We were given our third choice of The Take by Martina Cole - We have to hand out copies of the book to encourage reading. I wonder who the lucky ones will be when we hand them out :-)
Stephen King picks Hesh Kestin and Terry Pratchett adds GK Chesterton to
accompany their novels in million-book giveaway
Terry Pratchett (left) would like to introduce GK Chesterton
(right). Photograph: David Levene/Getty
Terry Pratchett would
like us to sample GK Chesterton, Iain Banks is pushing Alan Moore and Roald
Dahl's estate is keen on Sarah Waters. The authors chosen to be part of World Book Night on 23 April,
when 1m books will be given away for free, have picked the books they themselves
would recommend to readers – with Stephen King's ringing
endorsement of obscure American crime novel The
Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats as "the best book you never read" leading a
British publisher to pounce on it.
From King's Misery to Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Pride and
Prejudice to The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella, each of
the 25 titles to be distributed in April by 20,000 volunteers is now also set to
include a sample extract from another title selected by its author. King's pick
of Hesh Kestin's The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats – he calls it "The Godfather on
laughing gas, or Catch-22 with guns … witty, sexy, thrilling, and all story" –
will see two chapters of the book included in the back of the 40,000 copies of
Misery distributed in April. Publisher Hodder & Stoughton couldn't miss out
on the chance and has just acquired Kestin's 1960s New York tale about a college
student who meets a notorious Jewish gangster, published in America in 2009 but
previously ignored in the UK, for release on 12 April.
King might have plumped for a recent novel to
promote to readers, but other World Book Night
authors are hoping to push older titles. Martina Cole has chosen an extract from
Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, Kinsella is pushing EM Delafield's The Diary of a
Provincial Lady and Ishiguro is hoping readers will be intrigued by Stefan
Zweig's 1938 novel Beware of Pity. Further picks mean Jeanette Winterson's
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit will be sampled in Dodie Smith's I Capture the
Castle, Jorge Luis Borges's The Aleph in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and Ann
Patchett's State of Wonder in Emma Donoghue's Room.
"The idea is really very simple," said World Book Night chief executive Julia
Kingsford. "World Book Night is all about encouraging people to embark on a
reading journey and we believe that you're never more vulnerable to your next
read as you are when you've just finished a book. We are really excited at the
prospect of being able to put another great book into the hands, hearts and
minds of new readers the minute they've finished their WBN book. Asking our
World Book Night authors to recommend something seems like the perfect way to
introduce new books and writers to readers and encourage people to keep on
reading."
The award-winning poet Don Paterson has also chosen a Shakespeare sonnet for
each book – themed "as much as possible" around each individual title – which
will be printed in the books to mark Shakespeare's birthday, which coincides
with World Book Night. Pride and Prejudice will feature Sonnet 116, "Let me not
to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments"; Donoghue's story of
imprisonment is matched with Sonnet 133, "Me from myself thy cruel eye hath
taken"; and The Remains of the Day with Sonnet 73, "In me thou see'st the
twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west".
Alison Flood
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