book – Page 12 – Shady Characters

Mea culpa

February 9, 2014

Like many books, a few errors slipped through the net as I wrote Shady Characters and evaded even the practised gaze of Brendan Curry, my editor at W. W. Norton, and of Rachelle Mandik, our excellent copy-editor. Unlike some books, however, I’ve been lucky enough to have a cadre of eagle-eyed readers to pick up and help correct those mistakes. Without further ado, then, I give you the first instalment of Shady Characters’ errata. There will be more to come, I’m sure, as more editions are published (speaking of which, keep an eye out for the American paperback later this year!), but for now I must thank Mark Forsyth, Eric Johnson, Zoran Minderovic, Bill Pollack, Patrick Reagh, Jeff Shay, and Liz B. Veronis for helping point out and fix these errors.

Announcing The Book: a new book and a new website

October 20, 2013

Now that Shady Characters has been published, I can reveal what I’ve been working on for the past few months. The Book: A Cover to Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time will be published in late 2015 by W. W. Norton, and I’m delighted to say that the esteemed Brendan Curry will assume editing duties once again.

Book launch competition: we have a winner

October 11, 2013

As I mentioned recently, I handed out copies of the Shady Characters quiz at the book launch party here in Edinburgh. I promised the attendees that one winner would receive a copy of the US edition of the book, and I’ve finally got round to tallying up the scores. Tom Pilcher and Chris Mackinnon both scored top marks, but random.org, my go-to source for numerical chaos, has selected Tom as the winner. Congratulations to Tom, commiserations to Chris, and thanks again to all who came to the launch and took part in the competition!

Publication week round-up

Shady Characters

October 6, 2013

has been on sale for over a week, and now that the furore has died down a little I thought I’d collect links to all the articles I wrote in support of the book. Some of these have already been featured here; others were posted on Twitter, Facebook and so on, and a few more are new. Without further ado, then, and in no particular order, here you are:

Shady Characters, the quiz

October 4, 2013

The launch party for Shady Characters went swimmingly! The bar was packed with family and friends, both old and new; many books were signed, and much wine was drunk. My mum brought along a fountain pen that had once belonged to my grandfather, and it was an honour to be able to sign books with it at my first-ever book launch.