LitPundit - Lit Round-up

Man Booker Judges’ List and more

Pundit — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:44:48 GMT

14 authors from 12 countries have made it on to Judges’ List of the Man Booker Prize 2009, with seven of the authors being writers in translation. You can find the list here. On the other hand, American authors dominated the longlist of the Orange fiction award.

The shortlist for the 2009 Arthur C Clarke Award was also announced this week, consisting of six works, with the early frontrunner being the Neal Stephenson for Anathem.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney was awarded the £40,000 David Cohen prize in recognition of the "sheer scale" of his literary achievements.

His fellow poet and chair of the award's judges, poet laureate Andrew Motion, honoured Heaney for a body of poetry that over the past 40 years has "crystallised the story of our times, in language which has bravely and memorably continued to extend its imaginative reach", and for his critical writing, his translations and his lecturing, which "have invigorated the whole wider world of poetry".

Exclusive extracts, reading lists etc.

Pundit — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 07:11:28 GMT

The New York Review of Books carried an excerpt from J.M. Coetzee's new novel, Diary of a Bad Year, to be published in January 2008 while The Independent carried an exclusive extract of "Mere Anarchy" by Woody Allen.

The storySouth 2007 Million Writers Award for Fiction for best online short story was judged as "Urchins, While Swimming" by Catherynne M. Valente. Paolo Coelho's most famous work "The Alchemist" is heading for the big screen, with Laurence Fishburne directing the effort. July issue of Words Without Borders is out. Gunter Grass meets the translators of the new translation of "Tin Drum".

From the world of book lists

Neil Griffiths' top 10 outsider books
The Sunday Times list of 100 best holiday reads
Melissa Katsoulis looks at what our critics have enjoyed most this year

Rushdie knighted, latest issues and more

Pundit — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 04:58:48 GMT

Booker of Bookers author and staunch secularist Salman Rushdie was knighted by the Queen of England.

Stephen Hawking is said to be writing a children's book, while Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles is reported to have cast a "international roster of stars" for the screen adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel Blindness.

Latest issue of Book Forums is out, featuring among other, a writers' list of their favorite book-to-film adaptations. Latest issue of Words Without Borders has also been released. J.K. Rowling will give a reading from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. at midnight on July 21 at National History Museum in London.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" wins yet again, this time the 2006 Believer Book Awards. Speaking of awards, the 2007 Locus Awards winners have been announced, with Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" winning Best Science Fiction Novel.

Orange Prize, weirdness and more

Pundit — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:17:57 GMT

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins 2007 Orange Prize for her book "Half of a Yellow Sun" while Karen Connelly gets the New Writer award for The Lizard Cage.

Antoine saw me driving around in that car, with my bad keyboard-player from the Cure hair and, 20 years later, give or take, rePsih8u_2membered it and put it in his book. Now that, my friends, is fucking weird.

The weirdness continues.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez at last journeys home, while Iain Banks is interviewed on topics ranging from politics to SF (of course!).

"I wouldn't move to the United States now any more than I'd have moved to Germany in the mid-30s." Surely he can't be looking forward to explaining that quote to readers in Des Moines? "Let's just say that the character who says that, who is more articulate than I will ever be, doesn't have the same views as me. But no, I'm not."

A bit, but oh well

Pundit — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:37:59 GMT

Tom Wayne of Prospero's Books started a storm by creating a bonfire of second hand books because he didn't have place to store them and other thrift shops and libraries could not take them in since they were also full.

Wayne said he has seen fewer customers in recent years as people more often get their information from television or the Internet. He pointed to a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982.

Sorted Books project looks interesting, at least the pictures are sure to draw a chuckle.

The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom.

Want to know what some of the authors like Dave Eggers, Ursula K. Le Guin and Nicole Krauss have been reading? Now you can!