The Middlesteins

A Jewish Family in Chicago?

Good authors make you care about characters with whom you have nothing in common. Think Allison Johnson in Willy Vlautin's Northline, or Stoner in John William's eponymous novel.

I am only halfway through Jami Attenberg's The Middlesteins, but I am living alongside this family as they deal with divorce, ambition and a mother with an unhealthy relationship with food.

Yes, it's a dark novel, but it's funny too, and warm. A serious book that doesn't take itself too seriously. Jonathan Frazen said, "The Middlesteins had me from the very first page," and I have to agree. There is something delightfully dysfunctional about this family.

If you are looking for an engrossing summer read then look no further. 

The author, Jami Attenberg, will be appearing at the Morges Book Festival alongside other writers, such as Nathan Filer (The Shock of the Fall) and Sadie Jones (The Outcasts, Fallout). You can find ot more about the festival at www.lelivresurlesquais.ch. Personally, I can't wait!

New books set or written in Switzerland

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair
Joel Dicker

For those of you who haven't heard of him, Jöel Dicker is a young author from Geneva who won numerous prizes for this book when it first appeared under the French title,
La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert.

The book has now been translated into English and will be published in three weeks, so get your orders in now!

It tells the story of novelist Harry Quebert who, in 1975, fell in love with fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up from his yard along with a manuscript copy of his career-defining novel. Quebert is the only suspect.

The book has been described as, "a brilliantly intricate murder mystery, a hymn to the boundless reaches of the imagination, and a love story like no other."

It will be available from your nearest and dearest independent bookshop from 2nd May.         

 

A Heart Bent Out of Shape
Emylia Hall

It's always fun to read a book set in the city where you live, particularly that feeling of knowing where the action is taking place. So I was delighted to hear about a new book set in Lausanne.

A Heart Bent out of Shape is set in, and I quote, "the glittering Swiss city of Lausanne, a place that feels alive with promise."

The story concerns Hadley Dunn who decides to spend a year studying at the English department at Lausanne University. Here Hadley meets Kristina, a beautiful but elusive Danish girl, and the two quickly form the strongest of bonds. Yet one November night, as the first snows of winter arrive, tragedy strikes.

Hadley, left reeling and guilt-stricken, begins to lean on the only other person to whom she feels close, her American Literature professor Joel Wilson. But as the pair try to uncover the truth of what happened that night, their tentative friendship heads into forbidden territory...


 The book is available now.
 

Happy Birthday Books Books Books!

Bookselling and the Art of Happiness

I opened the bookshop on this day 5 years ago. Nervous preparation turned to elation as customers came through the door. It seems so long ago that my memories of that first year have become hazy.

I remember a team of friends assembling the bookshelves. I remember taking an order for 300 francs and thinking I'd hit the big time, and stacking a wall full of books I'd never sell. Skipping lunch to save money, not having the time to read. How things change.

That was 2008. A couple of months later the sterling crashed, and in 2 years the Kindle would become the dominant way people bought stories.

But the bookshop is still here, and every year we sell more and more books.

What do I love? I love the regular customers who I've known since forever. The friends I have made. Sometimes people send me an email for recommending a good book - these I want to stick on the wall. The bookshop attracts characters who make my life interesting.

I enjoy the freedom of determining my own success, and of being close to the heart of a literary community.

It's not all great; sometimes I envy people with stable jobs and healthy pensions. I lie awake at night as well asking myself if I have made the correct decision.

Would I sell the shop? The entrepreneur in me would, in an instant, if the price was right. The bookseller in me wouldn't. It would be interesting to see which side would win if I ever got an offer. I'd be curious to see what I'd do next.

Something cool.

Highs of this year include getting drunk with Colum McCann, reading Stoner, employing Emma, a photo from Politics and Prose, the friends, and those wonderful, wonderful people who order books.

Man, I'm tired. Bring more champagne!

La Nuit de la Lecture

Free Book Readings All Day and All Night


Why do I still hear people saying, "Nothing happens in Lausanne"? Last month you could have seen John Malkovich on stage in St Prex. A couple of weeks ago there was the Morges Book Festival. And this Saturday Lausanne hosts La Nuit de la Lecture.

This is a free festival taking place across several locations in the city. It's starting early, at 2pm, with book readings for kids. As evening approaches the theme switches to poems and stories for adults. Come the midnight hours and the readings turn decidedly chaud.

You can check out the entire programme at the website http://www.lanuitdelalecture.ch. You're bound to find something that will interest you amongst the Slam Poetry, Japanese Kamishibai and the music/text crossovers.

Books Books Books is contributing two events. At 14.30 there is the "Jabberwocky Booky Wooky Party" a celebration of poetry and story-telling directed at kids.

At 18.00 there is Lausanne Writers, Laura Spinney and Jon Steele will be discussing how the city inspired their work. They will both be reading passages from their works, Rue Centrale and the The Watchers.

Both events are in French and English. We hope to see you there!

Le Livre sur les Quais

Le Livre sur les Quais

Morges book festival drew to a close yesterday evening. It was an incredible weekend and I thought I'd record my personal impressions of it. In doing so I hope to persuade you to come next year. Not just to meet the authors, but because it is so much fun.

The weekend started for me back in July when I received the first of the many books I had to read. You can see it was quite a pile. Some of these authors, like Vicotria Hislop and Peter F. Hamilton, I had never read before. I also hadn't realised that John Boyne has a whole body of work. I'd assumed that The Boy in the Blue Sriped Pyjamas was his only book.

By the time I had finished the books I felt like a goose force-fed for foie gras – I also felt more or less ready for the festival.

The first session on the English programme was Colum McCann, an author who I have admired for some years. I interviewed him with my friend Laura Spinney, the author of Rue Centrale. We had to translate his responses into French, no easy task. His replies were wide-ranging, articulate and nuanced – the kind of answers that take weeks to fully digest.

What struck me was how he turned details into characters. To give an example, one of his central characters in Let the Great World Spin was a drug-addicted prostitute called Tilly. He went to the Metropolitan Library in New York to look at photos of prostitutes in the 1970's. Then he toured the Bronx with the police to hear their descriptions of the working girls. Unsatisfied with this, he spoke to retired policemen who were around the area 40 years ago to collect their memories. Finally, he found an archive of rap sheets dating back to the era. These were good at recording nicknames and other details. He found Tilly's voice only after doing all this and committed the first sentence on the page....

The next day I interviewed Victoria Hislop, John Boyne and Tom Robb Smith. These are authors who count their book sales in the single figures (1 million, 2 million...) They were all so kind and ready to share their thoughts and experiences as writers. We were supposed to talk about the wars they have written about, but we got onto the subject of the publishing industry, loosely centred around the book Fifty Shades of Grey. Did it really get people to read more? Did it count as reading? How did they feel about its success? We could have talked about this for the next hour... Maybe we should have done.

In the afternoon I talked to Peter F. Hamilton and Stafn Bachmann. Peter's book, The Great North Road, was a revelation to me as someone who never reads science fiction. Just the breadth of imagination and the way he maintains the tension throughout the 1000-odd pages. There is a lesson there for every writer, whatever the genre they are writing in. And Stefan Bachmann, barely twenty, with 2 books to his name, four more on the way and a fledgling career in music composition for film. It was enough to make me feel old and redundant.

In the evening I had the opportunity to interview John Boyne before the screening of the film The Boy in the Blue Striped Pyjamas. How did he feel the film measured up to the book? By the end of the screening I think everyone had agreed that the film was different, certainly not worse and maybe even better. The film enlarged the adult characters in the way the book's nine-year-old narrator Bruno couldn't. The changes they made to fit the film medium changed the story in places but took nothing away from the power of the narrative. It's the first time I have seen an entire audience stay in the cinema until the end of the credits.

On Sunday, I interviewed my old friend Laura Spinney about her book Rue Centrale. We were joined by two of her interviewees, Yago of  free hug fame, and Ruth Braewen, the mid-wife. Hearing them read their interviews brought the book to life and gave us deeper insight into their words.

This was followed by a bilingual reading with David Vann reading in English and Gérald Blocher in French. If you've never heard David Vann speak then I suggest you check him out on youtube. He's so funny, so outrageous. His style is to meditate for about 30 minutes before he starts writing. Then he rereads the previous 30 pages of his current book. Then he writes. He doesn't know what is going to come out, doesn't plan, but he trusts his instincts to write the truth.

I guess I had some revelations during the festival. The Absolutist by John Boyne is a fantastic book. I urge you to read it. So is The Great North Road, this coming from someone who has never read science fiction. I am reading David Vann as quickly as I can get my hands on it. These just conform to my personal taste. You could read any of the authors I mentioned and enjoy yourself.

I also realised that the best writers are the ones who are most authentic, both on the page and in real life.

What suprised me was how few local writers were at the festival. How can you be a writer and not a reader, or not at least curious to hear from other writers?

At the end of the festival someone said that my role in all this was to be a catalyst. I am not sure I agree with this. The role of a catalyst is to trigger chemical reactions and yet remain unchanged at the end of the process. I certainly didn't remain unchanged....

Book Reviews on the Old FM

World Radio Switzerland is closing down at the end of August. Somehow the ministry for Swiss broadcasting decided that it wasn't worth subsidizing. Quite how they arrived at this decision remains a mystery. It will be off air at the end of August.

This means that the Spead Read will be coming to a close. On Monday they broadcast my second-to-last selection of books. I have to say out of all the broadcasts I have done this is one of my favourites. I think I have got three really strong books. You could read any of these and come away having enjoyed a satisfying read.

Enjoy - there's only one more left. The books reviewed are:  

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Stoner by John Williams
Strange Stones: Dispatches from East to West by Peter Hessler

Listen NOW

Summer Reads

I took a train the other day between Lausanne and Montreux, which is about 20 minutes down the track. I slightly appalled myself when I realised I had packed 3 books for the  journey, as well as a newspaper.

So you can imagine that deciding what I am going to take on a two-week holiday is a painful kind of pleasure.


After much consideration, I have narrowed the choice down to five or six. Here I am restricting myself to the top four:

Transatlantic by Colum McCann: This Irish writer is very close to the top of my list of favourite writers of all time. His newest book starts with the first transatlantic crossing made by aeroplane. This idea of whether we can link the new world with the old develops in the central theme of the book. It's an interesting question for an Irish writer living in New York. I have read the first few chapters and am loving it already.

 The Art of Fielding by Chad Harback: This is a new author, this is his first book, and I am reading it on the recommendation of a friend.

I have to say that I love novels with an American voice and, having read the first few pages, there it is, rich and authentic. The book is also endorsed by Jonathan Franzen. 

It's a  Bildungsroman (coming of age novel - I had to look it up too!) about a genius, young baseball player called Henry Skrimshander. Sounds like the best thing for a hot summer's evening.

The Old Ways : A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane: Macfarlane is a travel writer in the sense that he uses the landscape to reflect what it is to be human. In this book he sets off from his Cambridge home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast network of routes criss-crossing the British landscape and its waters - the kind of journey that send shivers up my spine.

Knowing Macfarlane's style I am expecting a slow-burning book that will stay with me for years.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter: The cover first attracted me to this book - I love the retro, technicolour feel. It's a love story about a young Italian who watches a beautiful American woman walk out of the sea. Fat-foward a few decades and an Italian man turns up in Hollywood searching for her.

I am hoping the book will live up to its cover, but even if it doesn't I hope to look cool at the beach reading it.



 All these books are of course available at your nearest and dearest independent bookshop. 

Iain Banks is dead....

I was very sad to read that Iain Banks passed away yesterday. I didn't read every book he ever wrote, but the ones I read left an indelible mark.

Banks wrote more than a dozen works of fiction and, writing under the name Iain M. Banks, the popular science fiction Culture series.

He is an author who many people will not have heard of, so I thought it would be worth considering the book that I best remember.

Banks wrote The Wasp Factory in 1994. It was his first novel. His publisher, Abacus, put together a

memorable black and white cover with the key items of the novel -  a burning dog, a catapult, roman numerals - represented by pictograms.

The book is narrated by Frank Cauldhame, who lives with his father on an isolated island somewhere in Scotland. Franks has spent a lot of time alone and is an odd child. He imbues objects with mystic powers and, because of his strange upbringing, is forced to hide when people come to visit his father.

Much of the early part of the book is devoted to Frank's retelling of how he killed three of his young cousins before he turned ten. The story's violent climax arrives when Frank's brother escapes from a mental hospital. It ends with a twist you can't see coming.

I haven't read this book for at least five years, but I can still remember most of the scenes. In that sense I would compare it to The Road, another book which has stayed with me over the years. Macabre, bizarre, gothic. Original, surprising and humorous too.

When the book came out it courted controversy for its depictions of violence. However,  it recently made it onto one of those Top 100 Books of All Time lists, showing that the book has wide appeal.

I have read other books by Iain Banks, but I keep coming back to The Wasp Factory.  I believe it's a modern classic. As the expression goes, read it and weep.

You can buy The Wasp Factory (paperback, ISBN 9780349138909) from us. Select whichever delivery option suits you. Please note that we do not mail outside Switzerland.

Choose from the following delivery options

Pick-up from the Shop 13.00 CHF Mailed in Switzerland 16.00 CHF

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Michael Chabon is one of those authors who I've heard good things about, but somehow never got around to reading.

Having yet another friend eulogise this author I decided to finally pick up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 (you can see just how far behind the times I really am.)

The book relates the partnership Sam Clayman, a Brooklyn layabout, and Josef Kavalier, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, who create a sensation with their Escapist comic strip.

Their story is laced with humour and tragedy. Kavalier left behind his family when he fled the Nazis and he spends time and his considerable fortune on trying to spirit them to America. Clay, the business brains in the partnership, keeps making bad deals for their franchise.

Two things struck me about this book. I can be quite conservative in my reading tastes and will shy away from bizarre stories, but there is an element of the fantastic in the writing which I warmed to. The book is also very funny, with acute character observations I am sure every reader will relate to. 

It's a long book - more than 600 pages - but it doesn't feel like a slog. Each chapter has the feel of a short story and you can read it in bit-sized pieces. Strongly recommended for people looking for something new to get their teeth into.  

Lausanne: City of Stories

Literary Event at the Bookshop

Lausanne has long been an inspiration for literature. Dickens, Byron and Shelley all wrote here and the city has provided the backdrop for numerous novels.

Two recently published books continue this tradtion and I am very pleased to invite the authors to the bookshop to dicuss how the city  inspired their work.

Laura Spinney will be speaking about her book Rue Centrale in which she presents a portrait of a European city, Lausanne, painted in the words of the people who live and work there. The book features interviews with 70 people encountered in the street, in their bedroom, on a barge or in the belfry of the cathedral. Laura is the author of two novels and as a journalist she writes for publications including National Geographic, Nature and The Economist.


Daniel Tschumy is the author of Place du Nord et autres lieux, a collection of short stories mainly inspired by locations around Lausanne. His other works include collections of poems, short texts and a travelogue about a trip in South America. He currently teaches English to high-school students in Lausanne.
 

The discussion will be moderated by Jo Ann Rasch, a poet, editor and author of Blowing Feathers and Transitions.


Lausanne: City of Stories will take place on Tuesday, 12th February at the Zinema. The event will start at 19.00. 

The discussion will be in English and French. Please sign up here if you are interested: http://www.doodle.com/5tvgq2eik4bqu6gs

Mother, I think I might have a problem....

Top book picks for 2012

For ages now I have been meaning to write about the top books I read in 2012, but I've been dogged by two problems, my chronic laziness and my inability to remember even half the books I read. Then these two factors coincided to create an amazng outcome.

In a moment of folly I decided to tidy up all the books that I had left lying beside my bed, in the loo, on the sofa and random chairs and tables. I took a photo of the pile I made and it turned out to be an excellent cross-section of everything I have read in the last few months.

So here are my top picks for 2012, starting from the top.

White Noise by Don Delillo - top of the pile and top of the list. Genuis going full throttle. Read twice.

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley - Funny in parts. Tongue-in-cheek book about the tabacco industry. Halfway through. Will finish but not reread.

Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis - Everyone should read one book by this author. My suggestion would be this book or American Psycho. This is a story about vacuous celebrity. Finished but won't read again.

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein - An American becomes a crime reporter for a leading Japanese newspaper. Read and reread and strongly recommend.

The Dudley Smith Trio by James Ellroy - Gritty noir detective fiction. I would suggest this book to hard core fans. The Black Dahlia is a better entry into his work.

Where The Hell Have You Been by Tom Carver - Monty's grandson describes his father's escape from an Italian POW camp and the effect Monty had on his family. Read but wouldn't reread. WWII buffs only!

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk - Moments of genius, moments of utter dross. Struggled to finish.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce - a retiree makes a pilgrimage across England to get to the bedside of a dying colleague. A good story book that looks at relationships between older people. Liked but wouldn't reread.

The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth - Found this on, not suprisingly, in the little room. A step-by-step look at the evolution of English words. Fun to flick through. Read and reread.

Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland - I have been reading this author since I was a small boy in short trousers. Not as good as Generation X but have reread numerous times.

Place du Nord by Daniel Tschumy - Short stories in French set in Lausanne. Very interesting and am making my way through.

The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal - I am amazed that this guy still has things to say about English given all the books he has read. He still does and he is still interesting. Read and reread.

Classic Cocktails a Modern Shake - Sadly out of print, but my reference for literary cocktails.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster - Auster's first book and still a classic. Veeery disappointed with his latest autobiography A Winter Journal. I found myself skipping pages!

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk - why do I have two copies of this book?

Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James - still in pristine condition if anyone wants it.

The Case for Working with Your Hands by Matthew Crawford - the author argues that skilled labour is more rewarding than office drudge. Who can disagree - but maybe labours the point a bit. Reread.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - I have very nice memories of reading this book by a canal in Amsterdam. Haven't managed the feat of reading it twice.

Winning! by Clive Woodward - England rugby fans only I suspect....

A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton - short, sweet and immensely readable. The philospher spends a week at Terminal 5 in Heathrow and simply recounts his observations. Awesome book that I have reread many times.

This is How by Augusten Burroughs - having only recently come to this author I have read almost his entire ouevre in the last month. This is a self-help book laced with dark humour and ancedotes. Worth reading, but suggest Dry for people looking for an entry into his work.

All My Friends are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufmann - A short but sweet romance and a tonic to read.

The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz - An(other) American in Paris with recipes! Dipped in and out of but no read in its entirety.

Two more books which I loved in 2012 but weren't in the photo are The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden. These books make my top 5 books of the year.

The Plague of Doves is essentially a number of short stories made into a novel. What sets this book apart is the masterly use of language amd the originality of the characters. A love story, a murder story, a story of generations of native Americans. Loved it.

The Three Day Road is about two First Nation friends who served as snipers in the Second World War. The story covers their time in France, as well as the experiences of one of their parents who remained in Canada. A deeply moving story that I thought about for many weeks afterwards.

Four Years of Books Books Books

Lausanne's English Bookshop Celebrates its 4-year Anniversary

I remember August 2008. I gave up my job and rented a space in Holmes Place which I planned to turn into a bookshop. Some days I whirled around making booklists, ordering furniture and speaking to suppliers. Other days I watched the shadows move across the floor, paralysed by indecision.

Can I do this?
Is this a mistake?
What happens if....?

4 years is a long time. The shop has experienced stomach-lurching drops and vertigo-inducing highs. We've yet to have a day where we've made no sales, although we have been close. Other days we've had five people working flat out to get the work done.

Do I wish it was easier? Yes, all the time. Do I stop to think about what I've achieved? No, never. Like many businesses the gap between success and failiure is too slim. Do I feel like celebrating? Yeeeerrrrsssss!

Join me for a cocktail on November 6th at 7pm at the bookshop. Diccon Bewes will be speaking about his books - Swiss Watching and the recently-released Swisscellany.

Sign up here

See you then!

What do these books have in common?

Can you see what these books share?

•  The Giver By Lois Lowry
•  Where the Sidewalk Ends By Shel Silverstein
•  Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
• To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Not sure? How about if I add these:

•  Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury 
•  Slaughterhouse-Five  By Kurt Vonnegut
•  Leaves of Grass By Walt Whitman
•  The Master and Margarita By Mikhail Bulgakov
•  The Catcher In the Rye By J.D. Salinger

Need a couple more....

•  The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood
•  Ulysses By James Joyce
•  Native Son By Richard Wright
• A Wrinkle in Time By Madeleine L'Engle

 I am sure with these titles you'll be able to guess:

• Animal Farm: A Fairy Story By George Orwell
•  Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov
•  Brave New World By Aldous Huxley
•  The Satanic Verses By Salman Rushdie

That's right, they've all been banned at one time or another. Apparently, Where The Sidewalk Ends  was banned in some school libraries because it , “suggests drug use, the occult, suicide, death, violence, disrespect for truth, disrespect for legitimate authority, rebellion against parents.” 

According to the American Library Association (ALA), the most frequently challenged or ban books are the Harry Potter Series because of - and I am paraphrasing - "its themes of death and resurrection.. depictions of potions and other hocus pocus [and] celebration of witchcraft."

I am mentioning this because it is the Banned Books Week, the ALA's annual celebration of the freedom of speech. This year it is running from September 30th−October 6th.

BBB is joining the celebration and is offering a 35% discount on any of the ALA's top 100 banned books. You can find the list here -  contact the bookshop if you want to order.  The offer's good until October 6th.

What's On in Lausanne?!?

I often get people in the shop who say that there's nothing to do in Lausanne, that the city is boring and they'd much rather be in New York, London or some other metropolitan area. This attitude always amazes me. There is so much to do here it sometimes feels like an embarrassment of riches.

I don't consider myself a particularly cultured person. I don't scan the arts listings every week to see what's going on. But I thought I'd list a representative sample of the events I attended over the past few months, not to brag, but in the hope that people will get switched on to the events on offer.

1. Estival - this is a summer-long series of free events for people of all ages and tastes. There are walks, tours, concerts and readings and they are all free. The best event is probaly La Fete de la Cite, a week-long festival in the old town with gigs, comedy and theatre. You should check out the Estival site for more info. 
2. International Guitar Festival - this is so awesome it's unbelievable. Some of the best guitarists in the world come and play for a few days in the summer. The events take place all round the city. I went to see three guitarists who performed at the the Abbaye de Montheron. The atmosphere was amazing and there is a great restaurant next door too. 
3. L'Orchestre de Suisse Romande - did you know that Lausanne is home to one of the world's leading orchestras? I went to see them at Beaulieu and, while not a great fan of classical music, I really enjoyed it. Definitely worth going to see. The musicians also give smaller concerts throughout the year in more intimate venues. You should drop by the Fondation de l'Institut de Ribaupierre on Georgette to pick up flyers
4. Throughout October there is the Lausanne Underground Film Festival. Many of the films are in English and often the directors are there to introduce the films and take questions from the audience. There are also at least three independent cinemas in Lausanne where you can see films all year round. 
5. Aperti - every year all the artists in Lausanne open their doors to visitors. This is called 'Aperti'. The organisation publishes a map and other details and you can easily spend an afternoon going from studio to studio meeting the artists and seeing their work. I was suprised at how many artists Lausanne attracts and at the quality of the work.
6. Scarecrow festival - admittedly a bit left field, but the village of Denens near Morges is the Swiss capital of scarecrows. There is a lovely walk to do all year round between the village and Vufflens le chateau, but once a year they crank it up and have a festival with theatre, fireworks and more scarecrows you can shake a stick at. It's happening this year on 29th September.
7. While we are in Morges, we should mention two more festivals. First of all, the tulip festival. You can spend a nice afternoon looking at tulips, which is actually more fun than I make it sound. 
8. The Livres sur les quais is Morges' book festival. They have a growing English-language component and this year featured Douglas Kennedy, Stephen Clarke, Nancy Houston. Well worth the effort. 
9. As I mentioned in my earlier post, anyone can study at UNIL. You need to simply fill in a form, pay CHF 150 and choose the courses you want to attend. You don't get credits, and some courses you can't take, but essentially you get the run of the university and a chance to put those grey cells to use. 
10. Geneva Writers Conference - a weekend of writing with the big boys, this conference attracts some very high profile writers and literary agents who share their knowledge with you. 

I could go on, so I will. Did you know there was a free show at Beaulieu last night featuring a 250-strong choir, full orchestra and a light show? Did you catch the awesome temporary theatre in Lutry this summer? Have you ever been on a walk with Pierre Corajoud? Even better, have you celebrated the annual Fete des Voisins - it's a city sponsored intiative that gets neighbours together over wine and food. It's one evening a year that pays dividends all year round.

Don't fly home for the summer - you'll miss the best bit.

Studying at UNIL

Even if you are not a student

Every year the professors in the English section order books through the shop.  This year someone ordered books by authors who interested me and I found out something valuable: you can take courses at UNIL even if you are not a student.

All you have to do is to pay sFr. 150 and sign up as an auditor. You can do this here: http://www.unil.ch/immat/page5393.html

Being an auditor entitles you to attend the lectures in whatever course interests you (with a few exceptions), and you don't even have to do the homework.

Responsibility-free study appealed to me, as did the course, so I signed up. This semester I'll be studying Paul Auster, Don Delillo and Chuck Palahnuik.  It feels great to go back to University again, even if all I can do is listen!

More Thoughts on Writing

I was sitting at the dinner table talking to my eight-year-old daughter about the difference between good and bad writing (poor girl!) and I was trying to think of an example of what I thought was good writing. What came to mind was a passage I read in Douglas Kennedy's The Moment.

The passage happens early in the book when the narrator, Thomas Nesbitt, is looking for accommodation. He has responded to an advert and set up an appointment to view a flat. He is climbing up the stairs of the apartment building looking for the place. Kennedy writes,

'As I reached it I saw that its door was in the same style as the others, only this one had been whitewashed in a way that allowed its old brown finish to underscore the artfully swabbed white paint.'

I think the writer is doing two things. It may not seem like much of a trick, but he has given us in a condensced way a description of a door that we can perfectly imagine. It's short enough that we hardly notice it and yet the image is perfectly clear. Very few writers can do this. Having sat thinking about this for a few minutes, the only other author I can think of is Murakami.

The other achievement of this sentence is that he has decribed the character we are about to meet before we have met him. Reread the sentence...what kind of a person do you imagine has a front door like this one? If you guessed a painter who cares about, and takes care of, the environment in which he lives then I hope you get my point.

Of course, each writer has their own style. Camus might have written, 'It was a door' and everyone would have gone wild, myself included, leading the parade with pom-poms. But it fits the the context of this book where the author spends considerable time describing the surroundings.

Totally off topic, but another sentence made me gasp today. Here it is:

'In his dream, which he later forgot, he found himself alone in a room, firing a pistol into a bare white wall.'

A free book if you can tell me the author.....

Life in the day of a bookseller

What do I do all day?

As I mentioned before, I thought I planned to spend my days at Books Books Books sipping cappuccinos and making literary small-talk with less fortunate readers. Surprisingly, this doesn't happen very often. Yesterday was a pretty exceptional day but I covered all the elements that make this job, if not exactly fun, then at least interesting. Here's what I did.

I got up at 6am and took some money to the bank. I needed the cash to pay some bills. On Monday the money-in machine had swallowed the day's takings so I was relieved when the payment went without a problem.

Back at the shop I paid all the bills marked urgent (i.e. most of them), then I walked down to the car hire place and picked up a van I needed.

I drove it back to the shop and then began to answer the emails which started 'Dear Matthew, This is the third time I have written to you and I hoping - praying - that I might get an answer.' At 8.50 I began to reply to an emailed order, indeed I had got as far as the 'D' in 'Dear' when the phone rang. It was a teacher making an order. As I took this down my colleague James arrived.

We loaded the van with about 30-odd boxes and I drove it to a local suppliers. I had ordered about 400 books through this supplier at the beginning of August. The week before I had exhausted the box marked, 'Ask politely about the status of your books' and had started hectoring them twice a day for news. This had got better results and I drove to their place to pick up my books.

With these loaded I drove to a school where I had arranged to sell directly to the students. The concierge who had been slated to help me disappeared leaving me to carry all the boxes from the van to the school, down some stairs and then to another wing. By the time I'd finished there were about 100 students waiting for books. Some of the teachers kindly helped me and by 3pm I was out the door and back in BBB.

I figured I would unload the two boxes I had in the van and then drop it off. However, a teacher drove up and we discussed her order on the street. James and another colleague had a few questions and another customer needed some advice. Then our favourite delivery driver arrived. We call him Mr Benzedrine because he drives to and from Argaau everyday and by Friday his eyes look like bloody dots in the snow. He doesn't speak French and I don't speak German so we've evolved a kind of pidjin that covers how many deliveries he has to do, if James's sleeping and if he can leave his van in my spot for five minutes. I took the van back when he left.

It was 4pm and a local teacher came in to speak with me. There had been a problem with her order a few days earlier. James had mistaken the figures '17' for '117' and '20' for '120' so we had a few too many. I had written to her to say, 'I have just shot James and stuffed his body in the nearest rubbish bin' to which she had replied, 'I'm soooo sorry to have caused the death of your colleague' and  I supposed her visit was to reassure herself that we had recycled his body correctly. I'll never know because someone uttered the words, 'It's been really quiet today' and suddenly we had about 50 customers in the shop. The next time I looked up she was gone.

Having been going for 11 hours on a bottle of orange juice I popped home and bewed a cup of English lifesaver. I wanted to stay home, but there were emails I knew I had to answer so I went back to work. It was ten to six when I continued the email I had started that morning, 'Dear Mr Moser' I wrote, 'Thank you for your email which I received this morning....'

I got home at a very reasonable hour and after supper I picked up a book The Moment by Douglas Kennedy which I am reading because I am interviewing him at the Morges literary festival next Sunday. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work might have been more appropriate.

Speed Read: Outlaws, assassins, spies and...restaurants?

 My picks for the WRS SpeedRead

Three books that will keep you in suspense, in fits of laughter and just wholly entertained during the summer holidays:

•  The Sister’s Brothers by Patrick deWitt
• Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre
• How to Eat Out: Lessons from a Life Lived Mostly in Restaurants by Giles Coren

What is good writing - one reader's advice

The Sister's Brothers vs. Fifty Shades of Grey

I get to read a lot of books. This month I have read, or reread, the following titles:

How To Eat Out
Dog Collar
Double Cross
Winning
Out
The Sisters Brothers
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
What Will Survive
a lot of James Ellroy

and I have also given up on many books, the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey being one.

I had just finished The Sisters Brothers when I read that Fifty Shades sold 1,000,000 copies in 11 weeks, overtaking Dan Brown and J K Rowling in the process and making it something of a record breaker.

I loved The Sisters Brothers and could not get beyond the first chapter of Fifty Shades. It reminded me of some self-published novels I have read. While it might be unfair to single out this particular book - there are many other books I haven't liked - the gulf between it and Sister's Brothers was so wide, so obvious, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two. 

In doing so I am trying to approach the question, 'What is good writing?' concious that the answer should always be, 'Something you like.' Taken at face value this is as good an answer as any. I like it so it's good for me. So why is it that millions of books get written every year and only few are published? If you want to be a writer what should you be doing?

For me, good writing elevates itself above the ordinary because it never tells the story, it shows it. Let me give you an example.

New York writer and journalist Pete Hamill tells the story of one of his first newspaper articles which was about a fire. He described the event and finished with the sentence 'It was a tragedy.'.

His editor brought the article back with this sentence underlined. 'It was a tragedy? Write it like it happened and let the reader decide if it's a fucking tragedy.'

Quite so.

We find this kind of show-don't-tell writing in the first chapter of The Sisters Brothers. The narrator is talking about his new horse Tub. We learn how he got it, 'in partial payment for the last job', why he got it, his last horse died violently, why he doesn't like it, '[he] could not travel more than fifty miles in a day' and why he has to keep it, because his brother got first pick while he was in bed with a leg wound.


In less than 30 lines we know everything we need to know about Eli and Charlie. They are living and breathing for us and we know that bad but exciting things are about to happen to them, and all because the narrator is talking about a horse.

The writer is showing us the action and letting us draw our own conclusions. He is allowing us to unpick the subtlies of the brothers' history and relationship. He could have said, 'Me and my brother Eli are gunslingers and we were at our bosses house to get a new job. Our last job ended badly and I got wounded. I don't get on with my brother all the time but we work as a team'  - and that would have been both dull and shallow.

By comparison, in Fifty Shades we learn that the narrator Ana is going to be subjected to 'an ordeal'. She is a brown-haired girl with blue eyes who is currently frustrated and exasperated. Her friend Kate is 'gamine and gorgeous...articulate, strong and persuasive.' Kate has volunteered Ana to interview a 'mega-industrialist tycoon' the CEO of Grey Holdings.

I just don't find this as gripping. The author is telling us what is happening in primary colours. She is not asking the reader to untangle the relationship. It is presented as fact and we are not allowed to draw our own conclusions.

I don't care for the scene either. A good author creates tension by explaining the stakes. We know that these are high for Eli and Charlie, it's life or death . It doesn't always have to be so dramatic, but suspense compels the reader to find out what happens. Fifty Shades starts with Ana brushing the knots out of her hair. What is at stake is the success or failiure of an interview with a 'mega-industrialist tycoon' for a student paper. I am unconvinced that I should care about this.

I gave up with Fifty Shades on page five where the author describes a view as, 'Wow.' This might be a shame as there is possibly a good story to come but I am reluctant to invest my time in finding out. I need writers to try a bit harder, to show me they are serious.

Here's Jonathon Saffron Foer describing his grandmother who survived during the war on scavenged ends of potatoes and scraps of meat, 'And so she never cared if I colored outside the lines, as long as I cut coupons along the dashes.' Elegant, entertaining and persuasive.

Here's Colum McCann on the first page of Let The Great World Spin: 'He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped dark against the gray of the morning.  A window washer maybe. Or a construction worker, Or a jumper. Up there, at the height of a hundred and ten stories, utterly still, a dark toy against the cloudy sky.'

And just to show I'm not singling out Fifty Shades, here is Wm Paul Young in The Shack, 'March unleased a torrent of rainfall after and unusually dry winter. A cold front out of Canada then descended and was held in place by a swirling wind...' Why? Why? Why start with the weather? Is this a book or a forecast?


'The articulation of perception', as Geoff Dyer has called it, the ability of good writers to delive beyond the exterior and articulate what they see. 

Marcus Brigstocke Washes God's Socks

God Collar by Marcus Brigstocke

Now the move has been completed to the new shop, it is great to start up the blog again, particularly with a an excellent book.

I was in England recently and bought God Collar by Marcus Brigstocke on impulse. I knew of the author because of his famous appearance on the witty BBC news show 'Have I Got News For You' - you can watch a short clip here.

I hesitated getting the book because the only blurb came from The Big Issue. Also, the book is a spin-off from his God Collar tour and I was worried it would be simply a disappointing cash in.

Brigstocke is an athiest, albeit a reluctant one. He wishes he could have the calm and security that he finds amongst believers. Essentially he is trying to find if he and God have anything in common.

As you might expect from one of the UK's leading comic talents, the book is a laugh-riot. I do not suggest you do as I did and read it on plane, train and metro unless you don't mind the sidelong glances as you smother your giggles. Despite the levity in the writing the book's topic is deadly serious. He poses the question, 'How can we follow God if his followers abuse kids, blow themselves up and declare, "We have the only truth"?'.

This might appear to be a flimsy context for a 300-page tome but there are no soggy bits. I genuinely looked forward to reading more and was a bit sad when I finished. Having said that, there were parts where he started to simply rant or digress into an interesting story half-way through an argument. He does warn the reader that they won't necessarily find anwswers in the book, and that is certainly the case. The lack of conclusion does not detract from the book and I highly recommend it.