Writerswrite.com's Writer's Blog

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Adds New Words for 2009

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has added 100 words for 2009. The new words include frenemy, staycation, vlog, waterboarding and webisode.

Hardworking word-lovers everywhere can now learn the meaning of the word staycation ("a vacation spent at home or nearby") along with nearly 100 other new words and senses added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. America's best-selling dictionary offers its new 2009 entries in its updated print edition and online here at Merriam-Webster.com.

Many of the new words address: concerns about the environment (carbon footprint, green collar), government activities (earmark, waterboarding), health and medicine (cardioprotective, locavore, naproxen, neuroprotective), pop culture (docusoap, fan fiction, flash mob, reggaeton), online activities (sock puppet, vlog, webisode), as well as several miscellaneous terms such as haram, memory foam, missalette, and zip line.

You can see a list of 25 of the newly added words here.

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Video: Queen Latifah Reads Poem for Michael Jackson Written by Maya Angelou

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST

Michael Jackson's memorial service was held to day at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The memorial included a special poetry reading by Queen Latifah. Queen read a poem written by Maya Angelou in honor of Michael. The poem is called "We Had Him." The poem concludes with the lines "We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given...We do know we had him and we are the world." Take a look:

Another memorable part of the memorial service was when Michael Jackson's 11-year-old daughter Paris gave an emotional farewell to her father.

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Authors Turn Booksellers to Help Promote Oxfam Bookfest

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 15:40:00 EST

Authors and celebrities have joined forces to help promote the first annual Oxfam Bookfest, a nationwide book festival in Great Britain. Celebrity authors are working in the Oxfam used bookshops across the country, happily helping customers find something good to read. The bookstores sell used books at a premium, which used to support the international aid organization Oxfam.

The Oxfam bookshop on Marylebone High Street in London is humming this Monday morning, customers thronging the aisles, as Monica Ali and Bill Nighy serve behind the till and Joanna Trollope busily sorts and prices the literature section.

Authors and celebrities, from Philip Pullman to Jonathan Coe and Hanif Kureishi, have teamed up to launch the first annual Oxfam Bookfest, a nationwide book festival running from 4 to 18 July in hundreds of venues around the country to raise money for Oxfam. Kamila Shamsie, Esther Freud and Mark Haddon are also participating, volunteering in their local Oxfam stores to help launch the festival, while new poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy has written a poem celebrating the charity and its shops.

"It's absolutely terrific - the shop is heaving," said Trollope, taking a short break this morning. "I've been given the task of sorting the literature shelves - I'm quite tidy-minded. I'm allowed to do the pricing as well: nothing under £2, and above £10 has to be something like a signed John Le Carre first edition. I've been admiring Bill Nighy and Monica Ali behind the till - I'm rather hoping they don't ask me to do that."

Trollope got involved with the festival after being asked to write a short story for Ox-Tales, an anthology published in conjunction with the event. "These bookshops turn over enough money each month for two million people to have clean drinking water," she said. "If you take 15 good quality books you don't want to Oxfam, they can either pay for a goat, or train a teacher in the third world. And I bet everyone reading this on Guardian books today has 15 books to spare."

Customers who head to their local Oxfam bookshop during Bookfest might find authors such as Esther Freud, Jonathan Coe, William Sutcliffe or Hanif Kureishi helping them find a good beach read and then ringing up their purchase.

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Screaming Whalers Tale Wins Bulwer-Lytton Contest

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST

David McKenzie has won the grand prize in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The international literary parody competition honors Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). Entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Here is David McKenzie's bad opening to a fictional novel that won him the grand prize.

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

You can read bad openings from the runner ups here on the official contest website.

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Authors Demand Great Britain Make School Libraries Mandatory

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 21:00:00 EST

High profile authors are banding together with teachers, publishers and librarians to ask the British government to fund a statutory scheme of school libraries. The group has created a petition for people to sign to promote the idea of increasing the size and scope of all school libraries.

Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children's laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children's publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.

The campaign's supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. "[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels," they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign's head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.

Only half of all secondary schools in Great Britain have a full-time librarian, and many of those are not technically qualified for the job. Philip Pullman said at a lecture at a comprehensive school last year that it would become "a byword for philistinism and ignorance" if it did not scrap its plans to close the school's library. We just love his ability to turn a phrase. After all, no one wants to become "a byword for philistinism and ignorance."

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Philip Hoare Wins Samuel Johnson Prize for Leviathan

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

Writer Philip Hoare has won the BBC Samuel Johnson prize for his nonfiction book Leviathan. Described as a mix of genres, from natural history to memoir, the book is the result of Philip Hoares' lifelong love of whales.

The chairman of judges for this year's £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson prize, the American political journalist Jacob Weisberg, predicted that Hoare's genre-defying book would become nothing less than "a classic". He added: "The quality of his writing was just so impressive, it is literary, just beautiful. It is a model of a certain kind of writing and I imagine it is a book that will be read for a long time to come."

*****

Hoare, who lives in Southampton, has previously written books on figures including Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and the brightest of the Bright Young Things, Stephen Tennant. He traces his love of whales to reading Moby-Dick and vividly recalls his first actual encounter with a killer whale at Windsor safari park. Hoare now frequently travels to Cape Cod as a volunteer on a humpback whale identification programme.

Hoare's book saw off competition from a shortlist that also included Ben Goldacre's book version of his Guardian column Bad Science, which Ladbroke's had installed as 2/1 favourite. The others were Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance, an examination of the Great Depression; David Grann's The Lost City of Z, about the British explorer Percy Fawcett who disappeared in the Amazon in 1925; Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder, in which he links a series of biographies on 18th century scientists; and a book praised for making quantum physics accessible and interesting - Manjit Kumar's Quantum.

We love whales and can't wait to read Leviathon. You can visit Philip Hoare's website (which could use a bit more content) here.

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Author Alice Hoffman Criticizes Book Critic on Twitter

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:00:00 EST

The L.A. Times Jacket Copy reports that author Alice Hoffman used her Twitter account to vent her frustrations about a review of her book, The Story Sisters, in the Boston Globe. Alice Hoffman felt the critic's review gave away too much of the plot from her novel.

But the vitriol Hoffman used to express her dissatisfaction was extreme. "Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron," one tweet began. "Now any idiot can be a critic," stated another.

At first, Hoffman defended her right to express herself any way she wanted. "Girls are taught to be gracious and keep their mouths shut. We don't have to," she wrote, and then continued a minute later: "And we writers don't have to say nothing when someone tries to destroy us."

That's not all: Hoffman tweeted Silman's phone number and e-mail address, encouraging readers to "Tell her what u think of snarky critics."

It's probably going too far to tweet the book critic's home phone number but the email is there in the review.

Jacket Copy says Alice Hoffman's Twitter account (which was @AliceHof) has been deleted. Alice Hoffman left the following formal statement through her publicist.

I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course I was dismayed by Roberta Silman's review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn't. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that's the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn't mean to hurt anyone and I'm truly sorry if I did.

Best,
Alice Hoffman

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Rhianna Pratchett Talks Writing For Video Games

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:00:00 EST

Terry Pratchett's daughter Rhianna Pratchett has found success in the video game realm. She told That Video Game Blog that game publishers still don't know best how to use writers. She says they often contact writers at the end of a game's lifespan instead of at the beginning - but she says that's starting to change.

"Writers and narrative designers are still relatively new positions on development teams." she said. "This means there's still a level of uncertainty about how best to use and integrate them. I know from talking to lots of fine people in my field that the writing process can often be done too late, without proper access to the team and under extreme pressure. Thankfully, things are starting to get a little better and more writers are being contacted in the first few months of a project's lifespan, rather than the last few months. Personally, I consider I've been very lucky with some of my projects."

Rhianna Pratchett would also like to see more variation in video game content and less of the "Gruff guy with super powers/large weapon kicks assss!" plot lines.

"A little more variation in concept and content would be nice, as well, which is something writers and narrative designers can help with. Although they have their place and god knows I've enjoyed them on occasion, I could do with a little less 'Gruff guy with super powers/large weapon kicks assss!' tales. The medium has huge potential, so I'm not sure why there's this constant desire to keep rooting around in Hollywood's action-movie scrapheap."

Rhianna Pratchett talked about humor in video games in another interview. Her writing in the Overlord and Overlord II video games helped make the games respected for their dark humor.

"What I think has really worked for the franchise is that the setup and gameplay is ripe with humour," says Pratchett. "You play an evil Overlord, rampaging through a twisted fantasy world, with an ever expanding army of sycophantic minions who loot and pillage for you. What's not to love about that?"

Rhianna Pratchett's website can be found here. She's has written scripts for several fantasy titles including Heavenly Sword, Overlord, Overlord: Raising Hell, Mirror's Edge and Viking: Battle for Asgard. She has also written a Mirror's Edge comic book mini-series with DC Comics.

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Chris Anderson Says Copied Wikipedia Passages Were Unintentional Mistake

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:00:00 EST

Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson has admitted that some of the passages in his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price were copied from Wikipedia. The L.A. Times says Anderson the passages were unintentionally left without a credit to Wikipedia, an online user-edited encyclopedia.

Typically, the passages Anderson took from Wikipedia would be accompanied by a footnote or end note in standard citation format. For Web pages, citations include a date and time -- a time stamp -- indicating exactly when the Web page was accessed. Anderson disagreed with his publisher about the citation format to use in the notes.

"I made the decision to nuke the notes because we couldn't come up with a compromise citation form," Anderson said by phone Wednesday afternoon. "I thought time stamps looked silly in books and my publisher insisted on time stamps. I made the decision to nuke the notes entirely -- and then to integrate the attribution into the text, which I -- " he took a breath, "then screwed up."

In an effort to take the information from Wikipedia and remix it in his own language -- a process Anderson calls a "write-through" -- several passages were left unaltered, and without any credit to Wikipedia. For Anderson, the worst part is that it was Wikipedia that was shortchanged, because the site has been the target of frequent criticism about its accuracy as a source.

Chris Anderson's publisher Hyperion has accepted his explanation and apology. They released the following statement, "We are completely satisfied with Chris Anderson's response. It was an unfortunate mistake, and we are working with the author to correct these errors both in the electronic edition before it posts, and in all future editions of the book."

The copied passagers were revealed in a blog post by Waldo Jaquith in the Virginia Quarterly Review. A post here explains how Jaquith discovered the copied passages.

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Author Edward Hogan Wins Desmond Elliott Prize

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:00:00 EST

Reuters reports that author Edward Hogan has won the Desmond Elliott Prize. The Desmond Elliott Prize is an annual award for a first novel written in English and published in the UK. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the prize is named after the literary agent and publisher, Desmond Elliott.

The former teacher from Derby, central England, started working on the novel seven years before it appeared in print in 2008. "Blackmoor" is published by Simon & Schuster.

The story, set in Hogan's home county of Derbyshire, centres on a small mining community at the time of the miners' strike in the mid-1980s which saw thousands of miners clash with police in a bitter standoff over job losses in the coal industry.

"I was four when (the strikes) happened, in West Hallam," Hogan said in a statement. "I couldn't really remember it, but to me it seemed like such an integral part of the community."

Hogan is in the process of writing his follow-up novel.

The prize was awarded by a panel of three judges, Candida Lycett Green (Chair), Rodney Troubridge and Suzi Fea. Canddia Lycett Green said, "In a shortlist of exceptional quality Blackmoor stands out. For a first novel it is both beautifully crafted and dazzlingly well-written."

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Bon Jovi, Crosby, Stills and Nash Join Songwriters Hall of Fame

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

The Rolling Stone reports that Bon Jovi and Crosby, Stills and Nash were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The BBC says Jon Bon Jovi called the honor the "closest thing to immortality that we're ever going to see here."

The duo performed their hit Wanted Dead or Alive at a gala to celebrate 40 years of inductions.

Veterans Crosby, Stills and Nash were also inducted at the event, while Sir Tom Jones was given a hitmaker award.

You can see a video of the induction here. The Songwriters Hall of Fame website can be found here.

Photo: BonJovi.com

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Ray Bradbury Campaigning to Save Library

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

Ray Bradbury is launching a campaign to help U.S. libraries, which are struggling because of funding cuts. Bradbury appeared last Saturday at a California event to help raise money for the HP Wright library in Ventura.

The HP Wright library in Ventura is threatened with closure due to cuts in public funding, unless it raises $280,000 by next March. Bradbury's event was the first in a year-long series of author appearances designed to help keep the 44-year-old library open. The $25 ticket offered patrons the chance to hear a talk from the author of Fahrenheit 451, as well as see a screening of The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, a film based on one of his short stories.

Bradbury said that he had spoken at all of California's 200-odd libraries. "I have a wheelchair, so they carry me to the car, and they throw me in the car, and throw me in the library, and they sell books and they keep all the money. I talk free, to make money for them so they can continue," he told the New York Times. "All libraries are special."

Although the 88-year-old Bradbury is vehemently anti-internet - it's "a big distraction ... It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere," he told the Times - he is very much pro-library. "Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years," he said. "I read everything in the library. I read everything. I took out 10 books a week so I had a couple of hundred books a year I read, on literature, poetry, plays, and I read all the great short stories, hundreds of them. I graduated from the library when I was 28 years old. That library educated me, not the college."

If you'd like to donate to the H.P. Wright library, you can contact the library through its website. There are libraries across the U.S. which are in trouble right now. Because of the recession, traffic is up and funding is down. Librarians are overworked and could use trained volunteer help, as well.

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Michael Connelly and Janet Evanovich Interview Each Other

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:00:00 EST

Amazon.com recently conducted an interesting Author One-to-One feature with author Michael Connelly and Janet Evanovich interviewing each other. You can read the questions Michael Connelly had for Janet Evanovich here. Michael Connelly mentioned that one of his characters uses a Janet Evanovich in his latest novel. Janet Evanovich replied that she alwasy reciprocates when one of her character names pops up in someone elses novel and advised him to "live in fear."

Connelly: You strike me as an author who is involved in every aspect of the publishing of her work. But the output--at least two solid novels a year--suggests otherwise, that you delegate all over the place so that you can focus on writing high-quality stuff. So which is it? (And if your answer is that you do indeed delegate, how the heck do you learn to do that?)

Evanovich: You reach a point in your career where the business side threatens to eclipse writing time and you either delegate or power back. I delegate everything but the writing. My daughter and her staff manage the website, the fan mail, the book tour, the author publicity and marketing. My son is my agent and finance officer and chief problem solver. When no one else can solve the problem it gets dumped on my son's desk! I oversee all aspects, but I've had to learn not to micro-manage.

***

Connelly: Did you know that in my most recent novel a very bad man plans to use a Janet Evanovich novel to get close to an unsuspecting, potential victim? It's scary stuff--the plan, not the Evanovich novel. Have you reached a stage where your work is part of the terrain and gets these sorts of little nods here and there?

Evanovich: Every now and then my name or one of my character names pops up and it's usually in the work of a friend. I think it's fun and I always reciprocate...so live in fear.

Janet Evanovich's questions for Michael Connelly can be found here. One of her questions for him was what will bookstores be like in 2020.

Evanovich: What will a bookstore look like in 2020? Will we all be downloading?

Connelly: Good question. Since it is only eleven years from now, I think there will still be a solid population of "old school" readers who need the book in their hands. The question is, will they get it at a bookstore or will we have a Kindle 9.0 device that manufactures a book for you at home, complete with photo of author in a bomber jacket.

Evanovich: If everybody is downloading in 2020 what the heck will we be signing on book tour? Body parts? Kindle cases?

Connelly: I signed two Kindles yesterday. One person asked me to leave room for signatures from you and Dennis Lehane. So next time you're in Seattle she'll be in your line.

That's pretty cool that authors are getting Kindle autograph requests. It might make it hard to upgrade to a new device if you have some autograph on your ebook reader that you really treasure.

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John Irving Shares His Writing Process

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

Bestselling author John Irving (The World According to Garp) discusses his next book, Last Night in Twisted River, and his writing life with Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review. It's an interesting interview. Irving was at his doctor's office and the last line of the book came to him in a flash of inspiration (which is always what comes to him first). Having no paper he started writing on a prescription pad, which pretty much freaked out the nurse when she came into the room and saw him apparently writing his own prescription. He also shares the first and last sentences of his new novel. Take a look:

Last Night in Twisted River is available for preorder at Amazon.com for a nice discount. The book will be released in October, 2009.

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Israel's Haaretz Newspaper Let Poets Write the News

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

Forward reports that Haaretz editor-in-chief Dov Alfon let authors and poets write the newspapers' daily news for a day instead of journalists. The poetic reporting resulted in some stock market summaries that were more interesting than usual. Forward says there were also some "gripping journalistic accounts" written by Israel's most famed novelists.

Among those articles were gems like the stock market summary, by author Avri Herling. It went like this: "Everything's okay. Everything's like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything's okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place... Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points... The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again..." The TV review by Eshkol Nevo opened with these words: "I didn't watch TV yesterday." And the weather report was a poem by Roni Somek, titled "Summer Sonnet." ("Summer is the pencil/that is least sharp/in the seasons' pencil case.") News junkies might call this a postmodern farce, but considering that the stock market won't be soaring anytime soon, and that "hot" is really the only weather forecast there is during Israeli summers, who's to say these articles aren't factual?

Alongside these cute reports were gripping journalistic accounts. David Grossman, one of Israel's most famed novelists, spent a night at a children's drug rehabilitation center in Jerusalem and wrote a cover page story about the tender exchanges between the patients, ending the article in the style of a celebrated author who's treated like a prophet: "I lay in bed and thought wondrously how, amid the alienation and indifference of the harsh Israeli reality, such islands - stubborn little bubbles of care, tenderness and humanity - still exist." Grossman's pen transformed a run-of-the-mill feature into something epic.

What an interesting experiment. You can read the weather report, which was turned into a poem by Ronny Someck, here

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J.K. Rowling Accused of Plagiarism

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

Here we go again. Yet another author (well in this case his estate) is suing J.K. Rowling for plagiarism. Rowling and her publisher Bloomsbury are being sued for allegedly copying "substantial parts" of a book written in 1987 by Adrian Jacobs called The Adventures of Willy the Wizard -- No 1 Livid Land. Bloomsbury and Rowling deny the charges.

It [the lawsuit] added that the plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire copied elements of the plot of Willy the Wizard, including a wizard contest, and that the Potter series borrowed the idea of wizards traveling on trains.

"Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures," the estate statement said. "It is alleged that all of these are concepts first created by Adrian Jacobs in Willy the Wizard, some 10 years before J.K. Rowling first published any of the Harry Potter novels and 13 years before Goblet of Fire was published."

According to the statement, Jacobs had sought the services of literary agent Christopher Little who later became Rowling's agent. Jacobs died "penniless" in a London hospice in 1997, it said. In its response, Bloomsbury said Rowling "had never heard of Adrian Jacobs nor seen, read or heard of his book Willy the Wizard until this claim was first made in 2004, almost seven years after the publication of the first book in the highly publicized Harry Potter series. "Willy the Wizard is a very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution. The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school."

Bloomsbury's attorneys said that these same claims were put forward in 2004, but that the plaintiff could not point to one passage in Goblet of Fire that had been lifted from Willy the Wizard. Based on these facts alone, it does not seem like the plaintiff has a case this time either.

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Britain's Poet Laureate Takes on MP Expense Scandal

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST

Britain's first female poet laureate Carol Duffy has debuted her first poem for the nation and it's already raising eyebrows. Entitled "Politics" the poem depicts the corrosive nature of corruption and how it destroys idealism. The poem refers to the expense scandal that is currently rocking Britain. Britain's MPs have been submitting expenses for such things as a castle moat repair, new chandeliers and hours of porn movies. The scandal has already ruined quite a few careers.

John Sutherland, professor emeritus of modern English literature at University College London, called it an angry poem. "The motive force here is disgust. Disgust at the great machine and its dishonest mechanics who run our society. Duffy Furiosa. The poem's technique is that of someone almost speechless with rage - a great tumbling catalogue. No time for structure."

He said he rather regretted the fact that Duffy had given the poem a title "because it's not until close to the end that this great heap-of-crap which has so got Duffy's goat is identified."

Sutherland also wondered whether Duffy was shifting her attack from politics to politician - as in Gordon Brown - by using the "the talismanic phrase" of "moral compass".

Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, called it a bold poem. "I think that what she has managed to do is capture in poetry the sense of disbelief, the strangled despair, which leaves most of us just shaking our heads, open-mouthed and inarticulate." She said Duffy had brilliantly put into words that "bloody hell" feeling most people felt every time they listened to the latest detail of the expenses scandal.

Here is the poem:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this -

politics - to your education education education; shouts this -

Politics! - to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

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Debut Novelist Wins Dublin's Impac Prize

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:00:00 EST

A first time novelist has beaten out such literary luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth and Doris Lessing to win Dublin's Impac Prize, which carries a cash prize of 100,000 Euros. American Michael Thomas won the world's most lucrative book prize for his novel, Man Gone Down.

"I'm stunned," Thomas said today, in Dublin for the prize ceremony from his home town of New York. "I had a hard time believing I'd made the shortlist - or the longlist, for that matter - so I'm still waiting for the punch line." Currently a professor at Hunter College in New York, he said he'd use his winnings to "pay some bills". "It's too late to bet on myself [winning]," he said. "I've had an interesting life up until now, so I may get a little more conservative. I've got three kids, a mortgage, a half-built house ..."

Man Gone Down is a stream-of-consciousness narrative by a black man from Boston, married to a white woman with whom he has three children. The story stretches over a four-day period, with the unnamed narrator on the eve of his 35th birthday, broke and estranged from his family, with just four days to find the money to keep his family afloat. Described by the judging panel as an "extraordinary novel ... from a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight", Thomas said he'd written it at a time when he was "feeling a little desperate" himself.

*****

"We never know his name. But the African-American protagonist of Michael Thomas's masterful debut, Man Gone Down, will stay with readers for a long time," said the panel of judges, which included the novelists Rachel Billington and Timothy Taylor. "Tuned urgently to the way we live now, [Man Gone Down] is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth."

Thomas was born in Boston and spent years working as a taxi driver, waiter, construction worker and a pizza delivery man. He wrote poetry and wrote songs, but it wasn't until he entered graduate school that he concentrated on his fiction writing. For his graduate thesis, he wrote a series of short stories that he eventually turned into a novel which was published by Grove Atlantic, after many rejections. He is currently working on a nonfiction book, but you can be sure that his agent is urging him to get to work on his next novel.

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Ben Franklin Book Sells at Auction for $556,500

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:25:00 EST

An authentic copy of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac sold at auction at Sotheby's for $556,500, which is the second highest price ever paid for a book printed in America (the highest price was for a copy of George Washington's copy of The Federalist Papers which went for $1.4 million). The 1773 volume was found by the members of the Berwick Historical Society in the archives. They had no idea it would turn out to be so valuable.

That was big news in Berwick, an old manufacturing city of 10,000 residents about 150 kilometres northwest of Philadelphia, where Franklin, using the pseudonym Richard Saunders, printed thousands of copies of his almanac between 1733 and 1760, dispensing advice and aphorisms along with "lunations, eclipses, judgment of the weather" and other data relevant to the 40-degree latitude "from Newfoundland to South Carolina."

The celebration for historical society members began on the trip back home from New York. "We're on the second bottle of champagne," historical society president Thomas McLaughlin said when reached on his cellphone aboard the bus taking 14 society members back to Berwick. McLaughlin said that when the society inquired of experts about the almanac's value, the first estimate was $7,000 to $10,000, but it rose sharply after the Library Company of Philadelphia, which Franklin founded, determined the book not only was real but also was one of only three 1733 copies known to exist.

The experts said it was authentic based on the original binding, the ink and the printing, but even then the presale estimate was only $100,000 to $150,000. Selby Kiffer, an authority on historical American documents who examined the almanac for Sotheby's, said it "had that right look." "It's like finding a fossil in its matrix," Kiffer said. "It's a cliche to say something is once in a lifetime until you have an opportunity like this."

The purchaser chose to remain anonymous, so it is most likely in the hands of a private collector now. The money has gone into the endowment fund of the historical society, which is planning on renovating the town's 1860s-era city hall and for the purchase of a World War II Stuart light tank, many of which were made locally.

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Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Launches The Okra Picks

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:00:00 EST

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is launching a book program called the Okra Picks. The Okra Picks will focus on Southern books. 12 new books will promoted at the organization's 250 member stores each quarter.

SIBA has developed the Okra Picks program in response to feedback from its bookseller members who wanted the opportunity to promote current and upcoming southern titles.

The SIBA Book Awards are designed to give longer legs to books that have already been published. SIBA's Indie Stores and SIBA want to recognize those authors and thank them for the books that have added to the bottom line and to see those titles continue to grow in popularity and readership.

The Okra Picks are a whole new crop just hitting bookshelves that SIBA stores know their customers are going to love. The first dozen Okra Picks will be for the fall and will be displayed at the SIBA Trade Show in Greenville, SC, for the first time.

The Washington Post says Oprah's Book Club did help SIBA think of the name.

I spoke with Wanda Jewell, executive director of SIBA, and asked her how she'd cooked up this plan.

"I've had the title in mind for a long time," she said, "trying to figure out how I could use it." In fact, she's been cultivating Okra Picks since she first heard of Oprah's Book Club. "With a good name and good tag line, you can go far."

How does a book get on this new list?

It sounds like it could benefit some authors of southern books who get on the list. The first nomination period is between now and September 1st. SIBA will be soliciting publishers for galley offers and "advanced access" requests which it will then forward on to SIBA bookstores. You can find out more details here.

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David Eddings Dies at 77

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 14:00:00 EST

Bestselling fantasy author David Eddings has died at the age of 77. His co-author and wife, Leigh Eddings, died in 2007. Eddings wrote more than 25 books, including the Belgariad and Mallorean series which introduced legions of fantasy fans to Garion, the farmboy, Belgarath the Sorcerer and his daughter Polgara.

Despite his success, Eddings was known for his humble nature. "His huge worldwide success and fame did not change Dave at all," said his long-term publisher at HarperCollins, Jane Johnson, herself a fantasy author. "He was unfailingly self-effacing on the subject of his success, once saying: 'I'm never going to be in danger of getting a Nobel prize for literature, I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story'."

Eddings was always delighted, he said, to hear that he'd turned non-readers into readers. "I look upon this as perhaps my purpose in life," he said in 1997. "I am here to teach a generation or two how to read. After they've finished with me and I don't challenge them any more, they can move on to somebody important like Homer or Milton."

*****

Johnson said he would be missed "tremendously" at HarperCollins, which published his last title, The Elder Gods, in 2006. "He was a towering force of modern commercial fiction, a master of the epic, and a delight to work with," she said. "The Voyager team and I were immensely sad to hear the news."

The Nevada Appeal newspaper has details of his passing. He never quite recovered from the death of his wife Leigh from a series of strokes; David had reportedly been suffering from dementia for some time. This is a great loss to the fantasy community. Our condolences to his friends and family.

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Marilynne Robinson Wins Orange Prize for Fiction

Wed, 3 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

American Marilynne Robinson has won the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel, Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

The US author beat five other writers to take the 30,000 pound prize during a ceremony at London's Royal Festival Hall, on Wednesday. The award, which recognises the work of fiction written by women around the world, was set up in 1996. Author Francesca Kay took the New Writers award for her debut novel, An Equal Stillness. Broadcaster Fi Glover, chair of judges, praised Robinson's "kind, wise, enriching novel" as "exquisitely crafted". She said: "We were unanimously agreed - it is a profound work of art."

Robinson is the author of two other novels, Housekeeping (1981), which was chosen as one of the Observer's 100 greatest novels of all time and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Gilead (2004), which won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also written two works of non-fiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam, and teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Home centres on Jack, the prodigal son of the Boughton family, who returns home looking for refuge and tries to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. Jonathan Ruppin, from Foyles bookshop, said: "Robinson is simply one of the outstanding prose stylists of recent years; she will undoubtedly come to be seen as essential as Nabokov or Conrad. "In picking this as this year's winner, the judges have made a real statement about lyrical power of fiction, beyond its basic function to tell stories."

Congratulations!

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Leo Tolstoy: Great Writer, Terrible Husband

Tue, 2 Jun 2009 22:00:00 EST

The diaries of Leo Tolstoy's wife Sofia paint a miserable picture of her life with the famous novelist.

What emerges from Sofia's diaries, which span more than 50 years and which are due to be published by Alma Books this October, is a picture of a cruel and difficult man, indifferent to his family, endlessly critical, who forced his wife to breastfeed all 13 of their children despite the agony it caused her.

"All the things that he preaches for the happiness of humanity only complicate life to the point where it becomes harder and harder for me to live," wrote Sofia - who transcribed all of Tolstoy's manuscripts, including War and Peace, in longhand - at the start of 1895. "His vegetarian diet means the complication of preparing two dinners, which means twice the expense and twice the work. His sermons on love and goodness have made him indifferent to his family, and mean the intrusion of all kinds of riff-raff into our family life. And his (purely verbal) renunciation of worldly goods has made him endlessly critical and disapproving of others."

And it only gets worse from there. The diaries were first published twenty years ago in an academic edition that nobody read. Alma Books is producing a more accessible version that it believes will round out the portrait of Russia's greatest writer. A forward from Doris Lessing blasts Leo Tolstoy as a terrible husband "who is sexually inconsiderate and a bit of a monster." So, there's that to look forward to.

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J.D. Salinger Sues Anonymous Author of Catcher in the Rye Sequel

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 21:00:00 EST

J. D. Salinger is suing the author of a copycat novel that purports to take up where The Catcher in the Rye left off.

Lawyers for Salinger filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Monday. The lawsuit seeks to force a recall of what it says is a copycat book titled "60 Years Later" by a "John Doe" author writing under the name "John David California." It also seeks unspecified damages.

The lawsuit said the right to create a sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye" or to use the character "Holden Caufield" belongs only to Salinger. The lawsuit says Salinger has "decidedly chosen not to exercise that right."

Now this is what we call an interesting lawsuit. Will the reclusive J.D. Salinger appear at the trial? Will the identity of the anonymous author be revealed? It's all quite interesting.

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Kate Atkinson Says She'd Rather Write and Be Unpublished

Sat, 30 May 2009 18:00:00 EST

Whitbread Prize-winning author Kate Atkinson admitted how much she hates the publishing process. The reclusive author reveals that her dream is to have enough money to write but never be published. Her last book, When Will There Be Good News won the best book of the year at the British book awards.

Her reclusive streak was revealed on stage this morning at the Guardian Hay festival, where she confessed her ideal situation would be "to have enough money ... [to] write and not be published". She doesn't, she told Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, like reviews or critics. "It's a very uncomfortable thing for a writer, we're very tender," she said. Writing is the thing she does best, how she earns her money, but "not being published would be great", Atkinson continued. "When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane."

Even though she doesn't feel a need to be published, she said she "probably need[s] to write", a distinction which JD Salinger - who hasn't published a word since 1965, despite rumours of shelves groaning with manuscripts - would surely recognise. But it's not an "overwhelming burning urge," she added, suggesting she would "rather potter about in the garden". "My work is not my life," she said. "I started writing quite late, I didn't have that 'writing is everything, my art is all'. You have to be able to recognise the difference between the two."

Usually it takes her two years to write a book, she said, but if she were locked in a room, she could do it in the three months it took her to write her Whitbread-winning novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. "Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book," she said, and "without the time pressure" she could write faster.

Clearly, she's not in it for the fame. She is currently working on her fourth novel featuring Inspector Jackson Brodie.

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Geoff Dyer Wins Wodehouse Comic Fiction Award

Fri, 29 May 2009 21:00:00 EST

Geoff Dyer has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction for his novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

"Geoff Dyer is a naturally funny writer," said one of the judges, the broadcaster James Naughtie. "It's a curious book in a way - it has two locations, one in Venice and the second in India. It's a book of two halves and it actually becomes a rather serious book - at least it takes on the serious subject of our spiritual journey in the world."

"But the whole spirit of the book is naturally comic," he continued, "and what is quite clear about Dyer is that he's got a real feel for the absurd. That's why we thought the should win this year."

Although Wodehouse himself never swore in his books, the winning book is laced with profanity. But the judges felt that it was so funny and so in keeping with the Wodehouse style that it should win.

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Ruth Padel Resigns as Oxford Poetry Professor

Thu, 28 May 2009 21:00:00 EST

The first female Oxford professor of poetry, Ruth Padel, has resigned her post in the latest installment of the most drama-laden poetry professor election of all time. A newspaper revealed that it was Ruth who sent an email alerting journalists to the fact that her rival for the post had a scandal-laden past of sexual harassment claims by former students. She let a journalist know about a book written by one of Derek Walcott's alleged victims.

When the news was made public about Walcott's smarmy past, he withdrew from the competition. When some people accused Ruth of smearing Walcott's name, she promptly resigned, which we think is ridiculous. She denies she was behind the campaign, but does admit she sent the email to a journalist alerting him to the situation.

Padel resigned on Monday after holding the Oxford post - the most important academic role in poetry in the UK - for just nine days, after it emerged that she had alerted journalists to Walcott's past. Walcott had withdrawn from the race earlier this month after some 200 Oxford academics were anonymously sent a package containing photocopied pages from the book detailing the allegations made against him, criticising the "low tactics", and the "low and degrading attempt at character assassination" the election had become.

Padel gave a press conference at the Guardian Hay festival yesterday, where she apologised to Walcott for what she described as "a grave error of judgement". "It was naive and silly of me - a bad error of judgement. I can of course see that people can misconstrue these two isolated emails of mine as part of a larger campaign I had nothing to do with," she said yesterday. "I do think I was very silly to send those emails but I was trying in a misguided way to address student concerns."

Not one person has said that anything Professor Padel said was untrue. Just that it was unfair somehow to a lecherous old professor. We find it disgusting that the British press is taking so little notice of the very serious charges against Derek Walcott. Sexual abuse and harassment are not a joke, but you'd think it was Walcott who is the victim here. One editorial went so far as to say that it didn't matter that Walcott is a creep, he's a good poet so that's all that matters. Oh, well when you put it that way.... Let's make sure he has full, unfettered access to nubile young coeds at Oxford. What a great idea.

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Alice Munro Wins Booker Prize

Wed, 27 May 2009 15:40:00 EST

Canadian Alice Muro won Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement.

The prize is awarded every two years to a living author whose work has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage. "I am totally amazed and delighted," Munro told Man Booker Prize officials after receiving news of her win. One of the world's most renowned short-story writers and the winner of numerous literary awards, Munro has lived in and spent much of her career writing about the lives of women in smalltown Canada. She has made an artform out of the ordinary.

"To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before," the judging panel that included author Jane Smiley, writer Amit Chaudhuri and essayist Andrey Kurkov, said in a news release. Munro has been recognized over and over for her short-story collections - three Libris Awards from the Canadian Booksellers Association, Governor Generals awards, top fiction prize from the National Book Circle in New York for "The Love of a Good Woman", and in 1998, she won the Giller Prize for the same collection.

Her first collection of short stories, "Dance of the Happy Shades" (1968), won the Governor General's Literary Award as did her 1978 collection "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Also has also won the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature. Her themes generally involve the challenges faced by adolescents and by those in middle age. Her next book is a collection of short stories called Too Much Happiness. The book will be published in October.

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Iranian Police Arrest the Agatha Christie Serial Killer

Thu, 21 May 2009 15:40:00 EST

Iranian police have arrested the country's first female serial killer, a woman they are calling the Agatha Christie Serial Killer. The 32 year old woman committed her crimes using the plots of Agatha Christie mysteries, which are very popular in Iran.

The 32-year-old suspect, named only as Mahin, stands accused of killing at least six people, including five women, according to officials in the city of Qazvin, about 100 miles north-west of Tehran. "Mahin in her confessions has said that she has been taking patterns from Agatha Christie books and has been trying not to leave any trace of herself," Mohammad Baqer Olfat, the Qazvin prosecutor, told Iranian journalists.

*****

Police said she confessed in custody to killing four such women in Qazvin since January, claiming to have been driven by a desperate need for money after chalking up debts of more than 16,000 [pounds sterling]. After offering her victims a lift, Mahin allegedly gave them fruit juice which she had spiked with an anaesthetic to knock them out. She would then suffocate them before stealing their jewellery and other possessions and dumping the bodies in secluded spots. One victim was beaten to death with an iron bar after regaining consciousness.

Which Christie novels Mahin studied has not yet been revealed, though many of the books describe killers using drugs. Christie's novels, some of which depict unsolved murders, are highly popular among Iranians. The writer, who died in 1976, visited Iran several times and used it as the setting for one of her stories, The House at Shiraz.

She was caught after being stopped for a minor traffic offense. After apparently being so careful to stay ahead of the police, it seems that the most mundane of transgressions, a road traffic offence, alerted detectives and led to her arrest. One of her victims who got away helped the police identify her. The whole thing is just unbelievably creepy.

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The Jewel of Medina Author Speaks Out Against Censorship

Wed, 20 May 2009 09:00:00 EST

Sherry Jones, the author of the novel The Jewel of Medina, is speaking out against censorship of her book which details the life of the child bride of the Prophet Muhammad. The book was originally to be published by Random House for a six figure advance, but threats from Muslim extremists caused Random House to drop the project. Then, her British publisher Gibson Square backed out after a firebomb attack on their offices. The attackers were caught and have been sentenced. But Jones' book is now without a publisher.

Jones has now revealed on her blog that despite attempts to find a new UK distributor for The Jewel of Medina, "everyone, it seems, is too afraid". "Although the extremists lost in court, they have apparently won where it really counts - in the UK's book stores," she wrote. "The 'thugs' have accomplished their task - and freedom of speech, the first freedom to go when fascism gets a foothold, has taken a blow in the western world."

She called on "the people of Great Britain" to "speak out against those who are limiting their right to read, think, speak, listen, debate, discuss, criticise". "I hope the people of the UK can find the power, and the courage, to raise an outcry against censorship," she said. "Now it's time for the rest of us, including moderate Muslims and the press, who cherish our culture and our freedom, to raise a cry louder than that of radicals, so we don't lose that most precious, and crucial, of freedoms."

Jones has repeatedly said that the book is not derogatory towards the Prophet or his wife, but her comments fell upon deaf ears of extremists who are now succeeding in censoring the book. The entire situation is appalling; the fact that this criminal group has the power to stop this book does not bode well for the freedom of authors to write and publish books on controversial topics.

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Ruth Padel Named First Female Oxford Professor of Poetry

Tue, 19 May 2009 16:00:00 EST

After all the drama and angst, Ruth Padel has been voted in as the first female Oxford Professor of Poetry.

"I should like to thank the university and the people who voted for me," Ms. Padel said. "I feel honored and humbled to be given this responsibility and shall try to carry it out as well as I can. My backers based their support for me on what they felt I could offer poetry and students. Now I shall do my best to fulfill their trust." Ms. Padel's selection follows close on the heels of Carol Ann Duffy's appointment as Britain's poet laureate; that post had been held by male writers for 341 years.

Congratulations to Professor Padel! You can read a profile of Professor Padel's life and work here.

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Cormac McCarthy Archive Opens in San Marcos

Mon, 18 May 2009 21:00:00 EST

A complete archive of Cormac McCarthy's work is going on display at the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos.

The Pulitzer prize-winning author's notes, handwritten drafts and correspondence for each of his 10 novels are included in the archive at the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos. Also featured in the 98-box archive, which spans McCarthy's literary career from 1964 to 2007, is his 1994 play The Stonemason, about an African-American family in Louisville, Kentucky, and four screenplays, including No Country for Old Men - which McCarthy started as a screenplay in 1984 and adapted into a novel 20 years later.

The author, who guards his privacy carefully, admitted in a rare interview with the New York Times in 1992 that he'd sent his debut The Orchard Keeper to Random House because "it was the only publisher I had heard of". Letters in the archive show McCarthy expressing his gladness that the "book is acceptable to [Random House]", and discussing inconsistencies and changes that needed to be made to the book.

There are maps and letters from experts who assisted McCarthy with questions such as "how a competent, rural physician might handle a gunshot wound." His unfinished novel, The Passenger is also in the collection, although it will not be displayed until it is published. The amazing archive also contains an unproduced screenplay. It's a real treasure trove for future Cormac McCarthy scholars.

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Voting for Oxford Poetry Professor Going On, Despite Protests

Fri, 15 May 2009 18:40:00 EST

Despite many calls for a postponement, the race for the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry is going forward, as planned. After the withdrawal from the race by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott over alleged sexual harassment claims, many felt that the remaining candidates weren't up to snuff and demanded a postponement of the voting. But those voices were overruled.

The race for the 300-year-old post of Oxford poetry professor, the most important academic poetry position in the UK, is expected to be decided late this afternoon despite calls from a growing group of Oxford students and graduates, headed by the secretary of the Oxford University Poetry Society, for it to be suspended.

Oxford University graduates, who vote for their choice of professor, have been left with just two candidates to choose between - British poet Ruth Padel, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and Indian poet and critic Arvind Mehrotra - following the withdrawal of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott at the start of this week.

*****

Oxford Poetry Society secretary Eloise Stonborough said that responses from students, graduates and fellows backing her call for the current candidates to withdraw and allow nominations to be reopened had been pouring in on Friday. She believes that unless the election is suspended, the "importance and dignity" of the professorship, held in the past by Matthew Arnold, Seamus Heaney and WH Auden, will be damaged.

*****

Even one of Padel's own nominators, philosophy professor AC Grayling, believes the election should be postponed, and wrote to his candidate asking her to withdraw in protest. "To win because anonymous and malicious persons witch-hunted Walcott out of the race would be a hollow and tainted thing," he wrote in a blog for the Guardian. "The election for professor of poetry at Oxford is about poetry, not morals. Plenty of poets in the past have behaved very badly in all sorts of ways, and far worse than Walcott is said to have done. Do we refuse to read them therefore? That is, do we silence their voices, exclude them, bar them, on the grounds that they did those things? No, we do not."

Never before has the selection of the Oxford poetry professor been fraught with such drama. Emotions are running quite high. Some voters are threatening to abstain, others are determined to vote. And there have been editorials in the major British newspapers arguing about what to do. If only Americans could get so worked up over poetry and the selection of the next poetry professor. What a lovely thing that would be.

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Derek Walcott Withdraws from Oxford Poetry Election Over Sexual Harassment Allegations

Thu, 14 May 2009 22:00:00 EST

Derek Walcott has now withdrawn from the race to become the next Oxford Professor of Poetry. Allegations of sexual harassment against former students have followed Walcott and instigated quite the scandal.

Three days after winning the presidential election, Barack Obama was spotted in Chicago carrying the 500-page volume of Derek Walcott's collected poems. You wonder if he would let himself be seen holding that book now. Earlier this week, Walcott felt compelled to withdraw from the race to replace Christopher Ricks as the £6,901-a-year Oxford Professor of Poetry, after what one of his backers described as an "insulting smear campaign".

Some 200 academics recently received a dossier detailing sexual harassment claims made against Walcott. The dossier included pages from a 1984 book, The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus by Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner, which details the sexual harassment claim made by a Harvard student against Walcott (upon which he has never commented). It also included a 1996 allegation made by Nicole Niemi, a Boston University student and member of Walcott's creative writing class. Niemi, now a writer using the name NM Kelby, sued Walcott for alleged sexual harassment and "offensive sexual physical contact", demanding $500,000. The case was reportedly settled out of court.

There are two poets now up for the post: Ruth Padel, the great great granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and Indian poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. The election result will be announced after a vote of Oxford graduates. Walcott had this to say about Ruth Padel: "Ruth Padel is a gifted poet who will make a great Professor of Poetry. I look forward to hearing or reading her lectures if she is elected." She's the favorite now.

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Eden Ross Lipson Dead at 66

Wed, 13 May 2009 21:00:00 EST

Eden Ross Lipson, the former Children's Books Editor of The New York Times Book Review has died of pancreatic cancer. She was 66.

Lipson spent 31 years as an editor at the Book Review, and she was the children's book editor from 1984 until her retirement in 2005. She was only the third person to hold that position, created in 1935, says the New York Times.

Lipson was the author of The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children (Three Rivers Press), a reference guide to 1,001 titles, ranging from picture books to young adult novels. Roaring Brook Press in August will publish a children's book by Lipson called Applesauce Season, "about a family's tradition of making the dessert."

Lipson made frequent appearances on TV and radio to talk about children's literature, and strangers often stopped her at cocktail parties asking for book recommendations for their kids.

Our condolences to her family.

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Harlan Ellison Turns Down Cleveland Arts Prize

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:00:00 EST

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a story about how science fiction author Harlan Ellison was nominated for the local Cleveland Arts Prize but ended up turning it down and calling it a "sham" and a "fraud." Harlan Ellison was upset they would not pay his travel expenses and that he would only be allowed three minutes for his acceptance speech.

Nominated several times over the years for a Cleveland Arts Prize, celebrated author and Cleveland native Harlan Ellison finally was awarded a prize for lifetime achievement this year. But he turned it down.

Ellison objected to having to pay for his and his wife's travel and lodging expenses from their Los Angeles home to Cleveland for the awards event in June.

He also objected to an unsigned letter he received from Cleveland Arts Prize Executive Director Marcie Bergman, which stated he would have only three minutes for his remarks.

The Cleveland Arts Prize Executive Director Marcie Bergman told the Plain Dealer that the nonprofit doesn't have the budget to pay the winning author's travel expenses. It doesn't like a very pleasant situation for anyone involved.

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Jodi Picoult Blasts Dan Brown's Writing Skills

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:00:00 EST

With the release of the film version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons this Friday, some authors are taking the opportunity once again to slam Dan Brown's writing. Jodi Picoult let fly in the Daily Mail saying that Brown's The Da Vinci Code was poorly written.

Graciously allowing that she doesn't "deny Dan Brown any of his success", Picoult went on to pick apart Brown's best-known novel, declaring that the code-cracking thriller left her cold. "I don't understand the hype over such a poorly written novel - and as an author who does all her own research, I know better than to consider myself an expert in the field I am writing about," she told the Daily Mail. "I believe this was an error in judgment for this particular author."

Picoult, sales of whose page-turning novels of families in crisis have made her a worldwide bestseller, is not the first author to have given Brown a rough ride. Salman Rushdie memorably laid into him in lecture he gave at the University of Kansas in 2005, during which he called The Da Vinci Code "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name". The Booker prize winner did, however, allow that despite the apparent paucity of his writing, Brown should be allowed to continue living. "Even Dan Brown must live," he said. "Preferably not write, but live."

Writers are entitled to their opinions about their peers' work, but the criticism of Dan Brown seems especially mean spirited to us. Then again, is there another author on the planet that Salman Rushdie does think is worthy of his time?

Dan's sequel to The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is available for pre-order at Amazon.com for a very nice discount. We can't wait to read it.

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Software Programs Attempt to Analyze the Emotion in Our Writing

Sat, 9 May 2009 18:00:00 EST

New Scientist has an interesting article about how the latest software aims to analyze the emotion in our onlnie writing, including our blog posts and tweets. Currently, this "sentiment analysis" software is being used by marketers to analyze consumers' reaction to products. The article says that software from a company named Sentimine analyzed people's updates on Twitter to see how they felt about Amazon.com's new Kindle DX. Sentimine's software found that 89% of the updates were neutral, 7% were positive and 4% were negative.

Sentimine's software determined that most of the 1500 messages it analysed (89 per cent) were "neutral", while 7 per cent were "positive" and 4 per cent "negative".

Sentimine says a previous analysis showed that two-thirds of blog posts reacting to Apple's MacBook Air were positive about its features - but a similar proportion were negative about its price.

Another software tool that analyzes emotional content is a product called JuLiA. JuLiA has been trained to detect the semantics of abusiveness in user-generated content such as blog comments and message board posts. New Scientist says the developers are also trying to tweak JuLiA so it can find online discussion that is "intelligent, sarcastic, or political in tone."

It's difficult to see how a computer program could know when you are being sarcastic. Even humans sometimes have trouble ascertaining when someone else is being sarcastic. Many people use an emoticon after an instant message or a tweet to express how they are feeling and to help make sure their message is understood by the reader.

(via Newser)

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Phillips Pioneers New Color E-Ink Technology

Fri, 8 May 2009 18:00:00 EST

Phillips is working on creating color e-ink so that media readers (like the Kindle, which is only black and white) will be able to display full color pages.

A new approach developed by Philips now offers fresh hope for color e-paper displays that are so bright and clear that even traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) will pale in comparison. According to Kars-Michiel Lenssen, who headed the work at Philips Research, based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, the new approach has the potential to create color images that are three times brighter than displays that use color filters, including LCDs. "This is the closest an electronic-paper technology ever got to printed paper," he says.

Color displays normally require four subpixels--red, green, blue, and white--to create each full-color pixel. "That costs you in terms of resolution," says Pieter van Lieshout, head of product research and development for Polymer Vision, which was spun off from Philips Electronics three years ago to develop flexible electronic-paper displays.

The other consequence of using a color filter is that it reduces the brightness of a display, says Sri Peruvemba, vice president of marketing at E-Ink, in Cambridge, MA, which was spun out of research at MIT in 1997. For example, making the entire screen red using subpixels means that only a quarter of the screen will actually be red. In contrast, Philips Research's approach involves turning the traditional electronic-paper pixel quite literally on its side, in order to tune it to different shades of the spectrum.

Philips's new technique is called in-plane electrophoretics. It suspends colored particles in a clear liquid and moves them horizontally. The pixels are made up of microcapsule chambers, each of which contains either yellow, cyan, magenta and black. The technology is in its infancy, but it's clear that in the not too distant future, there will be full color ebook and magazine readers.

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Napoleon Bonaparte's Romance Novella to be Published for First Time

Thu, 7 May 2009 18:00:00 EST

A long lost romantic novella written by Napoleon Bonaparte has finally been translated and will be published. The book was written long before he conquered half the world and crowned himself Emperor of France.

"I feel numb. Come to me without delay," may not have quite the same - panting ardour as his famous love letters, but then Napoleon had not yet met his Josephine when he wrote the words. There's more where that came from, 40 pages more. The first English version of the pieced-together fragments of his long lost novella, Clisson and Eugenie, is due out this autumn, the Bookseller magazine reveals today. Two years ago when the lost first page resurfaced and was identified by Peter Hicks, an English expert on - Napoleon responsible for the translation, it was sold at auction for £17,000.

Napoleon turned to literature, or at least an early precursor of chick-lit, at a wretched time when he seemed to have stalled his glorious career and lost his woman. In the years of his power and glory, when he was painted by artists including Ingres as a god-like figure shining in cloth of gold, he kept the unfinished tale of a brilliant young soldier who loves tumultuously, loses, and dies heroically in battle "pierced by a thousand blows". Napoleon wrote it when he was a brilliant, youngish soldier tumultuously in love.

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Jane Aitken, director of Gallic, insists the book will reveal Napoleon as "an accomplished writer of fiction". "Although the piece of writing is short, it does cast an extraordinary light on Napoleon, who is someone we all think we know. We in Britain think of him as a -military man, but here we see the -romantic side to him."

The manuscript was among Napoleon's belongings when he died and the pages became scattered as different people made off with them. It took scholars years to piece together the handwritten novella which provides a very interesting look at the romantic side of the man who conquered half the world.

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Ruth Rendell Denies Rumors She's Killing Off Inspector Wexford

Wed, 6 May 2009 15:40:00 EST

Ruth Rendell's fans were so upset at the rumor that she was finished writing the Inspector Wexford novels, that she had to issue a statement denying the rumors of the bestselling series' death. The legendary mystery writer says that Wexford is alive and well, and ready to do more detecting.

A report in the Telegraph yesterday suggested that Rendell, 79, didn't want to write any more Wexford novels after this autumn's publication of The Monster in the Box, her 22nd mystery featuring Detective Chief Inspector Reg Wexford. But her longtime editor, Paul Sidey at Hutchinson, said this morning that Wexford was still "living and breathing".

"I was rather surprised to hear the news, and having just spoken to Ruth she said nothing of the kind," he said. "So on it goes. I'm in my 27th year as her editor and I'd be very disappointed to lose Reggie from my life."

The Monster in the Box is published this October and casts a new light on the diligent inspector who first appeared in Rendell's 1964 debut From Doon with Death, seeing him grapple with an unsolved mystery from his past when the suspected killer returns to Kingsmarkham. Rendell also depicts Wexford's courtship of the woman who would later become his wife. "It does reframe the Wexford story. You see him in his early years as a young policeman, meeting his wife-to-be. It's quite clever the way she's used a contemporary story and framed it with something which happened in his early years. It gives another view on the whole Wexford story," said Sidey.

Well, that's a relief. We look forward to this new take on the Wexford mythos.

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Feminist Author Marilyn French Dead at 79

Tue, 5 May 2009 21:00:00 EST

Feminist author Marilyn French has died. She was 79. Her debut novel, The Women's Room, sold 20 million copies when it was first published in 1977. She died from heart disease at a hospital in New York City.

Ms. French, an erudite and angry writer, blamed men for the condition of women throughout the centuries, a stance that brought her sharply divided critical attention. Although many feminists lauded her for writing one of the most influential novels of the emerging feminist movement, others outside the movement charged that her books were belligerent and artless.

"In a way, 'The Women's Room' was, to a particular part of the women's movement, what Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' was to the civil rights community," feminist Gloria Steinem said yesterday. "She was always so far ahead because she wasn't writing about reforms around the edges. Her theories were big and exciting, and they definitely appeal to younger women who hear about them."

The novel centered on a repressed young woman described by one critic as "expectant in the 40s, submissive in the 50s, enraged in the 60s . . . in the 70s independent but somehow unstrung, not yet fully composed after all" she'd been through. Partly autobiographical, the book was acclaimed by women eager to see their lives in print, and it was translated into 20 languages.

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"They said I was a man hater, and I never defended myself against that, because I do believe that men are to blame for the condition of women," Ms. French told London's Guardian newspaper in 2006. "Even men who are not actively keeping women down, but are profiting from women's position, or who don't mind things being the way they are -- they are responsible too. I don't hate men . . . but men are responsible for the situation of women."

Although Ms. French's best-selling novel brought her to public attention, her later books cemented her role as one of the leading Second Wave feminist writers on the issue of gender inequality. "Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals" (1985) was "nothing less than a history of the world (from the cavewomen to the Sandinistas) as seen through the critical prism of contemporary feminism," wrote Stanford University history professor Paul Robinson, in a Washington Post review.

Her latest novel, The Love Children will be published in the fall and she was working on her memoir when she died. Our condolences to her family.

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Cormac McCarthy Wins PEN/Saul Bellow Lifetime Achievement Award

Mon, 4 May 2009 15:40:00 EST

Cormac McCarthy has won another literary honor. He has been awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for lifetime achievement in American fiction. The award carries a cash prize of $25,000.

McCarthy won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, a National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses, and saw the film adaptation of No Country for Old Men win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Other awards form the PEN American Center, included a nonfiction award for The bin Ladens by Steve Coll and citations to 20 other authors for achievement in short fiction. Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer and Ha Jin were among those honored.

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U.S. Poet Reported Missing in Japan

Fri, 1 May 2009 15:00:00 EST

American poet and author Craig Arnold, 41, has gone missing during an expedition to a tropical Japanese island. Arnold is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wyoming and was doing research for his new book on volcanoes when he went missing on the island of Kuchinoerabu-jima in Southern Japan.

Japanese law only requires authorities to look for missing people for three days but University of Wyoming officials say the search has been extended through Sunday. Arnold went for a hike up the volcano around mid-afternoon Monday, shortly after arriving at the island by ferry and checking in at an inn, according to his brother, Chris Arnold, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

When Arnold hadn't returned by 8 p.m., the inn staff went looking for him. They reported him missing at 9 p.m., and a formal search began that night. Forty people, dogs and a helicopter joined the following day's search. Police reported finding Arnold's tracks on a trail up the volcano but they couldn't find any tracks coming down. The island is about 11 kilometres long by about five wide and dominated by an 550-metre volcano that last erupted in 1980.

Dense vegetation covers much of the island but the area near the caldera, the volcanic crater, is bare. Japanese authorities speculate that after emerging at the top, Arnold may have had difficulty finding the trail again to get back down the volcano, Chris Arnold said.

The island's terrain makes helicopter searches impractical, so they are using teams to search the island on foot. Arnold has two award-winning poetry collections, Shells and Made Flesh. He is an experienced hiker, traveler and amateur vulcanologist. We hope they find him soon.

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