http://www.thebookseller.com/news/111542-record-number-of-submissions-for-the-2009-odd-title-prize.html

Many of those mentioned have already proved strong sellers in the shop over the past few months, not least festive favourite Father Christmas Needs a Wee and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. However, as a long-standing fan of this excellent prize, the Book Barge is tipping either I Stopped Sucking My Thumb… Why Can’t You Stop Drinking OR Budgeting for Infertility for glory should they make the shortlist.

Meanwhile, sate you appetite for the weird and wonderful still further with the following terrific titles in store:

Pet Noir: Shocking true crime stories that shook the nation and rocked the world

How People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to do About it

The Compulsory Wife

Hairdressing Science

How to Become Archbishop

If You Want Closure in Your Relationship Start With Your Legs

The Normal Child and Some of His Abnormalities

How to S**t in the Woods: An environmentally sound approach to a lost art

Delphiniums for Everyone

Fabulous Small Jews

Milk Without Tears: The Essentials of Dairy Farming

Life with Women and How to Survive it

I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen.

So for the past few months I’ve adopted the edifying routine of rising at 6.45am for tea (which, rather usefully, helps dispel any self-loathing I may feel at my listlessness forty minutes later when I climb back into bed), rising again at 10.30am, having another tea in front of the final thirty minutes of Wanted Down Under (awful Oz-based BBC property programme which reassures me greatly that there is nothing good about pre-noons, especially when the lousy house-hunting participants start weeping loudly at their messages from home) and then a final dash for the boat. The duration of the latter, which ultimately affects my punctuality opening the shop, depends very much on how productive I’ve managed to be at the 6.45am stage. Sometimes I can fit in a whole shower and get dressed for the day before returning to my favoured prone position. Invariably, I just feel cold and moan about that for a bit before bed again. So yes, usually I end up late. Sometimes however, like yesterday and today, I forego the second sleep (for the sake of heightening the appeal of subsequent lie-ins later in the week – my idleness being somewhat of an art form, finely tuned by years of hypnagogic sloth) and find myself all ready and waiting for customers at the tawdry but more culturally acceptable hour of 8.30am. These days fill me with endless pride and I usually tell everyone I meet about my diligence.

Anyway, as a result of this temporal unpredictability, I suggest doing away with fixed opening times altogether and adopting the rather fashionable flexi-time approach to work. Thus I can assure customers, as the updated homepage now reads, that the shop will be open most days, most of the time. Except Tuesdays. Any confusion can always be resolved by ringing first on 07946 605324 to check whereabouts.

Home again, home again

jiggidey jig

said the fat,

round,

green little pig.

With a sgwiggle and a sgwoggle

and a twitch of his nose

he sat on the poof

and struck up a pose.

It also reminds me we have a brand new WRITE section in the shop, adorned with all you could need to create your own mini masterpiece. Penguin pencils, Cath Kidston and Liberty notebooks and the very useful Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2010 are just some of the things that should help you get started.

The New Year also sees a refurbished interior for the boat, including a lick of paint, prettier shelving, a rather delectable Underwood typewriter on display (more of these to come for sale), new boating and writing sections and a greater emphasis on MINDING YOUR HEAD on the way out. Our mini-holiday last week was also spent scouring book fairs so expect plenty of interesting second hand and antiquarian stock to peruse. Meanwhile, it looks to be an excellent year for new releases too. Our top fiction picks for January 2010 include Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, EL Doctorow’s Homer and Langley and Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde. I should also put lingering A-level prejudices aside to do my booksellerly duty and inform poetry-lovers that Carol Ann Duffy has a love collection out this month. The best of non-fiction includes Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society edited by Bill Bryson and an illuminating guide to the current financial chaos in Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester.

Wonderful as the above all are I have to confess that, in my head, I sometimes like to forget The Book Barge is on a canal at all. Dismissing the fact that it is currently permanently moored in a tiny Staffordshire village without diesel enough in the tank to venture further afield than the first lock, daydreaming invariably follows the infinitely more sensational lines of a Joseph Conrad plot (interestingly, the boat is also called Joseph) and I fancy that we’re gunrunning rather than bookselling, and the setting is rather more South China Sea than Burton on Trent suburbia. Consequently, I tend to find boat-related fiction much more pleasing than real-life travelogues and often steer my buying in this direction. Ill-advisedly, perhaps, as the three books I am about to recommend are still sitting on the shelves awaiting customer interest a good few months after purchase. Hmmph.

The Lightship by Siegfried Lenz

The copy I have has a wonderfully gaudy cover and the promise of “a brilliant novel of psychological tension – now a major feature film.” Now usually this sort of boast would have me reaching for my ineffectual pair of left-handed scissors in the drawer beside me (which don’t actually cut but rather bludgeon their way with all the grace of a John Sergeant paso doble through paper) to dismember its 127 constituent page parts into blizzard over the bin. Not in this case. While I still have no idea about the second claim, the first is entirely true. It IS both brilliant and arresting. It’s also set on a vessel I didn’t even know existed: an old reserve lightship sent out into the Baltic again after the war to warn ships of the shifting sandbanks and to give them a steering point between mines. It starts, as a memoir of this boat probably could in a few years time too: “They had been moored endlessly.” Cue the arrival of three ruthless criminals, the odd cold-blooded murder, suspense, intrigue and a rook called Edith who meets a very nasty end.

Timmy the Tug by Jim Downer and Ted Hughes

Not just a beautiful story, beautifully illustrated, but also with an amazing story about the story, if you get my drift. Turns out Jim Downer (illustrator) once shared the same building of flats as Ted Hughes and Peter O’Toole, among other famous names. Downer wrote the original Timmy tale in the mid-1950s to impress his then-girlfriend and Hughes offered to help improve the verse. The manuscript was then lost but, 52 years later, Hughes’ wife Carol found it in the late poet’s archive and, after searching him out, returned it to Downer. It is published as a facsimile of the original manuscript and looks stunning. The accompanying verse is equally good, as you would expect from Hughes. Again, it deals with a boat longing to escape its moorings:

“Timmy the Tug sat patiently there.

The ropes rubbed sore, his rivets ached.

He was up to his eyes in oil and tar.

The gulls cried ‘Old Crock’ in his ear,

The green crabs called him wrecked.

This was more than he could stand.”

The Boat by Nam Le

A resplendent collection of short stories, which I can’t recommend strongly enough. While only one actually deals with a boat (the harrowing last, which gives its name to the collection), they share that very nautical of themes – wanderlust – traversing not just continents, but time/history too. Fellow writer Junot Diaz called Nam Le a “heartbreaker” for this debut, which seems the most perfect word of praise, particularly for personal (and surprising) favourite Halflead Bay. It has an unassuming start, a bit Home & Away (it’s set in a small Australian fishing town and follows a teenage boy/school footie star, his sickbed-bound mum and a real slut of a girl with a bruiser of a boyf) but is quietly and tenderly shattering to read. There’s a horribly good description of a sleepless, troubled night: “The ocean seethed and sighed in the dark. So this was where you ended up, sick in sleep. Your night a beach and all sorts of junk washing up on shore.” It’s worth looking at the website for the collection too: http://www.namleonline.com/

Martin will be in the shop between 15:30 and 17:30 to sign copies and compare notes on the *original* Jedward. Team Jacob or Team Edward, choose your side… canalside.

Meanwhile, we’ll be getting into the Twilight spirit throughout the day with discounts across the entire Stephenie Meyer series and related merchandise. We may also wear fangs.

Anyway, the tree is now up in all its twinkling loveliness and there’s some free festive confectionary in the biscuit tin so come aboard for a browse or to collect a Christmas catalogue. Late afternoons are particularly pleasant here by the water, when the boat is framed by the promenade’s fairy lights and our interior lamps are subdued enough to hide my feeble daytime dusting attempts.

Our first book will be Barty’s Scarf – the story of how a lamb’s love for knitwear ultimately saves the day. All youngsters sporting a scarf can come in for free. Bare necks must pay a £1. Afterwards, we’ll be making our very own paper scarves to stretch the length of the kids’ corner and keep the shop snug for winter.

Email info@thebookbarge.co.uk or phone Sarah on 07946 605324 to reserve a place.

For details of subsequent weeks’ stories, keep checking the events page.