Apparently, it’s now Christmas time. Personally, I’m not done with summer, but I’m wearing my mum’s cardigan and I’m melting the soles of my boots on the shop radiator, so it must be time to give in.

Here are the top 5 books I plan on giving over and over this winter – they are not only awesome, they’re the kind of books you want to read with a rug and a sleepy dog on your lap, and with a large glass of whiskey nearby. Dog is optional.

In fiction:

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann

The Wild Things by Dave Eggars

Martha, Jack and Shanco by Caryl Lewis

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

For a far more comprehensive list of the best books of the 2000s see Stuart Ever’s blog here: http://stuartevers.blogspot.com/2009/11/50-novels-of-2000s-part-one-50-to-40.html

 Tomorrow I’ll post a list of short stories, the next day some non-fiction etc etc. That ought to fill up a bit of space anyway.

Alternate lists? Suggest away.

I know, I know, I KNOW it’s bad form to respond to criticism, but I feel oddly proud of this bad review:

“In a word, awful. This has to have been one of the worse books I have ever read…”

It’s from the Goodreads website, read the rest of it here:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75939203

It really is a beauty.

Thanks Mel, and thank you Janie, who goes on to agree with Mel and say

“I absolutely insist on a book’s having a point. “ 

A smiling face right back at you Janie.

This Wednesday at 7.30pm I’ll be doing a reading and answering some questions at Review Bookshop, 131 Bellenden Road, Peckham.  This has only just occurred to me.

http://www.peckhamliteraryfestival.co.uk/

I’ve done this sort of thing before, and I’m starting to feel alright about it. Taking part in the Melbourne Writers Festival in August pretty much flogged out all of my worst nightmares. We had to wear Madonna style headsets instead of using a microphone, and I had a cold. I got a massive tickle in my throat, which I couldn’t clear because of the headset which made the room vibrate when I coughed, so I had to sit there with my eyes streaming, looking to the audience like the pressure was just too much for me.

I also managed to turn an elderly audience against me in answering the question ‘Would you ever write about your English family?’ by saying I’d have to wait until my Grandmother died. It was sort of a joke, but it was met with a sharp communal inhalation and a hard and beady look from the white haired lady who had been nodding along with everything I said up until then.

So what else could go wrong? The worst would be if no one came, and I had to fill an hour by just prattling on to my parents. I’ve also woken up with a cold this morning, so I might be reading in an awful adenoidal voice, and hacking into a handkerchief. Or I might have a terrifying nosebleed like David Frost did that time:

frostbleed

My main problem though, which is the same one I face every time I do something like this, is how to start. I have become no better at describing what my book is about, in this past year. I sometimes feel like I want to start flapping my arms and just say something like ‘it’s all about stuff and things and that. And lots of it.’ A cab driver in New York asked me what it was about, and I told him ‘It’s a thriller about men not speaking to each other.’

It’s hard this bit, I’ve spoken to other authors who say they have the same problem, you’re so close to the story , it becomes about how a character ties his shoes, how beer tastes, what a headache feels like. What you want to be able to say at the beginning of an event like the one on Wednesday is, ‘I’ve written a book about three men living together in a caravan in Uzbekistan, and how they feel about organic farming’. Instead, on Wednesday, I’ll be stammering and trying to make sense of a list of stuff that will be written in tiny writing on the cover of my reading copy of the book. It will say: Australia, 1950s, Sydney, East Coast, men, landscape, Vietnam, conscription, PTSD and cake decorating.

Any worst ever public speaking stories? Things to watch out for? Even better, has anyone who has read my book got a succinct one-liner on what the book’s about? If you have there’s a stubby cooler in it for you.

Hope to see you there.

Writing and working in a London bookshop

I don’t know if it’s from a kind of  awkwardness that comes with walking into a quiet space,  but I find it really strange when people come into the bookshop singing to themselves. 

 Today it’s been particularly noticeable – perhaps singing makes people feel warmer in this cold weather? One guy sang the intro to Fever, without ever getting to the words, complete with clicky  fingers and a bouncy little walk,  for a good four or five minutes, until his girlfriend very softly, and not unkindly said ‘Why don’t you just shut up?’

Mostly though, people sing little ditties they’ve made up, tuneless things that might just as well be them reading out the words ‘der dum der dum de dee dee’ as there is no attempt to make them sound at all musical.

What I’d really like would be if someone would swing open the door and really go for it, some sort of fat man opera, ideally. Then I could stop what I was doing, and enjoy the distraction rather than just getting unreasonably annoyed by the low level noise.

 My favorite moment of today though, was when a harassed mother whose young daughter was singing Postman Pat at the top of her screech, called her a ‘noisy arsehole’ by accident. She explained to me that she’d meant to say ‘noisy article’. I was very pleased, either way.

Is about the most annoying thing that people say regularly in the book shop. It makes me want to give a Clement Freud style comeback that  would both embarrass them and cause them to change their reading habits. Instead I go a little red and smile too much. Sometimes I say “Mmmm” like I’m agreeing with them, which makes me deeply ashamed. Especially as I’ve been reading I Could Ride All Day in My Cool Blue Train by Peter Hobbs, and it’s just wonderful. I’m that ‘engaged’ I can’t think about much else.

Published by Faber and Faber

SO, I’ve managed to get Peter Hobbs to sign three of his beautiful books and I will be giving them away to the best Clement Freud style comeback to “Yeah, I don’t like short stories, they just don’t engage me,” or to excellent suggestions of short story collections. I can’t write that without it rhyming, sorry.