Hey everyone, welcome back to the Waterstones vlog, it's Will here. You may have seen this
week that the Costa Book Awards have announced their shortlists. If you don't
know the Costa book awards they have different categories so there's novel,
first novel, biography, poetry and children's books and they have shortlists
for each of those, then there'll be category winners announced at the
beginning of next year and then an overall book of the year announced a
couple of weeks after that. It was very interesting to see some of the books on
the shortlists. Great to see another nod for Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams,
also great to see Surge by Jay Bernard in the poetry list. But I had a particular
interest in the biography section this year because this year I was on the
judging panel for biography. So I've spent the last few months reading a lot of
biographies. And I mean A LOT. And then had a meeting with my fellow judges
Professor Susannah Lipscomb and James Marriot and we then had to whittle
those down to a shortlist which was really, really hard. I have a lot of
respect for judges now, having done this. It's just really tricky to sort of lose
some books that you absolutely love in order to come up with a short list of
four books. However we did it and I'm very, very proud of this shortlist. I
think there is something for almost any type of nonfiction reader here. Here they
are and I'm just gonna have a little quick word about each of them, in no
particular order. I'm gonna pick up first of all On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming
which I have actually mentioned myself here once before and indeed it's been
covered by Naomi on the vlog. Not too much more to say here obviously but what
begins with a fascinating premise; the idea of a young girl basically being
kidnapped on a beach, disappearing for a few days and then coming back to the
family home, not talking about what happened, not able to really remember
what happened in those few days and Laura Cumming sort of digging into her
family's past to find out more about what had happened and why it happened.
Completely fascinating book and it manages to combine I think some of those
things that are interesting about biography which is that kind of
narrative page turning quality with sort of some meticulous research, a real sense
of time and period and place. And also some interesting stuff in there
about art which of course is Laura's day job if you like, that's her area
of expertise. So absolutely fantastic book. Very, very, very much recommended.
Moving on now to The Making of Poetry by Adam Nicolson. This looks at Coleridge
and the Wordsworth's and the year that they spent together and it takes an
almost sort of day-by-day approach to telling the story of what happened in
this year that they spent together. You can see it's got this really striking
cover and this is some artwork that runs throughout the book.
There's some nice endpapers here, there's other images throughout the book
to not so much illustrate the text, because they're not always
directly related to what's happening in the book, but I guess to sort of help add
to the feeling of the book. Now I don't know about you but I was taught poetry
really appallingly at school and so I don't have a great awareness of the work
of Coleridge or Wordsworth and so it was quite interesting to read this book
because it it really looks at how some of these really famous poems were
created, what might have fed into them, in particular looking at
the landscape that they were in, in this year together and how that may have
influenced how they were writing and why they were writing. I think
obviously particularly of great interest to those who are into their
poetry and even especially if they're into Coleridge or Wordsworth; a perfect
Christmas gift that one. Moving on now to The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather
which is a completely fascinating story about a Polish soldier, part of the
Polish resistance, underground, who volunteered to go into Auschwitz in order
to sort of expose what was happening there. And it sort of seems extraordinary
to think that anybody would volunteer to go into somewhere like Auschwitz but
this is exactly what he did. And he was there as I say to sort of it expose what
was happening there but of course you've got the problem about how you get that
information out. It's a completely meticulously researched book and so
historically it feels like a very, very important document. Narratively it is
page-turning and fascinating and sort of awful. I've
read quite a few books now I think about the concentration camps in Nazi Germany
and there is a really fine line to tread between sort of sensationalism, in a way,
telling that story but sort of focusing on the
gory details if you like for no reason other than that they are a bit gross and
sort of horrifying and here there's sort of a real discipline in sharing that
information but without sensationalizing it. And in fact allowing the stories of
the people who are there to, you know, to sort of tell their own story if you like.
Fascinating photographs throughout the book showing all of the people there and
just brilliant. I mean absolutely loved it, couldn't stop reading it, one of those
sort of compelling books that I couldn't put down. So very, very highly
recommended, that's The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather. And then to finish off we
have In Extremis which is Lindsey Hilsum's biography of the journalist
Marie Colvin. So Lindsey Hilsum was a friend and colleague of Marie Colvin's
and so she has access to so much of her life as a close friend of yours would
and so therefore there's lots of personal detail in here. You get a real
insight right from her childhood growing up in America to throughout her
journalistic career right up until her sort of untimely death. And it is a
brilliant insight into journalism and I think incredibly important in this day
and age where the journalism in the media is under attack from people saying
things like fake news or mainstream media being used as sort of pejorative
terms. It's a real insight into the bravery that it takes sometimes to go
into certain parts of the world to report what is happening there and also
at the same time you get this insight into how bravery and recklessness
sometimes go hand in hand. And there's a real question with Marie Colvin about how
far she pushed things and whether that was safe and whether she should have
done that or not. Her boundaries were always quite fluid and also with
that I suppose how that kind of spirit can influence your personal life as well.
In terms of her close relationships and her family relationships and things like
that. So again, really, really gripping, very,
very interesting book and another one that I found myself just turning the
pages completely gripped and wanting to sort of take time away from everything
else in order to read it. So again, very very, highly recommended. That's In
Extremis by Lindsey Hilsum. So there we go.
Four books on that short list, absolutely
brilliant. I am now going take a well-earned rest from reading
biographies and maybe go read some fiction. But it was a real privilege to
be one of the judges for this year's Costa prize. It's great
to read such a breadth of work and also to sit down and talk with my fellow
judges to work out you know the best books to put on that short list was
intellectually challenging and really good to speak with fellow book lovers
you know and to find the best books. So if you do read any of them I obviously hope
that you enjoy them and we will be finding out which book has won not only
the biography of the year but the other categories at the very beginning of
January 2020. So, watch this space. Take care, bye.