Although RuPaul’s lifetime award for services to international joie de vivre is secure, fans may find themselves a little cross with this autobiography: it stops long before Drag Race turned the world’s viewing screens lurid. Yet there’s still plenty to raise an eyebrow. The truly terrifying mother who raised him in San Diego once responded to his father's tom-catting around by dousing his beloved car in petrol and threatening to set it alight – in the garage that formed part of their home. She also shared this piece of life-coaching with her son, “Ru, you’re too goddamn sensitive, and you reminisce too much”. He was five at the time. After diversions into second-hand car dealing Ru eventually found his tribe in Atlanta and then New York clubland, but rather than the gleeful promoter of attention-seeking men in homemade womenswear that you might think you know, he is here guarded, serious and working his karmic contacts with fate and predestination hard.

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You may have seen the news recently that in Paris, President Macron has cancelled the proposed eviction of the boquinistes – the few hundred second-hand booksellers who operate from functional green stalls beside the Seine – for the duration of the Olympics this summer. 

Retailers of printed materials have been scraping a living beside the river in this way since the seventeenth century, and such was the outcry at this recent assault on a symbol of French heritage that Macron (favourite novelists: Celine and Mauriac) stepped in with a firm mais non. 

The ban in part seemed to be from nervousness about wrong 'uns using the boxes as a staging post for mayhem during the Games, but especially during the opening ceremony, which in a break from convention is this year due to take place on the Seine itself. 

But what's so special about these units? I can fully understand people's sense of nostalgia and indignation at lofty council edicts treating them as an inconvenience, but do Parisians ever use them?

When I lived in Barcelona in the eighties there was a similar, if smaller-scale tradition of small, permanent cabins retailing old books, although on closer inspection their offering was often dominated by towers of second-hand pornography. So an essential local service. 

But in France? In keeping with that nation's brand, the business seems to be a blend of high-minded nationalist principles ("cheese, wine and literature are every Frenchman's birthright" etc. etc.) and unbelievably fussy regulation (there are rules on how many boxes a family may own, how many days a week the owners must staff the cabin themselves, how long a period an owner is allowed to be off sick, and so on). 

Most importantly, there are rules governing how much space is allowed for the sale of what can only be described as tourist tat (no more than 25%). 

Given the chance, many owners would probably turn over 100% of the plot to souvenirs. They already devote a certain square meterage to the sort of art you can find hanging from the railings of Hyde Park on a Sunday.  

There are plenty of testimonials online from tourists sharing their delight at finding a copy of Paris Match from the day they were born or a poster that sent them into ecstasy. 

Yet less thick on the ground are comments from Parisians describing their need for the trade. My guess is therefore that Parisians love that they exist, but never spend as much as a euro on them from one year to the next. 

And anything that exists exclusively for tourists is hardly great for a city's health, especially one as image-conscious as the French capital. 

People of Paris – do you have a moment in your incredibly chic schedules to enlighten me? 

Haughty thoughts, s'il vous plâit, to info@strong-words.co.uk.

On a topic hovering on the fringes of the literary radar...

Dear Ed, I noticed in the current issue of the magazine your mention that the ocean's larger creatures are starting to learn how to cause mischief to yachts, and how killer whales have worked out the trouble they can cause by biting off the rudder. Just a few minutes after reading that, I was looking at the internet and read the story in the Guardian about that poor man Michael Holt, who had been trying to row solo across the Atlantic but was found dead on his boat after falling ill. A paragraph towards the end of the article says "Holt, from Porthmadog in north Wales, had been travelling alone on his boat, named Mynadd. He had faced challenges including a 3 metre shark having 'a party' with his rudder." I'd never before heard of this problem, so to find two instances of it within 20 minutes just felt like too much of a coincidence. 

Niamh O.

Delighted you chose to share this startling concurrence with the Sunday Book Club, Niamh. Seafaring members – has a whale, shark or other underwater scenester ever had a party with your rudder? This may be one of the more marginal trends of our age, but Strong Words is always keen to learn more about the surprising sensations that accompany life's less common experiences. All reports of your one-off dealings with large fish please to info@strong-words.co.uk. Ed. 

And the subject of blurbs still has energy to burn...

Dear Ed, with regard to your reader who said they felt that buying books on the strength of the blurbs often made them feel as if they had been swindled by a stranger, I see them differently. Of course, some are a bit idiotic or just a string of cliches, but others make you really want to know more. So I see it as like turning up at a party and just praying you are not the first person there. With blurbs, someone has got to the book before you and their presence is reassuring. If they hadn't, the absence of any blurb on the cover would be like hearing,"You're the first to arrive. In you go. Good luck."  

Gordon H. 

Sunday Book Club – does a good blurb remind you of a night out? Does their absence make you feel like turning on your heel and heading straight home? Keep the blurbs on blurbs coming please, and any other literary topics currently tapping you on the back, to info@strong-words.co.uk. Ed.

As if writers didn't have enough stress to endure, what with dismal royalties, invisible marketing budgets and AI threatening to lay off the entire word-arranging industry, here comes another unasked for dent in their reputation in Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's recently translated (and 2021 Prix Goncourt winner) The Most Secret Memory of Men (Harvill Secker, £20).

Early in the book, a young Senegalese man with dreams of being a great writer has from somewhere found the courage to proposition a much older and more renowned author, who has taken him back to her hotel room. While his confidence feels like it is getting ready to wait for him outside the door, she shares this catastrophic fragment of her experience:  

"Writers, and I've known many, have always been among the most mediocre lovers I've ever encountered. Do you know why? When they have sex, they're already thinking about the scene the experience will turn into. Every caress is ruined by what their imagination is doing or will do with it, every thrust is weakened by a sentence. When I talk to them during sex, I can almost hear their 'she murmured.'"

Writers: are you a mediocre lover? Readers: have you come across professions that are even worse at making the love? Evidence please, no questions asked, at this window: info@strong-words.co.uk.

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Here's the current issue of Strong Words. Even though it features the smirking face of an old roué with skin that some have compared to the surface of the sun and others to that of the Irish Iron Age "Old Croghan Man" bog body, it has proved such a hit that it is SELLING OUT fast.

Infinite gratitude to all who have contributed to this intense ray of sunshine. 

And while issue 49 is now officially a collector's item, the scramble to participate in the hottest trend in publishing goes on. If you'd like to enter the fray, reliable and trained operatives are standing by around the clock here to complete the transaction.

If you're not familiar with what Strong Words does and need something of a taster before committing, you'll find some recent pages to look at here.

For new UK subscribers it is STILL just £40 for a whole year's issues.

People stare at me in the street like I should be in some sort of special hospital for keeping prices so low, but before I come to my senses, please take advantage, and sign yourselves up. 

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