A superbook

There are books, good books and superbooks - not to mention, of course, bad books. Everyone who reads books at all will have favourites, and many of us will have one or two that
- to ourselves, at least - are superbooks.

What makes a superbook will depend on who the reader is. I know I am a pedant - that is, that I take writing seriously. Even comic writing, which I love. As far as I am concerned, a superbook is one that I enjoy not only for its content, but for its structure (how well planned it is) and its language. Really good writing is pretty rare: among my secret sins is the habit of scribbling pencil notes in the back of my books, recording my own assessments of the authors' poor use of words, incorrect grammar, bad punctuation, mixed or ungainly metaphors, lexical ambiguities and verbal infelicities. Very few have none of my notes at all; fewer still have nothing but praise: these last are my superbooks.

A friend lent me a superbook last week. If it was my own copy, I would have recorded my delight in pencil inside the back cover. The author is Adam Nicolson, and the book is titled Power and Glory (Jacobean England and the making of the King James Bible), published in 2003 by 'HarperCollinsPublishers' (see last sentence of this blog). Now only a person with great sensitivity to the English language should even dare to write a book about the literary qualities of the 'Authorised Version' of the Bible. Nicolson dared, and my word, how he has lived up to the task ! The story itself is fascinating, especially to anyone with a taste for history and a love of our language. But the planning, the research, the structure of the book are so imaginatively correct that every aspect of it seems 'just right'. The style is natural and simple without ever becoming monotonous or boring. Actually such apparent simplicity and correctness have to be the result of a high level of skill allied to perfect taste. The book is a tour de force. I haven't tried it, but I am convinced that it would be - like the Bible text that is its main protagonist -satisfying to read aloud and easy to listen to.

The only weakness of the publication, to my over-scrupulous mind, is the publishers' preference for a visually perverted version of their name. Harper Collins should be quite good enough without merging the words graphically in such a pretentious way.

A superbook