CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: LEE ROURKE

A weekly author Q&A series that dives into a pool of authors and retrieves a few bricks of truth. This week, we question Lee Rourke, author of The Canal and winner of the Guardian's 2010 Not The Booker prize.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

Today (it changes) it's 'Molloy' by Samuel Beckett. Because it's my third favourite of the trilogy.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

I talk to my two cats everyday. They like to tell me how much they enjoy murdering and torturing smaller animals for fun and, as one of them says, 'killing practice'.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

Radio waves beamed into infinite space.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

Ian McEwan.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

Red.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

I've just finished 'A Brief History of Fables: from Aesop to Flash Fiction' which is published this September.

I'm working on two things: my novel 'Amber' which is about dwelling. And a short story collection called 'I Like to be Stationary' which is about stasis.

The only big word I know is ultracrepedarian which I fear I am.

VIRAL PROMO FOR SOCRATES ADAMS' EVERYTHING'S FINE

Viral promo for forthcoming viral novel, Everything's Fine from Everything's Fine on Vimeo.

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: NICHOLAS ROYLE

A weekly author Q&A series that shakes fiction's cage to release some feathers of truth. This week, we question Nicholas Royle, author of Antwerp, the brains behind independent publisher Nightjar Press and now British literary fiction editor for Salt Publishing.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

That would have to be Echoes of Celandine by Derek Marlowe, reissued by Penguin as The Disappearance after there was a film adaptation.

Marlowe is my favourite author of all time, so one of his, probably Nightshade, would get top spot. With fairness in mind, I would give 2nd place to a novel by my favourite living novelist, Steve Erickson, and it would probably be Days Between Stations, his first.

So then for 3rd place I could go back to Marlowe and I think I would pick Echoes of Celandine/The Disappearance. It has never been reissued since that Penguin edition in 1977; none of Marlowe's novels has, despite various efforts by enthusiasts over the years. I could go on and on and on about Marlowe, but sense I should move on to Q2.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

I often ask Max, our cat, why he's so aggressive, why he bites and scratches all the time, and the only response I get is a bite or a scratch.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

I once tried to get the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to print a story of mine on the side of a house, an end terrace, so that my ex-girlfriend who lived near there would pretty much have to read it.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

It's got to be Anthony Burgess. If we're picking from Manchester writers.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

The only problem with red is an unfortunate association with a football team based in Salford or Trafford or somewhere. Not sure where, but I know it's not Manchester. I rather like sky blue for a book cover. Funnily enough, the cover of The Best British Short Stories 2011 is for the most part sky blue.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

I just did that. Damn. So let me plug another book. In fact, two books. Is that cheating? Since neither of them is by me I get to plug two. Fair?

Vault is a first novel by David Rose, published by Salt in a couple of weeks' time. It's very short and very good. Experimental fiction but highly readable, unlike, you have to admit, most experimental fiction. I'd like to champion readable experimental fiction.

Secondly, The Thing on the Shore, the second novel by Manchester writer Tom Fletcher, out now from Quercus. You will never regard west Cumbria in quite the same way again. I apologise for not using any words longer than experimental. How about I just finish by saying quotidian and haemaglobinopathy?

TALKING THERAPIES: GOOD FOR PEOPLE AND POLITICS?

Positive thinking will be poked with a stick at the next Manchester Salon discussion at Blackwell's bookshop.

Professor Dennis Hayes will join Dr Ken McLaughlin, senior lecturer in social work at Manchester Metropolitan University (pictured), to analyse the coalition government's drive to fund talking therapies.

The medicalisation of political and social trends and the assumption that we are all victims on the edge of breakdown will come under fire in this latest instalment of the Salon's discussions in our shop.

Come and join the debate. It takes place on May 16th at 6.30pm. Tickets are £5 and £3 and can be obtained from the shop. More information here.

MODERN LANGUAGES SALE NOW ON

An incredible sale of foreign fiction, textbooks and grammar guides has begun at Blackwell bookshop.

With prices as low as £1 for titles like Dom Juan, Huis Clos and Il castello dei destini incrociati, you'd be mad, verrückt, folle, pazzo, gal, szalony, i çmendur, šialený, ġenn and loco to miss it.

Find us on the first floor.

(Pictured: Cover artwork for Marguerite de Navarre's L'Heptaméron.)

WE GOT THE MAD SKULLS: BOOK EXHIBITION EXTENDED

Our exhibition of butchered books has been extended to May 18th following great coverage in yesterday's Manchester Evening News.

We launched this unique exhibition with a grand drinks reception in March (with a somewhat slurred after-party at Sandbar).

Customers now regularly browse the bones, shotgun cartridges, insects, film canisters and strange fluids nestled inside the books. Exhibits include a Jesus statue dripping in blood, bits of a rodent skeleton from a beach in Australia and the now infamous cast of female genitalia.

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: LARS IYER

A weekly author Q&A series that scratches beneath the surface and discovers it has won £5 on the lottery. This week, we question Lars Iyer, who will be reading from his debut novel Spurious at Blackwell Manchester tonight at 6.30pm.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

Third favourite? A random favourite instead: Clarice Lispector’s The Passion of G.H., a dialogue (of sorts) with a cockroach.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

Spurious is a Passion of G.H.-like dialogue with the tiny snails which fall through the hole in my kitchen ceiling. And a dialogue (a one-way dialogue) with the damp itself, which says the same thing as God to Moses: I am that I am.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

If it were possible to print in an ink of dryness on walls of damp, that would be my wish. To print with dry ink, the printed words swallowed up by a fresh wave of damp by morning.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

I would be Bez, a kind of idiot jester, shaking my maracas at the sky.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

Brown, damp-brown, mottled with green.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

I am always working at the blog Spurious, and with long words like apocalypse and Armageddon.

EVENT: LARS IYER & LEE ROURKE, MONDAY 11TH APRIL

Lars Iyer and Lee Rourke will be reading from their novels tomorrow (Monday) at 6.30pm.

Based on the blog of the same name, Spurious is Lars Iyer's deadpan account of two academics ("neither of [whom] is Kafka") and their rather unbalanced relationship.

Lee Rourke's The Canal, meanwhile, is a novel about boredom which is defiantly unboring: the book is joint winner of the Guardian's Not The Booker prize.

The event takes place in the bookshop and should run 'til about 8.30pm. Expect readings, discussion about things literary and a pleasing amount of free alcohol. For more information, ring the shop on 0161 274 3331 or leave a comment.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET OUR BOOKSELLERS LOOSE ON A #HUNGRYWRITERS TWITTER HASHTAG

Lots of people on Twitter have been coming up with 'hungry writers' puns. Here is a selection of our booksellers' contributions. With analysis from our blog editor.

Aldous Pizza Hutsly  ¦  Bill Fryupson  ¦  Caramac McCarthy  ¦  Charles Bukowskeema nan  ¦  Chow Lin  ¦  Cormac McFlurry-Carthy  ¦  David Bell-pepper-bin  ¦  David Foster Wall's Ice Cream 2 Litre Tub  ¦  Donna lemon Tartt  ¦  Donner meat DeLillo  ¦  fruit Flan O'Brien...

Editor's note: there's a significant takeaway feel to the tweets so far, with mentions of keema nan, donner meat and McFlurries. This says much about the diet of the average bookseller

...Gordon Lish 'n' chips  ¦  Graham Greene bean salad  ¦  Ham and cheese Roal-d Dahl  ¦  Harper Leek  ¦  Haruki MuraCaramac ¦  Henning Mankelloggs  ¦  Iain M&Ms Banks  ¦  Ian McEwanton Soup  ¦  Irvinetomatoes Welsh  ¦  Jeff after-Noon snack...

Editor's note: This is better. We have at least one of our five-a-day in there, although I can't imagine Automated Alice having time for an afternoon snack, not where she's been.

...Jenn Ashworthers Originals  ¦  John Grisham sandwich  ¦  Jonathan Branzen  ¦  Jonathan Saffron Foercheese pizza  ¦  Joyce Carol Oats  ¦  Knut Roast Hamsun  ¦  Marcel Boost ¦  Martin Amiso soup  ¦  Mary Shellfishey  ¦  Neil Gamepieman  ¦  Nikesh Shuklarge fries ¦  Oliver Jeffers-Cake...

Editor's note: Now we're getting clever. We have a spice and a pizza in one author, plus nut roast and roast ham in in another. Incidentally, Mr Hamsun is Norway's premier post-modern 19th century author (no, really) and would not have known the joy of the Jaffa Cake.

...Paul Auster-fry  ¦  Paul Oatser  ¦  Philip K(ebab) Dick  ¦  Philip KFC Dick  ¦  Philip Poultryman  ¦  Pilchard Brautigan  ¦  Ray Branbury  ¦  Raymond Carvery  ¦  Roald Lentil Dahl  ¦  Salmon Rushdie  ¦  Soup Townsend  ¦  Spam Stoker  ¦  Stephen King-size Mars bar  ¦  Truman Capotatoete  ¦  William Giblets-son  ¦  William S(campi) Burroughs  ¦  Yukio Bangers-N-Mashima

Editor's note: If you have spent any time sharing a staffroom with booksellers, you'll know our predilection for many of the foodstuffs listed here: pilchards, salmon, giblets... Philip K Dick gets two bites of the tweet here: an honour of which his androids could only dream. What have we learnt from this? Is literature richer as a result? Does anyone really know what the M in Iain M Banks stands for? We may never know.

WRITERS AND KITTIES

We were going to post some illuminating information on new releases this morning, but the internet has put a stop to that.

The latest one-theme Tumblr site to grab our attention is the quite delightful Writers and Kitties.

It features the likes of Samuel Beckett and his cat, and Albert Camus and his cat, and Sylvia Plath and her cat, and Margaret Atwood and her cat, and Don DeLillo and his cat (pictured). Although the presence of Haruki Murakami and TS Eliot is a given, there are some delightful surprises too.

Now, where were we? Oh yes, running a bookshop...

(PS - if you prefer things you can tap rather than things you can stroke, here are some authors and their typewriters.)

DON DELILLO'S NEW COVER DESIGNS

We love the new covers on Picador's Don DeLillo books.

The stark, block colours are based on the content of the books, so Point Omega gets a baking hot desert, Running Dog has a film reel based on the book's movie of somewhat dubious repute, while the preoccupations of the protagonist in End Zone gives the cover its odd nuclear baseball design.

Do pop into the shop and get yourself some DeLillo: you'll see the display near the front door.

SLICE TO SEE YOU, TO SEE YOU SLICE: THE SURGERY OF DREAMS IS STILL OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Edit: this exhibition has now been extended. It will be on display until May 18th 2011.

We're hosting a unique exhibition that, basically, kills books.

Michael Mayhew is an artist; one of those types that will disappear into his studio for days then come out looking ragged but with an interesting new piece of something-or-other.

Recently, he has been slicing into old books and placing objects inside them. The macabre results can be seen in an exhibition running in our bookshop until April 20th May 18th.

We hope you'll find it beautiful, disturbing, entertaining and uncomfortable.

The exhibits can be seen next to the stairs near the skeleton in the medical department, nestled against the pillar at the front door and scattered in the windows next to the Aardvark cafe. The whole thing is overseen by a naked plastic bodyguard, muscles scratched with quotations.

No, really. Come into our bookshop and you'll see.

Read more about the Surgery Of Dreams exhibition on this site here.