Speculation, Fact and Fiction

So, according to The Guardian,

Sir Richard Branson is considering a £50m bid for the Borders books chain in the UK, in what would be a major expansion of his retail operations.

Publishing News have a different take, seeing the most likely prospect as a management buyout led by CEO David Roche.

One senior publisher commented: “The Borders brand is so good the hope is that David, with or without James Heneage, will get the backing and turn them into versions of Daunts. The worry is that Books etc's high street stores will go under, unless the airport shops are given as a sweetener to someone taking on Books etc. My money is on David and James coming together, selling off the Books etc and airport shops, and concentrating on Borders.”

While The Retail Bulletin, quoting the Mail on Sunday, reckon

Trevor Goul-Wheeker , former MD of book chain Hammicks, has emerged as a potential bidder for Borders. Goul-Wheeker is believed to have joined forces with Keith Watson, a former colleague at Hammicks. It is not known if the pair have lined up finance for a bid.

Ladies and gentlemen, pick your horses.

It's a new month and that means interesting reading over at SFRevu. My contribution is a review of Justina Robson's second Quantum Gravity book, Selling Out - aka justinar hereabouts. They're also re-running my thoughts on John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things as the paperback's now out. Both books are cracking reads, in my humble opinion.

I'll be interested to know if justinar sees any kind of spike in export sales to Croatia. I was reading Selling Out on my recent trip there, and had the book in my bag in case of unexpected downtime at the convention. I didn't actually have any of that, not least because the Croatian fans were all very eager to know what UK and US authors I read and recommend, that they might not have come across before. So a lot were asking what was I reading at the moment and I showed them the advance copy I had. The blurb on the back cover definitely excited their interest.

Hopefully I'll have a chance to write up a full report on Istrakon before the end of the week. After that we're on holiday so there won't be any blogging as I am determined to have a complete break.

In the meantime, I have assorted work-related things to do and a slew of domestic stuff, ranging from the boring like laundry and cutting the grass to the rather more important, like getting my sons focused on their forthcoming SATS tests at school. Which is a god-awful system on so many levels, if you ask me, but since we're stuck with it for the moment, they really do need to apply themselves, as the results will affect elder son's setting for his GCSE courses and younger son's transfer to secondary school.

Oh, and after a month where I was away three weekends out of four, some housework wouldn't go amiss...