Kate Atkinson, Case Histories, Started Early, Took My Dog, and Book Design

There's no rhyme nor reason to this week's posts (one could make a similar case for most weeks' posts...); I'm still trying to catch up on the backlog of books that's been building up, so, much like yesterday and the day before, the next few days will essentially consist of a random series of posts on whatever takes my fancy. And today, we have two books, starting with this:

A UK hardback first edition/first impression of Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, published by Doubleday in 2004, with an intriguingly abstract dustjacket illustration by Michelle Thompson. I've only just started reading it, and am enjoying it thus far (character and digression seem to be watchwords), but I've never read any other of Atkinson's books. So why, if I'm not familiar with her oeuvre, did I track down a first edition of this particular novel, I hear you cry? Excellent question. Well, as I say, I'd never read any of Atkinson's work, but I saw her new book, Started Early, Took My Dog, was out (published by Doubleday), and getting good notices. And of course Started Early is the fourth of Atkinson's novels to feature private investigator Jackson Brodie, and I couldn't very well buy the fourth book in a series without at least getting the first book in the series, now could I? I mean, that would be sheer madness.

So I bought Started Early, Took My Dog, ostensibly so Rachel (a.k.a. The Bird) could read it, as she's read a couple of the other Brodie books, and I found an inexpensive first edition of Case Histories so that I could start reading the series too. But I'm not very far into it yet, and I get the feeling Atkinson deserves more than my customary one-line largely-sight-unseen plot summary (Book Glutton, I know you're an Atkinson fan, so feel free to enlighten/elaborate in the comments). So... yeah. Really, this post is even more pointless than usual.

Ah, but of course I do have a point to make (there's a shock) and that's concerning the cover design on Started Early, Took My Dog. Now, as a rule, I'm not overly keen on contemporary cover design, at least not that which graces (disgraces?) novel dustjackets. The form for designers seems to be: find a nice font; alight on a vaguely relevant/failing-that-moody image of a person/house/if-all-else-fails-tree from an image library (which can lead to amusing duplication; The Rap Sheet has lots of examples of the same pics popping up on different covers); bung on a texture; job done. (The jacket for Case Histories is all about that unusual illustration, although I guess it at least displays a mind at work in the picking of that illo.) Truly distinctive or memorable jackets are few and far between, and cases are an afterthought, if that.

I'll hopefully be returning to this subject tomorrow (what was that about there being no rhyme or reason to this week's posts? Yeah, I might've lied there; there's always a plan, no matter how half-arsed), but there's usually an exception to every rule, however rambling that rule may be, and the UK hardback of Started Early, Took My Dog is such an exception:

That's a lovely piece of cover design, one of the best I've seen this year. What I like about it is there's evidently a lot of thought gone into it, not least because there are so many names listed on the jacket back flap it almost reads like the closing credits of a movie, or maybe a particularly elaborate band intro. We've got Tracey Paterson credited for the front cover image; Mauritius/Alamy credited for the back cover image (those pesky image libraries are never far away...); Petra Borner/Dutch Uncle on the patterns; and Claire Ward/TW on overall design (and John Bonham on the drums – good evening Norwich, we are here to rock you).

But let's not get too glib (...), because the end result is definitely worth the many cooks that brewed this particular broth. There's a great balance to the jacket, and a nice link between the jacket and the case, with that purple colour and Petra Borner's patterning present on both. The picture on the front continues to intrigue me; I think it's a painting, but I'm not completely certain, and I'm struggling to find anything on Tracey Paterson beyond this list of artists (if that even is her). In any case, the choice of the photo of the abbey on the back is a nice counterpoint to Tracey's front cover image, which I guess is down to Claire Ward, who I believe is creative director at Transworld, Doubleday's parent publisher.

There's clearly a lot of care and attention gone into the book as an object, something you hold in your hands, something tactile, something you'll want to keep and look after. The detailing extends to a subtle bit of embossing on the author's name on the front of the jacket, and even to the endpapers, where there's a nice stone effect instead of the standard flat colour:

It's a good example of how book design can still be beautiful and interesting, even in this age of InDesign, Photoshop, image libraries and all the rest. And the publisher has even seen fit to extend the design across Atkinson's backlist, repackaging the whole line:

Splendid stuff. Well done that publisher. And, as mentioned, more on cover design tomorrow.

Notes from the Small Press 2: Monitor's Human Reward by Chris Reynolds

Something a little different for this second instalment of Notes from the Small Press – which, if you've just joined us, is, or at least is intended to become, a series of posts about small press comics; first instalment here (and indeed third instalment here). Usually on this blog I babble on about stuff and either show book covers or comic book covers or a few sample pages to illustrate whatever point I'm trying (and often failing) to make. Today, however, I'm reproducing an entire comics story.

The story is called Monitor's Human Reward, written and drawn by Chris Reynolds, and it is quite simply my favourite short comics story, ever. I first read it in the December 1986 issue of Fast Fiction, the small press anthology I wrote about in the previous Notes from the Small Press (I think it also made an appearance in Paul Gravett's brilliant Escape magazine, and it may well have been in Reynolds' own Mauretania series too). Something about it really connected with me; I knew nothing about the title character, Monitor – for some reason he wore a helmet with his initial on the side of it, but other than that he was unremarkable. In fact I still know virtually nothing about Monitor, who has featured in many of Chris' comics over the years, and in a way that only enhances the effectiveness of this story. It's a part of its mysterious allure; in Monitor's Human Reward, what's unsaid is as important, if not more important, than what's plainly stated.

Reynolds was an important part of the 1980s UK Fast Fiction small press scene, publishing his own Mauretania Comics periodical and contributing to many anthologies. His oddly awkward, blocky, somehow cinematic renderings are instantly recognisable, while his stories are a beguiling mixture of the ordinary and the otherworldly – a kind of everyday extraordinariness. There've been a number of collections of the Mauretania material and also Chris' more recent comics, including a 1990 Penguin Mauretania paperback (now available from Chris' website), 2004's The Dial and Other Stories (ditto), and 2005's Adventures from Mauretania (ditto again). There are some brilliant, strange and strangely affecting comics contained in those books, all of which are well worth a look.

I'm still not sure why Monitor's Human Reward left such an impression on me. I think I'm slightly afraid to examine why it means so much to me in case deconstructing it somehow causes it to lose its power, like taking a much-loved mechanical toy apart and then not being able to make it work again. But I recognise the emotions it evokes: an unspecified longing; a sense of not knowing what it is you want until it's right in front of you; how it feels to arrive home. I like the way it's as if the story is being made up as it goes along, and you can see that happening; I don't know if that's how it was created, but it could have been, and that makes it more real, because in real life all our stories are being made up as they go along. It lends it a freshness to go with its innate timelessness. It moves in unexpected directions, with little moments along the way that appear to have come as as much of a surprise to the tale's creator as they do to us. Like the scene where Monitor reads the letter on the doorstep and discovers... well. You'll just have to read the story yourself.

Monitor's Human Reward is presented here exactly as I originally read it, scanned from my copy of Fast Fiction #21 – click on each image to see a larger version. A huge thank you to Chris Reynolds for granting permission to republish it; please go visit his website, take a gander at the Mauretania links and his wonderful paintings (I'd definitely recommend clicking on the 'more paintings' link; some of Chris' landscapes are fantastic), and perhaps buy some stuff. And enjoy the story.

Notes from the Small Press 1: Fast Fiction Presents the Elephant of Surprise

Notes from the Small Press 3: Small Pets

Notes from the Small Press 4: Anais in Paris by Mardou

Notes from the Small Press 5: The Curiously Parochial Comics of John Bagnall

Notes from the Small Press 6: Ed Pinsent's Illegal Batman and Jeffrey Brown's Wolverine: Dying Time

Notes from the Small Press 7: The Comix Reader #1

Notes from the Small Press 8: A Help! Shark Comics Gallery

Notes from the Small Press 9: Some Gristavision Comics by Merv Girst

Notes from the Small Press 10: Some Sav Sadness Comics by Bob Lynch  

From the Lewes Book Fair: American Gods by Neil Gaiman / Saturday by Ian McEwan

Final post about the Lewes Book Fair (first and second parts, if you're a particular glutton for punishment), which took place at its regular venue of Lewes Town Hall on Saturday. If you're curious as to what it looks like, Book and Magazine Collector ran a feature on it this month; the article and some of the photos can be found here.

Existential Ennui seems to have a sizable US audience these days (not to mention Canadian, Australian, French, German, Dutch, South Korean... I could go on; hello, wherever you are), and I'm not sure how au fait our American cousins are with the concept of book fairs (not that there's much of a concept there). So for any passing Yanks, or indeed anyone else who's never been to one, book fairs are essentially one-day (for the most part) marketplaces for bibliophiles, held in town halls, community centres and the like, with a selection of book dealers flogging their wares. They range in size from small, provincial affairs with ten or twenty dealers (I blogged about one of these, the Pevensey Book Fair, a year ago) to big city, weekend-long events like those held in London's Chelsea and Bloomsbury. Book fairs burgeoned in the 1980s, and while bricks and mortar bookshops are on the wane, book fairs are still going strong, with up to forty or fifty taking place in a single month in the UK.

I've only really started going to book fairs in the last couple of years, but I did spend many years prior to that going to comic marts, which are the comics equivalent. The best way to approach both, I find, is with an open mind; by all means take along 'wants lists' of particular books or comics (and Lord knows that's exactly what I did, many, many times, in that increasingly strange and distant era before the advent of internet shopping), but you'll get more out of a book fair (or comic mart) if you simply browse each dealer's stock carefully and have a look at anything that seems interesting. You might not find something you've been actively searching for at a book fair, but you're guaranteed to find something you didn't know you wanted.

Case in point, the Lewes Book Fair on Saturday, which seemed stronger on my area of interest – modern firsts – than usual. There were a fair few James Bond firsts on display, as well as early firsts from Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene, all of which were well out of my price range. I did see a copy of Our Man in Havana that I could've afforded, but the dustjacket was a little tatty, and anyway I've still got The Honorary Consul to read. I also manhandled a first edition of Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – a book I loved years ago, recommended to me by a tutor on my art foundation course at Ravensbourne – which seemed remarkably cheap, before I realised it was a fourth impression and put it back.

But apart from the Ross Thomas and John le Carre firsts I blogged about over the weekend, I also bought two books I wouldn't ordinarily have gone out of my way to purchase. First up:

A UK hardback first edition/first impression of Ian McEwan's Saturday, published by Jonathan Cape in 2005 (with, once again, me reflected in the protective dustjacket sleeve... I really must get a scanner at home). This is one of those books that falls into the category marked 'always wanted to read but never quite got around to getting', so it's perhaps not quite a completely out-of-the-blue buy. But it was in fine condition for a good price, so I figured, why not? It's a very well known novel, set during the February 2003 anti-war marches, which is part of the reason I wanted to read it.

And the other book I got was this:

A UK hardback first edition/printing of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, published by Headline in 2001. This really was an unexpected purchase; I've read and liked lots of Gaiman's comics work (The Books of Magic, parts of The Sandman, his underrated and still unfinished Miracleman run, the Death miniseries, and more besides) and the thoroughly amusing novel he wrote with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, but I've never tried any of his other novels. This copy of American Gods was pristine and only a tenner (bought from the same guy who sold me Saturday and A Perfect Spy), which is a damn sight cheaper than firsts go for on AbeBooks, where, ex-library copies aside, there are very few UK first editions listed, and the couple that are listed are at least thirty quid. I liked the sound of the myths 'n' Americana story, so I bagged it.

And yes, I know more recent UK paperback printings boast the Gaiman-preferred expanded text, which was originally only available in the 2003 Hill House limited edition, but this hardback looks plenty big enough to me. I've got quite enough books to read as it is; a potential additional 12,000 words in American Gods is, like, half a Richard Stark novel, near enough. Gotta get yer priorities straight, innit?

From the Lewes Book Fair: Voodoo, Ltd. by Ross Thomas

As mentioned in the previous post, Espionage Week – which this really will be the final tenuous instalment of (cue ecstatic cheering) as, quite apart from anything else, all this blogging is keeping me from actually reading some of these bleedin' books – has taken an unexpected turn, due to a couple of the books I bagged at the Lewes Book Fair. What I intended to be blogging about this weekend, if indeed I did do any blogging (which, evidently, I did do... have done... whatever), was an author I blogged about on Thursday – Ross Thomas. But as luck would have it, one of the books I bought at the Book Fair was by... and the title of this post might be a clue here...  Ross Thomas. So instead of blogging about a Ross Thomas book, I find myself blogging about... a Ross Thomas book. Just not the one I thought I'd be blogging about.

Y'know, this could turn out to be the most annoying post I've ever written. Which really would be saying something.

Anyway, the Ross Thomas book I got at the Book Fair was this:

That's the UK hardback first edition of Voodoo, Ltd., published by Little, Brown and Company in 1993 – originally published in the States by Mysterious Press in 1992. The dustjacket illustrator isn't credited in the book – there's a signature at the bottom of the artwork that could be "Milliner" – but for reasons I'll go into at some unspecified point in the future I do know the patterns on the back cover were created by one Elaine Cox.

Now, in that Ross Thomas post on Thursday, I alluded to one of the two series that Thomas wrote during his career. And if I'd ended up blogging about the Ross Thomas book I thought I'd be blogging about (yep, getting reeeaaaally annoying now), I'd be discussing that series now. But Voodoo Ltd. isn't in that series. It's in the other series, the one starring private investigators Artie Wu and Quincy Durant. In fact it's the third book in that series, following Chinaman's Chance and Out on the Rim – neither of which I have. But seeing as this rather fine copy of Voodoo Ltd. was only two quid, and therefore irresistible, it looks like I'll now be collecting this series of Ross Thomas books too; even though I haven't even started blogging about the other series – the one I originally intended to blog about, and will still blog about, at some point.

It's official: the most annoying post ever. I'm going now.

From the Lewes Book Fair: A Perfect Spy by John le Carre

Looks like Espionage Week is stretching into the weekend after all, although not in quite the way I expected it to. Because today the Lewes Book Fair took place, and as a result I ended up with a small pile of books, all of which I'm quite pleased with, two of which fit right into Espionage Week. And the first of those... is this:

A UK hardback first edition of John le Carre's A Perfect Spy, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1986, with a dustjacket design by typographer Howard J. Shaw (author photo on the back by Stephen Cornwell). Not exactly an uncommon book, but this copy is in fine, unclipped condition and was also bloody cheap. It's about the disappearance and possible defection of a secret agent, although I suspect there's a lot more to it than that; I texted Roly while I was at the Book Fair and he reckoned I'll enjoy it. It's certainly highly regarded by some, including Philip Roth.

I also saw a copy of The Little Drummer Girl, but that wasn't in as nice nick as A Perfect Spy, and also, judging by the jacket flap blurb, that one really did fall into Roly's eight point estimation of later Le Carre, so I gave it a miss. By then I'd already bought quite enough books anyway – about which, more soon...

One thing you sometimes find with second hand books bought from shops or book fairs is they occasionally come with little inserts. These can be the previous owner's bookmark, or a newspaper clipping – author obituaries are common – or just a random bit of jetsam. This copy of A Perfect Spy came with a holiday postcard hidden inside it, featuring the most orange beach scene I've ever, well, seen:

"Sun in pretty short supply," eh? Well that's what you get for going on holiday to the planet Mars.

Three from Le Carre: Call for the Dead, a Murder of Quality, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

As I might juuuuuuust possibly have mentioned before, I collect books – modern first edition hardbacks for the most part (with the occasional paperback thrown in there, not to mention comics and graphic novels). Despite appearances to the contrary, it's not actually a terribly expensive pursuit, at least not with the authors I collect; the majority of, say, Kingsley Amis, or Gavin Lyall, or even, to a lesser extent, Patricia Highsmith's body of work can be had in UK first edition for around a tenner a book if you know where to look, and there are a multitude of available avenues – eBay, Amazon, AbeBooks, bookshops (both online and bricks and mortar), book fairs, charity shops, and more besides. With a little work (or even using Bookfinder if you're a lazy sod), you can quickly compare prices and editions and get whatever you want. There are pitfalls, as I've outlined previously, but for the most part, the gains outweigh the losses.

But even with the authors I collect, there are still certain books that are, and probably always will be, out of my reach. I can't stretch to a first of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, for example – UK or US (although my UK paperback first does me just fine): we're talking at the very least £500 for a UK first with a dustjacket, and more likely into the thousands. Ditto Amis' Lucky Jim. And now that I've embarked on yet another crazed collecting quest, there's a similar problem with John le Carre's early novels. Because while most of his works from The Looking-Glass War (1965) on can be had for an affordable price (let's not get into the limited edition first impressions of his more recent books, as that way lies madness), first editions of Call for the Dead (1961), A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) will set a body back hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds.

On this matter, however, as on many other book collecting-related matters, I refuse to admit defeat, or see reason, or give in to good sense, or indeed confront the bruising reality of my mundane, soul-crushing, drab, humdrum existence. I will not let such seemingly insurmountable obstacles as a distinct lack of available funds, or for that matter such trifling concerns as continuing to feed and clothe myself (eating's overrated anyway, and as for clothes...) or keeping a roof over my head stand in the way of obtaining the books I want (need?). No indeed. Oh hell no.

So, to round off Espionage Week (possibly; I might still manage some weekend blogging, in which case Espionage Week may continue...), let's have a look at a pair of recently acquired Le Carre books that, while not quite true first editions of those first three novels, are as close as I'm likely to get, and quite uncommon in their own right. First up:

A UK hardback Omnibus of Le Carre's first two novels, published by Gollancz – who published all of the author's initial three books – in 1964. This, I have to say, was an absolute steal. I got it for a knock down price from a dealer on Amazon Marketplace who clearly didn't know what he had on his hands, i.e. the first omnibus edition of Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, and therefore a rather rare and valuable book. The dustjacket's a little knackered, as you can see (Gollancz jackets from around this period are notoriously fragile), but even so, this is the first impression of an edition that went through multiple printings:

so even though the jacket's seen better days, it at least has a jacket, and not price-clipped either. The cheapest first edition/impression I've seen online (apart from this one, which obviously isn't online any more) is about a hundred quid. Bit of a find, in other words. Plus, it's Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, together in one edition, and I haven't read either novel. Result. But possibly not as much of a result as this:

A 1963 UK first edition of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carre's third novel. Now, those of you not suffering under the early onset of dementia (not sure if I include myself in that category) may be wondering at this point what's going on here. Didn't he state, you might be puzzling, just moments ago, in fact earlier in this very blog post, that a copy of this would set a person back many hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds, and is therefore beyond his self-admitted meagre means? And you'd be correct. But appearances can be deceiving. Because although this is indeed a first edition, it's not a first impression:

It's a second impression, although, as the indicia states, a "second impression before publication". In fact The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was so feverishly anticipated before it was published that it went through a grand total of four printings (impressions) before the publication date. Five months after publication it was up to its eleventh printing, and by July 1964 was up to its nineteenth impression. So while with almost any other book I wouldn't really be happy with a second printing, with this book, it'll do me just fine. First impressions go for at least £300, usually a lot more, but second impressions aren't listed for much less – around £200 (needless to say I didn't pay anything near that for this copy), and actually there are far, far fewer copies of the second impression for sale online than there are of the first.

Of course, at root, the whole question of a book being worth more or less because of the existence or otherwise of a few words stating "second impression" or "reprinted twice" or even "book club edition" (shudder) in or around the indicia is inherently silly... but that's just the way the book collecting world works. You either roll with it, or you don't collect first editions. There are, after all, plenty of other types of books to collect. Like paperbacks, for instance. Speaking of which, I've recently bagged some real doozies there – scarce paperback editions of books by a certain Donald E. Westlake. Only a matter of time before he cropped up again, eh? But those are posts for another day...