penguin.

awful quality on these photos, sorry!

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to visit Penguin Books HQ on The Strand in central London thanks to my creative writing tutor!

The building was very big and very fancy and of course there was books everywhere you turned. Penguin Classics, Puffin Books, and Hamish Hamilton… the list goes on.

That’s one thing I learnt that day- Penguin itself is made up of several imprints covering a wide range of topics and genres. So Fig Tree for instance, focuses on books that are  'fresh, distinct, well written, clever, entertaining and sometimes funny’. Hamish Hamilton on the other hand, seeks creative pieces of literary world from all the corners of the world.

I really appreciated that the whole floor plan of Penguin was very open plan. Each imprint wasn’t locked away behind a door meaning everyone can communicate easily. PR can get in touch with marketing, marketing can go over and talk to art and design and so on.

I found out useful information about getting published and working in publishing during the day at Penguin, which has given me a small head start in (hopefully) working in the creative industry. 

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Last Saturday I got to see Alt-J perform live at Liverpool’s o2 academy. I’ve been overly keen to see the quartet perform since their Mercury award-winning album An Awesome Wave reached the Top 20 early last year.

The band remained still throughout their set-list and didn’t really connect with the space on stage. I’ll give it to bassist Gwil for trying to jerk about though. Both the band and the crowd held simple small movements- tapping a foot, shuffling along the sticky floor, mimicking lead singer Joe’s sway. There was no climbing of amps or the band asking for silly requests from the audience (how annoying is it when artists ask you to sit on the floor and jump back up at a concert?) Everything was plain and simple. For instance, the band's set mirrored the order of their album, with the exception of ‘Breezeblocks’ being saved for their not-so-surprising encore.

I found Joe’s I’ve-got-the-flu voice really distinctive when I first started listening to the band. It’s notable that he can describe a woman being murdered (hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks) in a calming, matter of fact tone. At times, it is difficult to understand what he is saying and I’m guessing the crowd agreed; the only point the whole audience sang along was to the opening of ‘Matilda’.

The band played two covers: ‘Slow’ by Kylie Minogue and College and Electric Youth’s ‘A Real Human’; the first appeared to be under appreciated by the crowd but ‘Slow’, having been previously performed in Radio 1’s live lounge, was a pleasant surprise. The song complimented the minimalistic approach Alt-j had held all evening.