The author of Original Sins, an account of addiction and shame, on his book’s impact on his evangelical parents, reading the Patrick Melrose series while waiting for drug dealers, and how looking middle class saved him from arrestMatt Rowland Hill, 38, is the author of Original Sins, about growing up as the son of a baptist minister before falling into a decade-long addiction to heroin while studying at Oxford. Out in paperback, it was longlisted for last year’s Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction while being praised by Geoff Dyer for its “novelistic virtues of vivid scene-making, fully realised characterisation and psychological subtlety”. Hill and I sat in a park near his home in east London.I might have read this as a novel had it not been subtitled “a memoir”.The subtitle wasn’t my choice: I was open to it being published as fiction if my publisher had wanted that. I approached it like a novel, thinking about point of view and how I’d produce moments of irony and humour, which maybe liberated me to write with an emotional distance that paradoxically allowed me to be more honest. Nothing is fabricated. I did go to psychiatric units. I was a heroin addict for all that time. I used my imagination to make vivid the bits of dialogue or details about what we were wearing, although it’s surprising how detailed your recollections are once you dig in; what my father told my mother on that car ride to Guernsey – “If you died tonight, I’d dance on your grave” – was scored into... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-04-29 17:00:41 UTC ]
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Barnes & Noble, through its combination of physical bookstores and bn.com, remained the largest outlet for the sale of trade books in 2010. That was one of the first findings from Bowkers annual rollup of its monthly book consumer tracking program, PubTrack Consumer. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Fri, 18/03/2011 - 16:25 Posters reminding book buyers that "Mum's The Word" are being made available for indie retailers to encourage Mother's Day sales. The Booksellers Association has produced a series of designs, which can be downloaded and... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Thu, 17/03/2011 - 15:57 Luke Johnson, best known in the book trade for his spell owning Borders, and fellow Financial Times journalist Mrs Moneypenny are writing business titles for Penguin's business imprint Portfolio. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Barbara Casassus Publication Date: Wed, 16/03/2011 - 09:03 The new-look Paris Book Fair will open on Friday [18th March] for four days as five of the leading French publishers ponder the raids by the European Commission competition officials a fortnight ago. Hachette Livre, Bayard... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 16/03/2011 - 09:04 Hodder thriller imprint Mulholland Books has acquired a fiction debut by "Saw" writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, and author, screenwriter and illustrator Stephen Romano. Editor Ruth Tross bought British... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Stone Publication Date: Wed, 16/03/2011 - 14:50 Fiona Goble's 64-page Knit Your Own Royal Wedding (Ivy Press), which comes with a backdrop of Westminster Abbey "so that you can display your creations in authentic surroundings", is the current sales leader in the incredibly... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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While librarians are pushing for access to more ebooks to satisfy demand, publishers are reconsidering how much that access should be worth. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In most parts of Asia, wizardry and fantastical plots have lost much of their magic after dominating the bestseller list for so long. The subsequent vampire and werewolf fever is, by comparison, not as rabidly welcomed in certain territories. As for that wimpy kid, well, his popularity suffers... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell and Philip Stone Publication Date: Fri, 11/03/2011 - 16:27 Sales of the selected 25 World Book Night titles soared by over 100% at W H Smith, amid a wider trade sales boost, following television coverage, events and book giveaways to mark its inaugural year. On 5th... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Wed, 09/03/2011 - 14:40 Faber and Guardian Books have acquired a title by columnist and author Grace Dent about social networking phenomenon Twitter. Guardian Books publisher Lisa Darnell and Faber publishing director for non-fiction Julian Loose jointly acquired world rights... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 08/03/2011 - 16:00 Online bookseller Book Club Associates (BCA) has been sold to a retail home entertainment supplier. The Webb Group, which supplies retail home entertainment products including games, DVDs, music and gifts, announced the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 07/03/2011 - 09:00 Sainsbury's has launched a range of own brand pre-school children's books, publishing eight titles in collaboration with Dorling Kindersley. The titles went on sale on Saturday [5th March] in more than 200 of the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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College stores may have taken the word "book" out of their name, but they still have a lot in common with their independent bookstore brethren. At this year's 88th annual meeting of the National Association of College Stores and Campus Market Expo many concerns shared with ABA stores, such as... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Back in 1984, I wrote a book that sold to a lot of libraries. It stayed on the shelves for over a decade. If it had been an ebook published today by HarperCollins, there's a good chance it would have been off those shelves within a year. Or sooner. Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2011-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Thu, 03/03/2011 - 07:34 Almost half of teenagers have read a book on a computer, according to a new survey to mark World Book Day. As hundreds of events get under way across the country today, 40.8% of teenagers said they had read a book on a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Thu, 03/03/2011 - 05:36 The administrators of British Bookshops and Stationers will begin an online auction of non-book stock, including forklift trucks and office equipment, on Tuesday (8th March). Interested parties will be invited to view the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Thu, 03/03/2011 - 08:45 Half of all book buyers expect to pay less for ebooks, according to new research by Mintel, but those book readers who already own ebook devices have marginally more realistic expectations over price, suggesting that the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The European Unions competition regulators carried out unannounced inspections into various eBook companies on Tuesday. Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2011-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 02/03/2011 - 18:05 Random House US is introducing 17,000 books to the iBookstore, several days after it announced it had moved to agency pricing. At this afternoon's Apple iPad event in San Francisco, Apple c.e.o. Steve Jobs said users have... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Stone Publication Date: Tue, 01/03/2011 - 16:09 Kate Atkinson has knocked Jamie Oliver off the top of the charts, thanks largely to a spot in W H Smith's "£2.99 if you buy the Times" link-save promotion, with Started Early, Took My Dog (Black Swan) the new Official UK Top 50... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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