Bits and Bobs
I’m not very good at waiting and patience is never something I’m good at. So I’m wondering how long do you wait before assuming that you’re never going to get a response to that email you’ve sent? I waited a week then sent a follow-up and still nothing. It’s just very disappointing to think that someone has just deleted you or ignored you completely. Then on the other hand you have lovely people that respond excellently, which kind of makes up for it. Anyway I think that’s going to burn away for quite a while.
Susan Hill is back on the blog and talking about the new Vintage Classics. I choose classics more on the quality of the type usually making sure it’s been redone in a clean print rather than the ones that look like they’ve bled into the page.
I’ve been making embarrassingly slow progress reading From a Buick 8 I will finish but it all seems written in first gear. I’m hoping that there is going to be big lightening show in the end…and don’t spoil it for me ;). I want to finish it so I can read my next non-review copy book. I’m trying to have one review copy and one non-review book on the go at the end same time.
I’m just about to start back on sci-fi with Dreaming the Void. It’s been getting some good reviews and it only 600 pages (gulp)
I had a “bugger it” moment in Borders last week and spent money I really don’t have and bought a copy of The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (a debut from Long Barn Books), Odd Thomas, which I’ve constantly failed to get off ReaditSwapit.co.uk, and finally The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, which had an excellent review in Deathray and is another debut.
The lovely people at Ebury Press sent me a copy of the debut novel by Julian Clary, Muder Most Fab. I’m really looking forward to it.
I’m afraid I didn’t get past the first 20 pages of Garden Spells a debut by Sarah Addison Allen. I might have been reading a little too far outside my comfort zone.
Otherwise I’ve been doing a typsetting and cover design job that I’ll probably announce properly when it’s done. I’ve got a blog about that sort of thing that you can find here. If you know anyone in need of that sort of thing be sure to send them my way.
More soon
“I choose classics more on the quality of the type usually making sure it’s been redone in a clean print rather than the ones that look like they’ve bled into the page.”
Oh I do agree! Nothing worse than a shiny new rejacketing of a old book, only to open it and find splotchy old typesetting that they inherited from the first edition in the 1930s. How expensive can it be to reset a book these days? It’s not as though several navvies are required to shift the hot metal about.
They’ve done that with The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie rather annoyingly - it should be a whole package - Wordworth seem to manage it and they are only a couple of quid.
Well I can happily report that the Vintage Fantasy set from Vintage Classics comes with clean crisp text. So I’d assume they’ve all had the same treatment - though assuming does occasionally make an ass out of u and me
I do think that when they don’t do it’s a shoddy saving. The typesetting should be invisible. Case Histories has the most annoying font that I’ve read for a quite a while and not only that they’ve used the same on for the sequel.
Thanks John, I’m glad it’s not just me.
Ugh yes, Black Swan (who publish Kate Atkinson) use that squarish typeface - Mallard, I think it’s called - on most of their books and it is absolutely f***ing hideous. It actually puts me off buying the books. Is this unnecessary anal retentiveness? I prefer to think that a good book should be aesthetically pleasing as well as intellectually pleasing.
Not retentive at all. We do judge a book by its cover after all. That’s what stops us mistakenly picking up a bodice ripper when we actually wanted a good horror novel.