Zadie Smith prepares a new book in her native town
30 Aug 2012 10:52:12
Her previous novel, On Beauty, set in a New England university town was widely admired by critics, but Zadie Smith, whose eagerly anticipated fourth novel, NW, has just been published, has said she will not set another work in America.
The author – whose public appearances are increasingly rare, and who declined to be photographed – told the audience at the Edinburgh international book festival that she had received a great deal of feedback, pointing out inaccuracies in On Beauty.
The novel, w... Read Full Story
E-books in England are more popular than in other countries?
30 Aug 2012 10:39:46
Barnes & Noble, the US bookseller, has secured a deal with John Lewis to distribute its Nook e-reader as it seeks to dent Amazon's dominance of the UK digital book market.
John Lewis will be the first retailer outside the US to sell the Nook and will begin stocking it from this autumn in its 37 stores and on its website.
Launched in October 2009, the Nook has helped Barnes & Noble, the largest bricks and mortar bookshop in the US, eat into Amazon's ebook market share. The popularity of its Kin... Read Full Story
The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder by JW Ironmonger
23 Aug 2012 01:32:04
I have to admit that after the chaotic voting in the early stages of the Not The Booker, I turned to this first book with a certain amount of trepidation. Matters weren't helped by the title - The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder - which has more than a hint of the wacky about it. I was also nervous about the premise.Briefly: aged 21, the titular Max locks himself off from the world in order to record all his memories to date. This takes him far longer than 21 years, partly because cataloguing... Read Full Story
I Am the Secret Footballer Alex Clark
23 Aug 2012 01:29:49
There is nothing like a concealed identity to drive people wild. Aside from all those Shakespearean kings going among their people disguised as commoners, it's the basis of the classic murder mystery, in which the governing idea is that someone with whom you thought you were familiar is capable of lethal actions, right under your nose. Just as this unnerves, it also bewitches: what if you were able to unravel the clues and solve the mystery? What would that say about you? As much as I enjoy the ... Read Full Story
Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It by Howard Jacobson
23 Aug 2012 01:28:15
Rarely has my job felt so much like goofing off than now: having to praise a selection of Howard Jacobson's columns. I would have latched on to this book and devoured it – heck, even bought a copy with my own money – whether or not I had a column in which I recommended good books to discriminating readers.Then again, this is hard work. As Martin Amis is fond of pointing out every few months, the thing about reviewing writers is that reviewers, being obliged to use the same medium as the creator ... Read Full Story
The Life of Joan Crawford by Donald Spoto
22 Aug 2012 01:14:26
"Miss Crawford is a star in every sense of the word; and everyone knows she is a star." This warning, printed at the end of a list of requirements on a promotional tour in 1964, was a precursor to all those divas refusing to do stairs, the calling card of one of Hollywood's most formidable leading ladies. Much beloved of drag queens thanks to her enduring fondness in later life for heavy eyebrows and lipstick, Crawford's reputation was made increasingly grotesque thanks to her daughter Christina... Read Full Story
Janice Galloway's bestseller books
22 Aug 2012 01:13:04
Janice Galloway's 'anti-memoir' of her teen years has been named Scottish book of the year,
All Made Up was the winner in the non-fiction section of the awards, before going on to secure the overall prize of £30,000 at the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year ceremony at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Friday.
Galloway said her first feeling was relief; "I'm a Scot in a lot of old fashioned ways and when I hear a piece of good news I doubt it. Every time the phone h... Read Full Story
Racism is in the life
22 Aug 2012 01:07:35
The eminent US fantasy magazine Weird Tales's decision to publish an extract from a young adult novel featuring a minority white race called the Pearls that is dominated by the black race of the Coals, which has been widely described as racist, has been attacked by readers, reviewers and authors.
Victoria Foyt's self-published novel Revealing Eden: Save the Pearls Part One is set in a dystopian future where solar radiation means the Coals (with dark skin) can survive better than the fair-skinne... Read Full Story
Memory of the Abyss by Marcello Fois
19 Aug 2012 19:58:54
Samuele Stochino, the Tiger of Ogliastra, was one of the more famous Sardinian bandits of the early 20th century. Born in 1895, the son of a goatherd, in 1915 he was conscripted and sent to Libya. Court-martialled in 1916 for disobeying orders, after eight months in a military jail he was released for good conduct and sent to the Austrian front, where his exploits won him promotion to sergeant and a silver medal for valour. A few months after returning home he was arrested for pig-rustling, but ... Read Full Story
About author Hilary Mantel - creation, life, books
19 Aug 2012 19:57:20
Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2009 Man Booker prize for her novel Wolf Hall, and last month longlisted again for its sequel, has fuelled the debate about the literary claims of historical fiction by arguing that characterisation in historical novels, "even very good historical novels", is "often two-dimensional".
She told the audience at the Edinburgh international book festival: "It's a big ask, to give the reader all the background information and all the foreground information and make the ch... Read Full Story
Harry Harrison died at the age 89
19 Aug 2012 19:55:10
Harry Harrison, the American science fiction writer best known for the Stainless Steel Rat comic space opera series and the dystopian Make Room! Make Room! has died at the age of 87.
He also parodied the genre in his Bill the Galactic Hero books, seeing his work as anti-war and anti-militaristic. Brian Aldiss, who worked with Harrison on criticism and editing science fiction anthologies, called him "a constant peer and great family friend".
Harrison's first novel, Deathworld, was published in ... Read Full Story
About Mark Haddon's taxs
14 Aug 2012 23:55:41
Mark Haddon, the award-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has written to his MP arguing that he and other wealthy people should pay more tax to save others being hit by government spending cuts.
Haddon, whose book has sold more than 2m copies, spawned a stage version and is being adapted as a film by Brad Pitt, said he was "not asking just an economic question but a moral one, too".
He said he had put his opinions in a letter to his MP, sent in February, which... Read Full Story
