iphonaphilia

If I didn't already love this little machine enough already, I've found this application called 'Brushes' for it where you can paint using your finger directly onto a blank screen or a photo you've taken. The sheer childlike delight in this I can barely convey. It costs £2.99 from the itunes app store.

Here are a few of my first extremely poor efforts. This first one, I call 'Ready Brek Parliament':

'Friday Night Wine':

'Half a Pooh, Dissected, In Blue':

What's In A Name?

I was thrilled to discover my cousin Sam's jazz CD Howeird was given 4/5 stars in the Guardian. I rushed down to the paper shop and showed the bloke in there and he gave me the paper for free. Then I noticed how they spelt his name. Sam Crockett. Maybe you didn't notice the frankly GLARING error. Sam Crockett? Who he? It's Crockatt people, A T T.

I phoned a mate who I'd given the CD to recently and he laughed.

"The trouble you face with your name is that American bloke got there first and he's more famous than you."

"Eh? What American bloke?"

"Davy man..."

All my life that raccoon skinning, bear shooting American folk "hero" has been a thorn in my side. I have a large family. There are a lot of Crockatts about and we travel. There are Crockatts all over the world. And we're going to breed and breed and breed and keep on producing brilliant jazz cds and brilliant bookshops and all sorts of other brilliant stuff and we're not going to stop until everyone knows how to spell the name ok...

(Maybe I've been watching too many episodes of the Wire)

Incidentally I'm still reading Roberto Bolano's 2666. I've nearly finished. But I'm taking it slow, savouring every morsel. One of the main characters is a writer who names himself Benno von Archimboldi. When he first meets the man who becomes his publisher the following exchange takes place - it's too long to quote in full but it's very funny and starts like this...

"What's your real name? Because it can't be the name you've given me, of course."

"That's my name," answered Archimboldi.

"Do you think the years I spent in England or the years in general have made me stupid? No one has a name like that. Benno von Archimboldi. To be called Benno, in the first place, is suspicious."

You can write this on my grave stone

Every good bookseller is a multiple-personality, containing all the extremes of human feeling. He is an ascetic hermit, he is an erotic immoralist, he is a Papist, he is a Quaker, he is a communist, he is an anarchist, he is a savage iconoclast, he is a passionate worshipper of idols. Though books, as Milton says, may be the embalming of mighty spirits, they are also the resurrection of rebellious, reactionary, fantastical and wicked spirits! In books dwell all the demons and all the angels of the human mind.

John Cowper Powys

So far I have watched one episode of the Wire...

...because we in Camberwell watch very little TV and there's Masterchef and University Challenge to contend with. Last night saw the return of Corpus Christi and the awesome Trimble. That lady knows it all. To say she was clever would not do her justice. She is a FREAK GEEK of the highest order.
"Jane and Charles; William and Charlotte; Lydia and George and Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam all..." that was as far as Paxman got before the awesome Trimble buzzed in and said "Pride and Prejudice".

My wife and I glanced at each other open mouthed. I'm usually ok on the book questions. The members of the Cambridge team in opposition knew what was coming and despite a brave challenge were soundly thrashed by Trimble and her mates.

The Internet does what it does best by revealing some fevered discussion over Trimble. Is she a sex God dominatrix? Or a spoddy twit? I even came across one site called The Long Hair Community where her locks were admired by fellow long hairs...(There are people out there who log sightings of impressively long haired people. Weird? Oh YES.)

That's Love

Atlas by U A Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes, which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in the air,
As Atlas did the sky.

Dedicated to the many people I love without whom my life would be total chaos and misery...

Where is my mind?

No not my brain, that is there on the floor.

(I phone a woman to say her book has come in. A man answers. I give the "your book is in spiel" He says "She's just coming" Since my brain is on the floor I assume she has psychic powers and is already on her way in to collect the book. "Ok thanks" I say and hang up. Only then do I realise he meant she was on her way to the phone. I phone back.)

The new LRB arrives and there is an article titled Where Is My Mind in which a PHILOSOPHER (Sweeeet Bejaysus we are doomed) argues that his I-Phone is now a part of his mind. If this was in Wire I would scoff. But the LRB? These are folk that think. And worst of all read.

Meanwhile here are the Pixies - the first band I ever saw live...



*Please excuse the lame dog video and listen to the music*

Some lunchtime suggestions

Mmmmmmm. Tasty food ideas, here!

Londontropy

/lun-don-truh-pi/ noun Physics

A quantity expressing how much of a person's mental energy is 

unnavailable for conversion into mechanical work in inverse proportion 

to the amount of time between trips out of the capital.

On the Radio

Haven't linked to David Byrne's monthly radio show for a while. This month is Japanese month. It's brilliant!

Kreutzer Sonata

Tolstoy was a great writer but boy did he have some strange ideas. A while ago I read a book called The Last Station by Jay Parini. The novel was about the final year of Tolstoy's life and revolved, to a large degree, around the difficulties between Tolstoy and his wife Sofya. At that point in his life Tolstoy was venerated in Russia, treated as a saintly figure by peasants and the upper classes alike. He lived, surrounded by Tolstoyan acolytes, in some luxury with his wife and family. This life of luxury went completely against the ideas of simplicity etc that Tolstoy preached to everyone else. He was also convinced that sexual abstinence was essential to the good life. This was again too much for his long suffering wife who knew all too well about Tolstoy's debauched youth and probably a thing or two about what he was up to in later life as well...

Anyway, I've just about finished the Kreutzer Sonata now and despite Tolstoy's weirdness the story/novella is yet another reminder of why I love Russian literature SO much.

(Incidentally it looks as though the Last Station is to be made into a film with Helen Mirren as Sofya - bound to be shite of course!)

When suddenly johnny gets the feeling hes being surrounded by

Take all of your arguments against the inevitability of e-books and substitute the word "horse" for "book" and the word "car" for "e-book." Here are a few examples to whet your appetite for the (really) inevitable debate in the discussion section at the end of this article.

"Books will never go away." True! Horses have not gone away either.

"Books have advantages over e-books that will never be overcome." True! Horses can travel over rough terrain that no car can navigate. Paved roads don't go everywhere, nor should they.

"Books provide sensory/sentimental/sensual experiences that e-books can't match." True! Cars just can't match the experience of caring for and riding a horse: the smells, the textures, the sensations, the companionship with another living being.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Did you ride a horse to work today? I didn't. I'm sure plenty of people swore they would never ride in or operate a "horseless carriage"—and they never did! And then they died.

Long article but worth the read.

I don't think it's going to come from the spindleblossom but I'm sure those dastardly geniuses at Apple are coming up with something for the itunes store...

I have to say and I know Matthew hates it, but I read more on my iphone than most anywhere else and the more I do it the more reading on a little screen doesn't bother me... AND I OWN A BOOKSHOP AND LOVE BOOKS!

Horses, horses, horses, horses
Coming in in all directions
White shining silver studs with their nose in flames,
He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses.

So what the hell are we doing perservering with this bookshop nonsense? This anachronism? Well, it's a nice place to come to work everyday innit. Plus, as crazy as it may seem, I guess we're almost professional booksellers by now. We get to do the filtering, the sifting, the looking at all the interesting things that the punters don't have time to do. Then when we present all these lovely things in our lovely shop they can come in and say things like, "what a great selection you have" and we say "why, thank you". 

And then, in the very near future, they can go to the caff down the road and download what they've seen straight to their iphone in 30 seconds.

When suddenly johnny gets the feeling hes being surrounded by
Horses, horses, horses, horses
Coming in in all directions
White shining silver studs with their nose in flames,
He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses.

“Our vision is every book, ever printed, in any language , all available in less than 60 seconds,”

The spindle 2.0

Just A Moment...

A jazz drummer is tapping, tss, ba dam! testing the limits of the known world, a blind man's stick, finding the edge, feeling the void as it opens beneath him and then quick! quick! just a quick step back, a snare snap back to balance on the edge once again.

The jazz is on the radio and the rest of the band are back. There are horns calling and a bass beneath, we're back in the womb and it's ok, though it might be raining in the street outside we're alright in here, where the coffee machine is warm and the music cool, where I can listen to Italian voices and jazz on the radio.

And I can stand, feeling the warmth of the venerable machine through my plastic armoured biker jacket, remembering Coltrane in 1961, from youtube last night, a 21st century memory of an event I never witnessed, and hear us clapping together at the end of the ten minutes or so of a man finding the edge and dancing along it with his saxophone in both hands, breathing such music into life...

Think laterally, think creative!

This is from a great Seth Godin post:

Creativity loves a problem, but it hates a lousy audience.

If everyone around you is sure the economy is tanking, that the end is near, that time is up and the company is headed for the tubes, it's almost impossible to find a creative solution.

Creativity changes the game, whatever game is being played. "We're going to run out of cash by the end of the year," is accurate unless you count creativity into the equation. Then the accurate statement is, "Under the current rules and assumptions, we're going to run out of cash..." Big difference.

Creativity demands exposure to market needs, and insulation from market fears. Give it some time to work, some support, some breathing room. That's when creativity has a chance to change the game.

So, C&P have been getting creative in these tough times and Matthew and I are happy to announce that as of monday we're going into the pornography and narcotics business. We've got basements folks and we're not afraid to use 'em...

Larry David VS Richard Yates

Larry David once dated Richard Yates's daughter.

This scene from Seinfeld is based on those experiences...

Add a little poetry to your day?

Maybe poetry will save us after all. Maybe it already has?

Snow Day!

Westminster Bridge and St James's Park. It were right lovely.

Something Else For The Weekend...

I am finding a distorted reality comes in handy a great deal at the moment.

Fulham really are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen.

The credit crunch is just an illusion.

Lower Marsh is a brilliant shopping street in the winter.

Poetry will save us.

See what I mean?

Something for the weekend

"When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop -- it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word. They're less comfortable with novels. They don't have a backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It's sad. It's momentarily uphill, I would say.
And who's to blame? Well, everything's to blame. Movies are to blame, for stealing a lot of the novel's thunder. Why read a novel when in two hours you can just go passively sit and be dazzled and amazed and terrified? Television is to blame, especially because it's come into the home. It's brought the fascination of the flickering image right into the house; like turning on a faucet, you can have it whenever you want. I was a movie addict, but you could only see so many movies in the course of a week. I still had a lot of time to read, and so did other people. But I think television would take all your day if you let it. Now we have these cultural developments on the Internet, and online, and the computer offering itself as a cultural tool, as a tool of distributing not just information but arts -- and who knows what inroads will be made there into the world of the book," - John Updike.

Scooter Don't Work? Scooterworks!

Following a small crash (fog, ice, skid, splat - ouch) my trusty steed (Piaggio Zip 50) gave up starting in the mornings. Naturally I tried to fix it myself. Using my vast experience in mechanical engineering I decided the battery was flat and proceeded to try to charge it from a large boat battery my dad brought round in a shopping bag. When this failed I swore at the bike a bit. Then I unscrewed some screws and took off a plastic cover. Now I could see the engine and the spark plugs. I looked and looked. I stared really hard. I tried to fix the bike with my legendary psychic powers. This didn't work either.

So, eventually - after swearing some more and throwing stuff about - I phoned Craig at Scooterworks.

He came, he collected, he fixed the bike. My diagnosis of a flat battery was wrong. (Surprise surprise) The air filter was clogged with oil, probably from when the bike fell on its side.

So repeat after me - If your scooter won't work take it to Scooterworks.

Westfield - Lots of space in this mall!

Ah, Westfield.
In delightful,
Shepherd's Bush
Which once was a field,
In the west, Of London's fair fields.

I lived once,
In the west's fields.
I grew up in Bristol,
It's in the West
Country, It has Malls too.

Oh, fair Westfield,
You remind me,
Of a Country Fair.
Only covered over with glass,
And underfoot,
With concrete, not grass.



(Forward to 1:58 in. I hadn't seen the Blues Brothers for ages. Thanks ITV4)

Heads Up Peeps - Literary Sensation of the Year Alert

This looks brilliant.

The 'silver bees' are fighting back against crime and vandalism in their neighbourhoods, mainly by turning themselves into walking booby traps. 'If we can't save ourselves from attack,' they say, 'at least the criminals won't escape either!'

Yvonne Jerrold has come up with a great idea. This book will make any young hooligan think twice before they mug a granny. What if that fragile old dear had a nasty surprise in store. Exploding knickers? Or maybe a brick in her handbag?

Film VS Book - Reversed?

I was walking along the South Bank this morning thinking about Revolutionary Road and The Reader - two books that have recently been made into films that are in the cinema now.

What percentage of films are based - either directly or indirectly - on books?

Has there ever been a film of a book that was better than the book?

If I were to write a book that was based on a film what film should I choose?

I am thinking of a scene by scene attempt to write a film if you see what I mean. A book like Revolutionary Road has so much more detail in terms of what characters are thinking and feeling than it is possible to convey via the medium of film. A meaningful look in a film remains just that. In a book you have to spell out what the character is thinking and so the reader has a deeper understanding of what the author is trying to say. (I have no problem with film in itself as a medium just why are so many based on books? Do the people who make films have extremely impoverished imaginations or something?)

My plan would be to take a film - a pure film - and write it. So you get the meaningful look - and I would then write what was going on in the character's head at that point...Do you see what I mean?

Obviously I would upset 99% of the people who had watched the film. My version would not tally with theirs. But I would love to do it - if only to get revenge for all the great books that films are guilty of turning to dross...

Oh Dear

Is it just me or does this seem, well, a bit off. Let's hope the people who made the film had nothing to do with the trailer

Yipper-dee-doo-dah!

Appointment with the accountants in the morning, appointment with the dentist in the afternoon! What a day!

At least the sun's out...

You Gots To Giggle

Further insight into the bizarre goings on around about bedtime at our house.

1: Finn has taken a real shine to Peter Kay's Comic Relief version of Amarillo.



We have to put this on 2-3 times an evening while he marches (naked) and yells "Look at Mr Bobbly" (Mr Blobby).

And then stories after that...

Incidentally we came across some classic Tom and Jerry on Youtube as well and he loves them too. Why not eh? All that whizbang technology and you still can't beat the old cat n mouse routines.

The future...?

Literary Criticism and a pleasant reminder given the circumstances...

'In 1903, in Paris, Emile Tardieu brought out a book entitled L'Ennui in which all human activity is shown to be a vain attempt to escape from boredom, but in which, at the same time, everything that was, is, and will be appears as the inexhaustible nourishment of that feeling. To hear this, you might suppose the work to be a mighty monument of literature - a monument aere perennius in honour of the taedium vitae of the Romans. But it is only the self-satisfied shabby scholarship of a new Homais, who reduces all greatness, the heroism of heroes and the asceticism of saints, to documents of his own spiritually barren, petty-bourgeois discontent.'
-Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p.102

ps FAO: Dr Rick: Your books in.

'Beggar's' Opera Ctd.

I know it was Bobby Darin's song but given Frank's 'alleged' mob connections I think he rocks it...



Maybe you'd all prefer Lotte...



Or is it Nick's gig really...

But those in darkness are lost to sight...

Consolations of Philosophy

Far be it from me to step on Alain De Botton's shiny pate but in these days of illiquidity and busted credit doesn't this seem a trifle apposite?

The Future Is Now!

I don't want to be pessimistic as our business depends upon it but really, honestly, when you look at something like this, what future is there for dead tree media in it's current form?

How long are we looking at here, 5? 10 years?

Update:

'Four of the five best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 belonged to an entirely new literary form called keitai shosetsu: novels written, and read, on cell phones.'
- Time magazine (online)

A world changing event...

Our street is becoming part of a CPZ (controlled parking zone). We had one of these parked outside our flat this morning. Then a bloke in a yellow jacket came along, climbed inside and made it go. He even raised the scoop at the front and waggled it up and down for us. As far as young Finn is concerned this is just about the most important, historic and exciting event to occur in history. I listened to him burbling something along the lines of "It was yellow and a man did come and make it go (screams with delight) it was a digger and it did have all lots of levers and buttons to press and it made a BIG NOISE" all the way to nursery.

O BA MA O BA MA

Good luck mate!

Aretha Franklin singing the national anthem - dude.

Fiction...

The Review section sat, unopened, beside his empty coffee cup. He thought about having a shower then glanced back at the paper and picked it up. Arturo Pizaro was on the cover. As if a full-page advert on the back last week wasn't enough. He opened the paper and began to read. And then there were tears in his eyes and he had to fold the paper quickly and get into the shower right away, but his wife had noticed his crumpled face and was already asking...

"Frustration" he heard as he closed the bathroom door and lost himself beneath the savage heat, felt the fierce rain against his skin, washed the dirt of self-indulgence from his face murmuring "Money money money it's always money how do you get it through your dumb head?" And when he shaved he was still angry and sad and angry at himself for being sad and so he dragged the skin-thin blade without a care, knowing he was wide open and bleeding and still he kept at it and finally felt better, dabbing the red with tissue that stuck in the cuts and had to be washed away a few minutes later.

Brake on. Ignition. A little gas. The engine refused to fire. It tried and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed and he saw the curtains twitch, felt the neighbour's gaze and so he stopped and sat there. He remembered seeing a deep-sea diver finish a marathon years ago on the Mall and he felt just as ridiculous, just as far removed from the correct context but so much less heroic. So he raised his eyes to the sky and stared into the blue for a while. When he tried it again the scooter started. It always seemed to start at the very last moment and in this he found some consolation.

An Award! (And we are 88% Men)

Everything is so shite at the minute I am absurdly happy to have received an award from the Caustic Cover Critic.

Thanks mate!

According to Gender Analyzer we are 88% likely to be men. A relief after so many years of doubts and fumblings (ahem). It would have been interesting to know how much Marie's posts would have affected things as she is (undoubtedly) a woman.

Photographic Memories

That's a photograph of our shop in 1989.




And in again around 1950. (When it was two shops - one a sweet shop!)

We received these photos from a man whose father was born in the flats up above the shop. At that time it was a sweet shop - a pretty good place for a kid to live I would have thought. It seems people used to take shelter in our cellar and the cellar of the Camel and Artichoke pub next door during bombing raids in WW2.

Looking at these photos it is clear that in some ways little has changed since the 1950's on Lower Marsh. The stalls, the rubbish, the small shops and assorted folk drifting along the street. There is a patch of waste ground next to the shop in 1950. Now there is a library and job shop but only in a portacabin - a temporary structure that has existed for many years now...

In the photo from 1989 you can see a small tree or bush growing on the roof of the pub. That tree or bush is still there! We also still have a sign on the side of the shop advertising Brights.

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Read Tough Books (preferably over 1000 pages long!)

My response to the cold weather and the general economic gloom seems to be to immerse myself in really long and rather nasty books.

I keep trying to get my head around The Kindly Ones. There are three areas I want to address.

1: It is a deeply unpleasant reading experience. 1000 pages in the head of a total - the word has yet to be invented that is powerful enough to describe an SS officer. But is that a reason to avoid reading it? Life isn't all fluff and love - surely there comes a time to face the darkness?

2: It is a work of fiction. To a certain sort of reader this will be an immediate turnoff. Why write novels about something as awful as the Holocaust? If you want to know what happened read one of the many excellent histories. And yet again I disagree. The Kindly Ones is a novel and so it allows Littell a freedom that is denied the historian. Who can know if his efforts are accurate, if the picture he gives us of a Nazi SS Officer's war is accurate or not? This reader found it utterly convincing. I now feel a renewed disgust for the Nazis and feel reminded of the very real horror of the Holocaust. That is a good thing and to me says Littell has succeeded.

3: Littell has no direct experience of the war. He had to learn about what happened through his own research. Such secondary experience could be seen as a handicap. But how many people who were there survive? How long before WW2 exists only in books and newsreel film? My generation need to keep re-imagining, re-experiencing these terrible events or, as Littell makes clear, it could all happen again.

Well that's probably all very obvious and stupid and confused but it's my 2p on why you should at least consider reading a 1000 pager narrated by a Nazi. The book is out in March so you have some time to gear up to it. By then it will be spring. You will be able to raise your eyes from the page and gaze at those first optimistic greens - a brief reminder of some of the pure joys of life - before you slip back into the pages of death...

Steamy...

I really couldn't say which Supermodel wot used to be in Friends was in earlier asking about books on lingerie...

But what I can say is that the windows of our Fulham Road shop are all steamed up this evening.

That's got nothing to do with lingerie and everything to do with Somerset Maugham award winning author James Scudamore who is launching his new novel Heliopolis in the shop.

James is a top bloke and surely destined to be a top author if he keeps producing books this good.

Heavy

Well I finished The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell before Christmas.

It was disgusting. Horriffic. At times I found I wanted to scream with rage at the horror of it all.

In other words it was an excellent novel.

Then I read the Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. In a similar manner to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I found the book took a while to build up and then exploded at a certain point and became almost impossible to put down.

Now I am sitting writing these words with just minutes to go before closing time. Then I will drive home on my Scooter to read some more of Roberto Bolano's 2666. Know what? I'm just 44 pages in and already I know this is the best of a recent crop of excellent books.

Some books call to me, I could read them FOREVER. Bolano has the magic people, he has the magic...

Legacy

Happy New Year folks! We're back! (At the Marsh anyway, F'lham never closes...)

Don't know why but this song kept popping into my head over the holiday break.

And A Happy New Year

I love the start of this video. It reminds me of nursery. We used to have dancing classes once a week and me and my little mate Frank always did our Batman dance. This involved climbing an imaginary rope ladder into a helicopter (kind of climbing on the spot) It used to really wind the teacher up. She would try and get us to follow everyone else and we just kept on climbing.

I also love this band.

Had one of their albums on I-Tunes for ages and every time a track popped up on shuffle I would think "ooh this is good, wonder who it is?" until I finally decided they were rather good.

You probably haven't seen me dance around my living room have you? The years have developed my technique way beyond the Batman stage. I can bend. And wiggle. Soft shoe shuffle. In a word, funky...

I didn't know Market stalls had accounts with Turnaround

Walking past the market stalls this morning on the Marsh I noticed a big ol' pile of Moleskine notebooks. I wonder if the stall holder had paid the suppliers pro forma because I know that we had to fill in a big form with address and referees and bank details to secure a line of supply.

I wonder, just where could he have got them from?

Merry Christmas

Just a sentimental sloppy wet one from half of Crockatt & Powell...

(The other half is groaning and hiding behind a curtain, wishing I would shut the f&c& up!)

I love you, no I really really love you. I mean it you know. All of you. Every single one of you that's spent any money in either of our shops ever. You don't have to shop in our shop but you do and that's why I love you. Did I tell you I loved you? I did? A few times already? Oh...ok...but...I love you...

(Sound effect of bookseller falling backwards into pile of empty bottles.)

Now That's

What I Call A Lame Duck...

Do You Sell Candles?

No.

But we do sell pillows stuffed with Lavender gathered from a roundabout in St George's Circus...

Sam Crockatt Quartet

Tom Richards, Tom Richards Orchestra

Jazz musician and composer who released the enthusiastically received Smoke and Mirrors

I love the Sam Crockatt Quartet's Howeird (Cadiz Music). Sam's compositions are incredibly melodic and open, and Gwilym Simcock does the most ridiculously virtuosic piano solo on the track 'Project 1', which is worth the price of the album alone.

That from the Observer best albums of 2008 list.


Well done Sam!

Copies of Howeird should be available for sale from C & P from tomorrow. If you want an advance taste then visit his Myspace page.

And a warm monday morning welcome to you too!

US Book Sales Decrease By 20% In October

Posted at 5:27PM Saturday 13 Dec 2008

Book sales tracked by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for the month of October decreased by 20.1 percent at $644.5 million and were down by 3.4 percent for the year.

Woolworths suppliers circle Zavvi

Music labels and creditors to Woolworths are circling the assets of Zavvi, the CD and DVD chain, with both sides looking to get their hands on cash raised from Christmas shoppers.

Administrator confirms 700 redundancies at EUK

Seven hundred staff at Entertainment UK (EUK), the CD and DVD distribution arm of Woolworths, will lose their jobs after a buyer for the division could not be found.   

Doesn't big ben look like some sort of glowing parasitic worm...

Tradition

We at Crockatt & Powell recognise the importance of traditions and the role they play in all our lives.

So it is with great pleasure that I now relate this feat of outstanding blaggery performed by our esteemed colleague Stuart.

It all started at about 6pm when I overheard a telephone conversation Stuart was having with a friend.

"The Lyceum. Yeah. Herodotus, yeah. But the Thucydides was more difficult - I could only get it in paperback."

"Great conversation Stuart, I loved the progress from pub to culture." I said.

But it went further than that. On the floor of the Lyceum Stuart and his mate found an invite to the Guardian Christmas party. An opportunity for a blag. Well, tradition has it that such opportunities must be taken. They turn up, brandish the invite "Yeah, we write for the Guardian" and leap hurdle one.

Hurdle two asked for security passes.

"Oh, we lost them in the pub" says Stuart.

"Oh don't worry" says the cheery bouncer "Your names will be on the list."

At this point our man confessed to losing his bottle. He froze.

"Er, we found the invite on the floor in the pub" says Stuart's mate.

"I live just round the corner" was all our man could come up with.

"Guys, you are really going to have to work on your excuses" says the bouncer and LET THEM IN...

To a world with not one free bar, not two free bars, not three free bars but FOUR free bars.

"At first we were after beer, then champagne then we thought "why not whisky?" and by the end we were like "A mochito? Why not?"

Sadly the chaps lost focus to such a degree they were not able to tell us anything else about the party.

"There was a Northern Soul room" were Stuart's final words on the matter.

Feed me

Apparently there were some issues with people not being able to receive a feed of this blog on their various readers. Don't let it be said we never listen to anybody. Somewhere on this page will be a subscribe button.

It now works.

Domestic Animals

Last night the Maz (my long suffering) went out for her office Christmas party. In other words I had to look after Finn and myself for the evening. Finn was fine. We hung out at Scooterworks eating falafel and drinking coffee whilst chatting to Fifi and Nat. Then we went home and he had a bath and some stories before we set off on a walk around the park. With the lad asleep at last I turned my thoughts to myself and my stomach.

Hmmm. I had neglected to buy anything for my own supper and a bookseller's cupboard is often more or less bare. I had a look in the freezer and spied a pack of fish fingers. I'd been chatting with Nat about fish finger sandwiches earlier and it suddenly seemed like a great idea so I stuck ten under the grill and left the kitchen.

The smoke had to fill the kitchen and the hallway before it reached me where I was sipping from a large glass of red wine...(Note to concerned firemen: We do have an alarm but I had taken it off the wall and thrown it in the bedroom earlier - as it often goes off when fish fingers are cooking normally)

Man, those fish fingers were dead. Very dead. Cremated.

And then I arrive at work this morning to find an e-mail from Adam's flatmate titled Dangerous Times Call For Radical Measures aka The Fridge. It seems the fridge round Adam's is a little stinky. Or very stinky indeed perhaps.

Aren't you glad we don't live with you?

A Heroine for Specky Types Everywhere...

There was a program about her last night. Why did she lose her TV show?

Second Hand bah, humbug

The Marsh gets a lot of people through the door asking 'Is it all new books then?' and looking disappointed and disdainful when I confirm that indeed, new books at full price is all we sell. Without fail these folk have a certain uppity moral superiority that indicates they would never demean themselves by buying anything new.

They remind me of all these 'Savers' in the papers moaning that interest rate cuts are punishing their good behaviour and rewarding those morally inferior 'Borrowers'.

Well, here's the story people. Savers earn interest on their savings because 'Borrowers' borrow money and all second hand books were once bought new. It's the system, fools!

A Load of Bolano (that's a good thing)

Some time ago I wrote this.

Now someone just sent me this.

Dr Rick, I know you didn't finish the Savage Detectives.

But this dead guy is/was the man...

Powers of Ten

Some friends gave me a flick-book of this video years ago.

Lambeth Council: An Antidote...

Geller - I Surrender...

Just when you think I can't possibly be any more stupid - I am more stupid.

Ok, so here's how it went.

Today I arrive at the Fulham Road shop soaking wet after having scooted over in the rain/snow. The crew are all very cheery and seem pleased to see me. Obviously alarm bells should have started to ring right away but they didn't. I drip through into the kids room and try to open the door into the staff room. Hmm. My code does not work. I sigh and try theirs. It does not work. I can hear what sounds a little bit like sniggering from the other room. Sure enough Stuart comes through and says words to the effect of "I know you haven't got psychic powers you Southern Jessie but I thought I'd let you find out the hard way."

I fiddle around for a while longer while people stand there saying things like "Yeah, we tried that. It didn't work."

So then I go out and get a crowbar come back and smash the door open.

Geller. You win. Bas$%rd.

(But you're just a bit afraid of me now eh? Remember Scott Pack eh?)

Uri Geller - Stand Aside!

I've got so many things to do I thought I might as well waste a bit of time blogging about my ever-increasing psychic powers...

We have a combination lock on the door to the staff area at the Fulham Road shop. Ever since we opened I have been using one code to pass through it and, I discovered recently, everyone else has been using another.

Both codes worked (that's why we've only just realised there were two) until Thursday last week. All of a sudden people were unable to get through the door to the staff area. Stuart would go off for lunch. Then he would come back through to the front room complaining about the door. I would go through, punch in my code and open it. This went on for a while. One of my colleagues would try the door and come back complaining it was broken. Then I'd go through no problem.

Somehow I have managed to make the door only accept my combination. My combination that was wrong the whole time.

So don't mess. I could probably really sc£*w you up if I put my mind to it!

You couldn't make it up

Brilliant!

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

"This tour de force, which not everyone will welcome, outclasses all other fictions and will continue to do so for some time to come."

Anita Brookner.

I'm only 240 pages in but I think she's right. Last week Dr Rick was telling me how he'd had an argument with a friend about novels of the familiar and oft spouted "but what's the point in reading novels? I want to read the truth!" variety.

We agreed this was a ridiculous argument that misses the point about good fiction (good fiction reminds the reader that Truth cannot be recorded in full - that there are gaps in our experience and understanding) and yet I was left with the lingering suspicion that it was rather a long time since I had read a book that would have met Franz Kafka's criteria. ("A book ought to be an icepick to break up the frozen sea within us")

And then The Kindly Ones arrived in the post and my frozen seas have been well and truly smashed to bits. I can't say I like the book. But I also think it's the kind of book you just can't ignore.

Something for the weekend

You gotta love the shuffle at three in the morning with a tumbler of whiskey...

Submarine

You can listen to the latest sound piece from our friend Will here.

That's a picture of one of the "instruments" (part of the heating system for Myatt’s Field estates in South London)

Best Brio Track So Far!

Have the dangers of a weekend of football, alcohol and loads of family ever been clearer?

Late on Sunday evening my lovely wife and I found we had created the dog's dangly bits of a Brio train track...

Wctah Wrhee Yuo're Ginog

Eyes. Brains. Weird.

(Thanks to Redstone Press and their beautiful Play Box for the pic)

1 GBP = 1.48540 USD

Oh, curses to this credit crunch. Not so many lovely books from America I fear this chrimbo...

When You Wake You're Still In A Dream...

Scooterworks looks closed. I place my head against one of the glass panels in the door and peer inside. I can see a girl cleaning a table. The door begins to open as I lean against it a bit more. Inside it smells of cleaning products. I wait for the coffee and "N" tells me all about the kittens covered in red paint she was dreaming about and how she often screams in the night until someone wakes her up. It's a guilt thing. Catholicism has a lot to answer for I think. I tell her the Flannery O'Connor story, the one about the girl with a wooden leg. Half way through "K" has finished making my coffee - but it's in a china cup. "N" and I look at one another. "It's to take away!" We can hear Big Ben in the background - I'm late opening. I watch "K" pour my latte from the china cup into a cardboard one. "Ten pence off for spilling some?" I joke and instantly regret it. Next thing I know I hand over a fiver, the till opens and they frown. "N" smiles a wicked smile - "Just give him it in 20ps". I leave with a pocket FULL of change.

Am I awake or asleep? You decide.

Flannery O'Connor

I read Wise Blood on the say so of a bookselling friend some years ago. This friend and I are both lovers of Dostoevsky and he said that Wise Blood had a cast of demented characters to rival the Russian master.

He was right. Hazel Motes is NUTS.

I now have a copy of the American Library edition of O'Connor's work and if I'm ever caught without a great book to read I take it off the shelf and read a short story or two.

Yesterday I read one called Good Country People. Have I ever read a funnier, darker story? Probably not. Want to know what happens when a nihilistic wooden-legged chick gets it on with a bible salesman in the hayloft?

Brilliant stuff...

"Gotta get away from this day to day runnin' around"

As you can probably tell from my last post I was starting to get a little crazy. When this happens I take a day off and head for the woods.

I dropped Finn off with his child minder and caught a train from Waterloo to Dorking. To do this I had to change at Clapham Junction, probably the busiest station on earth. The assault was physical (barged by commuters) mental (nobody could tell me how to get to Boxhill and Wotsit - probably because the station is really called Boxhill and Westhumble. What can I say? My geography outside of London is crap.) - and aural (there was a constant barrage of announcements of one kind or another).

And then I listened to one of the announcements. It was a reminder that it was the 11th of November. At 11am there would be a 2 minutes silence to remember "victims of human conflict".

It was beautifully observed. Everything seemed to come to a halt. There were no announcements. Guards stopped blowing their whistles. People bowed their heads and stood still. For two minutes I was able to concentrate on something outside of the day to day running around and find some peace.

And then the delights of the Surrey Hills and their forests of Beech. I strode along on a carpet of coppery leaves with nothing but the small sounds of birds and the murmuring trees for company. At one delightful spot there was a huge beech tree, over two hundred years old according to the Timeout Book Of Country Walks, that marked the boundary between the Polesden Lacey estate and Ranmore Common. There was something wonderful about using a tree to mark a boundary, something that seemed to belong to an era now long gone, where the natural world was an important part of the fabric of human lives.

Later I realised that the air had a taste. It tasted fresh, clean and sweet. I began to draw deep draughts of it down into my chest. Again and again I breathed as deeply as I could until I realised I was becoming quite light-headed. Moments later I experienced what folk wot exercise are always banging on about - a rush of endorphins. I physically straightened, looked at the world and my face cracked into a massive dumbo grin. Wow. Life is good I remembered.

What I found in those woods was space. Head space. A place outside of clock time where I could just...be...

Isn't that what reading provides? Open a book and you are somewhere else, in a world of endless possibility.

And what a privilege just to be alive on such a lovely day. I was pleased that amid the bustle and business of a London station we had been given the opportunity to remember those that died, that continue to die, for things the day to day running around world deems worth dying for.

Too many books? (Too many bloody Parenthesis more like) (Is that the plural? Where's that copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves) (Or was it Eat's)

As a bookseller I find it hard to avoid contact with the general public. Hmm, that didn't come out quite right. What I'm trying to say is that I meet a lot of people. And when they spend money in one of our shops I want them to know that I appreciate it, that I realise that if they didn't choose to come to C & P I would not be a bookseller.

But it's hard to make every person you deal with feel a little bit special, a little bit loved. This is something I think people often overlook when faced with a moody face behind the till. To be cheerful again and again and again and mean it is hard. Frankly it's work. Hard work. (Maybe if I were American or a convert to the consumer society I would find it effortless to say "Have a Nice Day" to everyone and mean it. But, despite spending most of my time in shops, I hate shopping and avoid it at all costs.)

Luckily I am full of nuggets of useless yet cheery information or mindless banter about the weather etc. And I am full of love and affection for our customers (especially the cake-bringing kind.)

(Apologies for the lengthy and rambling nature of this post. I could blame it on my brother who just popped in with a cd that is one hour long but only consists of two - highly repetitive - tracks. I feel as though time is standing still. But there is a point approaching, look, here it comes!)

One of the pieces of useless information of a vaguely book-related nature I regurgitate when faced with a customer who says they have "far too many books already" as they pile up a stack before me is a fragment I retained from reading Paul Auster's increasingly relevant book Hand To Mouth. It's all about his experiences as a penniless writer. In it, he talks about making furniture from books and someone just sent me a link to this pic...

(If you spend long enough in a bookshop by yourself - mostly - you may take up blogging. Or even talking to yourself.)

(It's been a very rainy day.)

(God I'm glad that's finally over and bet you are too!)

Onions

Whilst reading the Onion on the US elections I came across this.

Must install a a rip in the space-time continuum in the cellar tomorrow...

En Vogue (again!)

So there we are again - in Vogue with Kate.

Weird. But kind of wonderful too. The only bookshop in London mentioned in their Secret Address Book...

Two and a half hours sleep later...

Ok, so who didn't get the memo? Where's the sunshine and rainbows?

discretion

I could write something really mushy. Suffice to say, something's changed. Call me naive but really, something's changed.

That's it

Job done...

Kudos

Dimbleby redeems himself with a supreme dismissal of John Bolton, Republican wonk extraordinaire. Hoorah.

This is sweet

I have to stay up until those million folk in Chicago are spoke to.

Am now, officially, in a good mood.

More Elections

Pennsylvania goes to Obama. Looks like an earlier night than I thought.

Election Night Coverage - Live from C&P

Jesus, it's depressing listening to David Dimbleby going on about 'Afro-Americans', especially when talking to an African-American journalist. Where the fuck has he been the last 20 years.

Men of a certain age just do. not. listen...

Do I have to tune in to Sky News? Really?

Today's the Day...

It's been a while and I've been following the coverage from the States. In some people's eyes, possibly a little too obsessively. All I will say to that is watching Newsnight last night I realised I knew a lot more about the Elections than Jeremy Paxman did.

Fingers crossed (although I don't think it's necessary) and if you hear a whoop and a cheer coming from the general Waterloo direction about 4am tonight you'll know that history has been made.

Cake!

Oh wow, I think I've started something here...

"F" has been bringing us cakes and ale for ages now.

And then there's Jane, brilliant author of gardening books, excellent bookseller and cake-maker extraordinaire who often brings slices in to the Fulham Road shop with her so we can "test" them.

Then there was the Polish "dirty dancing" pancake lady.

Now "B" has just dropped in claiming to want to order a book. But then, "Oh, would you like some cake?"

Yes. Yes I would like some cake.

Lemon cake. With icing. YUM YUM YUM YUM.

Oh, what a difference a cake makes!

A morning of Crockatts...

So I'm buzzing along on the Zip 50 when I feel my mobile vibrate in my pocket. Expecting some shop-related emergency I pull over at the side of the road and dig my trusty Nokia brick (with torch!) from somewhere beneath the layers of waterproof padded armour I am swaddled in. It's a message from my cousin Sam letting me know that the Sam Crockatt Quartet are launching their debut ablum this evening somewhere in Dalston.

The album is called Howeird and is probably a work of genius. No I mean really. I have heard Sam play several times over the years and he is just better every time.

Then who should appear as first customer of the day but my uncle Ian. He's also a creative chap. (He's a poet and has published several collections with good poetry publishers such as Peterloo Poets.) Ian lives on a croft in the far north of Scotland. He was down south for a couple of days, meeting a publisher who are dealing with his latest project - translations of Rilke no less!

There are a lot of Crockatts.

What A Lovely Afternoon...

A classic Marsh afternoon.

In other words plenty of fun (though not as much coffee or beer as usual) a nutter or two and regular after regular entertaining me with witty banter and bookish conversation.

Somehow managed to make a few quid as well...

Camberwell Blog

This is a local post for local people.

It is a well documented fact that I love Camberwell.

Here is a blog for other Camberwell lovers.

more random Marsh stuff

1: Our lady friend from the Jamaican embassy came in and we discussed Barack Obama. She has a bottle of Champagne on ice and said she would "smash it up" if McCain won. She also said the Jamaican president really appreciated the book we suggested he should read - Negro With A Hat by Colin Grant.

2: A regular customer of ours came in and spent some book tokens she won after writing a letter to the Guardian. The letter was about busking - and I remember reading it myself a couple of weeks ago.

3: The pancake lady has given up for the day. It is 2pm and she had sold 3 pancakes...(lost money in other words - I had four free ones in the end) She is a dancer by trade and is now going off to a Fitness First where she is going to teach a class how to do a Dirty Dancing workout.

Lower Marsh eh?

Pancake Mountain...

At the moment we are selling our electricity to a Polish lady who using it to make pancakes on a stall outside our Lower Marsh shop.

So far today I have had three for free.

Cheese and Salami.

Cheese and herb.

And "el classico" sugar and fresh lemon.

"I have to keep making them so people can see me making them" she explained.

Fat Crockatt has a kind of nice ring to it doncha think?

Kerrruuunnnnch!

Great article by John Lanchester in the LRB:

'We grew obsessed with the price of our houses, felt richer than we should, borrowed money we didn’t have, spent it on tat, and now that the downturn has happened – as it was bound to do – we want someone else to blame. Well boo fucking hoo. Bankers are to blame, but we’re to blame too. That’s just as well, because we’re the ones who are going to have to pay.'

This Is The Dawning...

Traditional
Aquarian Traits

Friendly and humanitarian
Honest and loyal
Original and inventive
Independent and intellectual

On the dark side....

Intractable and contrary
Perverse and unpredictable
Unemotional and detached

I have just discovered that Sarah Palin is an Aquarian, like me. This is alarming...

Something for the Weekend

This was playing in Scooterworks on Lower Marsh when I dropped in there for my morning fix.

"L" fell off her bike yesterday and had a bruise on the side of her face.

I thought it was just her latest make-up style until she told me about her fall.

Crockatt & Powell "Win" Pub Quiz

There are publishers.

And then there's Penguin.

The Crockatt & Powell lads were invited to compete in a travel pub quiz, hosted by Penguin, (they do Rough Guides and the DK Eyewitness guides in case you didn't know).

*Note to other publishers who might be reading. This post is not sponsored by Penguin - but when I'm given access to a free bar and free curry I am honour bound to be a little bit OTT in my appreciation ok?*

Now for those yet to visit either of our premises in the non-cyber world travel is not a big part of our operation. Yes we sell travel guides. Yes we sell travel literature. But we're not a travel bookshop.

So when we finished second, splitting the two teams from Stanfords (travel specialists) we were quite pleased.

A certain other travel bookshop was represented. To spare blushes I will not say where they finished...

And who came last? Winning actual wooden spoons? Yes, you guessed it - those brilliant folk from Waterstone's head office in Brentford.

STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS

As I'm blogging away in the Lower Marsh shop with the shutters down (Adam is opening today so even though I'm here I'm not doing anything about the shutters till he arrives - Oh! What business leaders we are!) a bloke turns up with a box marked McSweeney's Seduction Box.

It's only a bloke from Penguin called Matt (a literary marketing executive no less!) giving us more gifts.

It's a right ducking early CHRISTMAS! Hooray for Penguin, the best publisher in the world.

Sony e-reader

I wandered into Waterstone's today and they had a Sony e-reader you could play with.

1: It is UGLY.

2: When you "turn a page" the screen kind of fades to black and then comes back again on the next page. That would really bug me after a while.

3: The second page I read had two words joinedtogether like so...That's just shoddy.

I left feeling fully vindicated in our dismissal of this ridiculous toy, a classic example of a pointless technology.

If it ain't broke and has been around for thousands of years...

Hmmm...it's not going to stop raining in the next hour or so is it?

I knew I should have put my waterproof trousers on this morning.

Now I am going to have to scoot back through the traffic-laden and slippery streets of South London while my legs get wetter and wetter...