A Very Sweet Story

Deborah Cadbury is not just a descendant of the founders of the biggest chocolate brand in the world, but also a bestselling historian. Chocolate Wars is only part family history; in telling the tale of how the chocolate business has moved from the idealistic Puritan principles of its Quaker founders to globalised, profit-driven modern capitalism, Cadbury tells what she calls “a parable of our times”. She narrates the story, too, of the development of the product itself: from an oily, exotic drink that was sometimes dangerously stretched with substances like red lead and veal fat, to the globally mass-produced chocolate bars we are all so familiar with today. Cadbury includes a wealth of detail about the characters and companies, such as Hershey, Mars and Lindt & Sprüngli, that drove the creation of the chocolate industry, and the ideals that animated them. This engaging tale, about a product many of us now cannot imagine living without, is an inspired angle from which to portray the development of the global corporate economic culture in which we find ourselves today. Helen

Helen really likes 'Sydney'

Sydney by Delia Falconer

Part of a beautifully bound series on Australia’s capital cities that already includes In Search of Hobart and Brisbane, with forthcoming volumes on Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide, Delia Falconer’s thoughtful and evocative little book on her home town leaves you thinking about the city, and indeed about everyday existence, in a new way. Part memoir, part history (both official and anecdotal), part poetic meditation on place, this book explores and seeks to explain Sydney’s many contradictions and idiosyncrasies. Falconer’s Sydney is a steaming, fecund, summery city: jacaranda trees in full bloom, the whine of mosquitos, the relief brought by a cool change at one in the morning. Yet she observes an undercurrent of melancholy as Sydney’s fundamental emotion, and this notion has a bearing on her reading of every aspect of the city, from its famous brashness, to the quality of its sunshine, to its inhabitants’ love of touristy activities like the Bridge Climb. Falconer also masterfully weaves a strong sense of artistic tradition into the fabric of her personal encounter with the city through references to the literature, art and culture that has shaped the city’s consciousness. This perceptive and imaginative book provides a fresh yet familiar idea of Sydney, and an atmospheric portrayal of an elusive subject. Helen

A Happy Author

James Hannam, author of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science has sent us a nice email:

"Sorry to write out of the blue. I just wanted to thank you for doing so well with my book.

I don't think I've ever seen it in a bestseller list before so it was great to be only one place behind Tony Blair!

Best wishes, James"

God's Philosophers has been shortlisted for the 2010 Royal Society Science Book Prize.

"The Cloud Man" visits Abbey's

Gavin Prettor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society and author of The Cloudspotter's Guide and The Wavewatcher's Companion dropped into Abbey's today.

Gavin has just returned from the Melbourne Writer's Festival and was kind enough to call in at short notice and give a reading and chat to some of his Sydney-based fans. He also gave us a short history of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which apparently started out as a bit of a joke, and now has over 23,500 members in over 88 countries!

Gavin is a lovely man, with, dare I say it, a very sunny disposition and the only problem with his visit was that he couldn't stay longer than he did. And if you missed Gavin talking about waves on Radio National's Late Night Live in July, here is a link to the program.

Getting Rid of Books

The New York Times has published an article called Books You Can Live Without in which they invited some "book people" to give their thoughts on culling personal libraries.

Running out of space for books is a problem for quite a few Abbey's customers, and there is some good advice in this piece if you are facing this problem yourself.

The contribution I enjoyed the most, however, was by the novelist Joshua Ferris, author Then We Came to an End and the forthcoming The Unnamed. He opened with "Get rid of books? Are you kidding?" and closed with this: "Sometimes when I hear of a book I want, I buy it and then I put it away with every reassurance that it will be read soon, forget about it, hear about it again, buy it again, and only realize my mistake when I place it next to its twin on the bookshelf. It’s an addiction of good intentions.

Books are notes from the field, bound and domesticated, life brought into narrow focus. Get rid of a book? No way. Every one is a brick keeping the building standing. Books are my life. I leave and come back, and the books I find there tell me I’m home." Dave

World Wide Words

If you are a word-lover you really should check out World Wide Words. It's run by Michael Quinion, the author of many books on words, including Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary and Why is Q Always Followed by U?.

As well as featuring losts of interesting information on all aspects of international English there are very useful reviews of word-related books, including two new books at Abbey's: The F Word and the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. And don't forget to sign up for the free weekly newsletter!

Elizabeth Blackburn Biography

We have just received stock of Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA, which was published in paperback this year. It tells the story of Elizabeth Blackburn's life and work and the emergence of a new field of scientific research on the specialized ends of chromosomes and the telomerase enzyme that extends them. Winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine is only the latest accolade to be bestowed on Elizabeth Blackburn and this biography offers a real insight into the tension between pure and applied science and also into the politics of science.

If you would like to learn more about telomeres you can read a Scientific American article written by Elizabeth Blackburn and her fellow Nobel Prize winner Carol Greider here.