Tuesday 27 January 2009

Translink Book Club Launches Tomorrow


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.

6 comments:

marco said...

So it's
Chick lit 2 Crime Fic 1.
That's not good.

Gerard Brennan said...

Marco - Out of diplomacy, I'd decided not to bring that up. Since you've mentioned it, though...

Actually, it's quite an encouraging ratio. A few years ago it might have been 3 to 0. But now Irish crime fiction is on the up (and according to Dec Burke, the Irish chick lit movement helped it along by paving the way).

Cheers

gb

Declan Burke said...

Sorry, Gerard, but I can't claim that one ... I was quoting John Connolly, who reckoned that the success of women's fiction in Ireland paved the way for other genre writing ... Cheers, Dec

Gerard Brennan said...

Declan - Sorry, my msitake. Ta for the clarification.

Cheers

gb

Stuart Neville said...

Alas, I won't be able to attend this. Great idea, though.

Gerard Brennan said...

Stuart - That's a pity, but if it's a success tomorrow, maybe they'll take it on the road. Or the rails. It could come to a station near you soon!

gb