Tag: novels

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A Short Trip Across the Water

Every March, I make a point of going to the St Andrews poetry festival, or StAnza. While I’m there, I take the opportunity to visit a pal who lives at the back end of town.

A couple of years ago, he lent me a poetry book – Occasional Poems by Callum Rodger – which I thoroughly enjoyed. I recently found it again while clearing out some old papers, and I asked whether he wanted it back, which he did. I happened to have some free time that coming Saturday, so I arranged to pop over.

He was unwell on the day of the visit, but I didn’t plan to stay long anyway, as I had other places to be before and afterwards. I was glad of the visit because I came away with several suggestions for novels to read, to the point where I’m considering reactivating my Audible account.

St Andrews is also home to my nearest branch of Topping & Co, somewhere else I usually make a point of visiting, but time wasn’t on my side. There will always be a next time, though.

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Discussion Questions About Discussion Questions

On Sunday evening, I reached the end of the Richard Osman novel The Man Who Died Twice. I always like to read over the acknowledgements, and then I turned the page to find a section titled ‘Discussion Questions for Readers’.

Most of the questions give away plot points, so I won’t repeat those here, but there are a few only tangentially related to the story, such as ‘Have you ever been lonely in a new town?’ and ‘What is an acceptable name for a pet, and what is unacceptable?’

I’d never before seen this feature in a novel, so I asked around to see whether others had. While some pals were – like me – surprised to see this outside of an educational setting, others reported discussion questions appearing in other books, such as:

  • A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six, both by Taylor Jenkins Reid

These titles were all published in or after 2012, and I’d be interested to find out whether any older novels also have this feature.

One respondent reported debating with herself whether such questions encourage critical thinking or are merely there to spoon-feed reading groups. I’ve considered this question myself, but I have no conclusions so far.

It’s not clear whether the discussion section was the initiative of the author or the publisher, but I expect you’d want to test the waters first. My edition boasts ‘The multi-million-copy bestseller’ on the cover, so I expect Penguin Random House knew by this point that its readers would want to discuss the title.

Although I really enjoyed The Man Who Died Twice, perhaps I haven’t seen a discussion section before because I simply don’t normally lean towards crime fiction, cosy or otherwise. However, I will keep an eye out for this in the future.

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Submit Early for Christmas

If you’ve never had work published before, it’s easy to imagine it’s a quick process. You send in your story, the editor gives it the thumbs-up, and then it appears in the next edition. On the contrary, the process can be tremendously slow, even in this fast-paced age.

For articles, a useful rule of thumb is to think six months in advance of publication. Magazines are full of Christmas features right now, but many of these would have been planned since July or August. Conversely, this is the time to submit pieces about relaxing sun-drenched locations, what to do during the school summer holiday, &c.

And the lengthier the work, the longer that timeline will be. For a novel, the wait could be up to two years, according to one source.

One way to shorten the time is by self-publishing. It’s entirely possible to finish writing a piece one day and then make it available online the next. But when you do this, there is the potential to cut out the steps that make a finished piece look polished. This includes tasks such as editing, proofreading, cover design and – in the case of non-fiction – fact-checking.

I know few people want to think about winter when it’s still the middle of summer, but from a publishing point of view, it’s the perfect time.

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Finishing an Overdue Book

It must be about 12 months since my pal Sofia lent me Mort. This is because I’d never read any Terry Pratchett other than Good Omens, although I’d seen a couple of his novels adaptated for TV.

As such, I’d gained a strong flavour of his style, so I suspected I would enjoy Mort. The problem was that I had enough time to read to the halfway stage, but had made no further progress.

Recently, I decided I would read a few pages at every break time, which helped a little. On Friday, however, I found myself with a two-hour period where I was able to finish it off.

Unfortunately, Sofia has been unwell – but is recovering – so it’s difficult to know when I’ll be able to hand it back. However, I’ll definitely seek out other Pratchett novels in the future.

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Trying and Failing to Read

For the last few years, I’ve followed the Icelandic tradition of reading on Christmas Eve, or Jólabókaflóð if you speak the language. In a nutshell, it’s about exchanging books, then reading them all evening with a cup of hot chocolate. This year didn’t go to plan.

Firstly, I hadn’t been able to exchange with anyone, although I have plenty of unread books on my shelf. I normally choose a poetry book and try to finish it in one night. This year, it was This: Tay Poems by Jim Stewart, published posthumously.1

Secondly, I’d underestimated how rich and descriptive the poetry would be. I was enjoying what I was reading, but I found it difficult to concentrate. I gave up at the halfway mark to head to bed.

Just a few days before this, a pal of mine had arranged a 12-hour reading event the previous Saturday to roughly coincide with Yule. There wasn’t a schedule as such, just time set aside to start or finish our books, but that also didn’t go to plan.

My intention was to sit down and finish Mort by Terry Pratchett, lent to me by a friend. Instead, as the day approached, other events kept encroaching onto the day, including a three-hour Dungeons & Dragons session. As such, I ended up listening to a total of about two-and-a-half hours of my audiobook: Beauty’s Release by Anne Rice.

Indeed, audiobooks are the way I tend to take in fiction these days. I’ve been trying to increase my walking this year, and it fits in with my schedule much better than sitting down to read. Still, I will carve out time to finish Mort as it needs to be returned at some point.

1 Although it was only published in 2018, I’m having difficulty finding a place you can buy the book. The only place that seems to stock it is a Dutch website called Athenaeum. The publisher barely has an Internet prescence, although you could try contacting the editors via the site they do have.