Sunday, February 26, 2012

Book Shopping at Foyle's

Last week I went to London for a few business meetings, to catch up with friends and do some book shopping. My favorite bookstore in London is called Foyle's and I stayed in a hotel just down the street to maximize my time there. Foyle's YA area was a real education about the scene and I thought some of you would like to hear about it.

Recently Foyle's has been fronting Noir books from all genres. They picked a good time to do it with YA because of the range of solid books that have darker themes have been published lately.

I noticed that Foyle's is also offering more fairy tale YA books than are typically available in US stores. I think the UK market may be a little ahead of this curve.

If you like cover art, book tickets to London today. The covers generally have more colors and detailed drawings. The UK version of The Future of Us was my favorite. And, the art looks great on the paperbacks. The glossy finishes pick up the light and make you think you can stuff your bag with them. I did.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

One of those moments

Do you ever pine after a very expensive, hard-to-find, out of print book and wonder if you’ll ever be able to have you own a copy? And then one day, you wake up and learn that some kind publishing house is republishing that book and you can in fact order your own copy? Well, that just happened to me. I have officially placed my order for The Girls of the Hamlet Club.

You’re probably wondering what I’m talking about. The Girls of the Hamlet Club is a book by Elsie J. Oxenham, an English author who was very popular in the early to mid-1900s. The Girls of the Hamlet Club is about eighty years old but its story is timeless: a group of intelligent, creative and compassionate girls successfully thwarts the clique of mean girls at their school. It’s the first book in a very long series about a group of girls who live around a half-ruined Abbey.

I’ve wanted a copy of The Girls of the Hamlet Club for literally ten years. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to read a typescript of the book (before you start frowning about copyright law, please know that Elsie Oxenham authorized several people to make copies of her harder to get books) and I absolutely loved it. There’s been a space for it on my shelf since then, if I one day won the lottery or someone as able to get the rights to reprint it.

But now, my very own copy is going to arrive in the mail in about two months. And I’m going to be a very happy camper.