Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Competition
To celebrate the DVD release of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on Monday 30th January, we've teamed up with Studio Canal and have 5 copies of the book Smiley Versus Karla to give away, a collection of three of John le... More...
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Monday, 23 January, 2012
Ben Masters Interview
"The writers I admire have a certain amount of literary swagger. They write with literary inheritance. But at the same time I'd say they're fiercely individualistic writers, and that's what I'm aspiring to, a voice that's completely my own." Noughties... More...
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Thursday, 12 January, 2012
January 2012 Update
A very happy 2012 to all our readers. As the last discarded conifers head off to be recycled into next season's book tokens, it's time to take stock of what the new year has in store for all things literary,... More...
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Thursday, 12 January, 2012
Jeffrey Eugenides Interview
"Austen novels are comedies, but as the 19th century goes along marriage plots follow the women into the difficulties of marriage, and become darker. Those novels - Middlemarch, The Portrait of a Lady, even Anna Karenina - are the ones... More...
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Tuesday, 6 December, 2011
Bedford Square Books
Bedford Square Books is the new ebook and Print On Demand publishing venture set up by the Ed Victor Literary Agency earlier this autumn. They debuted with six titles, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction - The Secret History of... More...
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Tuesday, 6 December, 2011
Joan Bakewell Interview
She's Leaving Home is the journalist and television presenter Joan Bakewell's second novel. It is story of one teenager's discovery of music, politics and love in the bustling city of Liverpool in the early 1960s. Like Lynn Barber in her... More...
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Tuesday, 6 December, 2011
December Update
The Merry Kindle season is upon us, yet the annual yuletide scramble goes on at revamped Waterstone's stores and in independent bookshops. As another year draws to a close, we reflect on literary highs and lows. Libraries are under mounting... More...
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Tuesday, 6 December, 2011
Interview with Marius Brill
Marius Brill published his first novel, Making Love: A Conspiracy of the Heart, in 2003, and followed it up this summer with How To Forget: A Book of Laughter and Regretting - described by A L Kennedy as a "genuinely... More...
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Monday, 7 November, 2011
November Update
"Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you think of its contents, will probably agree it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the... More...
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Monday, 7 November, 2011
Interview with Anna Funder
In 2004 the Australian writer Anna Funder won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction with Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall. Her original plan was to turn these stories - gathered while an undergraduate studying in Berlin - into... More...
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Wednesday, 5 October, 2011
October Update: Charles Frazier, Andrey Kurkov, Sarah Hall, Alexander Maksik and the Asian Experience.
It's been a lively few weeks in the book world. Amid the battle of the tablets, we witnessed a good old-fashioned author moan. Polly Courtney dumped her publisher for branding her work as chick-lit, leading to continuing speculation on... More...
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Wednesday, 5 October, 2011
Interview with Gavin James Bower
Gavin James Bower's second novel, Made in Britain, was published yesterday by Quartet Books - the small independent publishers based in central London that Bower joyfully describes as a "family". He tells me who sits in which room on which... More...
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Friday, 30 September, 2011
Scottish Talent
Freight Books is the new fiction imprint from Gutter Magazine - the award-winning magazine of new Scottish writing. Like Gutter, Freight Books is dedicated to promoting Scottish literary fiction, and it launched this month with the publication of Christopher Wallace's... More...
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Wednesday, 28 September, 2011
The Night Circus Online
Last week saw the publication of Erin Morgenstern's debut novel, The Night Circus; the snaking narrative of a mysterious travelling circus, open only at night and constructed entirely in black and white. "The circus", the novel begins, "arrives without warning.... More...
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Saturday, 24 September, 2011
The Book Stops Here
Last night was this month's The Book Stops Here - the hugely entertaining literary party organised by Emma Young and Lija Kresowaty at The Alley Cat bar in London's Soho. As advertised, the line up was "dynamite" - with Ali... More...
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Tuesday, 6 September, 2011
Banned books: forbidden fruit?
This month celebrates intellectual freedom and our 'right to read' in the form of Banned Books Week. From 24th September to 1st October, events at libraries across the country will discuss problems of censorship, highlighting books that have been banned... More...
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Monday, 5 September, 2011
September Update: Teju Cole, Amy Waldman, Jonathan Trigell, Jo Baker and the African Short Story
It's been an eventful month between issues, yet the world of arts and letters still managed to squeeze in among the main headlines - often for dubious reasons. During the Great British Shoplift, Waterstone's and other bookstores seemed to be... More...
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Monday, 5 September, 2011
August Update: On board with AL Kennedy, a glamorous week with Moni Mohsin, Marika Cobbold reads and Hari Kunzru writes
August is a languid month as hazy weather turns the fast-paced everyday into something pleasurably slower, with more time than usual to read and feast. If you're not heading off for your own city break, beach holiday or country escape,... More...
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Thursday, 4 August, 2011
"Incandescent and furious" - William Golding centenary
This year William Golding would have been 100 years old. To celebrate, Faber and Faber publishes two special editions of his modern classics complete with centenary-branded book jackets and specially commissioned introductions from two literary giants: Peter Carey presents The... More...
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Wednesday, 3 August, 2011
July Update: The p-book strikes back: Eco and Carriere, Amitav Ghosh, James Miller, Chris Adrian
Ah, the great British summer, if there isn't a hosepipe ban it's pouring with rain. Strikes, cuts and chaos at the airports. The annual two week decampment is traditionally the time to read all those books you haven't quite got... More...
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Wednesday, 6 July, 2011
Who's Reading Who this Summer?
As the holiday season looms, and bookshop tables heave under the weight of summer reading offers, we ask authors to name two books they're planning to settle down with as they recharge their batteries. It's a time to catch up... More...
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Tuesday, 5 July, 2011
The Book Will Never Die
As the widespread popularity and sales of e-readers and e-books continues to make headlines in the book press, there is much debate about the death of the p-book? Two avid book collectors, Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière, with a deep... More...
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Sunday, 3 July, 2011
Alice Albinia on the Indian Literary Scene
A decade ago, when I lived in Delhi, book launches were stately affairs. There were only three places to hold them and access was by invitation-only. The grand, red-brick India Habitat Centre was for poetry collections and policy reports. The... More...
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Sunday, 3 July, 2011
The Writer's Life Made Easier
Find a patron. Exploit a private income. Rent a garret (but don't pay the rent). Go to Paris, live in obscurity, wait for acclaim - probably posthumous, but you're an artist so you don't care. Graft as a journalist and... More...
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Thursday, 24 March, 2011
Immersed in Reading
Tucked into a corner of Spitalfield's Market, a Japanese tearoom has suddenly materialised; its checkerboard framework and opaque walls give it the look of an anaemic Rubik's cube dropped into the still-wintry bustle of the old marketplace. This is Shoreditch,... More...
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Thursday, 17 March, 2011
'Twittered to Hell'... and back?
So Howard Jacobson doesn't like social networking? When asked by Mariella Frostrup on The Book Show whether he was excited about the role Twitter and other such sites have played in mobilising protests in the Middle East, he wasn't too... More...
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Friday, 4 March, 2011
Small and Perfectly Formed
By Adam Freudenheim, Penguin Classics PublisherPerhaps it's not surprising that as editors at Penguin Classics we love fiction. After all, there are literally hundreds of novels published in Penguin Classics. These novels hog the limelight, however, and I was not... More...
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Wednesday, 16 February, 2011
My Funny Valentine
By David Levithan, author of The Lover's Dictionary It all started in physics class.I was sixteen, in advanced-placement physics, bored out of my wits. I decided to spend my time thumbing through the textbook, finding romantic puns. You know, opposites... More...
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Wednesday, 9 February, 2011
2010: an independent review
Anna Goodall, Clerkenwell Tales bookshop, December 2010 This year the broadsheets' best of 2010 fiction lists were dominated by publishing's heavy hitters: Franzen and Roth garner the largest percentage vote, with quite a few giving nods to Carey and Amis;... More...
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Monday, 20 December, 2010
Creator Bryan Talbot talks about the inspiration behind his steampunk graphic novel series
The initial inspiration for Grandville was the anthropomorphic illustrations of the early nineteenth-century French cartoonist Jean Ignace Isadore Gérard. I was looking at a book of his work that I've owned for several years when suddenly his animal characters came... More...
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Sunday, 19 December, 2010
Is it a story? Is it fiction? Is there a plot? Is it even a novel?
Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make your more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view,... More...
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Wednesday, 24 November, 2010
Shapes in the Dark: Ossian Brown is captivated by found images of Hallowe'ens past
Ossian Brown, artist, musician and composer cares for abandoned cats and goats on the south coast of England. More...
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Thursday, 28 October, 2010
Who Stole Franzen's Spectacles?
Poor Jonathan Franzen isn't having much luck here in the UK. After a spectacular blunder at the printers which saw an early uncorrected draft of his new novel Freedom published instead of the final version, Franzen was last night the... More...
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Tuesday, 5 October, 2010
It's All in the Edit - Making Pen Pusher
Pen Pusher Magazine's editor, Anna Goodall, discusses the process of putting a new issue of the literary publication together. It's both an enjoyable and an anxiety inducing process creating a new issue of Pen Pusher Magazine... Initially... More...
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Friday, 16 April, 2010
Publish or Perish - Prioritizing Graphological Tasks for Maximum Demiurgical Efficiency
I really want to write this blog post. I really do. I've been wanting to write it for three weeks now. But there's just too much else to do. And I don't mean visiting with friends or going for... More...
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Wednesday, 31 March, 2010
Publish or Perish - my brief experience with audiobookpodcastering.
Every day, writers are asked why they spend so much time writing and so little time marketing, particularly by people who don't write. Why aren't you twittering every few hours, we're asked. Why aren't you blogging every week... More...
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Wednesday, 3 March, 2010
Tales from a Bookshop - Write to Remember
Anna Goodall was lucky enough to meet two great literary ladies in just one week ... both of whom have put memories of their extraordinary lives on the page. I attended two events last week: historian... More...
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Friday, 19 February, 2010
Publish or Perish - A translation guide for those new to literary magazines' submissions guidelines.
American writer Tommy Wallach has five novels to his name but none, as yet, have made it in to print. In the first of a regular series, he posts about his writing life as he navigates the shark infested waters of agents, publishers and the long journey to the New York Times bestseller list. More...
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Thursday, 11 February, 2010
Sylvia Plath's annotations on The Great Gatsby
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Friday, 5 February, 2010
FiftyFiction - short and sweet!
A character in Matieu Kassovitz's film Le Fabuleux Déstin d'Amélie Poulain encourages his on-screen companion (and, we assume, the audience) to 'change the world one random act of kindness at a time.' This gooey sentiment may bring about an... More...
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Thursday, 4 February, 2010
Tales from a Bookshop: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies
John Carey's talk about William Golding at the Savile Club was the perfect way to end a week spent reading his biography of this elusive and gifted English author, writes Anna Goodall. William Golding was himself a... More...
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Wednesday, 3 February, 2010
Publish Or Perish
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Wednesday, 27 January, 2010
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art...
Clerkenwell Tales attended a very special event at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon on Monday night: 'Bright Star - an intimate evening of Keats' poetry', which featured one of the stars of the recent Jane Campion... More...
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Wednesday, 30 December, 2009
Tales from a Bookshop
Anna Goodall recommends her current favourite read from Clerkenwell Tales Being surrounded by and talking about books all day I've found myself picking up and reading things I probably wouldn't have tried if left... More...
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Friday, 18 December, 2009
Tales from a Bookshop
New bookseller, Anna Goodall, on her first week at Clerkenwell Tales... Yes, I've finally made it. As an editor, writer and lifelong booklover, I've finally crossed to the other side of the desk and become a bookseller... and... More...
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Thursday, 10 December, 2009
Tales from a Bookshop
Does the demise of Borders signal a new Golden Age of Indie Bookselling?In short. No. All last week the bookselling and publishing industry was awash with rumours of the imminent demise of Borders. Friends and customers alike... More...
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Friday, 4 December, 2009
Tales from a Bookshop
Clerkenwell Tales opened in Exmouth Market in August this year. Owner Peter Ho will be posting stories, notes and musings from behind the counter of an independent bookshop. Monday mornings are made that much harder... More...
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Wednesday, 25 November, 2009
Guardian First Book Award 2009
The shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award has been announced. The five titles were chosen by a panel of writers and journalists comprising Nadeem Aslam, Tobias Hill, John Gray, Martha Kearney, Katherine Viner, Claire Armistead, and Stuart Broom who... More...
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Friday, 30 October, 2009
The Book of the Film
We're rather loving Mitch Ansara's 'I Can Read Movies' series. The 26 year old designer from Toledo has redesigned the artwork of well known films such as Ghostbusters and the Hudsucker Proxy as vintage 60's paperbacks, complete with faded... More...
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Wednesday, 28 October, 2009
The Library of Unwritten Books
Originally commissioned by the Pump House Gallery, The Library of Unwritten Books is a collection of possible books - imagined stories, personal histories, books that should be written - made real. Short interviews are recorded with people who... More...
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Tuesday, 27 October, 2009
A Self-Portrait in Words: Antony Gormley's One & Other project set to reach beyond the Fourth Plinth
Sculptor Antony Gormley has famously invited the British public to help create a living monument every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth. A lesser known fact is that the backgrounds and inspirations of... More...
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Monday, 5 October, 2009
More News on the McSweeney's App
The McSweeney's iPhone app was created by a British developer called Russell Quinn, and since its launch last Tuesday has shot to No1 on iTunes. Now we really are jealous. More about how the app came about on the 37... More...
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Tuesday, 29 September, 2009
Please will someone make us an app?
McSweeney's has launched its own Apple application, Small Chair. 'a weekly sampler from all branches of the McSweeney's family.' One week you might receive a story from the upcoming Quarterly the next week an interview from the Believer, the next a... More...
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Tuesday, 29 September, 2009
Dreams from My Father, Lolita and One Hundred Years of Solitude - the 25 books that have shaped world literature
To celebrate their 25th Aniversary, Wasifiri Magazine has compiled a list of the 25 books which have most shaped world literature in the last 25 years, chosen by a roll-call of names in international writing. It's a surprising mix... More...
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Monday, 28 September, 2009
Knights of the Round Table for the Knife Gang Generation Gets the Glyndebourne Treatment
Savvy producers often turn good books into films. Richard Yates's macabre novel Revolutionary Road won plaudits last year. The more light-hearted Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak's classic children's story, comes out on October 16th 2009. Young people... More...
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Friday, 18 September, 2009
Online poetry workshop with Glyn Maxwell
Award-winning poet and playwright Glyn Maxwell is running an online poetry workshop this week for the Guardian. More...
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Friday, 18 September, 2009
Old Favourites - Richard Ford reads John Cheever
John Cheever's bitter, knife-sharp story Reunion is an exercise in brevity, and as near close to perfect as anything I've ever read. A young boy meets his errant father for lunch in New York and follows him from bar to... More...
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Monday, 14 September, 2009
Six Word Stories
Ernest Hemmingway once bet $10 he could write a complete story in just six words. He proclaimed the result - 'For sale, baby shoes, never worn' - the best story he'd ever written. Can you do better? post your six word stories below, and the best one will win a bundle of books. Here are a few to get you started... More...
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Monday, 7 September, 2009
André Kertész at the Photographer's Gallery
Currently showing at the Photographers' Gallery is On Reading, a delightful exhibition of André Kertész's street portraits of readers. Kertész, often called 'the godfather or photojournalism' was born in Hungary, but lived and worked all over the world, including Argentina,... More...
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Thursday, 27 August, 2009
EU say what?
Thursday's announcement of the winners of the inaugural European Union Prize for Literature went largely unremarked. Hopefully this won't dampen the spirits of the twelve novelists from Austria, Croatia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Sweden who will be looking forward to the official ceremony at the end of September where they'll receive their €5,000 cheques from Henning Mankell, the Prize's newly-appointed ambassador. More...
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Tuesday, 21 July, 2009
We're back!
Good things sometimes take a little while, and so it's been with the new-look website but I hope you'll agree it's been worth the wait. More...
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Monday, 20 July, 2009
