March is a strangely active time in the book world. Like plants that have been slumbering through the cold winter, books are beginning to wake up and stir themselves into action for the joys of spring.
Please indulge me with the slightly dippy analogy, as I think it’s surprisingly pertinent. After all, spring tends to be the time that books by ‘budding’ new authors are published, and when people are more inclined to amble to a bookshop and ‘leaf’ through some books. This is a time to remember that books are of course derived from trees, even etymologically stemming from a word meaning ‘beech’. Maybe this literary spring awakening shouldn’t be such a surprise.
A bookshop in spring is intriguing. Whereas publishers traditionally release their hardback blockbusters in September and October for the Christmas market, spring is the time for quieter books, the books that could be big but aren’t dead certs. Now bookshops are full of offerings from new authors, somewhat off-beat novels, such as Tom Bullough’s Konstantin, and quirky non-fiction, like Mark Pagel’s Wired for Culture. Without the Christmas crowd of sure-fire hits, there’s a greater opportunity for a small, unusual book to take root, grow and make its presence felt. Yes, there are still a few dead certs scattered here and there — like John Lanchester’s Capital and William Boyd’s Waiting for Sunrise — but now they are the happy giants towering over the forest canopy, freed from the struggle of autumn’s competition.
Just as exciting as the brand-new titles is the appearance of many covetable paperbacks. Alan Bennett’s Smut, Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, and Thomas Penn’s The Winter King among several others have just come out in this tempting format. These paperbacks give a new lease of life to last year’s hardbacks, widening their appeal to many more readers thanks to the drop in weight and price. This is the time of year when people tend to buy books to read themselves, unlike at Christmas, when they buy presents. Publishers bring out so many paperbacks in spring to cater to this reading habit, making the books more tempting by lowering the price.
Spring’s newly thawed ground is soon filled with all these colourful new books, which establish an eye-catching presence. While this adult phenomenon is taking shape, children’s books are suddenly woken up with a resounding bang.
Today is World Book Day, a fantastic initiative which takes place every year thanks to the cooperation of publishers, booksellers and National Book Tokens. The premise is that each child who is under eighteen and in full-time education in the UK and Ireland is entitled to a special £1 book token. This token can be used either for a £1 discount against any book, or to purchase one of eight special mini books by popular children’s authors such as Julia Donaldson, Cressida Cowell and Derek Landy.
This means that, in theory, every child in the UK can buy their own book. In light of last year’s shocking research from the National Literacy Trust, which indicated that almost four million children in the UK — the equivalent of one in three — don’t own a book, this really is a good thing.
You can probably imagine how busy and exciting, if a bit noisy and hectic, a bookshop feels when millions of children descend upon it with their £1 book tokens. World Book Day also provides a focus for events in bookshops and schools; it is a time when people are especially keen to nurture children’s engagement with books. This week is certainly a busy one for us booksellers.
But if the excitement of World Book Day and the new crop of books leaves you cold, then you could fall back on another March staple. For this is the time to remember the distant cousin of the Easter Bunny, the mad March Hare.
I can thoroughly recommend three books which prominently feature hares. The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund du Waal was the deservedly big hit of 2010, which I wrote about for the Spectator here. The author’s journey to uncover the story of his inherited netsuke collection, of which the titular hare with amber eyes is a star member, is a unique and fascinating path through place, time and family. An alternative, intellectual choice is The Year of the Hare by Finnish writer Arto Paasilinna. And, most beloved of all, is the forgotten classic The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, which I’ve just written about on my blog, EmilyBooks. This acute and poignant portrait of a marriage was first published in 1954. It aches with the problems facing a young woman who learns that the adult world of marriage, motherhood and work is far lonelier and more difficult than she’d imagined. Pleasingly, as well as the standard paperback edition,Virago recently packaged it up as a very pretty little hardback.
Perhaps it is a little eccentric, but I love the idea of picking one’s March reading around March hares. At any rate, I bet it’s a marketing angle that hasn’t occurred to all those clever publishers.
Emily Rhodes blogs at EmilyBooks and tweets @EmilyBooksBlog
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