Authors know everything
In a week when Monty Python's Eric Idle took to the headlines to complain he still had to work at 80...
“Work is much more fun than fun”...
...said Noël Coward, author of more work than most. Those toiling at the plastic cutlery factory may disagree, but that aside, just what is it that Eric Idle has to do that's so hard anyway?
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Kersten's Lists by François Kersaudy. Mountain Leopard Press £25
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This is the very curious history of the role of a gluttonous masseuse on the fate of thousands of people held in Nazi concentration camps. Felix Kersten was an ethnic German from Estonia, who in Berlin in the 20s discovered he had a gift for massage, and that his fingers could “see” the neural pathways of whomever was on his table. He soon built a lucrative practice relieving the sciatica and lumbago of society muckety-mucks in central European capitals, until news of his pain-relieving hands reached the ears of a powerful chronic abdominal sufferer: Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was so delighted with Kersten's talent that as the Second World War got under way he made him his personal therapist, a post Kersten was unable to decline. But it did come with two huge benefits: privileged access to the sort of eclairs and marmalades Kersten lived for, and a direct line into elite Nazi politics, as Himmler, relaxing under Kersten's manipulations, shared details of the ferocious jockeying for influence with Hitler. As the pain eased its grip on his powerful client, Kersten used his talent for manipulation to put the case for releasing various prisoners, often held for reasons of political manoeuvre. This process grew into a delicate strategy to secretly free thousands, including many Jews, on the grounds that it would enhance the vain Himmler's reputation as a great man of history. Buy this book
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The Strong Words Hot List Ready for some intense new literature? Here it comes... |
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5. About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler Peirene, £12.99
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At a family's Brittany holiday home, a brother and sister in their twenties move in to look after Uncle Disgusting – a revolting unwashed lump given to reminiscing about his days in the military and 1980s heavy metal. He gets about on a feebly-powered mobility scooter called “the hog”. When the pandemic strikes, the three are locked down together, with the siblings – contributors to a pet food website – responsible for helping their unhygienic relative fight an embolism. He in turn sprays food around while insisting the temperature is going to hit 600º within the next 24 hours and that a meteor is about to scrape the French coast. Buy this book
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4. How I Won A Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto Picador, £16.99
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A hotshot researcher in some incomprehensible field of physics has a difficult decision to make when her genius advisor is cancelled over a historic indiscretion. He moves his lab to a billionaire-funded island where the work of similar academic outcasts is encouraged. She follows him, and her unenthusiastic partner tags along. In spite of her determination to hopscotch over the politics of the place, the awkward clash of cancel culture and the exceptionalism granted to brilliant people cannot be resolved by complex equations alone. (*Warning: contains satire). Buy this book
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3. How to be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney Jonathan Cape, £16.99
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Dylan is an Englishwoman who in 2015 is thriving in a high-pressure environment: the New York advertising business. Until suddenly she quits – to cat-sit for an artist and work on a book. She doesn't mention this to anyone, least of all the boyfriend who has moved to the west coast. Then before long she's at it with the downstairs neighbour (he's married but “it's not a thing.”) Confrontation ahoy, but first... sparky comedy! Buy this book
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2. Pity by Andrew MacMillan Canongate, £14.99
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In Barnsley, all men were once miners – until the coal industry called it a day. Nothing has begun to replace it culturally or economically, so into this void comes... a university research team, bringing a poet to help the men bring buried memories to the surface. Two brothers who lost their father in a pit accident have memories aplenty – one most recently of a collapsed marriage – and a fair deal of repressed material beside. Buy this book
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1. Fervour by Toby Lloyd Sceptre, £16.99
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In the attic of a north London family home, grandad is dying. A survivor of the Nazi camps, he wants to see each of his three grandchildren, who are terrified of him. Father is a devout lawyer, mother has recorded grandpa's story and is planning to publish it, the daughter has overheard the horrors as he recounts them – and then she disappears. Is she possessed? Has this intense family pushed her over the edge? Is something biblical and mystical afoot? It's a lot of belief for one family to process. Buy this book
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Once thought extinct, but recently sighted: kindness, with its good friend, generosity.
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Dear readers,
This week something quite extraordinary happened.
One of your number, an author whose name would be familiar to many households, got in touch to make a donation to the Strong Words cause.
If you've noticed a shortage of gratitude around this week, that's because I used it all.
This is the year when Strong Words has to start earning its keep, so I am open to all forms of economic encouragement.
If you get the chance to subscribe, give a gift subscription, urge a friend to subscribe, evangelise about the magazine and so on, please don't be shy.
But if you've exhausted all those options and still wish to donate to a noble cause, then get in touch at the info address and I'll share the relevant details.
The benefits are simple: if you thought you had already risen in another person's estimation just as high as it was possible to go, then you will find yourself pleasantly surprised.
And if you have ever dreamt of your name acquiring an almost religious aura in the house of another, this is the fastest short cut.
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Opinions on the Amazon question are still trickling in...
No issues with Amazon here to be honest. Absolutely love the site, more as a repository for numerous second hand sellers selling sometimes obscure old volumes at good prices than for new books, so not sure if that makes my stance any less worthy of disapproval! Also very fond of Kindle when I do buy newer books. So while I kind of wish they’d left themselves just selling books, I think they remain bloody good at selling books. And as you say it’s perfectly within people’s ability to look up the books you recommend at any other store and buy them there.
David S. (subscriber)
And on to other pressing retail matters...
Ed, I know you once did an article about the corny and clichéd language publishers use to try to persuade us to purchase their books, going overboard with words such as “searing” and “harrowing” and “unflinching”, but how do you feel about blurbs? I can't help feeling I'm being tricked by their “BS" (as you would say), but I also feel a book would be naked without them. What do you think?
Eleanor L.
Eleanor, I often feel no other industry gets away with the sort of outrages that book publishing does with its on-product descriptions. Books very often do not do what they say on the tin. I've too often experienced the humiliation of buying a book based on a hysterical blurb only to find book and blurb couldn't be further apart. But then heaven knows it's not easy to sell books, so I also kind of understand why publishers take such massive liberties. My blurb rule is the greater the prestige of the blurber, the more they have to lose by blurbing so the more you should pay heed. This means that most blurbs, by people I've never heard of, can be discounted entirely. Also to be ignored: Lee Child, who has never seen a book he didn't blurb. Ed Book Clubbers – where do you stand on blurbs? Have you been gubbed too often to ever trust again? Or do you enjoy reading them just as much as the book itself? All fighting talk, on this and any other subject, to info@strong-words.co.uk
Hello Ed, enjoyed your thoughts on the ludicrous “bookshelf wealth” trend last week. On doing a bit of googling on the topic, I found this comment at independent.co.uk that sums up my thoughts on the subject perfectly. “The day I ‘cultivate’ books instead of buying what I like to read is the day I’ll know I’ve truly failed as a human.”
Jerry (initial unknown)
Readers, please send all instances of the day you bought a book to impress someone (or other ways you think you might have failed as a human), to info@strong-words.co.uk
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The kind of people skills they're currently looking for in private investment...
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If you’ve ever suspected some of those private equity types could dial it down several per cent and still be colossal tools, confirmation comes in a new book called Private Equity (Bloomsbury, £20) by a Chinese-American woman called Carrie Sun. (Exhibit A: a friend once told me about someone he knew whose company worked in advertising on the Underground. His private equity overlords once went absolutely ballistic when they momentarily couldn’t contact him. Turned out he’d been underground, not unreasonably, doing something connected with his business. This was unacceptable, they fumed – he needed to be where they could contact him, day and night, around the clock. So they insisted he was never to go below ground – including travel by Tube – ever again.) Carrie is an over-achiever in finance who decides she’d rather write. In the meantime she applies for a job as a personal assistant to a billionaire running some fund in New York. This character (she calls him “Boone”) “said he received seven thousand emails a day” (assuming he never sleeps or takes weekends off, that’s almost five every minute) “and needed help organizing his inbox and life.” But first… “on Thursday, I had my fourteenth and final interview, this one with Boone’s executive coach.” Having aced all fourteen (or enough of them at least), she then has to provide eleven referees, and arrange for them all to be available for Boone to call personally in a narrow window of time the following day. “If not, ‘my interview process would be over.’” On giving her the job, he sends her four self-help books, “to get us in sync” and says, “How are you with positive feedback? Because I don’t give it.” One night when she’s at home, presumably after wading through his 7,000 emails, he sends her pictures of himself relaxing with his kids. Just pictures. She gets on with being exhausted. The following day: “Can you reply to all my emails when you see them?” On the correct way to enter a meeting to hand over a post-it: “‘You’re too hesitant,’ he said. ‘I need you to walk with more confidence and just come in, and then get out, but also be more easygoing, relaxed, and chill.’” When she asks for clarification, “all I heard was that he wanted me to walk like a Victoria’s Secret Angel. He wanted me to be like him: breezy [...] ‘Most important’ he added, ‘don't be weird.’” Back to work people, the boss has got a ton more awesome to get through. Buy this book
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How to subscribe to Strong Words
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Issue 49 of Strong Words is on its way! If the Royal Mail can get their satnav programmed, it'll be reaching subscribers by the end of the week. If you're not a subscriber and can no longer bear this feeling of total literary isolation, follow this link here. If you're not familiar with what Strong Words does and would like to see a sample of some recent pages, you'll find your needs met here. For new UK subscribers it is STILL just £40 for a whole year's issues. This state of affairs cannot last for ever. Don't kid yourself you're going to be able to come back later and be sure to find this lunatic offer still on the table. Act now.
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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
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