Andrew Blackman
Currently viewing the tag: "books"
I paid a visit to the excellent Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green recently. The owners put out an appeal to everyone to buy an extra book from the shop to help them survive and pay off their bank loan. So I went along, and bought a couple of books, A History of [...]
So all the newspapers have been publishing their end-of-year roundups. Some even started back in November. Here’s why I won’t be doing my own little roundup of the best books of 2010.
Basically, it’s because I haven’t read very many of them.
Don’t get me wrong, I do read quite a lot. You can [...]
I got depressed about bookshops recently. A great little London literary magazine, Smoke, has just published its last issue. The editor/founder Matt Haynes explained:
Of the hundred-odd shops that stocked our early issues, well over half have now closed. And when Borders ceased trading just before Christmas, we lost not only more than 25% [...]
Even Tolstoy and Goethe and Proust must have had the odd moment when they wondered if they really knew what they were talking about. Somehow I find that heartening.
I’m never sure how these lists get created. In any case, the Guardian has named it’s books not to miss in 2009. Odd phrasing – not books to read, but books not to miss. Like the best advertising, it suggests an urgency, a tremendous opportunity that could be missed if you’re not fast enough.
In any [...]
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