A Small Gesture
March 3, 2007
The Scotsman
Book Worm Column
A SMALL GESTURE
FIRST Edinburgh with Kidnapped, then Glasgow with Small Island: The trend for freely distributed books is quickening apace. But it's fair to say that St Andrews, the latest place where you can expect to find books being given away, is doing it in a rather smaller way than anywhere else.
Over the course of the StAnza festival there (14-18 March), 1,000 copies of poetry booklets by Californian publisher Richard Hansen will be given away free. Each of them, however, is only the size of a sugar sachet.
FIRST Edinburgh with Kidnapped, then Glasgow with Small Island: The trend for freely distributed books is quickening apace. But it's fair to say that St Andrews, the latest place where you can expect to find books being given away, is doing it in a rather smaller way than anywhere else.
Over the course of the StAnza festival there (14-18 March), 1,000 copies of poetry booklets by Californian publisher Richard Hansen will be given away free. Each of them, however, is only the size of a sugar sachet.
"Richard has sent us a large supply of poetry booklets to distribute," says StAnza artistic director Eleanor Livingstone. "But much more importantly, he has published a poem by Scots poet, William Hershaw, who will be reading at the festival.
"He's done this partly because he's impressed by what we're doing, but also because he's wanted for a while to bring out a booklet with a poem in Scots. So as well as being all over StAnza, William's poem, 'A Lied Called Love', should be all over the States too!"
LIMITED AMBITION
IF THAT's one new form of writing, London writer and consultant Ziv Navoth is keen to convince you that he's just discovered another - the nanotale. It's really just an ultra-short short story and hardly original anyway - Dan Rhodes, to take just one example, wrote 101 of them for his first book, Anthropology.
The difference this time, however, is that Navoth is hooking up with Britain's "stickiest" website Bebo.com in a nanotale competition. It's aimed, we understand, at "a generation with attention deficit disorder. Nanotales will give them literature at their own pace."
I know, I know. I can hardly restrain myself either.
BIG RELIEF
FEARS that Dalziel and Pascoe author Reginald Hill might be about to break up Yorkshire's finest fictional crime-busting duo appear to be misplaced. Next week HarperCollins will release the 21st book in the series, The Death of Dalziel, whose title seems to indicate that the fat, politically incorrect one, is about to meet his maker.
FEARS that Dalziel and Pascoe author Reginald Hill might be about to break up Yorkshire's finest fictional crime-busting duo appear to be misplaced. Next week HarperCollins will release the 21st book in the series, The Death of Dalziel, whose title seems to indicate that the fat, politically incorrect one, is about to meet his maker.
The millions of Dalziel and Pascoe fans (10 million watch the TV series, 6 million have bought the books) should not, however, be too worried. According to the Bookseller, Hill has just signed a deal for another two books in the D&P series.
This article: http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=334722007
posted by Richard Hansen at
9:59 PM
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