More about book covers

I forget now which particular blog or web site it was that first pointed me towards the video of Chip Kidd's presentation to a TED audience, on the design of book covers -- but my hat is lifted to them, whoever it was.

Chip Kidd has worked for Knopf publishers -- which is apparently pronounced with a hard K, unless my ears are deafer than usual -- and unless, of course, Mr Kidd is just being droll -- but in any case, he knows his business and will also make you laugh, never a bad combination.

So, go take a look, is my advice. You will need twenty minutes or so.

Yum yum

Should you be planning to visit Shakespeare country. or thereabouts, be sure to visit Rebekah Owens's blog Travels with my Oxygen. Full of good advice on where to go to eat well, and how to foment political unrest, where to become the next J.K. Rowling, et cetera.

Simon Garfield: Just My Type

Just My Type is a book about fonts. And these days most people have a vague idea what fonts are, if only because they see the word (occasionally) on their word processor.

Well, a whole book about fonts may not be your thing but this is interesting enough, even for the non-professional. It's a series of short essays, about the designers of type, the folk who choose them for specific purposes, and all like that. It's a good bedside book -- you can read the odd chunk before going to sleep.

Of course you do have to be a bit weird to be interested in fonts. But if you're going to use CreateSpace or Lulu or something to produce actual printed books, as opposed to ebooks, then you're going to have to take an interest to some extent.

If you're looking for a practical book that gives you a list of suggested fonts for various different purposes, then this isn't it. But then it doesn't claim to be.

For something similar, but a bit more in-depth, perhaps, try Simon Loxley's Type: the Secret History of Letters. And for those who are actually designing a printed book, Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is indispensable.

Sugar: the bitter truth

Well, well, it took a while -- actually about twenty years -- but finally Penguin did the obvious thing and reissued Professor John Yudkin's absolutely classic study of sugar: Pure, White and Deadly. This book has been out of print for many a long year, and when you could find it the price was usually in three figures. A few years ago I had to borrow a copy from my local library's county archive.

The new edition comes with an introduction by Professor Robert Lustig, who was probably the guy that twisted Penguin's arm. I'd like to think that Penguin were smart enough to launch a reissue unprompted, but then why did they ever let an important book like this go out of print in the first place? (There's no polite or reassuring answer to that question.)

And, what's more, Lustig himself has a book out. The title is Fat Chance, and it looks like a brave book to write, because it dares to criticise the food industry. Yudkin tried that, and got nothing but trouble as a result. He should, of course, have been supported by his university, but wasn't, which is a disgraceful story in itself.

The fact that sugar is the source of half our health problems is not new. The journalist William Dufty wrote a classic expose of it in the 1970s, in Sugar Blues, which is still in print. But scientists who are prepared to put their head above the parapet and let Big Food fire cannon at them are not thick on the ground.

If by any chance you haven't yet realised what pernicious stuff sugar is, and how determinedly it is forced upon us in almost everything, then Lustig's new book is the one to go for. Those of us who've been paying any attention to food in the last 40 years probably won't learn a lot that's new -- except of course that we shall be given a host of new examples of how little the food companies care about their customers' health, and how committed they are to making profit no matter what.

German Army? No worries...

Englishmen of a certain age -- let's say over seventy -- tend to have a grudging respect for the German army. I'm not quite sure why, but it probably has something to do with two world wars, the flower of English youth slaughtered in the first, 20 million dead, worldwide, in the second. And we tend to remember incidents such as the invasion of Russia in winter (Napoleon did it and lost), the battle of Stalingrad, and so on.

One way and another, us old guys have a mental image of the German army as a vast assembly of bullet-headed thugs, with masses of first-class ordnance made by world-class German engineers. And even now we keep seeing these history documentaries showing the inexorable advances made by these relentless buggers.

It's worth noting that even when it came to the Battle of Stalingrad, when everything conceivable was against the Germans -- the weather, the lack of supplies, the sheer number of the Russians launched against them -- even then the Germans were hard to shift. Stalin's approach was to send boat after boat across the river, where they were machine-gunned down to one or two survivors, as often or not. But one or two was enough. Stalin sent another boat. And another. He had lots of peasants at his disposal.

All of that being the case, we ancient Limies tend to think of the German army as a hard-nosed bunch. Jeez, we mutter to ourselves, I hope we don't have to fight those buggers again -- not till I'm safely dead, anyway.

But you know what? We can sleep easy! Yes, there is absolutely no cause for alarm. A report in today's Times says it all. The link may not get you through Rupert's firewall (the strategy isn't going to work, Rupert, I keep telling you), so I'll give you the gist of the report here.

It was once dreaded for its military might and unfailing discipline. But the German Army is now struggling to hold on to recruits, with almost one in three dropping out after six months of basic training.

See, what happens is this. The recruits turn up cos they rather fancy themselves in one of those uniforms -- a real girl-puller. But then they're a bit surprised by what they find. They have to share a room with other men. They have to polish their own boots! They can't smoke except during certain times. And there are all these bossy types strutting about and expecting recruits to do what they tell them! Whatever next? Result: 30.4 per cent drop out within six months.

So, I think we can all relax. If and when the German army invades somewhere uncomfortable, such as Russia in winter, or even Manchester on a rainy day in August, the recruits are going to take a long hard look at what they can expect. And if the Generals can't guarantee of supply of the young men's favourite hairspray, the great German war machine is going to say, 'Nah. No way. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.' And then they're going to piss off home.

For those of you who would like to read in detail about the glories of the once-unstoppable Wehrmacht, and just how difficult they were to batter into submission, William Shirer gives the best overall picture in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

For a painfully detailed account of one battle, go to Antony Beevor's Stalingrad. 

Ebook cover awards

It seems that The Book Designer web site runs a monthly competition for the best designs for an ebook cover (or e-book cover, as the site chooses to spell it). If you follow this link you will arrive at the page recording the winners for November 2012.

The results make interesting viewing, and almost without exception they confirm my belief that most ebook covers -- or at least those designed by 'professionals' -- are grossly overburdened by information and are generally less than wonderful in meeting what ought to be the design brief.

Anyone with any wit surely knows that ebook covers are going to be viewed mainly in thumbnail form. And that is the key format, because that's the one which determines whether a potential reader cum buyer is going to bother to look at the sales page at all.

But... If you got to Amazon.com, books, fiction, last 30 days, and list by publication date, you get a reasonable set of examples of what is being offered by way of 'design' for the covers of today's new ebook novels. And most of these designs, quite frankly, are bloody useless. Here are three chosen pretty much at random from the first page:

In each case the title and/or author's name is largely illegible, at least to my elderly eyes, and the illustration gives very little clue as to the genre. The one on the left might be a Regency romance, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

My own view (doubtless hopelessly biased) is that any reasonably computer-savvy author can easily design her own cover, and in most cases it will turn out to be at least as good as something commissioned from a professional. Why? Because the professionals (on the evidence of Amazon) seem to be still thinking in terms of mass-market paperback.

All a good ebook cover needs is a highly legible title, highly legible author name, and perhaps an image of some kind to reinforce  the perception of genre which is created (ideally) by the title.

Here's a good example which author Camille Laguire designed for her own book:

Many of the other honorable mentions in this months's Book Designer competition were also designed by the book's author. Go take a look.

The Rescue of Bertie's Mummy

Despite my best efforts, there seems to be less and less time for writing these days. However, I have managed to turn out the odd short story. (Odd in more ways than one.) The Rescue of Bertie's Mummy is my latest.

This is a story intended for those who have been given a Kindle (of one sort or another) for Christmas. Such giftees will no doubt be looking for free stuff, so this one will be offered free for 5 days from 24 December. In the meantime it will cost you 99 cents or the equivalent in your local currency.

The narrative begins on Christmas Day, and it involves a little boy who is lost, together with some not very bright policemen (apart from our hero, PC Moreton); and it has a love story with a happy ending.

What more could you possibly want?

This book is the first in what I hope will be a series of 'coffee-time' short stories. That is to say, they will be short enough to be read over a cup of coffee. This one runs to just over 4,000 words.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, while stocks last. Or some such misleading drivel.

Adam Curtis rides again

I have recommended the work of Adam Curtis here before. And if you have any hope (Ha! What an optimist you are!) of understanding the Middle East, then you urgently need to read and watch his latest post.

It is something of a mystery how Mr Curtis comes to be allowed (and presumably encouraged) to poke around in the BBC archives, but his resulting insights are worth ten of any academic tomes on the subject. More power to his elbow and archive-searching, say I.

David Wesley Hill: At Drake's Command

Some eighty-five years ago, an English novelist by the name of C.S. Forester published the first in a 12-book series about Horatio Hornblower. The books were not written chronologically, in terms of the hero's life, but eventually covered Hornblower's career in the British Navy, from Midshipman to Admiral.

The Hornblower books were set in the age of the Napoleonic Wars, and were enormously successful, both in the US and the UK. They were admired by, among others, both Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill, and yet could easily be read by the average schoolboy. In 1951 a successful film version appeared, starring Gregory Peck in the lead role.

Since then, the idea of a book, and possibly a whole series of books, starring a member of the British Navy in times past, must have been seen by many a publisher and writer as a target worth consideration. Patrick O'Brian began a similar series, with Master and Commander, in 1970. And now David Wesley Hill has taken his turn to have a go.

At Drake's Command is set in the late sixteenth century and is subtitled 'The adventures of Peregrine James during the second circumnavigation of the world'. It's just published by the Temurlone Press, where you can read the first chapter, and it's available in trade paperback format through the usual channels. Early reviews are good.

The naval-fiction genre is a small one, but there is, surprise, a web site devoted to it.

China Mieville: London's Overthrow

London's Overthrow is a small paperback -- about 7" by 4.5" -- and it runs to about 96 pages, including the prelims and a few photos at the end.

The book is printed on paper which, as in a newspaper, allows the reproduction of a number of the author's colour photographs; these are done in what I take to be a deliberately impressionistic style. The publisher is the Westbourne Press.

The text began life (in a shorter form) as an article in the New York Times in March 2012.

As for China Mieville, who he? Answer, a very distinguished science-fiction writer: he is a three-times winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and has also won the Hugo, World Fantasy and British Science Fiction awards.

And what are we to make of it all? The title suggests that London has been overthrown. And if so, by whom?

Speaking as someone who lives in the provinces, I can only say that, on the rare occasions when I go there, I am struck by the almost complete lack of Londoners. In a restaurant or a hotel, it is rare to be served by someone whose first language in English. As for Cockneys -- damned if I've seen or heard one for decades. Is that circumstance the same as being overthrown? I don't know. But the character of the place has certainly changed, within my own adult lifetime.

Mieville seems to have wandered around this ancient city, poking his nose into obscure as well as famous places, and giving us, not unreasonably, his impressions of what he sees.

Inequality is one such feature. Rich and poor. Forty per cent of London's children live in poverty, he tells us. But poverty by what measure, and whose definition? Certainly nothing remotely comparable with the nineteenth century. All these poor children wear shoes, and I would bet good money that the majority of them carry a phone.

The picture of London that I get from these pages is of a patchwork of cultures. The Brick Lane mosque, for instance, was formerly a synagogue and before that a church. And Mieville suggests, if I read him aright, that Britain is seeing a mutation of its 'traditional' fascism into a form fixated on these new scapegoats.

I don't think I recognise that 'traditional' fascism, though it's an arguable point, I suppose, based on the UK's history of colonies and Empire. The past was indeed pretty vile in some respects. But would we be better off, for instance, with Sharia law? Would our women welcome being forced into arranged marriages, and being chopped into small pieces if they demurred? I hardly think so.

At the very end, Mieville encounters an old Londoner who is pretty depressed by the scene he now surveys. 'It starts this bitterness,' he says. 'Many become hopeless... Well, let us just wait for things to -- for chaos, really to take place.'

This is, I fear, all too realistic an attitude.

Speaking for myself, I am at a loss to explain how it is that the UK has not already descended into interracial violence on a massive scale. I speak here not so much of London as of the great industrial cities of the north. The streets where my mother and father grew up are now solidly Asian. For block after block.

And what do the displaced working-class Brits make of this? They seem to accept it. 'At least,' said my elderly aunt as I drove her past my grandmother's old house, 'they are maintaining it well.' This, mark you, where groups of Asian youths have recently been convicted of grooming underage white girls for sexual exploitation.

What is the explanation for this lack of violence?

Only a supreme optimist could put the present calm down to tolerance and goodwill. It is more likely, I fear, that the educated middle class have given up hope. Everywhere they look there is incurable corruption or incompetence: politics, science, education. As for the banks and big business... Well, words fail. And that's before we even begin to think about the potential of a Eurozone crash wiping out the world's financial system.

And the young -- the ones who might initiate some sort of change -- they seem to live in a state of fugue, made senseless by street drugs, deafening music and the distractions of technology.

Less than fifty years ago, a government-appointed committee, led by Lord Robbins, considered the purposes of higher education, and listed as one of the four most important 'the transmission of a common culture'. The four aims laid down by Robbins were accepted by the government and were built into the Charters of several of the new universities that were created in the 1960s.

But what was 'a common culture'? Did anyone ever know? What are its characteristics? Fair play, honesty, truthfulness...?

Well, if we ever had a common culture, I suggest that our policies on immigration and taxation, to name only a couple, have successfully destroyed it. I do hope that was an accidental result. In 2012, 1 in 4 of the babies born in the UK are to foreign mothers; and in London the number is 6 out of 10.

As usual in his books, Mr Mieville belabours us with long and obscure words; it is a characteristic of his style: tchotchkes, hecatomb, gnosis, quotidian, nonnatives... I have a pretty fair idea of what they mean, or can guess from the context, but these are not words in most people's everyday vocabulary, and I'm not sure that communication is improved by their use here.

The price of this book is £5.99 on Amazon and £7.99 as listed by the publisher. If you seek food for thought, it is here aplenty. But don't blame me if you end up feeling a bit queasy.