Category: Uncategorized

My Eastercon schedule

21st March 2013 / / 3 Comments

This year’s Eastercon, Eightsquaredcon (so named because it’s the 64th), takes place next weekend at the Cedar Court Hotel in Bradford. I’ll be there, and taking part in three panels. I received notification of the timings today, so I’m going to share my schedule here:

Saturday 29 March, 1pm: “SFF on SF: Criticism and Awards”

What are the relationships between critical reception and award shortlists? The panel will focus primarily on this year’s lists. With Penny Hill, David Hebblethwaite, Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James (moderator).

Saturday 29 March, 7pm: “The Best Books of 2012 “

Because of the timing, there cannot be a “Not the Clarke Awards” panel this year. Instead, our panel of reviewers will recommend and discuss their personal best books from last year. Chris Hill moderates David Hebblethwaite, Francis Knight and Sandra Unerman.

Sunday 30 March, 6pm: “The Brothers Grimm”

It’s two hundred years since the Brothers Grimm first published their folk tales. What were they doing, and what was in the stories? How have those stories been reused since, and can we get at what they were like before? Tanya Brown moderates Carolina Gomez-Lagerlöf, David Hebblethwaite and Anne Sudworth.

It should be an interesting weekend; if you’re going, do let me know in the comments.

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013: the longlist

13th March 2013 / / 2 Comments

The twenty books on the longlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) have been announced. And here they are:

  • Kitty Aldridge, A Trick I Learned From Dead Men
  • Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
  • Ros Barber, The Marlowe Papers
  • Shani Boianjiu, The People of Forever are Not Afraid
  • Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
  • Sheila Heti, How Should A Person Be?
  • A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven
  • Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behaviour
  • Deborah Copaken Kogan, The Red Book
  • Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
  • Bonnie Nadzam, Lamb
  • Emily Perkins, The Forrests
  • Michèle Roberts, Ignorance
  • Francesca Segal, The Innocents
  • Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette
  • Elif Shafak, Honour
  • Zadie Smith, NW
  • M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
  • Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds
  • G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

Out of the twenty, I’ve read three: NW (which I liked very much), The Forrests (which I thought was all right), and How Should a Person Be? (which I didn’t really like at all). I have Shani Boianjiu’s book to review for Bookmunch, so I’ll be reading that before long. I started reading Honour last year and liked it, but stopped for some reason I can’t fathom; I really ought to pick it up again.

Gone Girl has been the toast of many a book blog, and I’ve also seen plenty of favourable noises about Where’d You Go Bernadette. I’ve been meaning to read both, and am also intrigued by Kate Atkinson’s latest. Looking through the other titles, Kitty Aldridge’s jumps out in particular as sounding of interest. So they’d be top of my reading list – how about you?

First thoughts on Clarke Award submissions

5th March 2013 / / 6 Comments

Clarke season began today with the publication of the submissions list over on the SFX website. Here are some initial thoughts:

First of all, the length: 82 books, which is a lot for an award that normally peaks at around 60 (though there continues to be a low proportion of books by women – and it may be even lower than usual this year). This upsurge seems largely to be down to a greater number of YA titles being submitted. It’s good that the Clarke’s submissions base is broadening in this way, though of course it remains to be seen whether that will have much impact on the shortlist.

Submission of non-genre titles continues to be hit-and-miss, with some publishers (such as Granta and Random House) clearly keen to engage with the Clarke Award; but no submissions at all from, say, Simon & Schuster (publishers of Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles) or Bloomsbury (publishers of Liz Jensen’s The Uninvited). From the genre imprints, perhaps the most notable omission is Peter F. Hamilton’s Great North Road.

Turning to what actually has been submitted, I think the book that most surprises me is Kimberly’s Capital Punishment by Richard Millward, which I hadn’t had down as being sf (which is not to say that it necessarily is, because there are always borderline cases and outright fantasy amongst the submissions). It’s a pleasure to see Adrian Barnes’ Nod (one of my favourite reads of last year) in the pool; and I’m now intrigued by the sound of The Dream Killer of Paris, a book that was previously unknown to me.

The shortlist will be announced on 4 April, which will sadly be too late for there to be a Not the Clarke panel at this year’s Eastercon. We can still try to guess the shortlist, but I’m not going to do that just yet. At first blush, though, I think I could narrow the submissions list down to about a dozen likely contenders; and I expect we’ll see a shortlist that skews towards core genre. But the Clarke is rarely predictable, so I could be entirely wrong. As ever, I look forward to finding out.

Open Thread: Books for your Valentine

14th February 2013 / / 4 Comments
View as slideshow
  1. I asked people on Twitter: “which book would you give your Valentine as a token of your affection?” Here’s what they said:
  2. PhoebsCaulfield

    Phoebe Caulfield@PhoebsCaulfield
    @David_Heb Andrew Kaufman All my friends are superheroes

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 04:44:36

    ·

  3. Frizbot

    Naomi Frisby@Frizbot
    @David_Heb Wuthering Heights is the obvious one…

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 04:46:59

    ·

  4. nine_below

    Martin Petto@nine_below
    @David_Heb I’m giving my missus a book of poems about divorce.

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 04:47:59

    ·

  5. (“People should be able to guess the book,” Martin tells me. Much as it pains me to admit, I’m not.)
  6. PlashingVole

    Plashing Vole@PlashingVole
    @David_Heb Thoreau’s Walden.

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:41:27

    ·

  7. fragmad

    Will Ellwood@fragmad
    @David_Heb I once gave my current partner Kawabata’s Snow County.

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:41:59

    ·

  8. stujallen

    stu@stujallen
    @David_Heb love in the time of cholera gabriel Garcia Marquez love that is on whole unfulfilled but lasts a lifetime

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:42:21

    ·

  9. matthewhill

    matthewhill@matthewhill
    @David_Heb Dan Rhodes’ ANTHROPOLOGY.

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:44:11

    ·

  10. JemimahRH

    Jemimah @JemimahRH
    @David_Heb All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman.

    Wed, Feb 13 2013 06:43:01

    ·

  11. iwilltweet

    William Rycroft@iwilltweet
    @David_Heb The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman. I did, in fact, and it worked a treat.

    Wed, Feb 13 2013 06:41:55

    ·

  12. Mr Kaufman would seem to be a popular choice!
  13. AlisonLMercer

    Alison Mercer@AlisonLMercer
    @David_Heb When younger and even less sensible than I am now, I gave a few love interests The Catcher in the Rye… mainly cos I liked it

    Wed, Feb 13 2013 07:43:49

    ·

  14. Not everyone was so specific:
  15. maureenkspeller

    maureen k speller@maureenkspeller
    @david_heb Whichever book he most recently happens to have expressed interest in come the day.#obviousreally #wevegotpastromanceroundhere

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:59:59

    ·

  16. niallharrison

    Niall Harrison@niallharrison
    @David_Heb Something from her Amazon wishlist.

    Wed, Feb 13 2013 06:44:16

    ·

  17. And, as some people pointed out, this is not necessarily a straightforward question:
  18. ActuallyAisha

    Aisha @ActuallyAisha
    @David_Heb I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday and almost anything I could think of would end up as a test. :/

    Wed, Feb 13 2013 06:40:13

    ·

  19. emma_darwin

    Emma Darwin@emma_darwin
    .@David_Heb Depends wholly on the person I was giving it to: any good give at least 75% about the recipient, only 25% about the giver.

    Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:42:33

    ·

  20. That last point is well made, but I’d still be interested to know what other people would choose – so please let me know in the comments.

    (And me? I’d choose Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Robert Shearman – depending on the person, that is…)

Award shortlists: BSFA and Kitschies

18th January 2013 / / 4 Comments

Some thoughts on two sets of sf award shortlists which were announced today.

BSFA Awards

The BSFA Awards are voted on by the membership of the British Science Fiction Association. The shortlists are made up of the works which received the most nominations from members.

Best Novel
“Dark Eden” by Chris Beckett (Corvus)
“Empty Space: a Haunting” by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)
“Intrusion” by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
“Jack Glass” by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
“2312” by Kim Stanley-Robinson (Orbit)

No great surprises here. Harrison, Roberts, and Robinson all felt like shoe-ins to me; Beckett and MacLeod are well-respected names within the genre. It’s a solid, albeit familiar, list – but the fact that it’s all-male is not good at all.

Best Short Story
“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (“Clarkesworld” #69)
“The Flight of the Ravens” by Chris Butler (Immersion Press)
“Song of the Body Cartographer” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (“Phillipines Genre Stories”)
“Limited Edition” by Tim Maughan (1.3, “Arc Magazine”)
“Three Moments of an Explosion” by China Mieville (“Rejectamentalist Manifesto”)
“Adrift on the Sea of Rains” by Ian Sales (Whippleshield Books)

A more diverse list in terms of its authors (though, as Niall Harrison pointed out to me on Twitter, these writers are still ‘known’ names within the field). The only one I’ve read myself is the Sales, and I think it deserved its place; though I have also heard good things about the de Bodard and Maughan. My overall impression of both fiction shortlists is of works mostly from the centre of the field which are trying to push outward in terms of what they do. That’s no bad place for the BSFA Awards to be.

Best Artwork
Ben Baldwin for the cover of “Dark Currents”(Newcon Press)
Blacksheep for the cover of Adam Roberts’s”Jack Glass” (Gollancz)
Dominic Harman for the cover of Eric Brown’s”Helix Wars” (Rebellion)
Joey Hifi for the cover of Simon Morden’s “Thy Kingdom Come “(Jurassic London)
Si Scott for the cover artwork for Chris Beckett’s “Dark Eden” (Corvus)

The Jack Glass cover is the standout piece here for me – I think it’s just beautiful.

Best Non-Fiction
“The Complexity of the Humble Space Suit” by Karen Burnham (“Rocket Science, “Mutation Press)
“The Widening Gyre” by Paul Kincaid (“Los Angeles Review of Books”)
“The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature” by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge University Press)
“The Shortlist Project” by Maureen Kincaid Speller
“The World SF Blog“, Chief Editor Lavie Tidhar

An essay on technology and history. A review of three anthologies that becomes a meditation on the state of sf. A critical survey of fantasy. A set of in-depth reviews. A blog which continues to be a key resource for the field. Quite a task of comparison!

The Kitschies

The Kitschies are juried awards intended to ‘reward the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic.’

Red Tentacle (Novel)
Jesse Bullington’s The Folly of the World (Orbit)
Frances Hardinge’s A Face Like Glass (Macmillan)
Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker (William Heinemann)
Adam Roberts’ Jack Glass (Gollancz)
Julie Zeh’s The Method (Harvill Secker)

Given their remit and juried nature, I’d expect the Kitschies to range more widely than the BSFA Awards. I think they have with this list, which takes in YA and mainstream-published works. I’ve read the Harkaway and Roberts, and am happy to see them here. My previous experience of Hardinge’s work has been positive, though my previous experience of Bullington’s hasn’t. I’m pleased to see the Zeh as a book from beyond genre circles that’s been well received as far as I’ve seen. Yes, this is an interesting list.

Golden Tentacle (Debut Novel)
Madeline Ashby’s vN (Angry Robot)
Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon (William Heinemann)
Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina (Doubleday)
Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo (Jo Fletcher Books)
Tom Pollock’s The City’s Son (Jo Fletcher Books)

Well, the Lord was one of my favourite reads of last year, so I’m very pleased to see that on this list. The other books, I don’t really know. I’ve seen or heard positive opinions of the Ashby and Pollock, but nothing either way about the Hartman. The Fagan is a mainstream title which I know has been received positively, but I didn’t have it down as fantastic – I must take a look.

Inky Tentacle (Cover)
La Boca for Ned Beauman’s The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre)
Oliver Jeffers for John Boyne’s The Terrible Thing that Happened to Barnaby Brocket (Doubleday)
Tom Gauld for Matthew Hughes’ Costume Not Included (Angry Robot)
Peter Mendelsund for Ben Marcus’ Flame Alphabet (Granta)
Dave Shelton for his own A Boy and a Bear in a Boat (David Fickling Books)

A strikingly different list from the BSFA equivalent. I think I’d go for Shelton’s cover myself – there’s something about its starkness.

Open thread: 2013 debuts by women

16th January 2013 / / 2 Comments

This year’s Waterstones 11 list of debut novels to watch was announced on Tuesday. Do take a look, as there’s some interesting stuff on there. (I’d pick out Carlos Acosta’s Pig’s Foot; Sam Byers’ Idiopathy; Gavin Extence’s The World Versus Alex Woods; Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart; Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go; and Sathnam Sanghera’s Marriage Material as the ones that initially catch my eye.)

But only three of the eleven novels are by female writers, and I knew there were many other interesting debuts by women being published this year, so I decided to make a list. This has mostly been compiled from suggestions on Twitter, but I do want to add to it, so please feel free to suggest more titles in the comments.

(NB. Where there are multiple editions, publication details refer to the UK one.)

Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love by Sarah Butler (Picador, January)

How to Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman (Picador, January)

Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont (Corsair, January)

70% Acrylic 30% Wool by Viola Di Grado (Europa Editions, January)

The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena (Atlantic, January)

Clay by Melissa Harrison (Bloomsbury, January)

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis (Hutchinson, January)

The Beauty of Murder by A.K. Benedict (Orion, February)

The People of Forever are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiou (Hogarth, February)

Warpaint by Alicia Foster (Fig Tree, March)

Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle (Jo Fletcher, February)

Mums Like Us by Laura Kemp (Arrow, February)

The Night Rainbow by Claire King (Bloomsbury, February)

Pantomime by Laura Lam (Strange Chemistry, February)

The First Book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz (Hutchinson, February)

The Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle (Michael Joseph, March)

The Girl Below by Bianca Zander (Alma, February)

Dancing to the Flute by Manisha Jolie Amin (Alma, March)

The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland (HarperCollins, March)

Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman (Serpent’s Tail, March)

Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley (Tinder Press, March)

Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter (Jo Fletcher, March)

She Rises by Kate Worsley (Bloomsbury, March)

Fever by Mary Beth Keane (Simon & Schuster, April)

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri (Allen & Unwin, April)

The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter (Fig Tree, April)

The View on the Way Down by Rebecca Wait (Picador, April)

Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy (Picador, May)

The Trader of Saigon by Lucy Cruickshanks (Quercus, May)

Chaplin and Company by Mave Fellowes (Jonathan Cape, May)

If I Could Tell You by Lee Jing-Jing (Marshall Cavendish International, May)

The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell (Fig Tree, May)

The Things We Never Said by Susan Elliot Wright (Simon & Schuster, May)

The Whack-Job Girls by Bonnie ZoBell (Monkey Puzzle, Spring)

The Oathbreaker’s Shadow by Amy McCulloch (Doubleday, June)

Hunters in the Snow by Daisy Hildyard (Jonathan Cape, July)

Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador, July)

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador, August)

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury, August)

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman (William Heinemann, August)

Thanks to all the Twitter users who made suggestions:

@fictionpubteam @beccalikesbooks @Laurajanekemp @shelleywriter @stujallen @emmacapron @Frizbot @JessicaLeeke @ckingwriter @LinsHealy @say_shannon @thisgreyspirit @JaneRusbridge @DogEarDiscs @bibliomouse @essiefox @taniahershman @AndrewHookUK @Clareaux @CathyReadsBooks @lozzhadden @WmHeinemann @amymculloch @JoFletcherBooks @JD_Slazenger

My BSFA short fiction nominations

10th January 2013 / / 2 Comments

Midnight tomorrow is the deadline to submit nominations for this year’s BSFA Awards. I sent mine in yesterday, with a view to suggesting things that might otherwise be overlooked. I won’t go over the novels I nominated, because they’re mostly covered elsewhere. But coming up with  short fiction ideas made me dig further into my reading from last year, and it might be a little more interesting.

I’m aware that most of these will be long shots (though you never know…); I’ll probably be the only person in the BSFA who’s read some of them. But I can highlight stuff all the same; so here, in no particular order, is what I nominated:

‘Countless Stones’ – Lucy Wood

I couldn’t neglect my favourite book of short fiction from 2012, so here’s a story from Diving Belles. ‘Countless Stones’ is probably the strongest fantasy story in the collection (some of the tales have a lighter fantastic touch than others), and it really illustrates Wood’s approach to combining the supernatural and mundane, as her protagonist treats turning to stone yet again as just another inconvenience, no worse than having to deal with an ex-partner.

‘Black Box’ – Jennifer Egan

This is the story from the New Yorker‘s science fiction issue that was also serialised on Twitter. We had a good discussion about it on the blog last summer. It’s a flawed story, but also an interesting one, and I thought it should have a chance to be considered.

‘The Lonely Hunter’ – John Grant

John Grant is a friend, but I nominated this novella (published as a stand-alone volume by PS) because of how much I enjoyed its blurring of reality and fiction.

‘How We Ran the Night’ – Keith Ridgway

A story/chapter from Hawthorn & Child. I couldn’t call the book as a whole speculative fiction, for all that it shares some of the same sensibilities. But this particular piece toys with the idea of a fantastical society of wolves living in London, and is worth attention in its own right.

‘Ghost in the Machine’ – Christopher Parvin

There are a number of sf stories in the latest Bristol Prize anthology, but I decided to limit my nominations to one story per book, and this is it. I found Parvin’s take on the idea of robots living alongside humans amusing – and its collage structure works well, too.

‘Switchgirls’ – Tania Hershman

This piece from Still is particularly short, but carries emotional heft and is nicely ambiguous.

‘The Kendal Iconoclasm’ – Paul Rooney

One of a handful of fantastic stories from Rooney’s collection Dust, this weaves horror out of characters’ awareness that they’re in a story and can’t escape.

Before I finish, a note on one of my non-fiction nominations. John Mullan’s dismissive attitude towards science fiction is well documented, but I nominated him for his Guardian Book Club series on Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons. This nomination wasn’t entirely frivolous: when he’s focused on analysing the book, Mullan’s critique is engaged and engaging. Yet there’s still the odd swipe at the genre; the shifts in tone are quite bizarre. But, for all that, I thought the articles were worth acknowledging.

The BSFA Award shortlists will be published next week – I look forward to seeing what’s on there.

Man Asian Literary Prize 2012

9th January 2013 / / 0 Comments

Another award shortlist today, this one for the Man Asian Literary Prize:

  • Between Clay and Dust by Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan)
  • The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami (Japan)
  • Silent House by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
  • The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia)
  • Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (India)

The two books that immediately jump out at me there are the Tan and the Thayil, because of course they were also shortlisted for last year’s Booker. I’ve read The Garden of Evening Mists, but haven’t felt inclined to try Narcopolis. There’s a readalong taking place of Kawakami’s The Briefcase as part of January in Japan, so you can expect a review of that on here by the end of the month.

Of the other two nominees, Orhan Pamuk falls into the category of well-known authors I’ve never got around to reading. I don’t know the historical background of Silent House, so it could be an interesting read. Farooqi, I knew nothing about at all – but Between Clay and Dust sounds like something that would chime with my sensibilities, so count me intrigued by that one.

The winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize will be announced in Hong Kong on 14 March.

Open thread: graphic novel recommendations

3rd January 2013 / / 8 Comments

With Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes just having won the Costa Biography Award, and Chris Ware’s extraordinary-sounding Building Stories popping up on year’s-best lists, it seems clear to me that I’m missing out by not reading graphic novels. It’s not that I don’t like the form, more that I don’t really know where to start. So…

Please give me your graphic novel recommendations for someone who, like me, comes from a prose fiction-reading (rather than a comics-reading) background. Not Watchmen or Sandman, though — but something I might not have heard of. (And proper recommendations only, please — no advertising.)

Martin Lewis stopped by to recommend Days of the Bagnold Summer in the comments of my Costa post. What else could we add to the list?

Costa Book Awards 2012

3rd January 2013 / / 3 Comments

The category winners of the Costa Book Awards have been announced:

Novel: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

First Novel: The Innocents by Francesca Segal

Biography: Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot

Poetry: The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie

Children’s Book: Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

There are a couple of notable firsts for the Costas here: a graphic novel (Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes) taking one of the prizes, and an all-female roster of winning writers (Bryan Talbot being the illustrator of the biography).

Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes actually looks like the winner I’m most interested in investigating – graphic novels are a gap in my reading diet, and this could be a good title with which to start changing that.

 

 

Archives

Browse posts by author, original language of book, or post category

© 2024 David's Book World

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑

%d