Book News: April 2011
from The Book Case, who have been providing our community with books for over 25 years
TOP TEN: March bestsellers at The Book Case
What you've been buying: MARCH's bestsellers at The Book Case
World Book Day made its mark on The Book Case's bestsellers in March, and our first Literary Lecture promoted Andrew Bibby's interesting book still further. There were four other popular local titles, a little book of poems about mothers sold well (Mother's Day is coming) and three very different novels were also in demand.
1. Dr Seuss on the Loose! (£1.00)
By far the most popular of the World Book Day Specials, this is a collection of rip-roaring rhymes from the master of verse. We keep most of his other books in stock too.
2. Backbone of England - Andrew Bibby (£8.99)
Life and landscape on the Pennine watershed from a well-known local author and walker. Now in a portable paperback version.
3. At the Foot of the Lud - Sheena Ellwood (£9.99)
A well-researched history of Luddenden Foot by a local resident which has been selling very well in a number of outlets. Royd Press.
4. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas (£5.99)
Peter Thomas's account of the history of our area from ancient times to the present day. Pretty well a permanent resident in our Top Ten.
5. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley (£5.00) Colour-illustrated pamphlet from Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre with the history of watermills in the area. The two new ones in the series deal with Hebden Bridge: "From Fulling to Fustianopolis".
6. The Good Ship Calder High and other tales from the 1950s - Peter Thomas (£5.00) Still selling well, an account of life at the experimental new school in Mytholmroyd, by a survivor! And other local goings on in the 1950s.
7. Ten Poems about Mothers - ed. Jenny Swann (£4.95)
One of the Candlestick series of poetry pamphlets, including a bookmark. The title of Jackie Kay's poem 'I Try My Absolute Best' says it all really!
8. A Shilling for Candles - Josephine Tey (£7.99)
Beneath the sea cliffs of the south coast, suicides are a sad but common fact. Yet even the hardened coastguard knows something is wrong when a beautiful young film actress is found lying dead on the beach one morning. One of the stylishly jacketed reissues of the classic 1950s whodunnits.
9. Room - Emma Donoghue (£7.99)
Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single, locked room. They don't have the key. Jack and Ma are prisoners. Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 and longlisted for this year's Orange Prize.
10. Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk (£7.99)
It's a perfect spring day in Istanbul and wealthy Kemal is about to become engaged to aristocratic Sibel when he meets Fusun, a beautiful shop girl. A "haunting novel of memory, desire and loss."
Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,
NEWS
The Mills of the Hebden Valley - HB Alternative Technology Centre (£5.00) and Fustianopolis - Hebden Bridge: the growth of a textile town - HB Alternative Technology Centre (£5.00)
Two new well-researched illustrated pamphlets with succinct accounts of our local textile history and fascinating old photographs. Justine Wyatt was the project coordinator and members of Hebden Bridge Local History Society contributed in many different ways. There's currently an exhibition at the Alternative Technology Centre.
And more on the Pennine Way:
The Pennine Way - Roly Smith, photos by John Morrison (£16.99)
A beautiful and refreshingly different look at the the grand daddy of our long distance footpaths. John Morrison is well known in Hebden Bridge for his atmospheric photographs and his wryly humorous Milltown trilogy.
Pennine Way South - Tony Hopkins (£12.99)
Features the southern section of the Way, following Natural England's acorn waymarks from Edale in the Peak District across the South Pennine moors and the Yorkshire Dales to Bowes, a distance of 127 miles (204 km). This is the complete, official guide for the long-distance walker or the weekend stroller. (Does he still refer to Hebden Bridge as a boiler room, I wonder?)
Local Authors
Full Blood - John Siddique (£9.99)
Intelligent, sensual, highly erotic, manly and beautifully mortal - "Full Blood" is the result of a fifteen-year labour of love. This is literature in its most empowered state, and poetry at its most radical, lyrical and affecting. "Full Blood" invites you in easily, and then turns into one of those books that you can't put down because it has become your close friend.
Talking to the Dead - Anne Caldwell (£7.99)
Winner of the Cinnamon Press Poetry Award 2010: by a Hebden Bridge writer and poet, it's a book of poetry telling a whole series of stories from different points of view.
Turning Back - Terry Quy (£8.99)
Todmorden-based novel from an artist and writer who grew up there: attractive, academically-gifted daugther of a West Yorkshire working-class family in the 1940s, Miriam Sanderson leaves the milltown of her birth to make her future elsewhere - but the repercussions of the past continue to haunt her. Click here for the author's website.
Jill Liddington (a Kensington and Chelsea suffrage trail) and Issy Shannon (women's wartimes magazines) have articles in the latest edition of Herstoria magazine.