Upcoming events at Backstory
(all at 71 Balham High Road)
Wednesday 5th April, 7.30pm
One of Tom’s favourite authors, who writes so well about modern relationships and the body. Talking about her latest, Milk Teeth.
Yaba Badoe: An introduction to YA (young adult)
Tuesday 11th April, 7.30pm
Yaba Badoe is a Ghanaian-British documentary filmmaker and writer who has judged a few YA book prizes. We're going to talk about her experience writing for young adults and judging prizes in that category. Come to learn about all things YA, what it takes to build new worlds and create memorable characters. Under-18s go free (but need to reserve a free ticket)
Wednesday 26th April, 7.30pm
The Costa Book Prize-winning author of Unsettled Ground and Swimming Lessons joins us to chat all about her latest, The Memory of Animals. In the book, a pandemic is sweeping the planet. Neffy joins a vaccine trial, cut off from the outside world. The novel puts isolation and humanity under the microscope.
Wednesday 3rd May, 7.30pm
In his book The Digital Republic, Jamie Susskind asks how freedom and democracy can survive in an online world of data leaks, racist algorithms and hate-filled social media. A manifesto for navigating, and managing, the increasingly digital world.
Wednesday 10th May, 7.30pm
Georgina Sturge uses skills from her day job as a researcher in the House of Commons library to debunk nefarious numbers and explain the uses and abuses of statistics in her new book, Bad Data. Numbers tell stories, if only you know how to read them. Thankfully, Georgina is the perfect guide.
Team pick of the week
Amy recommends: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
This coming-of-age story is told with stark yet vivid prose from the perspective of Darling. We first meet Darling as a 10-year-old playing made-up games with her friends in their shanty town in Zimbabwe. Darling is desperate to move to the US, but she soon discovers that it is not the land of celebrity and luxury that she had imagined. As the political situation in Zimbabwe worsens, Darling struggles with her identity and with what home now means for her: “If it’s your country, you have to love it, live in it and not leave it.”
Our bestsellers this week
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel
Pod by Laline Paull
Send Nudes by Saba Sams
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait
To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher
BUYING BOOKS FOR THE SHOP is a bit like Tinder. It’s fun then it’s repetitive, it’s quick, dirty and ultimately ever so superficial, and you swipe left a lot more than right. It’s hard not to feel slightly guilty when sending in an order for 20 new releases for the next month, implicitly rejecting the other 200 or so in a particular publisher’s catalogue.
Even the biggest bookshop, though, is much more about rejection than selection. With more than 100,000 new books published in English alone every year, it would be impossible to stock them all, let alone read and cherish them.
For every breakout success, there are a bunch of authors (especially debut fiction writers) who for whatever reason just don’t make it big. Sometimes it’s down to the quality of their work, of course, but very often I suspect it’s not. Perhaps it’s timing (during the pandemic, for instance, readers wanted reassuring comfort rather than new voices, even if bookshops had been open to market them). Perhaps it’s a bad jacket (if you’re an author, always, always judge your book by its cover; everyone else will, up to the point they buy the thing, then it’s down to you). Perhaps another book on the same subject comes along, or a huge breaking news story means you miss the big interview slot that was going to launch your career. Etc etc etc.
And let’s be honest, we’ve all read plenty of blockbuster books that were, well, a little bit meh. If you’re anything like me, when you read an underwhelming book you usually think of three or four others that you’d rather got all that hype instead.
So go on, then. Which are yours?
Let’s tilt the scales a degree or two. In a few weeks, we’re going to do a big display at the front of the shop of ‘overlooked books’; ones we think have been unfairly neglected. They won’t have won the big awards or hit the bestseller charts or become “word-of-mouth sensations”. Or perhaps they did, but 30 years ago, and nobody talks about them anymore. They are, however, bloody brilliant.
Each of the Backstory team is going to nominate a handful, but we’d love your help. Think of it as Tinder introducing a function for your best friend or - Heaven forfend - your mother to argue your case after you’ve been left-swiped. ‘God knows why he was cavorting with that inflatable pelican but he’s really the most gorgeous, generous soul who works with rescue puppies, volunteers at a local charity and never has bad breath.’
So please fill in our really quick survey to nominate a book for the display. We’re after anything from undiscovered books to books that were once relatively popular but could do with a bit more love. The books can be fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any setting… they just have to be in print. (But we can check that.)
So please nominate! I can’t wait to see what you suggest. We’ll share the full display - with a mix of team picks and your suggestions - in a few weeks.
Thanks a lot,
Tom
A few that might fit this: A Night to Remember still puts you on the Titanic like no other book, as so many survivors were interviewed.
Sixpence House by Paul Collins is a fun nonfiction about living in Hay-on-Wye.
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman is a quiet story superbly written.
That’s a great idea! I’ve just looked at my list of books I’ve read recently and it’s hard to know if some have actually been widely read or if it’s just the people on my social media! But I’d go with Sistersong by Lucy Holland.
It’s a retelling of an Anglo Saxon myth which seems to have got lost in all the other mythology retellings of recent years!