Who will be the owner?
16 Aug 2011 01:58:40
After Ballard's death in 2009 it went on sale this month for £320,000, despite protest by fans that the three-bedroom home, which is in a somewhat dilapidated state, should instead become a museum. It has now been withdrawn from sale to be rented out, with a new family due to move in this month.
• While one of Charles Dickens' London homes is now a museum dedicated to the writer, you can get your hands on the clifftop home in Broadstairs, Kent where he and his family holidayed for 22 years – if... Read Full Story
It was formed new tandem
16 Aug 2011 01:56:54
The history of shark movies is littered with the corpses of failed attempts to recapture the majesty of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, but a new Hollywood combo may offer fresh hope of reviving the genre. Paul Schrader, the esteemed writer of Taxi Driver and director of such offbeat joys as American Gigolo, Cat People and The Walker is to collaborate with author Bret Easton Ellis on new psychological horror, Bait.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the story will focus on a worker at an expensive b... Read Full Story
Tony Parsons will tell the truth
16 Aug 2011 01:55:35
The first time Tony Parsons took a flight, it was the 1970s and he was a young music journalist travelling to Philadelphia to join Thin Lizzy on the road. It wasn't a great start – the plane was delayed and sat on the tarmac for six hours – "but it didn't bother me at all. It was so enormously exciting."
Parsons believes "we have lost that sense of wonder" about air travel, which explains in part his decision to spend a week as writer in residence at Heathrow, researching a book for which he al... Read Full Story
Would you like to read on of the biggest books called World Book Night?
15 Aug 2011 01:12:02
On 5 April this year, one million books, from Yann Martel's Life of Pi to Toni Morrison's Beloved, were given away in the UK as part of the inaugural World Book Night. Twenty thousand "givers" each distributed 48 copies of one of 25 titles, with the remaining books handed out by the World Book Night organisation itself in "difficult to reach" spots such as prisons and hospitals.
Next year, on the new date of 23 April – the UNESCO-appointed international day of the book as well as the traditiona... Read Full Story
Kurt Vonnegut and his novel
15 Aug 2011 01:09:58
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and young adult novel Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler have both been banned from a school curriculum and library in a Missouri school following complaints from a local professor about children being exposed to "shocking material".
Ockler's novel, which tells of a girl's summer romance as she attempts to get over the death of her first love a year earlier, is being removed from the school curriculum and library in Republic, Missouri, along with Kurt Vonnegu... Read Full Story
Famous Chinese writer Ma Jian can't visit his home
15 Aug 2011 01:08:26
Ma Jian, author of Red Dust and Beijing Coma, was prevented from crossing the border from Hong Kong on Saturday. He had previously returned hundreds of times since leaving China in 1986. Officials have given him no reason for the ban or any indication of how long it will last.
"The fact that I have been denied entry is an indication of how repressive the regime has become," said Ma. "It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so bei... Read Full Story
Who are the adventures and what do they interesting in
11 Aug 2011 02:03:17
From battling cannibals to wrestling crocodiles, capturing two-headed snakes to riding whales, Price's much-loved Adventure series ran to 14 books, written by the natural historian between 1949 and 1980. Now McGowan, author of young adult novels including Henry Tumour and The Knife That Killed Me, has been commissioned by the Willard Price estate to write four new books in the children's series, starring the children of the original characters in a contemporary setting.
The first, with a workin... Read Full Story
Every talent is important - even if you can't write poems - tale a part in competion!
11 Aug 2011 02:01:52
Fondrie, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, beat an impressive display of terrible writing to win the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, named in honour of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford and its much-quoted opening, "It was a dark and stormy night". Entrants to the prize are duly challenged to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
The academic's submission to the prize , "Cheryl's mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, ch... Read Full Story
Popular week with popular art review
11 Aug 2011 01:56:27
Lingua franca in Avignon
The Diary returns fresh from a weekend at the Avignon festival, France's answer to our own Edinburgh arts extravaganza. As well as acquiring the French for "Excuse me, can you please budge up so I can get to my seat?" ("Excusez-moi, mais je dois vous déranger"), the Diary was interested to hear, from festival co-director Vincent Baudriller, that British audiences are generally poorly represented in Avignon. This is a surprise, considering the city lies in the heart of P... Read Full Story
Greetings from Mexico
09 Aug 2011 01:40:20
Mexican-born novelist Juan Pablo Villalobos has booked the first place on the Guardian first book award longlist with his debut novel about Latin American drug dealers, Down the Rabbit Hole – one of the first titles published by new imprint And Other Stories.
Publishers submitted 136 debuts for the judges consideration in July, with the longlist due to be announced later this month. In a bid to open the prize up to new voices, however, the Guardian reserved one slot on the longlist for suggesti... Read Full Story
What the internet does prepare for readers
09 Aug 2011 01:39:23
Tucked away in a small warehouse on a dead-end street, an internet pioneer is building a bunker to protect an endangered species: the printed word.
Brewster Kahle, 50, founded the non-profit Internet Archive in 1996 to save a copy of every webpage ever posted. Now the MIT-trained computer scientist and entrepreneur is expanding his effort to safeguard and share knowledge by trying to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published.
"There is always going to be a role for books," said Kah... Read Full Story
Old histories are pops out
09 Aug 2011 01:37:48
Hercule Poirot never risked his little grey cells – nor his impeccably waxed moustache – by attempting to hang ten. Nor did Jane Marple ever strap a board to the roof of a Kombi and thunder out of St Mary Mead in search of the perfect tube.
Their enigmatic creator, though, was something of a pioneering and diehard wave-rider. At a time when many of her contemporaries were chugging cocktails in Blighty, Agatha Christie was paddling out from beaches in Cape Town and Honolulu to earn her surfing s... Read Full Story
