I imagine one of the greatest pleasures in writing a book (apart from celebrating with a whisky, putting the manuscript on your car seat then driving through the snow, having an accident and waking up in the house of a mad woman who’s gonna whack your ankles with a hammer) is choosing the art for the cover and then deciding on the book title. The cover is something you can either get horribly wrong or amazingly right. The author Christopher Brookmyre gets his titles pretty much spot on…. “All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye”, “A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil” and “Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks” are all great, but his book covers are pretty disappointing. However it’s an interesting point that the choice of book title will utterly influence whether it will go down in history as one of the best books of all time. No matter *how good* a book is, calling it “Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks” is like called a supermodel Brenda, it just ain’t gonna get to number one.
My book title? Hmm, maybe, “The Lord of the Badgers”?
My point? I don’t have one of course, but I did enjoy reading “All Fun and Games”, thanks for the recommendation! The story is about how far a normal person will go to when their family is in danger, but it’s also a story about how potential can be crushed by a cloying relationship… I’m just *so glad* that in the end of the story the main character didn’t do the decent, proper thing and stand by her man, go girl!