|
|
July 11th, 2008
Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children has won
the “Best of the Booker” prize. The prize was to mark the 40th anniversary of the prestigious book prize.
“Midnight’s Children” won the Booker Prize in 1981, and the Indian-born writer was hot favorite to take the award decided by the public from a shortlist of six in an online poll.
The 61-year-old, whose 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” outraged many Muslims and prompted death threats against him, also won the 25th anniversary Booker prize in 1993.
“I think it was an extraordinary shortlist and it was an honor to be on it,” Rushdie said in a recorded message from the United States, where he is on a book tour.
His sons, Zafar and Milan, accepted a trophy in London on his behalf, and the author said it was apt that “my genuine children (are) accepting a prize for my imaginary children.”
Milan, the youngest, added: “I’m really looking forward to reading it when I’m older. Well done Dad.”
Victoria Glendinning, chair of the panel who drew up a shortlist, said the entries were dominated by themes of the end of empire and two world wars.
“These are the nettles we have been compelled to attempt and grasp,” she told reporters.
But there was some criticism of the award, partly because the choice was narrowed to just six nominees.
“It’s an artificial exercise, simply because the general public only got to pick from six of the previous winners,” said Jonathan Ruppin, promotions manager at Foyles bookshop.
Readers were able to vote on a brief list, which consisted of Rushdie’s book,
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker, Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell and The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer. 8,000 people from all over the world voted: Rushdie received 36% of the vote.
Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds
Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
July 10th, 2008
The practice of “age banding” — listing the suitable age of reader for children’s books — has infuriated British authors who say that age banding is inappropriate. J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman are just two of the bestselling authors who oppose age-banding. The Publishers Association issued a pledge saying that it would first consult with the author, but the authors aren’t convinced.
The statement from the Publishers Association follows a meeting it had last week with the Society of Authors and Pullman, representing the campaign against age banding.
Speaking today, Pullman was unconvinced: “Our point of view remains that consultation is not enough,” he said. “We could consult and consult to the point of nausea and publishers could still turn acircular and insist that a book be banded.”
For the Publishers Association, Children’s Book Group secretary Kate Bostock conceded that one new book, Keith Gray’s Ostwealthy Boys, had alalert been published with a teen logo by Random House against the author’s wishes. “It was a dreadful in-house mistake,” she said, “but that’s the only author affected”.
For the rest, Bostock said, “well over half of the books being published this autumn will have age guidance, but all of them have agreement from the authors.”
Many parents want age banding so they know if the material is suitable for young children or not. In the U.S., the publishers regularly list age guidance on children’s books, but it really has more to do with the reading level of the prose.
Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds
Advertisement: Plurk is a fun new microblogging service. You can get an invite here!
Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
July 8th, 2008
 The judges for the Frank O’Conner award generally issue a brief list. But this year they were so impressed with one book that they simply announced
it as the winner of the world’s third richest honor for a brief story collection. American author Jhumpa Lahiri will take the 35,000 Euro prize for her book, Unaccustomed Earth.
In what will be a shock to writers and publishers, Lahiri’s collection of eight stories examining different aspects of the Bengali migrant experience has seen off authors including Booker winners Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle. But the book is alalert a publishing sensation: published this spring, it went straight into the New York Times’s fiction charts at number one. It is an unprecedented feat for a brief story writer which the paper comparuddy to “a comet landing”, so rarely does a serious writer make this kind of commercial impact. Indeed, unusual success has been the hallmark of her career since she published her first book of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, in 1999, winning the Pulitzer prize and selling 600,000 copies - another very scarce feat.
Lahiri will head off to Cork, Ireland to pick up the award at the end of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story festival on September 21, 2008. Jhumpa was born in England, but moved to the United States when she was three. She grew up in the U.S. and holds multiple degrees from Boston University, including a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has also won a Pulitzer Prize and the O. Henry Award. Congratulations, Jhumpa!
Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds
Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
July 8th, 2008
  Little, Brown © 2007, 291 pages
Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon starts with a murder, a clumsy, unpremeditated affair that happens almost naturally. It was easy, Helen Knightly tells us in the book’s first sentence:
“When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.”
It’s a sentence that makes you want to read more. The book continues:
“Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother’s core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers. She had been gorgeous when my father met her and still capable of love when I became their late-in-life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered.”
One paragraph in and it’s clear that you’re in for something special.
What follows that delicious opening is the story of how Helen came to kill her mother–the toll that Claire’s mental illness took on the family over decades, its unexpected consequences, the mental abuse, the exhausting intensity of Helen’s love-hate relationship with her mother. This back story is interspersed with the continuing story of what’s going on in the present: what Helen does immediately after the murder (whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong), the eventual discovery of the body by outsiders.
That Helen commits murder so clumsily, with only the most amateurish attempt made to cover it up, is a awesome strength of the book, I think. This is the sort of mess that a genuine person might make of matricide. And while Helen’s behavior after the fact seems bizarre, that too lends the story credence. Who in such circumstances would be fully sane?
While The Almost Moon is not a suspense novel per se, it is certainly suspenseful. What will become of Helen, given the murder investigation and her own feelings of…not quite remorse, is never clear, not until the book’s last page. And when it comes the ending is, really, just right. This one’s highly recommended.
Tags: Alice Sebold, book reviews, books, The Almost Moon
Original post by Debra Hamel
« Past Entries Next Entries »
|
|
|
