Tall Stories - Fine Books for Discerning People.Newsletter

I am pleased this year to be able to say that not only do I know of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, but I have even read her. This in sharp contrast to my disgrace of last year, but the less said about that the better. Herta Müller, I can now say with some authority, is a worthy winner.

This being the world, earth, and inhabited by humans, bookmakers took bets on who would win the $1.42m prize. Most punters lost their money, although if any had put money on Müller they would have cleaned up at 50 to 1 odds.

The favourite for this year was Amos Oz, with Algerian novelist Assia Djebar running a close second.

According to Ladbrokes, Oz was odds-on favourite at 4 to 1. Phillip Roth was ranked at 7 to 1, with Haruki Murakami at 9 to 1, who would have been my choice. If he does not win it this year, he should do so soon, along with Tim Winton, who has sadly been overlooked twice for the Booker Award but will still get that if there is any justice in the world. Paul Auster was a rank outsider at 100 to 1 odds.

The Booker Man prize went to Hilary Mantel. This did not surprise the bookies at all as she was the odds-on favourite.

My partner suggested that we contrast the Nobel Awards with the slightly less exalted Ig Nobel Awards, announced in early October. This award states its ambition as being: "first make people laugh, then think". The winner in the category of literature this year was the Irish national police force for issuing 50 tickets to one "Prawo Jazdy", which in Polish means "driver's license." Of further interest was the Ig Nobel award for Mathematics given to Zimbabwean, Gideon Gono and the Zimbabwean Reserve Bank for printing bank notes in denominations from 1 cent, to $100 trillion, ($100,000,000,000,000), thus "...giving people an everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big".

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

The Alexandria Link - by Steve Berry

A hidden treasure. A forgotten truth. Cotton Malone is in trouble. His son has been kidnapped and his bookshop in Copenhagen attacked, all because he is the only man alive who knows the whereabouts of the Alexandria link -- the means of locating the most important cache of ancient knowledge ever assembled: the legendary Library of Alexandria, which vanished without trace fifteen hundred years ago. Now, Malone is forced to join the search for a forgotten truth hidden within that vast literary treasure -- a truth that, if revealed, will have grave consequences, not only for Malone, but for the balance of world power ... 534 pages, December 2007 Published by Hodder & Stoughton

Published Price : R114.00.Tall Stories Price : R50.00

Delizia! The epic history of the Italians and their food by John Dickie

Buon appetito! Everyone loves Italian food. But how did the Italians come to eat so well?

The answer lies amid the vibrant beauty of Italy's historic cities. For a thousand years, they have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. Italian food is "city" food.

From the bustle of medieval Milan's marketplace to the banqueting halls of Renaissance Ferrara; from street stalls in the putrid alleyways of nineteenth-century Naples to the noisy trattorie of postwar Rome: in rich slices of urban life, historian and master storyteller John Dickie shows how taste, creativity, and civic pride blended with princely arrogance, political violence, and dark intrigue to create the world's favorite cuisine. "Delizia!" is much more than a history of Italian food. It is a history of Italy told through the flavors and character of its cities.

A dynamic chronicle that is full of surprises, "Delizia!" draws back the curtain on much that was unknown about Italian food and exposes the long-held canards. It interprets the ancient Arabic map that tells of pasta's true origins, and shows that Marco Polo did not introduce spaghetti to the Italians, as is often thought, but did have a big influence on making pasta a part of the American diet. It seeks out the medieval recipes that reveal Italy's long love affair with exotic spices, and introduces the great Renaissance cookery writer who plotted to murder the Pope even as he detailed the aphrodisiac qualities of his ingredients. It moves from the opulent theater of a Renaissance wedding banquet, with its gargantuan ten-course menu comprising hundreds of separate dishes, to the thin soups and bland polentas that would eventually force millions to emigrate to the New World. It shows how early pizzas were disgusting and why Mussolini championed risotto. Most important, it explains the origins and growth of the world's greatest urban food culture.

With its delectable mix of vivid storytelling, groundbreaking research, and shrewd analysis, "Delizia!" is as appetizing as the dishes it describes. This passionate account of Italy's civilization of the table will satisfy foodies, history buffs, Italophiles, travelers, students -- and anyone who loves a well-told tale.

Published Price : R144.00. Tall Stories Price : R75.00

Our COLLECTABLE book for this month is.....British Fresh-Water Fishes (Two Volumes ) by Rev. W. Houghton.

First Edition xxvi, 202pp. William Mackenzie : London (1879). First Edition. Very Good / No Dust-Jackets. Folio. Illustrated with 41 full page, tissue-guarded colour plates as well as vignette head pieces, brick-red cloth, with gilt piscatorial emblems. All edges gilt. The 41 colour-printed xylograph plates are by Benjamin Fawcett of Driffield after A.F.Lydon, and another 64 woodcuts also by Lydon. Tear in the cloth of volume 1 (30 mm). Cloth on the spine-ends frayed. Loss of cloth on all corners. No inscriptions, all plates present and bright. Hinge giving (page 20), volume 1. Front paste-downs of both volumes - tears in the gutter. Overall a lovely set, with exceptional plates.

Alexander Francis Lydon (1836 - 1917) was an English engraver of natural history. He worked for Benjamin Fawcett the printer, to whom he had been apprenticed from an early age. Benjamin Fawcett (December 1808 - January 1893) was one of the finest of English nineteenth century wood block colour printers. He pioneered a system of engraving from multiple wood blocks that resulted in vivid, finely coloured works such as this marvelous book. This process was called chromoxylography (colour wood engraving). Rev. W. Houghton, served as rector of Preston-on-the-Weald Moors, Shropshire. At the same time, he was a serious naturalist who had previously authored Sea-side Walks of a Naturalist, and was a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London, a scientific society for the study of biology founded in 1788. For this work, Houghton studied the specimens in the collection of the British Museum.

Price : R9000.00

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

Old Pleasures Rediscovered.

The Ghost, by Robert Harris

In interviews given to the press Robert Harris has had to answer many questions about his new book. To all that have read it, it seems closely modeled on Tony and Cherie Blair and their political reign in the UK. Harris has stated that he started out as an enthusiastic supporter of New Labour in the UK, but grew increasingly disillusioned as, like the rest of the world, all stood aghast at the direction the country took and the fashion in which it made itself into the lapdog of the USA. To many it seemed betrayal of earlier promise, and quite inexplicable. In this book Harris has crafted an explanation, and it will intrigue you. It is a wonderfully well-written political thriller, with more than a dash of conspiracy theory, and a marvelous twist, just after you think you’ve unraveled the plot all by yourself and are feeling smug, that will make you reconsider all you know of the history, even if for only a moment.

The book’s protagonist is a ghostwriter, one who immerses himself in the lives of other, well-known people, in order to write their autobiographies. In doing this he blurs the lines between his memories and theirs, and makes order and sense of their lives in such a way that lives that could have seemed dull become interesting and meaningful. As a chameleon of sorts, he slips easily into the skins of his subjects and, in a sense, becomes them for the time it takes to write the book.

His services are called upon to complete the memoirs of the past British Prime Minister, after the original ghostwriter is found drowned in Martha’s Vineyard. In the process he unravels a plot so dastardly that it would have made Machiavelli skip with glee. Though not beyond the call of far-fetched, you find yourself nodding thoughtfully and thinking – ‘could be, could be’. The character of Cherie/Ruth comes in for more than a bit of stick, as does British and American politics and the wars in the Middle East.

Before becoming a full-time writer Robert Harris worked for the BBC and was the political editor of The Observer. He is the author of several works of non-fiction, including A Higher Form of Killing: Secret Story of Gas and Germ Warfare and Selling Hitler: Story of the Hitler Diaries, but it is as a novelist that he really shines. His first novel, Fatherland, an alternative history in which the Germans emerged victorious from the Second World War, was a best seller and successfully filmed, as was his second, Enigma, about the breaking of the Enigma code at Bletchley Park in the Forties. The huge success of these two made it possible for him to be able to devote himself to full-time writing.

He is married to the writer Gill Hornby, who is the sister of best-selling author Nick Hornby.

There’s a lot of fine writing in that family.

Lives Less Ordinary

Adolf Galland


Though war, death and destruction are almost always bad things in the grand scheme of things, some of those involved or caught up in it, by virtue of our prurient interest in these matters, come to our attention. Some of these people lead, or have lead, remarkable lives. Which is not to say that others do not, nor that one would have to have a hand in the slaughter of ones fellows to have such a life. Now, before succumbing utterly to the doctrine of the death of a thousand qualifications, I come to the point.

We bought a copy of The First and the Last, the autobiography of Adolf Galland. A man who lived a remarkable life. He was trained as a fighter pilot in the German Luftwaffe prior to the Second World War. He flew missions with the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War and the Luftwaffe in WW11. In 1941 he was placed in command of Germany's fighter squadrons and in the next year became the youngest general in the German military, aged 29. He remained in the same command until 1945 when, after pointing out that Hermann Goering was an idiot, something that, while patently true, did not endear him to either Adolf Hitler, or the commander of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, and caused him to be dismissed from the High Command. He was sent back to active service and commanded the first ever jet fighter squadron. He survived the war with 105 victories to his credit, if credit be the right word.

In civilian life he built and ran a successful aviation firm. He became fast friends with some of his former adversaries, including the British fighter aces Johnny Johnson and Douglas Bader. He also survived three marriages, and died in 1996, at the ripe old age of 83.

Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith

Quite when the old-style Agatha Christie crime novel died I am not sure, but die it did. To be fair one should actually say that it evolved, or morphed, or progressed, or just changed into something else. The formulaic nature of the old-style very British crime novel, one supposes, could not remain unchanged in a world that has shrunk dramatically, where cultures are closer than ever and the most esoteric information a mere mouse click away. There have been significant changes wrought to the genre by French, Spanish, German and American authors, not to mention the Scandinavians. Why this is, is something to ponder of a dark and stormy night. (How Iceland, for example, can be a hotbed of crime, where they record a murder every five years or so, is something we need not dwell on here.)

For me one of the most interesting things about crime fiction is that it has in some senses evolved into something more than it used to be. Some authors have blurred the lines between crime fiction and literature, like Perez-Reverte and Daniel Pennac, making it so much more than just a detective with a personality flaw, and less than perfect home life, investigating a murder.

I am also partial to exotic settings, I have to admit. I well remember how much I enjoyed reading Martin Cruz Smiths’ Gorky Park, in a time when stories set in the U.S.S.R. were the sole preserve of the spy novel.

In this spirit is Child 44. The story follows the investigation into a series of murders of children in the Soviet Union of the early Fifties, an era of burgeoning interest. It was the last years of Stalin-inspired fear and paranoia, where no one was above suspicion, and the start of the slightly enlightened era of Kruschev. Leo Demidov is a militia officer who becomes obsessed with apprehending the killer, even though every obstacle is placed in his way, chief of these being that in the worker’s paradise that is the Soviet Union, there is officially no crime and therefore nothing to investigate. Indeed, by investigating the murders, he puts himself and his family at risk. He is also victim to internal politics and the ambition of a particularly brutal colleague which causes him to lose his rank and be exiled to a remote Militia outpost in Siberia as a private militiaman. After the death of Stalin, when society opens and becomes slightly less repressive and more open, he continues his surreptitious investigation until he finds the killer.
In many respects it is a common-or-garden crime thriller with not unpredictable twists and resolutions, but the setting makes it better than the usual offering. The writing is good and the atmosphere of suspicion and repression is quite remarkable. Perhaps most impressive is the development of the protagonist, from arrogant Militia officer to haunted, hunted investigator – nicely judged and well executed indeed.

This novel was long-listed for both the Man Booker Prize and the Costa First Novel Award in 2008.