Ladybird by Design exhibition at House of Illustration

I still have my many Ladybird books so I was always going to be interested in an exhibition about them. Even more so when it was on at the House of Illustration which is a very short walk away from my office in Kings Cross.

In fact I was so keen that I went a day early having failed to check the opening date. A day later I went again, this time with more luck.

This was an exhibition at the House of Illustration so it was about the pictures rather than the words, and that was fine with me. I like pictures.

The gallery is not that large with one main room about the size of my downstairs living space and a couple of little rooms off this. I think that the entrance fee is a tad high for time it takes to see everything, around twenty minutes, so I was pleased to see that they now had an Art Fund discount, which they had not on previous visits. This had annoyed me a little as the Art Fund were in the same building!

The first illustration that grabbed my attention was this one, the cover of the book In A Big Store. It was not the book that what was familiar, it was the store. This was the Bentalls store in Kingston upon Thames. It is now the Bentalls Centre, with the store having moved next door, but the wonderful frontage have been retained.

Most of the exhibition was illustrations like that which had been used in Ladybird books. The original drawings were all A4 sized (or something very close) and they were printed smaller for the books.

I was interested to learn that the size of Ladybird books had been set by the default size of print. It was just after the war and materials were scarce so the books were designed to use all of a standard print with all 56 pages arranged so that they used all of the paper and could be printed in one go. The exhibition had a sample book as it was printed and it was fun trying to work out how it was folded and cut to put the pages in order.

The largest part of the exhibition was illustrations from the book Shopping with Mother, not one that I ever had. The pictures were displayed in two rows on one of the long walls in the main room.

These had the double interest of being illustrations where I could appreciate the work of the artist and could also be reminded of how the world was when I was a small child. Ham Parade still looks a little like that with the fruiterers and hardware shop having impressive displays of goods outside of their shops.

That double joy continued throughout the exhibition as I looked at the illustrations and remembered the books that they came from. Books in the exhibition that I had read as a boy included Exploring Space and The Story of Flight.

They also had The Policeman and my memories of this were more recent, only twenty years old. My eldest son was in love with it for a while when quite small and I spent many a long evening reading it to him. It was very wordy too!

I thought that I had a lot of Ladybird books but there were whole series of them shown here that I did not even remember seeing in shops. The variety was enormous and I had not realised that subjects like wildlife and travel had been covered as widely as they had.

There was a sort of house-style to the books, all the illustrations looked real to life, but the different topics and different artists meant that there was some variance and part of the fun was trying to learn about and understand these differences. Just like it is fun to try and guess who drew a specific Dennis the Menace story.

In one of the small rooms, the last one if you go around anti-clockwise which I think you were meant to do, was a documentary about the books on a continuous loop and I found this interesting and informative, which is probably what it wanted to be.

Ladybird by Design was a jolly exhibition that revealed much about the illustrations, and their illustrators, that many of us took for granted when growing up. Now we can properly appreciate their quality.

Quentin Blake: Inside Stories at the House of Illustration

I am rather fond of illustrations so it was a very pleasant surprise to discover the new House of Illustration just a stone's throw from the office. The stone throwing is made a little easier by me being on the top (7th) floor of Kings Place and the House of Illustration being at ground level on the other side of the road. It is located in Granary Square, part of the new Central Saint Martins complex just north of the canal and a couple of hundred metres north of Kings Cross.

It's opening exhibition was Quentin Blake: Inside Stories. I would have gone to see the exhibition whatever it was, just to find out what the gallery was like, but it helped having fond memories of Quentin Blake's work from reading Roald Dahl books to small boys.

It cost me £7.50 to get in (my attempt to walk in without paying failed miserably) which I thought was a little steep and I was further aggrieved to find that my usually helpful ArtFund card carried no weight. When places like the V&A and Saatchi Gallery are free and the much larger Cartoon Museum is £7 (free with ArtFund) then this sort of fee takes some justifying.

The exhibition was not that big, not much more than one room but it was deceptively busy and it took me half an hour or so to see and read everything. And I did read everything.

The exhibition was spread over all of the walls and two large tables.

It was arranged by book and each section started with an explanation of the book and the approach taken to the drawings. It was then illustrated with several original drawings.

One of the things that I found interesting was the way that some parts of some of the pictures had been redrawn and the new part literally cut and paste over the old. This is not something an illustrator has to do today when they use digital tools extensively or exclusively.

I only knew the Dahl books so it was interesting to learn about the others. Different techniques were used in each but all the drawing had the same distinctive and instantly recognisable style. Most of them were amusing too.

The surprise came in the second and smaller room that was dedicated to just one book. This was Michael Rosen's Sad Book which was about his reaction to his teenage son's death. It was quite a shock after the monkeys, princesses and washer-women in the previous room. It was still very much Blake though and Rosen's words were a poignant read.

The whole exhibition was neatly curated and arranged with plenty of helpful words to explain the pictures.

It will be interesting to see how the House of Illustration develops and I hope it grows to become a worthy and established gallery catering for those of us who like our stories told in pictures.

Neil Gaiman narrates The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

The last time that I saw Neil Gaiman in person in London it was in the holding room while waiting to see a recording of The Now Show and I was the only person in the room who recognised him.

That was a few years ago and things like American Gods have happened since then and now to see Neil I had to fork out £50 for a decent seat in the Circle (B27) at the Barbican Hall. This is the largest space at the Barbican Centre and it takes almost 2,000 people. It looked sold out to me.

I was not quite sure what to expect, though there is a clue in the poster, because the Barbican had listed it under their music section and one of the artists mentioned was FourPlay String Quartet.

It was the quartet who opened the evening and they started it with some tuning-up sort of noises that quickly became the Dr Who theme. Cue much applause. They played some of their own songs too and they did a pretty good job of entertaining us for twenty minutes or so.

Then Neil came on. Cue much more applause.

The first half of the show was a bit rambolic and felt almost as if it was made up on the spot, some of it probably was. Neil told a few tales, some that he had written and some about writing them. The substantial material came from his 2013 collection A Calendar of Tales, a set of very short stories commissioned by BlackBerry and each inspired by a tweet sent to Neil in response to his request for an idea or image for each month.

I have read A Calendar of Tales but it was nice to hear Neil read a few of them.

And that was the first half. In about forty five minutes we were back out looking for beers having had a fairly thin feast. I was somewhat disappointed but that was only because I did not know what was coming next.

The second half was filled with the tale The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains and some tales about the making of it.

The tale had been originally commissioned for an event at the Sydney Opera House and had been told a few times since then. The more that it was told the more pictures there were from Eddie Campbell to illustrate it. It developed from an illustrated book to a picture book.

It was a long rambling tale firmly in the Neil Gaiman tradition of folklore and magic with little things planted along the way to reappear later when least expected. It was consummate storytelling from somebody who has mastered the art.

The tale was significantly enriched by Neil's telling of it. He usually records his own audiobooks for this reason and I have his reading of Neverwhere (I also have the book and the DVD of the TV series). It was also significantly enriched by Eddie Campbell's many illustrations.

I did not check my watch but the story lasted around an hour. Then we had some chatting about it with Eddie joining Neil on stage (in a kilt). Neil generously explained that he had nicked some of the ideas from a Scottish writer that nobody else had ever heard of while staying in his Skye retreat.

The evening ended as rambolically as it had started but that did not matter. The evening was all about The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains and that was a pretty tale prettily told.

Picture This: Children's Illustrated Classics at the British Library

I do like the way that the British Library puts on small exhibitions on the space on the first floor next to the cafe. About a year ago I went to see Murder in the Library and this time it was Children's Illustrated Classics.

This exhibition explored ten classic children’s books from the 20th century including Paddington Bear, Peter Pan and Willy Wonka and classic works such as Just So Stories, The Wind in the Willows and The Hobbit.

Few of these were books that I could claim to have loved as a child (The Wind in the Willows was one that I did) but I did know most of the characters and that familiarity helped.

The exhibition was quite simple; for each book/character there was a brief history of the book and its illustrators and a few examples of their work.

For example, for The Wind in the Willows there was a classic illustration from Ernest H. Shepard and several others including this rather pretty modern one from David Roberts.

One of the interesting things was to see how different artists had reinterpreted familiar characters, sometimes trying to keep faithful to the original look and sometimes doing just the obvious.

The other interesting differences came from the style of the drawings. In the Wind in the Willows example I think that the character, Mole, is very like the original whereas the drawing style is very different from EH Shepard's.

My highlight of the exhibition, surprisingly, was The Secret Garden, a book I had never read. The three illustrations were all very colourful (subsequent illustrators following the style of the first) and utterly charming.

Sadly I cannot show you what they looked like as photography was banned, the exhibition space was out in the open so I could not easily break the rule and they are not on the web. That is a good reason for you to go there and for me to go back.

Analysing trends in racists words

A recent holiday in Spain reminded me of the non-PC line in Blackadder II (1986) where, in the episode called Chains, he told his Spanish captors that he, "No speako dago". It struck me that the word "dago" had disappeared from regular use, and rightly so.

I was interested to see if this hypothesis was true and went off to Google Books Ngram Viewer to check.

Before making any conclusions it is important to note that Google is just searching for the words in its books and so the data is compromised by the data sampled and where words have multiple meanings. For example, looking to see which recent books have the word "coon" in shows many that are about Maine Coons, a breed of domestic cat.

These graphs shows some interesting things, such as the steady fall in the use of "coon" from 1900, the virtual absence of "wog" until 1920, the decline in "dago" from around 1940 and the decline in "wop" from around the same time only for it to start picking up again around 1970.

If the recent rise in "wop" can be explained in the same that "coon" can, e.g. it is part of "Doo-Wop", then the trends are all positive and we can note with interest when the tide started to turn in the use of each of them.

What surprised me was how early they started to fall into disuse when I had not expected this to be much before the 1980s.

Murder in the British Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction

Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction is a small exhibition at the British Library that caught my eye.

My interest in crime fiction comes more from the TV adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Adam Dalglish, Miss Marple, et all and that was enough when combined with my experience of previous exhibitions at the British Library to pull me in.

The exhibition is on one of the funny landings between the entrance and the reading rooms near to the cafe. It is generally accessible to the public and is free to enter.

It consists of 26 alphabetical displays of around A3 size. These covered topics like Agatha Christie, Kidnapping, Locked Rooms and Villains.

In each case it explained the history of the theme, e.g. the first story to feature a murder in a room locked from the inside (which is The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe), gave examples of where else it was used and described how the trope developed.

For somebody who has read none of the books mentioned, not even the Enid Blyton, I was surprised at just how interesting it was and I read every word on every display.

Grandville Bete Noire by Bryan Talbot

After taking a break for a year Grandville came back to reclaim Christmas and, judging by my Twitter stream, many people were given it and they all loved it.

In my case it was bit of a cheat as I bought the book myself a couple of months ago when I had the opportunity to get it signed by Bryan Talbot. He has signed all three volumes for me so far and that is a tradition that I have every intention of continuing.

Grandville Bete Noir is a lovely book.

You know this from when you first pick it up. The book is beautifully constructed with a thick hard cover and heavy stock glossy paper.

The pages are A4 which makes the book a good solid size. You know that you have something special in your hands.

I read the book slowly and carefully just for the pure joy of turning the pages. I also washed my hands first.

The structure of the story is a little different this time. Right at the beginning we meet the bad guy and he tells us what he plans to do so the main plot is DI LeBrock trying to find out what we already know and then trying to stop it.

As with the other books the pages drip with references most of which are too arty for me, though even I recognised Paddington Bear.

It is also delightfully steampunk and the autogyro on page 93 is a joy to behold. We also get a quick reprise of the wheeled boots that opened the first book.

The range of animals seems to be a little wider this time with the usual woodland creatures supplemented by a gazelle and a crested newt, among others. We also have some humans this time, or "doughfaces" as the animals call them.

Grandville is visually rich in gadgets, characters, buildings, streetscapes and works of art (part of the story is set in the Louvre). That is another reason to read the book slowly.

Page 56 hit me when I first read it so I have used it as example of why I like Bryan's storytelling so much.

Most of the pages have a white background and the panels are edged in black but when the action gets hot the background turns black.

In all the panels there is solid black that bleeds in to the background disguising the shape of the panel.

Each panel is taken from a different perspective and distance.

The page is a sandwich with LeBrock motionless at the top and bottom and all the action across the middle.


The artwork is all that is needed to describe the action and the single word at the end is all that is needed to tell us what LeBrock thinks about it.

The page is the unit of work for a (printed) comic and Bryan is a master at page composition.

The flow between the pages works equally well and the story changes pace and mood nicely.

Grandville Bete Noire is exquisite in all regards. The wait for volume four has started.

My Seven Lives by Agnesa Kalinov

Thanks to my (minor) involvement with the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) I am invited to some events organised by the Slovak Embassy and while some of these do not interest me and some I cannot get to there are a few invitations each year that I am delighted to accept.

This one was to launch the book My Seven Lives by Agnesa Kalinov.

I had not heard of her before but I was interested to hear from somebody who had direct experience of Word War II (as a Jew), the post-war period leading up to the Prague Spring, the Russian invasion in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in1989.

This region of Europe has been called The Blood Lands because of the turmoil, and deaths, caused by these momentous changes.

The event was opened by The Ambassador of the Slovak Republic H.E. Mr. Miroslav Wlachovský who explained his personal interest in the book. Prior to the Velvet Revolution Agnesa Kalinov had been part of the Radio Free Europe organisation that broadcast to the other side of the Iron Curtain from West Germany and he had listened to those broadcasts.

The book takes the form of a series of long interviews with Jana Juráňová in which she tells lots of little stories about herself and the people she met. These personal histories help to show the larger history in which they took place.

Think of this as The Diary of Samuel Pepys rather than Gibbon's The Rise and Fall.

Our panel for the evening was (R-L) Miroslav Wlachovský, Agnesa Kalinov, Jana Juráňová and Agnes' son-in-law who read from the book. Her grand-daughter, sitting in the audience, also did some reading.

Obviously in the short time allowed for readings and questions we only skirted around a few of the topics covered in the book and my notes taken at the time reflect that.

Agnes was a young woman when the Nazis invaded and in 1941 she was thrown out of secondary school and was taught to sew instead.

In 1942 she was due to be taken to a labour camp but escaped by feigning sciatica. She was advised to do this by a friend as it is an illness that is relatively easy to fake. Later she managed to escape to Budapest but her parents were taken.

Many years later she fled Communist Czechoslovakia to enable her children to have the education that had been denied her by the Nazis.One can only begin to imagine what it was like to flee from Communism to the country, Germany, from which you had fled twenty years earlier. That, for me, summed up the changes that happened in central Europe in that period.

The evening ended with a chance to chat with people that I knew from the BCSA while nibbling a few cakes and drinking some Saris beer. That part of the evening was as pleasant as the earlier part had been informative.

I am very grateful to the Slovak Embassy for inviting me to events and as long as they are as good as this one then I will keep going to them.

BCSA Book Launch

My knowledge of Czech/Slovak history is woeful considering how long I have been a member of the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) but it got a little better at the launch of two books at the Czech Embassy.

Tomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes: Czechoslovakia by the historian Peter Neville of Kingston University is one of numerous titles in Haus Publishing's Makers of the Modern World series, and deals with the role of the two statesmen as champions of the independent state of the Czechs and Slovaks.

I learned how Masaryk's and Benes' experience of studying and/or working abroad was vital in building links with other European countries in the period immediately after the First World War and led to the formation of Czechoslovakia with the more or less borders that they wanted.

This, in turn, led to a country of 14m people of which over 3m were ethnic German and another large minority were Hungarian.

Exile In and From Czechoslovakia during the 1930s and 1940s, edited by Charmian Branson and Marian Malet of the University of London's Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, is the proceedings of the very successful conference held at the Institute in September 2003, at which distinguished experts examined every facet of the subject.

We were given an overview of some of the topics covered by the conference; immigration from Germany to Czechoslovakia in 1933, experiences of specific groups of exiles who came to Britain in 1938, i.e. children and musicians, and finally about some of the exiles who became famous here.

Czechoslovaks were 10 thousand of the 80 thousand that fled to Britain during the war.

The question and answer session after the talks went on for quite a while and could have gone on for a lot longer. I'm sure that this is a period that the BCSA will return to in another talk and I'll try to get to that one too.

Slovakia in History

I don't recall ever being to a book launch before. I've been to several private viewings at galleries and the like but never a book launch. The book that broke this enviable record was Slovakia in History and I was invited because of my Czech/Slovak interests.

Though, to be honest, I accepted the invitation more because it was being held at the Slovak Embassy than anything else. This meant that I was guaranteed to see some familiar and friendly faces and also that the associated reception would be worth the trip.

The launch took the form of a speakers' panel with the three editors, Mikuláš Teich of Robinson College, Cambridge, Dušan Kováč, of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Martin Brown of The American International University in London. Martin is a BCSA member and is a regular speaker at our events.

The three editors each gave us a perspective on how they approached the book and told us something of its history; the idea of doing a history book on Slovakia in English was first mooted some fifteen years ago.

The first problem encountered is defining what is meant by Slovakia in the context of history. Slovakia is firmly in Central Europe and its changing borders have been part of several large empires over the centuries, notably the Austro-Hungarian.

Similarly the Slovak people and their customs are not so easily defined with their close relationships to their Slavic cousins in the neighbouring Czech Republic and Poland and to the Hungarians to the south.

One word of caution though, this is an academic book and is priced accordingly.

To complement the book we had a music interlude of Slovak folk songs arranged for piano and violin. That went down very well.

After the speeches and a Q&A session came the reception and once again the Slovak Embassy put on a good show.

I love the building with it's main reception room that has glass doors to the garden on one side, a mezzanine floor, a strange glass light and lots of lovely rough concrete.

The space is also quite flexible and was arranged very differently from the previous visit just the week before. The layout also encourages you to flow around the room and to mix with other people, which is the main point of receptions like this for me.

A simple, pleasant evening with a fond concoction of history, culture and conversations. This is why I go out at night.

SFX Weekender: Tie-in and shared universe fiction

The session on tie-in and shared universe fiction might not have been the sort of thing that I went to SFX Weekended for but it sounded interesting enough and it meant that I could keep my hard-won front-row seat for this and the following session too.

There were a couple of names I knew on the panel; I've read several of Dan Abnett's stories in 2000AD and in various Marvel Comics (e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy) and I'd seen Ben Arronovitch on the Dr Who panel earlier that day.

There were a few times that day when panellists were repeated, but that's a good thing when the panellists contribute knowledgeably and appropriately. There was no repeating of favourite stories here.

The conversation flowed immediately and we were treated to many insights in to the life of a writer working within the boundaries set by other people.

And perhaps the most interesting aspect of this was the way that a pre-defined world and characters takes some of the hard work away from authors, leaving space to play with the story.

The differences between canonical stories and spin-offs filled a large part of the session. During this Stephen Baxter produced an old Stingray book that I recognised as I have a copy in the attic!

We also learnt that Dan Abnett had been commissioned to write a Primeval story that the producers wanted to tell but which would have been too expensive to do on TV.

There are various reasons why copyright owners want to extend their franchise in to print media ranging from the obvious one of making more money from the brand to finding a way to keep fans engaged when the main product is not available.

The obvious example here is Dr Who that was kept going for several years in books and audio. Similarly the Warhammer books let game players in to the world of space Marines and Tyranids from places other than Games Workshop.

From the author's perspective there is the need to play within the rules and that's a question of getting the tone right (would the character behave like that?) as well as the continuity. And the continuity problem is getting bigger all the time as the back-catalogue grows. Imagine how much a new Dr Who or X-Men writer has to read and watch.

Ben Aaronvitch also made the interesting point that writing within a shared universe means a writer has other people they can talk to about their story, e.g. to discuss exactly how a character would behave in a given situation.

So what I initially treated as a fill-in session proved to be much more than that and I learnt a lot and gained even more respect for authors.

Reading books on the iPod

The iPod touch keeps getting better and now I am using it to read books, something that I have not been doing much of recently.

There are several eReader applications for the iPhone/iPod but the one that I chose is called Stanza.

Stanza gives you access to several libraries where you can download thousands of books. Obviously I have only explored the free books so far but I have already found a few interesting ones that I am now reading.

A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde is already proving to be delightful. It's a collection of magical short stories about kings, princesses, mermaids, dwarfs, dreams and enchantments.

It rather reminds me of Neil Gaiman in both subject and style. And that is a good thing.


The Stanza software itself is both simple and clever. To move through the book all you do is to touch the screen on the right or left side. This may not sound much but it means that you can read the book with one hand (using your thumb to turn the pages) which is very useful when commuting.

Touching the middle of the page brings up the menu where the display settings can be changed. It is possible to modify the background colour and the font face, size, colour and alignment.

I have chosen dark green (teal) text on black as I often read in the dark. It works well.

What I really like about reading books on the iPod is that this means that I always have some books with me so, for example, I can read a chapter of The Time Machine if the pub is quiet.

Stanza has got me reading books again while pretending that I am just playing with cool technology. And that's why I love it.

The Best of The Saint

The Saint makes a very welcome return to print in the UK with the publication of two "best of volumes" - and just in time for Christmas too.

Each of the volumes contains a selection of Saint short stories covering his entire career of thwarting criminals and poking fun at the law, particularly Inspector Claude Eustace Teal, while enriching himself in the process.

The stories are all an excellent read and the weighty volumes (they are 800 and 600 pages long) are stupid value at a ridiculously low £6 on Amazon.

I started my Saint reading some forty years ago with an earlier collection of short stories, The First Saint Omnibus, and the new books are a good opportunity for new readers to become new fans.

The Ladybird Book of The Policeman

I remember The Ladybird Book of The Policeman very well but this is not it; it is very funny though!

The Saint in Helsinki

A work trip to Finland gave me the opportunity to spend a few hours walking around Helsinki to discover new sites and to revisit some old favourites, such as the Opera House.

Just behind the Houses of Parliament I came across the famous Saint stickman working as the doorkeeper to an underground car park. This is why I always carry a camera with me.

My Finish is pretty poor but I think that the car park belongs to the Houses of Parliament which, if true, gives that saintly figure serious recognition.

Miss Finch disappoints

I had forgotten that I had ordered "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch" so I was pleasantly surprised to find it in this week's comics order.

An illustrated short-story by Neil Gaiman is normally a complete joy, and I cannot recommend Murder Mysteries and The Dream Hunters highly enough, but Miss Finch disappoints in comparison.

The story is thin and lacks the typical Gaiman grandeur of vision and clever, but not too clever, plot. The characterisation is also a little weak, probably due to the main characters being based on real people, i.e. Jonathan Ross and Neil Gaiman himself.

What does remain is the expected fantasy elements and here Michael Zulli's art does a sterling job in rescuing an otherwise poor book.

Neil Gaiman fest

By coincidence, I have been wallowing in Neil Gaiman more than usual at the moment taking dips into both Stardust and Neverwhere, but not in book form.

Last night we all watched Stardust on DVD. I had read the book some years ago so my memory of it is a little hazy but there were parts of the book that I did remember that were not in the film and bits of the film that I don't recall from the book. But, overall, it seems like a reasonably close adaption of the book. The biggest change is that the film has a lot more humour and a little less magic (which is a lot easier to do in words!). Even the two teenage boys liked the film and there can be fewer higher accolades than that!

Currently spinning on my iPod touch is Neil Gaiman reading his preferred version of Neverwhere (which I had to get from the USA for some reason). This is unabridged and so runs to ten CDs. I am currently on number eight but with limited prospects of another long-haul flight in the near future to finish it off. Again it is some time since I read the book and so am not too surprised not to have noticed any differences in the text. I did, however, spot some Americanisms which Neil defended when challenged.

There are common themes in both stories (and with others), such as magic, different realms that people from England manage to cross in to, and cross-race/species lovers that you can spot on page one. But they are very different books.

Stardust is a great story that hangs together very well and contains some wonderful ideas (definitely Neil's biggest strength), e.g. the princes having to kill each other to succeed to the throne. Neverwhere also has some fantastic ideas, mostly around London place names, e.g. the Black Friars and the Knights' Bridge, but overall the story lacks the momentum that Stardust has. This is compensated for in the audio book by Neil's reading which makes it well worth getting.

My recommendation, read Stardust (with Charles Vess illustrations), watch the Stardust film and listen to the Neverwhere audiobook.

Page 123 of The Best of Philip Jose Farmer

SWENGLISHEXPAT has tagged me for this little meme, ‘Open Book’. These were the instructions:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it at page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence/ phrase.
4. Blog the next four sentences/ phrases together with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig your shelves for that very special or intellectual book.
6. Pass it forward to six friends

Finding the book was not trivial as there are several piles of books in my study but most of them are graphic novels and/or have fewer than 123 pages. The "real book" that is nearest the top of the pile is The Best of Philip Jose Farmer, which pleases me as he is my favourite author (just ahead of Leslie Charteris).

I was a bit worried about selecting the text as some of Farmer's writing can be a bit "colourful" both in content and language but lady luck was on my side and this is the selected text, taken form the story The God Business.

"Major Lewis cleared her throat. 'Mr Temper, streamline the details will you please? These gentlemen are very busy and they would like the bald facts. The bald facts mind you.'"

Finding friends who read books and write blogs to pass the meme on to is not that easy either but I hope that the following people fit the bill; Tony Emmerson, David Southwell, and Stephen Dale.

A few things to read

I'm not sure for certain if I'm managing to keep to my New Year's Resolution to read more books and comics than I buy but I suspect I'm well short of the target. Looks like I will be doing a lot of reading over the summer holidays.

Obviously none of this is my fault.

For example, somebody on The Saint forum was offering paperbacks recently so I had to get the five that I did not already have. And nice books always make good birthday / xmas presents. And there have been some special issues, such as the two Philip Jose Farmer books and the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser collection. And Rebellion has started reprinting old Judge Dredd, Nemesis and Strontium Dog stories from 2000AD.

Not my fault at all.

My (small) collections of signed books

The recent arrival of my signed copy of Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman started me thinking about how many signed books I have.

Until a few years ago the thought of getting a book signed had never occurred to me and then I started buying Redwall books for the boys and the Redwall website says, "all books purchased from the Redwall La Dita Book Club are autographed by Brian Jacques". As there was no extra cost for this, and I was buying the books online anyway, the books came signed as a matter of course. I have several of these.

Not long after that the younger son started reading the Measle books by Ian Ogilvy (alert readers will have spotted The Saint connection) and, again, I was able to buy a signed copy of one of them online at no extra cost.

The first signed book that I got for myself was Jim Starlin's Dreadstar. Jim Starlin has been a big favourite of mine since the Warlock series in the early seventies so this was a nice treat to myself.

I'm not sure what other signed books I have, a clue that perhaps signed books are not that special anymore, but one is worth mentioning and that is my signed and numbered limited edition print of Pearls of Peoria by Philip Jose Farmer, pictured here. 


Philip Jose Farmer is still my favourite author thanks, mainly, to the new worlds he invented and the fantastic stories he placed in them. The obvious examples are the Riverworld and World of Tiers series. Well worth a read, signed or unsigned.