A bookseller in Newport, Shropshire, is raffling his house, which contains a bookshop. Tickets cost £15 each and the house is worth £300,000. I know Newport. I used to live around 15 miles away and I’d go to cricket practice at the nearby National Sports Centre. I can think of worse places to live.
Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana will be 50 years old in December. Check out our feature about one of Greene’s best novels.
The Bad Sex awards are given out annually for best (read: worst) examples of authors including unconvincing, awkward, embarrassing and redundant sex scenes into their prose.
Bad Sex Award shortlist for 2008
James Buchan for The Gate of Air
Simon Montefiore for Sashenka
John Updike for The Widows of Eastwick
Kathy Lette for To Love, Honour and Betray
Alastair Campbell for All in the Mind
Rachel Johnson for Shire Hell
Isabel Fonseca for Attachment
Ann Allestree for Triptych of a Young Wolf
Russell Banks for The Reserve
Paulo Coelho for Brida
Last year’s “winner” was Norman Mailer for this (fine?) example of poorly executed sexual prose
Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni’s death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.
The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again!
David Malouf has won Australia’s newest and richest literary prize of $110,000 for his work The Complete Stories. It is given by the Western Australian state government to the best work of fiction primarily about Australia and Asia.
The interesting bit about the award is that it is state funded but doesn’t necessarily go to an Australian.
“It’s a wonderful piece of writing, a combination of decades of work, and it captures the human condition in such a deep and intense way,” said Nury Vittachi, a member of the judging panel, along with the Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, and the Australian critic Peter Craven.
“His characters are very ordinary people and he captures the intense joys and sadness of ordinary life.”
The Complete Stories spans Malouf’s career, containing all the stories in his collections Dream Stuff (2000) and Every Move You Make plus 1985’s Antipodes and the two shorter pieces from Child’s Play (1982).
Vittachi agreed the decision to award the prize to a book of short stories was unusual.
“It might usually go to a novel. But there’s an ancient story form called a bracelet, where you have a sequence of stand-alone stories which when read together have as much power as a single, united novel. We thought this book worked as just such a bracelet.”
Full story from the Sydney Morning Herald
During a dash into a bookstore (if one can ever really dash through a bookstore) a new children’s book caught my eye; a) Because my 4 year old niece has, in adult terms, an irrational fear of insects (and all fluff resembling bug-like creatures) and b) Because it has a very cute cover.
The book is Bee & Me by Elle J. McGuinness, illustrated by Heather Brown, and with animation effects by Jeffrey Charles Cole and Katrina Ford. Yes, you read that correctly, “animation effects”. The book employs ’scanimation’, a process that produces the illusion of movement. Some of you may be familiar with this from the highly popular scanimation books, Gallop! and Swing!, both by Rufus Butler Seder.
The fact that the bee “flies” throughout the book makes the book fascinating but the pictures are delightfully colourful and the story is quite catchy too. It tells a tale of misconceptions, the eco-balance, friendship and understanding. Who wouldn’t be moved by a poor little misunderstood bee?!
If this book wins my niece over to bugs, then I’d say it’s a winner all ’round!
Before my recent reading of Unless, I’d never read much Carol Shields, and some of her best-known titles (Larry’s Party, The Box Garden, The Stone Diaries etc.) are still on my ‘To Read’ list (in the smallest font, it would still be taller than I am), and getting closer to the top as I realize how very much I love Shields’ writing.
I first read Happenstance a few years ago, after picking up a used copy on this little web site I know… *ahem*, and was instantly struck by how effective the writing, particularly in regard to people, was. I loved the book and couldn’t get over how well Shields wrote people.
Having just finished Unless, I’m convinced. It wasn’t just a fluke. Unless is the story of 44-year-old-Reta Winters (born Reta Summers, a fact that fast bonded her to her husband, Tom): writer, wife, mother, and basically blessed person. She has really never questioned her overall contentedness - her financial comfort, her marriage (still going strong, even the sex!), her three daughters, even her dog - until something happens to her eldest daughter.
Norah, 19, has left her boyfriend, left university, and spends her days sitting on a busy downtown Toronto street corner, wearing a sign she has hand-printed with the simple entreaty: GOODNESS. She has historically been stable, if sensitive, loving, rational, bright, intuitive, and above all, present. Norah’s vanishing, both physically and mentally, sends Reta’s entire world into doubt. It creates an awareness of vulnerability, where before there was comfort taken for granted, if not complacency. As Reta becomes alert to the dangers around herself and Norah, she becomes angry at a world she feels has let them down.
The writing is basic, simple, and absolutely heartbreaking. I am not a parent, but the grief, terror and all-encompassing need to take care of a child is portrayed exquisitely throughout the pages of Unless. Many times I could barely see to read, for tears blurring my vision. It is heartfelt and sincere without being sentimental, honest and basic without being stark, and tremendously affecting, particularly toward the end. I’ll read this again, one day.
NPR has listed their top five crime and mystery novels for 2008.
On the list?
Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman;
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson;
The Chinaman by Friedrich Glauser;
Death Vows by Richard Stevenson; and
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman.
I haven’t ready ANY of those yet, so that’s very exciting. I think I’ll start with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I’ve been seeing that name around a lot.
The story of the day is from the UK’s Daily Mail….
A multi-millionaire businessman is facing jail for stealing hundreds of pages from rare ancient books worth £500,000 to store in his personal book collection. Iranian-born Farhad Hakimzadeh, 60, expertly cut the pages from treasured travel chronicles stored at the British Library in London and Oxford’s Bodleian for eight years without anyone noticing.
If you want to find out more about a book thief who simply couldn’t help himself, then read A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes.
Congratulations to Peter Matthiessen, whose latest novel Shadow Country has won the 2008 National Book Award for fiction. All four winners were delighted and honoured to be nominated, let alone selected as winners. But it was especially satisfying for 81-year-old Matthiessen, whose first brush with the National Book Award was in 1966.
Matthiessen, 81, had some words of wisdom for his fellow nominees. He reminded them that when he didn’t win the award in 1966 for his novel At Play in the Fields of the Lord, someone told him, “Oh well, you’ll be back.”
“I was encouraged,” Matthiessen said. “I want to tell all those guys … they’ll be back. They’re wonderful writers. They’re going to be back. I just hope it doesn’t take them 43 years like me.”
The other winners were Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family for Nonfiction, Judy Blundell’s What I saw and How I Lied for Young People’s Literature, and Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems in the poetry category.
A town unfortunately named Forks, just across the border from us in Washington, is under going a revival thanks to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books. Meyer set her teenage vampire tales in Forks. Shame she didn’t use Moose Jaw in Canada or Puddletown in Dorset.
“Twilight” has quickly turned this soggy spot that gets 12 feet of rain a year into a strange tourist destination full of teenage fans. And with the coming release of a movie based on “Twilight,” townspeople are bracing themselves for an even larger influx.
“It’s amazing for our town, nobody could have anticipated any of this,” says Mike Gurling, who works at the local Chamber of Commerce.
Remember rock-band Metallica (and others) moaning about users downloading their songs for free on Napster, and all their court orders and whining and all that? Well, leave it to the men of Monty Python to have a different take on things - and a sense of humour.
There are countless Monty Python videos up on Youtube already, without authorization, but rather than having a snit about it, the surviving Pythons have decided to join ‘em rather than try to beat ‘em, Yahoo news said today.
“Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands,” they said. “We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell.
“But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube,” they said.
I love it.
If you’re not familiar with Monty Python (!), then All The Words: Volume 1 and All The Words: Volume 2 are probably great places to start.
This time of year usually finds me standing outside a shop, shaking my fist at the tinsel-strewn display inside and lamenting the commercialism of a holiday that seems to come sooner each year. But for some reason, this year I feel downright festive. It could be that I’ve adopted a tradition of my own - shopping primarily online - to help me avoid rabid shoppers and tinny Christmas carols.
Regardless, I’m looking fondly forward to the holidays. Traditions at the Beth house include reading/watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which we’ve done since I was a little girl, so I’m considering getting my mum a collectible copy, because if there’s one joy I take at the holidays, it’s making Mum’s eyes well up with nostalgia. For a similar reason, I’ll be looking for used copies of books she read to me as a child, like Old Black Witch, which is now out-of-print and becoming scarce. It has a recipe for blueberry pancakes in it, which I remember making with my mum when I was about six. I’m also thinking of getting her something both special, and sure to become more valuable - a signed book from one of her favourite authors, like Ian McEwan or Jose Saramago. Sadly, collectible Jane Austen is well beyond my means, but it would be great to see her face.
Christmas morning is generally spent lolling about and listening - often to Christmas music like a holiday jazz CD I made them a few years back, or Vince Guaraldi (think the piano music Snoopy dances to in the Peanuts cartoons). But I recently heard an audio story from Stuart McLean that was hysterically funny, and then discovered that the Vinyl Cafe has a Christmas collection, which would be fun to hear as a family. David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice, one the funnier things I’ve ever had the pleasure to read, is also available in audiobook format.
I’m looking forward to it.
Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, and Hillary Clinton will be showcased in a quarterly biographical comic book series…
Even though Michelle Obama has yet to move into the White House, and Clinton and Palin fell short of their political goals in 2008, Bluewater’s president, Darren Davis, thinks the three women have forever changed US politics.
“They’ve changed the way people look at government,” he said. “Nobody ever thought there would be a female president. Nobody ever thought there would be an African-American first lady. Nobody ever thought there would be a female vice president, aside from Geraldine Ferraro. (They’ve) really changed society, so in 2012 we really could have a female president.”
The book will follow Michelle Obama from her youth on Chicago’s South Side to her career as a lawyer, through the 2008 presidential campaign and Election Day.
full article in The Guardian
Interesting news from the Man Booker camp. The Booker Prize Foundation has linked up with Georgetown University and its entire freshman class of about 1,600 students, no matter what they are studying, will be required to read a designated novel from the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Forced reading - excellent. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to put these sort of laws into place.