Bookbabble Episode 6: What’re You Reading For?
Recorded 22 May 2008 Babblers: Bjorn, Lars, Gem, Donny Synopsis:
This episode was a leisurely-paced show where the babblers mull about what would constitute a good book. A great many books were mentioned in this podcast, and you get a full short story thrown in for good measure! Also, our resident Harry Potter correspondent comes up with the goods again, and Bjorn is true to form with his thought-provoking idle rambling.
Books mentioned in this episode:
How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C Foster
How to Read a Novel: A User’s Guide, John Sutherland
A Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Little Friend, Donna Tartt
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Wuthering Heights
Gone with the Wind
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
Asylum Piece, Anna Kaven
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Jose Saramago
Demian, Herman Hesse
Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
Legends
Legends II
The Overcoat, Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
White Nights, Doestoyevsky
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Black Monk, Anton Chekov
Chess, Stefan Zweig
The Death of Ivan Illyich
Answer, Friedich Brown
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
Cutting It Short, Bohumil Hrabal
A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (Myths, The) by Victor Pelevin and Andrew Bromfield
The Sea, John Banville
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Found this in Jeff Vandermeer’s blog: The Guardian has suggested very interesting holiday spots for the coming summer months in England, and they are right between the covers of some of the best fantasy books you will find.
I’ve just learned that there is a new social networking site in the works. Facebook and MySpace haters can put your flamethrowers down - it’s for writers and booklovers, and it’s launching in sometime in 2008. This site is called Authonomy, and created by HarperCollins.
In a nutshell: we’ll be asking writers to upload as much of their manuscript as they choose to an online platform for visitors to read, review, and talk about. And we’ll be using the public’s recommendations to search out the cream of the crop – and showcasing those titles to the book world at large.
And apparently this stems from the fact that the search for quality writers is getting more and more difficult.
Certainly the hunger for fresh writing remains as strong as ever – it’s not for want of enthusiasm that the ‘slush pile’ (as the stacks of new manuscripts are termed) receives such scant regard from so many in the business.
It’s more that amidst the flurry of proposals that fill the daily mail bag (proposals that vary quite wildly in quality) the chance of the right book landing on the right desk - and at the right time - has long been creeping perilously close to zero.
I find this experiment completely fascinating. A renowned publisher is turning to the internet to find talent in a transparent manner, and attempting to merge the old methods of traditional publishing with the tools that are available in this era of technological advancement.
It’s currently in beta, but you can sign up for consideration to get a beta invite.
Apparently there is a bubbling discontent on the recently announced Best of Booker shortlist. Not everyone was entirely happy with the selection of the final selection, and Scott Pack, a former head buyer at Waterstone’s, gathered up a judging panel and set up The Best of the Rest of the Booker. Like the Man Booker Prize counterpart, Pack invites everyone to go to the site and vote for one of the alternatives. He has promised to bake a cake for the winner.
The books are not only Booker winners, but also those that either made it to the shortlist or longlist that the panel had decided was perhaps more deserving of recognition. You can read a little more at Times Online.
The books are:
Amongst Women by John McGahern
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Master by Colm Toibin
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills
Waterland by Graham Swift
Amazingly, The Life of Pi didn’t even make it to this shortlist. Hmm.
Go and vote!
(Many thanks to one of my favourite book news site: Bibliobibuli for this bit of news).
Fresh off the announcement that he’s taken over the mantle as the new writer for Fleming’s iconic James Bond, Sebastian Faulks has been interviewed over at The Sunday Times. Apparently he set this story in 1967. Somehow the idea of a superspy that I’ve always associated with hi tech cars, hi tech gadgets and hi tech everything else running around in 1967 it at once intriguing and strange. The kind of feeling you get when you think back to the campiness of Dick Tracy, and how you liked it then.
Bookbabble Episode 5: The FrankenRitchie
Recorded 14 May 2008 Babblers: Bjorn, Lars, Gem, Donny Synopsis: The group takes a look at self-publishing, from Dickens’s day to the present day incarnation, and briefly examines what has changed in terms of perception and technology. Gem braves the waters to sample celebrity-written fiction, and lives to tell the tale. Also discussed: the trailblazer of a novel that is Frankenstein, what Mary Shelley had in common with Nicole Ritchie, the Best of the Booker shortlist, the 10 most challenged books in 2007 and a fanboy gush on Guy Gavriel Kay.
On a cold winter’s night, in the long lost days of my wasted youth, I stumbled across a god. He had a Scottish accent and eyes that instantly warmed the cold night away and turned me into a believer. So began my love affair with all things Bond.
In between watching the films, I began to read the books and completed all those written by Ian Fleming and a couple by John Gardner. Like with most of the things we read in our youth, I no longer have the patience for Bond books - I thoroughly enjoyed them at the time but even back then they couldn’t compare to the likes of Dickens and Hardy, both of whom I was discovering at the time.
As we know, Sebastian Faulks is the author of the new Bond book - The Devil May Care. Faulks is an established writer with well loved novels like Birdsong and Charlotte Gray under his belt, perhaps not a conventional choice.
At first, I wasn’t going to bother reading The Devil May Care, after all I have grown out of that phase and there are so many books old and new that I would rather read. Then I realized that I still enjoy the movies, so why have I stopped reading the books? Is a writer of Faulks’ calibre, and I go only by reputation here, tempting enough for me to return to 007? The answers to those questions are quite simple; I am a snob and yes, Faulks might just tempt me back, ergo I am an even bigger snob.
Anyway the point of this post was to say that the new Bond book is published on the 28th of May and a ’spectacular’ launch event is planned for the 27th, the details of of which you can find by clicking here.
Yes, we’re still around. This week’s release will shift towards later this week, as we only did our recording on Wed (my time). I’ll upload it soonest.
Find out what Mary Shelley has in common with Nicole Ritchie!
Bookbabble Episode 4: Ebooks? That’s doolally!
Recorded 3 May 2008 Babblers: Lars, Gem, Donny Synopsis:
Lars invites the others to ponder on the importance of language, of the responsibilities of translators and of the English language’s propensity to adapt words from other languages into its own. Also discussed are the good and bad about ebooks, and if it could be the future of reading. Discover Gem’s secret feelings for the Kindle. Other chitchat include finding love in the library, mobile bookstores and Donny’s book warehouse sales haul! Show Length: 53:40mins Links:
