It seems to me that the first chapter of If On a Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino would be the perfect opening post for a literary book blog*.




Which is a rather oblique way of going on once again to talk about The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs which got a review in this week's Independent on Sunday . And a nice one it is too, beginning 'Marion Boyars is, by all accounts, one of the UK's more free thinking publishers...' Thanks to all those who accounted us such. I like it: it makes us sound like the kind of people who might just decide to put all our commas before the phrase, full stops at the top of line and vertical hyphens everywhere. The review goes on to highlight the extracts from Dovegreyreader as particularly good and quite right too.



More good news comes from Gourmet magazine who have made Chocolate and Zucchini one of their books of the year, which is a pretty big deal. I also like the magazine's web address : epicurious.com. Our congratulations to Clotilde over in Paris, if she's not too busy we hope to be able to arrange some signings over there soon. Unfortunately there is no online link to the text of their books of the year section so this is as much info as we've got at the moment. We'll put the full text on the web page when we get it.

Having spent the last few weeks complaining about early christmas adverts I spent much of today designing, printing and mailing our own. How's about this for diverse?
This May Help You Understand The World
Last Exit to Brooklyn
The Devil in the Flesh
The Bookaholics' Guide to Books Blogs

Something for everyone madam? I'd say so.

Almost lastly: Apologies to anyone who tried to get to Riverbend's latest blog and couldn't through the link from this one. I don't know why it directs back onto itself - the link was to the right address. Anyway, one can copy and paste:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/


*What a great book this is, I'm ashamed to say that I haven't read it before. It was gift from the same friend who, upon hearing that I'd started working in publishing gave me New Grub Street . This is much happier BUT I would say that if you like this then you MUST read some Julio Cortázar (MB author page coming soon), he has a similarly playful but brilliant conception of literature. Try All the Fires the Fire for starters.

Kit