Friday, March 02, 2007

The Evil that Lurks in the Heart of Men.
Eergh. Really don't want to waste too much time on this. But we were burgled last night. Some numpty broke in to the shop. Took some money - not even all that much. But it has meant that we didn't open up till lunch time today. Grr.
Yesterday was fantastic. World Book Day which means as much/little as you want it to mean when you work in a bookshop I suppose, was yesterday. And as far as the Pan Bookshop goes this is what it meant. Lots of lovely children from the nearby Park Walk School came to redeem their World Book Day tokens and get the books specially written for them.
Some of the books are fantastic: The Sharing the Shell book and the Selfish Crocodile books are particular faves of mine (I'm not quite the target audience for the Tiara Club).
Oh and while I'm at it, special thanks to Cara/Cora Lovett at Bloomsbury who got me more copies of the Selfish Crocodile book at the last moment.
The whole week has been pretty special. Monday night was - as Julian's blogged - my birthday which I didn't really celebrate. Instead I went along with Charlie and David to sell V. S. Naipaul's books at the Chelsea Arts Club. It's only a shame that he didn't have a brand new book.
And today should resume its normal course fairly soon: we have Allan Mallinson coming in to sign Man of War which by the blurb seems to go into Patrick O'Brian territory. Even if I didn't like the Matthew Hervey novels, I would have read the fourth in the series: The Sabre's Edge.
In fact as I speak, he has just popped in. And recommended Alessandro Barbero's account of Waterloo as one of the best he's ever read. 48 chapters - each of about 1000-1200 words - which in their concision give you a better picture of this battle than you're likely to get anywhere else.
Instead of all of the above, I was going to write about The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril which looks (haven't finished it yet) like a great novel and has a puff from Glen David Gold on the cover. It deals with Lester Dent, L. Ron Hubbard and Walter Gibson. I've never read any of Hubbard's books, but I'm a fan of Dent's Doc Savage (avoid the Ron Ely film which is faithful but terrible) and of Gibson's Shadow - do see the film with Alec Baldwin and Penelope Ann Miller and a cameo from Ian McKellen.
I loved the Shadow not just for the lines which introduced every episode: "Who Knows what Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!" but just the whole atmosphere and actions...
saber

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice to see the Pan bookshop blog back in action. Sorry to hear you are leaving Saber...will try to get in touch with everyone soon.