Happy Old Year 2007!!!

With only five shopping days left till New Year’s Eve, here is your chance to buy me a bottle of Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame... er, I mean, here is your chance to tell me about the most memorable book of 2007. It may be a book you read, or tried to read and failed, or heard about and never got the chance to buy.

Here’s mine, and it’s no surprise for regular readers of this blog:
· Lionel Shriver’s “Post-Birthday World”!!!

Your Christmas Wish List

I admit I stole this idea straight from http://sormag.blogspot.com/2007/12/wish-list-room.html. But it’s such a good one, it needs to be propagated. And besides, don’t they say that plagiarism is the finest form of flattery?

So this is your chance to share your list of books you would like to find under the tree this season, or the list of books you wish on others (for noble or not so noble reasons).

Authors, feel free to advertise your book.

Here is a short appetiser to get you going: this Christmas I wish... I wish... I wish that everybody would spend 80 cents on “Small Price to Pay”:

I didn't mind it when I discovered that Nick was having an affair. I mean, I did mind, but we'd been married twenty years. We've had some good times, we've had some bad times, but most of all, we've had some very long lacklustre times. What more can I say?
So it was not the affair that hurt. It was what he'd said.
A week ago, I picked up the phone to arrange a summer camp for the children. That's when I heard her voice--on my phone--to my husband--discussing a holiday away together.
"I'll keep the sheets hot for you, Nicky."
Nicky? I had tried calling him that once in our early days, and Nick had hated it.
"Hot, huh?" Okay, so flirting is not my husband's strong suite. But his voice was liquid chocolate.
"That's right. Hot. Come as quickly as you can."
I almost burst out laughing when I remembered, unkindly, how quickly Nick can come.
"Patience, M," Nick was saying meanwhile. "We have a whole week."
M. My husband was having an affair with M, the least likely Bond girl of them all.
"Aren't you worried to leave your wife alone for that long, though?" she teased. "What's good for the gander, you know...."
"Nah," replied my husband. "She's too vain to have an affair when she's fat."
....

Pterry: “I aten’t dead”

STOP PRESS:
L-space is bending into itself in the aftershocks of the Alzheimer news today. Terry Pratchett’s press release about his prognosis was short, factual and with a just a micro-trace of his trademark humour to put an optimistic spin on it. He did not say “I aten’t dead yet”, but he may as well have.

This blow could have happened to a lesser writer (a number of, in fact).

It didn’t.

Perhaps ill health is a by-product of genius, then, or perhaps genius is a by-product of an organism that knows (on a molecular level) its time may be limited. After all, it’s been speculated that Felix Mendelssohn had a brain tumour, that Mozart suffered from Tourette Syndrome, that Einstein was autistic. If that’s the price you pay for brilliance, I’ll settle for featuring on the New York Times Top Ten with a book that will astonish the readers by its lack of genius...

Anyway, for updates on Terry and the Discworld, please see http://paulkidby.com/news/index.html.

Writing The Breakout Novel

This is the third time - in about as many years - that I’m going through the book “Writing the Breakout Novel” by Donald Maass (writer and literary agent). The title says it: if you want to enhance your pacing, your plot or your characters, then this is the manual for you.

Some of the practical advice that you can expect from the book includes:
· Raise the personal stakes so that they “dig deep down to show us who we are”. The higher the stakes, the higher the novel’s success.
· Remember that the setting is more than landscape or rooms: it’s the geographical and historical context for your characters’ ideas, motivation and actions.
· “Subplots must affect the overall outcome of the story.”
· We all need heroes. Is the main character of your novel a real hero or just a protagonist?
· Conflicting ideas = tension.
· Stir your reader: if you have a dog in your story, kick it. If you have a character who’s easy to like, kill them.
· Let the theme of the novel arise from your passion.
· Symbols may either enhance your novel, or make it feel stage-y.

A word of warning here: if you are a true writer, you will find it difficult to read the book from cover to cover. After the first chapter, you will have this insatiable urge to open your work-in-progress and start writing....

(Sorry to end this mid-air, but I’ve just paged through “Writing the Breakout Novel” looking for quotes and now you can find me in front of my latest manuscript.)

The Hindi Bindi Club

“The Hindi Bindi Club” by Monica Pradhan appealed to me on many levels: because I’m a daughter, because I’m a mother, because I’m an emigrant and because I married into a different culture. I also fancied the Indian atmosphere of the book, in particular the recipes (which taught me to appreciate fresh coriander leaves) and the short lecture on where to place your food on the clock-face of the plate.

Many heavy issues are dealt with on its pages, and yet the book is a fast, relaxing read. Some might call it chick-lit in a curry sauce. I just say read it.

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Perhaps it’s because I’m a sucker for cute guys with an attitude and a bad-bad-bad reputation (my husband and Sawyer from LOST being a case - or is it two cases - in point)... oops ... now where was I....

So I must admit I really like Moist von Lipwig (the confidence artist whom we met in Going Postal). I like the way he gets restless when things are too good, too safe and too easy. I even like his cigarette-reeking girlfriend (and coming from somebody who’s medically allergic to nicotine, that’s saying something).

The main theme of the book (that of how money doesn’t have to be based on gold) and the basic lessons in economics, were also fun. And I really appreciate that Terry is becoming more playful with sexual innuendo again (akin to the first few chapters of “Small Gods”).

Now for the bad news: the book is nowhere near his best. While the pacing was good, I found the plot resolution disappointing and not up to his usual clever tricks. The villain was ridiculous instead of scary, the golem problem was introduced too late and it was sorted out with an “oh?” rather than an “aaaaaaah!”

Still, as I always maintain: give me a mediocre Pratchett any day. It’s better than most writers can achieve.

Murder @ The Bling Bling Xmas Table

The Setting:
Exclusive Game Reserve “Bling-Bling Bush Lodge”, Christmas 2007

The Characters:
- Christine Chamberlain, a mathematician and our amateur detective who will help us solve the puzzle
- Tom Wodehouse, artist and Christine’s husband
- Alta Vermaak”, Christine’s best friend from school, owner of the “Bling-Bling Bush Lodge which, despite its glamorous name, is making a financial loss of bling-bling proportions
- Kenneth Vermaak, Alta’s husband, game ranger at his wife’s game reserve and begrudging the fact that this is the only job he could get in the new South Africa
- Sandra Vermaak, Alta’s twin sister from New Zealand, visiting after a 10-year absence, a stay-at-home mom who says she’s not bored and that she loves her children, but if so, then why did she leave them in New Zealand with the nanny?
- Connor Vermaak, Sandra’s husband and Kenneth’s older brother, self-made millionaire who is reluctant to talk about his money-making ventures

Back Story:
Alta Vermaak organised a xmas reunion for the immediate family. Aware of the undercurrents in the family members’ affairs, however (Kenneth is envious of Connor’s business success, Sandra had a crush on Kenneth but he chose Alta, Connor cannot forgive Kenneth that he was Sandra’s first choice, Alta is irritated by the way Sandra throws money around), she invited Christine and Tom to join them for Christmas.

(Thank you to those of you who attended “Set the Table for Murder” last Saturday. We had lots of fun, lots of praise and lots of sales!)

(In the next blog: review of Pratchett’s “Making Money”… watch this space.)