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A little corner of We Love This Book

3rd November 2011 / / 0 Comments

If you’re reading this in the UK, you can now pick up the second issue of We Love This Book magazine from libraries and independent bookshops (or you can take out a subscription). There’s a lot of stuff in there, including Erin Morgenstern talking about The Night Circus; Ranulph Fiennes choosing his favourite books; a short story by Booker-longlisted Alison Pick; and a feature on music biographies.

And I must mention page 65, where’ll you’ll find some bloggers’ recommendations of non-fiction books: Jen from The Lady Loves Books on How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran; Pinda, the Bareback Reader talking about Simon Garfield’s Just My Type — and me, saying a few words in praise of Joe Moran’s On Roads.

October wrap-up

31st October 2011 / / 0 Comments

Book of the Month

This month, I read the winners of both the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian‘s Not the Booker Prize. The latter won out for me, so my pick of October’s reads is King Crow, Michael Stewart’s intriguing study of a teenage boy obsessed with birds, who gets led astray by a new friend.

Now here’s what else was on the blog this month…

Reviews

 

 

Features

One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four… and Five (again!)

30th October 2011 / / 4 Comments

Simon from Stuck in a Book has posted another edition of the reading-snapshot meme he created in May. I enjoyed answering it the first time, so I thought I’d do it again; as you’ll see, it is a full house of 2011 titles for me.

1) The book I’m currently reading

Robert Jackson Bennett, The Company Man

Bennett’s first novel, Mr Shivers, was one of my favourite reads of 2010, so naturally I have high hopes for this sophomore effort. I’m a little too early on in The Company Man to say firmly what it’s like, but so far it is an intriguing noir-ish novel set in an alternate 1919 with more advanced technology.

2) The last book I finished

The Guardian Review Book of Short Stories

Free with yesterday’s Guardian, this is an anthology of eleven original shorts from writers including Margaret Atwood, William Trevor, and Audrey Niffenegger. It’s a very diverse selection that almost certainly does have something for everyone. I particularly liked the stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Mohsin Hamid.

3) The next book I want to read

Helen Gordon, Landfall

It was way back in March when I saw Gordon read from her debut novel at the Penguin General bloggers’ evening. Between that and the blurb of Landfall, which promises “one of the most surprising and destabilizing endings you’ll have ever read, I’m keen to read the book as soon as possible.

4) The last book I bought

Ian R. MacLeod, Wake Up and Dream

I haven’t bought any books since FantasyCon at the start of the month, so I had to think back to work out which was the last. MacLeod’s follow-up to the Clarke-winning Song of Time imagines Clark Gable as a private eye in a ’40s Hollywood where the movies can be transmitted directly into your brain. That makes two books out of five on my list which are noir fantastications — quite an odd coincidence.

5) The last book I was given

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

A big thank-you to Bianca Winter for very kindly sending me her copy of this year’s Booker winner, which was also the subject of my latest review.

The Clarke Award and posterity

24th October 2011 / / 5 Comments

Last Friday, Adam Roberts posted a thought-provoking blog piece on literary awards, taking in the Man Booker Prize, the British Fantasy Awards, and more besides (do check it out if you’ve not read it). One of Adam’s key points is that it’s important for the selections made by awards to be able to stand the test of time; I was interested to see how successfully that happens, so I’m going to look at some award-winners and see how posterity has treated them. I’ll be concentrating on the Arthur C. Clarke Award, as that’s the one I feel in the best position to consider.

This is not about whether the books are good so much as how history seems to have judged them from the viewpoint of me as someone with a reasonably good knowledge (though not an expert knowledge) of fantastic fiction. I’ll be rating each Clarke winner for posterity using the following scale:

5 stars – an acknowledged and enduring classic, or the pinnacle of a distinguished career.

4 stars – a very important book, or a likely classic-in-the-making.

3 stars – a moderately significant novel, or a newer work whose long-term importance is still unclear.

2 stars – a book which has evidently not been treated well by posterity.

1 star – a work which has largely been forgotten.

I’ll try to be as objective as I can (but of course that is not going to be entirely possible). Here goes…

Continue reading

September wrap-up

3rd October 2011 / / 0 Comments

This wrap-up post is a little later than usual, because I was away at FantasyCon over the weekend. But here’s what happened on the blog in September.

Book of the Month

My favourite read this month is a work of non-fiction (something I don’t read as often as I’d like). Joe Moran’s On Roads: a Hidden History is a look at the British road system in the post-war years, but there’s so much more to it than might appear from that description.

Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

Features

World Book Night 2012 Top 100

13th September 2011 / / 8 Comments

This year, World Book Night asked people to nominate their top ten books, to create a list that would feed into the selection of next year’s titles to be given away. That list, the Top 100, was announced today, and here it is; in time-honoured book-blogging tradition, I’m emboldened the books I’ve read.

The 2012 Long List – ordered by number of votes:

1    To Kill a Mockingbird    Harper Lee
2    Pride and Prejudice    Jane Austen
3    The Book Thief    Markus Zusak   
4    Jane Eyre    Charlotte Bronte
5    The Time Traveler’s Wife    Audrey Niffenegger
6    The Lord of the Rings    J. R. R. Tolkien   
7    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy    Douglas Adams
8    Wuthering Heights    Emily Bronte
9    Rebecca    Daphne Du Maurier
10    The Kite Runner    Khaled Hosseini
11    American Gods    Neil Gaiman   
12    A Thousand Splendid Suns    Khaled Hosseini  
13    Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set    J. K. Rowling
14    The Shadow of the Wind    Carlos Ruiz Zafon
15    The Hobbit    J. R. R. Tolkien   
16    One Day    David Nicholls
17    Birdsong    Sebastian Faulks
18    The Help    Kathryn Stockett
19    Nineteen Eighty-Four    George Orwell
20    Good Omens    Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman  
21    The Notebook    Nicholas Sparks
22    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo    Stieg Larsson
23    The Handmaid’s Tale    Margaret Atwood   
24    The Great Gatsby    F. Scott Fitzgerald
25    Little Women    Louisa M. Alcott
26    Memoirs of a Geisha    Arthur Golden
27    The Lovely Bones    Alice Sebold
28    Atonement    Ian McEwan
29    Room    Emma Donoghue 
30    Catch-22    Joseph Heller
31    We Need to Talk About Kevin    Lionel Shriver
32    His Dark Materials    Philip Pullman  
33    Captain Corelli’s Mandolin    Louis De Bernieres
34    The Island    Victoria Hislop
35    Neverwhere    Neil Gaiman
36    The Poisonwood Bible    Barbara Kingsolver
37    The Catcher in the Rye    J. D. Salinger
38    Chocolat    Joanne Harris
39    Never Let Me Go    Kazuo Ishiguro
40    The Five People You Meet in Heaven    Mitch Albom
41    One Hundred Years of Solitude    Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42    Animal Farm    George Orwell
43    The Pillars of the Earth    Ken Follett
44    The Eyre Affair    Jasper Fforde    
45    Tess of the D’Urbervilles    Thomas Hardy
46    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory    Roald Dahl    
47    I Capture the Castle    Dodie Smith
48    The Wasp Factory    Iain Banks
49    Life of Pi    Yann Martel
50    The Road    Cormac McCarthy
51    Great Expectations    Charles Dickens
52    Dracula    Bram Stoker    
53    The Secret History    Donna Tartt  
54    Small Island    Andrea Levy
55    The Secret Garden    Frances Hodgson Burnett
56    Lord of the Flies    William Golding
57    Persuasion    Jane Austen
58    A Prayer for Owen Meany    John Irving    
59    Notes from a Small Island    Bill Bryson 
60    Watership Down    Richard Adams
61    Night Watch    Terry Pratchett   
62    Brave New World    Aldous Huxley
63    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time    Mark Haddon
64    Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell    Susanna Clarke
65    The Color Purple    Alice Walker
66    My Sister’s Keeper    Jodi Picoult
67    The Stand    Stephen King
68    Cloud Atlas    David Mitchell
69    The Master and Margarita    Mikhail Bulgakov
70    Anna Karenina    Leo Tolstoy
71    Cold Comfort Farm    Stella Gibbons
72    Frankenstein    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
73    The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society    Mary Ann Shaffer
74    The Picture of Dorian Gray    Oscar Wilde  
75    Gone with the Wind    Margaret Mitchell
76    The Graveyard Book    Neil Gaiman
77    The Woman in White    Wilkie Collins
78    The Princess Bride    William Goldman
79    A Suitable Boy    Vikram Seth
80    Perfume    Patrick Suskind    
81    The Count of Monte Cristo    Alexandre Dumas
82    The God of Small Things    Arundhati Roy
83    Middlemarch    George Eliot
84    Dune    Frank Herbert
85    Wolf Hall    Hilary Mantel
86    Stardust    Neil Gaiman    
87    Lolita    Vladimir Nabokov
88    Midnight’s Children    Salman Rushdie
89    Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone    J. K. Rowling  
90    Shantaram    Gregory David Roberts
91    The Remains of the Day    Kazuo Ishiguro
92    Possession: A Romance    A. S. Byatt
93    Tales of the City    Armistead Maupin
94    Kafka on the Shore    Haruki Murakami
95    The Magus    John Fowles
96    The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas    John Boyne
97    A Fine Balance    Rohinton Mistry
98    Alias Grace    Margaret Atwood
99    Norwegian Wood    Haruki Murakami
100    The Wind-up Bird Chronicle    Haruki Murakami

So, that’s 22 titles that I’ve read (and I’ve just started The Great Gatsby, which will make 23), which is a higher percentage than I usually manage with this kind of list.

As for the list itself:  it’s the typical mixture of established classics, more recent favourites, and talked-about titles from the past year or two, that one might expect — and, from that point of view, I think it’s not a bad list. Quite remarkable showing for Neil Gaiman, though, I must say, with a full five titles (including one co-authorship) on the list.

And if I were going to choose one of these books to give away? I think I’d go for Notes from a Small Island.

BBC National Short Story Award 2011 shortlist

9th September 2011 / / 5 Comments

The shortlist for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award has been announced:

  • M.J. Hyland, ‘Rag Love’
  • Alison MacLeod, ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’
  • Jon McGregor, ‘Wires’
  • K.J. Orr, ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’
  • D.W. Wilson, ‘The Dead Roads’

My initial thoughts? I enjoyed Jon McGregor’s shortlisted story last year, and the Alison MacLeod collection I read a few months ago. I’ve read M.J. Hyland before, but it’s been a long time since; the other two authors are unknown to me. If the standard of this year’s shortlist is anything like last year’s, we’re in for a treat; the signs are good as far as I can see.

BBC Radio 4 are broadcasting each shortlisted story at 3.30pm (BST) on consecutive days from Monday 12th, with the winner to be announced on Monday 26th September.

Man Booker shortlist 2011

6th September 2011 / / 3 Comments

The shortlist for the Booker Prize has been announced, and here it is:

  • Juiian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
  • Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie
  • Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers
  • Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues
  • Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English
  • A.D. Miller, Snowdrops

I still haven’t read any of these books myself, and so can’t add much more to my original thoughts on the longlist. But I will share my thoughts on hearing the shortlist.

Overall, I find this year’s Man Booker shortlist surprising and interesting. The Barnes sounded a typical ‘Booker novel’, and it’s no surprise to me to see it here; the same goes for Pigeon English, which seems to have been featured and talked about all over the place this year. I couldn’t make a call on the Edugyan, but the other three shortlisted titles certainly sounded less obviously ‘literary’ (I appreciate I’m making crude judgements here) than I would traditionally associate with the Booker.

Though I may be surprised with the shortlist, I’m also pleased, as I think it makes for rather a diverse selection of books. Also, three of the four books I named in my longlist post as those I most wanted to read have made it on to the shortlist, so I may well read at least some of the shortlist before the announcement of the winner on 18th October (any reviews will, as ever, be linked in the list above).

Congratulations to all six nominees; I wonder who will win.

Notable books: September 2011

1st September 2011 / / 5 Comments

September has arrived, and autumn with it here in the UK (not that it’s particularly distinguishable from summer…); which means: new books! I’m particularly looking forward to these:

David Almond, The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean

A book that came to my attention as a result of my interest in mainstream-published fantastic fiction, this is the story of a boy in a broken world, written as by Billy with his own idiosyncratic approach to spelling. I’m instinctively reminded of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy; I can only hope Almond’s novel is as good.

Gavin James Bower, Made in Britain

I liked Bower’s 2009 debut, Dazed & Aroused, more than I might have anticipated from its subject matter (a model messes up his life againsta  background of glossy superficiality); so I’m intrigued to read his second novel, which focuses on three teenagers growing up in a washed-out northern English town.

Alois Hotschnig, Maybe This Time

A departure for Peirene Press, this is their first collection of short stories. It sounds like dark, borderline-supernatural fiction, which should be right up my street.

Erin Morgernstern, The Night Circus

This tale of a mysterious and magical travelling circus in the late 19th century is being trumpeted as one of the hottest books of the autumn. I’m rather sceptical of the hype, but would love Morgernstern’s debut to live up to it.

Christopher Priest, The Islanders

Priest is one of my absolute favourite authors, so I’m always going to be interested in a new book by him. This, his first novel in nine years, returns to the setting of his Dream Archipelago stories, which also featured in The Affirmation.

The SF Gateway

If anything were ever going to persuade me to read ebooks, this may be it: vast numbers of classic science fiction and fantasy titles being brought back into print by Gollancz as digital editions. A brilliant idea.

Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole

One of the first two titles from new independent publisher And Other Stories, this novel about a Mexican drug baron’s son who wishes for his own pet hippopotamus has made it on to the longlist for this year’s Guardian first book award.

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