Spring is upon us

Yesterday evening I attented what my esteemed colleague called "fashion week for books". Apparently Belgian publishers organize this event called De Aanbieding aka The Offer every quarter to present the bestsellers of the season and inform all booksellers what to surely purchase for their store. It sounds interesting but it sadly wasn't.

The evening started off with a lot of numbers and marketing mumbo jumbo and surprisingly enough the top 3 bestsellers of 2008 where the same as in 2007: both Khaled Hosseini's books and an Aspe (they're basically all the same). This was followed by an extensive list detailing all the offers that magazines and newspapers where planning on doing the next few weeks. Anyone who loves to garden, buy Knack! That's all I'm saying.

Luckily just before I was about to nod off, then fun part started: 2009's spring newcomers: Aspe starts killing Miss Belgium contestants, Paulo Coelho tries his hand at writing a literary thriller, the new Murakami is out (it's already 2 years old but for Belgium that apparently means new), Catherine Millet no longer indulges in sexual shenanigans but is now Jealous, Santa Montefiore (Who? Or that was what I was thinking at least) supposedly wrote another bestseller and the high light of the season will probably, actually definitely be Carlos Ruiz Zafon's new novel: The Angel's Game, a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind. It already made my night yesterday, which actually wasn't that hard to do.