Bookbuyer's
Bookend
Since it is rumoured that Associated Newspapers may soon be stepping up their paperback activities, Bookbuyer thought it worth taking a look at the firm's current efforts in that direction. Where better to start than the
Daily Mail Year Book, now in its seventy-fifth year of publication? And where better than the section headed 'Books in 1974'?
A gentleman by the name of Richard Whittington-Egan begins his 500-word piece: "We m the Lit.Crit. business" — Bookend will take his word for that — "call it the Diabolical Dichotomy." (And that too.) "That is, the division gf books into best books and best-selling books." He then picks out books of both sorts as highlights of the 1974 publishing year — at least,
one assumes it is meant to be 1974: five of his books were published in 1973. He notes that "the, trend in favour of non-fiction books continues but unfortunately he could hardly have picked a worse year because non-fiction titles showed the biggest single drop in output since the war, and fiction was actually up.
There is no mention of the big fiction bestseller of the decade — Frederick Forsyth 's
The Dogs of War, but perhaps that is because the
book was published late in the year, 19 September. No mention either of the `discovery of the decade: Richard Adams, whose WatershiP Down became widely known through its 1974 appearance in paperback and whose Sharclik was not far behind Forsyth's novel at Christmas time — but then children's authors do not seem to be within the scope of the piece, although children's books represent the second largest single category outside fiction.
You may care to know that among the notable 1974 books were Paul Tabori's The Ghosts of Borley, Peter Costello's In Search of Lake Monsters and Justice Megarry's A second Miscellany-at-Law.
The Year Book also includes a 'Biographies in Brief' feature which dutifully records authors
who have won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize but which might have been more complete if it had also included. the Nobel prizewinner Samuel Beckett. And the Obituary section Might,
perhaps have mentioned that John Ronald Rene' Tolkien was a writer, as well as being a Merton
Professor. In fact this otherwise very useful Year Book might have profited from the knoW" ledgeable advice of the Daily Mail's on literal)' editor Peter Lewis who appears not to have been .consulted at any stage.
My story. last week about cats and dogs and Gollancz's chairman, John' Bush, was, I have since been fold, a sorry misrepresentation of the facts! Apologies!
Previous page
