(Sorry, couldn’t resist that obvious pun for a title. The management wish to make it clear that, actually, DarceysMam has nothing to do with this post.)
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The other week I met DaddyPig for a coffee. We had previously been discussing our choice of preferred authors, and Nick Hornby‘s name had come up. I thought Fever Pitch and High Fidelity were absolutely brilliant; both really did resonate with me. But then my admiration went into a steep decline. I thought About A Boy hinted at some rather worrying attitudes Hornby may have towards women, and I loathed How To Be Good‘s smug faux-liberalism with a passion.
Now, I’ll admit that part of my issues were in trying to square what I liked in the first two’s resemblance to myself, to what I hated about the next two, and what – by logical extension – they might say about me. But I digress … the point is that I gave Hornby one last chance with a borrowed copy of 31 Songs, and it just left me cold: no connection at all. Strange given its subject matter, but there you go.
End result? I gave up on him, and haven’t paid him any attention since.
Anyway, DaddyPig wanted to convince me that in Juliet, Naked there was something of a return to the Hornby form I had previously admired. And as he’d been given more than one copy, he presented me with a spare. Thank you very much; a lovely surprise present, but given how many unread books I have in my bedside cabinet, (including TWO Michael Connellys, goneforeign!) I was unsure when I’d get around to it. As it happened, I found myself in bed early a few nights back, next to a poorly, restless, but sleeping Darcey. I picked up Juliet, Naked a-a-a-n-n-d readitinonesitting. Blimey, it’s 2am, where did that evening go?
And yes, I liked it; I enjoyed it a lot. And the subject matter – as DP had himself pointed out – is particularly apposite for us RR/Spillers. So here’s the deal:
this was a spare copy of a book DaddyPig owns and likes. He gave it to me, I read it and I liked it.
NOW WHO WANTS IT NEXT?
I’ll stand for the postage, or if it’s someone I can actually hand it over to, so much the better. And wait, this offer gets better: I have spare copies of several Christopher Brookmyre novels, so I’ll put one of those in the JiffyBag too. Brookmyre is my personal auto-buy author, and I’m always (if sometimes wrongly – again looking at and apologising to you, goneforeign!) looking to recommend him to people.
Book/author sharing is one of the next logical phases after music for a blog like this, surely, but I’m buggered if I’m going to try DropBoxing novel transcripts!
So, form an orderly queue, and just ask. If he’s in the ‘SpillHaus, I do have to say that ToffeeBoy has a preference voucher to cash in, as I already have a package I need to post to him.
Anyone?
Oh, and of course a further Thank You to DaddyPig for his permission and blessing to do this with the present he gave me.
Have you come across Bookcrossing? I’m prone to the occasional bit of ‘wild releasing’ and have never signed up but it might be a way to track and collate feedback and responses. Great idea
No, TY, I haven’t. Don’t have time now until this evening, but I’ll have look then.
Ta.
I want to read it! I’ve liked pretty much everything I’ve read by Nick Hornby. I’ll probably try to get a copy from the library, though, since I live so far away. Nice post and good idea, DsD.
DsD: Might I suggest that you add a proviso to the gift, the recipient must do the same and pass it on to another Spiller? You might become the Oprah Winfrey of the Spill! This could snowball, think about dubs of CD’s. We could save the postal system from bankruptcy!
Re. Michael Connolly, it really came as a surprise when I learned that you liked him, I somehow had the idea that his readership was mostly California, mostly LA, but of course that’s ridiculous, he’s huge! I read a review of his latest book and instantly went online to the library to reserve it only to find that there was a queue, I was number 435!
I don’t recall the title of his last one but it deals with Harry in Hong Kong looking for his daughter, both my wife and I agreed that it was his weakest
ever and I’ve read ‘em all, so if that’s on your nightstand, there’s no great hurry.
Re. Hornby, sorry for your change of heart, I continue to enjoy him and I particularly enjoy listening to him talk, google him and you’ll probably find some interviews.
I still shudder when I think about the Brookmyre person, wish you hadn’t mentioned him.
I’ve been on the queue for the newest LeCarre for a few months now. It willl probably be my turn in a year or so.
Amy, I was going to offer you my review copy of Our Kind of Traitor (ooh, get me – it was a freebie from a well known UK bookshop chain on the provisio that I later provided a review on their Web site, which I did) but then I remembered that I’ve loaned it to my mother-in-law.
I’ll try and remember to give you a shout when I get it back.
Thanks, Zala! I’ll have to check my reservation and see where i am on the queue, or if the book i even in at the libraries yet. Books by UK and European authors and publishers tend to show up here a bit to a lot later.
Hi, gf.
“Pass it on“? That was of course my intention, but reading back, I didn’t actually suggest it in type, did I?
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I can’t even remember which Connellys are in the bedside cabinet, and I’m not going to risk waking DsMam by looking now! But I’ll let you know later. What I do remember is that I was sucked into becoming a fan by UK publisher Orion’s policy of including the opening couple of chapters of the next book at the end of this one. So having stumbled across The Poet in a random purchase, and enjoyed it, I made a point of going to buy Trunk Music (spoiler warning – remember the police truism that the first person to find a body is the most likely to have been the last one to see them alive!) on the strength of those early chapters.
Or was it the other way round? I can’t be sure of the order, but it was definitely those two novels.
And again, sorrysorrysorry about CB: the defence, m’lud, can only say that the recommendation was done in misplaced good faith.
I wonder whether that publisher habit of putting the first chapter of the next book in at the end is more prevalent in the US? A couple of times now I’ve bought a book over there, read it, read the chapter at the end, and then there’ll be a bit of a pause before I actually get round to buying the next book (or maybe it’s not out in the UK yet) and then I’ll start reading and be convinced I’ve read the book before!
@TFD, I do that, too! I’ve mostly decided that it is A Good Idea to completely ignore the first-chapter-of-the-next-book.
I think that usually happens here with books in paperback, by very prolific authors that churn out a lot of books. By the time the book gets into paperback, the next hardcover is usually out.
DsD-
The Hornby books don’t look like my cup of tea, but thanks for the nod towards the Brookmyres, those most definitely do! I’ll check my library next time i go back.
I love good crime fiction, and if you haven’t read or heard about them (no doubt you probably have), I’d put James Lee Burke’s Louisiana series at the very top of the contemporary yankee pile.
Nope, Amy, don’t know anything of JLB: will look out for some though – thanks. Any recommendation on where to start?
On the subject of which, Brookmyre’s first was Quite Ugly One Morning if you want to follow the writing chronology. But as you’re in the US, it wouldn’t hurt to start with <Not The End Of The World. My all-time favourite is One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night, which, whilst it features the detective from the first two novels, he has retired and moved to a new town in 1FDitMotN, so it doesn’t really affect your enjoyment of the story. And it does contain the single best set-up comic/crime moment I’ve ever read in ANY novel involving said retired detective, a misunderstood French student, and a police roadblock.
But as you may have gathered from goneforeign, you do need a strong stomach and black sense of humour for Brookmyre’s darker moments.
Whoops! Messed up the formatting on Not The End Of The World there.
Best place to start is with the first one, makes it easier as they’re sequential. Here’s a list of the Dave Robicheaux series, they take place in southern Louisiana, they are excellent. Here’s a page on his website, if you click on the title of a book, it gives a brief synopsis.
I don’t think Brookmyre will be a problem for me, i read a lot of crime fiction
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Ok, i just ordered Quite Ugly and Not the End of the World from the library. They didn’t seem to have One Fine Day, but they do have Country of the Blind and Boiling a Frog. If it has animal cruelty i may skip that one, that’s where my stomach gets weak! Black sense of humor is my default mode. Thanks, DsD, I’ll report back after I’ve read them.
Cheers, Amy.
Careful with Boiling A Frog: no animal cruelty that I recall (I have only read it twice) but it’s definitely one of his weaker efforts.
There is a dog that comes to an unfortunate end in QUOM, though.
See what you think after those first two.
Does One Fine Day… feature two dead men who got up to fight? That rhyme was one of my father’s favourite pieces of doggerel.
I do hope that the book lives up to the title… (I’ve just ordered myself a copy).
Ah. I had to look the poem up, because I thought I didn’t know it. When I got there, I found I did know it, and several lines took on new relevance with me.
I have no idea whether there is any deliberate or formal causal connection between the two, but the whole air of nonsensical, violent farce in the poem is certainly a vibe transferrable to the book.
Enjoy!
For our Scottish readers – by chance, this came my way today.
Christopher Brookmyre at Govanhill Library
Monday 25 October, 6.30pm FREE
The Glaswegian Crime author comes to Govanhill to talk about his books including Pandaemonium, Boiling A Frog, A Snow Ball In Hell and much more.
170 Langside Road, Glasgow G42 7JU
Telephone: 0141 276 1550
Love that illustration, where’d you get it?
A random Googling in search of “bookreader photos”; the pic was entitled bookhug.
Is it weird how passing on a book for a friend just seems normal – where as passing a bit of music on always gives me tinges of guilt.
What gives? is it that music is copied and then passed on again. A book is always in it’s original form… how do the writers here take this.
What if Apple had started paper backs for instance – I reckon there would have been huge NO RESALE clauses and second hand book shop would be illegal and underground.
love the picture too.
when things get back to normal – I have a book I would be willing to send on a spill mission.. I’ve never read Hornby – but can’t picture getting the time at the mo.
We also used to release books into the wild on Bournemouth benches.
It is strange isn’t it ? I have no bad feelings about passing on books, none about home-made compilation tapes or even CDs. It’s only a difference of ease and potential scale when one shares electronically, it must be a Hegelian dialectical thing about quantity transforming into quality. I wonder if Abahachi can help ?
In March 2005, Caroline Martin, managing director of the publisher Harper Press, said in a speech that “book publishing as a whole has its very own potential Napster crisis in the growing practice of bookcrossing”
I’ll have to save my “Top Five Things I Like About ‘Juliet, Naked’” post, or write it in such a way as to avoid ‘spoilers’.
I like the way Nick Hornby writes, even if “About A Boy”, “How To Be Good” and “A Long Way Down” don’t hit the spot quite as well as his football / music books do, I admire him for branching out. I’d have hated him becoming a formula writer. DsD, it’s interesting what you say about attitudes to women / middle class smugness; but might you be confusing the characters’ attitudes and behaviours with the author’s ? I know he lets his characters behave badly without condemning them, but that’s a reason why I like him. I can see how you can’t bear to be with the characters, but that might be a sign of how well they’re written ?
Remember what a dreadful person Rob really is in High Fidelity, where we have an author writing in the first person, being likeable but awful, pulling off the trick of showing us how awful he is without realising himself. Re-read the scene when he asks Penny why she wouldn’t sleep with him when they were at school, how hurt she is by the conversation, and how blissfully, selfishly unaware he is of how bad he’s made her feel, because he’s got the answer he wanted.
Anyway, thanks for this, it’s a good feeling to think that spare copy might be going on a journey !
Now that’s a REALLY good, and well-made, point there, DP. My short answer is “I don’t know”. You could well be right, but that doesn’t change the distaste I felt reading the books. Weirdly, I almost never get that feeling about novels’ baddies, regardless of how evil/sick they may be. (Notable exception for all three main characters in Thomas Harris’ Hannibal, which I hated and thought was an awful betrayal and wilful cash-in by the author.)
No doubting your right to dislike those characters. Though I wonder how Rob in High Fidelity gets away with being so crassly awful at times, yet we like being with him ? I think there’s a redemptive quality, that he is forgiven for his past sins, and it makes us feel better about the awful things we might have done, in amongst our growing pains ?
I’m a bit of a book snob, having read english down t’ university. There’s something about Hornby that feels almost guilty to me. He’s such a pleasure to read! It goes so quickly, because you swallow it down in great gulps! So…is it the equivalent of bad-for-you-but-momentarily-enjoyable fast food? I THINK NOT!!
As DaddyPig so wonderfully stated it…his characters are complicated and not always like-able, but you relate to them and understand them, even if it’s not a part of you they’re expressing. Which makes him a short-attention span Tolstoy for me. It has that same love for the characters – and humor mixed with uncomfortable realism to express it.
His voice is so appealing that it’s like talking to a friend, but I think that ease of communication is a beautiful thing. To compare him to another classical author, he reminds me of Jane Austen. Uncanny eye for details of foibles of the time. A style which feels like you’re reading a letter from a good friend.
I tried to read How to be Good and absolutely hated it. THen I read About A Boy and was completely charmed by the subtlety of the boy’s lack of humor. Went back and read How to Be Good, and liked that one, too.
Nobody wanted to know all this, did they? Ha ha!!
I’m glad to know it steen, I know what you mean by the Jane Austen comparison.
Nice one DSD. Who’d you finger for Tucker Crowe? Paddy McAloon? As I read it, I had Willy Vlautin in mind, tho’ no-one could accuse him of lying low for nearly 20 years…
Good question, ghe. Visually, and I’ve no idea why, I had Jerry Garcia firmly well fixed in my head. (Must have been a subconscious “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated” moment. Musically, Paddy wouldn’t have cut it; he never rocked out enough to have recorded You And Your Perfect Life. I had someone kinda halfway between Steve Earle and Neil Young, but walking away just as they’d got up a head of steam.
Quick note to dond James Lee Burke and to nom the daddy of American police procedural: Ed McBain. He got quite cross with the makers of TV’s Hill Street Blues for nicking all his ideas (gritty realism, multi-thread storylines, even the characters’ names – Furillo vs Carella). The 87th Precinct series is great, even if they are 200-page novellas rather than full-length novels.
Lending books is a no no for me – still have resentment for the non-return of JG Ballard essays lent out over 10 years ago.
Library’s here are great. You can order on line & they deliver for free.
Have similar feelings to DsD about later Hornby. Remember liking a short story comp that he edited, but don’t recall much else about it.
Would recommend the new Gibson, that wraps up his post 9/11 trilogy. New Ian Banks “Culture” epic out this month, yippee.
I’m a big fan of Iain Banks, with and without the M. Although I seem to have let my reading of his works slide a bit…
Hasn’t been that great without the M lately. “Matter” was great though.
To be fair, Garberdale was enjoyable, despite feeling like a retread of past glories.