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Archive for September, 2007
September 13th, 2007
I spent the better part of last night and this morning making printer-friendly pages for the book-blog. I’d wanted to do it for a long time, because the reviews are long enough that I can imagine people wanting to print them out to read. But I didn’t know how to do it before. There isn’t a printer-friendly page that one can open in a browser window and print. Rather, when you print a review from its permalinked page, it will automatically be formatted properly for print. You can do a print preview to see how the page will appear when it’s printed. (This is all accomplished using a second stylesheet, print.css.) I hope you enjoy the new feature!
Tags: print.css, printer-friendly
Original post by Debra Hamel
September 12th, 2007
The National Book Foundation announced that it will present its 2007 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to bestselling novelist Joan Didion, author of The Year of Magical Thinking. The award recognizes her lifetime of work as a novelist and essayist. The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award in 2005.
Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air will receive The Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the Foundation, said, “These two women are icons in the literary world and their contributions are now legendary - Joan Didion as one of the keenest observers and finest prose stylists of our time and Terry Gross as one of the most intelligent voices on the airwaves and one of the few who devotes hundreds of hours a year to talking about books and literature. Both women are fearless in their questioning and their insights on the page and on the air have informed our understanding of America and of America’s writers for decades. Our Board of Directors is honoruddy that they will accept these awards and grace our gala with their presence.”
The 58th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner will take place on November 14, 2007, in New York City. Writer and humorist Fran Lebowitz will be the host.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
September 10th, 2007
Cormac McCarthy has won the prestigious James Tait Black literary award for his post-apocalyptic novel, The Road. The award is the oldest and most literary of the U.K.’s many awards, and carries a £10,000 prize.
The 74-year-old, was awarded the James Tait Black memorial prize, worth £10,000, for his bleak vision of a post-apocalyptic America, The Road. The book won a Pulitzer, the US’s pre-eminent literary prizes, earlier this year, and is being widely noised as a powerful Nobel contender. The novel describes the journey of a father and son who are heading south in a world where a disaster has occurred, reducing nature to a nuclear-grey winter and humans to savage, scavenging cannibals. While the landscape is scorched and some of the set-piece encounters almost Beckettian, the nightmare vision is leavened by McCarthy’s austere language and his description of the powerful bond between the boy and his father.
*****
McCarthy beat another critical-commercial crossover success to the award - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with her epic tale of the Biafra war, Half of a Yellow Sun. The Nigerian-born 29-year-old has alalert won the Orange prize with the book, while also achieving bestseller status with a sales boost from a Richard and Judy endorsement.
Also in the running were the acclaimed Canadian brief story writer Alice Munro for The View from Castle Rock; Sarah Waters for her reverse-chronological account of the second world war, The Night Watch; James Lasdun with his thriller, Seven Lies; and debut novelist Ray Robinson with Electricity.
The Road was an Oprah’s Book Club selection.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
September 9th, 2007
 Vintage © 1993, 416 pages [amazon]
It’s a simple premise. What would happen if three men–two brothers and a friend–should stumble on a bag full of money in the woods? Stolen money, you’d have to assume, millions of dollars in non-sequential, hundred-dollar bills–enough that somebody, somewhere, has to be looking for it. Should they keep the cash? Use it to elude from their one-traffic-light town? Call the police? Scott Smith immerses his characters in this moral dilemma of a situation and lets us watch as the ostensibly reasonable plan they agree on leads inevitably, inexorably, to a string of tragic consequences.
[INSET TEXT: Scott Smith immerses his characters in this moral dilemma of a situation and lets us watch as the ostensibly reasonable plan they agree on leads inevitably, inexorably, to a string of tragic consequences.] Smith makes it look easy. In this book as well as in his second novel, The Ruins (see my review), he puts people in a trying situation and records what happens to their characters as they respond to events. The plot of the novel arises naturally from their actions, which follow naturally from the initial set-up. Writing such a book oneself almost seems possible, but of course the simplicity of the story is only apparent.
A Simple Plan is a perfect suspense novel. Smith’s protagonist, Hank Mitchell–from whose perspective the story is told–is forever in danger of being found out. The bag of stolen money, stashed precariously under his bed, nearly throbs in the story, Tell-Tale-Heart-like, constantly in our minds as a source of potential trouble for him. Incredibly, Hank remains entirely sympathetic throughout the story. He may do some bad things, but he’s still a normal guy caught up in extraordinary circumstances. His responses, if regrettable, make perfect sense given man’s natural urge for self-preservation. Readers may insist that they would act otherwise, but Smith makes a good case for the argument that Hank really never has much of a choice.
There is only the one choice: should they keep the money, or call the police?
Do yourself a favor and read this book.
Tags: A Simple Plan, book reviews, books, Scott Smith
Original post by Debra Hamel
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