This has been a very poor week for book sales, with the weather keeping customers away from high streets and even, it seems, chilling their enthusiasm for internet shopping. But this week’s chart holds some good news for publishers and booksellers, who are desperate to see the new Channel 4/ More4 TV Book Club rivalling the influence of its predecessor, fronted by Richard and Judy. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, the new club’s first selection, has risen to No 6.
Val McDermid, author of the novels that inspired the ITV series Wire in the Blood, this week became the latest recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding achievement in crime writing. Further honours may be in the offing, should she want them: previous Diamond Dagger winners include two life peers (P. D. James and Ruth Rendell), two CBEs (Dick Francis and Ruth Rendell), and three OBEs (P. D. James, Colin Dexter and Ian Rankin).
Who was the most pirated author in 2009? Stephenie Meyer, you might guess. In fact, Meyer’s Twilight series was at No 7 on a list of titles downloaded on BitTorrent, the filesharing protocol.
No 1 on the list was The Kama Sutra, No 2 was Adobe Photoshop Secrets and No 3 was The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex. It’s a list that suggests that e-book reading has not yet become a mainstream activity.
The US has found a potent way of supporting subversion in Iran, according to the country’s Deputy Minister of Culture: funding literary awards. An absurd accusation, you might think. But in light of Alex Ross’s description in his award-winning The Rest Is Noise of how, during the Cold War, the CIA funded atonal composers, perhaps the minister’s allegation is not so outlandish.
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The achievement of Chris Cleave in getting to No 13 on the annual bestseller list for 2009 had even more merit than I acknowledged last week. Of the literary titles on the list, Cleave’s novel The Other Hand was the only one — unless you also count Barack Obama’s memoirs — without a Richard and Judy selection (I stated incorrectly that it had featured on their show), a literary award or a film adaptation.