Costa Book Award's results
09 Jan 2012 04:19:52
Poet and first-time biographer Matthew Hollis scooped the Costa biography award for "Now All Roads Leads to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas" about the war poet who died in action during World War One.
Christie Watson, a children's nurse, was named 2011 debut novelist for "Tiny Sunbirds Far Away" about a Nigerian family forced to leave a comfortable urban life for poverty in the countryside.
And Moira Young won the children's book category for her first novel "Blood Red Road" set in a law... Read Full Story
Josef Skvorecky went from this world
09 Jan 2012 04:14:56
Josef Skvorecky, a Czech exile and author who published works by Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera that had been banned by communist authorities in their native country, has died. He was 87.
Skvorecky's wife Zdena Salivarova told the Czech CTK news agency he died Tuesday in Toronto. The couple moved to Canada after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of then-Czechoslovakia that crushed the liberal reforms known as the Prague Spring.
He was born Sept 27, 1924 in Nachod in northern Czechoslovakia, and went ... Read Full Story
Thomas Frank "Pity the Billionaire"
06 Jan 2012 03:44:01
In his new book "Pity the Billionaire," the chronicler of conservative politics and market-based economics discusses the two trends after the 2008 financial crisis that led to bailouts of the large U.S. banks and to a recession.
Throughout the book, Frank seems to be shaking his head over the rise of the free market-espousing Tea Party movement in the midst of hard times and income inequality that he and many others blame on markets that were too free.
"Moneyed interests understand that ... they... Read Full Story
"Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats" by Roger Rosenblatt
06 Jan 2012 03:42:54
"Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats," was written after the essay was turned into a best-selling book. What he has discovered in the more than 2½ years since her death is that just getting on with life — captured in the closing image of the essay when his 23-month-old grandson asks for toast — hasn't worked. "What I failed to calculate is the pain that increases even as one gets on with it," he writes.
Rosenblatt has taken up kayaking, spending hours exploring the shoreli... Read Full Story
Ben Kingsley and his works
06 Jan 2012 03:41:53
Sir Ben Kingsley plays silent film pioneer Georges Melies in Martin Scorsese's "Hugo." The film has proven to be a tricky sell commercially, and it's unlikely to be a moneymaker -- but the film is a marvelous and magical journey that fully justifies Scorsese's decision to adapt Brian Selznick's book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," and to shoot it in 3D. And Kingsley is sly, sad and commanding as a man desperate to bury his glorious past.
Were you familiar with the book, or with Georges Melies' w... Read Full Story
George R. R. Martin prepairs new book
03 Jan 2012 03:30:17
The chronology, as usual, is tricky," Martin said on his LiveJournal page. "This chapter will be found eventually at the beginning of 'Winds,' but as you will be able to tell from context, it actually takes place before some of the chapters at the end of"
Martin also said another "Winds of Winter" sample chapter will be included in the paperback edition of "A Dance with Dragons," which is due in July. "A Dance With Dragons" was released in July 2011, 15 years after the first volume -- "A Game of... Read Full Story
Amazon's Kindle news
03 Jan 2012 03:27:21
Amazon historically has been loathe to release specific sales data for its hardware, so this was a minor step forward as the company released figures -- albeit imprecise ones.
It also announced that three Kindle products occupied the top three spots on its bestseller charts.
The newly released Kindle Fire tablet topped the list, while the Kindle Touch and regular old Kindle clocked in at numbers two and three respectively. The Fire has been the bestselling and "most gifted" product on Amazon sin... Read Full Story
World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It John A. Byrne,
03 Jan 2012 03:26:22
In his new book, "World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It," John A. Byrne, the former executive editor of BusinessWeek, gets invitations to sit down with the people behind those big-name companies. It's an impressive accomplishment, but what he gets out of the conversations is somewhat uninspired. Maybe it's the book's format, a short introduction to each person followed by a question-and-answer transcript of the interview, which allows the subject to ramble unchecked... Read Full Story
The Death of King Arthur by Simon Armitage
28 Dec 2011 10:06:52
Arthur is certainly several parts beast. His manners, like the narrator of Hughes's famous early poem "Hawk Roosting", often consist of "tearing off heads". When ambassadors from Lucius Iberius, emperor of Rome, arrive at Arthur's Christmas court in Carlisle (this is a northern poem) demanding fealty from the British king and commanding him and the Round Table knights to appear in Rome, it looks as though they might be leaving with their heads under their arms like the Green Knight in the poem n... Read Full Story
Chris Mullin become a Christmas writer
28 Dec 2011 10:04:01
Waterstone's asked 150 MPs which book they would most like to be given this Christmas and Mullin's chronicling of the time before his years in office came in first, with 4% of the total vote. The title was selected only by Labour MPs, however, with Tories preferring their biographies with a less political edge, and plumping instead for Claire Tomalin's prize-winning Charles Dickens: A Life. Liberal Democrat MPs responding to the ComRes/Waterstone's annual survey went for the satirical Private Ey... Read Full Story
Caitlin Moran is one of the most feminist writers
28 Dec 2011 10:01:01
What Lauren Laverne has dubbed "an indispensable guide to Ladyhood" by the Times columnist came in ahead of titles by esteemed literary names including Claire Tomalin, Alan Hollinghurst and Pulitzer winner Jennifer Egan to be named the Galaxy book of the year, it was announced this morning. The vote asked the public to choose their favourite from amongst the winners of all 11 categories from the Galaxy awards, with comedian Dawn French's debut novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous coming in second, and Ro... Read Full Story
The Ascent of the Detective Haia Shpayer-Makov
27 Dec 2011 04:50:46
One of the things early Victorian Britain most prided itself on as a nation was its lack of detectives. They were a nasty French phenomenon – donning "plain clothes" to hide their real identities, spying on people, intruding into private lives – and distinctly un-British. Times change, and national identities with them. By 1914 detective branches were not only well established over most of England, but had become the stuff of popular fiction and reportage.Did the latter have something to do with... Read Full Story
