Books to Brighten Up Your Summer ; Newest Isn't Necessarily Best When It Comes to Selecting Your Holiday Reading. And Steer Clear Sof Those Stacked and Gaudy Piles at the Front of the Bookshop - the Publishers Paid for Themalamy

Evening Standard - London › July 09, 2007

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Summary

SUMMER is the best time to read books." Gordon Brown, our new Dear Leader, has said so, so it must be true. Of course, it's Christmas that's the peak time for the book trade, because that's when we buy hardbacks to give to other people. At this time of year, it's a different, rather more interesting market. With holidays approaching, we actually buy paperbacks to read for ourselves. And everybody in the book business is desperate to grab a chunk of this turnover. It's been a pretty moderate year for book sales so far. We are, of course, all awaiting the arrival of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on 21 July, likely to sell three million copies in 24 hours and settle once and for all what most people will read on their hols.

In the meantime, the Richard and Judy Summer Read campaign, sponsored by Galaxy Chocolate, starts on Wednesday, the first title being the US bestseller The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, a saga about a father concealing from his wife the fact that for many years they have had a living child with Down's syndrome. Richard and Judy wield far more influence over book buyers than any other agency reviewers, for example, or word of mouth even. Since their choices are made by a panel of researchers ably directed by Richard and Judy's producer Amanda Ross, they are at least not absolute turkeys: the pick of this year's list looks to be Simon Kernick's thriller Relentless and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday. Richard and Judy are certainly more to be trusted than bookshop promotions and instore displays. Beware the bookshops. We all know now that the way they present books has been very expensively paid for by the publishers and so amounts to no more than surreptitious ads. So it's a good idea to have formed definite ideas of your own before you get there. To sort out your holiday reading properly, it's much better to go to a nice second-hand bookshop where none of this twaddle is forced in your face. For the truth is that the new books are not necessarily the best books.

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Books to Brighten Up Your Summer ; Newest Isn't Necessarily Best When It Comes to Selecting Your Holiday Reading. And Steer Clear Sof Those Stacked and Gaudy Piles at the Front of the Bookshop - the Publishers Paid for Themalamy

Publishers don't like this idea even being whispered they diligently pretend that this year's books have more or less abolished last year's books, and that, just like laptop computers or digital cameras, there's been a steady improvement in quality and value, year after year, that makes it worth binning the old and upgrading to the latest product. It's just not so. If you haven't read David Copperfield or Great Expectations lately, since you were at school or university, say, you will find they are infinitely more reward...

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