So, I finally completed the self-publishing process for my book.  It's now available to buy, which I find a touch unnerving.  I was pondering scrapping the whole project but I decided in that blissful post bacon-sandwich moment of joy that I should just bite the bullet and click publish.  It's irreversible now, it's on sale, it'll soon be in the Bowker's Books in Print list and on Amazon. All decisions should be made after eating, they're so much easier then.

The story is about an English Attaché in St Petersburg while they're preparing the triple entente treaty.  A lady friend over hears a conversation that sets in train a sequence of events that threaten the lives of the Imperial family and the future of Europe.  (Cliché alert, huh?).  Anyway, it's my attempt at writing an old fashioned adventure, suitable for all ages; I like this idea because I love books like Kidnapped, Prisoner of Zenda, etc, that are just good fun whether you're fourteen or forty.  

Anyway, some kind (silly) people had suggested they'd be interested in reading it and perhaps even owning a copy.  It's now available to buy online here.  It'll take a while longer to filter onto Amazon etc.  If anyone does want to read it, that would be awesome - if you like it it was all me, if you hate it, um, blame the cat.  I also have a copy of the download file so if anyone wants to read it I can e-mail you it free and gratis.

I'm still unsure about it's merits, I am not really proud of it and can't decide if this is just because I'm very critical of things I do (and I've now been through it three or four times and am sick of the sight of it!) or because it's actually claptrap.  I guess it's just impossible to judge your own work impartially, some people think they're the best thing in the world, others struggle to find merit in what they do.  At any rate, I feel like I've learned a lot and expect my next one to be better.

(Naturally this being an "anonymous" blog, I'll be taking the link and picture down in a few days!)

Inspired by Booksplease

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

Odd that this would be the BTT this week!  My earliest memories of the library is doing the summer reading competitions where you used to get stamps for every book you read and for every review you wrote. I mainly just took out The Hardy Boys and Tin Tin books though, both of which I loved and took out many times.  I couldn't wait to outgrow the children's library.  You could get a grown up card when you were 12 and use the real library.

Back then the lending library was great, the whole room was full of bookshelves, all in rows, all organised in glorious Dewey Decimal.  The shelves were tall too, it was even a stretch for adults to get to some books.  There were tens of thousands on every imaginable subject and I used to go regularly and take out as many as they would let me.  It felt very bookish, if that makes sense.

This is the main reason for my dislike of the town's library now - what the heck happened to all the books? The shelves are only half the height they used to be - literally they're like four foot tall so you can see the whole room instead of getting lost in books - there are less of them, and they're no longer in rows so everything is hard to find.  I can't stand it and think they're ruined the place by taking the emphasis a bit off the books, instead of feeling like wall to wall books it feels more spacious and less bookish.  (It's a library people, if you don't like books don't go there.)  Anyway, it makes little odds as I can't seem to help buying books nowadays so just read what I buy.

I think non-council run libraries may be the way to go, at least where they're available. Hence my previously mentioned love of the lit and phil - dusty jackets, ladders to get to the top shelves, books on an unimaginable range of topics - that's the stuff.

I'm sure, learned readers, that you're all familiar with the tale of Cleopatra and Caesar.  Caesar went to Alexandria to withdraw a book from the library, he bumped into Cleopatra in the anthropology section and had embarked on a short conversation when one of the librarians, named Ptolemy XIII, requested he leave.  He did as he was bade but returned in 48 BC to vent his anger on Ptolemy and, just in case Ptolemy objected, he took with him his fleet and his legions. The complaints process at Bibliotheca Alexandrina being bureaucratic and frustrating as it was, it took until late in the night for Julius to fill out the forms, he had one of his homeboys light a torch to help him read the small print and the rest, as they say, is history.  In the ensuing firestorm the library, along with 40 000, books was burned.

Okay, so there is an outside chance that Plutarch and I have minced the story somewhat, but I'm sure you get the point.  It's not nice to throw people out of the library and doing so can make them rather angry.  I thought it was very magnanimous of me, therefore, to hold my temper and leave quietly when they asked me too, instead of raising my own legion and burning the place down.

If, however, they wish people to treat the place with the respect they would accord to a real library, then they need to raise their game, organise their books properly, sort out their shelves, make sure everyone is quiet.  Why should I be silent like I'm in the reading room at the British Museum while there is a book club going on in one corner, computers whirring away everywhere, people tapping keys, staff talking to customers about books, etc?  If they can conduct their conversations at a reasonable volume level then so can I.  If they do wish I wouldn't then it would be far politer to inform me of the silence policy than to ask me to leave.  Then again, it's far easier to stereotype young men as yobs who don't belong than to engage with them on a civil basis. 

It makes little odds anyway though, I only went in because it rained and my umbrella broke.  If I wanted a real library I'd have went to the Lit and Phil Society Library in Newcastle, where they've oddly enough never had a problem with me.

EDIT - Okay, okay, I was having a bad day.  I shouldn't have been on the phone.  I accept this, I was wrong.  (Though still think it's more correct to ask a person to be quiet than to tell them to leave) Please don't crucify me as I'm not Spartacus and if you do it will mess up my whole Caesar allegory.  (That doesn't mean you can stab me, either.  I was aiming more for pre-Ides of March Caeser.)

Suggested by Miko

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?

Yes, books for me are a great way of escaping to other times and places, not all places I'd like to live, but there are certainly some I'd like too.  I've mentioned before that it would be nice to live in Wodehouse world, it's such a great idea of England, with your club, your valet, stately homes, etc, and the biggest problems you find are getting engaged to to many women.  Brilliant.  Tolstoy's War and Peace is also one that would be livable in, but this is possibly down to the broad range of society he paints in the book, he really builds up a whole scene and emmerses you in character's lives.  Also Anthony Hope's Ruritania in Prisoner of Zenda, you have all the classic ingredients, chivalry, castles, real villains, princesses in need of rescue.  Clearly that is a world I'd enjoy!

Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?

I'd not want to live in the Paris of Les Miserables, it can't have been a nice age to live in, nor for that matter is most of Hemmingway world, such as the Italian front in A Farewell to Arms.

What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?

Interesting question.  Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson, he really couldn't resist adventure and he didn't over analyse characters, so by the time he'd finished my life would be full of cool events and no one would dig to much into my psyche.

In case the ECB's board of selectors are interested I would like to confirm that I am available if required and can start the job immeadiatley.

There are some institutions that shouldn't be messed with.  As Laurence Binyon would say; 'Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.'  They're the things that allow us in these barren years of labour government, with society falling apart at the very seams, hold up our heads and remember there will always be an England.

The Times of London was one such institution.  When you bought it, you weren't just opening your morning paper you were making a stand against the crude vulgarity of the red tops, you were in your own way doing your bit for civilisation.

Then came the compact edition, closely followed by free dvd give aways, marketing ploys, once I even saw a full front page pic of Liza Minelli in Cabaret. Slowly but surely the things that made The Times that cut above the rest were eroded away.  I still love the institution, I still think they have the best cricket coverage, great reportage, etc, it just doesn't seem to be quite so grand anymore, less than the sum of it's parts.  

Yesterday saw the most ghastly example of this yet, the example that saw me pic up my Times to buy it then put it down in disgust and refuse.  Yes, they let Katie 'Jordan' Price write for them.  Not only did they let her contribute but they felt the need to brag about this on the front cover of the paper.  I was black affronted.  

I couldn't quite believe it, it's symptomatic of our society where everything has to pander to the lowest common denominator.  Jordan is inescapable enough as it is, to the extent that I'd already been having a moan with the Waterstone's staff about the fact that they moved the Shakespeare section to make way for multiple copies of her books.  Now I can't even turn to my newspaper to escape her, because apparently stripping naked to turn men on for a living now qualifies you to replace Shakespeare and to write for The Times.

It seems that The Times is joining the avalanche of other media outlets swan diving downwards to appeal to chavus-neanderthalus and so I ask you to join with me and mourn the passing of The Times of London.