Wednesday 2 January 2008

Two Ravens Press



Here's another shot at a post which didn't seem to work yesterday...
I have been rather lax this year already - not just that I missed posting on the first day of 2008 (only by
45 minutes, though) but in writing about Two Ravens Press. I've been meaning to do it since October, I think, but better late than never.

Quite a while ago I was sent three of their books to read, and I decided that I wanted to be able to write about all three of them at the same time. That meant quite a lot of reading, and that had to happen alongside lots of other books which needed to be read right-this-minute for all sorts of reasons. Well, the books have now been read! But they're going
to wait until tomorrow. To give Two Ravens Press their proper due, I shall write today's post about the company in general - and tomorrow tell you about the three books I've read.

Two Ravens Press are an independent publisher, and can be found at www.tworavenspress.com - they, like many independent presses, have
een rather remiss. No, not just missing the first day of 2008 on my blog (only byone main rule for what they publish - they have to love it. Literary fiction, poetry and non-fiction are all considered, their central consideration is... well, I'll let them speak for themselves. This is from their website:

Everything that we publish, we publish with passion. We love each of our books. They say something about the author, they say something about us and they say something about the time and the place they were born into. Each book is a person we like being around. Because each, in its own way, fights back against formulas and homogenization, against the analgesic washing-out of colour that threatens to fade our bright thoughts.

What made this publisher stand out for me? Well, as you may know by now, I tend to j
udge books by covers. Or at least let them lead me in the right direction. I certainly look at book covers to tell me what sort of publisher I'm looking at. And well done Two Ravens Press! Their covers are strikingly attractive while also being a little edgy and uncompromising. Very cutting-edge, but with humanity and beauty too. Good signs. I went straight to novels, as they are the area I know best, and the ones listed all look so different from anything else I've encountered. Probably the bigger presses didn't know quite where to place them in their marketing - Two Ravens Press can simply market them as individual books, with passion. That's not to say I adored all three, but it's a definite good sign when I'm intrigued and surprised by the description of a book - genuinely unable to think of a precedent, let alone a genre full of near identical books, as is sometimes the case.

Do go and check out the website; their novels are listed here. And tomorrow you can find out what I thought of some of them...!

5 comments:

  1. Simon, thanks for this recommendation, all the Two Ravens books look wonderful. By the way, was I the only person who couldn't see the pictures on your blog today?

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  2. I read about Two Ravens Press recently ... perhaps because you posted about them earlier in 2007? And I thought then that if Beautiful Books hadn't snapped up Speaking of Love I would have submitted it to them. Their philosophy echoes mine about reading and writing and about the way books look. Looking forward to your reviews of their books.

    But I too couldn't see the pictures on this post ... .

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  3. Oh, that's curious... I can see the pictures on my computer. Let me know if the problem happens with my next post - I think the pictures for this post may be the wrong picture format thingy wotsit...

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  4. I've tried again with only one picture - my internet is being funny at the moment. Obviously doesn't like 2008!

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  5. That's blogendipity Simon because I've almost finished Nightingale too, haven't been able to put it down.

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