NEW BOOKS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 260, 3 November 1941, Page 9

NEW BOOKS

Authors Encouraged In Spite Of The Blitz

Women book lovers in this country will be interested in the following news from London, which explains how publishers are reconciling rising book sales with increasing paper shortage. A list of present best-sellers is also given, but will probably be read with a sigh here, since many of them are unlikely to reach this country.

One suggestion regarding the paper shortage, says Joan Littlefield, is that each book must contain 6000 words for every ounce of its bound weight. A lower ratio may be decided on for educational, technical and juvenile books, in which provision must be made for illustrations or diagrams. Margin?, will be narrower, type smaller and space for chapter headings less, but so far there is no idea of asking authors to write shorter books.

The Strand Magazine, which published Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and many of the short stories of W. W. Jacobs. H. G. Wells, A. E. W. Mason and P. G. Wodehouse, is now one-third of its usual size, mough it has more pages, some of them in colour. Its wartime price is still 1/3. Among present best-sellers here is "Grim Glory," a collection of pictures of Britain under fire made by American photographers. Alice Duer Miller's "The White Cliffs" is still much in demand and has been broadcast twice with American-born Constance Cummings as the speaker. Other popular books are "Middle East," by H. V. Morton; "The Thin Blue Line," a true-life novel of the R.A.F. by Charles Graves; and "Winged Words," a collection of airmen's speeches.

Britons are also reading Clarence Streit's "Union With Britain Now"; a new volume of Bertrand Russell's essays, "Let the People Think"; H. G. Wells* "Guide to the New World"; Jan Valtin's "Out of the Night"; and<John Masefield's new chapter of autoDiography, "In the Mill," which deals with his experiences in a New York carpet factory.

John Buchan's "Sick Heart River", heads the list of novels, and people are also reading L. A. G. Strong s "The Bay"; Noel Langley's wicked satire on Hollywood, "Hocus Pocus"; Karel Capek's "The Cheat"; and Sir Philip Gibbs' "The Amazing Summer."

Since the Russo-German clash booksellers and libraries have been receiving many inquiries for books on Stalin and Soviet Russia. One (Jf the most interesting of these is Geoffrey Cox'sf "The Red Army Moves" a well-balanced account of the Russo-Finnish war. A new political study is "War and Peace in Soviet Diplomacy," by T. A. Taracouzio.

Other popular books on Russia published during the last few months include Sir Bernard Pares "Russia," outlining Russian political development from 1905 to to-day, a new authorised translation of Stalin's "Leninism"; st ®, u ",? Kampf," by M. R Werner. and an outspoken biography of Stalin by Eugene Lyons.