Its magic...

It was my day off yesterday, but I did go to the bookshop for an hour or so – madness but loads of fun because we had a new children’s author in to wow the crowds and sign books; John Lenahan and his book, Shadowmagic. Vicki had control of the event and a fine job she did too; when I arrived John was already entertaining customers and booksellers, young and old, with his humorous repartee and magic.

Yes, MAGIC.

John is also a very well known magician. He hails from Philadelphia but has lived in the UK for more than twenty years. He will tell you that his claim to fame is for being the voice of the Toaster on Red Dwarf (see below), but John is much more well-known than that. He has hosted his own BBC2 series Stuff The White Rabbit and starred in Secrets of Magic; appeared on Richard and Judy and How Do They Do That? among others and fronted ITV’s Hoaxbusters. The Guardian has hailed him "the mascot of a magical renaissance". He performs all over the world; has toured with the likes of Lenny Henry and Jack Dee; and has proudly held the title of Time Out Street Magician of the Year.




John is a man of distinction. He has achieved the distinction of being thrown out of the Magic Circle - the first I believe, for 85 years – for revealing a card trick to millions of television viewers - a trick is used by con artists around the world to cheat the unsuspecting shopper and holiday-maker. He also has the distinction of being the first magician to perform magic live over the internet – which he did for British Telecomm. His latest distinction is to turn into a children’s author.


The Friday Project and Scott Pack, never one to miss a good thing when he sees it - or so he tells me - have published Shadowmagic; a fabulous tale of myth and magic, fantasy and adventure (a review to come later).



John wows young and old with card tricks.














And rope tricks.










Everyone had a good time…and he has promised to come back!

I can’t wait.

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

Listening to.....

I love Seth Lakeman's music. This is one of my favourite of his songs.

Oh, yeah, and he's cute.....

Intellectually Stunted

As my body clock is tuned to the early-morning-get-up-for-work thing, one of my favourite occupations early on a Sunday morning, is to sit in bed with the laptop, and browse through the online newspapers. I often look at the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) online, and while its all very high-brow, I don't usually come away feeling intellectually retarded.
Until today.
Maybe its because it Sunday which is my one lazy day of the week, maybe its because I'm tired after a week of work, events and overtime...but this morning I feel the intellectual equivalent of a mollusc! All because I love reading lists of the 100 Best.....whatevers.
The TLS has a list of the Hundred Most Influential Books Since The War - and no, Harry Potter is not listed. Of the hundred books listed, I have read all or part of nine. I pretty much stared at most of the rest and thought either 'Who?' or 'What?'
So, I'm off to my Ladybird Book of ABCs and then hopefully be cheered up by magician John Lenahan who is performing magic and signing his book 'Shadowmagic' in my beloved Chidlren's Department today.

Two Brave Young Men

Two brave young men, a funeral and a promise. Makes you weep, makes you proud. Read this.

Twilight Zone

Book snobs are one the worst kind of intellectual bully, and I loathe bullies - intensely.

A group of people stood in my beloved and cherished Children’s Department recently, moaning about the Twilight series, and all my lovely teen Horror books. They tossed around terms like derivative, cliched, and trite, then sneered and mocked the ‘sort of people who read this drivel’. And they did it loudly. Dracula and Frankenstein are both horror books – I wanted to argue - just two of many that are part of our canon of classic literature, so why then do you think it fair game to deride and dismiss the horror genre?

I didn't. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. As hey continued, I wanted to pound their faces to a bloody pulp, and had a wonderful Walter Mitty moment – via Van Damme and Segal - of doing just that. Then one swore and the moment was gone. Sadly, we have security cameras, so all I could do was summon up my most harsh, displeased stare and tell them to tone down the language. They left.

What is worst of all - they were all in their thirties and forties.

Sad – isn’t it?

Bookswapping Windsor Style

So Thursday arrived. Did a full day at work, shut up shop, had a sandwich, and a cup of tea to prepare myself for the evening ahead. This time I was better prepared swap-wise and took Inside The Whale by Jenny Rooney - fab book - not a problem for a swap I thought. After respite, loaded the event box (big, giant, blue and plastic) and then discovered it wouldn't fit in the boot of my little car! So, fearing for the upholstery, on the back seat it went.

Got there in plenty of time - even beat Scott! Set up, with the aid of a lovely young Irish man whose name I didn't catch - but you know who you are - thank you for carrying my event box. People started arriving - I got a drink.

Hugs from Helen Rappaport for reviewing her book. Lots of interesting non-book chat about Russia, loves, hates, teen angst poetry - all sorts of things. Helen is a delight even if she did turn her nose up at my book! She had a copy of D H Lawrence poetry, and as I couldn't remember ever reading any, I offered to swap, but she declined. Maybe I just did a bad sales job on the book.... :(

Kate Clanchy was equally delightful. She's a poet, and is convinced writing prose has changed which of her eyes is the dominant one. Her theory sounded fine to me! Her book Antigona and Me, sounded just as interesting and has now joined my Roundtooit Pile.

Question from the Question Jar were answered. Macaroons baked by the lovely Mrs Pack were eaten. Someone called Stephanie came and brought seriously delicious raspberry cupcakes.

Swapping was fun, from 'Scottish with lots of sex', to 'it's a really good book but I hated it', to 'Oh no I've changed my mind I don't want this one', lots of fun and laughter. Nothing really grabbed my interest after D H Lawrence and Helen's rejection! Nothing until Scott declared his choice of Candide by Voltaire. I was in a stage production of this at school and loved it so much I read the book. I was seventeen. I haven't read it since and thought I'd quite like to go back and see if I love it as much now, as a supposedly mature adult. We fingers trembling I held my hand up... I wasn't sure I'd handle the rejection...and offered to swap. So now I have the Voltaire - I hope you enjoy Inside the Whale, Scott.

Through out the evening Melanie Gow, author, Twitterer Extraordinaire, and founder of Beat, tweeted the proceedings. There is a podcast to come too.

Next time is on 22nd October. Authors will be Ariane Sherine, the founder of the Atheist Bus campaign and now editor of the soon-to-be-festive-bestseller The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, and Sue Cook, journalist, TV presenter and more recently a novelist.

Get your tickets here.

Conspirator: Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaport

I reviewed Conspirator by Helen Rappaport for the Bookswap evening at the Firestation. Here is a taster - you can read the full review at Beat

...We start in 1887 when Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was studying for his school exams and his older brother Aleksandr was hanged for his part in the failed assassination attempt on the Tsar. We follow Lenin in exile as he lives hand to mouth, tracked and watched by the secret police and others, moving from city to city across Europe, often at a moment’s notice and dependent on the help and protection of friends and supporters. Rich in fascinating detail, for example we are told that at the time of Aleksandr’s execution, hanging in Russian was slow strangulation at the end of a rope, Helen draws a vivid picture of Lenin’s life in those seventeen years. Poverty stricken, insecure, and existing in the shadows, he continued to work tirelessly, writing and debating, and risking everything to get works smuggled into Russia. In all of this Lenin was supported by the several women in his life – his wife, mistress, mother and sisters. Helen also examines the effect this uncertain life had not just on Lenin, but also on these women, until his return to Russia ...

At the same site as the review, there is also an interview with author Helen Rappaport.

Please help save the British Forces Post Office

*Outrage Alert*

Friends and family know that when I occasionally find something that makes me very cross, I talk about it and try to do something positive and proactive. They would also tell you that sometimes I find things that make me so angry, I am akin to a cartoon character, red in the face and blowing scalding steam from my ears.

This is one of those occasions.

The Government and Civil Servants, sitting safe and secure in Whitehall, with Protection Officers, Security Guards, and specially armoured cars, have decided in their infinite wisdom to cut the BFPO services.

So what you say? Well.....let me tell you what.....

The British Forces Post Office is a life line for members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces serving abroad and at sea, and for their families. This is the means by which people at home can send letters and parcels to their families stationed abroad, and vice versa.

My father served with the Royal Navy in our Mediterranean Fleet. I still have most of the postcards he sent me as a child from all the places he visited. Without the BFPO service, instead of the regular postcards, I would have heard little from him except in letters he sent my mother, and maybe an occasional card for me. Without the BFPO service, he would never have been able to afford to send the cards he did - and that is no exaggeration!

Before I married, my now husband was serving in Germany. Being able to write to him at a rate I could afford, meant many letters back and forth. We were able to send parcels for birthdays and Christmas, and at odd points in between. When we married we were posted to Cyprus. I had my first baby there and I cannot, just cannot, emphasis how vital the BFPO service was to us.

Be it Europe or the other side of the world, even just the ordinary everyday letters from home mean more than I can express here, and it all arrives safe and secure.

That's the other important part - the BFPO service not just affordable, it is is SAFE and SECURE, not open to access by anyone who means us harm. Would you really want to send a parcel to a military family through the normal postal services of other European countries?

'They' are proposing to cut the European service. Why? Saving money. What a morally bankrupt act from a group of people who are supposed to be serving the nation, not themselves.

You may dispise war; you may disagree with what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq; but servicemen and women go where they are told - don't punish them for the decisions of Government. PLEASE, sign the petition at the link below, and don't forget, when you have signed the petition you need to check your email and confirm your signature by clicking on the link they send - otherwise it won't count.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveBFPO/

Thank you.

BookSwap

Well, a month has gone by and its time for the second Bookswap evening. This time Marie Phillips and Scott Pack will be talking and eating cake with:

Helen Rappaport - historian and novelist, whose new book, Conspirator, looks at Lenin's 17 years in exile.
and
Kate Clanchy - award-winning poet, whose new book, Antigona and Me, is an account of her relationship with the Kosovan refugee she employed as a cleaner and nanny.

The first evening was tremendous fun and I'm looking forward to this one.
Don't forget to bring a book to swap.

Tithe by Holly Black

I had mixed feelings about reading this, as other urban fairy tales have failed to capture my attention and imagination enough to carry on to the end. However it has been recommended so many times now that I decided to give it a go. I liked the opening and settled in to enjoy the story, and was certainly engaged enough to be thoroughly disgruntled when I reached the ‘reveal’ (I hate spoilers, so won't say in case you haven't read it, but you’ll know what I mean when you get there). Anyway I didn't want to read anymore and put the book aside.

My disappointment was down to my preferences, not the writing or the plot line. I just couldn't get the vision of Kaye out of my head and that really put me off. Still, a couple of days later I was back, I had to know what happened to Kaye, Roiben and Corny.

‘Tithe’ is well written, and moves along at a decent pace. It is a dark, gritty and bloody novel, with evocative imagery, set not in the fairy world of just the sweet and kind, but of the equally harsh and cruel. A world of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. a fairy world that is political, capricious and violent, where characters are cruel for their own pleasure and amusement.

The characters are interesting and well drawn, though I would have liked more detail and insight into Roiben. He's interesting and attractive but edging on the two dimensional; I felt I knew him least. This reflected on the romance with Kaye which I felt lacked depth. I’ve moved on to ‘Valient’ and ‘Ironside’, so it must be good…its certainly enjoyable, and I'd recommend it as a good read.

Heights and Lows

Almost panicked as I somehow failed to set record on the second part of Wuthering Heights. Thank God for online replays! I enjoyed the drama, as much for Andrew Lincoln and Tom Hardy, as well as Sarah Lancaster a much under-used actress, but I wasn't convinced, and generally felt disappointed. Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is about one of the greatest, all consuming, destructive, passionate loves in literature, filled with the full A to Z of emotions, good and bad. What we get with this production, is a somewhat restrained, almost Jane Austen-like tale of bad manners, but set in glorious Yorkshire countryside. The actors were good, but altogether it was a handful of sparklers rather than a full-blown fireworks display.

I am also disappointed on the book front. After years of not getting round to it, I finally read Tithe by Holly Black. Again, I enjoyed it, much more so than TV's Wuthering Heights, but I was left wanting at the end. What worked for me was the human girl with ability and a faery knight, it still worked for me after the revelation that she had Faery blood, I partly switched off with the green pixie deal. That just didn't work for me with, but I'm reading Ironside, so it wasn't all bad - I just hate it when books disappoint me though.

Exhaustion seems to have become a permaent fixture in my daily routine - regardless of how much or how little sleep I get. The knock-on effect is that I'm reading fewer books. This is very frustrating, so should the Grime Reaper come calling, I shall have to tell him to push off, and point to my currently ever-growing, not-diminishing reading pile. I don'y want to think about how little I've written - which is NONE! Now I need to sleep, so .....another day.......