Penguin's decision to "revive the lost art of the weekly serial" with its publication of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, a "compulsive gothic adventure story, set in a fictitious Victorian city", meets mixed reactions this week. "The subscription includes the whole book in 10 instalments, with one instalment delivered to your door each week," explains Viking publisher Venetia Butterfield at The Penguin Blog. "You can either hungrily grab each book as it falls through the letterbox, feverishly unwrapping and devouring to immediately discuss it with your friends, or stopper your ears with cotton wool and save the whole clump for a huge binge over Christmas."
"Visually it looks as if it's going to be beautiful, and from the website the story looks intriguing," says Jessica at The Book Bar. "There's been a bit of a glut of literary Victoriana recently, but despite that, the book looks good enough and the concept interesting enough to stand out ... Just a marketing gimmick? Possibly, but if so, it's worked for me."
"Publishers are always looking for new (or old) ways to sell their wares, so you can't blame them for that," argues ReadySteadyBook's Mark Thwaite. "But the book sounds like terrible tripe."
"There are so many things to ponder here," muses a blogger at Booksquare. "First, the price ... the total cost of the serialised version of the novel will exceed the list price of the put-together version by roughly £10. Sure, that makes sense ..."
"Fans of the serialised version will get a chance to discuss the book online, preferably at the website devoted to the novel's extensive mythology," Booksquare goes on to explain. But "so far, the site is, well, less than we expected ... It looks really pretty, but doesn't deliver the key elements we're seeking: extensive mythology and community interaction ... Since we can't do much beyond read a few screens of text, there is no incentive to return. What Penguin has created here is a very elaborate commercial; what Penguin needed to create was a community. To build buzz, you must provide a hive."
"This is a really different book to anything Penguin has published previously," claims Butterworth back at the Penguin blog, under the heading "Throwing stones at Glass Books". "It's sexy, adventurous, thrilling and unusual, packed full of Dickensian cliffhangers, and we wanted to capture and share that in how our first readers enjoy the book. Yes, the subscription costs more than January's hardback will ... but this is a wonderful, unique way to read this book."
"Bottom line remains: good idea, not-so-great execution," is the final verdict from Booksquare.
Elsewhere, Book World's Sandra can't find a book to stick with. "Is it possible to have reader's block in the same way that authors encounter writer's block?" she wonders. "I prowled the bookshelves like Goldilocks ... sampling everything and finding nothing that was just right."
Happily, the author Susan Hill is on hand with a solution. In a post entitled "Six books to read if you don't know what to read next", she says: "I've done a trawl along the bookcase on the landing ... And I have come up with the following six books. All come highly recommended ... The High Window by Raymond Chandler, A Month in the Country by JL Carr, Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, The Flaneur by Edmund White and A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul." Guaranteed to cure the most stubborn reader's block.
