Tag Archives: books

Justin Cronin’s ‘The Passage’

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the passageWhen the book opens, the US government is exploring new ways to create the ultimate fighting weapon. The discovery of a mysterious virus found in the deepest parts of a remote jungle, which seems to render its carriers impervious to disease and to give them extreme strength, seems like it may offer a solution. But experiments on test subjects straight from death row soon take a disastrous turn.

Skip forward a hundred years and the catastrophic consequences of these experiments become abundantly clear. Darkness brings death in the form of virals – infected humans that roam the country, moving like lightening and killing or turning every living thing in their path.

A small pocket of survivors live in the First Colony. Their entire survival relies on their ability to guard their high walls against the virals, and on the bright lights that protect against the night. The people living in the colony are several generations down from the original survivors, and the old world and the promise of a rescuing army have been changed into the stuff of myth and legend. Continue reading →

A detective story with a difference

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Rivers_of_LondonWhen PC Peter Grant stumbles across a key witness with a first-hand account of a violent crime, he sees it as an opportunity to save himself from the tedium of a career in paperwork. The only problem – his witness is a ghost.

As a result of this encounter with the supernatural, Peter is swiftly recruited into a special unit within the Met police – designed to help solve the cases where fact and reason have failed. He soon discovers a whole new side of London policing, complete with rivers that walk on two feet and ghosts that steal people’s faces.

Ben Aaronovitch’s creation has all the lure of the paranormal combined with the mystery, suspense and action of the crime novel. Continue reading →

Classic dystopian fiction

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In a not so distant future, the world has died. Nothing grows. The supply of tinned or preserved food is almost gone. Most of the people are dead. The ones that have survived are often more dangerous that the hazardous world they live in, and armies of ruthless cannibalistic murders roam the grey and lifeless land.

The RoadIn this world, one man and his son are walking the road. Scratching for every scrap of food and often near death, they make their way towards the coast, hoping to find the survivors. The man knows they won’t survive much longer in the open, and they live in constant fear of people taking their meagre supplies in a place where a dry blanket could makethe difference between life and death.

The man’s whole reason for being lies in keeping his son, the one speck of light left in his world, alive to see another day.

We never find out the names of the man and his son. However, the fact that the book is confined to just their small sliver of the world and their experiences of the long grey road means that we get to know them intimately. It’s intense and sometimes it’s quite claustrophobic, but it’s also incredibly gripping. Continue reading →

Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Sisterland’

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SisterlandIdentical twins Violet and Kate have grown up as two halves of a whole. With an often absent father and a mother suffering from some sort of implied depression, they are left to find their way through their adolescence together. But Violet and Kate also have a physic gift, with an uncanny ability to see what isn’t there and to predict what’s coming. As children, this gift binds them together, but it also drives others away.

As the twins grow up, their lives take very different directions. Kate changes her name and does everything she can to blend in and conform. She aims to be the model friend, mother and wife. She sees her psychic abilities as the root cause of everything bad that has happened in her past, and she does all she can to supress them. On the other hand, Violet embraces her differences. Exuberant and eccentric, she makes a living as a psychic and has no inhibitions when it comes to embracing life and exploring her sexuality.

Their wildly different choices have been the cause of strained relationships between the sisters their whole lives, but they are still linked by the unbreakable bond of sisterhood. When Violet predicts a catastrophic earthquake and is catapulted into the public eye, Kate is drawn back into the world that she hoped to have left behind. As the date of the event draws near, tensions rise. For Kate, the cracks in the life she has built will be revealed. For Violet, her life is about to be put under a microscope by the media. Continue reading →

Hannah Kent’s ‘Burial Rites’

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Burial RitesSet in rural Iceland in the late 1820’s, ‘Burial Rites’ is based on a real life double murder case. In the absence of places to detain criminals for any length of time, the convicted murderers are each sent to stay with different families across the area.

One of these prisoners is Agnes. The family she is assigned to rails against her presence, refusing to call her by name, and the youngest daughter in particular is shamed to have her living under their roof. In the months leading up to her execution, Agnes internally rages against her conviction. Gradually, through Agnes’ stories to her priest, and eventually to the family themselves, the truth behind the death of her two alleged victims is uncovered.

As Agnes tells her story, the family also get to know her and start to accept her presence, forcing them to question their prejudices. This asks the larger question of whether the legal system can be trusted to make the right decision Continue reading →

A vibrant assault on the senses

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Frog Music‘Frog Music’, from Emma Donoghue, takes us back to the brothels and backstreets of San Francisco, and to the sweltering heatwave and smallpox epidemic that characterised the summer of 1876. The novel opens with the murder of Jenny Bonnet. The only other person present at the scene of the crime is her friend Blanche, one of the star performers at the infamous House of Mirrors bordel.

The rest of the novel flits back and forward in time. In one narrative stream, we learn how Blanche and Jenny first met, and how their chance meeting and friendship may have led to the shooting. In the other strand, we follow Blanche’s wild search for the guilty party after Jenny’s death.

Famous for her ability to capture the hearts, minds and bodies of men, Blanche lives with Arthur – her ‘maque’, her man or her pimp depending on how you look at it – in a Chinatown apartment, performing twice a week in a titillating dance show of risqué burlesque. We quickly learn that Blanche’s baby son is being raised out of town, and is seen by his parents only rarely, allowing them to carry on with their own lifestyles without worrying about his upbringing.

But when Blanche happens to run right into the infamous Jenny Bonnet, it’s the catalyst that will change everything. Continue reading →

Ebooks versus print

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Continuing the debate about ebooks and their place in the market, Hodder Children’s announced last week that it will be launching a new e-only sci fi classics list. The list is launching with five out-of-print books, and aims to release up to 21 titles by September – see their Hodder Silver Twitter account for more info.

But is this a trend that’s set to continue? One of the major criticisms levelled at ebooks and the ebook market is that they limit the possibilities of new discoveries, making it hard to find new recommendations in the way that you would in a traditional bookshop.

It’s telling that the first e-only list is aimed at children and young adults, a generation that is likely to be far more engaged online with blogs and social media sites than ever before. The number of sites aimed at the sci fi and fantasy genre is huge, and each one is teeming with recommendations and opinions on the latest releases. It’s only natural that this audience would gravitate towards ebooks, where a quick click of the mouse is all it takes to deliver a book to the screen in front of you in a matter of minutes.

It’s a tentative start – as these are all novels that have previously appeared in print – and I think that we can see this growing more and more over time as people, but I can’t see paper books disappearing forever.

It’s also interesting to see that Sand, the latest novel from Hugh Howey, has actually been released as an ebook by publisher Cornerstone months before it will appear in print. Readers will still be able to pick up a hard copy, but it’s getting people used to having an ebook format be something that they look forward to.

Music, books and lyrics

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Browsing Twitter earlier today, I stumbled across a recent promo campaign from a top UK band that’s using classic ghost stories to get people excited about their new music.

Coldplay are going all out to promote their upcoming album, the aptly named ‘Ghost Stories’, and their new songs are being unveiled in a way that should excite all the readers out there! Chris Martin’s handwritten lyric sheets for each song on the album are being hidden within the pages of books in libraries all over the globe. One lucky lyric hunter will also find two tickets and a free trip to London to see Coldplay perform at the Royal Albert Hall.

So far, five envelopes have been found – in copies of ‘Hounds of the Baskervilles’ in Barcelona, ‘Mister B. Gone’ in Helsinki, ‘Ghost Stories’ in Singapore, ‘A Christmas Carol’ in Mexico City and, most recently, in Dartford Library, Kent. If you fancy combining a trip to your local library with the chance of seeing the band perform live, keep checking the Coldplay twitter feed for clues to the next book.

Even if you don’t find anything, it’s a great way to get people visiting public libraries, especially at a time when so many of them are facing closure from lack of funding.

High street vs. online book selling

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Last week, I wrote about the perceived threat to the publishing industry from self-publishing (here). This week, I wanted to look at another issue facing the sector – the decline of the high street bookstore in favour of online super-sellers such as Amazon.

One of the main issues facing high street bookshops is that the simply can’t afford to compete with Amazon on prices. There are a number of measures and initiatives being put in place to combat this (see here for more info on something Waterstones is trialling), but the fact is that books are generally cheaper online thanks to low overheads and running costs of e-sellers.

There are notable exceptions to the rule, and impulse buyers, author signings and loyal booklovers with a preference for seeing and feeling a book before buying have and will continue to ensure that bookshops remain a feature on our high streets. However, these shops are increasingly facing even more competition. Major supermarket chains in particular are starting to encroach on their territory and are also able to offer popular books at cut prices.

One fear associated with the decline of bookstores is that readers won’t have the same capacity to discover new books, resulting in falling sales and a shrinking market. While I’m a proud supporter of high street book stores, I’m feel that this is an area where social media can really come into its own. For a while now, Twitter has been a great source of information and a major platform for conversation. Bloggers and professional reviewers are constantly pouring out a stream of opinion about new books and trends, which should help to drum up enthusiasm for a book prior to its publication and beyond.

Author John Green, for example, showed just how effective social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube can be in driving sales in the run up to the launch of The Fault in Our Stars. Extensive vlogging, tweeting and audience engagement activity led to massive pre-orders, and the novel topped the Amazon best sellers list before Green had even finished writing it.

Hopefully, moving forward the industry will find a happy medium that works for everyone and every business model – and that continues to do so for the foreseeable future.

Going digital

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The explosion of self-publishing platforms has, understandably, been a topic of great debate in the publishing world. Quite simply, these platforms have the potential to completely transform the structure of publishing as we know it – from who can publish a book in the public realm to the price that a book will be sold at. But what does this really mean for the industry?

In my opinion, ebooks and self-publishing present a range of new and exciting possibilities to traditional publishers to evolve. Take Penguin, for example. The publisher has recently invested into author services and self-publishing platform, Author Services, while in 2011, ebook sales made up 12% of its total revenue. It’s an impressive percentage that effectively demonstrates the direction that the market is moving in, and from a practical point of view, I can see the appeal. Embracing digital publishing has the potential to reduce overheads and unnecessary outgoings while still offering almost limitless opportunities for expansion.

The perceived threat comes from the vast array of authors who are now able to bypass traditional publishing houses and publish and market their work themselves. Examples of hugely successful self-published authors are not hard to find, and there are a few in particular that any discussion of the topic can’t fail to mention. E. L. James and her Fifty Shades trilogy is one. Hugh Howey and his widely acclaimed apocalyptic novel ‘Wool’ is another.

But I think it’s worth noting that although these authors began their journey in self-publishing, they also made agreements with traditional publishers to produce hard copies of their books. This undoubtedly is a major factor in their success. In fact, Fifty Shades accounted for almost one in ten of the 750 million books sold globally by publisher Random House across the year, resulting in record annual revenues and profits. And although I’d been reading rave reviews of Howey’s ‘Wool’ for a while, it wasn’t until it came out in paperback that I invested in a copy for myself.

This goes to show that the input and expertise of a traditional publishing house is still very much in demand. By positioning themselves as an expert in possession of all of the tools that self-published authors need to hit the big time, publishers can ensure that their knowledge and business model can go hand in hand with the digital revolution.

The real danger posed by self-publishing, as far as I can see, is in the already established, big name authors of the publishing world. There’s a real possibility that as self-publishing becomes more established, these authors could jump ship and take on the role of publisher and marketer for themselves, safe in the knowledge that a large percentage of their loyal readership will duly follow.

Whatever happens, the publishing industry almost certainly has more to gain from embracing digital publishing than it has to lose.