How do they DO that?

I’ve just read three books in succession

Picked not quite at random, but certainly without deliberate intent to prove this thing.

Book A had a heroine called Lacey.

Book B had a man called Lacey and a heroine caller Lennie and Book C contains a minor villain character also called Lennie

It isn’t always names;  it’s quite often random references to, for example, a straw basket called a skep, which occur in consecutively read books, but I am certain that such a link  connects from one book to the next, every time.

 

Something to hang on to.

Howard Jacobson, at this week's Hay festival: "The author has an obligation to please the reader, but the reader has an obligation to be intelligent."

Shock horror! - Rock'n'roll Britannia

Picked up a link to this programme on FB early this morning and watched before 7 a.m. grinning like an idiot and wallowing in nostalgia.
It doesn't look very shocking these days, but I remember my father leapng up from the Sunday dinner table, hurtling himself across the room to turn the radio off, part-way through 'Forces Favourites' after Billy Fury so temptingly sang "I want to be your lover".

Dressing to tease?

A letter in yesterday's Daily Telegraph* referred to the cover of the paperback edition of Harlan Coben's Stay Close, saying it had 'absolutely no connection with the story'.  Coincidentally, I had earlier that morning, reviewed G J Moffat's Blindside on Goodreads, beginning with the question 'What the hell does the cover (plane crashed into a loch) have to do with the story?'

Such carelessness is not  universal:  in December 2011, the Daily Telegraph interviewed Suzanne Dean, who explained in some detail how the cover of Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending came about, and many, many books have what are obviously well-thought out covers.  Additionally, I remain fascinated by the ability of publishers to correctly lure me to he type of books I like.
 
So why do some so  totally disregard content?  Fail, at times to even bother with a photograph of the relevant location?  It's not rocket science and any book that has made it thus far deserves better; any reader not to have his intelligence insulted.

Harlan Coben is published by Orion, G J Moffat by Headline, a division of Hachette - neither of them unknown.

*from Keith Edwards, of Tattershall, Lincolnshire

Silver linings

The broken crankshaft of the Hamnavoe - the Scrabster-Stromness ferry to Orkney - was a nuisance by which we lost a day's time there, but we were able to travel on the boat from Aberdeen to Kirkwall instead.  
The return journey allowed me to take some early morning photographs of the entry to Aberdeen's harbour and make notes about the experience of sleeping aboard - all useful background information for 'Not wanted on voyage'