Gather round your wireless...

...because tonight, from about 11:30, I will be discussing the best and worst of the past decade with Aasmah Mir, Neil McCormick and Zara Rabinowicz on BBC Radio 5live. Let me know if there’s anything I should mention. Apart from plugs for the book, obviously.

(Expect more of this sort of stuff in the coming weeks. Sorry.)

PS: It’s here for the next week; from about an hour in.

The book of Daniel

Stan of Bête de Jour infamy recently bemoaned the state of being An Author Who Is Not Dan Brown; in WH Smith, he was offered 50% off The Lost Plot or whatever DB’s latest extravaganza is going to be called, which is bad enough if you’re just a run-of-the-mill sentient human being, but if you have your own book on the market, that you know is better than Brown’s but your sales figures will be about a squillionth of his, it’s pretty depressing.

So it was with some trepidation that I entered Waterstone’s in Croydon today (yes, am back in the temperate zone). The till chap scanned my copy of Loops (the Domino/Faber muso periodical) and informed me that the Nick Cave novel, an extract of which is included therein, will be published next week.

“And my book’s published the week after that,” I said, and immediately worried whether I sounded too pushy.

“Oh right,” he said, “I hope we can get some signed copies.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, took his business card, and strolled off. There’s the cultural landscape mapped out for you, I pondered: on one side, WH Smith and Dan Brown; on the other, Waterstone’s and Nick Cave and me. And, of course, Stan Bête.

I slipped the receipt into my wallet, and only then noticed at the bottom the half-price offer on the new Dan Brown.

PS: And here’s Expat@large with yet more evidence of Brown’s essential shiteness as a writer.

Winging it

On Saturday I shall be embarking upon a longish plane journey, and just in case a combination of Kate Hudson movies, articles about luxury watches and scented towelettes doesn’t sustain me, I’m thinking of taking a couple of books. But what to pluck from the pile? Any suggestions gratefully received.

Geoff Dyer, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
“A wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning.”

Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
“...an extraordinary feat of imagination and of style funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece.”

Will Self, The Book of Dave
“Will Self is such an overpowering presence in his own books that it’s sometimes difficult to tell what he's actually written.”

Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills
“If you need all mysteries to be solved and all plotlines to be resolved, this book will frustrate you to no end.”

Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World
“This is a book not about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.”

Charlotte Roche, Wetlands
“It's a famous woman talking about vaginas – of course it’s going to sell.”

PS: Scott Pack offers his criteria for chucking books out. Is there some variant of this I might be able to use?

Name that toon

This made me chuckle:


And Everett reminded me of this:

Autoblography

Mary Pols in Time, reviewing Julie & Julia, the first big-budget feature film of a book of a blog:

There are memoirists like Child who write about what made them famous, or infamous. There are unremarkable people who write about a remarkable thing that happened to them. And there is the 21st century memoirist, who makes him- or herself interesting in order to write about it.

Holmes, wait! I know why the bear is white!

What's that great line we got off Rotten Tomatoes?

"Pass the Vaseline and clear the row in front of me."

And again, no one's saying this is going to be any good.

But sir, it is wafer thin!

My orientation professor made a "wafer thin" reference yesterday and I think I was the only one who got it.

But I write that line because in the Financial Times this morning (which is dutifully delivered to our door and no one else's every morning, whatever), there was a cool article about how Pepsi is about to start doing video ads in print media; very Harry Potter, the FT thought.

Also, randomly, my favorite moment of the day...wait no, I have two. First of all, we're sitting in a large room with about 120 people for a little seminar/Q&A on what to expect, and they're warning us about the dangers of stress and the ominous path it leads you down. She said, and I quote:

"People start drinking more and doing more cocaine..."

Everyone totally looked around like, "Did she really just say that?" Because I try to keep my coke use respectable. (I'm sure it was not how it was intended, but we still made jokes about it later.)

In the same session, during the Q&A, when people invariably mutter the question, one person brazenly, loudly asked, "Does the health center give out free condoms?"

There were a couple snickers, but what was priceless was the answer. He said yes, they have tons and tons. But apparently one of the admin for health services came in one day and said, "These condoms suck!" And she went out and spent money on different shapes, sizes, textures, flavors, you name it. And they don't put those out in dishes, so if you want the good stuff you have to ask.

And that was what I learned today.