Poets & Writers Interview with Nat Sobel

Another great inteview from Poets & Writers conducted by Jofie Ferrari-Adler, this time with agent legend Nat Sobel.

Books - What Books?

I've just come back from visiting The Carbon Copy in Bristol, which was great fun. What is more, I went with the firm resolve to buy nothing. Well, as little as possible. Certainly not 2 DVDS, a CD and 7 books...

Oops.

But, in my defence, Colin did take me to Fopp (an amazing discounted entertainment shop) and Amnesty Books, a bookshop with the sublime combination of cheap and good and charitable. So I didn't spend much. But indisputably more than nothing. The films were An Affair To Remember (with Cary Grant & Deborah Kerr) and Brief Encounter, as someone borrowed my copy then moved to Japan, chortle.

And the books?

The Brontes Went to Woolworths - Rachel Ferguson : I've been keeping an eye out for this one for a few years, actually, and especially since Karen wrote about it, though I can't find her exact post now. Surreal, amusing, domestic = my kinda thing

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby : read the book for Book Group a while ago, saw the film the other day - liked both, and wanted a copy of my own.

Yellow - Janni Visman : this one actually came through the post. I barcoded a copy of it in the Bodleian the other day, was struck by the stark cover, and enticed by the blurb. "Yellow is the colour of gas, of fear, of jealousy". Domesticity and paranoia...

Private Papers - Margaret Forster : at 20p, this is an author I can afford to explore

The Night Watch - Sarah Waters : enjoyed Affinity when I read it some years ago, and £3 for a new hardback.... it would have been rude to say no.

Bobbin Up - Dorothy Hewitt : all this Virago anniversary hullabaloo has made me look more closely at the old bottle green ones. Anybody heard of this one?

The Dark is Bright Enough - Christopher Fry : a playwright I've been meaning to read. At 20p...

Discipline - Mary Brunton : a contemporary of Jane Austen, I read Brunton's novel a couple of years ago, from the library. Loved it, and been keeping an eye out for a cheap copy.

All in all, a successful splurge!

A-Z Favourites

You know how sometimes an idea will pop into your head, and you can't ignore it? I imagine that's how Einstein and Newton and... and those other science guys... felt. On a similar, potentially less significant, scale, I have been pondering - if I had to pick a favourite author for each letter of the alphabet, and the accompanying novel, how would that go?

Expecting me to tri-sect the angle, were you? (I maintain that this is easily performed with a ruler, but The Carbon Copy and Our Vicar, both holders of Maths degrees, assure me that it's trickier than that) Sadly not. But this might be fun. And once you've read mine, I'm sure you won't be able to resist making your own...
And I should have included? Some you're surprised to see? Let me know!

AUSTEN, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
BAKER, Frank - Miss Hargreaves
CROMPTON, Richmal - Frost at Morning
DELAFIELD, E. M. - The Provincial Lady
ELIOT, George - The Mill on the Floss
FADIMAN, Anne - Ex Libris
GIBBONS, Stella - Cold Comfort Farm
HANFF, Helene - 84, Charing Cross Road
I....... haven't read anything by anyone whose name begins with I... not even Ishiguro.
JANSSON, Tove - A Winter Book
KENDAL, Felicity - White Cargo
LINDSAY, David - The Haunted Woman
MILNE, A. A. - It's Too Late Now
NOBLE, Barbara - Doreen
OLIVIER, Edith - The Love Child
PARK, Ruth - The Harp in the South
Q....... there must be some 'Q' authors out there? Q himself, I suppose.
ROWLING, J. K. - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
SMITH, Dodie - I Capture the Castle
THWAITE, Ann - A. A. Milne : His Life
U....... guess what?
VOLTAIRE - Candide
WOOLF, Virginia - Mrs. Dalloway
X....... who'd have thought?
YOUNG, Angela - Speaking of Love
Z....... should have seen that coming...

Dear Dictionary

It's been a while since I did a Booking Through Thursday, usually because Thursday happens without me noticing... cunning, but true. Today was spent cataloguing auction catalogues (my first Full Level Cataloguing, and very attractive things to flick through, filled with paintings I can't afford and odd owl figurines I wouldn't want to) - then I went to a cake party (yum) and finally my Church Small Group had dinner together. The only thing I read today (aside from the auction catalogues) was my driving theory book... oh dear. Will tuck myself up with a good book soon.

Before I do, will turn my attention to this week's question:
I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Dictionaries! When I did my English Language section of my degree, one of my coursework pieces was on dictionaries - specifically the illustrative quotations which accompany definitions. It sounds dull... but was absolutely fascinating, and really fun. Sadly, when my computer decided that its hard drive was a little blasé and wiped itself, my essays disappeared. And that was one of the ones I hadn't printed, except to hand in to The Powers That Be, so I shall never again know as much about dictionaries as I did then.

What I do know, however, is that I have a dictionary to hand whenever I'm reading a book. Well, not to hand - but on the shelf, and it is referred to often. Dictionary.com sometimes offers a hand, but there's nothing quite like skimming through a real live dictionary, and having a sentence make sense.

Oddly, and irritatingly, there are certain words which I read over and over again, and look up over and over again, and which refuse to stick in my mind. Of course, none spring to mind now... but for a long time 'importunate' and 'sedulous' were two of these. They'd crop up time and again in books I read, and every time I was stumped... now, eventually, I know what they mean. But then there are words like 'vicariously', the meaning of which I always *thought* I knew, but turns out I didn't...

Howsabout you? Do you ignore the words you don't understand, or immediately scurry away to a dictionary, or note it down for later? Or are you just better than me, and haven't encountered an unfamiliar word for years?!

London Book Fair

I have a few moments of respite from meetings this morning, and so I thought a post describing the London Book Fair might be fun.


Held at Earl's Court in Kensington, the London Book Fair occurs once a year and lasts three days. Similar book fairs are held around the world throughout the year, with Frankfurt and Bologna also extremely important for rights sales. Frankfurt is far and away the biggest, though London continues to grow. Bologna is for children's books, and as a result is both smaller and a bit calmer.

This is actually my first London Book Fair; in the past I attended Frankfurt but for various reasons it made sense to come to London instead this year. I'm a big fan of London generally - there's something to see on every street, the people are nice, and the food great. My only problem is the price of everything, but the tube is a solid transportation option and there are enough cheap eats to avoid breaking the bank.

To the fair itself. Imagine a huge convention center, split into columns and rows. Most publishers, distributors, or book sellers set up stands, with the bigger and nicer stands belonging to the larger houses. The stands are typically organized by country or language, though this is less a rule than a guide. Each stand will typically have a few of the publisher's books displayed, or in some cases some of their authors' names, and often there are a number of tables set up at each stand for meetings. Here is a link to some statistics from 2007.

One floor up is the International Rights Centre (IRC). This is where you'll find me and most of the agents (about 400 in total). There are numerous rows of tables manned by agents or rights managers from countries throughout the world, though some agents don't take a table at all and walk from table to table throughout the day. There's a bit of a buzz in the IRC, though it's not so loud as to cause a headache, and there are chairs a bit away from the tables to take breaks as needed.


To the meetings, which are the heart and soul of any rights fair. Typically thirty minutes long, they can be between just about anyone, including agents, agents and publishers, publishers and book sellers, publishers and authors, and publishers and distributors. My typical meeting consists of pitching my rights list, which is a collection of the titles I represent.


This is both the most difficult and most fun part of the fair for me; I have a very short space of time to pitch multiple titles to a person that I often just met for the first time. Some meetings are disasters, with your pitch falling on deaf ears. Others are more successful, and connections are made and friendships even formed.

Another important part of the fair is socializing. Whether it's a drink at a bar, dinner afterwards, or a swanky publishing party, these are great times to meet and make connections. People call it a night a bit earlier here because the tube stops running after midnight, but in Frankfurt the partying can go on until the early hours of the morning. Take together all the handshakes, the meetings, the partying, and the traveling, it's almost inevitable that people get sick towards the end of every fair.

OK, back to the madness!

Not Just William

I've been meaning to write about Richmal Crompton for absolutely ages, and have finally been propelled into doing so by the Family Roundabout book group I went to last week. You may well know Richmal Crompton as the author of the 'William' (or 'Just William') stories, written between 1922 and 1969, when she died. I, like many others, devoured these hilarious books as a child (alongside Thomas Henry's brilliant illustrations - mine very much with apologies to him. Though mine looks rather more like a Chinese woman...) What I didn't know until 2002 was that Richmal Crompton had written over 40 novels for adults. Scandalously, Family Roundabout is the only one in print (step forward Persephone Books - and it was actually via Crompton that I found this publishing house).

Richmal Crompton's novels have fans across the internet - notably Elaine, who has joyfully borrowed many of the thirty or so Crompton novels I've managed to find, and who wrote about RC here - but she remains famous primarily for the William books she considered 'potboilers'. These come under the category of "difficult to explain how wonderful they are", so I can only say that they spark booklust in the unlikeliest candidates, and nothing else can quite satiate the thirst for another Crompton novel. Their scarcity may be frustrating, but hunting down the elusive novels is quite a fun pasttime...

Crompton's novels are all quite similar, and there is some overlap. Children grow up together; people in a village exist alongside each other; parents are disobeyed or thwarted; beautiful people take advantage of others; wise, older women dispense advice to all and sundry; unhinged authors write dozens of romance novels whilst being wholly unconnected with reality... not all of these appear in every novel, of course, but they represent the mixture of fun and pathos which characterise Crompton's books. She is perenially the author of William, and cannot avoid that tone forever (one of my favourite quotations concerns an author, in Family Roundabout: 'Of his own novels there was no trace [in his room]. Their absence impressed his modesty on people, and Mr. Palmer spent a lot of time and thought impressing his modesty on people.') - but this humour is balanced with characters who experience understated struggles or genuinely touching revelations. I can't do them justice - the only thing you can do is read one. I can't encourage you to do so enough.

Shall I pick one for you? Ok. Frost at Morning. Let's put it in the 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. If you prefer the easy route, or don't like secondhand books (is this possible?) then go for the one in print, Family Roundabout, but I don't think it's the best. It's in Frost at Morning (1950) that Crompton demonstrates her most subtle understanding of children and their vulnerable position in families; it also has her most amusing of the crazed-authors, in Mrs. Sanders, who dictates several novels at once, and muddles them all. A group of children are gathered as companions for a Vicarage daughter - their personalities shine through the opening section, as they play with modelling clay. Angela, Philip, Monica and Geraldine are all immediately unique personalities, and continue to be so as we witness them separately and together throughout their childhood and into adulthood. Read it, you won't regret it. Lots available at abebooks here, and Amazon here.

Oh, and special mention to Our Vicar's Wife, who took these photos from my RC pile in Somerset.

Sketchy Behaviour

I decided to triple my Bijou Prizette, since there is a little stockpile of previous sketches on my desk, and thus there are three lucky winners of Stuck-in-a-Book doodlings. Glad they're going to a good home - so, without further ado (drumroll, please)...

Book Reviews Made Easy goes to - Linda!


Karen at Cornflower was next - and I thought this one was particularly appropriate, drawn for the day when I met Karen in Magdalen, almost a year ago:



Catherine at Juxtabook was the third winner - I chose this one for her:


Ladies, if I don't already have your address, please email it to me at simondavidthomas@yahoo.co.uk. Congratulations!