book talk with Graeme Neill - the week that was

Common sense thankfully prevailed this week when the High Court quashed the decision to close libraries in Somerset and Gloucestershire. Campaigners were understandably emotional at the decision, which vindicated their dogged campaign against plans to slash services. Daniel Carey, of Public Interest Lawyers, who represented the residents, said: "Today's High Court ruling sends a clear message not only to Gloucestershire and Somerset councils but to every council in the country, that catering for the needs of the vulnerable must be at the heart of every decision to cut important services such as libraries."
Gloucestershire campaigner Johanna Anderson attacked the culture minister Ed Vaizey, a vocal defender of the library sector   when in opposition but silent on the issue since elected. She said: "It is clear that he left his convictions at the door on entering office."
Julian Barnes could become the first author to win both the Man Booker prize and Costa Book of the Year award, after The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape) was nominated in the best novel category. Barnes is up against John Burnside's A Summer of Drowning (Cape), Andrew Miller's Pure (Sceptre) and Louisa Young's My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (HarperCollins) for the award, which will be announced on 4th January. The winner will face off the category winners of the poetry, debut, biography and children's prizes for the Costa Book of the Year, which will be revealed on   24th January.
Charity retailers have hit back in the row over whether they are responsible for the difficulties hitting high street booksellers. Last week, the Booksellers Association demanded the government end tax and business rate concessions for charity bookshops, as they provide "unfair competition" for booksellers. However, a spokesman for the Charity Retailers Association said: "Charity shops are not responsible for the challenges faced by independent booksellers . . . We think that independent retailers could be supported in a variety of ways without penalising charity shops, which raise around £200 million for a huge range of causes in the UK every year, and we would support greater help for independent booksellers in the current economic climate." Staff at The Bookseller, and no doubt readers and booksellers across the country, are hugely excited by the announcement that Hilary Mantel will have her sequel to the 2009 Man Booker prizewinning Wolf Hall published in May 2012. Authors will have a tough job coming up with a better title for a book in 2012 than the grisly Bring Up the Bodies. Fourth Estate publisher Nicholas Pearson said: "[Mantel] has turned her attention to the downfall of Anne Boleyn, a story at the heart of Tudor history, and in Mantel’s hands, every bit as illuminating, terrifying and utterly compelling as one might expect."

While Christopher Paolini may not attract the same amount of column inches as Stephenie Meyer or J KRowling, he is still a publishing phenomenon in his own right. Inheritance, the concluding part of his Inheritance Cycle (Doubleday), sold 76,359 copies across five days last week, averaging one sale every five-and-a-half seconds. It is the strongest sales from a hardback novel since Stephenie Meyer’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Atom) sold 137,000 copies in seven days in June 2010.

Graeme Neill is The Bookseller's   News Editor