LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Fiction interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:51:05 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://epist.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/halfway-through-12-books-12-months/ Hurray! I have read 6 of my 12 Books 12 Months list.  And with this book I am fully appreciating the benefits of the 12 Books 12 Months idea because without it, I would most likely have gotten lost on reading tangents about sci-fi Jesuits, emotional food, and teenage demi-gods.  And I would completely forget about all these books that the Sara from 6 months ago wanted to read.  With the 12 Books list and the brilliant monthly summaries from E on latter day bohemian (I think those monthly round-ups really play an important role in motivation), I’ve managed to alternate between my whim readings and my planned readings – thus, moving ahead on some goals while also pursuing other spontaneous interests.  It’s a really good feeling. So even though I was very tempted to immediately jump into the sequel to the space traveling Jesuit story, I did myself a favor and picked up Haroun and the Sea of Stories.  I had heard about this book at the ALA Conference this past summer in D.C. when I had the great privilege of seeing Salman Rushdie at an author talk.  He was charming and intelligent, and his story about the beginnings of this book had me hooked. This is a children’s book with some obvious, but playful, political messages.  Rushdie wrote this just after the fatwa against his life was announced, wondering each day if he would see his son again, to whom the book is dedicated.  So we get greasy politicians, evil tyrants, and egotistical princes.  We also get some absolutely delightful bits — like the chapter headings: The Shah of Blah, An Iff and a Butt, and a wonderful nod to Beatles’ lyrics. My timing in reading this book was good and bad.  Bad – the pace and humor of a children’s book felt kind of jarring when I was in the middle of a stressful, high-stakes work week. ... Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:57:09 +0100 895911 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SellersLibraryTeens/~3/s4MPtBfNuIs/recommendation-here-lies-librarian.html Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck (Click here to find a library copy.) Recommendation by Saranjeet Should we keep it?  YES Why?  I definitely think we should keep this book because it keeps the reader interested.  Also, this book has a good story and will probably attract those who love cars. This book was part of the Last Call book display in the teen section during November and December. Thanks to everyone who participated! I took your opinions seriously and kept all the books that people recommended with a YES. I also deleted the one book that got a NO vote. Look for this display again next year! (Source: Sellers Library Teens) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:04:00 +0100 895795 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/10/books-2011-garrison-keillor-rpddy-doyle The Guardian books team tell you what's going to be published in 2011, including a new novel by Roddy Doyle, another tome from Noam Chomsky on US hegemony and Garrison Keillor's new book of sonnets - which he sings!Claire ArmitsteadSarah CrownBenedicte PageRichard LeaTim Maby (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:19:49 +0100 895785 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/audio/2010/dec/31/best-of-podcasts Welcome to our pick of audio highlights from 2010, presented by Pascal Wyse. Hopefully there is something for everyone here: poetry from Simon Armitage, World Cup fury from Football Weekly, music from Orbital, a man with a lampshade for a head and a guided walk along the Thames with Ian Sinclair.You can listen to the original podcasts these clips were taken from via the links below. Thanks for listening – and Happy New Year.Tech WeeklyThe Books That Made MeMedia TalkMusic WeeklyFootball WeeklyElection DailyThe Bike PodcastThe Business PodcastAudio walksHaycastScience WeeklyFilm WeeklyPascal Wyse (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:39:27 +0100 895786 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/video/2010/dec/31/zen-rufus-sewell-michael-dibdin Rufus Sewell talks to Catherine Shoard about his lead role in Zen, the BBC1 adaptation of the Michael Dibdin detective novels - and why he's turning his back on the moviesCatherine ShoardChristian BennettAndy GallagherRufus (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:58:00 +0100 895788 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/31/new-year-reading Whether you want to improve yourself or simply get your brain going again after Hogmanay excess, it pays to choose the year's first book carefullyIf you're like me and tend to use literature as a kind of How-to guide to navigate life, then the book one chooses to read at the start of a New Year requires some careful consideration. Perhaps this book will be something worthy to get the brain working again after the excesses of the night before … Or an old favourite to welcome in the new year on a friendly, comforting note … Or perhaps something inspiring to set the tone for the upcoming 12 months and strengthen one's resolve to change and do better … Here then are just a few of the titles you might consider opening up on the first of January.Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton by John LahrOK, so it doesn't end happily, but Orton's journey from abject failure to dizzying success is utterly inspiring and compellingly told. Lahr's admiration and enthusiasm for his subject is contagious, and if his critical dissections of Orton's work occasionally have the air of the study-note about them, there's always the sparkling wit of the diaries to turn to – or even the plays themselves. A one-off talent triumphing against overwhelming odds.The Memory Chalet by Tony JudtPublished earlier this year (sadly posthumously), historian Tony Judt's memoir was written under the most arduous of conditions: paralysed from a neurodegenerative disorder, Judt composed these warm and intelligent essays in his head during what must have been near-unbearable hours of insomnia and dictated them back the next day. The result is a remarkably positive, life-affirming read, and about as far away from the realms of "misery memoir" as one can get.Lucky Jim by Kingsley AmisAnd so to fiction. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 09:00:03 +0100 895783 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/31/top-books-hits-of-2010 No surprise on such a literate site that everybody wanted to read some of the best living authors' advice on writing and worrying about literature in the age of Twitter. Elsewhere readers were compelled by children's books, accidental cookbook racism and allegedly unsuitable dictionariesThe wind howls, the snow swirls, the seagulls are picking their way across the frozen canal outside and it's time once more to look back at the stories you've actually been reading in the year of Freedom, aka the second coming of Franzen. Pausing only to mumble the usual invocations to the gods of number-crunching, in the traditional spirit of honesty and openness, let's wrap up warmly against the chill and investigate the dizzy heights of the year in books.Except, darn it, I've gone and wrecked it all, right there. If only I'd paid a little more attention to our top story of 2010, Ten rules for writing fiction. Take a look at line one. "Never open a book with weather," declares Elmore Leonard, and given the stern nature of his other nine rules ("Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue", "Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose', "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip"), I feel sure that the great man would be equally unforgiving of meteorological openings in journalism.With contributions from luminaries such as Anne Enright, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman and, um, Jonthan Franzen, which run the gamut from wise to witty, spanning the territory from heartfelt to jaundiced along the way, it's not hard to see why these pithy recommendations have proved so popular. Not only do they contain more good sense than my family cookbook, but they also cast a fascinating light on the way the authors approach the task themselves. Consider Diana Athill, whose "only by having no inessential words can every essential word be made to count" seems only a whisker away from being a motto for life. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 09:00:01 +0100 895784 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/30/john-sutherland-top-10-books-about-books From Aristotle to Roland Barthes, the author and commentator gives his analysis of the critics who find the hard answers to simple questions, and offers some improving ideas for new year's readingJohn Sutherland staggers under the title Lord Northcliffe professor emeritus of Modern English Literature at UCL. He has written numerous books on literature and a couple on himself (notably a drunkalog, Last Drink to LA). He has taught, principally, in the UK and America. His next book (out in a week or so) has the self-explanatory title: 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know. Roll over Dr Johnson.Buy 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know at the Guardian bookshop"There are only a handful of grand-master literary critics in action at any one time in the English-speaking world. We lost one of our greatest literary critics, Frank Kermode, a few months ago. That leaves, by my count, Christopher Ricks, Terry Eagleton, and Elaine Showalter. Others will have a different pantheon – but if they're honest it will be highly select."The hardest lit-crit is that which asks the simplest questions. What's the difference between a 'story' by Ian McEwan and a 'story' on the front page of the Guardian? What precisely, is 'lost' in translation? Literature 'means' something. But is that meaning located in the author's mind, on the page, or in the reader's mind? Why does literature (unlike, say, the discourses of law or science) cultivate 'ambiguity' – saying many things at the same time?"1. Aristotle, The Poetics (Ingram Bywater translation) The still-most-relevant work of literary criticism, given (as a lecture, probably) around the fourth century BC. Aristotle takes on the biggest/simplest questions of all. ... Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:36:30 +0100 895642 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/30/short-stories-fiction The year saw strong work from Lydia Davis, Damon Galgut, Yiyun Li among others, as well as other brilliant stuff I no doubt missedTo start where I finished last year's round-up of the year in short fiction, Lydia Davis's Collected Stories was published in a UK edition this summer. This stocky orange and white volume underlines her position as one of the most fascinating short story writers of the past 25 years, who combines formal experimentalism and psychological complexity with a keen wit. She featured in my brief survey of the short story series in February.Deborah Eisenberg is another great short story writer whose collected appeared this year (albeit only in the US). Every story from her four collections to date is included, which makes for a feast of unconventional storytelling and exquisitely turned sentences. Like Davis, she's profoundly intelligent with language, and frequently very funny.Of the new collections published this year, my personal favourite might equally be considered a novel or memoir. That Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room manages to be both, as well as a collection of stories, is just one of the many extraordinary things about it. Shortlisted for the Man Booker, its three sections were originally published as stories in the Paris Review.An attempt to relate, as accurately as possible, three journeys and relationships Galgut experienced, the book is an interrogation of memory and a study of the way different relationships function. No one would desire to find themselves in these situations, but if they did, they'd want to describe them with Galgut's rigour and penetration. Much of the book's power derives from his ability to pare back situations to their fundamentals.Yiyun Li's Gold Boy, Emerald Girl is my other essential collection of the year. A US citizen who writes in English, Li's stories are mostly set in China, where she lived until 1996, but her influences are international and surprisingly old fashioned. ... Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:00:05 +0100 895643 http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2010/12/year-in-read-view.html Despite my lifetime membership in LibraryThing, I keep official track of what I've read in notebook I bought in Chinatown. Due to my aesthetic tastes at the time of purchase, it has a Hello Kitty-ish rainbow cat in the form of a cloud smiling at me on the front. This year the cat tells me I have read 51 books, unless I can finish up one of the 6 unread ones by tomorrow. That's average for me, but if anyone criticizes it, I can whip out the "but I read Moby Dick this year!" excuse. My favorite books read for a book group were: The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig, A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Photograph by Penelope Lively, and Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos. Except for The Whistling Season, all of these books were suggested by people in my book groups, who are brilliant except when they make me read books that I hate.My favorite nonfiction books were: Switch by Chip Heath and Chad Heath, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. All of these were bestsellers when they came out, so I am losing points for originality here.In the category of "really good if you share my obscure interests" are Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano by Madeline Goold, Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnades, Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini and The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose. Rounding up my fiction favorites are Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani (two points off for choosing another bestseller), By the Lake by John McGahern, A Call From Jersey by P.F. Kluge, which everyone in Berkeley Heights & environs should read, and Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. (Source: Berkeley Heights Public Library Book Blog and Buzz) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895737 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SellersLibraryTeens/~3/GchrF9YBBzE/recommendation-friend-at-midnight.html A Friend at Midnight by Caroline B. Cooney(Click here to find a library copy.) Recommendation by ElizaShould we keep it?  YESWhy?  This is a very insightful book; probably one of the best I've read, and I read a lot of books. This book was part of the Last Call display in the teen section.  Eliza checked it out, read it, and filled out the bookmark with her recommendation.  You can do the same...there are a lot more books that need a boost from readers like you!  Just make sure you get to the library before December 30 to participate. (Source: Sellers Library Teens) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 03:27:05 +0100 895584 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/idate-releases-ebook-report/ European consulting firm, IDATE, has released its 130 page study of the ebook market for Japan, America and Europe for 2008-2015. The report costs between 2,900 and 3,500 euros, but they have allowed me to release part of their principle results (blockquotes omitted): By the end of 2010, the digital book market took off in all of the surveyed countries, albeit under varying scenarios. That year, the United States became the world’s largest market with a turnover from e-book sales reaching EUR 594 million, ahead of Japan, e- book pioneer country whose market is evaluated at EUR 527 million. European markets remain relatively modest, but are characterised by strong growth rates (around 80%). This digital migration concerns all literary genres, although some more rapidly than others (sentimental literature, science fiction & fantasy, detective stories) and a wide range of media (e-readers, PCs, mobile phones, game consoles, tablets, media players). • By 2014, the digital transition should not result in a global loss (or destruction) of book value. Certainly, sales of printed books have been declining for several years in the surveyed countries (except for France and Canada), and the emergence of a digital offer will only accentuate this trend, especially for the literary genres that are prone to this digital migration. However, e-book sales should offset the decline in printed book sales, and potentially even expand the book market thanks to the incremental sales effect (i.e., digital book sales which would not have taken place with printed books). By 2015, the future of the market will be shaped by factors operating at two levels: the degree of conversion of casual readers to digital media (who represent the bulk of the book market in terms of volume) and the impact of enriched books, hybrid multimedia products capable of attracting people who are not regular consumers of traditional books. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:36:06 +0100 895515 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html#9021876522383787082 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/"Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits." ~Author UnknownWe at Southlake Public Library want to wish you a Happy New Year. May it be filled with happiness, friends, and lots of good reading! FEATURED NEW RELEASEUNBROKEN This extraordinary tale from the author of “Seabiscuit” tells the true story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who became a POW in a series of Japanese prison camps during WWII. Zamperini started out in Torrance, California as a bit of a hoodlum, stealing pies from kitchens and pulling pranks on teachers. He found focus in running, thanks to his brother’s encouragement, and soon became the high school track star to beat. He began training for the 1936 Olympics and was able to gain a spot on the team headed for Berlin. He did extremely well there, considering his age and experience, and vowed to return to the next Olympics and take gold. He also wanted to be the first man to run a four-minute mile (thought to be physiologically impossible by many at the time). Zamperini’s big plans were interrupted by WWII, and he was drafted into the Air Force. He and his crew completed several dangerous missions in the Pacific, narrowly avoiding disaster. However, on one mission, they were not so lucky, and he and two other crew members ended up in a life raft, with little provisions, surrounded by sharks. The rest of the story is filled with nail-biting moments. In fact, I found that I had to put the book down occasionally when I became too tense or upset. This book truly is a story about a man that manages to remain “unbroken,” even after all of the unimaginable horror he endures. I do not want to spoil the ending – suffice it to say it shows what an amazingly kind and good man Zamperini is and how he refused to give in to his inner demons. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895776 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/12/27/books-help-me-imagine/ Books help me imagine other places and other people. Sometimes, at the end of the year, I pretend I’m a book critic for a major American newspaper, and put together a top ten list of what I’ve read, regardless of when it was first published. Davis, Lydia. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. Reviewed in September. Dickens, Charles. The Pickwick Papers. As Richard Russo and others have noted, while reading this you’re watching Dickens figure out how to write a novel. Also, it’s hilarious. Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Didion is a masterful writer. I also recently read and enjoyed her novel, Play It As It Lays, and I hope to read The Year of Magical Thinking in 2011. Harrison, Jim. Legends of the Fall. Three novellas. Revenge and The Man Who Gave Up His Name are pretty good; Legends of the Fall is majestic. Herbert, Zbigniew. Collected Poems. The poem Five Men made me want to read everything Herbert wrote. Jansson, Tove. The Summer Book. Writing about children isn’t often very good. Neither is writing about grief.  Jansson’s book is nearly perfect. Link, Kelly. Pretty Monsters. The story “Magic for Beginners,” available in Magic for Beginners as well as Pretty Monsters, is amazing. Kylee likes Pretty Monsters, too. Munif, Abdelrahman. Cities of Salt. The workings of power on small towns in the desert. Smiley, Jane. Moo. Do you live in the Midwest? Did you go to college? If one of those applies, you’ll probably like this book. Walser, Robert. Selected Stories. A one-of-a-kind writer admired by Kafka. You won’t regret taking a walk with Walser. (Source: MADreads) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:49:20 +0100 895270 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ebooks-at-year-end-2010/ From a NY Times Article (by Julie Bosman via Austin American-Statesman) E-books now make up 9 to 10 percent of trade-book sales, a rate that grew hugely this year after accounting for less than half that percentage by the end of last year. Publishers are predicting that digital sales will be 50 percent higher or even double in 2011 what they were in 2010. January could be the biggest month ever for e-book sales, as possibly hundreds of thousands of people download books on the e-readers that they receive as Christmas gifts. [Clip] But publishers have not yet figured out how to market e-books more effectively. Debut fiction and so-called midlist titles — books that are not large commercial successes — are particularly tough sells in digital form, said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company. “You can have all the availability in the world, but if people don’t know the book exists, it doesn’t matter,” Hildick-Smith said. [Clip] “My No. 1 concern is the survival of the physical bookstore,” said Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need that physical environment because it’s still the place of discovery. People need to see books that they didn’t know they wanted.” Read the Complete Article Via Resource Shelf (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:44:28 +0100 895260 http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/62931 The Top Trends for 2010  Lists Include:  Top 10 TV Programs – Single Telecast  Top 10 TV Programs – Regularly Scheduled  Top 10 Timeshifted Primetime TV Programs  Top 10 DVD Sales  Video Game Console Usage  Top 10 Print Book Sales – Adult Fiction  Top 10 Print Book [...] (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:09:00 +0100 895278 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/dec/27/archive-review-lewis-carrolls-new-story-1871 Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 27 December 1871Through the Looking-glass, and what Alice found there. By Lewis Carroll, author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." With fifty illustrations, by John Tenniel, London: Macmillan and Co. 1872. Lewis Carroll has been telling another modern fairy tale to those three fortunate young ladies who have him for their fabulist, and now the result lies before us in a charming Christmas book, where those thousands of children of a larger or smaller growth who have laughed over the adventures of Alice, that most delightful of little girls, may follow their heroine through a new "Wonderland."The realm of marvels which she visits on this occasion is "Looking-glass House," part of which she has often seen in the drawing-room; but her curiosity is strongly excited about the rest. "You can just see a little peep of the passage in 'Looking-glass House' if you leave the door of the drawing-room wide open; and it's very like our passage as far as you see, only you know it might be quite different on beyond."And very different on beyond it proves to be when Alice one day in a dream walks through the looking-glass and explores it. One very natural peculiarity of Looking-glass House is that most things in it are exactly reversed; accordingly if you want to go anywhere you have to turn round and walk the other way. People live backwards too, and their memory consequently works forward; thus there is an unfortunate person whom we find undergoing sentence in prison — "the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday, and the crime comes last of all."Readers of the Wonderland will be sorry to hear that it is their old friend the Hatter who is in this predicament. He still preserves his hat, "in this style, 10s. 6d." and seems to have lost none of his knack of getting into disgrace with royalty. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 11:43:45 +0100 895223 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/27/poem-of-the-week-grevel-lindop A single gem is a talisman for gathering the fading memories of a departed grandmother in these unassumingly intense versesThis week's poem, "My Grandmother's Opal" by Grevel Lindop, is a quest to reveal the past. The last line-and-a-quarter sums up the significance and difficulty of the quest: "this one spark / saved from the fiery heart of a lost world". Adrift in attics and cupboard drawers, such tantalising "sparks" may be all we have of that mysterious immensity, a person's life, reminding us how little we truly know the people we're closely related to: the grandparents who died before we properly "met" them; that venerable great-grandparent we just missed. Perhaps they remind us, too, of the future whose past we will sooner or later become – our grandchildren, their grandchildren. These distant relatives haunt Christmastime in our culture. To borrow the poem's words, they offer love we can never return – nor properly receive - but which can sometimes seem profoundly present.A poet's historical imagination must work hard and tactfully in this half-world, and, while trying to salvage traces of unique reality, resist the fiction-writer's dramatisations and stay faithful to the facts and memories "sparked". Lindop's poem seems deliberately modest in form, underplaying its symmetrical quatrain structure with irregular lines and half-rhymes. The careless loss of the grandmother's photograph, regretted in the first stanza, might be the poet's blessing in disguise: the gem is a more potent object, a symbol and a cauldron. The opal's rainbow mixture evokes compression, fragmentation and buried depths.Its colour and texture are deliciously realised in the second stanza, with the third adding to the intricacy by punningly evoking the streaks of colour as "figures". ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 09:00:03 +0100 895141 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/27/debut-novel-shortlisted-orange-prize Rosie Alison's debut novel, The Very Thought of You, was shortlisted for the Orange prize despite not getting a single review in a British national newspaper. So how has her book fared since?In March, Rosie Alison's debut novel, The Very Thought of You, was shortlisted for the Orange prize despite not garnering a single review in a British national newspaper. At the time, she said she was relieved by the absence of coverage: "It's a very sincere, heartfelt book . . . easy for a cynic to write it off in a few dismissive lines."Alison didn't win the Orange but her book has since been sold to 10 countries abroad, including China, and should, according to her publishers, have sold 100,000 copies by Christmas – with no posters, no advertising."It's all been word-of-mouth," Alison says. "I'm quite a guarded, buttoned-up kind of person, and it took courage to write a book like this. I think I assumed it would simply fall into the black hole of first novels. I really never expected it to take off."Nor did she expect "the letters, the emails from strangers – this interconnected world of readers that opens up, in festivals, book groups, libraries". The feedback has led her to understand "what kind of book I'd written. It's about longing, and heartache, and how we deal with that." She admits it hasn't appealed to everyone: "Those who are pragmatic about love get annoyed. It only really works for people who are prepared to tune into it."If a book is prize-listed, "You do tend to get some form of backlash. I've sometimes found that a bit unnerving – people saying they hate your book. But I'm reconciled to it now. I've tried not to let it diminish the pleasure of seeing my book find its readership." (Particular pleasure, she says, came from seeing a young blogger in far-off Singapore feel "enough ownership" of a passage to cite it online, and call it My Story. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 08:00:38 +0100 895142 http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/ricklibrarians-books-that-matter-and.html 2010 was a good book year for me. As I look back, November was especially stellar, as almost every book that I read for a few weeks was superb. It was difficult deciding which were best of the year, but I took a stab at it anyway. I also selected movies and music.In this post, I also include links to all my reporting from library conferences and to all my reviews of new reader's advisory sources.Have a Happy New Year for good reading and cultural experiences.Recent NonfictionClaiming Ground by Laura BellDangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by David BianculliThe Grace of Silence: A Memoir by Michele NorrisI Am Nujood, Age Ten and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine MinouiThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca SklootLife List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia GentileLighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris, Jr.Mark Twain: The Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years by Michael SheldenA Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls LaNierNine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William DalrymplePacking for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary RoachZeitoun by Dave EggersRecent FictionCorduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall SmithThe Man from Beijing by Henning MankellThe Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia StuartGreat Old BooksFirst Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer by Noel PerrinIn Patagonia by Bruce ChatwinRoseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per WahlööChildren's BooksAn Egret's Day by Jane YolenFace to Face with Elephants by Beverly JoubertMarching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary by Elizabeth PartridgeSaving the Ghost of the Mountain by Sy MontgomeryZen Shorts by Jon J. Muth and Zen Ties by Jon J. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895302 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/26/stephane-hessel-93-french-bestseller Resistance hero Stéphane Hessel stuns publishing world with 30-page work that calls on readers to be outraged about societyProving that age is no boundary to publishing success, the French book world has been taken by storm by a surprise Christmas bestseller: a political call to arms by Stéphane Hessel, 93.The unlikely publishing sensation is a former resistance hero whose 30-page essay, Indignez-vous!, calls on readers to get angry about the state of modern society.Launched in October by Indigène, a small publisher working out of an attic in Montpellier, southern France, the book had a tiny first print-run, 6,000, and sold for €3, unprecedentedly cheap in a country where book prices are regulated and kept high by the law.Hessel's success has stunned France. After two months on the bestseller lists, the book has spent five weeks at number one, beating Michel Houellebecq's award-winning latest novel La Carte et le Territoire and a host of Christmas fiction. It has sold 600,000 copies and – publishers predict it will reach a million. Translations are underway for Italy and other European markets.The book's soaring sales reflect a general mood of French exasperation at the social inequalities of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency. But the phenomenon is mostly down to Hessel's charisma and his life story.Hessel was born in Berlin in 1917 and emigrated to France aged seven. His free-spirited mother, Helen Grund-Hessel, inspired the novel Jules et Jim, which became Francois Truffaut's film about a love-triangle of two male friends and a woman who loves them both. During the Nazi occupation of France, Hessel joined the French resistance, was caught, tortured and and deported to Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps where he escaped hanging. After the war, he helped to draft the universal declaration of human rights and later became a diplomat. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 21:05:26 +0100 895145 http://www.lisnews.org/fact_checking_john_steinbeck039s_travels_charley Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck took a road trip across America with only his dog Charley for company. He published a non-fiction book about his experiences two years later, called Travels with Charley: In Search of America. Journalist Bill Steigerwald retraced Steinbeck’s journey this year and says the only problem with Steinbeck’s story is that it’s mostly a fabrication. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:19:35 +0100 895874 http://lisnews.org/fact_checking_john_steinbeck039s_travels_charley Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck took a road trip across America with only his dog Charley for company. He published a non-fiction book about his experiences two years later, called Travels with Charley: In Search of America. Journalist Bill Steigerwald retraced Steinbeck’s journey this year and says the only problem with Steinbeck’s story is that it’s mostly a fabrication. (Source: LISNews.org) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:19:35 +0100 895085 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/dec/26/elisabeth-beresford-obituary Prolific writer who enjoyed her greatest success with the recycling WomblesElisabeth Beresford, who has died aged 84, enjoyed her greatest success with the creation of the Wombles. The family motto of the colourful underground creatures – "making good use of bad rubbish" – sprang from a concern of the writer's that chimed with the growing ecological awareness of the next four decades. Famously, the inspiration for the figures came on a Boxing Day walk on Wimbledon Common, south-west London, during which her daughter, Kate, misnamed it Wombledon Common.As elsewhere with Beresford's work, the point of departure was real – here, the place and the characters, largely drawn from uncles, grandparents, siblings and her children: Marcus, her son, genial and interested in food, inspired Orinoco; Kate inspired Bungo, a strong character in the books, though not in the films.Their underground and above-ground adventures begin simply; in The Wombles (1968) the characters do little more than potter about tidying up, braving humans and dogs when necessary. Gradually, over the next 10 years, the adventures become more ambitious and more far-flung in titles such as The MacWomble's Pipe Band and The Wombles Go Round the World (both 1976).As often happens, the early home-based books worked best, since their clear message – the importance of litter collection and recycling that Beresford believed in passionately – was at their heart. Then in its infancy and largely confined to an alternative lifestyle, the theme transformed what was essentially the story of a spirited and likable but conventional family with old-fashioned values into one with an original and contemporary edge to it. It spread the message of recycling to a wide market and touched a chord with many readers, who went on to set up Womble Cleaning Up Groups on Wimbledon Common and elsewhere. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:18:00 +0100 895075 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SellersLibraryTeens/~3/psazeThDrQ0/review-thirteen-reasons-why.html Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (Click here to find a library copy.) SUMMARY:  Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch.  Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker--his classmate and crush--who committed suicide two weeks earlier.  Hannah's voice explains that there are thirteen reasons she decided to end her life.  Clay is one of them.  If he listens, he'll find out why.  Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide.  He becomes a first-hand witness to Hannah's pain, and learns the truth about himself--a truth he never wanted to face.  (from the inside flap) OPINION:  This book has been on my to-read list for several years and I finally checked it out of the library. I like to read realistic fiction with a psychological edge and this book definitely fit the bill.  As secret after secret is revealed on the tapes in the book, the reader experiences it from the points of view of both Hannah and Clay.  The layers of tension kept me reading, even though I had much more sympathy for Clay than Hannah.  I thought the structure of the book was a bit false, the audio tapes acting a bit too overtly as a device to tell Hannah's side of the story after her death.  However, that same weakness is what gives the reader insight into some of life's big questions, like why people commit suicide and what responsibility we bear for our own actions.  Ultimately, I think this is a good read for those interested in puzzling out the "whys" behind people's personalities and actions.   SIMILAR READS: Deadline by Chris Crutcher If I Stay by Gayle Forman Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci (Source: Sellers Library Teens) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:17:00 +0100 895072 http://www.lisnews.org/lawrence_weschler_fiction_nonfiction Joseph Mitchell and Ryszard Kapuscinski were both non-fiction writers who cut their teeth as reporters but went on to create some of the most celebrated narrative non-fiction of this century; full of indelible characters, plots, settings and dialogue. But both have also been dogged by accusations that they committed journalistic sins by doctoring dialogue, manufacturing scenes and creating composite characters. For Bob these were unforgiveable transgressions but Lawrence Weschler, himself a celebrated author of narrative non-fiction, argues that the problem actually lies with Bob’s rules of truth and consequences. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:01:11 +0100 895876 http://lisnews.org/lawrence_weschler_fiction_nonfiction Joseph Mitchell and Ryszard Kapuscinski were both non-fiction writers who cut their teeth as reporters but went on to create some of the most celebrated narrative non-fiction of this century; full of indelible characters, plots, settings and dialogue. But both have also been dogged by accusations that they committed journalistic sins by doctoring dialogue, manufacturing scenes and creating composite characters. For Bob these were unforgiveable transgressions but Lawrence Weschler, himself a celebrated author of narrative non-fiction, argues that the problem actually lies with Bob’s rules of truth and consequences. (Source: LISNews.org) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:01:11 +0100 895087 http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom/451 High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips — I actually had little notion of or interest in Mackenzie Phillips, but I love drug addict memoirs, so I picked this up when it rotated through the library. It comes with the special added bonus of being an incest memoir. It may well not be up your alley. [reread] The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein — It’s possible that I reread this book too often. But not probable. Nobody’s Girl by Antonya Nelson — I ran across this in our collection and picked it up because I used to love a song of the same name sung by Bonnie Raitt. When I read the blurb and discovered this was about a young woman from the Chicago suburbs who decides to move to a small desert town in New Mexico, I figured I’d better read it. It took me a long time to get through it, but it was pretty good, though not really similar to my own experience except in feeling. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times by Thomas Hauser — For our Wyoming Humanities Council book discussion series of biographies of American cultural icons. I ended up spending a lot of time talking about the history of the civil rights movement and its various strands and bringing in a whole stack of books, which just goes to show I guess that one’s extracurricular collecting habits do eventually play some role. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen — I love Franzen’s essays most of all, but I liked this quite well — perhaps even better than The Corrections. Despite what you may have read about it plot-summary-wise, it’s really a novel about falling in love and out of love and trying to figure out how to differentiate who you are from who you want to be. [reread] The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley — When in danger or in doubt, reread. [reread] The Rooms of Heaven by Mary Allen — Reread shortly after I accepted my new job. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 17:18:44 +0100 895631 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/26/20-things-we-learned-in-2010 Observer writers and experts chart the concepts, trends and buzz words that defined the past year and are likely to shape the next one1 The new politics is, in fact, the old politicsNick Clegg will regret many things about 2010. One will be his decision to produce a Lib Dem election poster warning that the Tories would raise VAT. A few weeks later Clegg, installed as deputy prime minister, was backing coalition plans to – yes – raise VAT.Then there was the pre-election pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. Six months later Clegg was pushing a policy to triple them.These shifts were damaging not just because they were old-fashioned U-turns but because they fatally undermined the party's raison d'etre – its commitment to deliver a new, honest politics. A vote for the Lib Dems, Clegg had said, would be "a vote that counts".It was all part of his broader attempt to promote the merits of voting reform – the Lib Dems' core policy. Fair votes through proportional representation would mean that everyone's vote would matter and everyone's voice would be heard.Floating the idea of "new politics" and calling for an end to the duopoly of the "old parties" made Clegg more popular than Churchill for a while. But it is dangerous to take the moral high ground in politics.A mid-December poll for the News of the World found 61% of respondents saying that they didn't trust Clegg, compared to 24% in April. In a few months, he had gone from being one of the most trusted politicians to one of the least trusted.To many, the "new politics" had begun to feel very much like old politics – if not rather worse, as angry protests hit the streets and chants rang out about promises broken. Toby Helm2 Kanye West is pop's top innovatorIn 2009, Kanye West had the distinction of being called a "jackass" by the US president, after rudely interrupting an acceptance speech by his fellow performer Taylor Swift at an awards show. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:07:13 +0100 894991 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/26/20-things-we-learned-2010 It was a year in which game-changing developments in social media competed with a new political turf wars over the 'squeezed middle'. Here a team of Observer writers and experts chart the concepts, trends and buzzwords that defined the last year and are likely to shape the next one1 The new politics is, in fact, the old politicsNick Clegg will regret many things about 2010. One will be his decision to produce a Lib Dem election poster warning that the Tories would raise VAT. A few weeks later Clegg, installed as deputy prime minister, was backing coalition plans to – yes – raise VAT.Then there was the pre-election pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. Six months later Clegg was pushing a policy to triple them.These shifts were damaging not just because they were old-fashioned U-turns but because they fatally undermined the party's raison d'etre – its commitment to deliver a new, honest politics. A vote for the Lib Dems, Clegg had said, would be "a vote that counts".It was all part of his broader attempt to promote the merits of voting reform – the Lib Dems' core policy. Fair votes through proportional representation would mean that everyone's vote would matter and everyone's voice would be heard.Floating the idea of "new politics" and calling for an end to the duopoly of the "old parties" made Clegg more popular than Churchill for a while. But it is dangerous to take the moral high ground in politics.A mid-December poll for the News of the World found 61% of respondents saying that they didn't trust Clegg, compared to 24% in April. In a few months, he had gone from being one of the most trusted politicians to one of the least trusted.To many, the "new politics" had begun to feel very much like old politics – if not rather worse, as angry protests hit the streets and chants rang out about promises broken. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:05:53 +0100 894994 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/26/the-way-back-review Slavomir Rawicz never actually made the epic trek described in his classic book The Long Walk, but Peter Weir's movie version is utterly convincingMy generation growing up during second world war and the early years of the cold war first learnt to hate the Germans and Japanese, then to discover that our believed wartime allies from the Soviet Union were just as bad and the benevolent, paternal Stalin was as monstrous as Hitler.There was a literature at our disposal during the postwar decade to help us understand that change, significantly Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four, and the symposium The God That Failed written by former communists. To these were added in the mid-1950s an international bestseller, The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, a Polish army officer captured by Russians in September 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union carved up his country, and sent to a prison camp in Siberia. His book was one of the first detailed accounts of gulag life that most people had read until Alexander Solzhenitsyn published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and later The Gulag Archipelago.The book's big selling point, however, was not the horrifying story of life in the camps but the story of how seven men escaped from a remote camp and travelled 4,000 miles by foot across Siberia, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas before the surviving members of the party found sanctuary in India in 1941. Solzhenitsyn wrote that escaping from the gulag was "an enterprise for giants among men – but for doomed giants", and The Long Walk is an inspiring tale of courage and survival against superhuman odds. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:05:13 +0100 894998 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/26/kate-horsley-fancy-dress William has everything he ever wanted. Sophie, lying beside him, is expecting their first child. She is perfect, it is Christmas, so why does he feel so awful? An exclusive short story by Kate HorsleyWilliam woke up earlier than he would have liked. It was the morning of Christmas Day, but it was still dark outside. He thought about trying to go back to sleep, but even though he felt tired, he knew he wouldn't be able to. He got out of bed and walked over to the window. The blind had been lowered and he edged his body between the material and the glass. He looked down at the road running adjacent to the house. The streetlamps were still lit; grey parking meters stood at intervals along the pavement. The families in the row of houses opposite didn't appear to be up: the windows were dark and each building gave the impression of great stillness. He could hear some wind in the trees, but apart from that it was very quiet, as though there'd been a large fall of snow. He walked back over to the bed and he sat down on the nearest corner. Sophie had always been a good sleeper; she could sleep anywhere – in the back of a car, curled up on a sofa at a party. Since she'd become pregnant, she'd started having lie-ins too. Over the last few months William had grown more sensitive to his wife's habits because he'd been having trouble sleeping himself. It was a similar pattern every night. He'd go to sleep for a few hours and then he'd wake up, very suddenly. Sometimes he was still awake at six or seven the following morning. It all felt quite out of character. William liked to think of himself as a steady sort of man, the type of person who didn't let things get the better of him. He hadn't mentioned what had been happening to anyone – he didn't want to worry Sophie – until a few nights ago when he'd had a conversation with his brother on the phone. John had said something about it being a difficult time of year. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:05:12 +0100 894999 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/QQYp9vyryio/ As 2010 winds down, we’d like to call attention to some of the things we’ve worked on or created this year. You can see a rundown of highlights here. I hate those end of year “10 best” lists. For me, each list represents a number of [books, cds, movies, apps, restaurants] that I once again failed to get to in the current year and probably won’t in the next. I also hate being told what I should [read, listen to, watch, play with, eat]. But I love WorldCat Genres, which is a great way to browse and discover fiction (or movies) based on my own tastes and preferences. For example, I love autobiographical fiction, because it’s usually bittersweet and sometimes dishy. Browsing in WorldCat Genres, I can see some newer books that are in this genre that look tempting, as well as some old favorites, and related movies. I like this way of constructing my own lists, based on similarities in the WorldCat data. And then there’s Classify. Classify is an experimental web service that reveals the classification (Dewey Decimal Classification, Library of Congress Classification, or National Library of Medicine Classification) that has been assigned across a FRBR work set. A good example is a book I’m reading now, Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run. You’ll see, at least for DCC, the classifications mostly adhere to one class number, but also tend to be assigned to two other class numbers. Additionally, Classify reveals the FAST subject headings for the FRBR work set. So what? So this is a person-friendly prototype for what is actually a web service. Imagine farming a portion of your cataloging workflow off to a webservice. If there’s overwhelming agreement on classification (90% of those items that have a class number are all the same), then the class number is assigned automagically. If there’s variance, a human intervenes and makes a decision. ... Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:41:10 +0100 895035 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ebook-marketing-still-needs-a-lot-of-work/ The NY Times has a general ebook roundup and I found the following snippet of interest that ties in with the Mike Shatzkin article below: But even with widespread access to e-books, publishers have not yet figured out how to sell them more effectively to consumers. Debut fiction and so-called midlist titles — books that are not large commercial successes — are particularly tough sells in digital form, said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company. “You can have all the availability in the world, but if people don’t know the book exists, it doesn’t matter,” Mr. Hildick-Smith said. A look at the Kindle best-seller list on Amazon shows that it is typically stocked with titles that are also on the print best-seller list — this week, for instance, new novels by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell and David Baldacci. Early next year The New York Times will begin publishing e-book best-seller lists in its book review section. “We’ve certainly learned the technology of creating e-books and distributing them,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “But the marketing side is still the Wild West. There’s a lot of digital availability now, but we still haven’t turned the key and opened the lock on how to sell e-books.” (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 24 Dec 2010 14:55:32 +0100 894827 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/mike-shatzkin-how-book-marketing-could-change/ In his latest blog post, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin talks about an interesting discovery he made in the wake of interviewing publishers for a presentation on current trends in book publishing contracts—all the publishers seem to agree on the importance of working out new ways of marketing books in a post-e-book world. The decline of shelf space also means a decline in marketing opportunities. Up ‘til now, books themselves have been critically important in marketing the books—seeing a title on display at a bookstore is its own form of advertising, and will place an awareness of the book in the mind of the shopper even if he later goes on to buy it from somewhere else. (And in that vein, books have also long been used to advertise other things; the whole point of a tie-in novelization has historically been to serve as a mini-movie poster—the studios could care less about whether the book takes a loss, or is even worth reading, as long as it drives awareness of the movie by being faced out in a bookstore.) Shatzkin draws a distinction between “expensed marketing”—advertising a single-title in ways that serve to promote that title only, and “investment marketing”—building a brand to promote many titles over time. He notes that “expensed marketing” is what publishers and bookstores have always done, but believes the way forward is “investment marketing” instead. It doesn’t make sense to go to the trouble of digital promotion for only one book. He suggests a way of doing this through attacking the problem of search and discovery, how difficult it is to find an e-book you want without having a physical store to browse through and examine titles. He would like an e-book app that would offer him a catalog of books tailored to his interests, and alerts when new such books are published. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0100 894828 http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/dec/24/literary-holiday-destinations From a beat cafe in San Francisco to Robert Louis Stevenson's burial ground, Been there readers share the muse – the top two tips win a Sony ReaderUSWINNING TIP 1: Caffe Trieste, San FranciscoHaving paid homage to City Lights Bookshop and the Beat Museum, a stroll in the North Beach area must include a visit to Caffe Trieste. This cafe boasts the vestiges of the Beat generation, giving the traveller the opportunity to sip a wonderful espresso and taste some of the best pies and pastries in San Francisco, surrounded by pictures of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg among others. Being here is a true literary experience. The picturesque coloured marble tables and the wooden chairs are still those that one can spot in the old pictures of the place, in which poets are shown sitting and chatting amiably. But the most amazing experience is that, not only can one taste real Italian flavours here, but today you can still be surrounded by those very poets in the black and white pictures on the walls. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has been a habitué for years and Jack Hirschman, the amazing "red poet", can be found sitting, reading the local newspaper and enjoying a double espresso almost every day.• 601 Vallejo St, San Francisco, +1 415 392 6739, caffetrieste.comAlessandraBava FranceWINNING TIP 2: Le Passe Muraille sculpture, ParisThis is a sculpture of a man emerging from a wall. It is a homage to the short story Le Passe Muraille (The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls), written in 1943 by Marcel Aymé. It tells the story of an ordinary man, Dutilleul, who, one day at the age of 42, suddenly discovers he "has the remarkable gift of being able to pass through walls with perfect ease". What begins as a novelty that gives him pleasure ends up pushing Dutilleul toward more sinister pursuits. Aymé was not a native of Paris although many of his novellas are based in and around the Montmartre neighbourhood where this sculpture can be found. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:58:00 +0100 894801 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/09/callow-jacobson-self-armitage-mieville As we come to the end of the first full year of the Guardian books podcast we take a look back at some of the highlights.We talk comic writing with Booker winner Howard Jacobson, put the novelist and essayist Will Self on the psychiatrist's couch, and hear from the poet Simon Armitage, who tells us what what the elf said to Kevin in his latest collection.As part of an occasional series, The Books that Made Me, we also find out about the surrealist artist who made an indelible impression on the teenage China Miéville, now one of the UK's leading science fiction writers. We also delve into theatre anecdote with Simon Callow, and venture out to South London to find out what the potter Edmund de Waal has to say about his "hidden inheritance" of Japanese netsuke.Reading listThe Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, by Edmund de Waal (Chatto & Windus)The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)My Life in Pieces, by Simon Callow (Nick Hern)Walking to Hollywood, by Will Self (Bloomsbury)Seeing Stars, by Simon Armitage (Faber)China MiévilleClaire ArmitsteadSarah CrownTim Maby (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:00:42 +0100 894796 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/dec/24/bbc-mr-james-whistle-come-you-my-lad-christmas The 24 December screening of James's story Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad is sure to deliver some Christmas chillsIf the BBC's new dramatisation of MR James's story Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad does any justice to the original it won't be children but adults who struggle to get to sleep this Christmas Eve.Oh, Whistle ... is arguably the scariest story ever written. James was a macabre master of atmosphere and intimation. His stories generally feature scholars, librarians or collectors of curious rare art and books. In the archetypal James story a donnish figure, a bit dry and rational, is cut off from the comforts of the university common room in some remote cathedral, hotel or foreign town and visited by enigmatic signs – a rattling in the corner of the room, a runic inscription in a book, a picture that slowly changes – that gradually build in terror and intensity until a final, awful revelation is glimpsed. That sight of supernatural power is always momentary, fleeting, yet absolutely devastating: an encounter with absolute dread.James was himself a scholar whose masterpiece was a hugely influential translation of the New Testament Apochrypha. That vast knowledge haunts his tales. For if ghosts are the apparent theme, what makes his stories so scary is a sense of a larger, darker picture of the universe that holds such entities. In James's stories, ghosts are always evil. They are malevolent and murderous and may be summoned by black magic. The devil is his real subject; his supernatural visions have a nasty edge of satanism. Yet in a richly British way this is filtered through beautifully painted evocations of place.Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad – which was previously, brilliantly filmed in 1968 by Jonathan Miller for a terrifying BBC film – is set on the Norfolk coast, in a landscape of sand dunes and old churchyards that would be scary even without any specific supernatural goings on. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:52:42 +0100 894802 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/quiz/2010/dec/23/books-quiz-2010 How much attention were you paying to literary developments this year? Answer these questions and find out if you're a chump or a champion (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:13:35 +0100 894794 http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/holiday-post-2010-readers-edition.html We continue our series of posts for the holiday season here at The Itinerant Librarian. As a librarian and avid reader, I feel it is essential to make an end-of-year post about reading and books. I will be posting my end-of-year reading list and commentary right after the end of 2010. I am trying to squeeze in one or two books more to the tally before the year ends. So, here we go: Book lists: The Usual SuspectsThe New Yorker's Book Department has a "Holiday Gift Guide 2010." It also includes reading paraphernalia and accessories, but there are some interesting books too. The New York Times Book Review has its "100 Notable Books of 2010."  The Guardian has its "Best Books of 2010" list.  The Economist also has a 2010 Best Books list. You can find fiction and nonfiction here. The Financial Times has its "Fiction Round-up." Bob Sutton's Good Boss, Bad Boss book was featured in various business book lists. I am linking to the post because it includes links to various business book lists. Largehearted Boy has a large aggregation of book lists from the usual suspects (Amazon, NYT, etc.) as well as some less known lists. This is basically "one-stop shopping" for book lists. More Book Lists: Things not as easy to find but just as coolFor manga readers, and I happen to be one of them, here is The Manga Critic's 2010 Holiday Gift Guide.  The author also rounded up "The Best Manga of 2010." Via The Manga Critic. Lambda Literary has book lists for LGBT readers (and by this I mean not only LGBT folks, but those of us who enjoy LGBT literature as well). Their 2010 guide features "75+ Books for every LGBTQA Person in Your Life." They even have a list for comics and graphic novel readers. There is a lot of stuff in here that I want to read at some point. The folks at Guys Lit Wire discuss "Graphic Novels-- notes from a Top 10 List. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895485 http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/holiday-post-2010-stuff-and-things.html Another popular thing to see this time of year are shopping guides and gift suggestions. Now, anyone can point to some big corporate site to get the usual. I am thinking a few more interesting things. By the way, if you have not done all your shopping, what are you waiting for? You should be done by now. You should definitely be done by now if you bought stuff online. However, if you need some real last minute ideas, or you just want some holiday amusement, stay a while and check some of these out. Spirits: Mostly alcoholicLiquor Snob has put together their "Holiday Shopping Guide 2010." So does Drinkhacker over here. Intoxicated Zodiac points to some interesting items you could have put on the grown-ups stockings: whisky dram samples. You can get them some from Master of Malt. If I had a wish list, I would not mind getting those on my stocking. Stuff for the geek in your life Blag Hag points to these nice Plush Microbe Holiday Ornaments. Topless Robot has "20 Delightfully Offbeat Nerd Gifts Under $20." Mashable listed "10 Customizable Holiday Gifts for Your Tech Savvy Office." Now do you have a geek in your life? Are they very particular, say Star Wars fan or Doctor Who? Not to worry for here is a list of "Gift Ideas for Ten Major Species of Science Fiction Fan."  Via Io9. A few naughty things (some may be a bit NSFW). The only reason I am putting this under the naughty column is because of the Boink guided journal. As the company describes it, "Commit to having sex for 30 days in a row? And write about each experience in its glorious detail? That’s what Boink is about." I thought it was a nice and unique item. The company is Flytrap. Hat tip to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Em & Lo have some suggestions for "Sensual Holiday Gifts for That Special Someone." The sex manual parody on the list sounds amusing, just the type of thing I would like to read. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895484 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SellersLibraryTeens/~3/3jo9cBczYsM/new-books-continued.html Another pile of books just turned up in my office, so look for these on the teen shelves: FICTION Jason and Kyra by Dana Davidson (replacement copy) Played by Dana Davidson (replacement copy) Hustlin' by L. Diving (Drama High series; replacement copy) Second Chance by L. Diving (Drama High series; replacement copy) Seven Paths to Death by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler Promise Kept by Stephanie Perry Moore (Perry Skky Jr. series) Staying Pure by Stephanie Perry Moore (Peyton Skky series; replacement copy) Sweetest Gift by Stephanie Perry Moore (Peyton Skky series; replacement copy) Fast Forward by Celeste O. Norfleet (Kimani Tru) Homeboyz by Alan Lawrence Sitomer (replacement copy) Crashed by Robin Wasserman GRAPHIC NOVELS Vampire Knight, volume 11, by Matsuri Hino Bleach, volume 33, by Tite Kubo NONFICTION No Choirboy:  Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin (Source: Sellers Library Teens) Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:04:00 +0100 894776 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/new-ebook-sales-site-for-self-published-authors-novelled/ Back in October Peter Ibrahim sent me an email about his new site – Novelled, which had not yet gone live. I said I’d mention it when it hit the net. Well, it has just done that and here’s what Peter had to say about it back then. You can find the site here. … the website will allow any budding author to instantly convert their Word documents into various eBook-compatible file formats and make them available for purchase. Obviously, mine won’t be the first website to try this and we certainly won’t be the last, but I think it’s different enough to some competitors to be worth visiting. As long as sites promoting amateur fiction continue to sail somewhat under the public radar and don’t provide authors with quite the same exposure that musicians and filmmakers have then the opportunity is always there… The website is called Novelled and will sell eBooks in the three major formats (.pdf, .mobi and .epub) so hopefully no major eReader hardware is excluded. The site sports what I hope is a fairly attractive-looking and professional interface; whilst the content might be provided by amateur authors, there’s no reason for the website to look the same. Perhaps the biggest difference (and, I would guess, the love it or hate it aspect of the site) is the pricing structure – Novelled will use a fixed 99p / $1.50 price for all eBooks sold on the site. It’s been my experience that many budding authors set somewhat unrealistic prices for their work – prices that compare unfavourably with both physical books and their professional eBook counterparts – and perhaps sell fewer books than their content otherwise merits. By using fixed, low-cost pricing, the intention is to attract a larger audience and encourage more people to “take the gamble” on an unknown author. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:37:18 +0100 894676 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/23/season-s-readings-saki His bracingly nasty takes on Edwardian Christmases remain all too recognisableI have long been a lover of Hector Hugh Munro and his short stories, and I'd like to propose a trio of stories from Saki. I remember being disturbed yet fascinated by "Tobermory" as a bedtime story. Although, as is the way of these things, I was more upset by the death of the cat than that of the oddly named Cornelius Appin. As I got older, I relished the wit and cringes. And now we are heading into seasonal territory of twee and saccharine jollity, the nastiness of Saki is a welcome refreshment.To begin, we have Reginald on Christmas Presents. Reginald is one of Saki's heroes. I've never found him quite as devastatingly debonair as Clovis Sangrail, with his mulberry eyes and lowered dexter eyelid. But I think that's mostly because he's called Reginald.What particularly appeals in this vignette is how little things change. "I wish it to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I don't want a "George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book as a Christmas present. The fact cannot be too widely known." We may not be buying bridge markers or cheaper editions of Omar Khayyam in 2010, but the principles still apply. Aunts still have to be trained, and the person who "knows a tie is always useful" will, sadly, exist forever.For the day itself there is Reginald's Christmas Revel. It's a bracingly vicious take on spending Christmas with dull people – best if you imagine it delivered in a sardonic drawl. Faced with a bluff old major's boring safari anecdotes, Reginald retaliates: "I used to listen to him with a rapt attention that I thought rather suited me, and then one day I quite modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi I had shot in the Lincolnshire fens. The Major turned a beautiful Tyrian scarlet (I remember thinking at the time that I should like my bathroom hung in that colour). ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:04:07 +0100 894609 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/23/andrea-levy-book-club Andrea Levy will be in conversation with John Mullan at Kings Place on 24 JanuaryDate: Monday 24 JanuaryTime: 7.00pmVenue: Hall OnePrice: £9.50Andrea Levy will talk to John Mullan about Small Island. Set in 1948, the novel is narrated by four different characters – Gilbert and Hortense, a married couple newly arrived in London from Jamaica, Queenie, their English landlady and her husband, Bernard. A comic and touching story about the first wave of West Indian immigration to Britain, exploring themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, it won both the Orange and the Whitbread prizes in 2004 and was later adapted for the small screen by the BBC. Tickets are £9.50 online or £11.50 from the box office: www.kingsplace.co.ukBox Office: 020 7520 1490Andrea LevyFictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:00:00 +0100 894611 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/12/23/morris-cohen-1927-2010-a-few-thoughts/ Morris Leo Cohen died on Saturday, December 18, 2010. He had recently celebrated his 83rd birthday. More than a few of us call Morris mentor. During his years at Yale, Harvard, Penn and SUNY Buffalo, he attracted disciples with ease and grace. I trust that a round of tributes will follow his passing, but one aspect that may be neglected is the symbolic value of it for librarianship. Morris was the last great scholar bibliographer of his generation in American law librarianship. Not a scholar who stepped into the role of librarian, Morris was a scholarly bibliographer, a man of great learning, who could quote both Samuel Johnson and Ranganathan in the same sentence. Even more important, he was devoted to bibliographic integrity. While a hardy handful of American law librarians continue to pursue lines of scholarly interest, Morris stands for old-style, careful, bibliographic work. His work showed analytical depth combined with elegant style. It was an endeavor that called for intellectual focus and pure sweat equity. When I first met Morris in 1972, I was a second year law student at Harvard Law School. Sharon Hamby O’Connor, who had been my boss at the undergraduate library, suggested that I meet with him to discuss my very foggy career plans. (Sharon went on to become Law Librarian, Professor and Associate Dean at Boston College Law School, yet another of Morris’s mentees). Inspirational in every possible way, Morris told me to be a law librarian. Looking at him, at his work, and entranced, as so many were, by his sweet manner, he changed my life. I recall that on that day he told me of BEAL, his projected Bibliography of Early American Law. It was an ambitious project, conceived of with Balfour Halevy, that ultimately was designed to prepare a catalog that listed each and every legal imprint in the United States published before 1860. Ideally, Morris would look at each book in person. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:00:01 +0100 895185 http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2010/12/top-ten-books-of-2010-at-bhpl.html Fiction published in 2010 with the most checkouts so far at BHPL:1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson 2. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich 3. Worst Case by James Patterson 4. 61 Hours by Lee Child 5. Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci 6. 9th Judgment by James Patterson 7. Deception by Jonathan Kellerman 7. Private by James Patterson 9. Innocent by Scott Turow 10. Postcard Killers by James Patterson 11. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake Yup, the top ten is 40% James Patterson. That's why I threw in Sarah Blake, for some variety.Nonfiction published in 2010 with the most checkouts at BHPL:1. The Big Short by Michael Lewis2. Game Change by John Heilemann 3. Oprah : a biography by Kitty Kelley 4. This Time Together by Carol Burnett 5. Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang by Chelsea Handler 6. Steinbrenner by Bill Madden 7. Making Toast : a Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt 8. Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush 8. War by Sebastian Junger 8. Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth If The Big Short isn't enough for you, Henry Paulson's On the Brink and Joseph Stiglitz's Freefall were next most popular on the list. (Source: Berkeley Heights Public Library Book Blog and Buzz) Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894720 http://santafelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-comics.html Yes, I admit it, I love comic books! Like many kids, I grew up on Archie comics, simple stories with bright colors, and in conjunction with picture books that's how I learned how to read. When I grew out of the Archies, all that was available were superhero comics. Now, while I loved the Wonder Woman TV show and the Super Friends cartoons, the comic books weren't quite to my taste. So, alas, I put the comic books aside in favor of "real books" such as novels, non-fiction, poetry, and of course, schoolwork.Thankfully, a college friend introduced me to Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. With stories that dovetailed nicely with the mythology and literature classes I was taking, and breathtaking art that made the Archie comics look like doodles, I was immediately hooked. I was soon seeking out interesting, intelligent, and beautifully-styled comic books on a weekly basis. When I'd travel to another city, I'd load up on "graphic novels", an emerging literary form that was giving those flimsy funny books a more substantial binding and cover.Many years later, comics and graphic novels that were once hard to find have now hit the mainstream. Hollywood regularly adapts some of my favorite tomes for the big screen with mixed results. K-12 teachers are using graphic novels in the classroom, both to assist struggling readers and to teach these beautifully crafted stories as literature. Advances in printing and publishing technology have surely helped, but I think we've also gone full circle: back to a golden age of books, when illuminated manuscripts demonstrated that information and tales can be presented beautifully.While we may not be as knowledgeable as some of the folks at True Believers and other comics shops, we do have quite a collection of graphic novels for all ages and tastes. Many of our books, including manga and superhero series, are in an easy-to-browse section of the Young Adult collection. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894680 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/12/22/separated-at-birth/ Planning a plane trip or a leisurely vacation anytime soon?  Perhaps you’re traveling for the holidays?  If so then Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese should be in your carry-on.  The novel starts a bit slowly, but stick with it, soon it becomes a page turner.  It begins with the birth of twin boys in a mission hospital (forever known as Missing) in  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Their Catholic nun mother dies in childbirth and their father, the reclusive Doctor Stone, deserts them immediately.  The children are raised separately by the two remaining expatriate Indian doctors in the mission, the obstetrician Hema, who saved the twins lives at their birth, and Ghosh, the congenial role model and devoted father. The twins, Marion and Shiva Stone, who were separated at birth are in many ways mirror images of each other.  Through Marion’s narration, we see the unfolding of events in Ethopia during the reign of Haile Selaisse and its aftermath.  Both boys become doctors and although there is considerable medical detail, it is all very comprehensible.  Marion’s experience as a resident in an urban hospital is described, as is Shiva’s medical research.  And the elusive Doctor Stone also has a role to play. This is an epic novel, covering a good part of the life of a young man who is eventually forced by politics to emigrate to America.  It has all of the elements of a good novel: well developed characters,  humor, tragegy, romance, and a historical perspective.  Verghese writes well and  quickly draws the reader into a part of the world that is very unfamilar to most Americans.  Although the length of the book might discourage a book group, it is would be a great choice for a discussion. (Source: MADreads) Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:25:22 +0100 894523 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/22/nikesh-shukla-top-10-anglo-asian-books From Hanif Kureishi to Helen Walsh, the novelist celebrates books that find room for naked raves and Bruce Springsteen as well as wrangles over arranged marriagesNikesh Shukla is a writer, performance poet and filmmaker. His writing has appeared on radio and television and his film The Great Identity Swindle, co-directed with Videowallah, won best short film at the Satyajit Ray Foundation awards in 2009. He lives in north London. His first novel, Coconut Unlimited, is shortlisted for this year's Costa first novel award."If we've been told anything ever in our lives ever, it's that Anglo-Asian books will cross swords with themes of cultural identity and dual heritage, repressed marriages and there will be at least one mystical encounter in a mangrove swamp. Probably with mist. Anglo-Asian books are more than these stereotypes."Writing my own debut meant doing the entire opposite of all those things, throwing them out and doing a Hornby, or a Coe, filling the soundtrack with Public Enemy and steeping the drama in suburban nausea. These books deal with the diversity of Anglo-Asian themes and take us to communes, squats, concerts, Mumbai, even Tunbridge Wells. Not a banyan tree in sight. And it's not just the brown boys and girls getting involved. Multiculturalism is so embedded in our culture that writers like William Sutcliffe are considering themes of racism and spiritualism. Anglo-Asian books are beyond being about Asians in England. They're about the marrying of cultures, about understanding of the world we live in and its changing boundaries.1. Hanif Kureishi - The Black Album (Faber)While The Buddha of Suburbia is a masterfully comic tale of rise and fall that loves its characters, there's something a lot more sinister about The Black Album, making it the oddball in his output. ... Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:17:38 +0100 894377 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2010/12/call-for-papers-childrens-and-young.html Call for Papers Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture for the PCA/ACA & Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture AssociationsJoint ConferenceApril 20-23, 2011San Antonio, TXhttp://www.swtxpca.org/You may submit your proposals online by going to the conference event management database, here: http://ncp.pcaaca.org/Once in the database, create an account, and then submit a proposal. For submitting to this area, please use the pull down menu for the Topic Area: choose the one that reads: Children's/Young Adult Literature and Culture (Dominguez). This will make sure your presentation is submitted to my area for programming purposes (the national PCA/ACA also has a children's literature and culture area).You may also submit proposals to me directly:Dr. Diana Dominguez, Area ChairE-mail submissions preferred:gypsyscholar@rgv.rr.comPlease put SWPCA Submission in e-mail subject line.Proposal submission deadline extended to: December 31, 2010Conference hotel: Marriott Rivercenter San Antonio101 Bowie StreetSan Antonio, Texas 78205 USAPhone: 1-210-223-1000Now accepting proposals for the Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture area of the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Associations Conference. This area is not limited to proposals/papers about traditional literature; children's and young adult culture can encompass a myriad of media: books, television, film, computer/internet culture, fan fiction, toys, marketing issues, music, comics and graphic novels, and non-fiction mediums like documentaries, non-fiction books or magazines, textbooks, television non-fiction shows. Theoretically-based papers about the very nature of "children's" and "young adult" categories/genres also encouraged. ... Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894986 http://theloftonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-bundles.html Have you checked out our YA book bundles yet? Located in the YA Fiction stacks, book bundles are an easy way to grab some books when you are short on time or don't know what you want. Each bundle contains three books and is themed. Past and present themes include: Fairy Tales, Reincarnation, Disasters, Time Travel and MUCH MORE! So come in and grab a bundle! (Source: The Loft online) Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894780 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/12/21/on-reading/ The ABA Journal had a news link today titled, “Do Judges Read Online Briefs Differently? Brief Writers May Need to Be Briefer“. The post discussed a Texas Lawyer article on e-filing and what that might mean to legal writing. Interesting stuff. The idea of fewer words to convey a point may be necessary if reading moves primarily to a screen. A colleague once asserted that there was a bunch of literature showing that reading on screen was slower than reading from paper, and he was right. Here are some examples of studies that support this premise: Dillon, A., McKnight, C. and Richardson, J. (1988) Reading from paper versus reading from screens. The Computer Journal, 31(5), 457-464. Available here Mangen, A., (2008) Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion. Journal of Research in Reading, 31(4), 404–419, Abstract and Mentioned in the Chronicle of Higher Education Paper Because. “It is easier to learn on paper“ Today @ PC World, Reading on Paper is Faster than iBooks on the iPad, July 5 2010 Personally, I am enamoured of all the methods of consuming the written word. Consuming hyperlinked case law is bliss. I find joy in not keeping my spouse awake by reading in the dark with my back lit iPad…brings back memories of my youth with a flash light under the covers. I enjoy every visit to the public library, and I am looking forward to finishing the bookshelves in my new house where my collection of triage, tripe, and triumph will be displayed and accessible for revisiting. I relish time spent in bookstores for both new and recycled items. If writing with fewer words becomes necessary for technology, I hope that only occurs for certain types of writing. If you were wondering what to get me for Christmas, choose a book. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:02:39 +0100 895198 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/interview-with-mark-waid-on-digital-and-the-future-of-comics/ I’m not familiar with Mark Waid, who is the former chief creative officer of Boom! Studios, but a recent tweet by Richard Nash says: And don’t pretend it’s just comix … If you’re in publishing, you should listen to what @markwaid has to say …. You can find the interview at Comics Alliance. There’s a lot of interesting stuff there, but one of the things that really shocked me was this: CA: In our interview with Chip, he also talked about the barriers of the comic book format itself for new readers, including how and when comics are distributed, and even how to read them. He thought this could be a major impediment to breaking in new readers. How serious of an issue do you think that is? MW: I think it’s a huge impediment on a couple of counts. First off, all of us who have read comics since were kids, we all lose sight of the fact that smart adults can’t figure out how to read comics, which is mind-blowing. Just a couple weeks ago, I was in Indiana guest-lecturing at an anthropology class about comics, and I passed out some pages of comics to make some points. And some of the kids who didn’t read comics came down afterwards – these are bright kids who have light behind their eyes – and they were saying, “I’m not exactly sure how to read this. Do I read the balloons first? Do I read right to left or up and down?” For you and me, it’s like asking us how we breathe; we just know this stuff. But comics is like any other foreign language; you learn it easiest and best as a kid, and if you have to learn it as an adult it’s much harder to pick up on. Just the reading of comics, the mechanism is an impediment. Second, there’s a reason that newspapers don’t still publish serial fiction like [Charles] Dickens. Nobody wants to read it that way anymore. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:16:57 +0100 894293 http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-7022/TS-14733.mp3 Our main mission here at TeleRead is cover the ways that electronic media have changed reading. But occasionally we also talk about how it changes writing, because after all, writing is just the flip side of reading. And there are a number of sites where writing is only half the equation, because after someone has written something electronically, then naturally other people are going to need to read it electronically. One such site, which I have discussed here before, was Ficlets.com, begun in early 2007 as a subsidiary of AOL. Ficlets was based on a simple idea: let people write stories 1024 bytes at a time, with other people free to spin their own stories out of those others have created. The stories, called “ficlets”, were released under a Creative Commons Attribution/Sharealike license, meaning that other people could reuse them however they wanted as long as the reusers did not impose further restrictions. Requiem for Ficlets I first learned about Ficlets when two well-known Internet personalities became involved with it and endorsed it—child-actor-turned-geek Wil Wheaton and geek-turned-SF-writer John Scalzi. (In fact, I think that’s also how I first heard of John Scalzi, too—his involvement in Ficlets. I heard about it from Wheaton; he heard about it from Scalzi.) I went there and had fun. Both Scalzi and Wheaton eventually burned out on it—not surprising, I guess, as busy as they are with other projects—but I and a number of other writers continued participating. Even after Kevin Lawver, the site’s creator, left AOL, and AOL never replaced him, the site continued chugging along, rolling up a remarkable 49,000 story segment contributions before AOL finally pulled the plug. (My blog post here ended up being reblogged by Wil Wheaton himself, I was astonished to notice.) But fortunately, the Creative Commons license came to the rescue. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:15:00 +0100 894294 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/21/writing-at-night The shortest day – or longest night – of the year it seems an apt moment to consider the enduring appeal to authors of the hours of darknessI write this from a swivel chair at 4.17am. Twitter has gone quiet. There is darkness for miles. I can hear a watch tick. It's the longest night of the year, and if I time things carefully, I could avoid daylight for 48 hours. What's more, research suggests it won't just be me. There's a mislaid family of readers and writers at night, and at this hour there's nothing else to do but search for them.Robert Frost was up late. So were Delmore Schwartz, Alan Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda, Charles Dickens and Carol Ann Duffy. "The hour is midnight and the library is deep and carried like a dreaming child into the darkness of these pages," wrote Richard Brautigan. James Tipton seems to suggest that poetry itself is sleeplessness, a oneness with things only amassable at night. "A child," said Sylvia Plath, "forming itself finger by finger in the dark."Does the night absolve the day? Susan Rebecca White wrote after long shifts at a Middle Eastern restaurant, "still smelling of hummus and lamb". Tennessee Williams wrote after days as a clerk at the International Shoe Company, Kafka after insurance, TS Eliot after banking. JD Salinger was sent to military school aged 15, where he wrote under bedsheets by torchlight. His last, unpublished work – written in slippers and robe in New Hampshire, and burned at dusk – was a song to insomnia, a "memoir of the night" of which only 16 pages remain.Is it the peace and quiet? "I wrote [Twilight] mostly at night," Stephenie Meyer has said. "After the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate." So did Danielle Steele, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Barack Obama. "Now," says Allison Leotta, "the sound of a softly snoring baby triggers a Pavlovian response in me to start typing. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:05:18 +0100 894249 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/dec/21/underworld-danny-boyle-frankenstein Dance duo's crackling electronics will bring monster to life in director's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novelUnderworld are once again collaborating with Danny Boyle, teaming up with the director for his stage adaptation of Frankenstein. The National Theatre production will feature a "soundscore" by dance duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, who are bringing the monster to life with crackling electronics and pounding bass.Boyle and Underworld have a history of collaboration. In 1996, the director's use of Born Slippy .NUXX in Trainspotting catapulted the dance act to stardom. Hyde and Smith later co-wrote the score to Sunshine, Boyle's 2007 science-fiction film.Frankenstein is already in rehearsals in London and will open next year. With an original script by Nick Dear, actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller are to alternate in the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creature.Hyde hinted at his involvement with the play in a series of blogposts over the past couple of weeks. "Great day at theatre," he wrote. "People, noises, music, spaces, inspiration unlikely direction. Shepherd's pie, meat with a hat, Hamlet in the dark. Walking alone with the river, taking air with luminous boats. People like tourist crows, don't notice me. Everyone drawn, excited to the light. Bars full, bell rings. They go in, we come out." At the theatre, he explained later, "the dancefloor is full of seats".Frankenstein is to open on 5 February 2011. Tickets are on sale now.UnderworldDance musicElectronic musicDanny BoyleTheatreHorrorFictionMary ShelleySean Michaelsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:48:39 +0100 894250 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/12/21/literary-spin-offs-a-christmas-carol/ Okay, so you’ve seen, and this is just a conservative estimate, 1,489,226 television shows and movies based — sometimes exceedingly loosely — on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843). But how many literary spin-offs have you read? Adam Roberts, the British science fiction writer and parodist — I talked about him back in March, in this post – has written I Am Scrooge (Gollancz, 2010), a very funny retelling of Dickens’ classic story, with one tiny, almost insignificant addition: zombies. Scrooge, you see, is somehow immune to the plague that’s turning the rest of humanity into the walking dead, and the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future are really keen to find out why. If you’re a fan of Roberts’ brand of humor (and I am, very much), you’ll love this Yuletide mashup. If you’ve never come across his hysterical parodies — or, for that matter, his elegantly written science fiction novels — you’re in for a real treat. And, needless to say, zombie-philes will eat it up. Louis Bayard’s Mr. Timothy (HarperCollins, 2003) focuses on the grown-up Tiny Tim, who, with a young companion, exposes the dark side of London’s elite. Timothy Cratchit undergoes a transition that echoes that of his benefactor Ebenezer Scrooge — he’s a hard-edged cynic when the story begins — but the novel isn’t precisely a sequel to A Christmas carol. In fact the book feels a bit unsure of itself at times (is it an examination of its central character? is it a crime drama?), but you can’t deny that it’s well written and pretty darned interesting.  You should also check out The Man Who Invented Christmas (Crown, 2008), by Les Standiford – yes, that Standiford, the author of the John Deal mystery novels. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:38:44 +0100 894482 http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/12/amazons-latest-kindle-deletion-erotic-incest-themed-fiction.ars (Source: Library Link of the Day) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0100 894147 http://lovetheliberry.blogspot.com/2010/12/art.html Girl: Do you have Strawberries with Whipped Cream by James Patterson.I look all over-- the catalog, Fantastic Fiction, Amazon, Google Books, etc. to finally learn that it is the epilogue to Sundays at Tiffany's.Girl (to her dad): Why did they name the epilogue that?Dad: Because it's art. They can do whatever they want. Why did Picasso paint people with three eyes? Because it's art! (Source: Love the Liberry) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895098 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/12/singin_in_the_r.php Submitted to California Libraries by: Eve Nyren, CLA Member Last weekend I saw the closing performance of The Davis Musical Theatre's Singin' in the Rain. Loved every minute of it, except that it made me think of ebooks. For anyone not familiar with the plot, it is set when talking pictures began. Monumental studios has two big stars, Don and Lina, who are romantic leads in Monumentals' silent movies. Don comes out of vaudeville and is insecure about his current prestige; Lina is dim-witted, has a voice like chalk screeching on a black board, and believes the studio hype that she and Don are an item. ("I'd rather kiss a tarantula! says he--someone bring me a tarantula!" When the advent of the talkies is announced at a Hollywood bash, Monumentals' leader J.F. says it's just a flash in the pan. Nobody will go for that. The Jazz Singer? Give me a break! (Hey. Nobody's going to want to read a book that needs a battery) Fast forward. Monumental is playing catch up. They are desperately trying elocution lessons on Lina. No good. They try to get her to speak to the microphone. "I can NYOT make love to a bush!" Don can no longer amuse himself by verbally abusing Lina in silent "love scenes" and his performance gritting his teeth through Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou" gets booed. (We're not set up to market ebooks competitively, so we'll do it badly and not change any of our staffing, procurement or marketing models) Don and his friend Cosmo decide to draw on their vaudeville background to turn the silent romance (Dueling Cavalier) set during the French Revolution into a musical which narrowly misses being named Dueling Mammy. Cosmo helps Don see the vaudeville stuff is worthwhile because all that matters is "make 'em laugh" (the best song and dance number ever--he practically knocks himself out demonstrating pratfalls). (Budgets are bad all over. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:55:59 +0100 894331 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/the-elements-ipad-app-helps-sell-printed-books/ Publishing Perspectives has an interesting profile of Touch Press, the company behind “The Elements”, the periodic table app for the iPad that we’ve mentioned a time or two. The company was founded by scientist and author Theodore Gray, who came up with a pictorial periodic table poster now found in many schools. Gray and Touch Press’s CEO, Thomas Whitby, both collect elements, and met through bidding on the same pieces of plutonium on eBay. The Elements, an illustrated, interactive e-book application for the iPad, was one of the first apps that demonstrated the iPad’s full educational and multimedia potential, and was remarked on in a number of early reviews. The Elements was published as a printed book first, by Black Dog and Leventhal who were skeptical about the iPad version being released. “But what has happened is that initially there were 100,000 copies of the book in print and now, after the iPad app, there are 300,000. Sales of the printed book have greatly increased as a result of the electronic version coming out. I think people buy the electronic book, love what it does, but also want to be able to give the book to people who don’t necessarily have an iPad.” Whitby sees a synergistic future ahead for both interactive e-books and printed paper books—each does things the other cannot, such as being able to wrap and put a printed book under a trees. He would like to get all of Touch Press’s electronic books available on all platforms, but notes that “at the moment, the iPad is the best game in town.” Touch Press is planning future projects on the solar system, jewels and gemstones, dinosaurs (apparently), and a “’landmark’ TS Eliot poem”. It’s interesting that the most interactive books are non-fictional in nature. Though I suppose it makes sense. When we read a fiction story, the only “interaction” we want is our imagination interacting with the words on the page. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:18:33 +0100 894065 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lansinglibraryyouth/podcast/~3/N6-TOvIwAe0/junie-b-first-grader-jingle-bells.html Junie B., First Grader is at it again. Junie B. and May will not leave each other alone and they are driving Mr. Scary, their teacher, crazy. Dear first-grade journal, winter break is the school word for I gotta get out of this place! May is driving JunieB. crazy with her tattling and to top that all off, Junie B. picks May's name for her Secret Santa gift. Maybe she should give May exactly what she deserves? Please come into the library and check out Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May.) and find out how this ends. (Source: Lansing Library Youth Dept. Podcast) Mon, 20 Dec 2010 19:33:36 +0100 894255 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/20/john-wyndham-unread-bestseller Perennially popular, his science fiction is a great deal more nuanced than generally recognisedOne of the drawbacks of being a bestselling author is that no one reads you properly. Sure they read you, but do they really read you? I've been thinking about this because Nicola Swords and I have just made a documentary for Radio 4 about John Wyndham. Wyndham is probably the most successful British science fiction writer after HG Wells, and his books have never been out of print. He continues to haunt the public imagination – either through adaptations of his own work (last Christmas gave us a new Day of the Triffids on the BBC) or through thinly disguised homages (witness the opening of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, which almost exactly resembles the first chapters of The Day of the Triffids, and is in its turn parodied in the opening of Shaun of the Dead). But because his books are so familiar, maybe we don't look too closely at them.I read a lot of Wyndham when I was a teenager. Then, a few years ago, when I was looking around for books to adapt as a Radio 4 "classic serial", I thought of The Midwich Cuckoos. Rereading it, I was startled to find a searching novel of moral ambiguities where once I'd seen only an inventive but simple SF thriller. If you don't know the story, the village of Midwich is visited by aliens who put the whole place to sleep for 24 hours and depart; some weeks later all the women of childbearing age find they are pregnant, and give birth to golden-eyed telepathic children whose powers are soon turned against the village and the world.What I didn't see first time around are the awkward questions the book poses about its own story. While the narrator, Richard Gayford, is very clear that the children are a simple threat and must be destroyed, the novel isn't so sure. Put another way, I think Wyndham has deliberately created a fallible narrator, who often doesn't understand the story he's telling. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:12:31 +0100 894014 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SellersLibraryTeens/~3/U_EbbYbumOY/recommendation-samurai-shortstop.html Samurai Shortstop by Alan Gratz (Click here to find a library copy.) Recommendation by Kathy Should we keep it?  YES Why?  It's an interesting part of history, and I like how it teaches about samurai seniority. This book was part of the Last Call display in the teen section.  Kathy checked it out, read it, and filled out the bookmark with her recommendation.  You can do the same...there are a lot more books that need a boost from readers like you!  Just make sure you get to the library before December 29 to participate. (Source: Sellers Library Teens) Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:09:51 +0100 894095 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seealso/~3/uFNzEQeTanw/something_i_have_done_that_you_probably_should_too.html It is interesting what we take, if not for granted, then for “normal.” Science fiction writer John Scalzi posted this weekend a list of Yet Another 10 Things I’ve Done That You Probably Have Not. It’s a fun list, with items like “swatted a fly off Harrison Ford’s lapel” and “been in a car that crashed, in a not-quite-irony-free fashion, through a cemetery fence.” It’s a little heavy on the encounters with famous men for my taste, but “ingratiatingly self-aggrandizing” is part of Scalzi’s brand, so it works. His first item on the list is what caught my eye, though: “1. Been a couple of feet away from a Shakespeare First Folio.” This is a bet he would have lost with me. I was fortunate enough to work at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin when I was in library school. The job itself wasn’t all that glamorous, and mostly consisted of paging materials from the closed stacks to bring to the readers in the reading room. But even as a lowly page, one could say things like, “wait, which copy of the First Folio did he want? He knows we have two, right?” So yes, I have been a couple of feet from a First Folio. I then closed the distance and picked it up and took it to the reading room. When the reader was done with it, I probably paged through it. In that job, I held manuscripts hundreds of years older than the First Folio and 19th century “yellowback” popular novels far more rare than the First Folio. I held the first printed edition of Dante and the first book printed in English. I held manuscript pages written by D.H. Lawrence and Tom Stoppard and Tennessee Williams. Which, you know, yay me. But yay you, too. If you work at a college or university, you likely have something brag-worthy in your special collections, too. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:51:04 +0100 894646 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/12/20/my-guilty-pleasures-a-la-npr/ A recent NPR news special features writers talking about the books they love but are embarrassed to be seen reading.  One of the titles is an erotic historical novel, another, Haunted Wisconsin (yay!) and other ghostly guides, and yet another, The World According to Garp (OK, why is that embarrassing?).  There’s a certain voyeuristic pleasure hearing about what embarrasses folks, but at the same time, I work at a public library, so really, what’s the big deal? Folks are encouraged to read and check-out whatever their hearts desire.  Public libraries are wonderful for that.  What’s even better is that you can test out books, DVDs, magazines, etc. for free and if you really love them, you can then decide whether or not you want to shell out your hard earned dollars at the bookstore and buy them.  It’s wonderful! But in the spirit of sharing, I will disclose some of my own somewhat embarrassing reading interests.  I love US Weekly.  And not just when I am waiting for the dentist.  I love it weekly.  I especially love “Who Wore It Best” and “Fashion Police” (formerly “When Bad Clothes Happen to Good People” - I don’t know why they changed that). As for books, I not so secretly enjoy paranormal teen romances.  I don’t keep it totally hush, but it is still a little embarrassing.  One of my favorite newer series (yes, I am waaayyy over Twilight) is by Lisa McMann.  The first book, Wake, introduces the reader to high school student Janie Hannagan.  Janie finds herself drawn into other people’s dreams.  She discovers that she can use this special dream-catcher skill to help solve crimes. Warning: these books read fast and as soon as you figure out what’s going on in book one, it will be over and you will be on to book two, Fade. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:38:04 +0100 894076 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/20/scott-pilgrim-world-satellite-awards Edgar Wright's comic book movie is best motion picture comedy or musical and Michael Cera is best comedy actorWith its video game imagery, slacker geek protagonist and sardonic 20-something humour, it is not the type of fare which generally tends to capture the imagination of Hollywood awards body members. Yet the comic book movie Scott Pilgrim Vs the World began a late run for awards-season recognition at the weekend after it picked up a gong for best film of the year at the Satellite awards.British director Edgar Wright's film took the best motion picture comedy or musical gong at the awards, which are handed out by the International Press Academy and mimic the Golden Globes by splitting awards into drama and comedy categories. Star Michael Cera also carried off the best comedy actor award for his turn as the lovelorn yet pugilistic Pilgrim.The award comes as a surprise because Wright's movie was generally seen as something of a turkey at the US box office, though it did receive strong reviews. Cera et al are unlikely to be celebrating at the Oscars come February, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does not distinguish between comedy and drama, and rarely garlands the former. However, a Golden Globe run looks a distinct possibility.Elsewhere, The Social Network added to its haul of awards season wins by carrying off gongs for best motion picture drama, best director for David Fincher and best adapted screenplay for Aaron Sorkin, writer of The West Wing. Christopher Nolan's brainteaser thriller Inception won the awards for best score (Hans Zimmer), cinematography (Wally Pfister) and art direction and production design (Guy Hendrix Dyas, Luke Freeborn, Brad Ricker and Dean Wolcott).In the acting categories, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's Noomi Rapace won best actress in a drama, Colin Firth was best actor in a drama for The King's Speech and Anne Hathaway was best actress in a comedy for Love and Other Drugs. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:29:02 +0100 894016 http://memphisreads.blogspot.com/2010/12/memphis-reads-question.html By now, several year-end lists detailing the best books chosen by editors, book critics, and selection committees have been released.Memphis Reads wants to know what books were chosen by our blog visitors as the best of 2010. Memphis Reads asks: What was the best book (fiction or non-fiction) you read in 2010? Leave us a comment by clicking the "comments" link below. (Source: Memphis Reads) Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894362 http://www.powells.com/partner/18/review/2010_12_19.html?utm_source=overview&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_overview&utm_content=Best%20European%20Fiction%20%28Best%20European%20Fiction%29 Best European Fiction (Best European Fiction) by Aleksandar Hemon, a review from Cerise Press by John Givens. (Source: Powell's Books: Review-A-Day) Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:00:25 +0100 893838 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SellersLibraryTeens/~3/WT3c_oGhvVo/further-new-books.html More fiction came through processing, so the shelves are packed with shiny new things for you to read! Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson (sequel to Chains) The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (replacement copy) Friends 'Til the End by ReShonda Tate Billingsley (Good Girlz series) Darkest Hour by Meg Cabot (Mediator series; replacement copy) Haunted by Meg Cabot (Mediator series; replacement copy) Shadowland by Meg Cabot (Mediator series; replacement copy) Hunted by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast (House of Night series; replacement copy) First Semester by Cecil R. Cross II (Kimani Tru) Next Semester by Cecil R. Cross II (Kimani Tru) Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz (replacement copy) Culture Clash by L. Divine (Drama High series) Frenemies by L. Divine (Drama High series; replacement copy) My Little Phony by Lisi Harrison (Clique series; replacement copy) If You Really Loved Me by Anne Schraff (Urban Underground series) One of Us by Anne Schraff (Urban Underground series) Outrunning the Darkness by Anne Schraff (Urban Underground series) Shadows of Guilt by Anne Schraff (Urban Underground series) Teenage Love Affair by Ni-Ni Simone Blue Is for Nightmares by Laurie Faria Stolarz (replacement copy) (Source: Sellers Library Teens) Sun, 19 Dec 2010 15:23:00 +0100 893893 http://epist.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/serendipities-2010-december/ Doctor Who, Delicious, and the Commonplace Book Once again, all my worlds colliding in interesting ways this week.  For starters, I got Mark watching Doctor Who — he’s working his way through Season 4 with Doctor David Tennant on Netflix Streaming, and whenever the red envelopes show up, we slowly work our way through Season 5 with Doctor Matt Smith. What the heck could this possibly have to do with Delicious.com and Commonplace Books, you ask?  Excellent question. Here goes… In the Season 5 episode “The Time of Angels” River Song reappears with her intriguing blue TARDIS book, which basically serves as her commonplace book of all things Doctor-related.  But I didn’t think of it as her commonplace book till I saw some tweets coming out of THATcamp about digitizing them, plus Amanda Watson’s Ngram comparing commonplace books to scrapbooks. On top of all this, I’m reading Steven Johnson’s new book Where Good Ideas Come From (*highly* recommended) and I just came to the part in chapter 3 where he talks about the magic of commonplace books, particularly in regards to Darwin, who wrote copious notes and re-read them later to compare with other notes. So with my brain churning around questions about commonplace books, a seemingly unrelated event happens — rumors spin out of control about my beloved bookmarking site Delicious.com riding off into the dot.com horizon, and suddenly I (and thousands of other people) start really thinking about where to keep our treasure troves of both useful and forgotten links (I’m toying with both Diigo and Pinboard, for what it’s worth…). ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 03:53:50 +0100 893909 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/19/once-upon-life-peter-leonard As the son of Elmore Leonard, Peter was no stranger to gripping stories with unexpected plot twists. But nothing prepared him for his experience in a Roman jail when a drunken jape as an Italian student backfiredI was in a year-abroad programme, one of 240 American students attending Loyola University's Rome Center in Italy. The school year was winding down. I went out to dinner with a group of friends in Trastevere. After several courses and many bottles of wine we went to a bar, and listened to a singer do jazz standards.Around 11.30pm Steve Pappas, a friend from Vallejo, California, and I decided to peel off from the group and take a cab across town to Harry's Bar, an old Hemingway haunt on Via Veneto where we'd sit outside, drink whisky and talk to the prostitutes, beautiful women who walked down from the park, Villa Borghese, looking for a rich guy staying at one of the expensive hotels.We left the bar and I saw a taxi on the other side of the piazza under a full moon. I walked to it and I got in the back and closed my eyes, feeling the effects of many drinks. I heard the front door open and close, looked and saw Pappas grinning in the driver's seat. "We're going to Harry's."I thought he was kidding. But then I heard the engine start, saw him slip the shifter in gear, and we did a couple doughnuts in the middle of the piazza, tyres squealing, and pulled out, turning right on to a street heading for the Tiber River.I said: "Are you out of your mind?"He looked at me in the rear-view mirror and laughed.Minutes later, negotiating the narrow cobblestone streets of Trastevere, we passed a Carabinieri (national police) sedan parked on the side of the road. I could see the cops look at us in what seemed like slow motion. The next thing I remember, the taxi came to a stop. Unlikely as it was, we were stuck in a traffic jam on the backstreets of Rome. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:05:16 +0100 893720 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/19/house-of-mirth-edith-wharton-review Edith Wharton's novel is mercilessly frank in its description of 19th-century New York societyIs Lily Bart a victim of circumstance or an agent of her own destruction? Edith Wharton's acutely observed novel poses this question as it follows Lily's tragic path through the country houses, card tables and drawing rooms of New York's beau monde at the turn of the 20th century.Lily is a socially adept, intelligent and attractive young woman but her dependence on high society is her Achilles heel. Fashioned for a life of luxury and ease, she conducts herself as if she is entitled to such an existence, despite being unable to afford it, and she scorns those who lead alternative lifestyles. She must marry to secure a palatable future and, in the end, it is her failure to put her desires and scruples aside in pursuit of that essential, prudent match that both sets her apart and seals her fate.Wharton is mercilessly frank as she chronicles Lily's fall from grace, contrasting psychological insights with descriptions of external effects. Her heroine sinks in stages – failing to snare Percy Gryce or Sim Rosedale as a husband, gambling away large sums of money, being accused of having an affair with a friend's husband, losing her inheritance – until she is reduced to working in a milliner's, her reputation tarnished.Other characters in the novel operate within the parameters of their class, sex and wealth. Even the way they break society's rules seem to follow the rules. But Lily can neither accept the yoke of conventional behaviour nor shrug it off and she flounders in the space between.Wharton shows us exactly how women like Lily could be smothered by the upper reaches of society, where individual tragedies are easily subsumed by the current of other people lives. The novel was serialised in Scribner's Magazine in 1905 and aspects of it now seem old fashioned but its depiction of social mores and their influence gives it universal resonance. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:05:13 +0100 893721 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/19/anne-holt-1222-thriller-review The acerbic sleuth Hanne Wilhelmsen, snowed in on a Norwegian mountainside, would surely recognise her debt to Hercule PoirotTrapped in a snowbound Norwegian hotel as a blizzard rages and a murderer prowls, retired police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is reminded of one of Agatha Christie's most satisfying novels: "Twenty-four hours ago, there were 269 people on board a train. Then we became 196. When two men died, we were 194. Now there were only 118 of us left. I thought about Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I immediately tried to dismiss the thought. And Then There Were None is a story that doesn't exactly have a happy ending."There's a definite Christie-ish flavour to Anne Holt's 1222, and the author has even described the book as a homage to the queen of crime.The latest in the swarm of Scandinavian thrillers to hit our shores in the wake of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, it is distinctly less grisly than its predecessors, preferring to focus on the puzzle rather than the murders, and leading up to a wonderfully Poirot-esque I've-figured-it-all-out speech from Hanne.After a train crashes high in the Norwegian mountains, the survivors, wounded but initially optimistic, battle their way through the snow to a nearby hotel, 1,222 metres above sea level. As the temperature falls and the tension between factions – a Muslim couple and a shrill right-wing television presenter, hoodied youths and shady businessmen – rises, people start to die, and it's up to Hanne to puzzle out what is essentially an icy version of the locked-room mystery.Paralysed from the waist down after a bullet hit her in the spine, Wilhelmsen is as enjoyably antisocial as the best detectives always seem to be, while the presence of an armed guard on the top floor of the hotel, concealing something – or someone – which had been hidden in the sealed last carriage of the train, adds extra spice to the mystery. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:05:05 +0100 893723 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/19/andrew-miller-books-about-russia Novelists from Le Carré to Amis have an obsession with Russia. Small wonder: it's fertile territory for fictionA man walks into a room. Let's say he's 50-ish, greying, slightly dishevelled. What is his story? If he's a Russian, one of his grandparents might have died in the siege of Leningrad and another in the purges. After the grind and humdrum heroisms of the Soviet Union, he might have lost his savings and home to the hyperinflation and rackets of the 90s. Maybe along the way he fell in love, had children, did the commonplace things that make up the whole drama of lives lived elsewhere.All lives are interesting, and one of the jobs of fiction is to prove it. Still, that task is easier if they are Russian – which helps to explain why, as well as spewing out renegade oligarchs and rogue spooks, Russia has recently inspired an abundance of novels. I mean, specifically, novels set there by English-speaking authors, from thrillers such as Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko mysteries, to Helen Dunmore's Leningrad books. (By contrast, surprisingly few home-grown, contemporary Russian writers have found wide foreign readerships. The Putin era has not in general been conducive to great literature.) The vogue for Russian-themed novels reflects Russia's enticing turbulence. But I think it also tells us something about our own moral anxieties.The country's appeal to Olga Grushin, Gary Shteyngart and David Bezmozgis is easy to understand. They were all born in the Soviet Union, emigrating to North America as children. They inherited a folk memory of suffering, plus the minutely descriptive Russian language. The dying Soviet Union, in which shortages could sometimes be overcome by ruses and yarns, was a natural breeding ground for fabulists. Finally, a system that had seemed adamantine crumbled; the world broke open (Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov wonderfully captures the disorientation caused by this rupture). ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:05:03 +0100 893715 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/dec/19/faces-2010-david-nicholls His third novel, One Day, was a British love story that made men weep and has been in the bestseller lists all yearDid a book make you cry this year? Did it make you weep unashamedly on public transport? If it did, there's a big chance that the book in question was One Day. The third novel from actor-turned-scriptwriter-turned-author David Nicholls is a brilliantly messy, funny/sad, off-kilter British love story set against the quietly shifting political backdrop of London's recent past.Did Nicholls set out to make women sob on buses? I ask. (We have met in the cafe of the British Library, which is where 43-year-old Nicholls goes to write when his two children are home from nursery; it's a location so filled with pensive, attractive, possibly single people in unthreatening knitwear it could, by my estimation, provide the basis for at least 150 more tragi-romcom novels, without even trying.)"Interestingly, of the messages I get, there's a disproportionate amount from men. Men say: you made me cry in public. Which is great. I wanted it to be… weepy's such a terrible word, but I did want it to be an emotional read. I didn't want it to be mawkish and sentimental. But I did want it to be a big emotional love story that had an effect. Touching, without making it corny."Yes, well, top marks on that score. Did he have a sense that he was creating something that would resonate quite as much as it has while he was writing it?"I thought it was a good idea and I knew I was enjoying writing it. When I read it back, I wasn't as horrified as I generally am when I read things back. But my first book [2003's Starter for 10] did very well; my second book [2005's The Understudy], which I actually thought was a better book, didn't do quite so well, and I was quite prepared for this to be part of a downward trajectory."Instead, One Day became something of a literary sensation. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:04:02 +0100 893725 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/19/tessa-hadley-elizabeth-bowen-jungle Hadley on BowenThere are writers you love and admire – quite a lot of those – and then there are a few writers who are (unbeknown to them) your intimates, your writing family. For me, Elizabeth Bowen has been one of those intimates ever since she first claimed me when I was 14 or 15: I picked her books up in the library because I liked the woodcuts on the covers. I only half understood what I was reading, first time round – but I responded to the promise her writing gave: that lived experience could be as subtle, complex, richly substantial as her sentences. That promise is mostly what you read for, at that age.Her novels are marvellous too, but the short story suits her concision, her shapely plotting, and the polished surface of her style, with its oddly made, deliberate sentences. The style channels the electricity of experience on to the page, doesn't allow it to be deflected by language's lazy habits, its proneness to fall back on the clichés of perception. In "The Jungle", about a passionate friendship between teenage girls, how wonderfully freshly she makes us feel the mystery of Elise's personality and her body: like a "compact, thick boy in her black tights", her "wide-open pale grey eyes" with "something alert behind them that wasn't her brain", and her direct look "like a guard". Slipped out from the bland, reasonable routines of school, in the waste ground they call the jungle, the girls reconnect with the power of death and sex. (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:01:00 +0100 893712 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/author-alex-butterworth-digital-reviews Alex Butterworth on the book as appBack in the mid-1990s I did some research on narrative in digital media. Of the projects I worked on, those that seemed most outlandish then have since become familiar concepts. Virtual worlds hit the headlines with Second Life, geo-tagging has become mainstream with Foursquare, while many of today's best video games deploy something like a "story engine" to manage the narrative flow experienced by the player.What, though, of the digital book, and its promise of a rich, new, constructive interaction with the text? With this Christmas looking like the moment when the transition from codex to screen will finally gain real traction, will the expectations of new digital readers be fulfilled? And is there anything to encourage my own ambitious sense of the revolutionary changes in narrative that digital books might bring about?There was a time when I would have scorned a mere nonlinear rendition of a book as too simple, as not fulfilling its digital potential. So I was surprised to find myself warming to the MyFry app version of Stephen Fry's memoir. Its elegant interface charted my progress through a wheel of segments colour-coded by theme and character, drawing me into an episodic engagement with the text: I skipped through the story of Fry's addictive personality – he was hooked on sugar as a seven-year-old, before picking up serious smoking and reading habits.Are other new apps similarly successful? Illustrated non-fiction immediately suggests itself as an area where the iPad's qualities might be most apparent, and two apps without accompanying books seek to be in the vanguard. The Solar System, from the makers of The Elements, is self-explanatory, while Why the Net Matters, by David Eagleman, sells itself as a groundbreaking interactive essay on the world-saving potential of the internet. Sadly the latter over-promises, with a design that's sometimes cluttered, at other times misleading. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:32 +0100 893551 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/first-novels-reviews Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla, The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly, Down to the Dirt by Joel Thomas Hynes and Sleepwalker by John ToomeyCoconut Unlimited, by Nikesh Shukla (Quartet, £10)Harrow, London, early 1990s. In this Costa-shortlisted debut, Amit, Anand and Nishant belong to neither the world of their white private school, where they are mocked as the only Asian pupils, nor that of their traditional Gujarati families, where their lack of interest in science infuriates their parents. So they decide to embrace a new identity – as black rappers. That none of them has even spoken to a black person, and they have only the faintest idea of Public Enemy etc, is, apparently, not a problem. Their hip-hop band, Coconut Unlimited, will transcend the taunt levelled at them: "Brown on the outside, white on the inside." Yet Anand becomes sidetracked by girls, and it is left to Amit to galvanise the group. What the writing lacks in depth and maturity, Shukla makes up for with irreverence and humour.The Spider Truces, by Tom Connolly (Myriad, £7.99)A remote corner of Kent is the background to Connolly's magical coming-of-age novel, set between 1976 and 1989. Denny O'Rourke, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, moves his daughter Chrissie and her younger brother Ellis to a run-down woodland cottage, which he aims to restore as they rebuild their lives. Denny's eccentric Aunt Mafi completes the picture. Ellis is an awkward, unusual boy, given to outrageous utterances, dominated by a fear of the spiders dwelling in every corner of the house; the negotiation with Ellis's ongoing terror and his challenging singularity is one of many family battles focused on personal boundaries and freedom. Growing up, Ellis prefers to spend time on the local farm; later he will develop a talent for photography, but relationships remain a mystery to him in this fierce, humane and hazily poetic work.Down to the Dirt, by Joel Thomas Hynes (Brandon, £9. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:15 +0100 893558 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/book-istanbus-short-stories-review By Alfred HicklingIstanbul spans the largest metropolitan area in Europe, so it's hardly surprising that most of the 10 authors represented in this anthology express concerns about the traffic. Nedim Gursel writes of a furious, gun-wielding sergeant shouting at the cars: "For some reason he threatened to burn rather than roast errant drivers. Just for taking the roundabout carelessly, he would burn us." The religious rifts of a city straddling two continents are concisely dealt with in Muge Iplikci's story of a female student prohibited from wearing the hijab: "She would give up a piece of herself, first a headscarf . . . In the end she would leave college behind her like some forgotten item on a bench." Sema Kaygusuz is worried about feral cats overrunning a city where "almost everybody's ancestors come from somewhere else", while Ozen Yula spins an elliptical parable about a panther who devours a schoolchild and is beaten by its keepers with iron rods. One hopes there's a metaphorical element to this tale, otherwise it's a terrible indictment of Turkish zoos.Short storiesFictionAlfred Hicklingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:13 +0100 893559 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/steven-poole-nonfiction-choice-reviews The God Instinct by Jesse Bering | Zero-Sum World by Gideon Rachman | Adonis to Zorro: Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion by Andrew Delahunty & Sheila DignenThe God Instinct, by Jesse Bering (Nicholas Brealey, £16.99)Is the idea of God an invention maliciously hammered into the heads of the innocent young, or is it innate? Bering, an evolutionary psychologist, thinks the latter. Theism stems, he writes, from a cluster of brain adaptations that lead to cognitive biases and illusions. Useful abilities – such as our theory of mind, our "person-permanence thinking", or our perception of patterns and causes – work not wisely but too well, so that we intuit a big watcher, an engineer of coincidence ("encrypting information in [. . .] events"), a guarantor of immortality, or a designer of our life's purpose.God, in sum, is a "sort of scratch on our psychological lenses", hard to get rid of completely. Disarmingly, Bering tells stories of his own superstitious moments, and references to Sartre and Gide add a patina of literary class. The deep-historical theses, as usual in this field, are plausible to varying degrees but always unprovable. Did the idea of God solve the problem of gossip among early humans by inhibiting reputation-harming behaviour? Maybe, but we'll never know. Bering also downplays the role of culture excessively: indoctrination and tradition do exist, and they work. First-cause deists, meanwhile, will be serenely untroubled by it all, as they usually are.Zero-Sum World, by Gideon Rachman (Atlantic, £20)Since the financial crisis hit, we are living in an "Age of Anxiety", which follows the "Age of Transformation" (1978-91: Reaganomics) and the "Age of Optimism" (1991-2008: the "end of history"). ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:09 +0100 893561 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/windup-girl-paolo-bacigalupi-review Adam Roberts admires an award-winning science fiction debutLast year, two novels divided pretty much all the big SF literary prizes between them. China Miéville's fable of urban duplicity, The City & the City, won the BSFA and Arthur C Clarke awards; and Paolo Bacigalupi's energetic future-thriller The Windup Girl won the John W Campbell and the Locus first novel. The duopoly of merit was reinforced when the genre's biggest prize, the Hugo, split its novel award between Miéville and Bacigalupi: a pretty much unprecedented event. Evidently, it's the wisdom of SF crowds that these two novels represent the best contemporary writing the genre has to offer.Accordingly, readers interested but not expert in contemporary SF and wondering where to start – the sci-fi-curious, we might say – could do a lot worse than these titles. Of the two, The City & the City is probably the better novel, partly because it is more formally ambitious. But The Windup Girl is a very accomplished piece of writing, all the more impressive given that it's Bacigalupi's first novel.Its strongest feature is the worldbuilding – the intricately believable portrait of a future Thailand fighting back from environmental collapse. Crops are regularly devastated by genetically engineered blights, cities threatened by risen sea levels. Post-oil, society is powered by calories; spring-driven motors are wound up by bioengineered mammoths on treadmills. Merchants still trade, politicians still jockey for position, and fundamentalism still thrives. Bacigalupi's Bangkok is corrupt, riven, brawling and volatile, but also suffused with bustling, exhilarating energy.The protagonist is Anderson Lake, an American ostensibly in Bangkok to develop a new variety of motor-spring, in fact secretly scouting for blight-resistant foodstuffs. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:07 +0100 893562 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/tree-codes-safran-foer-review Michel Faber considers Jonathan Safran Foer's cut-up of Bruno SchulzJonathan Safran Foer's all-time favourite book is Bruno Schulz's Cinnamon Shops, retitled The Street Of Crocodiles when it was translated into English 47 years ago. "Some things you love passively," Foer told Vanity Fair, "some you love actively. In this case, I felt the compulsion to do something with it." How might this active love manifest itself? A foreword to a new edition of Schulz's masterwork? No, Foer had already done that, for the Penguin Classics reissue published in 2008 in the US (but sadly not here). So, might Foer do something to bring Schulz's book back into print in the UK? Or might he commission a fresh translation? (Celina Wieniewska's 1963 version still reads like a dream to me, but there have been mutterings about its faithfulness for decades.) Might he script or bankroll a movie adaptation?No. What Foer has done is cut Schulz's text to ribbons and turn it into a different book credited to Jonathan Safran Foer. Snip seven letters from the title Street of Crocodiles and you get Tree of Codes – and so on, for 134 intricately scissored pages. A boutique publisher called Visual Editions, working in tandem with die-cut specialists in the Netherlands and a "hand-finisher" in Belgium, has produced a £25 artefact that, if you share Foer's aesthetics, has "a sculptural quality" that's "just beautiful", or which, if you're an average reader, might make you think a wad of defenceless print has been fed through an office shredding machine.Foer has wanted to "create a die-cut book by erasure" for years, and considered using encyclopaedias or his own novels as raw material before settling on The Street of Crocodiles. Despite the fact that all the words in Tree of Codes – including many complete phrases and sentences – are Schulz's, Foer insists "This book is mine. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:06 +0100 893546 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/adrian-mole-sue-townsend-bookclub Week two: Sue Townsend describes how Adrian Mole and his diary emerged from an old cardboard boxI had one ambition when I was a child, and that was to grow up and become an adult. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of childhood.I was a secretive, reckless girl, who enjoyed sitting on the swaying top branch of a tree, looking down on the everyday world. Acute curiosity led me to explore the Leicestershire countryside. I set off on my Pink Witch bike. I didn't have a companion. Companions were forever whining that they were tired and hungry and wanted the toilet. When I got hungry I would search for a specific grass. It had velvety leaves and a sweet inner stalk. While I nibbled on the stalk I read my book. There was always a book – I knew no child who read with the same passion as me. After visiting the village church and listening to the loudness of the silence and saying hello to Jesus, I would pedal home in the twilight. Nobody asked me where I'd been, and I didn't volunteer the information.I left school at 14. I was an Easter leaver, a no-hoper. But since being taught about infinity I felt that nothing really mattered, that we humans were transient specks in the universe. I had started to arrive late at school, I stopped doing my homework, I played truant. When teachers got angry I would switch off and think about infinity. Like many writers I had an influential English teacher – pale, austere Miss Morris, who expected us to learn a poem by heart each week: Shakespeare, Milton, GK Chesterton, Keats, Shelley, Sitwell, Wilde . . . We also wrote a weekly composition: "A Day in the Life of a Penny" and "I am a Chippendale Chair". I lost a school writing competition because, as Miss Morris told me sadly, "You used a cliché, Susan. Clouds like cotton wool."When I left school I continued to write, and because I knew it was no good, I kept my writing a secret – for 20 years. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:06:50 +0100 893567 http://lisnews.org/new_kids_books_connecticut_library County Times GOSHEN, CT—The Goshen Public Library has received a grant from the Libri Foundation of Eugene, Ore., a nonprofit organization that donates new children’s books to small public libraries across the country through its Books to Children program. The Libri Foundation has been serving public libraries for 18 years, and supports the concept that children who learn to enjoy reading at an early age continue to read throughout their lives, according to a press release from the library. Library Director Barker Steinmayer said the foundation contacted the library because it had received a grant three years ago, and libraries are eligible for the grants every three years. “When I approached the [Friends of the Library] to see if they were going to match the grant, they were excited about doing that, and we have a number of excellent nonfiction and fiction books that have been circulating,” said Ms. Barker Steinmayer. According to the release, the library received 83 books worth more than $1,400. The library’s friends group contributed $300. (Source: LISNews.org) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:19:15 +0100 893580 http://www.lisnews.org/new_kids_books_connecticut_library County Times GOSHEN, CT—The Goshen Public Library has received a grant from the Libri Foundation of Eugene, Ore., a nonprofit organization that donates new children’s books to small public libraries across the country through its Books to Children program. The Libri Foundation has been serving public libraries for 18 years, and supports the concept that children who learn to enjoy reading at an early age continue to read throughout their lives, according to a press release from the library. Library Director Barker Steinmayer said the foundation contacted the library because it had received a grant three years ago, and libraries are eligible for the grants every three years. “When I approached the [Friends of the Library] to see if they were going to match the grant, they were excited about doing that, and we have a number of excellent nonfiction and fiction books that have been circulating,” said Ms. Barker Steinmayer. According to the release, the library received 83 books worth more than $1,400. The library’s friends group contributed $300. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:19:15 +0100 893507 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/12/17/weeklings-good-sex-e-books-discreet-yet-not-lowbrow-reading-and-the-butler-didnt-do-it/ A quick compilation of recent reads before I head off to the holiday party… In “No sex, please, we’re literary!” Laura Miller takes aim at the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, calling it a “sniggering exercise” that “poses as a knowing blow against literary pretension while embodying the most retrograde prudery.” This is the only antidote to the smirking crypto-priggishness of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award and its ilk: forthright praise for the literary sex writing that does work. Well, I think she’s taking a bit of fun too seriously, although there’s nothing wrong with her idea of also rewarding the good stuff. “How about a good sex in fiction award?” asks Toby Lichtig . . . but what do we do if the same piece of writing wins both? It’s bound to happen sometime. Speaking of sex, and love, and hand-holding, and soulful eye-gazing: romance novels. In the New York Times, Julie Bosman writes of “Lusty Tales and Hot Sales: Romance E-Books Thrive.” If the e-reader is the digital equivalent of the brown-paper wrapper, the romance reader is a little like the Asian carp: insatiable and unstoppable. Together, it turns out, they are a perfect couple. Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry. In The Globe and Mail, Leah McLaren explains “How the Rise of E-readers Takes the Fun out of Giving Books,” saying that the giving of an e-book is as soulless and depressing as the giving of a gift card. And that’s not even the worst of it: And here’s the most alarming thing: Once e-books completely take over, it will become impossible to know who actually reads and who doesn’t. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:25:30 +0100 894483 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/goal-sell-1111111-copies-in-six-weeks/ Well, one thing ebooks are doing is giving a lot of people some new ideas about marketing. Here’s a press release I just got from the new publisher Exciting Books: Sparks is the debut collection of short fiction from authors Will Entrekin and Simon Smithson, available only through the Amazon Kindle platform, from 12/15/10 – 01/26/11. Sparks is a collection of four pieces of short fiction, published by Exciting Books. The price point is US$0.99, and the end sales goal is 1,111,111 copies sold over the course of six weeks. … The sales concept behind Sparks is founded on the belief that with the rapid advance of new publishing paradigms, the audience for high-quality fiction is already present, and already waiting for instant distribution. With millions around the world able to update content immediately via Kindle, Sparks is a new kind of work for a new kind of readership. It’s also a new kind of challenge; the advent of e-publishing, and the establishment of a way to instantly disseminate new text to millions of readers, has the potential to put the sales of authors under the control of authors, and allow authors to reach worldwide audiences in way that would have been impossible as short as a decade ago. … In our first day of sales, we hope to sell 1 copy. In our first week, 10. In our second, 100. In our third 1,000, our fourth, 10,000 and our fifth, 100,000. Until, in the last week of sales, our goal is to sell 1,000,000 copies. By integrating the reach of new media, the principles of social media (and social media marketing), and the in-place sales platforms of Amazon, iTunes, and other eRetailers, Sparks can be presented to an audience of millions – if nothing else, this is an opportunity to see if less-established authors can use the new paradigm to match the sales numbers of best-selling writers and old-school publishing houses. Whether it can be done or not remains to be seen. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:16:14 +0100 893403 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/audio/2010/dec/17/carol-ann-duffy-jonathan-green This week's issue is the last of the year for Guardian Review (though not for the Guardian books podcast), so we've made it an all-singing finale by inviting 25 poets to pen their very own Christmas carols. On today's podcast, we discuss their offerings - ranging from an angry revisionist version of In the Bleak Midwinter from a rich man's perspective by Sean O'Brien, to a jolly Scottish rendition of Jingle Bells by Jackie Kay - with Review editor Lisa Allardice.We also offer our own seasonal treat: the Manchester Carols, written by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and performed on CD by Manchester Carollers and the Northern Chamber Orchestra.In an interview with the self-appointed master of slang, Jonathon Greene, we discuss some of the challenges of the three-volume, 1.5m-word project to chronicle hundreds of years of slang history.And as the time runs out to get those last-minute christmas presents, we ask a range of Guardian writers and editors, in areas ranging from fashion to economics, to nominate the best books they have read this year.Reading/listening listThe Manchester Carols, by Carol Ann Duffy, and Sasha Johnson Manning (Naxos)Green's Dictionary of Slang, by Jonathon Green (Chambers)At the Loch of the Green Corrie, by Andrew Greig (Quercus)Whistling Vivaldi, by Claud Steele (Norton)A Journey, by Tony Blair (Hutchinson)Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds, by John Bevis (MIT Press)Decoded, Jay Z (Virgin)A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore (Faber)The Hand that First Held Mine, Maggie O'Farrell (Headline)Jump! by Jilly Cooper (Bantam)The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Hamish Hamilton)Alone in Berlin, by Hans Fallada (Penguin Classics)Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, by John Lanchester (Penguin)Homer and Langley, by EL Doctorow (Little, Brown)Claire ArmitsteadLisa AllardiceLindesay Irvine (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:13:59 +0100 893349 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/dec/17/internet-problem-choice-self-publishing Self publishing a book provides a wealth of opportunity, but decisions are harder when there are no constraintsThe internet has created many problems in its young life – making various industries obsolete, enabling new forms of surveillance and control, exposing good, well-meaning people to crazy, vituperative trolls. But my internet problem is the surfeit of opportunity.If there's one thing the network does brilliantly, it's reducing coordination costs. The two best examples, of course, are the GNU/Linux operating system and Wikipedia. Whether you use these or not, whether you believe them to be of high or low quality, it's impossible to imagine how decentralised collectives could produce either an operating system or an encyclopedia without the internet.(I like to daydream fleets of Analogue Wikipedia lorries racing around the world with filing cabinets representing the day's edits, then racing back to the enormous Wikipedia Central Printing Office to retrieve a new load to deliver.)When I began writing, I imagined that the central problem of my working life would be figuring out which books to write, and how to produce the best books I could. These problems decompose into a lot of smaller problems: which books and music and movies should I consume to inspire my work? Which experts and artists should I seek out and converse with in order to improve my work?Once upon a time, the questions of which books, music, experts and experiences you should try were largely answered by circumstance. Which books to read? Which ones can you afford, which ones are on the library's shelf, which ones are in the shop, which ones can you discover? The pool of experts was limited to people who lived nearby or those to whom your immediate circle could introduce you. Half the problem was solved by default – the cost of seeking out a very rare book almost always exceeded the value you'd get from reading it. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:31:00 +0100 893353 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/dec/16/wallander-henning-mankell-actors Rolf Lassgard's portrayal of Wallander – airing on BBC4 this Christmas – brings yet another dimension to Henning Mankell's rumpled detectiveIn one of those music and video exchange places, I recently found a DVD copy of the first Rebus television adaptations: three woefully misguided attempts at bringing Ian Rankin's flawed cop to life. Rebus is written as ex-army, renegade, broken and slightly grubby. In short, everything that John Hannah could never be. Miscasting doesn't do it justice: it's like coming home for Christmas and finding your Nan has been replaced by Dougray Scott.ITV did rectify the situation by later giving Ken Stott an opportunity to show Hannah how it was done, but lessons were not learned. The casting of Stephen Tompkinson as DCI Alan Banks, earlier this year, for example, left anyone who's read the books muttering "You're not Banks" every time Tompkinson stumbled into view. In fact the whole sorry mess, as with Rebus before it, was a reminder that a great adaptations needs to adhere to the spirit of what made the original books appealing in the first place – though this can be a rather nebulous concept, as the trio of Wallander dramatisations suggest.Over Christmas BBC4 is screening the original versions, feature-length episodes starring Rolf Lassgard as Henning Mankell's rumpled detective. (You may have caught The Man Who Smiled last weekend; Firewall kicks off tomorrow). Lassgard is perhaps the most physically similar to the hero of the books, haggard and lumpen in just the right way; yet the casting isn't quite enough to eclipse those later attempts starring Krister Henriksson and Kenneth Brannagh respectively.Henning Mankell's books have proved a success in English thanks to a combination of fine plotting, great characterisation and a setting that was at once familiar yet curiously other. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:09:26 +0100 893355 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/16/culturomics-google-tool-cultural-trends Two hundred years of history in the form of 5,195,769 digitised books can now be probed for cultural trends using Google's new culturomics toolEmail updates and links to science@guardian.co.uk. We'd like to hear about your own research using the new tool. What trends have you unearthed? The paper's authors have agreed to analyse some of the best ones for usRead the research in Science (register to view it in full)Friday 17 December 3.34pm: Our own Martin Robbins has used the tool to identify a marked cultural trend in favour of a certain liberal-leaning newspaper.Friday 3.27pm: A vast collection of Google ngrams is already being amassed at #ngrams on Twitter.Friday 3.21pm: A bona fide linguistics researcher has weighed in with a blopost at the Language Log. Geoff Nunberg of the University of California Berkeley welcomes the research, and the new Google tool, but looks forward to more bells and whistles:The big news is that Google has set up a site called the Google Books Ngram Viewer where the public can enter words or n-grams (to 5) for any period and corpus and see the resulting graph. They've also announced that the entire dataset of n-grams will be made available for download. Some reports have interpreted this as meaning that Google is making the entire corpus available. It isn't, alas, nor even the pre-1923 portion of the corpus that's in public domain. One can hope…At present, that's all you can with this. You can't do many of the things that you can do with other corpora: you can't ask for a list of the words that follow traditional for each decade from 1900 to 2000 in order of descending frequency, or restrict a search for bronzino to paragraphs that contain fish and don't contain painting, etc. And while Lieberman Aiden and Michel made an impressive effort to purge the subcorpus of the metadata errors that have plagued Google Books, you can't sort books by genre or topic. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:10:47 +0100 893359 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/07/rose-tremain-yiyun-li-extra Tremain on YiyunThis is a beautifully crafted and moving short story, one of many adroit and affecting pieces in Yiyun Li's award-winning collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. It's a story of how a blameless person, Granny Lin, finds herself blamed and punished, in a country that cares far more about rules and hierarchies than it does about individuals. The voice of the storyteller – dry and spare – prevents the story from becoming sentimental. It is nevertheless able to make real to us Granny Lin's tenderness towards her elderly husband, Old Tang, and subsequently the overwhelming affection she feels for the six-year-old unwanted boy, Kang.Short stories have to establish their intention very fast, and stay on track, avoiding the kind of digressions and sub-plots that can enrich a novel. ­"Extra" bursts into life from the first sentence and holds the reader effortlessly. It also repays rereading.There is a lot in this short piece about the way Chinese society is arranged. But by the time I'd read it three or four times – to prepare for my own reading aloud on the podcast – it had almost acquired the status of a parable about individual kindness versus the indifference of a power elite. And this, of course, is a subject of universal and timeless importance.Francesca PanettaLisa AllardiceIain ChambersPascal Wyse (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:00:00 +0100 893347 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/wx_wsg_zaRg/whats-up-with-amazon.html I don't get it. Ars Technica reports that one incest-themed fiction book was removed from the Kindle bookstore and from the archives of people who purchased it. Other reports indicated that at least three titles were removed from the store... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 893492 http://sanchezkisser.com/blog/2010/12/16/dickens-in-a-dirigible/ A few weeks back, Charlie Stross opened a can of virtual worms in this post about the weekpoints of Steampunk as a genre. I observed the hubub from a safe distance (those zeppelin jockies have explosives, man, even if they are just dynamite dressed up with gears)  but since then have been thinking about something [...] (Source: The Invisible Library) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 04:54:48 +0100 893295 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/12/16/nicholls-wins-galaxy-book-of-the-year/ One Day, one of the bestselling paperback books  in the UK this year, won the Popular fiction Book of the Year public vote. David Nicholls was up agains some stiff competition, besting Stephen Fry, Hilary Mantel and Jonathan Franzen to take home the prize. Edmund De Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes took the new writer of the year category. For more wins and ceremony coverage, visit the Galaxy National Book awards website. (Source: Likely Stories) Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:00:06 +0100 893249 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/12/16/googles-ngram-viewer/ I’ve only just come across Books Ngram Viewer, a Google Labs tool that lets you derive graphs from their Books database at the text level. You can enter up to three terms and graph the frequency with which each term occur in a given corpus over time. Drawn from five million of the 15 million books Google has digitized thus far, there are five corpora in English, and one for each of Chinese (simplified), French, Spanish, Russian, and German. In English, the basic corpus has books ranging from 1500 to 2008 and is offered without any filtering except as to quality of OCR and metadata, resulting in 361 billion words. Further filtering produces English Fiction, British English (published in UK), and American English (published in US). There’s also the English Million, built of 6000 books from each year randomly selected. The About page explains all this and more, and alerts you to the fact that punctuation counts in this exercise. (If you’re interested in the difficult math and linguistics issues encountered in constructing the Viewer, feel free to get yourself a free account on Science and read “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books.“) To illustrate what can be done, I ran a search on the word “privacy” in books from 1900 to 2008, resulting in this graph: Click on image to enlarge. It’s also interesting to run terms against each other to seek correlations (not causes, remember). Thus, in a graph produced by Rob Sanderson, whose tweet alerted me to this tool, we see the terms [feminism] [terrorism] [civil rights] played out on the same scale: Click on image to enlarge. Note that beneath each block of years there’s a link to books from that period that might be relevant to your search terms. (Source: Slaw) Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:07:54 +0100 893958 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/6512 From the MediaBerkman blog:The idea that technology could want something seems kind of outlandish, almost like science fiction. But journalist Kevin Kelly is proposing a kind of technological self-determination in his new book What Technology Wants.It’s not exactly robots with souls that Kelly is suggesting. It’s more of an evolutionary theory of technological development, the idea that one technology naturally evolves from another. That the mobile phone, for instance, was an inevitable evolution from the telephone, or that the internet was a natural evolution from the spread of the personal computer.Well, not exactly inevitable. Best listen to David Weinberger’s interview with Kevin Kelly to hear him explain it himself.CONTINUE ON TO MediaBerkman FOR THE AUDIO AND MORE... (Source: Berkman Blog) Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:04:15 +0100 893264 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/16/google-tool-english-cultural-trends Harvard and Google say they have developed a way to identify cultural trends over the past 200 years using a database of 5m digitised booksHow many words in the English language never make it into dictionaries? How has the nature of fame changed in the past 200 years? How do scientists and actors compare in their impact on popular culture?These are just some of the questions that researchers and members of the public can now answer using a new online tool developed by Google with the help of scientists at Harvard University. The massive searchable database is being hailed as the key to a new era of research in the humanities, linguistics and social sciences that has been dubbed "culturomics".The database comprises more than 5m books – both fiction and non-fiction – published between 1800 and 2000, representing around 4% of all the books ever printed. Dr Jean-Baptiste Michel and Dr Erez Lieberman Aiden of Harvard University have developed the search tool, which they say will give researchers the ability to quantify a huge range of cultural trends in history."Interest in computational approaches to the humanities and social sciences dates back to the 1950s," said Michel, a psychologist in Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. "But attempts to introduce quantitative methods into the study of culture have been hampered by the lack of suitable data. We now have a massive dataset, available through an interface that is user-friendly and freely available to anyone."In their initial analysis of the database, the team found that around 8,500 new words enter the English language every year and the lexicon grew by 70% between 1950 and 2000. But most of these words do not appear in dictionaries. ... Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:00:29 +0100 893220