Spreadsheet of Doom
July 28th, 2009 by Vanessa
The thing about opening a new bookshop is that you need to order an awful lot of books in a short time and try to be objective and balanced and selective and lots of other things. The difficult thing about that is that your own prejudices and tastes get in the way of all those things – I find most true crime books fairly repugnant but I love really beautiful food and gardening books. Malcolm (former research scientist) is fairly scathing about a lot of popular science books and we all find fantasy and sci-fi difficult because as Becky said “they just seem to journey and hardly ever get there and if they do they die”. Likewise, we all share an aversion to celeb biogs although some are, I’m told, quite good. But which ones? And we have to choose thousands of books which Polly is, in the quiet moments in the gallery, collating onto an enormous spreadsheet – The Spreadsheet of Doom.
Obviously we’ve gone down the usual routes – publishers’ catalogues (although these are getting rarer despite being incredibly useful), our favourite blogs, the bestseller charts (although we have to weed out a lot which are selling in large numbers because they’re half price at Tesco etc), seeing reps to talk about forthcoming titles etc, etc…
We’re resigned to the fact that we will open with a stock that has gaps and biases and it would be hard not to – this can be rectified in the next few months as we discover our customers’ tastes – but in an attempt to be more balanced we’d like you, our lovely blog-readers, to make some suggestions in the comments section below as to say, your top ten books that you’d love to see in a bookshop. Please don’t suggest really obvious ones but likewise please don’t suggest books that are so esoteric and obscure that their chances of finding a reader are remote.
Go to it chaps!
Can only suhgest my [of course!] historical thrillers plus SEA GEM a 140,000 words sage set on Guernsey. The others are Republic, Bold Spirit, Spirit of defiance. You have Battle royal.
Pride of Mercia comes out next March.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
As someone who has opening bookshop fantasises lol in my top 10 would be
1. Anything by Neil Gaiman (I suspect you’ll have that anyway)
2. If you’re stocking non-fiction, a good selection of craft books, craft book sections can be so hit and miss in the mainstream bookshops, stock a nice selection of nicely produced books (some craft books are like something from the 80s), nice ‘crafty’ books off the top of my head anything by Jane Brocket, Amanda Blake Soule, Cath Kidston, Amy Butler, Aranzo Aranzi.
3. Cookbooks by Bill Granger, the Fay Ripley one is good to, I know she’s a celebrity but it’s actually a great family friendly cookbook.
4. Christopher Brookmyre
5. Douglas Adams
6. Audrey Niffengger
7. Tessa Kiros
8. Russell T. Davies The Writer’s Tale
9. Scarlett Thomas
10. Naomi Klein
Anything by Robin McKinley. Also quite a lot by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and David Weber (writing separately or together, it doesn’t matter).
Difficulty is, if you don’t have it in stock, someone is going to go home and order it off of Amazon, and then you lose a customer…. so how on earth do you choose? I seriously don’t envy you!
Books I love to see in a bookshop (of course I already own most of these):
Sybille Bedford – The Legacy in particular, but I love all her books
Naval history: anything by Nicholas Rodger, RJB Knight’s excellent biography of Nelson (OK I am biased there, but it is extremely good).
everything by Patrick O’Brian.
Phil Rickman – the Merrily Watkins books in particular, but I like the earlier ones too (though some are sadly out of print)
everything by Diana Wynne Jones
The Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green has a good selection of science fiction and fantasy, so they might be useful to talk to about that section? It always makes me happy when a shop stocks Lois McMaster Bujold, Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman, Susannah Clarke, Jacqueline Carey, Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, Iain M Banks, Charlie Stross, Doris Lessing (her SF in particular), Guy Gavriel Kay – but you probably already have all these authors on your lists. Also for other ideas in these genres you might do worse than look at some of Jo Walton’s re-read posts on Tor.com (http://www.tor.com/index.php?blogger=Jo_Walton) where she’s been discussing a lot of older but excellent books.
Lots of other things too, but probably that’s enough for now!
I love looking at cookery books in bookshops. Pretty ones with nice colourful illustrations :)
My mum is always complaining that the craft sections in bookshops never have any patchwork and quilting books, so if you have a craft section, don’t forget the quilters!!
‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak is amazing, and I’d say a must for any bookshop, as is his ‘I Am The Messenger.’ Everything Margaret Atwood ever put her name too, in multiples no less!
I also like a decent crime section. Harlan Coben, Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen, Ian Rankin and the likes.
Kate Atkinson. You should get some Kate Atkinson in there and then finally please please please stock Jon McGregor’s ‘If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things’ and Richard Bach’s ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.’ They are both the most incredible books and you never see them anywhere :(
I think most of those are on the list, Jo. V def. has Kate and Jon M, the Book Thief and Ian Rankin in the adult section of the children’s bookshop, though I agree, ‘I am the Messenger’ is a must :).
I’m glad to be away from the Spreadsheet of Doom, myself :p However *thinks*
Astonishing Splashes of Colour – Clare Morrall
The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite – Beatrice Colin
Cosmopolis – Don DeLillo
Molly Fox’s Birthday – Deidre Maddan
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho.
After Leaving Mr. McKenzie – Jean Rhys
The Year of the Flood- M. Atwood (s’the new one that will be out in Sept)
The four short story collection Ox-Tales are also fantastic xxxx
Wow this is a challenge.
In an vain attempt to spread my bets and make sure I cover as many bases as possible I think this list may well get a bit rickety but here goes! In no order particularly:
1) AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (for the thinking general history reader, this will launch them on the path of a thousand questions)
2) Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Civilizations or Millennium (in terms of broad brush history of the epic kind, you’d be hard pressed to find better than these)
3) Mark Kurlansky, The Basque History of the World (a travelogue, a cookbook, a history and all wrapped in the neatest little package, sweet as)
4) Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (clever science fiction for the fan who hasn’t yet mined the Science fiction cannon)
5) Stephanie Swainston, No Present Like Time (genre bending, adventure and all with an inconstant narrator, boy does Steph write fantasy well)
6) Ernest Hemmingway, The Old Man & The Sea (maybe its a guy thing, but this may well be one of the few fiction books I can stand to re-read)
7) Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour Trilogy (yes this cheating slightly because its a trilogy but lordy this is great writing)
8) Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome And the End of Civilization (this revives the full horror and the depth of the tragedy that was the end of the Roman empire, and moves the debate on from the hole I believe it fell into by trying to pass the collapse of Rome off as merely change rather than regression)
9) Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (a nicely thought through book on the global political lanscape, not as radical as any of the Kagan books [Paradise and Power/The Return of History and the End of Dreams] but better for that)
10) William A. Draves & Julie Coates, Nine Shift (one of the most prescient and forward thinking books, I have ever read. Calmly and plainly explains where the world is going, why and looks at how it will change society utterly. A great book)
Two notes. Children’s books from picture books, to fiction, Food & Drink, Sport, Modern Fiction and quite a few other topics got a raw deal here but that’s the nature of top 10 lists. The last space took some time deciding.
Hope the list helps!
Eoin
I went through everything I’d marked 4/5 or more on my LibraryThing account. This is the list I’ve come up with. I’ve deliberately cut out a fair bit of “normal” fiction, as I feel you will probably get the most feedback about that.
Sport:
Cyclecraft: Skilled Cycling Techniques for Adults – Franklin, John
Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession – Askwith, Richard
The Flying Scotsman: The Graeme Obree Story – Obree, Graeme
The Ascent of Rum Doodle – Bowman, W.E.
The Hour – Hutchinson, Michael
Short Stories:
The Loudest Sound and Nothing – Wigfall, Clare
Essential Kit – Leatherbarrow, Linda
Fiction:
The Trick Is to Keep Breathing – Galloway, Janice
The Quincunx – Palliser, Charles
Science Fiction / Children’s:
A Wrinkle in Time – L’Engle, Madeleine
Science Fiction:
The Stars My Destination – Bester, Alfred
Fantasy:
American Gods – Gaiman, Neil
Graphic Novels:
Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment – Talbot, Bryan
Horror:
Let the Right One In – Lindqvist, John Ajvide
Cats, Travelling With:
Travelling Cat – Harrison, Frederick
Valentine Warner’s cookery book he has a brilliant programme on the TV. Could be OK as a Birthday present !!!!
The ten Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (among the first and the greatest police procedurals)
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Story of Art – E.H. Gombrich
A good stock of Virago Classics including anything by Elizabeth Taylor, Rosamund Lehmann (Invitation to the Waltz, The Weather in the Streets), Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth), Winifred Holtby (South Riding), Dorothy Baker (Cassandra at the Wedding), Margaret Kennedy (The Constant Nymph), Barbara Comyns (Our Spoons came from Woolworths) and so on..
Persephone books, especially Dorothy Whipple
The England of Eric Ravilious – Freda Constable (anyone who likes Persephone books probably likes Ravilious!)
The New York Review Classics are lovely!
Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Jilly Cooper!
If I saw something called “The Edinburgh Bookshop” then I would go in expecting to find Scottish authors and books about Scotland too. I assume you have Neil M Gunn on your list (too obvious) but what about Lillian Beckwith for light holiday reading?
Diana Wynne Jones and Diana Gabaldon for SF (not my favourite genre)and (someone reading over my shoulder here) Jack Bode
Nigel Tranter, Fitzroy Maclean, Alan Bissett, Michel Faber, Alasdair Gray, Bashabi Fraser, James Kelman, Edwin Morgan, James Robertson
- does that help for less obvious?
Oh, while we are talking about what a visitor might like, a peerie Scots dictionary might help! :-)
You have reading to do Vanessa!
oo yes, Alan Bissett’s Adam Spark especially is vair good :)
Presumably you want to sell books :-) and you want something which will make people want to come in and browse rather than buy from Amazon.
You’ve got three big advantages over Amazon :- First, you’ve got a smaller market, with the advantage of being able to know what your readers will like (and buy); Second, you can be topic experts and offer recommendations; and Third, readers can browse.
Anyway, personally, I’d like to see a good selection of crime fiction (a genre that also sells well :-) … my own favourites being the more psychologically oriented, such as Barbara Vine, Karin Fossum, Karin Alvtegen, and others such as Fred Vargas and Håkan Nesser.
Good luck! (I’ll have to come visit now, just to see what you do stock up on :-)
Thanks everyone for your suggestions (and hint in the case of my mother who has a birthday coming up soon!). Do keep thinking – it’s always hard to make sure you’ve got all your bases covered and although the stock selection in the children’s shop is pretty good and although the drop of books for grown ups that we have there is very popular, stocking a whole shop with grown-up books is quite an enterprise.
And yes Tim, obviously we want to sell books and we know what our market/our (relatively) USP is, we just want suggestions from other people to trigger new areas to explore. And yes, do come and visit!
Just one suggestion to make:
Despite Losing it at Finkle Street by Samantha Priestley.
I’m going to echo Kieron and suggest
“Despite Losing it on Finkle Street” by Sam Priestley.
Also “All Names have been changed” by Claire Kilroy
and…”The Gathering” by Anne Enright
Hello Brendan and Kieron – what a coincidence to have two people suggest the same book within half and hour of each other!
The thing is with Sam Priestley’s book* is that it’s Print On Demand and the problem with that is that when I want a copy I want the distributor or wholesaler to have it in stock – I don’t want it a fortnight down the line. Also, because it’s POD, it will be on firm sale terms so I won’t be able to return it if it doesn’t sell and the discount offered is considerable less than standard. Overall, unless I’m sure I can handsell a lot of copies of it, it probably isn’t going to earn it’s keep for us. If your friend Sam or the publisher want to send us a review copy we’ll take a look and see if we do love it enough to want to stock but otherwise there’s probably nothing doing unless we get a couple of customer orders for it.
And thanks for suggesting Anne Enright – you’ll be glad to know we have Booker Prize winners covered!
People who like books will almost certainly like Jasper Fforde – The Eyre Affair and its sequels.
I’m guessing you’ll already have these, but I’m going to stick my oar in anyway.
I’d second the suggestion of Audrey Niffenegger – especially with the film of The Time Traveler’s Wife coming out soon (although I doubt it’ll do justice to the book), and Jasper Fford – I read the Eyre Affair in one sitting which lasted until 5am, and I can give no higher praise than that! I’d also second the suggestion of a section for Edinburgh/ Scottish authors, as it sets you apart a bit, and anyway, there are some good ones about who aren’t well known enough! I notice most of the Oxfam shops in Edinburgh seem to have such a section, so they obviously find it’s worth giving shelf-space to.
One book which has been around for a while, which I only recently discovered, was Regeneration (Pat Barker), which was beautifully written, and a really interesting story to boot – there’s also a local connection, as a lot of it takes place in Craiglockhart.
In terms of short story collections, I’d recommend Calvino’s ‘Difficult Loves’, and Brian McCabe’s ‘In A Dark Room With A Stranger’, which is also set in Scotland, although a quick recce on Amazon gives me a nasty feeling it may be out of print. Borges is also good fun.
Sci-fi wise…I don’t read as much of it as I used to, but you’d probably be quite safe with someone like Anne McCaffrey, and there are good short story collections by people like Arthur C Clarke and Philip K Dick which might whet people’s appetites.
I’m assuming that you’re leaving the young adult stuff in the children’s bookshop for now, so I won’t suggest any of those, although I know plenty of adults who’d read them – even the dreaded Twilight!
Quick clarification after reading through that huge chunk of text I just threw at you; McCabe’s stuff is Scotland-based, Calvino’s obviously isn’t. Lest there be any doubt.
I’m really looking forward to coming in and browsing now :)
Naomi Novak’s Temeraire books are a new and popular series in fantasy – Napoleonic wars with dragons !
I’ll back the recommendations for Jasper Fforde’s books – a great read and he’s a lovely bloke, well worth getting in to give a talk.
You could be radical and stock a few westerns. Robert Hale publish 8 a month, and Linford do large print versions. Most of the authors are based in the UK and would be happy to visit (like me :) )
I second Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books, they’re well-written and engrossing. Also, Susanna Clarke’s books, which can be described as literary fantasy, are excellent. Two of my favourite authors are Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of their books, they’re very warm. It’s a shame you don’t enjoy fantasy, it’s a difficult genre t explore because the authors are usually very prolific but it hides some true gems. One of the best books I’ve read this year is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which is marketed at teenagers. Also, Graceling by Kristin Cashore. She has a good blog, too. Philip Pullman is a great great favourite of mine. His Dark Materials is his most famous series but I feel his Sally Lockhart books, and especially The Tiger in the Well (#3 out of 4), are equally as amazing. Excellent author, he says so much in such few pages.
I have read all of Sarah Waters’s and Alan Hollinghurst’s books and they’re among my favourite authors. Sarah’s last book has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Alan’s latest book won it a few years ago. Their prose is gorgeous, and the storytelling excellent.
I am also very partial to Rosamond Lehmann, who has a sensitivity I can’t seem to find anywhere else. Anything published by Virago is always at least very readable. This is true of Angela Carter too, for example, whose books I adore, or even of Miles Franklin, whose My Brilliant Career should be in every bookshop.
I’m always very pleased to find Toni Morrison’s books in any bookshop I enter: it seems like an obvious choice but perhaps too obvious since most bookshops only seem to stock her latest book only (right now it’s A Mercy), I feel people are really missing out, thinking it’s too difficult for them. It’s not. Her prose is magnificent, sensual and articulate, and she tackles many issues, her books always read like a song to me and they’re really easy to read, even though they contain so many layers.
Persephone Books sometimes reprints books I’d rather have never read but they do sometimes make sensible choices: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild is one of my favourite books, and it would be lovely to see it sold in the grown-ups section when I’m sure (at least I hope) her children’s books fill the children section. I also think Winifred Holtby’s The Crowded Street deserves a mention, as well as The Closed Door and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Young Pretenders (which is in fact a children’s book) and of course, the delicious Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
Good luck choosing!
Sibylle, it’s not that I dislike *all* fantasy books by any means – I like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and Susanna Clarke, for example and loved Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Douglas Adams books. I think I like the genre when either it’s a direct satire on the real world (for lack of a better term!) or it somehow coincides with the real world – like The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. I’m afraid that the Lord of the Rings, for example left me cold (she says, awaiting the torrent of emails!). I also read the first couple of books in the Wheel of Time series, and thought they were horrendous…
As you say, perhaps a genre of hidden gems- but when many of the books are so long it’s so much easier to read something else.
Btw, I *love* Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day!
Hi V
Seems as though the short story is taking a huge step forward and I think it would be great to reflect this. So, I’d go (eg) for some Salt books, esp Tania Hershman’s The White Road – and if you look (as you may already have done) on the Short Review blog, you’ll find the best of the rest. I was not a fan of the short story form, as I found it unsatisfying by The White Road changed my mind. Flash fiction and more
If I didn’t already have all the Bernice Rubens books, i’d want you to have those – fabby author (sadly, dead …) and so avant garde that she’s never dated. Spring Sonata has got to be one of the most original novels ever
And the book I mentioned to you in the shop this morning, in case you forget, was The Countrywoman by Paul Smith. Better than Angela’s Ashes. imo …
Agree people would want to see good Scottish authors but I do HOPE you’re not going to have a Scottish ghetto section …. (unless guide books / history / geog)
Non-fiction:
I enjoyed ‘Fire and Steam’ (christian Wolmar) – basically a social history of the railways of britain, but not trainspottery. Some interesting stuff in there; I didn’t realise that the rise of GMT was down to the needs of railway timetables – prior to that most town clocks were still taking their cue from the sunrise, which altered the further north you got…
Talking of North, Stuart Maconie’s ‘Pies and Prejudice’ is a fantastic exploration of the english north/south divide, and very funny. And as a proud north-westerner myself, I agree with almost everything he says :P
One my mum recommended, which i haven’t had the chance to read yet, is ‘1599; A year in the life of William Shakespeare’ (james shapiro). She says there are bits where it slows down a bit, but the rest is fascinating. I’m going to nick it next time i go to visit, but in the meantime, i thought i’d mention it!
I like the idea of Westerns. I used to read a few, but I haven’t noticed them on the shelves for years (not that I’ve been looking).
Another author to consider is Rosamund Pilcher: some of her stories are based in Scotland.
A ‘theme’ you could use is to have books by authors who are well-known for their children’s books. For instance A A Milne wrote some grown-up books, as did Noel Streatford.
Do try THE GHOST MAP by Steven Johnson (Penguin. It’s a superb, well-written account of the work of Dr John Snow and Whitehead and others in discovering the source of Broad Street’s cholera epidemic, but also looks at social networks, prejudice,the domination of one theory over another, and much more besides. “Popular science” maybe – but excellent, even to a non-scientist like myself.
Good luck with the bookshop, Vanessa!
Hmmm. Ok, here are some books which, if I saw them, would make me think that these people are kindred spirits (the race that knows Joseph, even – although I always preferred Emily to Anne, personally):
1. Toni Morrison, particularly Beloved.
2. Classic crime, particularly Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh. And some modern crime – I can highly recommend the one I was talking about the other day, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean (niece of Alastair), which is set in 17th century Banff (I know but it is good, honestly). And James Anderson’s The Affair of the Bloodstained Teacosy et al contain lots of large country houses, suspiciously blue-chinned foreigners, outrageously glamourous countesses etc. Very restful. And I just finished The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotteril, which is set in 1976 Laos. Quercus, I note, who also publish Shona MacLean.
3. Another vote for Persephone.
4. And for Margaret Atwood,and Angela Carter, particularly Wise Children. And Virago in general.
5. Literary biographies. I loved Jane Dunn’s one on Antonia White, which I think is no longer available (unhelpfully) – but really well-written ones always make you want to go back and read the fiction two so you might get people coming back for more that way. Hermione Lee’s always a winner.
6. I just read Janice Galloway’s Clara (a bit late to the party I know) and it was absolutely brilliant.
7. Books which are beautiful to look at. I didn’t read Margaret Atwood at all for years because of those dreadful eighties covers that made the books look like airport novels.
8. Jilly Cooper (because I have nothing against airport novels, I just like to know what I’m getting). Particularly Rivals.
9. The Railway Man by Eric Lomax. Made me weep absolute buckets and has a vaguely Scottish connection. Some other Scottish authors/settings: The Jacobite Trilogy (although the version I’ve got is a horrible cover); Muriel Spark; Scott; Sunset Song.
10. Classics. Trollope, for choice, but any of the Oxford World’s or Penguins – which usually have lovely covers, too.
Can’t WAIT.
Number 5: ‘read the fiction TOO.’
Sorry.
Becky – thank you for reading my suggestions! I completely understand what you mean about Tolkien, I think his writing is quite cold too, he never seems interested in the characters for themselves, only in the History. I thought Peter Jackson’s adaptation was a great improvement on that part. Thank God not all fantasy is high fantasy. There are many subgenres in the genre.
I second the Oxford World’s classics edition, especially with the gorgeous new covers. That may be too obvious, though. Although I’d love to find a bookshop that really makes a selection of its classics. Some books hardly deserve the word, in my opinion, and yet are always reprinted under this label, which I find is a true shame. I’m not afraid to say I don’t like Dickens at all but love Thomas Hardy. And I can’t believe Gone With the Wind is considered a classic by anybody, yet I often find it in prominent display in that particular section of the shop. To me, “classics” all put together without any sort of selection means the owner hasn’t read many of them, hasn’t developed a particular taste but puts them on display on principle, and there’s nothing I find more off-putting than that.
1. United States by Gore Vidal 9780349105246. Pricey at £16.99, but I sold 22 copies in one year out of staff recs at W. Or go for Selected Essays 9780349120454 at £10.99, but you get less bang for your buck.
2. Essays by George Orwell 9780349120454.
3. Stone Voices by Neal Ascherson 9781862075832.
4. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia. I kid you not, the best crime novel I’ve ever read. Granta edition is OSND, so it’s the NYRB edition: 9781590170618.
5. Sonnets by Giuseppe Gioachino Belli 9781847490117. There’s a double Edinburgh connection: the translator, Mike Stocks, is Edinburgh-based, and this edition includes 12 translations into Scots by Robert Garioch in an appendix. No, trust me. This is mustard.
6. Dead Man’s Chest by Nicholas Rankin 9780571242184. Rankin just recently had a hit with Churchill’s Wizards. Yes, it’s a Faber Finds edition, so it’s £15.00, POD, has a rotten cover and lousy print, but the book is really, really good. Rankin follows RLS, writes about him, his life, the places he went, what they’re like now, and how other writers have followed, been influenced by or simply enjoyed Stevenson. Should have a readership in Bruntsfield.
7. A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright 9781841958309. As chosen by Python turned historian Terry Jones for ‘A Good Read’.
8. Nairn in Darkness and Light by David Thomson 9780099599906.
9 and 10.
Regarding SF/F, you really can’t go wrong with the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series published by Gollancz (e.g. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman 9781857988086 and Little, Big by John Crowley 9781857987119). The two must-haves in fantasy for my money are Ursula Le Guin and Fritz Leiber (Lankhmar 9780575082748); in SF? Dick and Bester, probably, as mentioned by other posters.
Current hot names in fantasy include Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch (both very readable), Brian Ruckley, (Edinburgh author), George R.R. Martin. Yes to Novak, Swainston, Wynne Jones. No to Flint, Weber, Lackey. They sell but not that well, they’re all US imports, and the quality is dreadful. Mistake not to have any Ray Bradbury or Poe.
SF: Charlie Stross is local, so is Ken Macleod. Alistair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter and Kim Stanley Robinson all still have legs.
Hope this helps.
Does any Edinburgh bookshop *not* have a Scottish section? I guess you will need to stock some of the obvious titles but I’d go to an independent bookseller to browse what they have from small local presses (dare I suggest poetry?), new authors and revivals of old ones.
I’ll second or third the plea for crime – because that is the kind of genre where you want to browse the crime section looking for new-but-similar titles, which is harder to do online. All the main Edinburgh shops seem to go for the hardcore forensic gore side so I’d love to go somewhere that was good for classic crime, translations of European books and what Americans call ‘cozy’. Which reminds me – Catriona Macpherson’s Dandy Gilver series fits right in between crime and Persephone :)
As a bookseller who’s specialised in SF and Graphic Novels (as well as Scottish lit & history – I’m flexible!) for years I can understand how impenetrable some of it must look if you aren’t used to it, especially with fantasy where the books are often part of long, multi-part series which tie up a lot of stock and shelf space because its pointless holding just one book out of 4 in a series. But perhaps it might be handy – and in keeping with the ethos of the bookstore – to start small for that genre with a few choice selections by Scottish and British authors, who are currently among the best in the genre.
Obviously Iain Banks (with his ‘M’) and Ken MacLeod’s work is aimed at a mature, politically aware audience – his last novel just came out in mass market PB, The Night Sessions, and combine near future SF with the politics of the post 9-11 world and the Edinburgh detective novel. Charles Stross is another Edinburgh-based scribe and an award winning author (collection of his short work, Wireless, has just been published). Richard Morgan is also an intelligent writer in the genre.
I’d guess graphic novels are even more mysterious if you aren’t used to them, but there are some good titles which have wide appeal even to the non comics literate – Jonathan Cape did a UK edition of Guy Deslisle’s lovely work Burma Chronicles – comics as travel lit as he details a year living in Burma as his wife works with Medecins San Frontiers. I’ve re-read it several times, lovely work and nice glimpse into a secretive country. Top Shelf have some very accessible works outside the ‘capes and tights’ hero comics, such as the award-winning Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell which draws on the author’s own experiences to explore the world of teen siblings with mental health issues.
Garen Ewing’s gorgeous Rainbow Orchid has just come out this month from Egmont; previously published online and in self published smaller segments its an all-ages wonderful adventure in the ligne clair style Herge made famous with Tintin – wonderful for adults and children. Classical Comics have several literary adaptations which come with notes and aids to use for students and teachers (great way to lure reluctant readers to classics) while Self Made Hero publish manga versions of Shakespeare and also some fetching adaptations of works by Bulgakov, Stevenson (their recent Jekyll & Hyde is gorgeous) and are now creating a range of well-done Sherlock Holmes adaptations.
Oops, meant to suggest 2 or 3 titles and have rabbited on, sorry, tend to do that when it comes to books…
This is a lovely thread!
Definitely second Helen V’s recommendation of the Catriona MacPherson Dandy Gilver series (and I think she publishes under another name as well). Also Hazel Holt for cosy crime, and any Gladys Mitchell you can lay your hands on (most of it seems to be out of print, sadly).
Sara Maitland – I’ve just read her Book of Silence, which I really enjoyed, and I recommend her short stories too. Far North and Other Dark Tales is a good collection.
I always like browsing a reasonable selection of Trollopes – not just the Barchester/Palliser novels, but others, because I haven’t yet read everything he ever wrote.
Stargazing by Peter Hill is about working in some of the last manned lighthouses around Scotland, and I enjoyed it a lot. As I did Attention All Shipping, by Charles Connelly, about travelling to all the different areas in the shipping forecast.
Mary Renault should be in every bookshop!
I recently read Steig Larsson’s second book and wondered about Kalle Blomqvist — Larsson’s reference to an Astrid Lindgren character (did you know that he based Lisbeth Salander on an updated Pippi Longstocking?). Why are Lindgren’s other series not available in English?
An impossible task !! but here one goes…
“A Dance to the Music of Time” Anthony Powell – an unadulterated pleasure from beginning to end…
Edinburgh-born, Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther Mysteries / “Berlin Noir” Nazi-dominated central Europe is chillingly depicted
I met Edinburgh-based writer/reporter Nick Thorpe at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshops. We are going for a drink in September…
“Adrift in Caledonia”
Boat Hitching for the Unenlightened
“Eight Men & A Duck”
An Improbable Voyage by Reed Boat to Easter Island
http://www.nickthorpe.co.uk/books/adriftreviews.html
Architecture books on great Scottish born and/or Scottish based Architects and Engineers…
The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam (Dover Books on Architecture) by Robert Adam, James Adam, and Henry Hope Read
William Playfair ?? !!
Thomas Telford / L.T.C. Rolt / Chris Morris
Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker / Charles McKean
Lorimer and the Edinburgh Craft Designers / Peter D Savage
Charles Rennie Mackintosh : Architect, Artist, Icon / John McKean
Sir Basil Spence / National Galleries of Scotland
Gillespie, Kidd & Coia / The Lighthouse
Gareth Hoskins / The Lighthouse
Eco-Minimalism as Best Value / Howard Liddell – RIBA
Green Guide to the Architect’s Job Book / Sandy Halliday – RIBA
The Care and Conservation of Georgian Houses: A Maintenance Manual for Edinburgh New Town
Georgian Architectural Designs and Details: The Classic 1757 Stylebook
I have given up reading everyone elses suggestions and i am looking forward to reading all these suggestions I have never heard of, but would add Mariana by Susanna Kearsley. The joy of any bookshop is discovering an author I haven’t read before so I will leave it there so the shop will be full of new authors for me to try!
Graham loves history books and some of his favourite suthors are A N Wilson & Robert Harris
We both enjoy Trry Pratchetts Discworld books