Dan Rhodes Blog

Hello people. Just a quick one this week. Fresh from having conquered the youth market of Glasgow at the Aye Write festival, Rhodes is heading straight back out on tour. He’ll be in Oxford on 27th and 28th March (the weekend the clocks change – this catches him out every year but we’re sure his team of personal assistants will get him to the stage on time), and he’s set to read on the Friday afternoon (9th April – exact time and place TBC) of the Laugharne Weekend in Carmarthenshire. The line-up is finally taking shape here, and it’s looking like another great year. Tons of writers, and musical highlights will include perennial Rhodes favourites Mark Olson and Richard James.

Then he’ll be in Aberdeen in May, with other dates to be added. The road goes on forever… Further details of all this kind of thing at the Readings page.

On to international news  - Little Hands Clapping is being launched in Canada any minute now, and it’ll be coming out in (at least) Finnish, Spanish, Danish and Italian. Further news of these translations when they’re imminent.

We’re all off to the airport now, to catch the next plane to Zürich and have a look at the best Dan Rhodes window display ever. Many thanks to Julia and everyone else at Orell Füssli for this – it’s a beauty.

Happy reading.

Hello everyone. This is our second update of the week, so we’ll keep it brief. Here goes:

Dan Rhodes has been announced as the winner of the 2010 E.M. Forster Award.

That’s all for now. Happy reading.

Hello people. A full month on from the publication of Little Hands Clapping, Rhodes is still being kept busy. We’ve tracked down a couple of recent interviews – this first one, with Colin Waters at the Scottish Review of Books, is a monster. We’ve never read a longer interview with anyone. Rhodes is notoriously irascible, and here he excels himself, so much so that his legal team have sent us a strongly-worded letter insisting we point out that while the bulk of this interview was taking place he was suffering from acquired torticollis, a.k.a. wry neck. He was only able to look in one direction (downwards and to the left), and any movement would result in a searing blast of agony. We suppose we too would be pretty grumpy under these circumstances. But it’s not all bad news – he gives us a mention, and even ‘applauds’ us, possibly heralding a thawing in relations. Maybe one day he’ll even stop trying to get us closed down.

[We've hacked into Rhodes' medical records and can confirm that his neck has since recovered, but he is currently bandaged up, having sliced open the back of his hand in a bizarre gardening accident. The show will go on though - the wound will be on public display at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow at 7.30 this Friday, 12th March. Why not go along and have a look at it?]

Another interview, a Q&A with The List, lives here. At this point Rhodes was going through a rare phase of good health, so he has no excuse for his bad temper and foul mouth. But at least he leavens things with a joke about a pillow, adapted from his 1977 Muppets annual.

On to other news. Rhodes has announced a string of appearances in Oxford on Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th March. His slots are at 3.30 and 7.30 sharp on the Saturday and 1.30 on the Sunday. They’re happening in a tent near the Book Festival’s ticket office and book shop – the tent has something to do with Canongate Books and Highland Park whisky (nice – keep your fingers crossed for a free tasting), and will be easy to spot. Rhodes will be reading different stuff each time, and it’s free – just turn up. Other authors involved include Geoff Dyer and Mari Strachan. This booking means that Rhodes will have visited Oxford twice in his life, bringing the city level with Cambridge in the Oxford and Cambridge Rhodes Race. 2-2, and everything to play for.

Details of this and other events (Glasgow, Laugharne, Aberdeen, more to follow) live over at our Readings page.

And finally… we are delighted to announce that Little Hands Clapping is spending an unprecedented fifth consecutive week in Heat magazine’s Top 10, together with its five star review. What a run.

Happy reading.

Hello everyone. We won’t keep you in suspense any longer – we are delighted to announce that Little Hands Clapping is in Heat magazine’s Top 10 for the fourth week running. It has only slipped one place, to number eight, which means – that’s right – that it might even make it to an unprecedented five-week run. We’re going to try not to think about it. Wish us luck.

In other news, great reviews of Little Hands Clapping continue to flood the media. This time it’s The Spectator: “This book will appeal not only to his numerous current fans, but to pretty much anyone who can stomach a bit of gruesome vulgarity in a love story. And that’s meant to be a compliment. The novel is a remarkable success.”

Well there you are. We’ve added a Spectator-related update to the post below…

And if you’ve not read Little Hands Clapping yet, now’s the time – while it’s still out in a glorious hardback at a NoNeedToWaitForThePaperback price.

Rhodes is currently in training for his reading with Alan Bissett at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow on Friday 12th March. Details here. News has reached us that Rhodes is making the ultimate sacrifice for this event – he is missing a Ken Dodd show in his home town the night before, in order to get an early night and be fresh for the train in the morning. This should silence anyone who doubts his commitment to his craft.

That’s all for now, but to pad things out a bit here is a recent photograph of Rhodes’ back garden. Don’t ask us how we got hold of it.

Happy reading.

The tension was unbearable, but we are at last able to reveal that Little Hands Clapping is spending its third week in Heat magazine’s Top 10. It’s sitting comfortably at number 7, and we now have another week of purgatory ahead of us as we wait to see if it can make it to a magical four weeks on the trot.

Great reviews are still rolling in. Unexpectedly, the Daily Telegraph has come up with a winner: “Disturbing and delightful. This is a crowded, lively book full of kooky flights of tangential fancy and engaging characters racked with unusual problems. Rhodes has devised a neat, dark and well paced plot.”

It’s good to see the Telegraph redeeming itself after their extraordinary coverage of Gold, which won its writer, Lloyd Evans, our now traditional Maggie Gee Award for Unbelievably Stupid Reviewing. This reminded us that it was time to start assembling the award for Little Hands Clapping. The trouble is, the reviews have been so positive that we’ve only found a couple of contenders – at the moment it’s a battle of the generations between some random old hippie and an iPhone-toting Twitter twerp. While both of them have completely failed to understand the book and have written stultifyingly dumb reviews, we’re not sure they have quite plumbed the depths to the point where they are worthy of the award. They certainly aren’t up there with Evans or Gee, or even last time’s wretched runners-up Tom Adair and Claire Alfree. So it’s looking as though the contest is still wide open. Further details here at our Dan Rhodes is disliked by page.

[Update March 2nd - We don't normally take The Spectator, but we bought a copy when they unexpectedly gave Little Hands Clapping a great review, and we were surprised to find an article called Cheapening the Currency, in which, interminably and over an entire page, "Lloyd Evans deplores the monstrous proliferation of arts prizes." Normally we would think an article like this had been written by someone who was bitter because they had never won a prize in their life. But Evans has won a prize (see above), and despite his moaning about award ceremonies, he was only too happy to visit the roof garden of our skyscraper, here in the heart of downtown Taipei, and accept his trophy in a long and lavish ceremony. That said, we can't be 100% sure that the right person turned up - we didn't know his address, so sent his invitation to Lloyd Evans, Plonker, UK. Still, whoever it was seemed to have a nice day.]

In other news, don’t forget to see Rhodes in a spectacular double-header with Alan Bissett at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow on Friday 12th March. Details here.

Happy reading.