Waterstones Blog

We start on a brand new selection of Book Club titles today, and Skios by Michael Frayn is this week's Book Club book of the week. The Book Club Podcast We think our Book Club selection are books not only worth reading, but worth talking about. Each week, we're bringing together a group of Waterstones Cardholders and our own booksellers to talk about our Book Club book of the week. You can download the discussion as a podcast via iTunes or click the link below to play.This week, discussing Skios are Anja, Victoria, Florentyna, Meg, and Dan.       Novelist and playwright Michael Frayn's latest book is an experiment in writing farce in the medium of a novel. We spoke to him about Skios back in October at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. You can watch the video below, or download the podcast via iTunes by clicking here.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvzsY1voEKU   Click here to download and read a sample of the book. Dan Lewis, for Waterstones.com/blog Buy Skios at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/108lk4R)   To find out more about our Book Club selection, click here.  

Journalist Kevin Maher's debut novel The Fields is our Waterstones eleven choice for March. Writing exclusively for Waterstones blog, Kevin tells how he came to write the novel, and in a video interview with us he discusses how his knowledge of the world of film has fed his fiction... Set in the 1980s in Dublin and London, The Fields tells the vividly evocative story of Jim Finnegan's unfairly interrupted adolescence, which Maher describes in our interview as being "violently autobiographical"...   http://youtu.be/Du6jrfcX1OI   I get sick of watching movies. Yes. That’s how it starts. Really. It’s London 2001, and I’m the film editor of a hipster bible called The Face magazine and I’ve seen a million movies (actually around two and a half thousand – I counted), and I can’t take it anymore. So I up sticks with the wife and only child and head north, far north, to a tiny Scottish fishing village. There I begin what will eventually become The Fields. I spend these days admiring sunrises, jogging on the beach, hanging with the family, and writing. We live sparsely, off incoming London rent (certainly not my writing), and I do about fifty good pages of story before my hipster head takes over and I decide to go all postmodern and critic-y, and write a book about the death of a book, an anti-book about anti-story and the impossibility of narrative. Naturally, it sucks. People read it and tell me that the first fifty pages are great, but the rest is really awful. 18 months pass. I get sick of jogging on the beach and admiring sunrises. So we move, all of us, the family, back to London. I start writing about films again and, in my spare time, I attempt two different novels, again both postmodern and smart-alecky and ain’t I so clever that I’m, like, totally above storytelling. Of course, they also suck. Eventually, 10 years after it began, I return to those original precious fifty pages. At this stage I have three children, to whom I tell bedtimes stories at night. I am older, but not too old. And I am not scared of story. In fact, I know now that there is only story, and nothing else. So I return to those precious fifty pages and I tell the story that wanted to be told. Of a fourteen-year-old boy bounced between the two grand narratives of 1980s Ireland – of IRA violence, and of the menace of clerical abuse – but a boy, all the same, with very simple needs. The need to be loved, to love, and know fully that so much of life around him is transient and absurd when compared to the delicate lyrical beauty of dancing to Soft Cell or Bronski Beat in a suburban box bedroom with a true and loving friend by his side. The book, of course, is my life and not my life. It’s the feeling of my early life transposed to other events. Thankfully. It’s the distillation of the pell-mell senses of an 80s Irish childhood crashed right up against the quietly beguiling trauma of that big biographical move from Dublin to London, and the kind of Oz-like experience that it can be, in every possible sense. In the end, I like to think, with my smart-alecky, postmodern, critic-y head on, that the journey of the book – from Scottish scribblings to now – is a journey towards an embrace of story and a love of the once-upon-a-time-ness of everything. Because all that The Fields really says is that once upon a time there was a boy whose cat died. And the boy loved that cat, but he loved his father more. And he didn’t want his father to die. And so, this is what he did. Kevin Maher, for Waterstones.com/blog Read an extract from The Fields now.   You can buy The Fields at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/Y1QJTw)

Florentyna Martin, Lead Bookseller at our Covent Garden bookshop, spoke to Lauren St John about our Children's Book of the Month The One Dollar Horse...   As Florentyna  explained in her review of The One Dollar Horse: This is a book of two worlds: a decrepit area in London’s East End is juxtaposed with splashes of colour from the high-class arenas of equestrian eventing. Existing somewhere in the middle is the aptly named Hope Lane Riding School, where we first meet our protagonist, Casey Blue, whose dream it is to win one of the “greatest prizes in eventing”: the Badminton Horse Trials. Being in the right place at the right time, she rescues an unruly horse, previously destined for the knacker’s yard. Thus begins their journey into the elite equestrian world. http://youtu.be/VXaYPg0WoT8 You can read Florentyna's full review of The One Dollar Horse here. The sequel, Race the Wind, is published in April.   Florentyna Martin, for Waterstones.com/blog   You can buy The One Dollar Horse from your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/VvNGov)  

John Lanchester's Capital, a black comedy of life on one street in London before and after the financial crash is our Book Club book of the week. The residents of Pepys Road appear to only be united by the coincidence of their addresses, until one day they begin to receive postcards inscribed with the simple statement "We want what you have." As the financial crisis deepens, a distinct air of suspicion and blame descends on the road once defined by a certain oblivious optimism and ambition. We spoke to John Lanchester about how his non-fiction writing on the banking crash fed into his novel, how this social commentary was influenced by Victorian writers, and why Capital is to some extent already an historical novel...   http://youtu.be/nUM2JyiJ9cs   You can read a free sample of Capital now.   Dan Lewis, for Waterstones.com/blog   You can buy Capital at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online from Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/YG6TID) To find out more about our Book Club selection, click here.

We spoke to Andrew Kaufman, author of All My Friends Are Superheroes, The Tiny Wife, and The Waterproof Bible, about his latest novel Born Weird... Celebrated for his gloriously comic and wonderfully touching left-field takes on life, love and friendship in the modern world, he spoke of the importance of structure in story-telling, how Born Weird evolved as he wrote it, and what exactly a "blursing" is...   http://youtu.be/CC_SIK0h4TY   Dan Lewis, for Waterstones.com/blog You can buy Born Weird at your local Waterstones bookshop: http://bit.ly/s6sdlu or online at Waterstones.com: http://bit.ly/1gS4UVk You can even check the book's availability at your local bookshop and Reserve & Collect it within hours: http://bit.ly/10IXmRj    

Mitch Albom, bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie andThe Five People You Meet In Heaven, spoke to us about his new  novel The Time Keeper... You can buy The Time Keeper at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/UrDMqf) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9kKALBrevA

The poet Christopher Reid talked to us about his Two Red Poems which are featured in Red – The Waterstones Anthology, and the up and coming poets who are influencing his writing today. Watch other exclusive interviews withVictoria Hislop and Red's editor Cathy Galvin.We have commissioned eighteen great writers to reflect the mood and changes of 2012. Through the eyes of some of the leading fiction writers, essayists, and poets, it offers an immediate reaction to the highs and lows of the past year.You can buy Red – The Waterstones Anthology from your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online from Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/QNJ4pe)  Find out more about Red here.  The full list of Red contributors:Will Self * Victoria Hislop * Max Hastings * Emma Donoghue * Andrew Motion * Cecelia Ahern * Anthony Horowitz * Hanif Kureishi * Rachel Cusk * Christopher Reid * Lionel Shriver * David Harsent * Suzanne Moore * John Gray * Jackie Kay * David Almond * Alice Oswald * Simon Van Booy  

Richard Ford spoke to us about the upcoming US election, and how America is perhaps "almost ungovernable". Buy Richard Ford's new novel Canada at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/T4XcAw) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELTtedWYnLY&feature=youtu.be

Aifric Campbell, ex-investment banker turned Orange Prize longlisted author, spoke to us about her book On The Floor and why fiction can some times be the best medium for dealing with issues such as the financial collapse. Buy On The Floor at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/Qmd4KX) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QODFNNWaQWQ

We caught up with the broadcaster Evan Davis after his book signing to hear about his book Made In Britain. We also asked him about the suggestion made by Digby Jones in an event the previous day at Cheltenham Literature Festival that the government could stimulate growth in the economy by cutting employer National Insurance contributions - which is, as he saw it, a tax on jobs. Buy Made In Britain at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/Qmd4KX) http://youtu.be/qTmFB_OtU-M

Journalist Jonathan Dimbleby enthuses about his new book Destiny In The Desert. We challenge you to not buy the book after listening to him...   Buy Destiny In The Desert at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/QmcXyU)

Novelist and art historian Ross King spoke to us about his new book, Leonardo And The Last Supper, why Dan Brown still looms large over da Vinci, and a possible return to fiction writing. Buy Leonardo And The Last Supper at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/RodLlW) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DcWXLPmCCc

One Shot Kill is the latest entry in the Henderson's Boys series from children's author Robert Muchamore. He talks about the book as well as the challenges faced making a CHERUB film, and the pleasures of writing characters over a series of novels. Buy One Shot Kill at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/xmHa0X)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj30v5W1f1s

It's been a rollercoaster year for Rachel Joyce with the runaway success of her novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry. She tells us a bit about the book, juggling family and a book tour, and that she's almost finished a new novel... Buy The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/xmHa0X)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpqnUbRN_mE

Andrea Gillies told us about the huge cast of characters and confused memories which make up her novel The White Lie. Buy The White Lie at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/s6sdlu) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/OtYjqX) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moBpFvHy7Vk&feature=youtu.be