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, 03 Sep 2010 02:51:38 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2010/09/02/september-2nd-stream-2.html Shared I don’t usually do the shoe meme, but… new shoes!. I don’t usually do the shoe meme, but… new shoes! Shared SF Signal: MIND MELD: SF Books That Will Stand The Test of Time. Did you ever read an old science fiction book that felt dated? Maybe the predictions were way off base, or maybe or they were a reflection of the times in which they were written. Yet some books are considered timeless classics, which makes one wonder which of today’s books will fall into that category. So we turned to this week’s and asked them hey @foursquare –u have a douchebag badge but ur stalling on the library one? that’s really where u want to hang ur hat? http://ow.ly/2ytUA [shifted] Share: No tags for this post. (Source: The Shifted Librarian) Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:00:03 +0100 868718 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/02/jonah-hex-film-review The acclaimed graphic novel about the mysterious, scarred old West bounty hunter has become a muddled, inept film, says Phelim O'NeillEven if you didn't know how troubled this adaptation of John Albano's comic book was, with rumours of countless rewrites and reshoots, it's obvious something is drastically wrong here even before the opening titles are over. After we are introduced to gruesomely scarred semi-supernatural old west bounty hunter Hex (Brolin, in grisly prosthetics), there is a terrible expositional animated sequence; it's as if they simply forgot to film some key scenes. Otherwise, it seems like a bad case of lost nerve: Hex is never quite the bad-ass he is in the comics, while the plot attempts some clunky relevance as Hex hunts down a campy villain (Malkovich) who is making an olden-days weapon of mass destruction. It just gets louder and more nonsensical as it progresses, with Fox shoe-horned into as many scenes as possible.Rating: 2/5Josh BrolinJohn MalkovichAction and adventureScience fiction and fantasyComicsPhelim O'Neillguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:20:13 +0100 868551 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/02/publishers-ghettoise-women-writers-and-readers Publishing's notion of what women want is dated and patronising. In my case it's like trying to stuff a rottweiler in a dressThe latest literary dust-up in the United States concerns the outsize critical admiration of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, the follow-up to his 2001 National Book Award winner The Corrections. Freedom secured two worshipful reviews from the New York Times in one week, the Book Review's lengthy cover essay drooling with such jaw-dropped awe that it was hard to read for the saliva stains. Franzen himself appears on the cover of Time, and Freedom sits in President Obama's stack of holiday reading.Fellow novelist Jodi Picoult ignited online fireworks last week by claiming that female writers never attract the same reverence as "white male literary darlings" like Franzen. Naturally Picoult risks the appearance of plain old envy. Though a skilful craftsman, Picoult may also lack the literary standing to make such a charge. Myself, I've yet to read Freedom, embargoed until this Wednesday, but it does sound like an excellent book, one I'm looking forward to.Nevertheless, Picoult has a point. A female novelist would never enjoy a Franzen-scale frenzy of adulation in America, which maintains two distinct tiers in fiction. The heavy hitters – cultural icons who often produce great doorstop novels that no one ever argues are under-edited – are exclusively male. Rising literati like Rick Moody and Jonathan Franzen efficiently assume the spots left unoccupied by John Updike and Norman Mailer, like a rigged game of musical chairs. Then there's everybody else – including a raft of female writers who keep the publishing industry afloat by selling to its primary consumers: women.Elaine Showalter did a bang-up job in the Guardian Review last spring explaining why American women are never credited with writing the Great American Novel while identifying female writers who deserve more acclaim. ... Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:00:14 +0100 868554 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/02/theresa-breslin-bringing-past-life In the fourth in our series of interviews with authors longlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, Michelle Pauli talks Theresa Breslin about writing historical fiction for a modern audienceHistorical fiction for teens may not be as in vogue as vampires right now, but for Theresa Breslin, the stories the past inspires can seem just as fantastical. The Carnegie-winning Scottish author has written more than 30 children's books, many of them tackling serious contemporary subjects such as bullying – but, recently it has been characters from centuries gone that have caught her imagination.Her latest novel, Prisoner of the Inquisition, which has been longlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, is set in 15th-century Spain. It was a time of tumult for the country: the throne was divided between two monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon; Tomás de Torquemada, the architect of the Spanish Inquisition, was at the height of his powers; and Christopher Columbus was about to set sail across the Atlantic."It was almost too good to be true," says Breslin, laughing down the phone from her home in Scotland. "If you had orchestrated this as a fiction story and gone to an editor saying, I've got a magnificent queen who was intent on reunifying the country, endless religious upheaval and an explorer, they would have said it was a bit much. But, of course, it's all fact."Prisoner of the Inquisition is narrated alternately by two teenagers, Zarita and Saulo, whose lives first connect when privileged, naive Zarita, daughter of a wealthy town magistrate, accuses Saulo's father, a beggar, of touching her in a church. He is killed and Saulo escapes, secretly pledging to take his revenge on Zarita and her family. His side of the story encompasses slavery at sea, an encounter with pirates and a burgeoning friendship with Christopher Columbus. ... Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:44:02 +0100 868549 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/zINsZfq6ghY/ From Boing Boing. I hate serials so I won’t jump in, but I’ll probably buy the thing when it’s finished. The Mongoliad is live! This is the collaborative, participatory shared-world project from Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and pals. It’s an epic fantasy novel about the Mongol conquest, told in installment form, with lots of supplementary material (video, stills, short fiction, etc), and a strong audience participation component in the form of a Wikipedia-style concordance, fanfic, etc. You can read the free samples without registration, but you need an account to edit the “Pedia.” For $5.99 you get a six-month subscription to the main body of fiction; $9.99 gets you a year (you retain access to the fiction after your subscription expires, but don’t get any new material until you renew, which is a major plus in my view — much fairer than most online “subscriptions” that lock you out once you let your sub lapse). Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:30:24 +0100 868672 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/sep/02/authors-acknowledgements Why do writers whose prose is clean and clear turn into gushing Kate Winslets in the thank-you pages of their books?The title story of If I Loved You, I would Tell You This, Robin Black's debut collection, is a shimmering, skewed tale of domestic disturbance and urban disaffection. It's one of 10 glacially poised stories that stand out for their simplicity; that quietly dissect the minor dramas of life and love, and blaze with understated emotion. However, on finishing the collection something else stayed with me almost as clearly as the stories themselves: the fulsome four pages of acknowledgements at the end.Black stops short of thanking the baristas in the local coffee house or the manufacturers of the computer she uses, but it wouldn't have been a surprise to see them mentioned. Friends, fellow writers and her family are given long, involved thank yous explaining exactly why they are great critics, writers and/or friends. For someone whose prose is so lithe and without adornment, these pages seem gushingly unreal: as though a literary hybrid of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet has wrested control of the keyboard.Acknowledgements are one of the few places in a book when a writer can break out of their fictional world and address readers in their own voice. This is something that perhaps is more powerful than we realise. While I know the text is supposed to be the most important thing, and I'm well aware that the biographical details of a writer's life should be incidental to the reading experience, the acknowledgement pages can have a subtle effect on the way I read a book.The best thing to do would be not to read them; to ignore those pages and stick with the story. But in moments of distraction I can't help flicking to the back to see whether I recognise the name of their editor, or if there will be gracious thanks to famous novelists or artistic grantors. ... Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:05:50 +0100 868557 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/sep/02/kick-ass-2-long-wait A sequel to the superhero hit has been greenlit, according to the writer of the original comic book. But doubts have been raised over the film's production scheduleKick-Ass was always rather nicely set up for a sequel, what with that open-ended denouement, so it's hardly surprising that Mark Millar, who wrote the original comic book, has been talking up a second film. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Millar said the film's success on DVD in the US, where it sold 1.4m units in its first week, meant the project was finally greenlit."The estimate is that Kick-Ass will do 100 to 150m on DVD based on the American sales, so it'll end up making a $250m (£160m) on a $28m investment," said Millar. "So it should be OK. The sequel's greenlit, we can go ahead and do the follow-up now. The first made so much compared to what it cost, it would be crazy not to."Millar's announcement, however, has been greeted with a degree of scepticism in the blogosphere, not least because Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman are tied up with preparations for X Men: First Class. In a later interview with MTV, Millar said the film was "probably about nine months away from production starting, at the earliest".He added: "Matthew's got to do X-Men: First Class. He just wants to get X-Men done next year, then hopefully we'll just go straight into Kick-Ass 2. That's the plan."All of which sounds a little less concrete. And there's the small matter of Vaughn's comments immediately following Kick-Ass's release, when he seemed to indicate there would probably not be a sequel.Could Millar, who clearly stands to benefit from a second film, be over-egging the biscuit? Probably. Having interviewed him, he's a refreshingly candid chap, saying that film-makers attempting to bring less well-known superheroes to the big screen were "fucked", following the arrival of Kick-Ass's postmodern take. ... Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:49:17 +0100 868558 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/z32_mMpjQxQ/2010-dayton-literary-peace-prize.html Celebrating the power of literature to promote peace, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has announced the twelve finalists for the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction and nonfiction. Finalists will be reviewed by a panel of prominent writers including Ken McClane, Cullen Murphy, Katherine Vaz, and Nancy Zafris. To be eligible for the 2010 awards, English-language books must be published or translated into English in 2009 and address the theme of peace on a variety of levels, such as between individuals, among families and communities, or among nations, religions, or ethnic groups (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:32:03 +0100 868630 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BabyBoomerLibrarian/~3/d-4nZnJgkRU/professional-military-reading-list.html The Professional Military Reading List The U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s Professional Reading List The Army List is compiled for leaders. The Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) views it as a pillar for his leadership development efforts. Titles are included that will provoke critical thinking about Professional soldiering and the unique role of land power; analysis and reflection on the past and the future; and a deep understanding of the Army and the future of the profession of arms in the 21 st Century. U.S. Navy Professional Reading ListA list of books from Chief of Naval Operations Reading List that includes history, fiction, inspirational and patriotic titles, biographies and the classics on military strategy and theory. The list provides an understanding and analysis of sea power, naval history, naval aviation, and the role of the U.S. Navy in past, present and future conflicts. U.S. Marine Corps Reading List The Marine Corps Reading list is developed to enrich a reader's knowledge and understanding of war. To quote directly from the reading program's purpose, "How do we translate written words into sound military decision? Obviously, the first step is to read. Then we must relate what we have read to what we actually do in training, field exercises, war games, leadership,and the like. We must read and discuss our readings with each other." Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) Reading List The CSAF Reading list is compiled to inform, analyze, inspire and educate. Titles are selected to inform readers about the history of the Air Force, analyze on-going conflicts and their relevancy to the future, inspire readers with success stories and provide lessons learned from conflicts. Coast Guard Commandant's Reading List This reading list is designed to offer Coast Guard people recommended books related to leadership. This list is not all-inclusive; the goal is to provide a starting point or expand existing knowledge and skills. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:42:00 +0100 868358 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/01/terry-pratchett-alzheimers-assisted-suicide Discworld's creator on his new novel, living with Alzheimer's – and why he should be allowed to decide when to end it allWhen, not very long ago, Terry Pratchett's father was given a year to live, Pratchett père took it, on the whole, philosophically. Father and son had plenty of time to "have those conversations that you have with a dying parent", and to reminisce about his father's time in India during the war. At one point, said Pratchett, in last year's Dimbleby lecture, his father suddenly said, "'I can feel the sun of India on my face,' and his face did light up rather magically, brighter and happier than I had seen it at any time in the previous year. If there had been any justice or even narrative sensibility in the universe, he would have died there and then, shading his eyes from the sun of Karachi."If the universe refused to display narrative sensibility, then Pratchett Jr would: that moment returns early in his new novel, I Shall Wear Midnight, in which a gruff, essentially kindly old man is vouchsafed a vision of youth and sunlight (though, instead of Karachi, the sunbeams glint off a leaping hare) and expires as he describes it. Even Pratchett knows this is a tad too neat, however, so, this being Discworld, his fantasy kingdom on a flat planet sailing through space on the backs of four elephants who in turn stand on a giant turtle, Death makes a lugubrious wisecrack about it: "WASN'T THAT APPROPRIATE?"Pratchett, when he arrives at his idyllic local pub in Wiltshire, turns out to be full of this type of humour – deliberate, slightly coercive, very self-aware. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:30:09 +0100 868194 http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/60243 The monthly lists of the most requested eBooks and Audiobooks, August, 2010) are now available from OverDrive. Below is the number one title in each category The complete list provide the Top 10 titles in each of the eight categories. Most Downloaded Audiobook from the Library - Adult Fiction 1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, [...] (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:24:41 +0100 868316 http://www.tangognat.com/2010/09/01/books-read-august-2010/ I was able to get more reading done this month since I was on vacation! Books The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner – Nice swashbuckling YA historical fiction with a little bit of fantasy set during the French Revolution. Blood Smoke and Mirrors by Robyn Bachar – Fun, funny urban fantasy [...] (Source: TangognaT) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:13:29 +0100 868440 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/new-sony-readers-announced/ I’m in NYC waiting to get a hands-on with the new devices. However I just received this press release which I’m reprinting in full.  Pictures at the end of the release: SONY BRINGS DIGITAL READING EXPERIENCE TO LIFE WITH THE LAUNCH OF ITS NEW LINE OF READERS New Readers Feature Sony’s Unique Touch Screens with Anti-Glare Technology for the Optimal Digital Book Reading Experience SAN DIEGO, September 1, 2010 – Continuing to provide book lovers with the most natural, immersive digital reading experience, Sony today announced the launch of its beautifully-designed new line of Reader digital books, including the new Reader Pocket Edition™, Reader Touch Edition™ and, in the US, the wireless Reader Daily Edition™.  The new line of Readers features a host of new design and technology enhancements that make them the perfect device for any reader’s lifestyle. “Today, we’re excited to announce not just the availability of the Reader Touch Edition and Pocket Edition in the countries we already serve but also plans to expand the Reader line to previously untapped markets,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “We take a thoughtful approach to country expansion, including Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan and China, working with local bookstores to ensure content is compatible, relevant and in the appropriate language for each market.” The new Reader models bring a fresh level of flare to e-reading with colorful, elegant aluminum designs and all new, highly responsive touch screens. In addition to the new devices in the US, Sony announced development of a set of applications for iPhone and the Android Marketplace to extend the Reader experience across multiple portable devices. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:18:37 +0100 868287 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/ohaadWbWw5Y/ I’m in NYC waiting to get a hands-on with the new devices. However I just received this press release which I’m reprinting in full.  Pictures at the end of the release: SONY BRINGS DIGITAL READING EXPERIENCE TO LIFE WITH THE LAUNCH OF ITS NEW LINE OF READERS New Readers Feature Sony’s Unique Touch Screens with Anti-Glare Technology for the Optimal Digital Book Reading Experience SAN DIEGO, September 1, 2010 – Continuing to provide book lovers with the most natural, immersive digital reading experience, Sony today announced the launch of its beautifully-designed new line of Reader digital books, including the new Reader Pocket Edition™, Reader Touch Edition™ and, in the US, the wireless Reader Daily Edition™.  The new line of Readers features a host of new design and technology enhancements that make them the perfect device for any reader’s lifestyle. “Today, we’re excited to announce not just the availability of the Reader Touch Edition and Pocket Edition in the countries we already serve but also plans to expand the Reader line to previously untapped markets,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “We take a thoughtful approach to country expansion, including Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan and China, working with local bookstores to ensure content is compatible, relevant and in the appropriate language for each market.” The new Reader models bring a fresh level of flare to e-reading with colorful, elegant aluminum designs and all new, highly responsive touch screens. In addition to the new devices in the US, Sony announced development of a set of applications for iPhone and the Android Marketplace to extend the Reader experience across multiple portable devices. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:18:37 +0100 868286 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/01/tony-blair-a-journey-booksellers Retailers predict high sales for former PM's political memoirAnd so the journey – well, A Journey – begins. Tony Blair's heavily embargoed, highly anticipated political memoir hits the shelves this morning, amid feverish predictions from booksellers.The book, running to over 600 pages, leapfrogged into top position in Amazon.co.uk's bestseller chart this morning from 11th place last night, overtaking bestselling books by Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer and Terry Pratchett. The online bookseller says it is on target to become its biggest-selling political memoir ever.Amazon.co.uk said that Blair's A Journey had generated 36% more pre-orders than Peter Mandelson's The Third Man at the same stage. It added that the book "is on target to overtake that title to become the most successful political memoir of all time on Amazon.co.uk" – news that will be welcomed by the Royal British Legion, to which Blair is donating all proceeds from the memoir, including his estimated £4.6m advance."Both books have performed very well and, perhaps unsurprisingly in a year when there has been a general election, we are encountering a strong appetite for books from the world of politics," said Amy Worth, Amazon's head of bookbuying.At Waterstone's – where Blair will sign copes of his autobiography on 8 September amid heavy security – A Journey was hovering in eighth place in its online bestseller chart this morning, while Foyles was predicting that the book would be the independent chain's bestseller of the week."Most bookshops have revised their expectations for A Journey, after such impressive sales for Peter Mandelson's book. Initial sales will be very high indeed and we expect it to be our bestseller this week, even on just four days' sales," said Jonathan Ruppin at the independent bookseller. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:12:35 +0100 868202 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/01/headteachers-literature-children-education-training Roald Dahl's Miss Trunchbull or Gillian Cross's Demon Headmaster demonstrate the exercise of power, study findsThey may be sadistic figures who hate children, but a study suggests that the savage portrayal of headteachers in children's literature possesses a grain of truth and may even be helpful when it comes to training teachers who aspire to lead schools.Characters like Miss Agatha Trunchbull, from Roald Dahl's Matilda, or the Demon Headmaster, from the sequence by Gillian Cross, can teach children to think about power and how it can be used for malign purposes, Professor Pat Thomson, director of the centre for research in schools and communities at Nottingham University school of education, has found.The study of 19 fictional headteachers found that nine are portrayed as evil or authoritarian, a further six are remote figures of power, and just one - JK Rowling's Professor Albus Dumbledore - is a positive role model.The study traces the origins of school stories to 19th century British fiction which – in stories aimed at boys – focused on the muscular discipline and militarism required for empire building.The books in the study were published between 1975 and 2009, and included Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events as well as Matilda and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.Many of the books show power can be used corruptly, according to Prof Thomson.Sometimes this can have a contemporary, political twist: in The Inflatable School by Peter Wynne-Willson, the "evil, messianic" Mr Stemple plans to turn his school into an academy sponsored by a business with whom his family has a profitable relationship.Miss Trunchbull is one of only two female heads in the books studied and is described, as "formidable and repulsive". ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:00:10 +0100 868029 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/hTOxRIC86D0/ I’ve been thinking about the topic of the value of books a lot. Not for days. Not for months. Years. However, recently I’ve been angered by the implication that readers are cheap, that they won’t pay a proper price for books, that they don’t get it. Whatever it is. These assertions are not untrue. They are also not entirely accurate. Perspective is everything, nuance matters, and I have thoughts. Of course. What is a book worth? Well, there’s list price created by the publisher. That seems to be the value referenced by publishers. Then there’s the price consumers actually pay. That gets more complicated, of course. You have to break it down to various levels including the price for the first sale and the price for the second sale. Library patrons pay a different price; we call that “property tax”. Oh, and then there are the books acquired for free. This is what I think about when I hear publishers talking about this, that, or the other devaluing the price of content. And by devaluing content, they really mean consumers paying far less than publishers would like. This is absolutely a valid concern. Once consumers get lower price points in their minds, they might expect to pay less all the time. As noted above, the way consumers acquire books means they pay varying amounts for the same product; I’d wager the number of full retail list price sales is greatly outnumbered by all other types of sales. Resolution: the price I pay for a book has absolutely nothing to do with how I value the book. This leads me to an inescapable contention. When publishers talk about the value of books, what they really mean is the value they have assigned. Conclusion: publishers are as responsible for devaluing the content of books as anyone else in the food chain. Recently, some friends and I discussed an author we love. Or loved. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:10:00 +0100 868021 http://ksulib.typepad.com/talking/2010/09/blogging-the-loc-an-introduction.html The start of the semester always brings at least a couple people to the Library Help Desk expressing frustration with the way our books are organized. Why isn’t all the fiction together? Why couldn’t you just put History in the “H” section? What happened to the number system I used in high school and at the public library? This year, I’d like to explain it to you. I’ll probably get my official librarian card revoked for revealing these arcane secrets, but I think it’s worth the risk. K-State Libraries, along with most other academic libraries, uses the Library of Congress classification system. It’s a method of grouping resources by topic, just like the Dewey Decimal numbers you’ve probably used before. It’s useful, but highly quirky. It’s a product of a particular time (the early 1900s) and a particular collection of books (those in the Library of Congress), but it’s also the best way most academic libraries have for organizing the vast numbers of resources they contain. The Library of Congress.  Image retrieved from Print and Photograph Online Catalog. The system consists of twenty-one basic classes, each with an associated letter of the alphabet. Five letters were left out: I, O, W, X, Y. I’m going to make a librarianly guess that I and O were too easily confused with 1 and 0. W, X and Y were likely left out for normal end-of-the-alphabet discriminatory practices (or maybe to leave room for eventual additions).  Each of the classes can have multiple subclasses, designated by more letters. Then there are numbers and more letters and more numbers, maybe with some punctuation sprinkled in. We’re not going to delve that deep, though, so no worries. We’ll start next week with “A” and see where it takes us. It will be super geeky, and therefore completely awesome. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868722 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/31/stephen-wall-obituary Literary historian, academic and longstanding editor of Essays in CriticismThe achievements of Stephen Wall, who has died after a lung infection aged 79, were exceptional for their humane generosity. As a literary historian and a critic of the Victorian novel, pre-eminently of Trollope and Dickens; as a reviewer – at once welcoming and discriminating – of new fiction and of theatre; as a director not only of Shakespeare but of Henry Purcell, informed by a love of enduring music; and as the author of a novel rewardingly patient in its nocturnal rhythms and chequered crosscurrents, he exercised an influence always benign and never sentimental. Likewise, as editor for 40 years of the quarterly journal Essays in Criticism, he was gently exacting, attentive to the very wording in a manner that contributors never forgot; and he was an inspiring teacher of English at Oxford University."Of joy in widest commonalty spread" – Wordsworth spoke to Wall as no other poet did, while there was added something for which this poet was not notable: a vivid sense of humour, together with a laconic wit, a sidelong glance endearingly free of anything furtive, a gift for offering advice in a way that made it a pleasure to take it and a mischievous delight that was the opposite of mischief-making. In his happy possession of these qualities, Wall was always keen to acknowledge how much he owed to the character of his friends FW Bateson, founder of Essays in Criticism, and Ian Hamilton, poet, wit, and founder of the Review. And, lifelong and supreme, to the love and the loving kindness of Yvonne, his wife of more than 50 years, and his daughters, Alisoun and Cassandra.Not every obituary should be a tribute, but this one should. For it is necessary to speak here of that which Wall himself judged it his responsibility not to invite attention to: his having been struck down by polio 54 years ago and lived since then from a wheelchair. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:51:31 +0100 867833 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/31/michel-houellebecq-novel-critical-fire New book comes under attack from Goncourt prize judge for 'affected writing style' and 'lack of imagination'La carte et le territoire is being described as the novel that could finally win French novelist Michel Houellebecq France's top literary prize, the Goncourt – but not if one of the award's judges has anything to do with it.Out later this week, the novel is Houellebecq's first since 2005's La possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island). Telling the story of the artist Jed Martin, son of a famous architect, it sees him asking the writer Michel Houellebecq, "a celebrated author", to write the preface for his exhibition catalogue. It was described in Le Parisien as "ferociously funny" and has already been tipped as a frontrunner for the Prix Goncourt, an award that Houellebecq, for all his international renown, has yet to win.But the French Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun, himself a former winner of the Goncourt and a member of the Académie Goncourt judging this year's prize, is unimpressed. In an article that stretches to almost 1,200 words in Italian newspaper La Repubblica, he lays into Houellebecq, criticising everything from the author's decision to include himself in the novel, to his mention of various consumer brands."What newness does this novel offer us?" writes Ben Jelloun, admitting that he would not have bothered reading the book if his duties as a Goncourt judge had not required it. "Some chat on the human condition, an affected writing style that pretends towards the clean and technically proficient, a pretence that summons up real characters and mixes them with others he has invented himself, a bit of publicity for a few consumer products."Ben Jelloun later told French website Rue89 that "all the name-dropping, all the mystery around him [Houellebecq] stems from a lack of imagination". (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:43:36 +0100 867831 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/31/edinburgh-book-festival-dip-sales Organisers blame recession for 3% decrease at the first event to be run by new director, Nick BarleyThe first Edinburgh international book festival run by its new director Nick Barley saw a small dip in ticket sales, bucking a trend of increasing audiences in previous years.This year's festival, which closed last night with a tribute to the Scots Makar Edwin Morgan, who died last week, sold 3% fewer tickets than last year's record-breaking event.Despite unusually sunny weather and another record year for the fringe, which sold nearly 2m tickets, the book festival's organisers believe the recession led its audience to buy fewer tickets.Frances Sutton, the festival's press manager, said that 200,000 people came to the event, the same as last year, but they appeared to spend less. By the close of the festival's public events yesterday, 76% of tickets were sold, compared to the "exceptional" 79% sold last year.The event is the first directed by Barley, a relative novice in the literature and publishing world who previously ran the troubled Lighthouse architecture centre in Glasgow, until it closed after a financial crisis.Barley has faced criticism for his lack of experience, with some critics picking out the decision by more than 20 prominent authors, including Don McCullin, Hilary Mantel, Andrew Sachs and Joan Lingard, to cancel their appearances.The historical novelist Philippa Gregory, who pulled out after the festival refused to allow her to change her programmed event at a late stage, implied there were problems with the event's organisation.She told the Sunday Herald: "I have worked with many major festivals and have always been able to use the material I wanted to use and I had prepared. It seems a lot of events have been affected by cancellations and you have to wonder why. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:04:16 +0100 867836 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2010/aug/31/boxer-beetle-ned-beauman The opening chapter from Ned Beauman's debut novel, longlisted for the Guardian first book award 2010Ned Beauman (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:23:04 +0100 867840 http://kairosnews.org/generation-quotborn-into-web-20quot-char I'd thought I'd throw out some characteristics of my son's generation rather than wait for ten years or so to see how they represent themselves in a Pew and American Life study. He's almost eleven years old. His is the generation that was born into Web 2.0 and other advanced digital technology. I know this isn't true for all kids his age (and it may be more true for boys--I don't know), but it's fun to imagine: Many of them would rather take videos than still pictures. They either have themselves, or have a friend close in age, who has put up a video on YouTube. They either have themselves, or have a friend close in age, who has been in a YouTube video. They have their own computer, or at least one that is shared with siblings and not the adults in the family. They share websites and videos they find on the Internet. They have email accounts and send and receive email on occassion. They have played an MMORPG designed for kids along with other kids in their school. My son and friends at school, boys and girls alike, play Wizard 101. They have mobile phones and have sent and/or received text messages. Some are used to watching television and/or movies without commerical interruptions, and they will prefer the use of a DVD, Blueray, DVR, Tivo, or Netflix on demand to avoid commercials. They have more than one game system, at least a DS and a console unit. Cable television is not their sole, primary form of digital entertainment. Video games and the Internet have a strong, competing role for their attrention. Mp3 players are the primary music listening device that they own. Radio is something they listen to in the car when there are no CDs, the DS is not with them, and they forgot the mp3 player. It's the electronic media of last resort. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:15:31 +0100 867774 http://gnomicutterance.livejournal.com/50138.html A friend to whom I will refer as Jules Léotard recently pointed me towards this lengthy video which is the product of Focus on the Family's "True Tolerance" program.Direct URL / Video in accessible playerThe video points parents towards the stealthy methods those "sneaky" homosexual activists are using to get into the schools, such as devious, wicked anti-bullying campaigns. (The fact that 23.2% of students who have been bullied at school because someone perceived them to be queer attempt suicide is apparently irrelevant to these people, who provide a [PDF] "model anti-bullying policy" which is not intended to prohibit expression of religious, philosophical, or political views. Presumably including "you're going to hell for being gay.")Anyway, their list of [PDF] devious homosexual agenda books you might find in your school makes me sad, because the only thing in there that counts as fantasy or science fiction is Uncle Bobby's Wedding. Is that really the state of homosexual agenda children's and YA books in F&SF? Hero, Cycler, and some albeit adorable queer guinea pigs? (I'm exaggerating. Somewhat.)It doesn't work that way in my mind, where I forget that Tally Youngblood never hooked up with Shay; that it was just subtext in King of Shadows; that none of those gay best friends in paranormal romances are the main characters. This is a good time of year to remind myself that for all I am used to seeing the intense social conservativism in fantasy, I mustn't discount the strong strain of it in science fiction.Also a good time of year to make the time to read Ash. *goes to request from interlibrary loan*(This is mirrored from an original post at Dreamwidth where there are comments. You can leave a comment here or over there. (Source: Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:03:19 +0100 867710 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/30/poetry Filled with vitality and physical exuberance, this week's bank holiday choice is that rare thing: a happy poemThis week's choice, "Pier", by one of today's most interesting younger Irish poets, Vona Groarke, seems to be that comparatively rare thing: a happy poem. It centres on the thrill, in the author's words, of "jumping into the sea from a high fishing pier."It might stir your own nostalgia for childhood and teenage derring-do, but if you're lucky - and wise - you won't have outgrown such experiences, nor save them only for bank holidays. "Pier" isn't designed to deliver a message, but it nevertheless says something about the nature of the good and happy life. Our muscles, extensions of our minds, have "a need for joy". Fascism exploits that fact, as regretted in the Auden sonnet which provides the poem's epigraph. But the "sport" here has a different goal. It's private and it's fun; an act not of conformity but rebellion.Vona Groarke was born in Edgeworthstown in the Irish Midlands, but, as she says in this too-brief interview, she thinks of the west of Ireland as her home. "Pier", from her 2009 collection, Spindrift, is set in Spiddal in County Galway. Initially, what's noticeable is that there's no direct first-person narrative. This emphasis on active verbs turns out to be an excellent device, recreating how it feels to be fully absorbed in physical activity, the mind, that often unwieldy "organ", streamlined into unity with the body. The body of the poem – its rhythms and syntax – is not a container, but a sinewy consciousness.The poem begins with a series of signposts or instructions. The abbreviated style helps focus process and movement. The speaker seems to be doing something she's done before - remembering, as well as reporting, a familiar sequence as she moves steadily to her goal. Each point of the landscape has its associated physical accompaniment. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:24:00 +0100 867424 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2010/aug/27/your-presence-suvanto-maile-chapman The opening prologue to Maile Chapman's debut novel, longlisted for the Guardian first book award (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:00:58 +0100 867426 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/29/teenagers-language-music-world Writing 11 novels for teenagers gives you a special insight on their world, from their use of language to their taste in fashion1Teen rebellions involving clothes dyed black with Dylon, sausages rejected as "meat is murder" or hair backcombed into a landmass don't shock parents now. The most shocking act of rebellion a little caucasian agnostic girl from Penrith could pull is a flash conversion to Islam, before swishing down to Londis wearing full niqab. Inshallah, you are so grounded.2Scores of inner-city kids live their lives on what must feel like a giant Pac-Man grid, being chased by enemies whenever they leave home. As adults we underestimate how stressful this is. I began writing comedy for teens as there's no bigger demographic who need a laugh. A joke about how many Rimmel nail colours one can fit in a thong and still run from Superdrug security guards goes a long way.3The idea that teens today have a looser sense of morals is rubbish. For every 15-year-old smashing up the swings in the park, there's another sat piously at home writing complaints to the BBC about bad language and posting my novel back to the publishers, incensed over the word "fartface" on page 34.4Teens don't want adults speaking their language, but a basic working knowledge goes a million miles when writing for them. Many adults are pompous, lazy sorts who write teen fiction in which the kids speak like mini-Michael Goves and never MSN or BBM as this would involve the author researching it. Words you should know but never use include: Wa'gwan? Tonk. Choong. Brap. Brare. Slippin. Wack. Bruv. Blad. Emosh. Par. Wasteman. Allow it. Buff. Peng. Owned. Merked. Shottin'. Beef. Giving me jokes. Airing. Bedrin. Blates. Totes. Bless. Diss. Boi. Ufff. KMT. Bustin. Chirps. Va-jay-jay. Cotch. Fam. Crunk. Cuzz. Dark. Deep. Endz and, of course, the delightful Clunge. (Need a translation? See below. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:29:54 +0100 867264 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/fiction A mysterious car crash is the trigger for a dark, dreamlike story of love and powerIsmail Kadare's new novel begins one rain-soaked morning, on the autobahn heading towards Vienna airport, when a taxi driver crashes through the safety barrier, killing both his passengers and leaving himself severely injured. It looks like an everyday sort of tragedy but, for reasons never explained, the driver's report of what happened immediately before he lost control of the car causes confusion. The couple in the back seat, he said, seemed as if they were "trying to kiss". For reasons that are never entirely clear, there's a suggestion that this seemingly innocuous act may have precipitated the catastrophe.The deceased were Albanian nationals and their deaths become the subject of a lengthy inquiry demanded by the governments of both Serbia and Albania. The dead man, known only as Besfort Y, worked for the Council of Europe and had an unexplained connection to the war crimes investigations under way in The Hague. It emerges that he and the woman, Rovena, an intern at the Archaeological Institute, had been carrying out a passionate affair in hotels across Europe for the past 12 years. And as the testimonies are gathered from the few people close to them, it begins to look like the crash may have had a more malevolent cause.The dark, dreamlike sequence that follows is familiar terrain for Kadare, an International Booker prizewinner whose work has been translated into more than 30 languages. His acclaimed previous novels, such as The Palace of Dreams, have documented the paranoid, absurd, often Kafkaesque dimensions of life under the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, perhaps the 20th century's most bizarrely gruesome autocrat. The Accident is set in contemporary Albania and central Europe, but the departed Hoxha's shadow still lingers, as does the fog of war that clouded the whole Balkan peninsula during the 1990s and early 2000s. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:45:52 +0100 867163 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=NEW_AT_THE_ST-_CATHARINES_PUBLIC_LIBRARY_-_St-_Catharines_Standard_--- FICTION DAY FOR NIGHT, by Frederick Reiken With a narrative that begins with a couple's vacation trip to Florida in the 1980s, the author weaves... (Source: pligg - all) Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:00:29 +0100 867009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/vs-naipaul-masque-of-africa-review VS Naipaul is often blinkered but he still sees things in Africa that others miss, says Aminatta FornaIn 2001, when the Swedish Academy awarded Sir Vidia Naipaul the Nobel prize in literature, it described him as the heir to Joseph Conrad: "The annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings… the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished." There are plenty who would have begged to disagree, for Naipaul has regularly attracted criticism, from Edward Said among others, for his dismissive remarks on the cultures of his native Trinidad, on Islam, Pakistan and more.The Masque of Africa is his latest – quite likely last – full-length work of non-fiction. It is a quest through the continent for the spirit of African belief, the belief systems that preceded the arrival of Christianity and Islam – which is very much in keeping with the legacy of Joseph Conrad, who is referenced several times in the book. Already this feels cliched and tiresome; one yearns for the day when an author from outside can approach Africa without invoking the "heart of darkness" mythology. In 1975, Chinua Achebe published an essay attacking Conrad's best-known work as racist and already the novelist Robert Harris has described The Masque of Africa as "toxic".Naipaul's journey across the continent takes him from Uganda, where he lived for a short while in the 1960s, to Nigeria, then to Gabon via the Ivory Coast and Ghana, and finally to South Africa. Along the way, he meets and talks to people about their beliefs. His sources are virtually all African rather than aid workers and expats (you'd be surprised how rare this is).Naipaul discourses with teachers, writers, academics, pharmacists, kings, queens and chiefs, businessmen, friends of friends. That there exists an African intellectual class does not escape him. ... Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:06:08 +0100 866783 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/william-gibson-interview The science fiction writer on his relationship with technologyWhat's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?Whatever piece of word processing software I'm using. I never learned to touch-type.When was the last time you used it, and what for?To answer the previous question.What additional features would you add if you could?I'd like a Word-compatible processor optimised for writing novels, that takes up a minimum of storage space, thanks.Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?I imagine we'll be using some version of it as long as we continue to write at lengths greater than 140 characters.What always frustrates you about technology in general?The reality of malfunction, something I've quite rightly been criticised for neglecting to adequately depict in my fiction.Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?The last fax I bothered to purchase, which cost virtually nothing, and was so loaded with features and options that I've yet to figure out how to send a fax. Fortunately I only need to send two or three a year, in which case I go to a nearby shop.If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?To wait for at least the second iteration, but then I suppose it's no longer new. But I've always tended to be a slow adaptor. I'd rather watch other people use new things than use them myself.Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?Neither. I try to be objective about technology. Agnostic, in a sense. Whatever personal opinions I form tend to have more to do with what we find to do with the new thing.What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?A Volkswagen Passat.Mac or PC, and why?Mac. I started with Apple, in a pre-Windows era when PCs seemed to involve more of a learning curve. But the fact that I'm yet to acquire so much as a single virus still seems a very good thing. ... Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:05:58 +0100 866788 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/julian-mitchell-undiscovered-country-review Julian Mitchell's 1968 novel deals powerfully in ambiguity and doubt, says Anna WinterJulian Mitchell (born 1935) is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. His sixth novel, The Undiscovered Country, is a disconcerting and enigmatic work, experimental in both form and content. The first half takes the form of a memoir, narrated by "Julian Mitchell". The young Julian meets another new boy at prep school, Charles Humphries, with whom he develops an intimate friendship. Julian is fascinated by the other boy's dark looks, solemn wisdom and cosmopolitan background. He is Julian's "alter ego" (indeed, in real life, Mitchell's forenames are Charles Julian Humphrey), guiding a self-consciously unreliable narrator who perceives the surrounding world as "a jumble of unrelated, often nonsensical impressions".As Julian progresses through life, Charles materialises mysteriously at different stages, in each instance displaying a new sort of sexual persona: he is an ostentatiously camp Cambridge undergraduate, a psychologically tormented beatnik, then a promiscuous amateur poet.The second half develops this idea of proliferating identities. The author presents a manuscript allegedly left to him by Charles, an adaptation of The Satyricon by Petronius, a classical homoerotic text. Charles's narrative follows its protagonist, Henry, through a surreal underworld as he pursues an ideal lover of unsurpassed beauty and uncertain gender.First published in 1968, the year after homosexual acts were legalised, The Undiscovered Country (which shouldn't be confused with Mitchell's 1981 play Another Country, which he later adapted into a film) clearly references the new culture of social and sexual freedom. The later part of the novel, however, offers disturbing visions of bizarre and violent eroticism – the subterranean world becomes a setting for rape, incest and sadism. ... Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:05:52 +0100 866789 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/new-york-stories-elizabeth-hardwick Over a range of troubling themes – the uncertainty of belonging, the inscrutibility of men – Elizabeth Hardwick's fiction shines with wisdom and craft, writes Tim AdamsThere is a gap of 20 years in this selection of Elizabeth Hardwick's short stories, between the late 1950s when she and her husband, the poet Robert Lowell, moved from New York to Boston, and 1980, when, after their divorce and Lowell's death (in a taxi on the way to her apartment), she seemed to discover her fictional voice once more. Hardwick was not idle in between times. She helped to found the New York Review of Books in 1963 and illuminated its pages with her essays until her death in 2007, each sentence weighted with sifted wisdom and delicious humanity – Derek Walcott called her the "best prose writer in America". And throughout the 1960s she devoted herself with legendary dignity to the almost overwhelming work of shoring up her famous, and famously manic, husband, as he migrated between his study, the outpatient ward or various mental institutions, and the bedrooms of women younger than herself.A southerner, from Kentucky, Hardwick had set out, though, when she came to New York in 1939, to write fiction, from a somewhat liberated woman's view (her first act on getting off the Greyhound bus in Times Square was to buy a new-minted American edition of Finnegans Wake). She was quickly cornered and hemmed in in this enterprise by the dazzle and success of her friend Mary McCarthy, and sometimes lost heart. ... Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:05:48 +0100 866784 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/oil-on-water-helon-habila A Conradian river journey in search of a kidnap victim uncovers the human cost of the oil industry in the Niger deltaThe brutal mechanics of our lust for oil, as Hollywood thrillers from The Pelican Brief to Syriana prove, lend themselves to tales of heroic underdogs unmasking the machinations of big petrobusiness. Helon Habila's new novel turns these certainties on their head. Oil on Water follows two journalists – keen, young Rufus and ageing, cynical Zaq – as they pursue the kidnapped European wife of an oil executive into the badlands of the Niger delta. But "the story is not always the final goal", Zaq tells Rufus at the beginning of their Conradian journey upriver, and their quest for the truth soon turns into something more complex.As they struggle up the river in a canoe, guided by an old man and a young boy, the reporters encounter nightmarish scenes of devastation: "dead birds draped over tree branches, their outstretched wings black and slick with oil; dead fishes bobbed white-bellied between tree roots". By the flickering light of oil flares, they find some villages abandoned, their fields and water contaminated; others scrape a miserable existence on the frontline of a civil war between the army and anti-government guerrillas.Oil on Water lays bare the real-life tragedy of the Niger delta, in which petrodollars warp human relationships as surely as leaking crude poisons birds and fish. A village that accepts an oil company payout, Rufus discovers, is initially jubilant. TVs and fridges appear in impoverished homes, presided over by the uncanny orange flare "that burns day and night". But then livestock, crops and finally villagers begin to die, while the survivors are bought off with do-nothing oil company jobs, join militant groups or turn to kidnapping for profit. ... Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:05:46 +0100 866791 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/gLQwe8ymeKw/2010-guardian-first-book-award-longlist.html The longlist for the 2010 Guardian first book award has been announced: Fiction: * Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt (Fig Tree) * Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman (Sceptre) * Things We Didn't See Coming by Steven Amsterdam (Harvill) * Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto by Maile Chapman (Cape) * Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed (HarperCollins) Non-fiction * Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of World War Two by Daniel Swift (Hamish Hamilton) * Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz (Portobello) * Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris (Thames & Hudson) * Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir by Basharat Peer (HarperCollins) Poetry * The Floating Man by Katharine Towers (Picador) (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:43:11 +0100 866805 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/kSajXOGhJTM/5th-manchester-literature-festival-2010.html 5th Manchester Literature Festival 2010 - 14-25 October 2010 - Manchester, UK - "Writers will be travelling to Manchester from as far afield as North Africa, China, Scandinavia and the United States to take part in this year's festival. Our distinguished line up of guests includes UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, beloved novelists Bernard Cornwell, Caryl Phillips, Lionel Shriver and Barbara Trapido, and award-winning screenwriter Heidi Thomas. The programme features a Historical Readers' Day and a series of events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of pioneering Manchester writer, Elizabeth Gaskell. Looking to the future, we present some unique MLF commissions, including the inaugural Manchester Sermon to be delivered by Jeanette Winterson, and the translation of a short story by acclaimed Chinese writer Ding Liying. We will also be showcasing some of the UK's hottest new talent, and inspiring the next generation of readers and writers with a tempting selection of family-friendly activities. With everything from a Moomin storytelling event to a debate on horror fiction, there's something to suit all literary tastes and ages" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:38:18 +0100 866601 http://mblc.state.ma.us/jobs/find_jobs/rss.php?job_id=6359 Environment: Busy Metro-Boston public library serving a diverse community. At Malden Public Library, we place a strong emphasis on personal service. -Day to day management of personnel and library services to insure the library needs of a diverse community is satisfied; -Plan programs and services, promotes library use in the community, and serves as liaison with community groups and schools; -Supervise 8 librarians, 8 support staff and messengers; -Interact effectively with the public, staff and administration; -Communicate with administration on a regular basis; -Train professional and support staff in public service; -Oversee collection development for adult fiction and portions of the non-fiction collection; - Keep abreast of emerging technologies; -Maintains a working knowledge of contemporary issues, trends, and technology in the library profession -Ability and willingness to assume responsibility; -Generate ideas for service improvements; (Source: MBLC Job Listings) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:20:01 +0100 866322 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/28/will-self-bigness-and-littleness As a child, Will Self collected doll's house furniture, trolls and miniature dictionaries. In later life, he has come to have a special admiration for artists whose work addresses size and scale – and transcends the Lilliputian character of the modern ageSome time in the summer of 1992 I sat down in a four-square and fusty house that my then wife and I were renting in the Oxfordshire countryside and typed these words: "Some people lose their sense of proportion, I've lost my sense of scale." Over the succeeding five days I wrote a section a day of a piece called simply "Scale". Its ostensible subject was the mental disintegration of an opiate-addicted scholar living in a bungalow next to the Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield – and this had obvious autobiographical resonances; but the organising principle of the material was the very perceptual conundrum implied by the opening line. Indeed, while like most writers I mistrust any romantic talk of "inspiration", even at the time I felt that "Scale" was coming to me with a peculiarly deductive fluidity, that each successive sentence seemed logically to derive from that initial and perplexing proposition.Eighteen years later I find myself on the brink of publishing a second work owing its genesis to my abiding preoccupation with the very big and the very little. The first part of a trilogy of fictionalised memoirs collectively called Walking to Hollywood, this piece, in fact, has the title "Very Little", and while seemingly a flight of – admittedly miserable – fantasy, detailing my destructive relationship with a monumental sculptor who happens to be a person of restricted height, it is in reality as close to a true piece of autobiography as anything I've written.Why should physical scale so preoccupy me? The most obvious explanation is that I myself am on the large side, as are most of the men from my family. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:35 +0100 866292 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/maile-chapman-your-presence-is-requested-at-suvanto Lucy Ellmann is drawn into a vividly realised first novel set in a women's sanatorium in FinlandWe've jogged up and down Everest, navigated the Arctic, and had a pretty good look at the moon – but women remain uncharted territory. What are they and what do they want? Freud didn't know; nobody knows. But a few intrepid explorers have ventured forth, studying women by isolating them. While Lucile Hadzihalilovic's 2004 film Innocence examined the society of little girls in an imaginary boarding school, Maile Chapman's first novel focuses on more aged and woebegotten gals, the lonely nurses and patients of a sanatorium in Finland, around 1920. In both, the single-sex set-up results in something surprising, and wholly original.This book should be bottled and sold at the chemist's, the perfect antidote to austerity and job loss – reading it feels like a rest cure. There is comfort to be found in all this order, hygiene, quiet routine and companionship, the resigned acceptance of the female body, and the constant, watchful presence of attendants who bring food and treat unnameable ailments. The food itself is a little dubious (a plethora of prunes characterises Christmas, while rutabaga is mentioned more than once); the ailments, at least at first, don't seem severe.Some of the women are here merely because they hate their husbands, or their husbands hate them. But the novel is elegantly suspended in a torpor of the present moment, not so much in the dramas that preceded it, and we are invited to relax with these women, artificially removed from convention and connection. This safe zone is ruled by the exacting requirements of the hospital, the landscape, the recreational activities of saunas, snowy walks in the woods, reluctant dance lessons after dinner, moisturising, knitting, and in particular the smell of everything. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:25 +0100 866300 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/fay-weldon-kehua-review The new Fay Weldon is rich in anarchic wisdom, says Stevie DaviesFay Weldon's new novel is a warmly exuberant metafiction. It's a story of grannies and great-grannies. A writer's zany journal of the work-in-progress. A tall tale of Maori spirits, female fugitives, marriage, sex, murder and anything else that comes into the writer's head. A saturnalian yarn of gothic haunted houses. The writer's granddaughter wants to know if those Maori spirits, the kehua, are "that rattling sound I can hear down there?" "No," replies her mum, "that's just your granny typing on the keyboard." Early in her career Weldon published the radical feminist Down Among the Women; forty years later this novel might be subtitled Down Among the Old Women Writers.Over the novel, "the kehua hang unseen . . . like fruit bats". I want to counsel you, reader: in all the confusion, stick with the old women. Granny may know best. At 92, Beverley has elaborated an anarchic wisdom of her own. But beneath the comedy we catch serious resonances: a testament of age in its final house, witnessing ancestral damage and the ravages of time, yearning to gather in what has been dispersed. Along with this goes a warning to younger generations: patch up your wrecked houses before it's too late; don't, for pity's sake, try to have it all.Kehua! is governed by the conceit of a host of friendly but addled Maori spirits liminal between life and death. These lost spirits pursue Weldon's lost characters in a plot as wayward as it is semi-intelligible. Everyone is running. Granny, daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter Lola are legging it away from the awfulness of family.Beverley brought the kehua to Europe, when she escaped a New Zealand childhood of murder, suicide and abuse; her granddaughter, Scarlet, is on the point of quitting her husband for her lover. It is Granny's job to intervene if she can. And somehow Scarlet is stuck in Beverley's kitchen. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:22 +0100 866303 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/lights-out-wonderland-dbc-pierre Alan Warner is impressed by DBC Pierre's fast and furious satire on contemporary decadenceIn a perfect inversion of plain truth, the Royal Bank of Scotland recently assured from billboards that it is "Here For You". In reality the exact contrary is true: We Are Here For It. Capitalism without pesky democracy is our future. If any novelist can collate the killing irony of what is happening around us it is DBC Pierre, who has boiled it down to a culinary emulsion of Hunter S Thompson and Ludwig Bemelmans.Gabriel Brockwell is an anti-globalisation activist whose daddy never loved him, a booze- and cocaine-partial sybarite in his 20s. His sanctimonious rehab guru, "Spread, creased, and folded by culture into a clever likeness of a man", insists: "Gabriel . . . I don't know whether to treat you or publish you!"Like Herman Hesse's Harry Haller, from Steppenwolf, Gabriel is liberated from the contradictions raging within by a pledge to commit suicide after one final blowout. Torching his rehab establishment, he flees England with a stash of cocaine and the embezzled funds from an anti-capitalist action group. He heads for Tokyo, where his childhood comrade – Nelson Smuts – works. An implosive neophyte chef – "the epicurian underworld pulled him into its rarest bowel" – Smuts is bound for the blessing of a Michelin star. Smuts's promise has been sponsored by a sinister party organiser and international playboy, Didier Laxalt, "the godfather of high-octane catering".And it is wine lore that sets up this brilliant satire: Marius is a vine so precious it grows with the assistance of virgins' pheromones and transports the imbiber with visions of its Cote d'Azur slope; the grape is "an ovary inseminated with dreams". It is accompanied by highly toxic blowfish, cut "so thin you could watch porn through it". Gabriel enters a night of gangsters, a teenage girl, a vast fish tank and an octopus. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:20 +0100 866305 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/beasts-being-ian-holding-review Diana Evans enjoys the bleak atmospherics of a post-apocalyptic tale in the African bushIn his first novel, Unfeeling, Ian Holding was cagey about where his account of a white farming community being slaughtered by black militants was set, though the imprint of Robert Mugabe was obvious enough. His second novel is also, we presume, set in modern Zimbabwe, but this time the picture is even hazier, the edges blurred and details deliberately withheld, so that the story itself is precarious, despite the vividness of its telling.An unnamed character, while scavenging for food amid a post-apocalyptic wasteland of charred bodies, bombed pit latrines and shelled shacks, is captured by soldiers and taken on a journey, destination unknown. Sold to an old man and strung up, he fears he is about to be eaten, until he is stolen by two young men with other plans. At the back of a deserted shopping centre he meets the rest of his new captors' party: another man and a pregnant woman. He is attached to a wheelbarrow, in which the pregnant woman is deposited, her legs splayed around supplies of maize cobs, water and tins of beans, and the aimless journey continues, across barren roads, sudden glades, valleys of bush and horrifying human remains.Although there is no clear point to their wandering, a sense of urgency and tension is evoked by the menacing desolation that infuses all around them, described in impressively exacting detail, and the ongoing question of whether or not the woman will survive to give birth to her child. These sections of the novel are written in a heightened present-tense narrative that strains to contain its subject, yet has the strange effect, when combined with the anonymity of the characters and the absence of background information on their plight, of keeping pathos just beyond our reach. There is virtually no dialogue. Some scenes cry out for dramatisation but remain trapped behind a gauze of inflated language. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:18 +0100 866307 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/aug/27/penelope-lively-books-made-me In the third of our series asking writers about the books that formed their literary personalities, the Booker prize-winning novelist Penelope Lively explains why the myths of Troy and Greece were so vivid to her as a young girl growing up in Egypt. She also reveals why she could never have cut it as a historian, even though history writing – such as Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic – is one of her passions, and talks about the fascination with landscape that has informed so much of her fiction.She also explains why she values short novels, idolises William Golding and admires Henry James's skill at showing all the things Maisie doesn't know.Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew LangReligion and the Decline of Magic by Keith ThomasThe Making of the English Landscape by WG HoskinsThe Inheritors by William GoldingWhat Maisie Knew by Henry JamesThe Good Soldier by Ford Madox FordClaire Armitstead (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:53:19 +0100 866285 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/27/guardian-first-book-award-longlist Ten titles contend for £10,000 award, with subjects covered including everything from the itinerant experience of the Somali community to Churchill's 'black dog'The past vies with the future and poetry with prose on the longlist of the 2010 Guardian first book award, which was announced today. The 10 debut titles in the running for the £10,000 award range from dystopian fiction to popular psychology, and span the globe from Somalia to Finland, Kashmir to Winston Churchill's family home in Kent.War stalks the pages of the best-known novel on the list, Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, which was longlisted for the Orange prize and has already won the 2010 Betty Trask award. Mohamed takes the story of her father, who left Somalia as a boy and settled in the UK after crossing Africa, and transforms it into fiction inflected by the African tradition of praise poetry. Starting as a 10-year-old boy in 1930s Somalia and journeying through Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt to freedom in Britain, Mohamed's main character witnesses key moments in the African experience of the second world war and embodies the itinerant experience of the Somali community.According to the chair of the judges, the Guardian's literary editor Claire Armitstead, Mohamed is just one of a group of young British authors on the longlist who are expanding the territory of the novel."This year's longlist brings together a younger generation of writers who have moved beyond the social realism of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, and are pushing at the boundaries of realist fiction," she said.Armitstead also cited Rebecca Hunt, whose novel Mr Chartwell imagines the depression that haunts both Winston Churchill and a young woman in 21st-century Battersea as a huge black dog, and Ned Beauman, who explores Nazism, eugenics and entolmology in Boxer, Beetle, as responding to the changes in publishing and wider society with fiction that enlarges the possibilities of the novel. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:32:15 +0100 866286 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/27/humanities-mobile-the-man-booker-prize-for-fiction-now-has-its-own-free-iphonepadtouch-app/ Yes, even the world famous Man Booker Prize for Fiction has been bitten by the “app bug” has just released its own FREE iPhone/Pad/Touch app. More info (and links) about the prize itself are located below. From the Description: The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. Explore the full history of the prize, with access to authors, book titles and judges for each year the prize has been awarded. Expand your experience of the titles by watching specially created videos, listen to audio extracts and read Q&A interviews with the authors. The app will be updated at every stage of the prize and will provide easy access to everything related to the prize. You’ll also notice that GPS can be used to find a local bookshop. You can read more about it and download a copy of the app here. See Also: Official News Release This year’s Man Booker Prize shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September at a press conference at Man Group’s London headquarters. The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC Ten O’Clock News. Learn More About the Award via the Man Booker Prize Web Site From the FAQ: Any full-length novel, written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland and published in the United Kingdom for the first time in the year of the prize. The novel must be an original work in English (not a translation) and must not be self-published. If many pundits are correct and self-publishing grows market share to a certain percentage you have to wonder if those who run the award will remove the self-published restriction. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:19:27 +0100 866123 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/27/jonathan-franzen-book-club Jonathan Franzen will be in conversation with John Mullan at Kings Place on 5 OctoberDate: Tuesday 5 OctoberTime: 7.00pmVenue: Hall One, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AGPrice: £9.50Jonathan Franzen talks to John Mullan about his much celebrated 2001 novel, The Corrections, a multi-generational epic about a midwestern family. Patriarch Alfred Lambert, a retired engineer, is struggling with Parkinson's disease and dementia. His wife, Enid, on anti-depressants and poorly-equipped to cope with his illness, is attempting to gather the family together for "one last Christmas". Their three children, Gary, a suburban banker, Chip, a failed academic and screenwriter, and Denise, a gourmet chef who is having an affair with her married boss, are battling their own frustrations and disappointments. Stretching from the mid-20th century to the new millennium, this big-hearted tragicomedy is an examination of contemporary America through the triumphs and dysfunctions of one ordinary family. Tickets are £9.50 online or £11.50 from the box office: www.kingsplace.co.ukBox Office: 020 7520 1490Jonathan FranzenFictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:00:00 +0100 865459 http://pelhamlibrary.blogspot.com/2010/08/bc-ferries-awash-in-controversy.html BC Ferries has banned the sale of The Golden Mean by Canadian author Annabel Lyon in their gift shops. While most books are challenged over content, The Golden Mean is being kept off of BC Ferries because of the cover which depicts a naked male figure whose buttocks are exposed. The ban has gained the attention of papers around the world who have picked up the story, including The Guardian in the UK and The New Yorker.According to the Vancouver Sun, "BC Ferries has a habit of banning books that feature nudity of any kind. Stephen Vogler's Only in Whistler was banned in 2009 because it featured a historical photo of four naked female skiers viewed from the rear. Two years ago, Wreck Beach, a history of Vancouver's nude beach, was banned for similar reasons."Deborah Marshall, a spokesperson for B.C. Ferries defended the policy, explaining that there are children in the gift shops and that they are a "family show." The suggestion that BC Ferries carry the book if there was a "belly band" hiding the photo was rejected by Random House. Books for the bookstore are chosen by a committee and according to Mitchell, "We choose to select non-controversial books in our gift shop." Craig Spence, president of the Federation of British Columbia Writers expressed his concern, saying the ban was "an overreaction to a photo that's artistic ... are you going to stop kids from seeing Michelangelo's David? The kinds of graphic material that kids are exposed to, through advertising and other media all the time, go much farther than that, and they're not in a context that would give it the justification."The Golden Mean is a fictional account of a young Alexander the Great during the time when Aristotle was his tutor. It has received wide acclaim and has been considered for numerous awards. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867721 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/antioch-review-fiction-will-survive.html "Many writers and editors hope that literary magazines will carry writers through these difficult economic times by providing outlets. There is the usual hysteria about the 'death of fiction' but we have seen little of that here as young, middle-aged and older writers keep emerging, keep sharpening their pencils and trying to ouwit and outfence their readers. It's not like the heyday of the late (Source: NewPages Blog) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866548 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/26/wars-of-words/ As long as there have been stories in book form there have been arguments, disagreements, gossip and controversies that erupt.  I’ll admit it, I’m happy about that fact.  What is literary?  What is commercial?  The debates rage on.  Often the war of words erupt over reviews written - note Alain de Botton’s comment (fourth one down) about a review written about his book (which we do own, so not completely dead in the U.S.) - or reviews not written as in the newest instance where two authors are taking the New York Times to task for lavishing so much space on Jonathan Franzen’s new book and none to their own.  That’s the short version. The longer version is an ongoing debate about what gets included in the limited space of the review section of the Gray Lady.  Authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner tell it as they see it in this Huffington Post interview.  Weiner starts off with: “I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book - in short, it’s something unworthy of a serious critic’s attention.” And even when more commercial fiction (or genre fiction) is included she argues: “when genre fiction that men read gets reviewed but genre fiction that women read doesn’t exist on the paper’s review pages? It would be as if the paper’s film critics only reviewed tiny independent fare and refused to see so much as a single frame of a romantic comedy, or if the music critics listened to Grizzly Bear and refused to acknowledge the existence of Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. How seriously would a reader take a critic like that?” I do agree with that. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:56:38 +0100 865848 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/26/world-fantasy-awards China Miéville's The City and the City and James Enge's Blood of Ambrose among those shortlisted for best novel prizeIs it crime? Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy? China Miéville's bizarre tale of a murder investigation, The City and the City, has already won both of the UK's top science-fiction prizes, and is now lined up for battle in the fantasy arena.The novel, winner of the Arthur C Clarke and British Science Fiction Association awards, is competing with Blood of Ambrose, a classic sword-and-sorcery fantasy from James Enge, and Kit Whitfield's tale of the uneasy alliance between humans and mermaids, In Great Waters, on the shortlist for this year's World Fantasy awards.Also in contention are Jeff VanderMeer's Finch, which concerns detective's attempt to solve two murders in the rotten city of Ambergris, and Caitlín R Kiernan's The Red Tree, about a writer who discovers a dead man's unpublished manuscript and starts to investigate centuries-old secrets.Enge expressed shock and pleasure at his nomination for a book that he says was "deliberately designed not to be award-bait". "I think the odds are very long indeed against Blood of Ambrose taking the 'best novel' award," he said. "It's an attempt to carry on some old pulpy traditions into the 21st century – sword and sorcery, in fact."Although sword-and-sorcery writers have won the World Fantasy award in the past – Enge pointed to Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock – "they didn't win for sword-and-sorcery novels, and they were already legends when they were nominated. I'm not a legend, merely somewhat imaginary, or so it feels this morning," he said.Whitfield, whose acclaimed debut novel, Bareback, subverted the werewolf myth, was "astonished" to be shortlisted for In Great Waters. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:31:23 +0100 865455 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/26/discworld-convention-terry-pratchett I'm a respectable mathematician – why would I spend four days at Birmingham airport? Because only Terry Pratchett asks the tooth fairy what it wants all those teeth forIt's August in an even-numbered year. That means only one thing: time to head up the road to Birmingham airport. Not to fly, though. To attend the Discworld convention at one of the airport hotels.You may be wondering why a serious and respectable mathematician is planning to spend four days in the company of 800 committed sci-fi fans, who, when not clad in anoraks, are dressed as wizards, witches, trolls and vampires, attending debates such as "Elves: nasty or nice?" and "The great hedgehog race". The answer is that I enjoy spending time in the company of the highly intelligent devotees of Sir Terry Pratchett's brand of humorous fantasy. Which isn't exactly science fiction (or SF or s-f; only mundanes call it "sci-fi" and if you need to know what a mundane is, then you are one already). The fancy dress is a bit of fun, not a lifestyle; if anyone's wearing an anorak it's likely to be me; and I follow the party line on elves. Two years ago the hedgehog race was absolutely gripping, and I'm hoping it will be even better this year ...I do sometimes stop and ask myself: How did I get into this? Well, 13.4 billion years ago when the big bang was no more than a gleam in God's eye ... No, perhaps that will overrun my word length.It's all Jack Cohen's fault, basically.Jack and I share a love of science fiction, and in 1990 he dragged me along to Novacon, the annual Brum group con – sorry, convention of the Birmingham Science Fiction group. And this chap Terry Pratchett was there: not as a speaker, although by then he was already very famous, but revisiting his roots as a fan. Jack knew Terry – Jack knows everybody – and we were introduced, and had lunch. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:20:02 +0100 865450 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/26/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-review Michael Cera is the star of the graphic novel series in Edgar Wright's witty and stylish big-screen transfer. By Peter BradshawEdgar Wright takes the ache out of "achingly cool" with his entertaining, hyperactive gamer-geek comedy Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, set in freezing cold Toronto and based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Despite riffing on some apparently emotional themes – male romantic status-anxiety is brought interestingly into parallel with Canada's cultural cringe to the United States – Wright insists on nothing more than comedy and the spectacle of pastiche, an entertainment of Seinfeldian inconsequence. The movie has been attacked in some quarters for lack of heart, and for an alleged lack of box office nous in pitching to a demographic that favours illegal downloads over ticket-buying. I can only say that where some see shallowness, I saw a witty interplay of surfaces and style.Our hero is Scott Pilgrim, bassist in the crashingly loud local band Sex Bob-omb and keen player of video games, activities that encompass the sum total of his cultural life. An interest in literature surfaces briefly when he realises that the love of his life has a job making special deliveries for Amazon, and so orders a book – the title of which is irrelevant and unmentioned. Scott is played by Michael Cera, perhaps the most sexually unthreatening male in the history of cinema, with a gentle, moonish face that makes him look like an early-60s Beatle. Scott and his band are not slackers, exactly: Wright shows them industriously rehearsing and worrying about their romantic and musical careers, but they are so utterly unworried about earning a living that they could as well be in college or even high school.Scott has a love life that, though notionally filled with angst, is actually beyond the wildest dreams of most real-life saddos and geeks. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:52:31 +0100 865462 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/08/26/reading-the-screen-christianna-brand/ Nanny McPhee Returns, the sequel to 2005’s Nanny McPhee, is in theaters. Emma Thompson, wearing some truly arresting makeup, stars as a sort of offbeat, uglified, funhouse-mirror-image of Mary Poppins who’s hired to care for a widower’s small army children. You might not know this — it wasn’t widely advertised — but Nanny McPhee was loosely based on a trio of novels written by Christianna Brand: Nurse Matilda (1964), Nurse Matilda Goes to Town (’67), and Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital (’74). Nanny McPhee Returns isn’t connected to Brand’s books, or to the 2005 movie. It’s a sort-of sequel, a movie that carries over a lead character but otherwise starts from scratch. Which is a bit of a shame, since there’s plenty of good material in Brand’s novels. The Nurse Matilda novels are a lot of fun. Brand had, apparently, an exceedingly impish wit, and the stories are full of mischief and magic and misbehavior. Also, to continue the alliteration, marvellously drawn illustrations and some major laughs. The original novels were out of print for years, but they were reissued, individually and as an omnibus edition, to tie in with the ‘05 movie. So they’re pretty easy to find, now. Good thing, too: for younger readers (say, eight to twelve years of age), they’ll be a real treat. And here’s something for the grown-ups: the Inspector Cockrill mysteries, also written by Brand. There are, I think, seven of them, published in the 1940s and ’50s. Several of them were reprinted in the 1980s and ’90s, and you can find them in libraries or used bookstores. The novels are very much in the Agatha Christie vein — a crime, a detective, an assortment of possible culprits — and Cockrill, of Scotland Yard, is a likable, determined detective. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:20:39 +0100 865734 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/oC9jrwEMTx8/ From the Report Summary: Bowker released its much-anticipated 2009 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report today, providing the U.S. book industry with the most complete consumer-based research on who buys books and why. The 2009 Annual Report is culled from more 44,000 total respondents, responsible for the purchase of 118,000 books in 2009. [Clip] This year’s report provides data not available in any other source with a scope that captures the changing nature of retail channels, including the growing presence of such mass merchandisers as Wal-Mart. Further, the report captures the explosion of new electronic formats. Selected Stats from the Summary + More than 40% of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book in 2009 and the average age of the American book buyer is 42. + Women lead men in overall purchases, contributing 64% of sales. Even among detective and thriller genres, women top 60% of the sales. Where do men catch up? Fantasy titles are purchased evenly by men and women. + Baby Boomers spend. The boomer generation is the largest purchasing generation, making up 30% of sales. Their elders – Matures – contribute 16%. + More income doesn’t mean more book purchases. 32% of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $35,000 annual and 20% of those sales were for children’s books. + Americans like people. The biggest selling non-fiction genre is biography – auto and otherwise. Access the Complete Announcement Source: Bowker Via Resource Shelf Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:02:04 +0100 864763 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/25/new-report-from-bowker-highlights-from-consumer-focused-research-report-for-book-industry/ From the Report Summary: Bowker released its much-anticipated 2009 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report today, providing the U.S. book industry with the most complete consumer-based research on who buys books and why. The 2009 Annual Report is culled from more 44,000 total respondents, responsible for the purchase of 118,000 books in 2009. [Clip] This year’s report provides data not available in any other source with a scope that captures the changing nature of retail channels, including the growing presence of such mass merchandisers as Wal-Mart. Further, the report captures the explosion of new electronic formats. Selected Stats from the Summary + More than 40% of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book in 2009 and the average age of the American book buyer is 42. + Women lead men in overall purchases, contributing 64% of sales. Even among detective and thriller genres, women top 60% of the sales. Where do men catch up? Fantasy titles are purchased evenly by men and women. + Baby Boomers spend. The boomer generation is the largest purchasing generation, making up 30% of sales. Their elders – Matures – contribute 16%. + More income doesn’t mean more book purchases. 32% of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $35,000 annual and 20% of those sales were for children’s books. + Americans like people. The biggest selling non-fiction genre is biography – auto and otherwise. Access the Complete Announcement Source: Bowker See Also: On August 5th, We Posted Selected Stats from “Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading” (Bowker/BISG). Access via: Kat Meyer, Sue Polanka, and Paul Biba/TeleRead (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:56:24 +0100 864854 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/25/disappointing-reads/ Some authors produce such reliably good novels that their fans will pick up the books without waiting for reviews.  Usually the new books don’t disappoint.  But even in the case of authors who usually get it right there is an occasional dud.  Two news books: Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott and Every Last One by Anna Quindlen, are both examples of this.  These bestselling authors have written both fiction and nonfiction and are reliably good.  But their latests fall short of the mark.  These two were less than engrossing for different reasons. Imperfect Birds is a sequel to the novel Rosie, published in 1983.  In that book, Rosie was a child whose father has died and whose mother Elizabeth is an alcoholic.   Now Rosie is almost 18, and is a scheming and troubled young woman while her mother, Elizabeth is remarried to James, a writer and commentator.  Rosie is using and abusing multiple drugs: speed, alcohol, cough syrup among them.  Both her mother and stepfather are seemingly ignorant and delusional in their view of Rosie’s behavior and her social interactions.  When Rosie is finally sent into treatment, against her will, their major concern seems to be how much it will cost.  It is difficult to decide which character is the most exasperating, mother or daughter.  Although Elizabeth is an alcoholic, she is sadly clueless to the signs of addiction in her daughter; she also puts up with a lot of verbal abuse from Rosie.  This book might be of interest to readers involved with addiction issues.  It could be a case study for disfunctional and abusive families but it makes for frustrating and depressing reading. Anna Quindlen’s novel was also disappointing, but is is hard to discuss without spoiling the story for her many fans.  Again, I did not find the main character very realistic or likeable. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:40:32 +0100 864811 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/25/jennifer-weiner-jonathan-franzen-overcoverage Chick-lit author weary of 'Franzenfrenzy' looks to promote other authors covering similar themesChick-lit author Jennifer Weiner has launched a campaign against the wall-to-wall coverage Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, is receiving.Last week the bestselling author Jodi Picoult criticised the New York Times for its focus on "white male literary darlings" after it published a rave review of Freedom, out later this month in the US. Franzen has also been the subject of a Time cover story, while Freedom has received a second New York Times review in which it was called "a masterpiece of American fiction". It hit the headlines again this week after Barack Obama was given an early copy of the novel on holiday.Dubbing the pre-publication furore "Franzenfrenzy", Weiner put out a call to her 15,000 Twitter follows "for non-Franzen novels about love, identity, families" (Freedom deals with the breakdown of an American family) under the hashtag #franzenfreude. "Don't dislike him, per se. Disliked his response to being Oprah pick, overcoverage in Times, elsewhere. There are other books," she wrote.Weiner kicked off by picking Anne Tyler's Digging to America, about two Baltimore families who adopt Korean babies, and was soon deluged with recommendations – including one from Picoult herself, who suggested Caroline Leavitt: "anything by her". One reader chose Zoë Heller's The Believers, about the dysfunctional Litvinoff family, another plumped for Sue Miller's While I Was Gone, in which a woman is forced to confront the murder of her best friend 30 years ago, a third pointed readers towards Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, about an Indian boy growing up in America.Other suggestions included The Love Wife by Gish Jen, Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott, Jennifer Haigh's The Condition and Joyce Carol Oates's We Were the Mulvaneys. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:57:01 +0100 865456 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/25/short-story-vladimir-nabokov There's no doubting that he's a master writer – but not of short storiesIn Paris in the late 1930s, Vladimir Nabokov duped a hostile critic, Ales Adamovich, by publishing a poem under the pseudonym Vasiliy Shishkov. Adamovich proclaimed it a masterpiece, then said when the truth came out that Nabokov was "a sufficiently skilful parodist to mimic genius". This judgment, quoted with relish by its subject in a note to a 1975 collection, is both amusing and troubling: Nabokov's stories are built from language that frequently deserves, in my opinion, to be called genius. The stories themselves, however, self-reflexive games which cycle through styles with the restless energy of a child tearing through a dressing-up box, often feel like experiments that, while interesting, are not always successful.This is partly a problem of the thoroughness with which Nabokov's son Dmitri has swept out the archive, jamming bagatelles written for unexacting émigré journals into the gaps between more substantial works. Another reason is that Nabokov perhaps felt little real affinity for the short story, which he called "a small Alpine form" of the novel. This seems an odd claim to make of a writer whose collected stories runs to nearly 800 pages. But the fact remains that he abandoned the form in 1951, even before Lolita's success freed him of the need to write for his rent. He returned to it later only to (as he put it) "English" untranslated stories, and to retranslate ones he thought poorly rendered.During the inter-war years, which he spent in Cambridge, Berlin and finally Paris, Nabokov's short fiction was dominated by meditations on grief (his father was shot in Berlin in 1922), the loss of homeland, and the rise of totalitarianism. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:05:54 +0100 865474 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/25/obama-and-franzen-freedom-novel I've read the eagerly awaited new Jonathan Franzen novel, but so has Obama – and that worries meSeeing as my holiday books this year included Danniella Westbrook's autobiography, The Other Side of Nowhere, and Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley (it's amazing the authorities allowed me to leave the country once the x-ray scanners saw the perverted literary contents of my bag), I am clearly no literary snob. But I have to say, I am concerned about President Obama's holiday reading. As has been widely and, in the case of the publishers, ecstatically reported, Obama has wangled an early copy of Jonathan Franzen's not-yet-published but already hyperbolically reviewed book Freedom. As chance would have it, I too procured a copy of this book, and while Obama and I may have obtained the book through different channels (he got it because he is the president, I got it because I begged), it is pleasing to think of Obama and me, united across the ocean, both reading about the trials of the Berglund family.So yes, I've read the new Franzen. In literary circles this is the equivalent of getting hold of the new YSL coat two months before it arrives in stores, or snaffling the new Radiohead album before they give it away for free. It has been touted as "a masterpiece", "a work of total genius" and got Franzen on the cover of Time. This apparently is a very big deal, even though I have never seen anyone read a copy of that magazine that they didn't get for free in an airport. But because a living author hasn't been on the cover of Time in 10 years, the word "landmark" has been bandied around. I don't think my desk has ever been as popular as it was this week. Truly, having some contraband Franzen in the Guardian office is like bringing pure cocaine powder into a record label company. But I digress.In some ways, it is a very clever choice for this determinedly non-partisan president. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:00:08 +0100 865475 http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2010/08/24/august-24th-stream-2.html Shared 3 photos. tonight Ella got a mani-pedi and an oatmeal bath before her mani-pedi & trim after her mani-pedi & trim great post but not just teens; adults @ work, too RT @zephoria: “Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight” http://bit.ly/bbADzA [shifted] RT @GraphJam: Help Desk: You’re Doing it Wrong — http://dbl.chzb.gr/18HCGs [shifted] Posted msauers: A Fondness for Antiques: The Future of Books According to Science Fiction http://ow.ly/2tXjK #ebooks. Share: No tags for this post. (Source: The Shifted Librarian) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:12 +0100 865908 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/24/book-group-reports-7/ For our August discussion book, the South Madison Branch Library read Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama.  Set in China in the 1920’s and 30’s, it’s a story of girls who go off to work in the silk factories in order to support their families.  The story follows Pei, born to a poor farm family in rural China, who is sent to the factory by her father at age 9.  The book details the silk industry, and more intriguingly, the communities and bonds formed among the women who do the silk work.  In the background of Pei’s story is the growing unrest between Japan and China, culminating in the outbreak of war. Our group was small, but there was a great deal of discussion.  The group unanimously loved the book and several voiced their hope to find out the rest of Pei’s story in Tsukiyama’s sequel, The Language of Threads.  The writing was simple, gentle and quiet yet didn’t always seem to express the depth of the hardships that the women were experiencing.  While most liked the writing – one member loved that it was pragmatic instead of flowery – at times it seemed incongruous with what was going on in the story.  One member noted that we are generally used to more graphic descriptions of violence and suffering in contemporary writing, so the difference was noticeable. Everyone agreed that they genuinely liked and cared about the characters.  They were surprised by the degree of autonomy and independence the women had during this era, and the kindness they were treated to in the girls’ house where the workers lived.  All agreed that although the working conditions were difficult, their treatment at the hands of the house mothers where they lived could have been just as harsh.  All of the readers were thrilled to have read about a world they didn’t know existed.  One member of the group talked about her travels to poorer areas of the world, where she has observed similar bonding and cooperation among groups of women. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:08:08 +0100 864812 http://ppld.org/blogs/ppld/?p=1657 Join Erik Larson, author of All Pikes Peak Reads selection The Devil in the White City, as he discusses his fascinating book, which The New York Times describes as “a dynamic, enveloping book… Relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel … It doesn’t hurt that this truth is stranger than fiction.” Tickets are $30 if purchased before September 17 and $40 after that date. The price includes lunch and a copy of the book. You can purchase your tickets by clicking here. For more information call (719) 531-6333, x1212 or x2205. When: Thursday, October 7 at 11:30 a.m. Where: Cheyenne Mountain Resort, 3225 Broadmoor Valley Rd. (Source: The Blog @ ppld.org) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:58:26 +0100 868003 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrariansMatter/~3/Mm_rXb36YGg/ … you can skip this post if you are here for the library tech. This one fits in the “balancing and being mum” bit of the blog tagline. I’m insanely proud of my family this week. BROADBAND INNOVATION AWARD My husband, Stewart, was instrumental in developing  the software for discerning unusual patterns in video surveillance footage for the Icetana company, which grew out of his research group at Curtin University. Last week the company pitched to over 400+ potential investors, mentors, entrepreneurs and customers at the Tech 23 event in Sydney – and won $25 000 from the New South Wales Government for the “Broadband Innovation Award”. (Of course, I can bring librarianship into this one – check out another one of the finalists – readcloud , which claims to be “the world’s first social ereading software”. It uses the ebook itself as the platform for social discussion about the book’s content. This Australian firm is not to be confused with Copia, which claims to be “the first social eReading experience designed so you can discover, connect and share what’s meaningful” – but they do this by integrating a website and a their own ereading device ) LEGO Then today my Mr12 came second in his school’s Lego club “Science Fiction City” building competition. He instigated the group last year and it has been a source of many, many hours of joy for him and his mates at lunch times. The support teachers are in on the act and buy ridiculously attractive large Lego sets as prizes that whip the kids up into a frenzy of creativity. Mr12 let on that they have a “Greenhill Award” in the club for each term’s competition – for whoever “shows spirit and never gives up”. ... Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:01:24 +0100 866139 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html#6951609704342391082 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/"Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher. That is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number." ~Author UnknowmWhat's that bumper sticker? If you can read this, thank a teacher? It's time to go back to school and we are here to help with required reading and reading just for fun. Check out the latest bestsellers for adults and kids below. FICTION HARDCOVERTHE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson. (Knopf, $27.95.) The third volume of a trilogy about a Swedish hacker and a journalist.Call #: F LARTOUGH CUSTOMER, by Sandra Brown. (Simon & Schuster, $26.99.) A private investigator pursues a deranged killer who is stalking the daughter he never knew.Call #: F BRO (Source: Your Southlake) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868405 http://yourlibrarycsu.blogspot.com/2010/08/need-some-holiday-reading-or-maybe.html Here is a selection of DVDs and fiction books available from the Library:DVDsP.S. I Love You - Hilary Swank, Romantic ComedyGrumpy Old Women: it's just everything - Television ComedyBorat - Sacha Baron Cohen, ComedyRunning With Scissors - Annette Benning, DramaWas it Something I Said? - Billy Connolly, Stand-up ComedyLittle Miss Sunshine - Toni Collette, ComedyCollateral - Tom Cruise, DramaGone Baby Gone - Alan Ladd, DramaBeowulf - Anthony Hopkins, DramaNew Moon - Kristen Stewart, Vampire DramaSweet Home Alabama - Reese Witherspoon, RomanceThe Invasion - Nicole Kidman, Alien DramaThe Bucket List - Jack Nicholson, Comedy-Cancer FilmTransformers - Shia LaBeouf, DramaDoctor Who. Planet of Evil - Television ProgramNorth by Northwest - Cary Grant, Comedy-ThrillerBooks:House Rules - Jodi PicoultJust Take My Heart - Mary Higgins ClarkFriend of the Devil - Peter RobinsonThe Bone Vault - Linda FairsteinThe Constant Gardener - John le CarréRose by any other Name - Maureen McCarthyLife in Seven Mistakes: a novel - Susan JohnsonThe Italian Romance - Joanne CarrollMy Sister’s Keeper - Jodi PicoultThe Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney (Source: Your Library@CSU) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866442 http://kairosnews.org/it039s-literature-jim-but-not-as-we-know   From Vooks to ebooks, from the iPad to the Google settlement, and from print-on-demand to new styles of writing, this article attempts to analyse the effects of the digital revolution on the publishing industry, and to make some educated guesses about how things may develop in the next few years. "An alternative to the Big Publishing model is already with us, and despite the odd viral phenomenon it consists in the main of very large numbers of small-scale products reaching small audiences, rather than small numbers of very high-profile products reaching huge audiences. This alternative model is enabled by digital technology, and it replaces high production values and market-minded editorial controls with the principle that people's desire to publish themselves and to look at each other's efforts is itself a profit motor." To read the whole article, go to http://www.hyperex.co.uk/reviewdigitalpublishing.php or http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=406 . - Edward Picot personal website - http://edwardpicot.com (Source: Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:27:51 +0100 865036 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/23/gen-x-lite/ I found Cecily Von Ziegesar’s new novel Cum Laude nearly as entertaining as her Gossip Girl Series, but I’m not sure who the target audience is.  It’s marketed as a novel for adults, but is written more like a YA novel, with a plot and setting that I can’t imagine would be all that appealing to fans of the CW show or YA readers graduating from the book series looking for something new to read. Set in 1992 at a private college in Maine, it’s more of an homage to the grunge-era.  Will young adult readers who love the stylish Upper East Side New York girls with their society parties and scandals be captivated by the granola-y Dexter College campus and college freshman with their J. Crew sweaters and flannel L.L. Bean dorm sheets?  I don’t know.  Adults who read the GG series and are curious about this foray into adult fiction might be interested, but the writing is just so-so. There is some recreational drug use and sexual activity, but no more than in any GG novel, in my opinion.  I’m thinking the book got marketed as adult fiction because the characters are starting college, but the book does not feel like an adult novel to me.  It feels more like an episode of Felicity, again minus the NYC setting. According to the author bio, Von Ziegesar is forty and attended Colby College in the late 80s/early 90s.  So I guess she is probably marketing the book to me, an adult fan of Gossip Girl who also attended college around that time, loves J. Crew and is looking for something easy and fun to read.  That sounds kind of lame, though, doesn’t it?  So, I will end this review encouraging everyone to read Cum Laude!  It’s full of sex and drugs and Pearl Jam! (Source: MADreads) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:59:00 +0100 864813 http://www.lisnews.org/texas_teen_lit_festival_will_be_minus_several_authors UPDATE According to the Houston Observer, the scheduled festival has BEEN CANCELLED in its entirely, due to the number of participants who have chosen not to attend. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Teen Lit Fest in Humble is a huge deal for renowned writers of young adult fiction and the kids they're writing for. Which is why it's a huge deal that half of the authors have dropped out of the January 2011 festival. It all started when an Humble ISD librarian complained to some influential parents about New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins, who was scheduled to appear at the festival. (Hopkins writes about cheery subjects like drug addiction, suicide, and religious intolerance.) Houston Press reports. Those parents then allegedly bent the ear of Superintendent Guy Sconzo, who ordered another librarian to uninvite Hopkins -- even though she had already appeared at two of the festivals Humble-area high schools, without causing any of the teenagers to slit their wrists, become pregnant, or turn to prostitution to subsidize chronic substance-abuse problems. When fellow writer and invitee Pete Hautman heard about it, he decided to drop out of the festival, and, according to his blog three more writers have dropped out -- Melissa de la Cruz, Tara Lynn Childs and Matt de la Pena. More on this story from Galley Cat and entries from author Ellen Hopkins Live Journal. The Lit Festival's Facebook page appears to have been pulled. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:12:44 +0100 865590 http://lisnews.org/texas_teen_lit_festival_will_be_minus_several_authors UPDATE According to the Houston Observer, the scheduled festival has BEEN CANCELLED in its entirely, due to the number of participants who have chosen not to attend. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Teen Lit Fest in Humble is a huge deal for renowned writers of young adult fiction and the kids they're writing for. Which is why it's a huge deal that half of the authors have dropped out of the January 2011 festival. It all started when an Humble ISD librarian complained to some influential parents about New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins, who was scheduled to appear at the festival. (Hopkins writes about cheery subjects like drug addiction, suicide, and religious intolerance.) Houston Press reports. Those parents then allegedly bent the ear of Superintendent Guy Sconzo, who ordered another librarian to uninvite Hopkins -- even though she had already appeared at two of the festivals Humble-area high schools, without causing any of the teenagers to slit their wrists, become pregnant, or turn to prostitution to subsidize chronic substance-abuse problems. When fellow writer and invitee Pete Hautman heard about it, he decided to drop out of the festival, and, according to his blog three more writers have dropped out -- Melissa de la Cruz, Tara Lynn Childs and Matt de la Pena. More on this story from Galley Cat and entries from author Ellen Hopkins Live Journal. The Lit Festival's Facebook page appears to have been pulled. (Source: LISNews.org) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:12:44 +0100 865307 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/aug/19/sarah-waters-guardian-book-club This month's Guardian book club takes Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger as its subject. Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker prize and described by Hilary Mantel in her review for the Guardian as "gripping, confident, unnerving and supremely entertaining", it is a ghost story set in the 1940s in the gently crumbling Hundreds Hall. It tells the story of the Hall's inhabitants through the eyes of the narrator, stolid, socially clumsy Dr Faraday, who is forced alongside them to the confront the possibility that the Hall is inhabited by a malign and violent presence. Listen to Professor John Mullan asking Waters about the genesis of her novel - and what really happens at the end of it. John Mullan (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:42:30 +0100 865453 http://memphisreads.blogspot.com/2010/08/book-review-84-charing-cross-road-by.html Beth reviews 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD by Helene Hanff (Moyer Bell Limited, 1970).I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I’m not much for non-fiction. It just doesn’t draw me in the way fiction does—maybe because it is so close to life? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I fell in love with this non-fiction book when a customer called for it. After placing myself on the waiting list, I was thrilled to read it cover to cover!84, Charing Cross Road is a collection of letters written between Helene Hanff and the staff at Marks & Company of London in the early 1950s through the end of the 60s. Thanks to these letters, we are able to see friendships and compassion form for those who never meet face-to-face.Helene contacts the shop to fulfill her need for “good, clean copies” of books at a reasonable rate. Her letters, often sarcastic and witty, are at odds with the serious and proper English gentleman’s replies. Over the years she continues to purchase books by mail, but also sends gifts of food during the rationing in England after WWII. A friendship that spans decades ensues—covering children growing up, getting married, and friends passing away. Although Helene grows and changes throughout the years, she always has 84, Charing Cross Road.Beth, Highland Branch (Source: Memphis Reads) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867969 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/08/21/reading-the-screen-the-day-of-the-jackal/ I know how busy you are, so I bit the bullet and watched The Jackal, the 1997 movie based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1973 novel The Day of the Jackal. Now you don’t have to. The Day of the Jackal is an excellent thriller. The story, set in 1963, revolves around an assassin’s scheme to murder the President of France; as the killer makes his preparations, Commissaire Claude Lebel, “the best detective in France,” pieces together the clues to his identity. Forsyth, a former political journalist, wrote the book in a documentary style, as though he were reporting events that had actually taken place.   The first movie based on the book, of course, was Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 classic The Day of the Jackal. Zinnemann understands the book. He shoots the movie as though he were shooting a documentary: there’s very little camera movement, except when it’s necessary to keep the actors in the frame, and in many key exterior scenes the action is occasionally obscured by people or objects getting between the camera and the action (actors move through crowds as though they’re unaware somebody’s filming them). The performances of Edward Fox (as the Jackal) and Michel Lonsdale (as Lebel) are subtle and compelling — if you didn’t know they were actors, you’d swear they were real people, secretly being filmed. The movie has almost no music: this is reality we’re watching, and reality doesn’t have a musical soundtrack. On the other hand, here’s Michael Caton-Jones’s The Jackal, in which the Deputy Director of the FBI teams up with a convicted IRA gunman to track down an assassion who’s been hired by an Azerbaijani mobster to rub out an unnamed target. The movie is loud, brutish, and preposterous. The direction by Michael Caton-Jones is highly intrusive: lots of camera movement, lots of angles. ... Sat, 21 Aug 2010 09:31:49 +0100 865735 http://bentleywg.livejournal.com/1330789.html Classic science fiction theme tunes sound even spacier slowed down. http://io9.com/5616392/classic-science-fiction-theme-tunes-sound-even-spacier-slowed-down B5, DW, BtVS, Knight Rider, Airwolf, Spiderman, ST-TOS, BG, Inspector Gadget, ... (Source: Google Blog Search: Bentleyblog blogurl:http://bentleywg.livejournal.com/) Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:01:58 +0100 867237 http://bentleywg.livejournal.com/1330789.html Classic science fiction theme tunes sound even spacier slowed down.http://io9.com/5616392/classic-science-fiction-theme-tunes-sound-even-spacier-slowed-downB5, DW, BtVS, Knight Rider, Airwolf, Spiderman, ST-TOS, BG, Inspector Gadget, SW, Terminator.via joshuamneff (Source: BentleyBlog) Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:01:58 +0100 865768 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/19/the-plays-the-thing/ Don’t let the beginning of the book scare you away; think of the disorienting first chapters of Eleanor Catton’s precocious debut The Rehearsal as your warm-up, a rehearsal of the techniques you’ll be using as you read this innovative, challenging but totally worth it novel.  After reading the first few pages I wasn’t sure I’d keep going.  The book is completely over the top: the dialogue consists mostly of long, melodramatic paragraphs bordering on monologues that drip with pretension, while the postmodern structure seems deliberately confusing.  However, I kept plugging along, because the sheer novelty of the book kept me interested, and after a few more pages, I was completely hooked.  The Rehearsal tells a familiar story in an utterly new way, and it’s one of the most brilliant, wickedly funny books I’ve read in ages. The central event in the novel is the discovery of an affair between a teacher and a student.  Mr. Saladin, a young teacher at a private school for girls, has been having a relationship with Victoria, a saxophone player in his jazz band.  Predictably, the school is in an uproar, and Victoria’s family will never be the same.  Her younger sister, Isolde, feels betrayed and oddly distant from her sister, who has an entire life she never knew about.  At the same time, Stanley, a recently admitted student at a prestigious acting school referred to simply as the Institute, becomes enmeshed in the situation from afar, as he and his classmates use this local scandal as fodder for an experimental performance.  When the two sides of the story inevitably come together, both Isolde’s and Stanley’s lives become even more complicated. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:34:47 +0100 864815 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/newpages-updates.html Newly added to the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines:Willows Wept Review - poetry, fiction, nonfictionStorychord – fiction, artwork, musicDevil's Lake - poetry, fiction, nonfiction, reviews, interviewsRick Magazine - poetry, fictionAnamesa - poetry, fiction, essays, translations, visual artAbraxas - poetry, translation, essays, criticism, reviewsPear Noir! - poetry, fiction, nonfictionWild (Source: NewPages Blog) Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866567 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/17/what-drives-a-killer/ Pinkie has problems.  He has just murdered the newspaper reporter responsible for the death of Kite, the gang leader Pinkie always admired.  But the murder didn’t go smoothly, and now Pinkie is faced with the prospect of tying up the loose ends in order to escape the gallows.  The coolly methodical pursuit of that goal is at the heart of Graham Greene’s 1938 character study Brighton Rock. A few things to be clear on: Brighton Rock is not for anyone looking for a commendable character, nor does it provide a sunny portrait of England in waning days of the 1930s.  Nothing like the charming sociopath like Highsmith’s Ripley, Pinkie is marked by a cold detachment that goes straight to his core.  In his efforts to cover his tracks, Pinkie becomes entangled with Rose, a young waitress who witnesses one of Pinkie’s associates masquerading as Hale, the murder victim.  Repulsed by women and the thought of sex, Pinkie nonetheless faces the prospect of marrying Rose to keep her from having to testify against him.  But he is continually dogged by one of the odder gumshoes in fiction, Ida Arnold.  In spite of knowing Hale for only a few hours before his death, Ida knows that the inquest surrounding the death is a farce, and sets out to find the truth herself.  A woman of worldly sense and easy living, she realizes that saving Rose is the key to learning the truth about Pinkie’s plans. Greene planned to adapt Brighton Rock into a film, and the story is marked by the sort of quick scene changes and terse dialogue of 1930s cinema.  More than anything, however, Brighton Rock marks Greene’s first real foray into his so-called Catholic fiction.  Despite their belief in possible salvation, both Rose and Pinkie seem resigned to eternal damnation for a taste of happiness (for Rose, love; Pinkie, power) in this world. ... Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:08:59 +0100 864817 http://memphisreads.blogspot.com/2010/08/news-and-notes-august-17-2010.html Author W. Ralph Eubanks talks to npr.org about his childhood memories of the local library bookmobile. Eubanks explains how bookmobile visits sparked his love for reading and inspired him to become a writer. Read the article.Janet Evanovich is the author of sixteen novels featuring New Jersey's feisty bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. Evanovich is now joining the club of contemporary novelists with books adapted into feature films. One for the Money, which is based on the identically-titled first novel of the Stephanie Plum series, is currently in production. You can view the movie cast here. Does the cast fit the characters as you envisoned them?Mystery fiction fans have probably read their share of books that portray murder clubs. In this article from usatoday.com, author Michael Capuzzo talks about his new book, The Murder Room, which profiles the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group. Read the article. The 2010 winners of the American Book Awards have been announced. The winners are Dave Eggers for his memoir, Zeitoun, and Amiri Baraka for Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music. Read the article. (Source: Memphis Reads) Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867971 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/08/16/reading-the-screen-the-forever-war/ You might have heard that Ridley Scott is getting together with his Blade Runner writer, David Peoples, to make a movie out of Joe Haldeman’s 1974 science fiction novel The Forever War. Scott is the right guy for the movie, I think. The kind of realism he brought to Blade Runner and Alien — scarred and battered technology, clothing that doesn’t look like costumes, a real-world environment — will be essential to The Forever War. In case you’re not familiar with it, Haldeman’s novel tells the story of William Mandella, who’s drafted into the army to fight in an interstellar war. Similarities to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers are not entirely coincidental — it’s hard to write a science-fiction war novel without covering some of the same ground — but the niftiest part of Haldeman’s book is the time-travel element. Ridley Scott is a talented director, and he’s said that he’s wanted to make a movie out of the book for 25 years. But he doesn’t have an easy job here. You see, this is an interstellar war: ships travel vast distances at mind-bendingly high speeds, which means (relatively speaking) that time is passing at an accelerated rate back home. The book covers about four years of Mandella’s life, and about 1200 years of human history.  I’m curious how Scott is going to handle the time-travel element. I’m sure he’s clever enough to have realized that you can’t just have your characters say: Hey, look, we’ve been traveling for a few months, but we’ve gone decades into the future. You have to show it somehow. ... Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:50:53 +0100 865740 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/14/with-baited-breath/ …we wait.  We wait for those books by our favorite authors and in our favorite series.  Suzanne Collins final book in her Hunger Games trilogy Mockingjay, which will be released on August 24th, already has 767 holds on it.  Kathy Reichs’ Spider Bones due out the same week has 176 people on the waiting list while Lee Child’s Worth Dying For is at 123.  The book that starts a new series by Janet Evanovich, Wicked Appetite has almost 300 people waiting and the sixth and final book! in Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series has been announced for April 2011 (you’ll really have to wait for this one, it’s so new that it’s not even in the catalog yet).  How do you keep up?  How can you know what’s coming out? The library has a few options for you.  You can read and/or receive email lists that update you on forthcoming books in a wide variety of subjects - from Books for 4-year-olds to Science and Nature and a whole bunch in between.  You can take a look at the Don’t Miss Lists that are updated monthly from our library catalog and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for book and other news about the library. Some places to go when you’ve combed through the library lists: For extensive mystery lists, take a look at the Bloodstained Bookshelf.  BB is updated monthly and has lists of forthcoming titles up to April of 2011. If you like romance the All About Romance gang has new reviews, reviews in the works and the books they’re looking forward to for the next month. SF Site covers the science fiction and fantasy genres in depth and includes listings for New Arrivals each month. When it comes to big book buzz about new and forthcoming lit fic, kid’s fic, and nonfiction check out EarlyWord.  They keep track of all the books that are being mentioned on tv, made into movies, getting lots of positive reviews, etc. ... Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:35:02 +0100 864818 http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/body-in-the-library/ Last term the Library Team at Joeys excelled themselves in launching an amazing “Body in the Library” investigative program in collaboration with the Science and English faculties. I promised to share this after talking about it at EduBloggerCon 2010 in Denver.  So here are some more of the details! Boy’s body found in the Resource Centre! Year 8 suspected! The focus of the project was to facilitate deeper learning in our students by creating an ‘authentic learning’ experience to strengthen writing and literacy skills across the curriculum. In English, students learned about the literary conventions of forensic fiction in their crime novel, Framed,  and how to use them to solve a crime.  In Science, students learned about how use a variety of scientific methods including analysing dental records, fragments and fibres, fingerprinting, shoeprinting and DNA samples in order to solve a crime. These skills were then put to the test when boys were asked to solve a ‘body in the library’ type crime which the library team spent weeks preparing! To solve the crime, students viewed the crime scene, looked at photographic evidence, read various ‘official’ forensic and crime  reports, watched video-taped evidence of the crime in action; watched interviews of the suspects; read  testimonies of different suspects; and analysed many forms of written and physical evidence!  Students employed deductive thinking skills, analysed all available evidence and established motives for the suspects in an attempt to determine who committed the crime. Lastly, each student submitted their own police report on the crime and its investigation. This collaborative activity raised an astounding level of interest from all 150 boys – as well as raising a lot of  interest from boys from many other years. Here’s  a brief overview of the scenario:: A body is found in the library at the end of Period 4 on Tuesday. ... Sat, 14 Aug 2010 11:49:07 +0100 867385 http://vvmsmedia.edublogs.org/2010/08/13/the-evolution-of-calpurnia-tate-by-jacqueline-kelly/ Title: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Author: Jacqueline Kelly Pages: 338 Lexile: 830 Characters: Calpurnia (Callie)- is the only girl in a family of seven brothers. She is interested in science instead of cooking and sewing. Grandfather- is interested in science and experiments.  He helps Calpurnia and enhances her understanding of the living world. Family- Callie’s brothers and parents, especially mother, also play a  role in the novel. Story- Callie is interested in the outdoors and living creatures.  Her oldest brother gives her a notebook to write down her observations, and she does this regularly.  She collects scientific specimens and shares them the her grandfather.  They learn together and build a wonderful relationship in the process. Problem: The novel takes place in 1899 when girls were supposed to stay inside learning to cook and sew in order to be a good wife in the future.  Callie is not interested in these things.  She is more interested in hanging out with her grandfather and learning about science.  This irritates her mother.  Her brothers are typical brothers sometimes helping and sometimes hindering. My Review- I typically do not believe there are boy books and girl books.  This may be more of a girl book in the fact that it shows the difficulties for girls to have numerous experiences in 1899.  Girls who appreciate science and intelligence will love Callie and the relationship she forms with her grandfather.  In historical fiction form, the reader will also learn about life in 1899 from photography to telephones. addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fvvmsmedia.edublogs.org%2F2010%2F08%2F13%2Fthe-evolution-of-calpurnia-tate-by-jacqueline-kelly%2F'; addthis_title = 'The+Evolution+of+Calpurnia+Tate+by+Jacqueline+Kelly'; addthis_pub = ''; (Source: VVMBookBlog) Sat, 14 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865208 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/icZfrW2iPuc/facts-about-our-network-neutrality.html Cross-posted on our Public Policy Blog. Over the past few days there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively. We don’t expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction. MYTH: Google has “sold out” on network neutrality. FACT: Google has been the leading corporate voice on the issue of network neutrality over the past five years. No other company is working as tirelessly for an open Internet. But given political realities, this particular issue has been intractable in Washington for several years now. At this time there are no enforceable protections – at the Federal Communications Commission or anywhere else – against even the worst forms of carrier discrimination against Internet traffic. With that in mind, we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together. We’re not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all. MYTH: This proposal represents a step backwards for the open Internet. FACT: If adopted, this proposal would for the first time give the FCC the ability to preserve the open Internet through enforceable rules on broadband providers. At the same time, the FCC would be prohibited from imposing regulations on the Internet itself. ... Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866226 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/08/11/reading-the-screen-ken-bruens-london-boulevard/ William Monahan, writer of such films as The Departed and Body of Lies, has written and directed London Boulevard, based on Ken Bruen’s 2001 novel of the same name. In the book, a clever riff on the classic movie Sunset Boulevard, Mitchell, an ex-con recently sprung from prison, gets entangled with an aging actress and is forced to confront the fact that it ain’t easy to bury your own violent past. Colin Farrell plays Mitchell in the movie, which sounds about right. I’m not so sure about the decision to cast Keira Knightley to play the actress. She’s called Charlotte in the movie, but that’s a minor change compared to the big one: cutting her age from an “expensive sixty” to Knightley’s mid-twenties. Even if she’s playing older than her actual age, you’re still looking at a character in her early thirties, which seriously changes the dynamic Bruen has going in the book. Here’s another thing that concerns me. Monahan is a fine writer — his screenplay for The Departed won an Oscar, and rightly so — but I wonder whether he can replicate the minimalistic feel of Bruen’s novel. Bruen writes like he’s been given an allowance: so many words, and that’s all he can use. Bare-bones descriptive passages, a multitude of one-sentence paragraphs, dialogue so noir you can barely see it. The book feels like a black-and-white movie made, say, sixty years ago. The novel is narrated in the first person, too, and Bruen gives us quite a bit of this sort of thing: Three years in prison, you lose      time      compassion      and the ability to be surprised. I think that’s brilliant, a real window into Mitchell’s mind, and I’m curious how Monahan intends to deal with Bruen’s unique prose style. The movie comes out in October. (Source: Likely Stories) Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:22:54 +0100 865742 http://ndlnews.blogspot.com/2010/08/astronauts-met-robonaut-at-nasas.html Getting into space isn't necessarily easy for astronauts, and it's not much easier for a robotic astronaut, either.Cocooned inside an aluminum frame and foam blocks cut out to its shape, Robonaut 2, or R2, is heading to the International Space Station inside the Permanent Multipurpose Module in space shuttle Discovery's payload bay as part of the STS-133 mission.Once in place inside the station, R2, with its humanlike hands and arms and stereo vision, is expected to perform some of the repetitive or more mundane functions inside the orbiting laboratory to free astronauts for more complicated tasks and experiments. It could one day also go along on spacewalks.Making sure the first humanoid robot to head into space still works when it gets there has been the focus of workers at NASA's Kennedy and Johnson space centers. Engineers and technicians with decades of experience among them packing for space have spent the last few months devising a plan to secure the 330-pound machine against the fierce vibrations and intense gravity forces during launch."I think back in May we realized we had a huge challenge on our hands," said Michael Haddock, a mechanical engineer designing the procedures and other aspects of preparing R2 for launch, including careful crane operations inside the Space Station Processing Facility's high bay.Though it was fast-paced, intense work, the payoff of getting to help R2 into space added extra motivation for the engineers involved.By spaceflight standards, planning for the packing effort moved quite quickly, particularly considering R2 is perhaps the heaviest payload to be taken into space inside a cargo module."The mass is what's driving the crane operations, otherwise we'd be handling the robot by hand," Haddock said. "But the robot itself weighs on the order of 333 pounds and when it is installed in the structural launch enclosure, it will weigh over 500 pounds. ... Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868058 http://memphisreads.blogspot.com/2010/08/book-review-ice-cold-by-tess-gerritsen.html Fiction/Suspense Beth reviews ICE COLD: A RIZZOLI & ISLES NOVEL by Tess Gerritsen (Ballantine, 2010).I truly enjoy a good mystery and this one was a shocker at the end! Even with me listening to Tess Gerritsen's “warning” on WYPL’s BookTalk that the end was not what I expected, I was still clueless!For those not familiar with Rizzoli & Isles here is a brief description:Rizzoli: Boston Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli, mother to an infant and wife of FBI agent Gabriel Dean.Isles: Forty-two year old Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles who is in a forbidden relationship with Priest Daniel Brophy.Isles heads to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a forensic conference and runs into an old college friend who invites her to join him, his daughter, and friends on a weekend ski outing before they all fly home. Isles, upset with Daniel, accepts and so begins a weekend she’ll never forget.When their SUV stalls out on a snow-covered road in the mountains, they seek shelter in the only available place--Kingdom Come. Twelve identical houses with no electricity, running water, or “comforts of home,” but all stocked with provisions for the winter, sit empty. But, things are not right—pets are found dead, meals sit ready to eat on tables, and cars are parked in garages. Where are the people who lived here? Why do Maura and her friends feel watched?The local police find a charred SUV in a ravine with bodies inside. An identification of one of the bodies is made—Maura Isles is dead. Jane, Maura’s friend, and Daniel, Maura’s lover, seek answers in Wyoming…if only there were easy answers. The investigation delves into the community of Kingdom Come, its leader and followers, and the towns around it. What secrets lie in the snow? What was Maura’s fate?This book fills you with dread as you read, continually knowing that something is not right. ... Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867972 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lansinglibraryteen/podcast/~3/-BsW7yomcsc/and-survivors-are.html You read and voted all summer long and now there are only three books remaining in the Book Survivor Program. If you haven't read these three books yet, be sure to pick them up. You and your fellow teens voted them the most popular books of the summer!#1 - Airhead by Meg CabotSixteen-year-old Emerson Watts, an advanced placement student with a disdain for fashion, is the recipient of a "whole body transplant" and finds herself transformed into one of the world's most famous teen supermodels.#2 - Hidden Talents by David LubarWhen thirteen-year-old Martin arrives at an alternative school for misfits and problem students, he falls in with a group of boys with psychic powers and discovers something surprising about himself.#3 - The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny HanBelly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are different as she finds herself falling for a boy she has known since childhood. (Source: Lansing Library Teen Dept. Podcast) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:28:41 +0100 867826 http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-librarians-who-may-or-not-read-and.html This post is sort of a response to the post by Liz B. from A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Cozy entitled "Readers' Advisory?"  The post made me think again of a few things I have been pondering lately about RA and librarians who may or not read.  * * * *When it comes to reading and readers' advisory work, there are two things that can make me cringe.One is the tendency of a lot of librarians in academia to not read or denigrate those who do. I have been in enough job interviews, on both sides of the table, to see this consistent reaction. It usually goes something like this: a candidate expresses that a reason she went into librarianship is because she likes to read. Those interviewing see the answer as less than substantial. I will grant that, unlike public librarians, academics tend to seek more specific traits in academic librarian candidates (collegiality, specific subject area knowledge for liaison work, teaching ability, ability and/or desire to publish, especially applicable to tenure lines), but somehow, to me at least, looking down on someone because they like to read is not right. The response I usually hear is that anyone saying they like to read is like someone saying they like puppies. I mean, you can't be against puppies, so same idea. The enjoyment of reading is either seen as a simplistic answer or as a stock answer, i.e. the answer you give when you don't have anything more original or substantial to say. I have found that you get a more positive experience if you get a candidate talking about some of the things they like to read, even if you do it during a lunch break or other more informal moment during the interview process (a note for any non-academic readers: interview process for an academic librarian, much like for faculty, can be an all day affair. Having a meal at some point is very common and  often used as an informal way to measure a candidate and viceversa). ... Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:21:00 +0100 866513 http://vvmsmedia.edublogs.org/2010/08/08/one-crazy-summer-by-rita-williams-garcia/ Title:  One Crazy Summer Author: Rita Williams-Garcia Pages:  216 Lexile: 750 Characters: Delphine- is 11 years old and the oldest of three girls. Vonetta and Fern- are her younger sisters. Their father and Big Ma (grandmother)- They live with Big Ma and their father since their mother left them when they were little (Fern was a baby). Story: The girls are put on an airplane in the 1960s to fly from New York to California to meet and spend time with their mom who left when they were small.  This is more their father’s idea than Big Ma’s idea.  Big Ma always says that their mom is a crazy person who lives on the streets.  When they arrive their mother, Cecile, is not welcoming.  In fact she sends them out of the house to get breakfast and lunch down the street at The People’s Center. Problem: When they arrive Cecile makes it clear that she did not send for them.  She is not what they expect of their mom.  Instead of taking care of them, Delphine basically is in charge.  Cecile will not let them in her kitchen not even for a glass of water.  It turns out the girls are responsible for their own meals.  The People’s Center is a center that promotes the Black Panther movement.  They learn about the movement and some of the problems faced in the community while visiting daily.  Sometimes this scares Delphine.  She doesn’t want her sisters to get shot, but it is the only place for them to go.  They need to be their for 28 days, and Delphine is going to protect her sisters. Important to Know: The Black Panther Movement originated in the 60s.  They were an organization trying to help people who were oppressed.  During the time of this novel, the person (Huey Newton) who founded the Black Panthers was put in jail.  “Black Power” was their saying although they were trying to improve the lives of other minority groups. ... Sun, 08 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865210 http://vvmsmedia.edublogs.org/2010/08/07/the-water-seeker-by-kimberly-willis-holt/ Title: The Water Seeker Author:  Kimberly Willis Holt Pages: 305 Lexile: None yet Characters: Amos – story follows him from birth to age 25, born with his father’s gift as a dowser but doesn’t tell anyone, his mother died at his birth, moved from home to home when other people in his life die, afraid to get close to people fearing he will lose them Jake – Father of Amos, believes his dowsing gift is a curse, earns money as a trapper so is away from home much of the year, then takes his family–Amos & Blue Owl–out west when he works as a scout for a wagon train on the Oregon Trail Blue Owl – Native American common law wife of Jake, patiently goes along with Jake on his journeys when she really just wants to settle in a house, tries to take care of Amos as if she were his mother Many other characters, each with interesting facets to who they are and their influence on Amos Story:  Follows Amos through his life from his birth that killed his mother, Delilah, to his journey on a wagon train with his father across the west on the Oregon Trail with people who have become his family through the years. Problem:  The author uses instances of magical realism to show that Amos is protected by the spirit of his red-haired mother, and female characters close to Amos are aware of her spirit.  The main other problems are the difficulties of life on the prairie in the mid-1850’s–disease, death, and geographic obstacles of getting pioneers out to Oregon Territory. My Review:  I wondered how the author could make a historical fiction book featuring dowsing into something interesting, but Ms. Holt, in her usual quirky way, did it. This was another book I couldn’t just skim because of how the author laid out her story and the key pieces of information in it. ... Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865212 http://vvmsmedia.edublogs.org/2010/08/07/salt-by-maurice-gee/ Title: Salt Author: Maurice Gee Pages: 252 Lexile: 700 Characters: Tarl- was captured by the “Company” to work in Deep Salt Mine a place from which no one has returned. Hari- is Tarl’s son.  He has the ability to talk with animals and is trying to save his father. Pearl- is a girl from the “Companny”.  She has lived a very sheltered life. Tea Leaf- has the ability to communicate with others, including animals, without speaking.  She is Pearl’s maid. Story: Pearl is supposed to be married through an arranged marriage, so Tea Leaf and her run away.  At the same time Hari is also running trying to save his father.  The three meet while on the run.  This is complicated because Pearl’s family (people) is basically responsible for taking Hari’s father and forcing him to work in Deep Salt Mine. Problem: Pearl and Tea Leaf come across Hari as he is killing Pearl’s brother.  This complicates the situation because although Pearl loves her brother, she is also running away from him and her family.  The three, Pearl, Tea Leaf, and Hari must work together and learn from each other, but they do not trust, or even like, each other. Important to Know:  Salt is the first book of a trilogy.  It is also a dystopian fiction book.  Dystopian novels are somewhat science fiction and often show world of darkness.  They deal with a world where one group is held back and or controlled while another flourishes.  Hunger Games is considered a dystopian novel. My Review: Although there is a lot of darkness in this novel, there are also many twists and turns.  It is different than most books I’ve read.  The characters are interesting and challenging.  I like that it’s a trilogy, so students that like this book have two more to read.  Some will read this as an exciting novel while others will notice some of the racism and class issues it contains. ... Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865211 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/06/howard-jacobson-book-club Howard Jacobson will be in conversation with John Mullan at the University of Manchester on 20 SeptemberDate: Monday 20 SeptemberTime: 6.30pmVenue: The Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, The Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, The University of ManchesterTickets: £7/£5Howard Jacobson will discuss his ninth novel, Kalooki Nights. Max Glickman is a Jewish cartoonist, born and raised in postwar Crumpsall Park, Manchester. His father is a boxing enthusiast and his mother hosts glamorous, if rowdy, games of kalooki (a card game similar to rummy "much favoured by Jews (though not all Jews would agree) on account of its innate argumentativeness"). As a child he is fixated on the Holocaust and 20th century Jewish history, but as an adult he moves away, and marries out of his religion. Following a reunion with childhood friend Manny, just released from jail having served a long sentence for gassing his Orthodox parents, he is drawn back into the world he thought he had left behind. A dark, uproarious and funny meditation on identity and belonging. To book tickets click hereBox office: 0843 208 0500Howard JacobsonFictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:00:00 +0100 864497 http://memphisreads.blogspot.com/2010/08/news-and-notes-2010-rita-awards.html Romance Writers of America have announced the 2010 winners of the RITA Awards.A description of the award from the website:"The purpose of the RITA® contest is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas.The award itself is a golden statuette named after RWA's first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and has become the symbol for excellence in published romance fiction."Click here to view all award recipients, including the winners of the Golden Heart, awarded to the best romance manuscripts.A few of the winners are listed below.Click on the titles to find available copies in the catalog.The Inheritance by Tamera AlexanderWinner for Best Inspirational RomanceNot Quite a Husband by Sherry ThomasWinner for Best Historical RomanceWhat Happens in London by Julia QuinnWinner for Best Regency Historical RomanceKiss of a Demon King by Kresley ColeWinner for Best Paranormal RomanceOne Scream Away by Kate BradyWinner for Best First Book (Source: Memphis Reads) Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867976 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=41&BlogPostID=7338 Sixth grader Mary Claire O'Brien wants to one day become Mother Superior and writes a letter to the local mother superior to explain why. In the sometimes humorous correspondence that develops between the two, she not only wonders about the requirements to become a nun (before she starts liking boys too much), but also about the rapidly changing Catholic church in 1967. As Mary Claire attempts to improve her behavior (she's hoping to also become a saint) she becomes aware of exactly how many times she sins everyday by the weight of pebbles she keeps in her pockets. This could be a problem in her future career, not to mention that she's not sure she could give the vow of obedience. In addition to her saint training, there are other things happening around her that she doesn't understand. For example, two of her brothers are at odds with their father, one because he's not out of high school and wants to enlist in the army to fight in the Vietnam war, and the other because he's trying to receive the conscientious objector status so he won't be drafted and have to fight in that war. As well, the recent riots in Milwaukee concerning unfair housing and segregated public schools force a statement from the local priest Father Gropi concerning his views on civil rights. But her mother's decision to find a job outside the house as the woman's movement takes hold might be the issue with which Mary Claire must grapple the most. How will she handle the ridicule from her friends and their parents, with whom she is already having a shaky relationship? The tumultuous setting forces Mary Claire to learn about herself and to consider her future in a way that might not have been possible prior to the combination of these events. ... Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:02 +0100 864603 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=41&BlogPostID=7364 Blake, 15, loves photography, his girlfriend Shannon, and in a different way, he loves his friend Marissa. Shannon is his first romantic relationship, and Blake can hardly believe that this delicious girl wants to date him. Marissa is his photography buddy, but up until Blake takes a picture of a sleeping homeless woman, he doesn’t know much about Marissa’s personal life. The picture shows Marissa’s meth-addicted mother, and plunges him into her sobering family situation. Blake wants to help Marissa, but keeping Shannon, too, proves difficult. Blake’s life is backlit by his home life, with kind and wise parents who “deal in death”—his mother is a hospital chaplain, his father a medical examiner—and an older brother who consistently gives him a hard time. Effortlessly, Madigan balances the serious subject matter with quirky humor. She’s a skillful writer, good at creating believable teens and teen circumstances, but avoids stereotypes.  It’s sadly rare to see good parents in current young adult fiction, so it’s refreshing that Blake’s mother and father exhibit good parenting skills, as well as being rounded, slightly odd characters.  Some mild sexual content and language. This book won the 2010 William C. Morris Debut Award for a first time author writing for teens. Ages 13 and up. (Source: Teen Scene from Wright Memorial Public Library) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:02 +0100 864601 http://lisnews.org/help_nancy_pearl_name_new_genre Nancy Pearl requests her listeners assistance on her most recent edition of NPR Pearl's Picks "Under the Radar"... "I only recently realized that many of the works of fiction that I most enjoy are those that push genre boundaries. I especially like fiction that is mostly realistic, but every once in a while zigs confidently into fantasy. We tend to call such works "magical realism" when they're written by South American or Indian or Latin American writers — think Jorge Luis Borges' short stories, Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, or Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. But in fact, these great works are being written by authors of all countries. Since the books themselves can be mainstream fiction, mysteries, Westerns or fantasy (or any mixture thereof), I'd love to come up with a one- or two- or possibly three-word label for such works that captures their essence (something other than "unclassifiable"), but so far I've drawn a blank. Anyone care to help? Have at it — I'll give you some examples of books that fit what I have in mind — Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, Under Heaven or The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke — and you find the best descriptor. Okay? You can send me your suggestions at nancy@nancypearl.com." (Source: LISNews.org) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:15:44 +0100 864641 http://sciref.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/hathitrustdigitallibrary/ http://catalog.hathitrust.org HathiTrust Digital Library is a consortium of universities that have released a shared digitized collection of books. The catalog allows a search of the synopsis or full text of books. A look into the public collections is also allowed.  Both fiction and non-fiction books are included. (Source: Business & Sciences Rolodex) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:11:50 +0100 864604 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/04/established-authors-and-the-self-publishing-backlist-an-interview-with-patricia-ryan-part-1/ Cory Doctorow and Joe Konrath are not the only e-pushing authors with already-planted stakes in the dead tree world! A growing cohort of Smashwords authors established writers who have regained rights to some or all of their backlist titles and have chosen to e-issue it themselves. A recent encounter I had with Patricia Ryan, who is one of them, first alerted me to this growing trend. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 1: AS A MATCHMAKER Ryan found her way to me through a recommendation a Mobile Read user made to me when I was looking for some new titles. I had some Paypal balance to burn and did not want to incur transfer fees, so I wanted some Smashwords recommendations. I was especially interested in books that were either part of a series (so that I could have more than one to read if I liked it) or were non-fiction or historical-based so that I might get immersed in a world and maybe learn something. Patricia Ryan’s mystery novels, set in the 19th century, fit the bill perfectly. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 2: AS A PR TOOL Now, here is where the true beauty of the internet kicks in: Ryan had apparently set up a Google Alert on herself, and when her name came up at Mobile Read, she found out we were talking about her and came on over. She personally thanked each person who mentioned buying one of her books, addressed some concerns about formatting and sought feedback on what readers wanted to see next. Well-played, Patricia Ryan! This is the first time I have heard of someone using Google Alerts to run their own self-PR! We had a fascinating exchange on ebook publishing, both from the reader and writer standpoints. Some highlights of our discussion (note: this is posted with her permission!) below: MY OPENING SALVO: I really appreciate authors, especially established ones, who embrace the digital age and do not put up barriers to people getting the books. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:44:33 +0100 864736 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/NV8_FvfK7TY/ Cory Doctorow and Joe Konrath are not the only e-pushing authors with already-planted stakes in the dead tree world! A growing cohort of Smashwords authors established writers who have regained rights to some or all of their backlist titles and have chosen to e-issue it themselves. A recent encounter I had with Patricia Ryan, who is one of them, first alerted me to this growing trend. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 1: AS A MATCHMAKER Ryan found her way to me through a recommendation a Mobile Read user made to me when I was looking for some new titles. I had some Paypal balance to burn and did not want to incur transfer fees, so I wanted some Smashwords recommendations. I was especially interested in books that were either part of a series (so that I could have more than one to read if I liked it) or were non-fiction or historical-based so that I might get immersed in a world and maybe learn something. Patricia Ryan’s mystery novels, set in the 19th century, fit the bill perfectly. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 2: AS A PR TOOL Now, here is where the true beauty of the internet kicks in: Ryan had apparently set up a Google Alert on herself, and when her name came up at Mobile Read, she found out we were talking about her and came on over. She personally thanked each person who mentioned buying one of her books, addressed some concerns about formatting and sought feedback on what readers wanted to see next. Well-played, Patricia Ryan! This is the first time I have heard of someone using Google Alerts to run their own self-PR! We had a fascinating exchange on ebook publishing, both from the reader and writer standpoints. Some highlights of our discussion (note: this is posted with her permission!) below: MY OPENING SALVO: I really appreciate authors, especially established ones, who embrace the digital age and do not put up barriers to people getting the books. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:44:33 +0100 864560 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/04/chick-lit-debate-dj-connell The 'chick-lit' label does nothing for humorous female writers already suffering exclusion from an old boys' clubA funny thing happened to me on the way to getting published. I changed genders, or, to be more precise, I exchanged the 'Diane' of my given name for the neutral initials of 'DJ'. I had good reason for choosing a neutral pen name. I am deadly serious about writing humour and wanted my book to be judged on its merits and not according to my gender.In the funny-peculiar world of humorous literature, a female name is like an affliction. It repels potential readers looking for the "seriously funny" (apparently women do not write funny books) and encourages reviewers and booksellers to reach for a red marker and tag the work with the toe-curling label of "chick-lit". While my writing has nothing to do with career women, romance or white weddings, I take personal offence at the way women's fiction, particularly humorous fiction written by women, is still getting shunted to the back of the queue.I know I am not the first woman to comment on this but it is a remarkable situation considering the great leaps forward female writers have made in most other literary genres. Humour remains an old boys' club and the knee-jerk "if a woman writes a funny book it must be chick-lit" attitude is indicative of this club's male-only policy.Why do I find the chick-lit label so offensive? Because it not only condemns a work of humour to the ghetto of the light and frivolous but it is also ridiculously outdated. Who in Playboy Mansion Hell still refers to a woman as a chick?When you call a woman a chick you diminish her as a human being and dismiss her as something less than intelligent. It is a word for the likes of Hugh Hefner and other refugees from the pre-feminist, satin sheet and jacuzzi 60s and it is about as relevant as calling the police "the fuzz". ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:15:45 +0100 864504