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Trade welcomes "good list" from TV Book Club

17.06.10 | Katie Allen and Graeme Neill

The trade has welcomed the second season of “The TV Book Club”, which revealed its Summer Reads and presenter changes this week.

The More4/Channel 4 show will launch on 27th June with Kathryn Stockett’s The Help (Penguin), followed by The Man Who Disappeared by Clare Morrall (Hodder), The Legacy by Katherine Webb (Orion), The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse (Bloomsbury), Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears (Random), Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan (Macmillan), The Devil’s Acre by Matthew Plampin (HarperCollins) and The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf (Mira).

Sainsbury’s head of books Phil Carroll confirmed each title would be charted in store. “It’s fair to say we may not have selected all of these without the support they will receive in a feature on The TV Book Club. The Help is the title we believe will perform well for us and it has already sold well in our chart.”

Waterstone’s fiction buyer Janine Cook also picked out The Help, as well as Stone’s Fall and The Devil’s Acre. She described the selection as “a good list of literary and mass market titles”.

Jonathan Ruppin at Foyles said it was “an interesting list, a little different”. He added: “Hopefully they will spend a little more time discussing books, that’s the idea, getting people passionate about the books.”

Presenters Jo Brand and Dave Spikey will remain, aided by three of six rotating “household names” plus a celebrity guest, according to Cactus m.d. Amanda Ross.

The original line-up received some criticism, but Ross said: “We wanted to make it like a real book group this time.”

She added that there was “a lot of people to keep happy. Ringing the changes seemed the best thing to do . . . We want to grow the brand and [for the trade] to keep the faith.”

Cook added: “It’s easy to criticise the choice of presenters, which will never be to everyone’s tastes, but surely it’s much more productive to celebrate the fact that some very good books are receiving decent exposure on TV.”

Meanwhile more details have also been revealed about this year’s ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards, Cactus’ link-up with ITV3, Specsavers and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger awards.

Broadcast in October, the awards will be preceded by a season of documentaries to find the “Nation’s Favourite Detective”. Beginning on 31st August with profiles of Morse and Frost, the season will then comprise five shows on: Tom Barnaby and Wycliffe; Wexford and Foyle; Jane Tennison and Marple; Poirot and Sherlock Holmes; and Lewis and Rebus. Ross also promised an “exciting new host” .

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