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 BLOG March '07
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The Dying Light - Henry PORTER
The Dying Light
 
Blood Harvest - S.J. BOLTON
Blood Harvest
 
The Impostor  - Damon GALGUT
The Impostor
 
C - Tom McCARTHY
C
 
I Am Number Four - Pittacus LORE
I Am Number Four
 
 WOLF BROTHER, SPIRIT WALKER, SOUL EATER, OUTCAST, OATH BREAKER, GHOST HUNTER   - Michelle PAVER
WOLF BROTHER, SPIRIT WALKER, SOUL EATER, OUTCAST, OATH BREAKER, GHOST HUNTER
 
Beat the Reaper  - Josh BAZELL
Beat the Reaper
 
World Without End - Ken FOLLETT
World Without End
 
VIKING  ODINN`S  CHILD - Tim SEVERIN
VIKING ODINN`S CHILD
 
The Cry of the Icemark - Stuart HILL
The Cry of the Icemark
 
The Tales Of Beedle The Bard, Collector`s Edition - J,K ROWLING
The Tales Of Beedle The Bard, Collector`s Edition
 
The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian SELZNICK
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
 

BLOG March '07
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Oxford, The City of Dreaming Spires, a very apposite city to host literary festival, a city that for more than 800 years has been home to the very best in academia and for the week of the festival played host to the crème de la crème of writers.

The festival, celebrating its tenth anniversary was held in Christ Church, one of the largest, and architecturally most beautiful colleges in the University of Oxford.

 

The festival this year was very well attended, a few cancellations nevertheless not enough to diminish the enjoyment.

 

The picture of the signatures, are those of authors that attended signings in the marquee, at the end of the event the sheet is auctioned for charity – commendable.

 

God bless Edna O’Brien!

 

Unfortunately Edna O’Brien cancelled at the last minute, however, P.D. James, a ‘Friend’ of Oxford Literary Festival stepped into the breach as it were. So what, you may be thinking, well, we have a customer in the US who desperately wanted a signed copy of “Children of Men” by P.D. James – having looked at the itinerary and found P.D. James was indeed attending Oxford but hosting a dinner for the “literati intelligentsia” with David Starkey at £65.00 per head – no profit margin there! We were carrying around a soft cover edition of the book all week in the hope of spotting Ms James prior to the dinner so you may imagine our delight when it was announced that P.D. James would be stepping in for Edna O’Brien. Mission accomplished, we got the book signed and inscribed and have posted off to a very excited Meg in the U.S.A.

 

For Valour:

 

I have to mention the courage and determination of June to attend her scheduled literary readings and signings – a crazed lady wheeling a pram across the Quad, at what I am certain was well over the speed limit, ran over June’s foot. Notwithstanding her considerable pain she valiantly attended readings/signings. On her return home the pain, which had now become “excruciating”, June went off to the local hospital: A cracked toe and 3 stitches! And the lady with the pram? No apologies, she went dashing off into the sunset, probably with the pram full of Philip Pullman signed copies!

 

 

Nice guy award:

 

Joe Hill: the son of the master of horror, but what a difference in approach to meeting ‘his public’. We hedged our bets prior to going to his public signing in London and arranged for copies of his debut novel “Heart-Shaped Box” to be signed at his private signing which we duly collected and sold out of within hours. So off to the ‘Goth Shop’ aka Forbidden Planet. As expected horror aficionados gathered in there hundreds to meet Mr Hill who was extremely ‘California’ laid back. Interested in speaking with everyone and thought it “cool” to write quotes with his signature, all round ‘nice guy’

 

Apropos “Heart-Shaped Box” we have listed a copy, signed in London at his private signing, on eBay for Great Ormond Street Hospital, 100% going to the charity. If it is one of our Ben Sheddling Books site customers who wins we will be ‘throwing in’ some extra goodies!

 

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; The charities that soothe and heal and bless Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

 

 

Happy reading,


Ben



The Naming of the Dead - Ian RANKIN
Published by UK Orion  18 October 2006  
Price £39.99
ISBN 0752868586 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

UK First Edition First Printing Signed, First Line Quoted and Doodled by Author to the title page.

July 2005, and the G8 leaders have gathered in Scotland. With daily marches, demonstrations, and scuffles, the police are at full stretch. Detective Inspector John Rebus, however, has been sidelined, until the apparent suicide of an MP coincides with clues that a serial killer may be on the loose. The authorities are keen to hush up both, for fear of overshadowing a meeting of global importance - but Rebus has never been one to stick to the rules, and when his colleague Siobhan Clarke finds herself hunting down the identity of the riot cop who assaulted her mother, it looks as though both Rebus and Clarke may be up pitted against both sides in the conflict. “The Naming of the Dead” is a potent mix of action and politics, set against a backdrop of the most devastating week in recent British history.




Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Simon ARMITAGE
Published by UK Faber & Faber  4 January 2007  
Price £34.99
ISBN 0571223273 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed and Dated (21st March '07) date of signing at the Oxford Literary Festival by author to the title page. Books comes with an Oxford Literary Festival pamphlet.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts, and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth. His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered, and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing. Simon Armitage's new version is meticulously responsible to the tact and sophistication of the original - but responsible equally to its own persuasive claims to be read as an original new poem. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two northern poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscapes - acoustic, physical and metaphorical - in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true and long-awaited translator.




Nightrise:Power of Five - Anthony HOROWITZ
Published by UK Walker Books   2007  
Price £10.99
ISBN 1844286215 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

Soft cover original, no dust jacket as issued. UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed and Dated Pre-Publication (21.3.07) at the Oxford Literary Festival by author to the title page. Book comes with an Oxford Literary Festival Pamphlet.

Nevada, USA - fourteen-year-old twins Jamie and Scott Tyler are performing a mind-reading act in a dingy theatre. But when a sinister multinational corporation, Nightrise, kidnaps Scott, Jamie is left alone - and wanted for murder. He becomes embroiled in a corrupt presidential campaign and breaks into the American prison system before being propelled ten thousand years into the past, where he encounters the other Gatekeepers and witnesses the creation of Raven's Gate - and the first fateful battle against the Old Ones.




Here Lies Arthur - Philip REEVE
Published by UK Scholastic  2 April 2007  
Special Price £9.00
ISBN 0439955335 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing Signed and Dated pre-publication (21.3.07) at the Oxford Literary Festival by author to the title page. Book comes with an Oxford Literary Festival Pamphlet.

This is a brand new novel from a leading children's author. Gwyna is just a small girl, a mouse, when she is bound in service to Myrddin the bard - a traveller and spinner of tales. But Myrddin transfroms her - into a lady goddess, a boy warrior, and a spy. Without Gwyna, Myrddin will not be able to work the most glorious transformation of all - and turn the leader of a raggle-taggle war-band into King Arthur, the greatest hero of all time.

Winner of the Carnegie Medal, 2008.




Heart-Shaped Box ++Signed, Dated, Quoted++ - Joe HILL
Published by UK Gollancz  15 March 2007  
Price £29.99
ISBN 9780575079120 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed, Dated (3.28.07 date of London signing) and Quoted by author to the title page. plus signed flyer  from another  signing  3.29 07.

'Buy my stepfather's ghost' read the e-mail. So Jude did. He bought the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wanted it: because his fans ate up that kind of story. It was perfect for his collection: the genuine skulls and the bones, the real honest-to-God snuff movie, the occult books and all the rest of the paraphernalia that goes along with his kind of hard/goth rock. But the rest of his collection doesn't make the house feel cold. The bones don't make the dogs bark; the movie doesn't make Jude feel as if he's being watched. And none of the artefacts bring a vengeful old ghost with black scribbles over his eyes out of the shadows to chase Jude out of his home, and make him run for his life…




A Spot of Bother - Mark HADDON
Published by UK Jonathan Cape  31 August 2006  
Price £29.99
ISBN 0224080466 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed and First Line Quoted at the Oxford Literary Festival by author to the title page. Book comes with an Oxford Literary Festival pamphlet.

George Hall doesn't understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. 'The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.' Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Mark Haddon's disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.

Short listed for the Costa Novel Award 2006




A Spot of Bother - Mark HADDON
Published by UK Jonathan Cape  31 August 2006  
Price £21.99
ISBN 0224080466 Signed by Author     First Edition     First Printing    

UK First Edition First Printing Signed, Dated (22nd March '07) at the Oxford Literary Festival by author to the title page. Book comes with an Oxford Literary Festival pamphlet.

George Hall doesn't understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. 'The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.' Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Mark Haddon's disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2006


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