"76 ways to make Christmas simple" by Steve Way

 It’s that time of year when magazines become full of articles such as, "76 Ways to make Christmas Simple" for which the title effortlessly and completely negates the premise behind the piece.

I was wondering if there could be titles for any other books or articles that would also undermine them in a similar fashion. I’ve had a few ideas and would love to see yours – maybe including real titles you know of already! Back in the day, I remember a series with the linked “Made simple” title, such as “Quantum Physics made simple”, which seemed to give away their failure to live up to their promise by all being roughly as long as “War and Peace”.

How about…

“The Bumper Book of positive things to say about politicians”

(This edition actually comes with pages!)

~~~~~

“A million and one bleedin’ obvious reasons why FIFA shouldn’t award a Peace Prize”

People who were daft enough to buy this also bought “My zero most reliable statements about resolving conflict” by Neville Chamberlain. (This edition soon to be updated with added contributions unfortunately.)

~~~~~

For football lovers (perhaps…)

“1001 ways of possibly understanding the offside rule and it’s reliable execution by referees”

(Can be paired with, “4 million ways of actually caring”.)

~~~~~

For younger readers…

“204 reasons why we love going to school and doing homework!”

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In the fantasy section…

“400 ways to avoid having your latest manuscript rejected”

Useful to purchase with, “50 ways not to be completely devastated and demoralised.”

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And as it’s coming up to Christmas…

“-6 ways of avoiding your in-laws for Christmas”*

*We didn’t think we’d be able to reach that high a number!

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Happy Christmas everyone – I hope you enjoy it in a variety of ways!

Mullets, by Nick Sharratt, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

    If you, or a small person you know enjoy the completely daft, then this wonderful picture book is for you.

    'Lets spend a whiles

    on Mullet Isle.

    Everyone there

    has SPECIAL hair!'

They all, people, cats, frogs, sharks, even bumble bees have mullet hair styles, and we're given a guide so that we, too, can become expert in spotting the iconic 1970s mullet hairstyle.

All fun and good, but how is Nick Sharratt going to conclude this fun in a satisfying way? I'm not going to tell you because it would spoil things for you, but I can promise you not one, but two, final spreads which both deliver laugh out loud surprises! 

AI takes over or people don't read? Or both? (Anne Rooney)

Photo: health.harvard.edu

In a sense, AI fiction is very like over-processed 
food as you don't know what's in it, it's entirely artificial 
and its production and consumption are exploitative

Well, which is it? Either, neither or both?
There is plenty of doom-saying around and no way of knowing which way the tide will actually flow. On the one hand, a recently published survey from Cambridge University revealed 51% of novelists believe AI-generated trashy fiction will damage their career and income. At the same time, other surveys have found that people aren't reading. The National Literacy Trust found that just one in three children aged 8-18 enjoy reading for pleasure.

Is AI going to churn out books for people who don't read them? 

 

The most at-risk group of novelists, it appears, are genre writers — those who write romance, in particular, but also thrillers and crime. These are plot-focused genres, and plot is the thing that AI is likely to be best at doing as it's just 'one thing after another', a series of external happenings. Obviously a plot is more than this: it relies on revealing a sequence that looks inevitable after the event but is not obvious in advance, in tying it to the psychology of the characters, in balancing plausibility and surprise, and so on. But a poor-quality genre novel is more plot than anything else, and so more likely to be achieved by AI than is, say, a literary novel of tortured psychological investigation. I am not dissing either of these; they are just different. 

When non-writers say they have an idea for a novel, the idea is generally a plot. They don't usually have a character they want to explore or a writing style they want to exercise, though those may be starting points for an established or accomplished writer. Putting a plot outline to AI and getting it to flesh it out is fairly easy for both the putative writer and the AI. Hence the proliferation of plot-driven AI so-called fiction. 

It seems likely, as many people have said, that the market will split into expensive human-authored books and cheap or free AI slop. Probably, some people will buy both, especially if they are not clearly labelled. If publishers see people paying £17 for a paperback by a real author, are they going to think they might as well charge that for their AI-produced books? Why wouldn't they? Principally because the sales will be so small. If you can sell 100,000 copies for £1 but only 1500 copies for £17, you're better off with the 100,000 copies (£100,000 v. £25,500). People will soon decide what they like and what they can afford. I will buy the £17 books when I can and read old books or borrow from libraries when I can't. 

Ah, libraries. Will they stock the AI-generated books? There are good arguments on both sides. If they are cheaply available, libraries can afford them. If people do want to read them, surely they should be avaiable? But if people want to read real books that they can't afford, isn't it the job of libraries to provide those? Libraries already have to make decisions about what to stock, which licenses to online magazines and journals to pay for, and so on. They do stock genre fiction. They don't buy subscriptions to cheap rags or fill their shelves with the cheapest trashy fiction (apart from anything else, the poor quality of the physical books means they will fall apart quickly).

If reading is declining, who is still reading? Is it the people like us (as in, readers of blogs about books —people who are genuinely interested and committed readers)? If so, won't we be inclined to favour human-authored books? If people (people in general now) find the quality of the books they get is deteriorating, will they just switch their attention to other platforms even more quickly? So the AI-generated books might accelerate the decrease in reading rates, to their own cost. This is another reason why we need really clear labelling. 

Readers should be able to buy a book (if they want to) that honestly reflects the experience of being human because it was written by a human. They should also be able to make a fair judgment about what they are likely to get. An AI-generated novel might have a coherent plot and a story you want to read, and you might not care that it doesn't reflect the genuine experience of being a human individual. But if you do care, you shouldn't be duped. If you buy books that disappoint you, you will stop buying books. If you buy books you know are produced by AI and they disappiont you, you might try buying a human-authored book instead.

Many, many markets divide by quality and cost. You can go to the deli and spend a lot on an artisan cheese or you can go to Aldi and buy budget 'hard cheese'. You can buy a top from Shein or go to Next or M&S and buy a mid-price item or you can go to a designer store or have something handmade by a talented craftsperson. We know people want to get what they are paying for. Look at the outcry when fraudsters stock their Etsy store with mass produced stuff at inflated prices. With honesty, we can keep readers buying books. Without it, AI will pour trash into a depleting market, undermining and disappointing everyone. 

 Anne Rooney

Out now, Arcturus 2025: The Essential Book of AI 

 

The Crocodile on the Bus – Capturing memories before the Elephant forgets by Lynda Waterhouse

 

This is the second community short film I’ve produced in two years with funding from Southwark Council’s Neighbourhood Fund. It was twelve months in the making, on an excruciatingly low budget, drawing on tons of favours and goodwill and leaving me a bag of nerves.

Never one to make life easy for myself  by  following the exact same model as its companion, ‘The Old Cow in the Kitchen’ completed in 2024.

 https://www.southwark.gov.uk/southwark-presents/film-month-old-cow-kitchen-and-other-stories-2024)

I wanted this film to generate some new creative work so I invited Paul Taylor to write a poem using some of the old photographs of the area. He produced three stunning poems.  Sara Byers composed a song based on some of the accounts of cinemagoers to the iconic and long demolished Trocadero Cinema.

Our filmmaking process to the onlooker must have appeared lackadaisical and random but it was a deliberate decision on mine and filmmaker Ludmilla Andrews’s part not to simply ‘interview’ people. We wanted to take our time, share conversations, laughter and cake, trusting that the stories would eventually unfold. This meant that we built lasting friendships but also that Ludmilla had a huge task editing all the material. It also meant that some surprising stories emerged.

How many times have people said, mainly at funerals, ‘I wished I had asked them about... and now we’ll never know.’ Another aim of the project was to remind people to have those conversations and overcome any shyness about asking certain questions.  

Working on this project also held up a mirror to my own writing process reminding me that I always start a writing project with a character who interests me and often come up with a title long before the story is fully formed. Then comes a first draft followed by a long editing and cutting period.

So as the holiday season approaches and family and friends gather, now might be the perfect time to ask those questions.  Go on I dare you!

 

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - ORANGE

 ORANGE

Orange is a bold warm colour. It can make young readers feel excited and ready for adventure. The mix of yellow's cheerfulness and red's excitement creates a perfect combination.

Orange will boost imagination and grab attention in a fun, friendly way.

Here are some examples of illustrators using the colour orange to its best advantage:

The Gruffalo's bright orange eyes are instantly recognisable and create a feeling of warmth and affection for the lovable menace.

This book is fully created around the word and colour orange. It's used perfectly in the storytelling as well as the artwork. 

Who doesn't recognise Judith Kerr's wonderful orange tiger in her famous book "The Tiger who came to Tea"? His bright orange coat dominates the pages and makes him a friendly rather than frightening character. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

News Round-Up of 2025

 A big thank you to everyone who sent their news in this year. It's great to see so many books published, schools visited, awards won.

Here's a run-down of the whole year. If you're looking for Christmas gifts, do take a look and support your fellow Sassies.

January - March

Dancing Dumplings by Eva Wong Nada, illustrated by Natelle Quek
My Mum, by Susan Quinn, illustrated Sarah Mathew
The Welsh language edition of Behind Closed Doors by Miriam Halahm
World of Wanda by Karen McCombie
Gathering the Glimmers written and illustrated by Ffion Jones
I Don't Do Mountains by Barbara Henderson
Paperback edition: Talking History: 150 Years of Speakers and Speeches, by Joan Haig and Joan Lennon, illustrated by Andre Ducci.

Plus hundreds of school visits, putting thousands of books into the hands of excited readers.

April - June

Food For All, and David, the Unauthorised Biography, both by Mary Hoffman

Project Pony by Camilla Chester

Valley of the Vikings by Liz Kessler

Land of the Last Wildcat by Lui Sit launched as Waterstones's Book of the Month

The Lucky House Detective Agency by Lui Sit, writing as Scarlett Li 

You Choose Bedtime by Pippa Goodheart, illustrated by Nick Sharratt

Naeli and the Secret Song by Jasbinder Bilan

Plus a shortlisting for Cobalt, by Sue Klauber 

July - September

The Secret Life of Clouds by Moira Butterfield, illustrated Vivian Mineker

Will Wolfheart by Teresa Heapy

My Sister is a Treasure by Tracy Darnton, illustrated by Yasmeen Ismail

One Cat, Two Cats by Jonathan Emmett, illustrated by Rob Hodgson

How to Build a Planet (illustrated by Clare Elsom) and Snore, Sneeze, Burp (illustrated by Ro Ledesma) both by Moira Butterfield

True Friends by Sheena Wilkinson

Plus a long-listing for Look What I Found by the River by Moira Butterfield

October - November

The Stalker by Teri Terry - her first adult book

Hidden Toxins by Helen Larder

Swanfall by Sophie Kirtley

Landscape with Mines by Anna Bowles

Pomegranates for Peace, by Miriam Halahmy

Miss McVey Takes Charge by Sheena Wilkinson

And, finally for this year, some exciting extra news items:

Katherine Langrish wrote an essay called 'The Door in the Mound' for a book on writing fantasy published by Dead Ink, titled 'Writing the Magic' and available in paperback now. Her essay was the only one on writing fantasy for children, well worth getting hold of.

Jane Wickenden has seven stories in this intriguing collection, Myths in Isolation, coming January. 

I will continue news round-ups on the 7th of each month. You can send me your items at any time.

Thanks!

Claire

www.clairefayers.com

Reading in Spanish by Paul May

Lately, as part of my attempt to improve my Spanish,  I've been reading books mainly in that language. The first book I got hold of was a set of literary short stories in a dual-language edition. This proved unsatisfactory in several ways. Firstly, and I should have thought of this, literary fiction of most kinds is often more demanding than thrillers and romance. Text in Spanish is demanding enough for me without having to struggle to understand what the writer is getting at. Secondly, a dual-language text is not necessarily a word-for-word translation and it turns out that, for me at least, it works better to translate individual words and figure out the sense for myself. And, thirdly, the selection of stories in that particular book didn't grip me.

Next I picked up a copy, in Spanish, of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls. But with this one I became distracted by the fact that the English text was so beautifully written and the Spanish translation never seemed quite right. In fact I was so distracted that I ended up reading the whole Country Girls trilogy in English.

Then, browsing in Foyles, I came across a thriller. This seemed like a good idea. Up-to-date dialogue and a page-turning plot to motivate me. Best-selling author. What could go wrong? Not much as it turned out.

The book I chose was Todo Vuelve by Juan Goméz Jurado. This is a violent, action-filled thriller, and it was the first book I read from beginning to end in Spanish. However, this was only possible with the help of Google. If I'd had to sit with a dictionary by my side, pausing every dozen words or so to look something up, I'd never have done it. My process was to try to read a page and get the sense of it, then take a pic and translate the text to clarify everything. The book was about 500 pages long, so a dual-language version could never have worked, but I was amazed by the sophistication of Google Translate. It can even translate idioms into their English equivalent - for example, the Spanish pull your hair rather than pulling your leg and Google knows to translate one with the other.

It was after I finished that book that I began to think about matters of style and judgement. It's very hard to judge the pace of a book when you're reading it a page at a time and stopping frequently to translate. For almost the first time in years I was reading every word. I had the feeling that the pace of the book was a bit slow, that everything seemed to take a long time, but of course it was taking a long time, for me. Maybe it was like the Reacher books, where one of Lee Child's trademarks is his ability to spend a couple of pages describing Reacher opening a door or taking a weapon apart. 

And then there was this author's fondness for strange similes and metaphors. Was it because I wasn't Spanish that they didn't really work for me? I couldn't tell. But there was no doubt that the whole process was helping my Spanish, so I went looking for more thrillers and found a writer called Roberto Martínez Guzmán. His thrillers were set in Galicia and it helped that I'd been to that part of Spain and recognised many of the locations. There was enough interest in his books to carry me along, and I could see that the author had used various mechanisms common to many English language crime writers, for example the detective's liking for a type of music that acts as a shorthand for outlining their character. However, as my reading became more fluent I began to notice things that could have been helped by a bit of editing and I also suspected that these books had started out self-published on Amazon. My suspicions increased when I asked after the author in a bookshop in Spain and the proprietor had never heard of him.

Next I discovered the novels of Cristian Perfumo, thrillers set in Patagonia and Barcelona. These were fun, too, but as my ability to read improved (and my Kindle started saying things like 'ten minutes left in chapter' rather than 'three hours left in chapter') I began to notice things I hadn't noticed before. I started asking myself, if this was in English would I have read it? Finally, it occurred to me to search for lists of the top Spanish crime writers on the internet. None of the authors I'd been reading appeared on those lists, and when I looked for Kindle editions of these recommended books they were all much more expensive than the ones I'd been reading. Maybe this was a clue. I bought one of them (the cheapest!) El último barco by Domingo Villar. I noticed immediately that Villar has a distinctive style. The plot proceeds slowly but the detailed descriptions of landscapes and interiors are of a different quality to the other books I've read. All children's authors know that making description interesting is both tricky and essential. Like Guzmán's books, these are set in Galicia, but the landscape comes to life in an entirely different way. There came a moment, about three chapters in, when I finished a paragraph and thought, Wow! that was really great writing.

I've also read a couple of children's books in Spanish. I've written quite a few football-based books, so I couldn't resist Los Futbolísmos when I found the first volume of the series in a bookshop. It's a completely different kind of football story to anything I've come across in the UK - aimed at 8-9-year-olds and above, it's almost 300 pages long! It's also highly illustrated. And the series is incredibly successful in Spain. The best thing about it from the point of view of a learner of Spanish is that it's full of natural, up-to-date (ish) idiomatic dialogue. But, despite the fact that I am considerably more than 9 years old, I still needed help from Google to read this. If I could read, speak and understand Spanish as well as a 9-year-old Spanish child I think I'd be happy.

And, finally, I should mention Don Quixote. I've tried and failed a few times to read this hugely long book, and I have succeeded at last. I found a children's edition in Spanish and it was only 70 pages long. Maybe one day I'll read the original. Maybe.