A morning in the woods: diary of an editor

It’s been years since I set my alarm for 4.30 am – I’ll do anything to avoid easyJet or any other such ungodly calls upon my time – but on Monday I was going off into the forest to see the deer, and being up before the sun was part of the deal.  So I set off in what I can only call the very, very dark and joined my guide for the day, Colin Elford, and his two dogs.

I first met Colin, a forest ranger, when he’d come on one of his very rare trips to London.  We’re publishing his diary of a year in the woods – aptly named A YEAR IN THE WOODS: DIARY OF A FOREST RANGER – so we had thought he might like to come and meet us in our natural habitat – which clearly wasn’t his.  He wore his special-occasion suit and looked distinctly as if he wasn’t from these parts.  And now here he was, looking much more himself, with his rifle slung over the shoulder (in case he came across an injured deer) and his dogs around his ankles. Meanwhile I clearly looked as out of place as he’d done in his suit, because there was a swift assessment of the situation and suddenly there I was – and here I am in the accompanying picture – dressed in one of Colin’s camouflage coats and a balaclava knitted by his mother.

And so we were kitted out and ready.  Leaving the vehicle and dogs behind we headed into the very depths of the forest, up a ladder and into a high seat.  We watched and we listened, and occasionally we’d see something and occasionally we’d hear something – and the whole thing was quite wonderful, with various creatures swooping, scurrying or trotting past. There were tawny owls, a woodcock, crossbills, pheasants, a wren, and of course the deer.  And added to all this was the half-pig, half-lion soundtrack of a rutting fallow buck (for those who aren’t familiar with the word ‘rutting’, it means, according to my dictionary ‘in a state of readiness to copulate’).  We didn’t see the rutter in question from the high seat, but we did see what looked like one of the objects of his affections.  She looked a little traumatised by the experience – as Colin put it, the males don’t bother with wining and dining – and she was almost licking her wounds as she came past.

The sun was almost up by now (but I was living the real thing, remember, and not this speeded-up version of events, so two whole hours had passed), and it was time to descend from the high seat and adjust to life on the ground.  We threaded through trees, heard more deer noises, examined deer prints in the mud, smelt where they’d left their mark, and spotted more deer ears above the undergrowth.  By this time I was feeling quite at home, with the usual accessories of my life left far behind – so much so, in fact, that when Colin said my name it sounded strange to me – and it wasn’t until the mention of food that I was very much back in my body and to earth as I usually know it.

So off with the camouflage coat and balaclava, and back for a hearty breakfast.  And now I’m back at my desk with nothing but some strange photographs to prove I was really there.

Juliette Mitchell,
Editor, Hamish Hamilton

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In praise of independent bookshops

Don’t tell anyone I work with but I don’t actually buy that many books. I used to, when I worked in Waterstone’s, as I a) was constantly surrounded by lots I wanted, b) had a staff discount, and, most crucially of all, c) couldn’t get them for free like I can often do now. 

When I do buy books, though, I like to try and do it from an independent. Yes, it’s more expensive as you usually pay full price but I find the experience quite edifying, mainly for the fact that it feels like everyone else in the transaction is getting maximum benefit: writer, publisher and, of course and perhaps most importantly, the bookseller. But to a few people I’ve told this to, including many friends, it seems a confusing choice: apart from 

feeling like a good egg/self-important, what do I get out of it? Call me starry-eyed but nothing less than a lovely, life-affirming experience, an experience typified by two brilliant independent bookshops in Bath: Topping & Co and Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. I visited them both with Nick Hornby recently, who read at Topping, and they both manage to be utterly charming yet completely different. Topping does fantastic events and the shop is full-to-bursting with signed first editions; they think of themselves as being a ‘year-round literary festival’ and Nick’s event, in the shop itself, was gloriously old-fashioned: people peering out from behind bookshelves, crammed into corners and surrounded by books of all kinds. Between listening to Nick read I found myself browsing the shelves and making mental notes of books I wanted.

Mr B’s takes the idea of browsing and shopping in comfort to a whole new level for bookshops. They have a ‘reading booth’, within which are a comfy armchair, some biscuits and a ledge to hold your cup of tea. You shut the door and just sit there and read. Imagine! A man apparently shut his dog in there recently and couldn’t get it out, so I guess it’s not quite fool-proof. But they have also started what I think is a brilliant initiative. It’s called a Reading Spa: for £55 a person gets an hour of undivided attention from one of their extremely nice and knowledgeable booksellers. You sit and have tea and cake and talk about what you like, what you don’t like; they talk about what’s come out recently, what’s selling well. Based on this, they then go away and come back with a pile of books. £40 of that £55 goes towards these books, plus of course any extra you want to spend. So far they’re doing at least one a week and one chap spent an extra £400 a couple of weeks ago.

Great independents don’t exist everywhere, of course, and you can’t always get to one, but if you do happen to have one near you, I urge you to go in and have a browse. It’s the best atmosphere for book-buying, in my opinion.

Do you have a favourite independent bookshop? Why don’t you write them a little puff-piece in the comments below and provide a link to their website? They’ll thank you for it, and you’ll sleep well because of it.

Joe The Publicist

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Penguin Press Design blog Autumn ’09

With the latest stress of dates and deadlines passed there is just time to bring the second round up of new Penguin Press covers, this time looking at the pick of covers being published this Autumn 2009. So all these books are just out in the shops or will be imminently.

There's been a few covers to get excited about this month, starting with Great Ideas Vol. IV.  Again, David Pearson and his merry team, Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon and Alistair Hall, have run riot over these covers producing another diverse, irresistible and often beautiful set of designs, many are saying the best yet. I've picked out five of my faves here, below, but you can see them all here.

    

And some very pleasant papery close ups:

 
We're also publishing four new books in a series called Great Stars, written by the eminent film guru David Thomson, each focusing on the lives of movie idols from the golden age of Hollywood. These cool graphic covers based on movie theatre marquees were designed in-house by Stefanie Posavec.

   

Stefanie has also been extremely busy these last few months working with Scott Schuman, also known as The Sartorialist, putting together a chic little Penguin book of the same name, featuring some of the photographic and stylistic highlights of his fashion blog so far. Last month saw Scott sign over 600 copies at the book's lively launch at Liberty.

 

There is also a very sharp collectors edition of The Sartorialist:

 

The pick of other Penguin Press paperback covers for Autumn ‘09 are:

The Penguin History of Modern Russia (design in-house by Richard Green)

 

The Candy Machine (design in-house by Richard Green)

And from our latest Allen Lane hardbacks:

1939: Countdown to War (design in-house by Coralie Bickford-Smith)

Justice (design in-house by Stefanie Posavec)

A couple of the coolest looking books new to the Modern Classics collection:

  

A lovely cover for Vitruvius, at last in Penguin Classics, and The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse:

   

Thanks to Samantha Johnson and Isabelle de Cat for the Classics picture selections.

A delicious round of illustrations by Richard Green on the cute little hardback, The Old Dog and Duck, published on our Particular Books imprint:

And, penultimately, we have the paperback cover for Deyan Sudjic's The Language of Things, designed by yours truly.

Deyan is someone living his very life in the golden section, surrounded daily by the beautifully crafted and elegantly formed (and that’s just the staff at the Design Museum, boom boom) so when it comes to designing his covers the stops have to be pulled way out.

And now, really lastly, we have put together this box of 100 postcards, called Postcards from Penguin, featuring Penguin covers from the past.

In the selection are some of the very first Penguin covers with their broad colour bands and charming typography. There are also many postcards that feature illustrated book covers and these were simply chosen for their irresistible charisma, like the lovely 60s paintings by Alan Aldridge on The Company She Keeps and There Must Be a Pony; the seismic David Pelham illustration for A Clockwork Orange; the perceptively light touch of Derek Birdsall on the covers for Chosen Words or Kiss Kiss; or the utterly 'Penguin' crime covers with illustrations by Romek Marber on books such as The Case of the Dangerous Dowager or The Case of the Howling Dog. And with a few surprises too.

That rounds up the pick of Penguin Press covers Autumn 2009.

Jim Stoddart
Art Director, Penguin Press

Hitchcon’09

It's nearly the end of September, and there's something seriously stirring in the Galaxy. The countdown (10 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes) is, well, still counting down, towards the much anticipated publication of 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Part Six of Three…And Another Thing' by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer, published to mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of the Douglas Adams' first book. 

And to celebrate publication of quite possibly the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor (probably), a red hot team of Penguins from the unfashionable end of the Penguin corridor, are currently putting the final touches to Hitchcon '09, a day of events celebrating all things Hitch at the Royal Festival Hall on the 11th October.

Special guests will include Clive Anderson, Andrew Sachs, Simon Jones, Harry Shearer, Dirk Maggs, Hotblack Desiato (depending on his ongoing tax situation) and the original Hitchhiker cast. Not a Vogon poet in sight. And at 11.30am on the Southbank we're assembling the largest group of dressing-gown-wearing Hitchhiker's fans ever in the whole world for a photocall, and possibly for some mattress racing afterwards …

Sadly there hasn't been enough contact with silver foil, glue, glitter and buckets of jewelled crabs to prepare for Hitchcon for my liking, but I'm still hopeful that one of these days my to do list will read (in big friendly letters) 'To Do Today Please and Quickly: Cover the Festival Hall and the length of the South Bank with tea and Chesterfield sofas'. No tea and sofas so far, but we have been handstitching dozens of dressing gowns, plenty of branded towels, and the odd pair of slippers (some of that may or may not be true) and I can now claim a nearly unrivalled office competence with a needle and thread.

It feels like everyone's gone completely bonkers over this book and for Hitchhiker's. And from all parts of the galaxy to boot, not just the literary bits. Fritz Hansen, super famous Danish furniture designer, most famous for his iconic Egg chair has created 42 individually numbered chairs, featuring a unique embroidered exploding earth on the back, and Eoin will be carrying one as hand luggage across the country for the book signing tour.

Multi-platinum selling Irish band The Blizzards have recorded 'And Another Thing', a single inspired by the book, which will be released in October. And the band will be very thrillingly appearing at Hitchcon alongside Eoin on stage. Penguin also put out a call to find the Greatest Hitchhiker Fans in the Galaxy in 42 seconds, and, after many brilliant competition entries – this one has to take the biscuit, surely? He jumps into an actual freezing Swedish lake in September! That's one hoopy frood.

Eoin will be touring all over the country transported in a Bistromath spaceship and carrying the aforementioned Egg chair across his back, signing copies of 'And Another Thing…' talking about the book, and possibly sharing God's Final Message to His Creation. We couldn't fit in a visit to the Maximegalon University, but he will be appearing at Cambridge University on the 14th October instead, alongside visits to Glasgow, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Manchester and Forbidden Planet in London.

And after all of this excitement our little team of red hot Penguins from the unfashionable end of the Penguin corridor, will probably enter something resembling that much discussed long dark tea time of the soul …

Publicist Katya

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