What are you reading now?

[muzzer]

What’s Become of Waring by Anthony Powell, which has led me to a piece by Christopher Hitchens. I hadn’t realised there was a connection to Orwell. AP chose the hymns for Orwell’s funeral.

[Bryn]

Tanya Harrod's The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture. I only picked it up from the sorting office this afternoon. Quite a tome, the acknowledgements alone occupy 5 pages of this 19.7 x 3.8 x 26 cm hardback. What a fascinating man he was. I only stayed at Wenford Bridge for a few days back in July 1970 but was greatly impressed by both him and his work.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Tanya Harrod's The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture. I only picked it up from the sorting office this afternoon. Quite a tome, the acknowledgements alone occupy 5 pages of this 19.7 x 3.8 x 26 cm hardback. What a fascinating man he was. I only stayed at Wenford Bridge for a few days back in July 1970 but was greatly impressed by both him and his work.

I saw that on sale at the Leeds Art Gallery shop a year or two ago - looked very impressive, but a bit beyond my budget.

[Bryn]

I saw that on sale at the Leeds Art Gallery shop a year or two ago - looked very impressive, but a bit beyond my budget.

My "Used: Very Good" (effectively new) copy cost £20.80 including p&p. I did not think that excesive for such a book.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My "Used: Very Good" (effectively new) copy cost £20.80 including p&p. I did not think that excesive for such a book.

No, that's very reasonably priced - the shop copy was £30-ish: in itself not a horrendous price, but still more than I could afford.

[teamsaint]

My "Used: Very Good" (effectively new) copy cost £20.80 including p&p. I did not think that excesive for such a book.

if we are pricing up "specialist" books, ie those that have almost no chance of breaking out of their niche, we take into account that ( usually) a very significant percentage of sales will be discounted by the online retailers, which doesn't cost us anything, and gets the book to the consumer at a competitive price, or to put it another way, the retailers take the hit. Very broadly, anything " Mass Market" has to be £25 or less RRP in HB. Below that level pricing becomes much more price sensitive as you drop down, and below £10 for stuff like mass market fiction, every £1 in RRP is very significant.
Going back to specialist stuff, we would regard almost anything priced over £25 as specialist, and that we would expect ( assuming the book is actually good) that those interested would buy even at RRP. And our experience is that they will, although in general they are able to buy at a discount online.

An exception to this , for bigger publishers, are some mass market HBs, such as big cookery titles, which are priced to be discounted, yer Jamie Oliver etc. These are printed in the far east in huge volumes, at very low print cost ( which is the basis of pricing) and never really designed to sell at anything like RRP. This is somewhat different to the approach that I mentioned for specialist books, as JO etc will be discounted by Amazon/WHS etc well below the price that indie retailers can buy at.

[Rjw]

Just finished reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, which I enjoyed, although I found it over-reflective in the way contemporary literary fiction can tend to be.

Not sure what to read next: i have a huge paperback edition of Montaigne's essays which I've never read, so I might give that a try.

Just noticed this.

I hope you read some of the essays, I enjoyed them so much I cycled down to the Dordogne so I could visit his tower.

[Guest]

Conrad: The Secret Agent.
Chillingly relevant to today!!

[Rjw]

From the city, from the plough.

By Alexander Baron.

Excellent novel about an infantry battalion training for battle immediately before and after D-day. Mostly told from the viewpoint of the private soldier.

[muzzer]

From the city, from the plough.

By Alexander Baron.

Excellent novel about an infantry battalion training for battle immediately before and after D-day. Mostly told from the viewpoint of the private soldier.

I highly recommend his other novels, especially those set in London in particular The Lowlife,, and if your interest is piqued a recent collection of essays So We Live is also well worth a look.

[richardfinegold]

Conrad: The Secret Agent.
Chillingly relevant to today!!

It is, but the Tsarist Secret Police that initiates the incident is laughably inept compared the sophistication of the KGB or the GRU....

[Rjw]

I highly recommend his other novels, especially those set in London in particular The Lowlife,, and if your interest is piqued a recent collection of essays So We Live is also well worth a look.

I've reserved the next one from the library.

[Maclintick]

It is, but the Tsarist Secret Police that initiates the incident is laughably inept compared the sophistication of the KGB or the GRU....

Quite. A modern-day novelist would surely stretch credibility too far were they to concoct a scenario in which 2 GRU goons -- let's call them Petrov & Boshirov (not their real names) -- who attempt to murder a Russian dissident -- let's call him Sergei Skripal -- in England in 2018, end up killing one Brit and maiming another instead of their intended target. Readers surely wouldn't believe the "sophisticated" GRU capable of such incompetence, would they ?

[gradus]

The Long Weekend by Adrain Tinniswood. It's actually an account of who owned, lived in, interior-designed, furnished and decorated large English Country Houses between the 2 World Wars and how they behaved - often outrageously which makes the book attractive and in some cases encourages research for the salacious detail.

[LMcD]

'Unreliable Sources - How The Twentieth Century Was Reported' by John Simpson.