{"id":15483,"date":"2024-02-20T14:11:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T14:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=15483"},"modified":"2024-02-19T14:54:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T14:54:39","slug":"blogathon-20-24-book-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=15483","title":{"rendered":"Blogathon 20\/24: Book find!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I meant to blog about this one a few months ago but, you know…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went to Hay-on-Wye (not Hay-oh-Why, that’s a place that doesn’t exist). The ‘we’ on this occasion were two mostly adults, two mostly children, and four unbelievably well-behaved dogs. Hay-on-Wye is probably the book capital of the world, but it is definitely, as the sign on the way into the town says ‘The World’s First Book Town’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The official Hay On Wye website lists thirteen bookshops in the town<\/a>, but I’ve counted twenty-five as I milled aimlessly around the streets. Anyway. Everyone who has been to Hay has their favourite bookshop. Mine is the Cinema; three floors of books, acres of books, a beautiful Welsh Language section, and all books categorised and in immaculate order. It’s brilliant, and I love the Cinema and everything it stands for and supports. Here’s one corner of less than 10% of one floor in the Cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of my early favourite reads was an English writer by the name of Adam Hall. I was addicted to his books; Adam had a uniquely edgy style of writing that defied literary convention. His books caught a lot of imaginations, to the point where the BBC commissioned a series<\/a> based on one of his books. Unfortunately the translation of edgy, convention-defying literary work into television drama did not work well, but the BBCs intentions were good, though misguided. Some work needs to stay in the original format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was such a fanboy of his work, I wrote to Adam (real name: Elleston Trevor, but more of that in a moment) and he (and his wife, Jonquil) wrote back from their home in Arizona. We corresponded for years; they were both encouraging and helped me develop a style for my own writing. Under the name Elleston Trevor he wrote the book ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ which was twice made into a film. The first one starred James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger, and Ernest Borgnine amongst others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was browsing the thousands of shelves in the Cinema, I visited the appropriate section and did an alphabetical search of old friends. I was delighted to find two books by Adam Hall so naturally I bought them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I got back to the caravan, I picked up and opened the first book and out dropped an A5-sized piece of paper. It was a typed letter on Daily Telegraph headed paper. The letter was from the Literary Editor of the Telegraph, addressed to a book reviewer on the Telegraph’s staff, asking him to turn around a review of the book I was holding! I felt as if I’d discovered something of significant historical value. I still do. But I’m probably the only person who thinks this way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I meant to blog about this one a few months ago but, you know… We went to Hay-on-Wye (not Hay-oh-Why, that’s a place that doesn’t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}