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I am not a fan of the Four Seasons. With the exception of one song I love (My Eyes Adored You), they have a few songs that are ok for me, and a lot of songs I would switch the station on. And I'm not a huge fan of musicals, because if I don't know/like the music, well...

So, as my husband (who is a huge fan( and I headed downtown last night to see Jersey Boys, the touring Broadway hit about the Four Seasons, I was not optimistic. In fact, I was secretly worried I'd fall asleep.

But the show was great! It was amazing, in fact, how a show filled with music I would not attend a free concert to hear could hold my attention and make me care about it: the music, the four main characters, everything. They used interesting staging, short vignettes, lots of humor, revealing details, and excellent variations of points of view (not only do you get bits of the story from all four main characters, but as an audience member, you are at times in the audience of concerts or tv shows, backstage at shows, and even once, in a brilliant bit of lighting and drama, onstage yourself). Even the songs themselves were fun to watch, although I don't like falsetto singing nor that whole genre of music!

All of which made me wonder: How do you do this in a book? Yes, I realize Jersey Boys is not strict nonfiction. But it's a story bursting with songs I have no inherent interest in. So how does a nonfiction book author write an amazing book that's bursting with facts a reader has no inherent interest in? Probably by using some of the same techniques Jersey Boys did.

My question for you: What's a nonfiction book you've loved even though the subject itself held no inherent interest for you? I hope you'll share!

 

The Shock Doctrine, is a huge huge deal for us at Penguin Press, so whilst thinking of ways to get the message out as widely as possible in an interesting way, we had the idea of filming a web trailer - like a film trailer that we could put out online to offer people an intriguing glimpse into the book and (hopefully) inspire them to read it (we'd seen the More4 ads for The Bloody Circus series and were inspired to do something even better - check it out, it's amazing!).

So we thought we'd get some young hipster with a couple of music promos to their name, looking for something a bit more serious to put on their cv. Then a contact with big ideas suggested we go after some major league directors. It seemed like a crazy idea but we were feeling cocky. So we got ourselves a shortlist of people whose agents we could reach - Spike Jonze, Fernando Meirelles, Alfredo Inarritu, Michel Gondry and Alfonso Cuaron (award winning director of Y tu mama tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men).

To cut a very long and complicated story short, after much persuasion one of them agreed... It's been a demanding and exhausting five months (who knew the film world was even trickier to negotiate than the book world!) but we now have the most amazing film for the most amazing book. From today the film will be available online at the Guardian online, Penguin, and the Shock Doctrine.com site. Take a look, hope you like it.

So in April I met Naomi Klein. Five months later Alfonso Cuaron's new short film is premiering at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals - a film that I commissioned. How on earth!?! P.S. Don't tell anyone that when I unexpectedly met Alfonso I squealed and blushed a fine shade of beetroot. Talented and cute!

Gina Luck, Penguin Press Senior Marketing Manager

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