BookBlasts® | Top 5 Reads for Independent Minds | September 2018

This month’s top 5 reads features titles by some of the #indiepubs being showcased in the  #bookblast10x10tour at talks being held in Waterstones’ flagship stores across the regions of England. Starting from Gower Street we have visited Newcastle, Leeds, Nottingham so far . . . and will be in Brighton next week Thursday, and Norwich the Thursday after . . . details & tickets HERE

Listing in alphabetical order  @commapress @carcanetpress @galleybeggars @hoperoadpublish @AnthonyGardnerA

The Book of Birmingham: A City in Short Fiction, edited by Kavita Bhanot, is part of Comma’s popular ‘Reading the City’ series (September 2018) buy here

Contributors: Alan Beard. Jendella Benson,  Balvinder Banga,  Sharon Duggal,  Malachi McIntosh, Bobby Nayyar,  C.D. Rose, Sibyl Ruth, Kit de Waal

 “At one time connected to every other corner of the nation through a latticework of canals which facilitated the transport of raw goods in and finished goods out of the city, and across the world, Birmingham has been shaped by its industrial history – in particular by the working-class roots of so many of its inhabitants who gave their professional lives to these industries. This working-class foundation is inseparable from the city’s literature, reflected in the voices of its best-known contemporary authors: Jonathan Coe, Catherine O’Flynn, Benjamin Zephaniah, Kit de Waal, Joel Lane . . . to name just a few. [. . .] Continue reading BookBlasts® | Top 5 Reads for Independent Minds | September 2018

BookBlast® Archive | Sparring with Hemingway, Robert Ruark | circa. 1954-55

An article about sparring with Hemingway and the stamina required to be a writer fell out of Gael Elton Mayo’s copy of Robert Ruark’s Something of Value while rearranging the overfilled bookshelves in the hallway this morning. Gael wrote about 1950s Spain in the 1950s in her memoir The Mad Mosaic.

The American writer Robert Ruark was a friend of hers: “He wrote not (yet) bestsellers, but sports columns, that were syndicated and appeared in twenty newspapers at once all over America. We went to see him with Dennis, in his villa near Palamos. The atmosphere was very different from our village. Friends of the Ruarks had houses with floodlit lawns, beach houses, booze and boredom. But Ruark was as hospitable as Dennis, having people to stay, offering meals, drinks, leaving all his guests for a few hours then returning, rubbing his hands together, to announce he had just had someone killed off. He was referring to the novel that he was working on, about the Mau Mau, Something of Value. He had many Tahitian primitive paintings and played Hawaiian music. He drank mainly rum with Coca Cola, and much ice and lemon. He had two boxer dogs who went swimming with him, and a wife called Ginny who looked as if it had all got beyond her long ago.”

To box with Hemingway when he was in his prime was a rather unusual experience for a reporter who had been sent to interview him. I went to cover the arrival of the Pan-American Airways Clipper across the Pacific via Manila to find Hemingway buoyant with the success of his Spanish Civil War novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. He had just sold the film rights to Paramount for a record sum. Some months before the balloon went up at Pearl Harbour he had been sent to China to cover the Sino-Japanese war for Marshall Field’s now defunct paper, PM.

Continue reading BookBlast® Archive | Sparring with Hemingway, Robert Ruark | circa. 1954-55

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