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Comment from the book world in January 2025

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'They are looking to be entertained'

20 January 2025

'I know it is the old J K Rowling argument but it is important culturally to get people to sit down and read 300 pages and she had done that. Look at Colleen Hoover, who has sold millions of books around the world and there could be a class of writers who are jealous of that but she has brought so many people into bookshops and brought so many people into reading...

I love Stephen King, Marian Keyes, Kate Atkinson; she can write an absolute page-turner but also when you are reading it you are thinking "This is amazing what you are doing and I'm envious of that."...

If I was to write Midnight's Children there would be a bit of me that would go: "I'm not sure people are going to enjoy this." I've always written and presented for an audience, created a show for an audience, that is the thing that I'm interested in...'

When most people watch television or watch films or read books they are looking to be entertained and I'm not dumbing myself down in any way. I am working to the absolute level of my intelligence.'

Richard Osman is a television presenter and author of The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed and The Last Devil to Die, all number one, million-copy international bestsellers as well as New York Times bestsellers. We Solve Murders is his fifth novel. The Times

Richard Osman's publisher's page

 

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'I'm violently against any form of censorship...'

6 January 2025

‘I have written four novels from the point of view of a woman, which is regarded as appropriation. I'm violently against any form of censorship. I defend a novelist's right to write about anything he or she wants. But in today's climate, the judging will be more harsh, severe or penetrative...

There is no point in trying to whitewash old attitudes. Trying to tidy up the bad behaviour of novelists of the past is misguided and fundamentally a waste of time. But you can certainly alert people that opinions expressed in these books are not opinions we have in polite society today. Evelyn Waugh's Scoop is full of racism. But you can't possibly go back to Scoop, remove all that and represent it as Evelyn Waugh's novel. You have to take the rough with the smooth...'

William Boyd, the prizewinning author of 17 novels, including A Good Man in Africa, Any Human Heart, Stars and Bars, Love is Blind and The Romantic, in The Times.

http://williamboyd.co.uk/