Book marks
I am sorry that World Books, the reprint book club jointly owned by W. H. Smith and Doubleday, has ignored my remarks of six months ago. At that time I challenged the wording of the club's recruitment ads in which, it was claimed, new members could acquire for only 25p books "worth up to £17 in the publishers' editions." This was quite true—but it did not say which publishers' editions. Several of the books advertised were already in paperback although, not surprisingly, there was nothing in the advertisement to indicate it.
Nor is there still. In their latest Sunday Times advertisement World Books continue to offer "any four for 25p," now worth "over £20 in the publishers editions." But I am afraid I feel bound to point out that Tolstoy's War and Peace (Publishers' Edition £2.35) is available in a two-volume Penguin edition at £1.50; that there are cheaper paperback editions available of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (Pub Edn, £2.25), Henri Charriere's Banco (£2.50), Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 (£3.00), Antonia Fraser's Cromwell (M.95) and a good many other "bargain offers" besides.
I still think several of the World Books offerings represent value for money — as do those of its sister clubs, the Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, History Guild and Ancient History Book Club — each of which offer brand new books as well as "reprints." But let's keep it clean, gentlemen.
Not that W. H. Smith's World Books are the only transgressors. That other firm better known for its bookshop business — Foyles — is also owner of a book club which has now taken to advertising along similar lines. In a recent Sunday Times (not the colour supplement, mind) Foyles' bargain offer was for five books — "worth up to £19.55 at publishers' prices." These included The Sunday Gardener (Pub Edn, £2.95) which, readers may care to know, happens to be available as a Fontana paperback, price 50p. Other and cheaper paperback editions also exist of Monsarrat's Kappilian of Malta (allegedly £2.50 in the publisher's edition), of Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince (£2.50), Winston Graham's The Black Moon (£2.95) and R. F. Delderfield's Give Us This Day (£2.95).
Title tattle
It is good to see that the sorry state of the nation has not numbed publishers' appetites for 'excruciating book titles. Among this autumn's efforts are No-Weigh to Cook — "for those who hate the paraphernalia of weights and measures"; autobiographies by Robin Day — to be called Day by Day and Harry Secombe, under the title Goon for Lunch. Brian Rix's theatrical memoirs have just come out as My Farce From My Elbow — one of which, an unkind critic once suggested, Mr Rix did not know the other from.
Norman Painting's account of twenty-five years of 'The Archers' is to be called Forever Ambridge, while Sir Robert Lusty's publishing reminiscences have the daring title Bound To Be Read. There is a tantalising item called The Cardinal and the Secretary but I feel bound to point out that it is a sober study of Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. Bookbuyer's own particular favourite is the autobiography of Mrs GoIda Meir, which is called, simply, My Life.
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