Today's Bookcase Showcase comes from author Jeff Povey as part of the blog tour for his new book Shift
The mainly Ed McBain collection
“I
scoured the internet, old bookshops, anywhere I could think of, to find
all of McBain’s books. I sourced interviews with him and read about
his methods and how he went out with New York cops looking for stories
or characters. I thought he was amazing. I’ve got a lot of Jack
McDevitt there as well, a sci-fi writer I discovered in an old bookshop
by accident. I hadn’t really read sci-fi until then. He got me
hooked.”
The Jonathan Coe and Kate Atkinson picture
“You
can’t not read Johnathan Coe at some stage. Kate Atkinson is just a
hero of mine. Oh dear, I just realised that my long forgotten novel is
in these pictures (there were clearly a few that didn’t sell J). I was actually focusing on Wodehouse – as anyone with a sense of humour should.”
Rufus the dog in the library
“Rufus was disappointed that there are no dogs in Shift.”
The Art Collection
“Sadly
not mine. My wife is an artist, two of my daughters are studying
printmaking and illustration, and therefore we have quite a collection.
I do look through them though, and we have some intense debates about
shows we have been to and collections that we have seen. Things have
been thrown during the course of these discussions. But that’s art for
you.”
The William Boyd picture
“I seem to have two copies of a William Boyd novel The Blue Afternoon.
I think that was because I bought one thinking my wife would like it
and she did the same for me at the same time. His film script for Stars and Bars
was the first screenplay I was ever shown by a film company. They were
trying to teach me how screenplays were set down – and written of
course. I sat there with the script in my lap while the film played.
Whatever I learned that day has stood me in good stead all this time.
If I ever met William Boyd I would bore him with that story.”
“Also I bought the rights to Caro Fraser’s The Pupil
and convinced Kudos Productions to back the development of it into a TV
series. It’s about a pupil in a law firm and it’s a great read with a
fantastic character at its heart. Sadly a legal series with John Thaw
started filming around the same time and the chance disappeared. I
still think it would have made great television. You can see many
different authors here, and some I will have read to see if they could
make great TV or even a film. Others I just chanced across.”
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