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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Congratulations to Alan Hollinghurst for his UK National Book Award win. The Stranger's Child, which was controversially omitted from this year's Man Booker shortlist, won him the Author of the Year Award at last Friday's Galaxy National Book Awards.
Most book trailers are, frankly, dull but occasionally one comes along that breaks the mold such as this one for Machine Man by Australian author Max Barry:
In a series of lectures, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk ruminated on what goes on in the mind of a person reading a novel. His thoughts are summarized by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. below.
Do these match your experiences? The point about finishing a (great) novel and feeling that it had been written just for me particularly struck home - it maybe irrational but it's so true!
The slow-mo implosion of Borders has created an enormous amount of commentary, but perhaps none as visceral as the poster spotted in a Borders in Santa Rosa, California.
The Booker Prize shortlist has been announced with the usual mix of criticism and praise from various quarters. Indeed, the controversy over each year's list is as much a tradition as the Prize itself. For example, Ron Sharp, arts correspondent for The Independent criticized the omission of Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child from the shortlist; while Boyd Tonkin, literary editor for the Independent opines that:
"the process seems to have lost much of its focus. It now delivers a curiously mixed bag of worthwhile novels. So what? No longer does the Man Booker seem to want to test the year's output against the highest standards of literary ambition and artistry...many accomplished authors who failed to make the long-list will be wondering what the Booker is precisely for these days."
