If you can make your way to Belfast Central Station tomorrow at 12.30pm, Translink promise to make it well worth your while. They're giving away three books, you see. And the three authors responsible for the books will attend to do the glitz and glamour thing. How's this CSNI relevant? Well, they're only giving away copies of Borderlands by Brian McGilloway. If you haven't started on the Inspector Devlin series yet, this is your opportunity to do it on the cheap. After Declan Burke's recent article on pre-loved books, I expect quite an attendance from the Belfast writing community. In fact, if I can steal some time away from the toils of the dayjob (God bless flexi-time) I'll grab a copy myself and force it on a friend or family member. They'll thank me in the long run.
The other writers in attendance will be Sarah Webb and Monica McInerney, so they've covered more than one genre preference. The idea is to encourage both commuting and reading. Not a bad idea at all, if you ask me.
In other news, I've had kind shout-outs at both Crime Always Pays and Colin Bateman's blog regarding my recent review of Mystery Man by Bateman. Cheers, guys.
UPDATE!!! 28/01/09
Having attended the event, I now have a better understanding of The Translink Book Club:
Pan MacMillan donated 300 books to Translink to start off this innovative book club idea. It's kind of like a library, in that the Translink customer is free to pick up a book and take it on their travels. The onus is then on the customer to drop it off at another participating station for the next customer to pick up and enjoy. It's quite a nice concept, isn't it?
Translink also plan to dedicate a page on their website to the books in the club. Each has a wee tracker number and you'll be able to go online to see where the books have travelled to. I think it's great that they've picked Brian's debut, as it'll raise the profile of the whole Devlin series. Which is why I abandoned the book heist plan I began to formulate as I waited for the readings to begin.
Sadly, I'm too nice to be a criminal.
