planet magazine in the UK later this year"


• Simon & Schuster has revealed "sales were up 17% in a 'wonderful' first half of 2008"


• Japanese books importer Yohan has filed for bankruptcy

Last Sunday night, the Russian dissident, novelist, dramatist and historian Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn died, aged 89, of heart failure: "Through his writings, Solzhenitsyn made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's labour camp system, and for these efforts, Solzhenitsyn was both awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994."

One of his most powerful works is the short, but shocking One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:

This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold - and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.

Google is by far the most popular way to search the internet, but recently I've discovered two new search engines that offer a slightly different service, and that I really like:

Searchme allows you to view your search results as page images rather than text. They say:

"Searchme lets you see what you're searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you'll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you're looking for, before you click through."

"The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up-until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else-three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft."

Kirsty McHugh started her blog Other Stories just over a year ago. Her day job is as a press officer and blogger for academic publisher OUP. At night she is studying for an MA in Victorian Studies. Kirsty lives in Oxford with her musician boyfriend and two extremely neurotic black cats. 

Mark Thwaite: What first drew you to blogging Kirsty?

Kirsty McHugh: I truly was a geeky teenager who only had three real interests: books, the internet, and heavy metal. When I was about 14 I started playing around with building very basic websites – and I mean very basic – about bands I was into at the time. These went through various incarnations and levels of success until I went to university when the whole website thing basically went completely out the window. About three years ago I started thinking about building them again, but by that time blogging had come along and I started looking into that instead, and found myself really interested in the whole thing – both reading and writing them. The first blog I made was purely a diary thing – I would talk about books but I by no means concentrated on them. Then I decided that my blog should have a focus and it dawned on me that since books and feminism are what I most enjoy and am interested in, then of course books and feminism were what I should write about. And lo! Other Stories (the name from Ali Smith's Other Stories and Other Stories) was born!

MT: What do you most get out of it?

KM: The chance to talk about the things I care about on a grand scale. Also, the camaraderie between bloggers is something I wasn't expecting but was delighted to discover – I now have a handful of bloggy friends that I email regularly. Of course it's also satisfying to see my stats climb, and I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that I was indifferent to getting free review copies from publishers! I mean really! Free books! But seriously, if someone went out and got a copy of a book I love on the basis of reading what I had to say, then I'd be pretty chuffed.

MT: What are your favourite blogs?

KM: Dovegrey Reader is my first stop every morning. I've lost count of the number of books I've bought on her recommendation! I love A Salted because of Sara's acerbic humour and tales from the bookshop in which she works, which remind me of the fours years I spent working in Waterstone's in Glasgow. Also, she introduced me to Lorrie Moore, who I now love. Vulpes Libris is another essential book blog. Moving away from books, I can't get enough of The F Word blog, which is my favourite UK feminism blog. From the other side of the pond, then I urge anyone interested in feminism to check out Feministe. Finally, my most recent favourite blogs are Freelance Mum and the always hilarious Photoshop Disasters.

     

MT: What are you reading right now?

KM: