Doubtless you have already performed a 21-glitter cannon salute in honour of the 50th anniversary of ABBA forcing the other 1974 Eurovision contestants to seek alternative employment, but don't stop there – there's reading to be done. Staggeringly, “ABBA finished being a band in 1982 – forty-two years ago”, yet today they are more everywhere than ever.

During their eight years of active service, the sound of swinging Sweden hogged the radio, but also jammed critical faculties: “so great... and yet so cheesy”, says Giles Smith. And still we know comparatively little about them.

Their ability to connect reaches from the most self-pitying, one-too-many hen party singleton, to the late middle-aged pedants, celebrating a half century of being able to remind all in earshot that – *pushes glasses up bridge of nose* – at Waterloo, Napoleon did NOT surrender.

Yet the source of their joyful alchemy remains undiscovered. My My! delivers a pop obsessive's exuberant search for enlightenment, but also claims that “in the spirit of honestly trying to work out just what the hell was going on there, we may reasonably arrive at some truths that hold good for our interactions with all of pop music, and not just ABBA’s.”                                     
Buy this book 

Farewell this week to the original, influential and always entertaining Paul Auster, who died on Tuesday.

Among his numerous titanic achievements was to earn the uninterrupted adoration of the French. 

His obituary in Le Monde (international version, obvs.) begins with this great story about how he found his career earlier than most. 

How does one become a writer? For Paul Auster, it all began at the age of eight. “At that moment in my life, nothing was more important to me than baseball,” he recounted in the essay Why Write, published in the New Yorker in 1995. He particularly admired the “incandescent” Willie Mays, one of the New York Giants. One day, after a game, he met his idol and asked for his autograph. “Sure, kid,” replied Mays. “Got a pencil?” The boy had nothing to write with. Neither did his father. Nor did anyone else nearby. “Sorry, kid,” Mays said. “Ain’t got no pencil, can’t give no autograph.” Auster burst into tears. “After that night, I started carrying a pencil with me wherever I went. As I like to tell my children, that's how I became a writer.”

In an earlier interview, with Bomb magazine in 1988, he described another fortuitous beginning – the spark that set City of Glass, the first book in his breakout New York Trilogy, smouldering.

The opening scene in the book is something that actually happened to me. I was living alone at the time, and one night the telephone rang and the person on the other end asked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. I told him that he had the wrong number, of course, but the same person called back the next night with the same question. When I hung up the phone the second time, I asked myself what would have happened if I had said, “Yes.” That was the genesis of the book, and I went on from there.

As a writer who was obsessed with chance and coincidence, these two Auster stories show how great things can begin at any moment – well worth remembering when stuck in a bout of pessimism. 

Bon voyage, Paul – not sure how the French would say that.


Buy the New York Trilogy 

Buy the autobiographical Winter Journal

On the topic of the soothing powers of green water... 

Hey Ed, I was interested to note in the Book Club last week that jewellery makers like to keep a bowl of green water handy to stare at as a balm for their weary eyes. Last year my family and I rented a holiday home in Spain and arrived to find the swimming pool, traditionally a calming presence, green with some sort of fungal discolorant. I can confirm that this particular “bowl of green water” did little for my heart rate or sense that all was well in the world. 

Mark L.

Sorry to hear that some swimming pool owner's more “organic” approach to bathing wasn't to your taste Mark. Perhaps the restorative powers of green water only work on a mineral level (ie. green ceramic/ clear water), although staring through a bottle of absinthe is not without its pleasures. Perhaps take one with you next time you're on the Costas. Ed


And more news from Mexico...

Ed, with your recent focus on Mexico in the magazine and the Book Club email, and your call last week for more novels with recipes in, has anyone mentioned Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate? If you don't know it, it's about the youngest daughter of a traditional Mexican family that won't allow her to marry, so all her frustrations go into her cooking (until she starts developing something with her brother-in-law). In my experience Mexican food doesn't need supplementing with additional emotions, especially when they've been generous with the chillies, but if you're looking for a dish from the novel that's a bit less aggressive, I really recommend the champandongo, a sort of mince dish. 
 
Alexandra J.

Thanks Alexandra, not often we hear much about mince these days, it seems to have dropped from the vocabulary. I also didn't know that the title of the book has a sort a pressure-cooker implication; saying someone is “like water for chocolate” means they are about to boil over. So book club members, if you have ever experienced uncontrollable passions while at the stove, please share (with recipes/first aid advice) at info@strong-words.com.

From a book coming early next month, a tip from a flight attendant as to how to pacify over-refreshed passengers. 

Given that barely a flight makes it into the skies these days without some sort of brawl breaking out, this may be a valuable safety initiative. 

And as an added bonus, it could contain a useful technique for cutting back on one's own gin intake. 

Lifting Off, by Karen McLeod (Muswell Press, £10.99, out Jun 7), describes her experiences as a member of the cabin crew in the era somewhere between the golden age of air travel as luxury, and the current experience of being kettled. 

Working in a cafe in Sydney once, a very drunk man insisted on more liquor and became aggressive when refused. To diffuse the situation she employed a method that her mother used to use to stop her alcoholic father from exploding: she would put tonic in a glass, and then “wipe the rim of the glass with an alcohol soaked tissue.” 

Having witnessed the effectiveness of her trick, she went on to use it while at work on aeroplanes to get belligerent/over-emotional drinkers back in their allotted seats, and was amazed at its success.

Surely worth a go when angry mini-breakers start windmilling across the aisles over the Bay of Biscay?

And given its efficacy, why not try the trick on yourself if struggling to keep your intake modest? 
                                                                                         
Buy this book

This cheerful individual is Strong Words subscriber and Queen's Park Rangers fan Jim Revier, who never leaves home without his copy of the magazine, even when attending this recent gig by Neil Young tribute band, Gold Rush.

The show coincided with a night when QPR were in action, hence Jim paying close aural attention as the band showed Harrow and Wealdstone how Cortez the Killer should be played, but also angling himself toward the big screen on which QPR were thrashing Leeds.

The result of that QPR-Leeds contest guaranteed Leicester's return to the Premier League.

I am a Leicester fan, which makes Strong Words Leicester's unofficial literary magazine partner.

This configuration of events makes it impossible not to conclude that Jim's directing the current issue square at the screen acted as some sort of success ray, helping Leicester escape from the cement mixer of the Championship with the power of literature.

So if you want to get your hands on a magazine that not only guides you towards all the great new books you need to read six times a year, but also seems to provide mysterious assistance to all who stare at it long enough, then please subscribe.  

This is the place to do it.

Or if you're very much a phone person, try ringing 01442 820580.

(Photo courtesy Christine Rumley)

Got a story you’d like to share? Or a question that's bothering you? Send your gossip, tips, literary sightings and intel to info@strong-words.co.uk

For all advertising enquiries info@strong-words.co.uk

Most importantly of all, please share this email with anyone you think might like a weekly shot of lively book recommendations. Strong Words needs readers, so use this link to pass it on. Or to sign up to receive the newsletter weekly, go to the website at www.strong-words.co.uk.

Strong Words receives a small percentage of the price of all books purchased via these links. 

All photos shutterstock.com, except where indicated.