Tall Stories - Fine Books For Discerning People. 2nd Newsletter

Now that our discontent is starting to wane, after the longest night and shortest day have come and gone, signifying our gradual emergence from the doom and gloom of winter into warmth and light, we present our second ever newsletter to you, the fortunate few.

Though the fingers are still thawing on the keyboard we look forward to happy hours of reading under the duvet. Did you know that there are strange English-type fellows and birds who call this object a counterpane? I know, astonishingly strange these Anglo johnnies are with their odd language.

We were almost overcome with excitement this last month when we obtained a couple of copies of Tim Winton's latest novel, Breath. For those of you who have not made the acquaintance of this marvellous antipodean author – shame on you. Straight to bed and no dinner for you tonight. The man is a genius and you must rush out forthwith and obtain copies of everything he has written and devour it soonest. You will not be sorry. Well, you may be – after all there's no accounting for taste.

I find that I am rationing myself in the reading of his books. It happens with authors I really like. I fear that there is a finite number of books that they will write and therefore I try to prolong the pleasure in my reading by always having a title in reserve. Not very lucid or clever, I know, as there are so many authors out there that are worthwhile that the list will not end but will expand ever outwards like the universe (according to some scientists).

Tim Winton's writing reminds one of the style of J.M. Coetzee, whose stripped down, spare and lean prose strikes with the concentration of singularity. His writing is earthy and so vitally alive that it feels like your own heartbeat.

Enjoy.

This month we are featuring 2 unused books and one collectable book.

On the Edge - My Story by Richard Hammond.

From the first ridiculous stunts on his tricycle to his increasing and near obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of gas, this is the high-octane life of TV personality Richard Hammond. A lively and intelligent communicator, TV soon beckoned for Hammond. He became one of the daredevil trio--along with Jeremy Clarkson and James May--who have made an enormous, world-wide success of the revamped BBC TV program Top Gear, Hammond describes the personalities, the camaraderie, and the stunts with which the trio entertains their weekly audiences, including the day of his 300 MPH crash that took his show off the air, put him into a coma, and plunged a nation into mourning. The stages of recovery as his shattered mind reformed are covered, as are the milestones in his slow recovery to full health and his return to Top Gear.

309 pages, October 2007 Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published Price : R245.00

Tall Stories Price : R99.00

Beneath The Bleeding by Val McDermid
Tony Hill, criminal profiler and hero of the television series Wire in the Blood, is back in a terrifying psychological thriller from bestselling author Val McDermid. Troubled criminal profiler Dr Tony Hill may have problems of his own but when Bradfield CID need him, he's the best they've got. While the police sometimes view him with the same suspicion as some of their suspects, DCI Carol Jordan is one of the few who appreciates his unique talents. For Tony, the feeling is more than mutual. Both have survived horrifying ordeals of their own. In Beneath the Bleeding they must risk them again. As the two return to duty, it's Val McDermid at her terrifying best.

404 pages, September 2007 Published by HarperCollins Publishers

Published Price : R195.00
Tall Stories Price : R85.00

Our COLLECTABLE book for this month is a rare edition of ...... Tom Stoppards's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

First Edition.Faber & Faber : London (1967) Very Good +/ Very Good. Blue Cloth. Octavo. 96 pp. Gilt titles on the spine. Slight spinal lean. Edges of the boards slightly dusty. Ink name of a previous owner on the front free end paper. Very, very light tanning to the end-papers. Spine of the dust-jacket browned. Very minor line of tanning to the interior top edge of the dust-jacket (2mm). Very light wear to the top and bottom edge of the spine of the dust jacket (1 mm chip, couple of millimetre closed tears). Slight soiling on the rear panel of the dust-jacket (more shelf-wear than soiling).

Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL (born 3 July 1937) is a British playwright. He has written plays such as "The Coast of Utopia", "Arcadia", "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead", and "Rock 'n' Roll". He co-wrote the screenplays for "Brazil", "Shakespeare in Love", "Empire of the Sun" and "The Russia House" and is rumoured to have assisted George Lucas with some of the dialogue for "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". It is also rumoured that Stoppard worked on "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith", though he never received any official or formal credit in this role. He worked in a similar capacity with Tim Burton on his film "Sleepy Hollow". He was born Tomás Straussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. He fled to Singapore with other Jews on 15 March 1939, the day that the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1941, the family was evacuated to Darjeeling, India, to escape the Japanese invasion of Singapore. His father, Eugen Straussler, remained behind as a British army volunteer, and died in a Japanese prison camp after capture. Stoppard completed his first play ("A Walk on the Water", later retitled "Enter a Free Man") in 1960. This first play was optioned and staged in Hamburg. Stoppard conitnued to work in London for "Scene" magazine often writing under the pseudonym of William Boot which he took from Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop". On the 11th of April, 1967, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" opened to acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival and Stoppard became an international success. Indeed he has become an adjective : "Stoppardian" has become a term used to refer to works in which an author makes use of witty statements to create comedy while addressing philosophical concepts. The linguistic complexity of his works, with their puns, jokes, innuendo, and other wordplay, is a chief characteristic of his work. In 2008, Stoppard was voted number 76 on the Time magazine's list of the most influential people in the world. "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" is one of Stoppard's most famous works. It is a comedic play which casts two minor characters from Hamlet as its leads, but with the same lack of power to affect their world or exterior circumstances as they have in Shakespeare's original. Hamlet's role is similarly reversed in terms of his stage time and lines, but it is in his wake that the heroes drift helplessly toward their inevitable demise. Rather than shaping events, they pass the time playing witty word games and pondering their predicament. It is similar to Samuel Beckett's absurdist "Waiting for Godot", particularly in the main characters' lack of purpose and incomprehension of their situation. In 1990, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", was made into a film staring Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz and Tim Roth as Guildenstern. The film was directed by Stoppard and won the Golden Lion Award. - Sourced (text & images) from Wikpedia.
Price: R11 400.00

Tall Stories can be found on the world wide web, thusly :

E-mail : tallstories@megaweb.co.za

website:http://www.tallstoriesbookshop.com/

Facebook: Log in to Facebook, use the search facilities, type in "Tall Stories - Fine Books for Discerning People". You should land up with 2 search results, one for a group page and another for the retail page. We recommend that you join the retail page
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TallStoriesBook
We are also a member of that illustrious and august body otherwise known as The Southern African Book Dealers Association and you can search our books on that site as well.


UNSUBSCRIBE from this newsletter.

In real space, we are here :

Shop 12, Irene Village Mall, Cnr. Nellmapius & Pierre Van Reyneveld Roads
Irene
Centurion
Gauteng
Republic of South Africa

Telephone :27 + (0) 12 662 2829

Hours:

Monday - Thursday : 09 : 00 - 19 :00
Friday : 09 : 00 - 20 : 00
Saturday : 08 : 00 - 18 : 00
Sunday : 09 : 00 - 17 : 00

The thrill of the thriller

There used to be a vacuum in South African fiction, right there on the border between crime fiction and thrillers with contemporary interest. One that needed to be filled with fast-paced, high tension, relevant stories with recognisable, interesting characters set in the roiling society of post-apartheid SA. That gap has been filled by Deon Meyer. At the outset you will discover that he possesses that vital skill authors in these genres need (and often lack) – he makes you want to turn the page. More than that, he makes you race to the end of the page so that you can turn to the next. The phrase ‘edge of the seat tension’ may be hackneyed and in intensive care from over-use, but it was made for him. Not only as regards the plot, (though that is essential), but also regarding the characters and their development. On first reading one of his books I found myself unable to put it down. I cannot remember the last time I read a book in a single sitting, but he forced me to with his skill. He manages to capture the atmosphere of the country and its people with style and wit. In fact, if I have any criticism of his writing style, it is that he does not write enough dialogue as he creates some of the sharpest and wittiest conversations between his characters. Without fail, his characters are interesting and as complex as the plot allows. They are so recognisably human, so defective, scarred, incomplete and prone to making mistakes that they never fail to resonate with the reader, suffering much of the same conditions, circumstances, hopes and failings. His novels are well plotted, structured with care and shows the result of many hours of study. Technical details are handled with a convincing thoroughness and ease that belie painstaking research. Where there are faults (and there are, though few) the cracking pace of the plot makes for an easy exercise in the suspension of disbelief. Some things are hinted at rather than resolved which makes, for me, for quite satisfying reading. Everything need not be spelled out and delivered complete with a nicely tied, frilly bow, life is not like that and fiction should not be either. Some things are left to the imagination, something few other authors care to do. His writing is earthy, expletives leavening the dough of many a page, and more so in dialogue. It is refreshing, and falls naturally on the ear, never once feeling gratuitous or superfluous. Above all he engages an economy of language that enhances rather than detracts from his descriptive passages. The country and the people come alive in his words, making it sheer delight to read. An added advantage for me was to read his novels in the original Afrikaans, a language he wields with formidable grace and power. Dialects and phrases blend beautifully in dialogue and description, carrying you along on a shimmering stream, masking the strong pull of plot-current twisting under the surface.
So far he has written six novels that have been translated into seventeen languages. He has won the prestigious German Krimi Award, two of his books have been filmed as mini-series and the film rights to another have been bought by a U.S. production company.
His official website can be found at:

www.deonmeyer.com

The Weirdness

I have just finished reading Christopher Brookmyre's Be My Enemy and it was hugely enjoyable. He is one of the foremost satirical authors in the UK and writes a kind of crime fiction. I say a kind of because he is very hard to classify and label, much in the same way that Iain Banks is. He is often likened to Carl Hiaasen but to my mind is much funnier and subtler. While he normally starts out in a manner that lulls you into thinking that you are confronted with a run-of-the-mill, slightly formulaic English murder story, his plots then twist and turn in commendably devious ways, and he always has a deliciously nasty little surprise in store for the reader. It's one of those moments where you burst out laughing, then clap your hand over your mouth and look guiltily over your shoulder, appalled at what you had just found funny. He has a wonderful sense for titles as well, as my favourite testifies: A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away. Which set me thinking about other, off-beat, titles I really like. Somewhere near the top of the list features Kyril Bonfiglioli's Something Nasty In The Woodshed, closely followed by Tibor Fischer's Don't Read This If You're Stupid, (although I much preferred the content of The Thought Gang). Irvine Welsh is not to be left out with If You Liked School, You'll Love Work... . Haruki Murakami, (with one is tempted to say Oriental inscrutability) produces almost exclusively weird titles, but The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains a high-point scorer on the bewildering-the-reader scale.