I never did find first sentences easy to write, the solution I've found is to steal someone else's words; I can resist anything but temptation.  (Stolen from Oscar Wilde, in case anyone has spent their formulative years having a life instead of geeking on quotes)  The temptation he was referring to isn't one I'm inclined to myself, but every man to his poison and my poison is book stores.  I love the fact that you can travel anywhere without leaving the store, to any place or time period.  The great thing about books is that there are so many there is something for everyone.

The biggest news in publishing for the past year or two, however, has been the Richard and Judy book club.  Now, I have nothing against Richard and Judy, they seem good, nice people; not working class but not middle class enough to make anyone uncomfortable.  However, I can't figure out the book club.  It just seems like reading for people who are indifferent to reading, it has the feel of one big marketing pitch, it's a very successful one and I'm glad some authors have made good money from it, but it still just feels like selling.

I watched it this evening, not wishing to criticise it out of hand, and it was much as suspected.  It wasn't criticism, it was nice people saying nice things about a book which I assume is nice.  No one offered any criticism, yet at the same time you can tell by the way they speak that the book was just another book, it wasn't one of those books.  I much prefer Newsnight Review where you can guarantee not everyone will play nice and you'll find out more about what the book is really like.

If you're going to choose a handful of books to big-up for the year they should be every last one of them books that make people love them or hate them.  No one ever put books like For Whom The Bell Tolls down and were indifferent.  I want to hear what it really made people feel, what it really made them think, I want to know if it made them fall in love or if it tore out their heart, I want a real opinion. 

This isn't to say that you don't get some good books on the list, I mean, William Boyd - Restless made the cut and Boyd is a fantastic writer. It just feels like it's all a sales pitch and one that is potentially damaging for the book market.  You get eight or nine books selling half a million copies, but what about everyone else who have now even less chance of being seen in the shop when the best places are hogged by rows of Book Club stickered books?

It leaves me divided because one the one side it gets some people reading who probably wouldn't read otherwise and helps them find books, that is a really good thing.  But it just seems like it is somehow negative, it seems less about the books themselves and it removes the element of choice.  It takes out the joy of finding a book you've never heard of in the shop, or of reading a review and thinking "yes, that sounds right for me." It makes for a whole lot of sheep going to buy what they're told is good and degrades the medium to that of a pop chart.

I know this probably makes me an unbearable book snob, but at least I'm honest about it, right? What do you all think?