Pulitzer 2010

This year's Pulitzer has been announced. Let's hope it's better than last year's Oprah novel.

According to this article in the Guardian, this is the first novel from an independent publisher to have won the Pulitzer since A Confederacy of Dunces. The novel, Tinkers, just looks to be available on Amazon at the moment, although I'm betting now that that small publisher has been completely overwhelmed with orders from bookshops who, a month ago, would have refused to put the book on their shelves.

Guess what?

Stephenie Meyer is attempting to make even more money from the legions of twitarded fans who just can't get enough of her blood-sucking stories. A character she kills off in Eclipse is apparently getting her own novella. Completely justified, considering that Bree just leapt off the pages and into my heart with the three lines she was given in book three.

If you want to read exactly the same information I have just given you but on the more reliable Guardian website, click here. You'll also get some extraneous details you didn't need and a picture of Meyer's smiling, bigoted mug.

Le Prix Goncourt 2009

Marie Ndiaye has won France's most prestigious literary prize for her novel Trois Femme Puissantes. Having just recently discovered a love for Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (who won the Nobel Prize in 2008) I am now craving another slice of the French literary pie. I think I'll try and find a copy of this in English. Earhart can show off and read it in French.

Booker Prize 2009

Hilary Mantel has won the Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall. Click here to read my earlier post on the Booker where I decided Mantel would definitely NOT win. It is an insightful post.

I will write no more on the subject because I am in bed, although it is the early hour of 7:51 pm. I am finishing up John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and I have not been this excited about a book since Vernon God Little. Stay tuned for a sickeningly positive review.

Why would you want to read when you've got the television set sitting right in front of you?

Tim Minchin has been asked by the RSC to turn Matilda by Roald Dahl into a musical. Read full article here. Whenever I see him on shows like Buzzcocks I find Minchin incredibly annoying, but the fact that he actually looks like a Quentin Blake illustration is a massive point in his favour. It could be fabulous... or it could suck.

There seems to be a reinvigorated enthusiasm for Dahl at the moment, what with Fantastic Mr Fox coming out this year as a film. Earhart thinks this will be a novel butchering of epic proportions. I don't agree. Hello??? George Clooney!

Later today: Helen Garner's The Spare Room.

*Earhart 4 Harper Collins* No More

Harper Collins you are dead to me. Pushing back the publication of Russell Brand's My Booky Wook 2 by a whole YEAR...why do you do these things to the people who love you? I was all excited, ringing Alcott, jumping up and down like a kid who has eaten too many jelly beans. Then, the Harper rep. comes, brandishing the new releases for October... My Booky Wook 2? There, in the corner... with a big cross through it. You can imagine my devastation when I found out that I would have to wait for an entire extra year before I could delve into the witty revelations Brand has to offer about life in the fast lane.

I loved you once you know Harper, remember the Skulduggery Pleasant days? They were good. Or the days when Oliver Jeffers hardbacks weren't out of print? (Oh yeah, that's another thing I'm angry about!) Or when Paullina Simons covers didn't incite comparisons to Jodi Picoult? It seems you were destined to disappoint me...

Bring the hardcover Lost and Found back into print and perhaps I can consider reconciliation, but until then... this is good bye.

Earhart

Booker Shortlist 2009

I have already waxed lyrical on this blog on how stressed shortlists make me... you can find that overly insightful post here. The Man Booker Shortlist has just been announced and without further ado, I present to you my immediate (although somewhat irrelevant and erroneous) thoughts on the list:

Let's see, let's see. Byatt for The Children's Book. Ffft. Definitely not as good as Possession. I haven't read it... but definitely not as good as Possession. Ohoh! Look who it is! My old friend Coetzee! Yeah whatever Coetzee. I'll pay for the book if you pay for my valium. Next... The Quickening Maze... not ringing a bell. Simon Mawer for The Glass Room. Never heard of it... Gah. Is that two already I haven't heard of? Hilary Mantel... Wolf Hall? What's that about? Wiki... why isn't wiki loading? Yadiyadiyada... political intrigue blah blah blah... HELLO!!! Henry VIII!!!! I think we're in business. Better pick up a copy. That won't win. Actually, I don't know. I'm so out of touch. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? I'm drifting and I don't have my finger on the book pulse anymore. I'M PATHETIC. A pale, shrivelled version of a once genius bibliophile. Reduced to nothing but a... OHOHO! What do we have here? Sarah Waters? Well, well, well Pulitzer. Booker is seeing your Oprah-esque novel and raising with LESBIAN ROMPS. Looks like the game of 'Whose Book Prize is Groovier' just got interesting.

Now bookshops around the world must endure the advent of customers racing in to buy those books that two months ago they waved away with a petulant frown, seriously enamoured with their imagined intelligence. "No, no. I want something HIGH BROW. Something like Christos Tsiolkas."

J.M. Coetzee for Summertime

A.S. Byatt for The Children's Book

Sarah Waters for The Little Stranger

Simon Mawer for The Glass Room
Adam Foulds for The Quickening Maze

Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall

Fantasy with a Capital F

The David Gemmell Legend Prize has just been awarded to Andrzej Sapkowski for his fantasy novel Blood of the Elves. Apparently it's about a mutant assassin which sounds quite promising, but I haven't quite decided if I'll rush out and buy this yet. I tend to try and steer clear of fantasy for one very good reason. I read quite a lot of Tamora Pierce in my younger days. She wrote books about girls who became knights and went around defending their magical kingdom whilst falling in love with loads of guys. They were awesome, but I read them at a time in my teenage years when I was already feeling discontented with the lot I had been allocated. After reading these books I went into a depressed state where I was CERTAIN I was meant to have been born in middle ages. Preferably with magical powers.

And THIS is the problem with fantasy. These novels are so phantasmagorical that you shut the covers of the book feeling that life outside of the pages is quite grey and drab. Why get dressed up for an occasion if a prince in a leather jerkin and blousey shirt isn't going to burst into the room and sweep you up in his arms? Why worry about the terrible crime statistics in Nottingham when, in all likelihood, none of the gangs have ork members? Why go to the gym and train hard when you won't have to strip down to your loincloth and compete in a duel at any point?

I learnt a lot about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis when I did a subject for my English major called "The World of Fantasy". This was probably one of the most stressful classes I took at university. First of all, my wardrobe was ALL WRONG (I wasn't dressed in robes). Secondly, having read Lord of the Rings was NOT ENOUGH to hold your own in the tutorials. If you couldn't recite all of Legolas' songs by heart there was really no point in coming to class. The other students were HARD CORE man.

Again, all this is the fault of a genre which is constructed to put beautiful, heightened and unrealistic worlds JUST within our reach, IF we keep reading fantasy. People who read fantasy tend to stick with what they're comfortable with. You don't get many people coming into the bookshop saying they normally read fantasy, but today they'd quite like a copy of We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Have been thinking about it whilst writing this post and I think I do need to read Sapkowski's novel. I can't, in good faith, pass up a mutant assassin. If you want to read the whole article about the David Gemmell Legend Prize, click here to go to the Guardian article.

Dyslit: We and 1984

So according to this article in the Guardian, George Orwell took his 1984 plot from an earlier Dyslit novel, We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. The article compares the main characters, plot development and ending of the two novels, does some nifty detective work to prove that Orwell read We just before writing 1984 and comes to the conclusion that he got his plot from it. I could have saved them the trouble of going through that whole process by saying "Well yeah...Orwell did get his plot from We. In fact after reading it he said he was taking it as the model for his next novel." (I tried to be extra tricky and get the reference for Orwell's quote from another dyslit gem 1985 wherein Anthony Burgess discusses Orwell, Huxley and Zamyatin but I couldn't find it in my skim re-reading so you'll have to make do with wiki.)

I agree with the conclusion to which the article comes - that it doesn't matter if 1984 was inspired by an earlier book - as a work of literature it is amazing, and some might argue more accessible than We. The cultural impact of Orwell's works is undeniable, and perhaps without We we wouldn't have the most significant of those - 1984. There. Wasn't that a nice diplomatic way of sorting things out?

For a little added interest: Anthem by Ayn Rand and We are so similar in themes, descriptions, and dystopian societies of the future that my mind boggles that no comparison between the two was raised in the article. Both deal with societies where the collective is of the utmost importance. In both books there is no "I" only "we". In both books individuality is erased and people are numbered not named. A strikingly obvious difference is that Anthem is one of the only dyslit books I have ever read with a 'happy ending'.

Go read 1984, We, Anthem, and chuck in Brave New World for good measure (another book said to have borrowed from We) and see what you think.

Orange Prize 2009

Marilynne Robinson has just been announced the winner of this year's Orange Prize for fiction, for her novel Home. We may get a review up of it shortly.

We may not.

Gilead, Robinson's Pulitzer winning novel, bored me to tears. Apparently, in Home, she is revisiting the same characters, thus effectively neutering any lingering desire I may have felt to read what sounds, essentially, like an Oprah novel.

According to the Guardian, in between these two novels she wrote a 'polemical book about the British nuclear industry." Now, THAT I want to read. 

The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas)

Absolutely wonderful news about good ol' Christos winning the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Slap. Even more exciting that it has now been optioned for television. I'm absolutely delirious for Tsiolkas, on an artistically-fulfilling front as well as a monetary one.

It's just seems such a damn shame the book was so reprehensibly awful.

The Slap is set in Melbourne and follows a group of middle class suburbanites as they deal with the fallout after one of them slaps a child who is not his own at a barbecue. What follows is a crude storyline (in content and style), where the generally sensationalised characters are cobbled together in all their selfish and seedy glory to form a stilted plot. I almost wrote a 'plot that limps along', but this indicates a certain underdog aspect of the characters or story, thus rendering this initial thought of mine incorrect. Rather than limping, the novel careers along hopelessly like a drunken, blind neanderthal on an obstacle course.

Other thoughts: I do not like book covers where there is a child crying on the cover (who has, I assume, just been physically hurt); I do not like sexual descriptions where I feel the need to wipe MY EYES out with disinfectant after having read them; and parvenus who adopt a manner of superiority through the employment of too much glitter and Lycra are probably the most annoying people on the planet.

This novel marks the expiration of my tolerance for these novels of modern fiction hailed as glorious when they are, at best, the least awful of a bad bunch and at worst, better never to have been written in the first place. This does not, of course, cover all modern fiction. That is a ridiculous notion. But I am feeling disillusioned and thus am exaggerating accordingly. It worries me sometimes, that humankind has penned every original thought and must now rehash other people's brilliance (and idiocy) for all eternity.

Honestly, it keeps me awake at night.

Thus I made a monumentous decision last night (I have not cleared this with Earhart but anticipate it will not cause her much grief. Also, I am aware monumentous is not actually a word, but I believe it should be). I want to scrap the Monthly Classic, as I would rather turn to these for my main reading material now. It DEPRESSES me, going into the library, standing in front of the classics section and allowing myself a single, miserable title. Think of the riches I shall feel endowed with, now being able to stand there and pile my arms high with Bulgakov, Camus and the like.

I shall, of course, then pop over to the romantic lit section and grab a couple of pastel coloured delicacies. I like to think of them as the literary equivalent of the macaroon.

Oh, and I am still to post on Lord Lucan (William Coles' latest) and must delve at some point into Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant.

Basically, I will still be posting on a wide range of genres, but will allow myself (ourselves) more than one measly classic a month.

Rating: 3/10.

Something for the Weekend...

From the mouth of Sherry Jones, UK citizens are being called upon to "...speak out against those who are limiting their right to read, think, speak, listen, debate, discuss, criticise... I hope the people of the UK can find the power, and the courage, to raise any outcry against censorship."

That all sounded very impressive on the Guardian homepage so I clicked through to the linked article. I wanted to see what this Sherry Jones person was protesting. Jones is angry that her book was dumped by Random House in the US before publication and now no UK publisher will pick it up. Jones is convinced that it is the controversial content that could offend the Muslim population that is the reason behind The Jewel of Medina's lack of publication.

However, and here's the amusing part, that's not the reason at all. According to the Guardian (full article here), Jones' book has been snubbed because it is 'absolutely awful', the prose is 'lamentable' and it can be summed up as 'an anachronistic bodice ripper'.

How embarrassing. The woman is out there campaigning for her book to be published, complaining that publishers are too scared of terrorist acts of retribution to pick up the title and it turns out that it is just... really, really bad.

So, no offence Sherry, but I'm not going to be organising a protest march for you in London anytime soon. If I'm going to be assaulted by the Met I want it to be for a good cause.

What I would like is for the one small publisher in the US who printed Jones' book to send me a proof copy, ASAP. I want to judge for myself the 'lamentable prose'. A shout-out to these guys, who simultaneously have the great courage to publish such a controversial title and the idiocy to think it was worth the risk.

Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2009

The winners have just been announced for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and Elizabeth Strout has snapped up the prize for fiction for her collection of short stories entitled Olive Kitteridge. The other two finalists were The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and All Souls by Christine Schutt. For the full list of winners and finalists in all categories, click on the link above to go to the official Pulitzer website.

TYPICALLY, none of the ones we have read won or were finalists, but we'll get reviews up ASAP.

Congratulations Ms. Strout (for the award and the prize money only, we'll reserve praise for the stories until we've actually read them. You never know...)

And our scientist friend is also to be congratulated- two of the three finalists (including the winner) were on his list of predictions. Check out the list again here.

PUHLEASE-itzer 2009

Tomorrow, at 3pm EST, the Pulitzer will be announced and we are both very, very excited.

That... is a lie.

The Pulitzer is always a bit hit and miss. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was... NOT wow (I am HILARIOUS)... March was no more than glorified fan-fiction... I have tried to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay so many times it is now my Everest... The Hours was soporific.

Which doesn't mean the judges cannot recognise brilliance. American Pastoral was superb, The Road was phenomenal and To Kill a Mockingbird... enough said.

The Pulitzer is a different award to most in that it does not announce a shortlist- on the day we are just presented with the winner and a runner-up. A very intelligent man (who obviously needs more to do) built a model last year predicting the 10 books most likely to win the Pulitzer. Considering he had both the winner and the runner-up on the list, that's pretty nifty regression analysis in my opinion. (Ahem, I have no idea what that means, I lifted it from the article.) If you want to read the rest of the article, including the list of books he predicts for 2009, click here.

I've only read four on the list: A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Indignation by Philip Roth, Netherland by Joseph O'Neil, and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. I didn't like the last, so I'm not pushing for that and on the others I'm undecided, but I reckon Netherland is in with a pretty good chance, at either winner or runner-up. (If only because it's about cricket.)

Undoubtedly it will go to one I haven't read... sigh. Starving children in Africa have NOTHING on me and my troubles.

Most punters seem to be backing Morrison's prequel to her Pulitzer-winning Beloved, but we'll all know tomorrow. Any further predictions are welcome, but they don't count after 3pm EST.

On Ratings

Earhart and I enjoy the freedom this blog gives us to express our distaste or great love (it rarely falls in the middle) for the books we cram into our heads on a relatively regular basis. We also particularly like our ratings table, as it is a fair reflection of what we find important in a novel (as well as what we could do without).

People have asked why we review books that we KNOW are probably going to be a load of rubbish (e.g. books with sparkly covers... books with the endorsement 'jaunty' splashed across the cover... books with overly aggressive marketing schemes... etceterrahhh, etcetterrahhh). The answer is this: it is not possible to fully scorn a book unless you have actually read it. I respect those who read a novel and disliked it, I pity and loathe those who didn't read it yet still feel confident in loudly expressing their dislike of said novel.

Also, there is much to be said for ensuring your reading tastes occasionally include those novels catering to the lowest common denominator. Too much Dostoevsky, Ibsen and Proust and you'll find yourself struggling to conduct a normal conversation, totally unable to embrace the usual spectrum of human emotion and instead employing the desperate reaches of your literary paladins. You will increasingly find yourself the only person worth talking to at a cocktail party and discreet bodyguards will have you removed from the premises after you are found talking forcefully to yourself in the bathroom whilst setting off the smoke alarm with your roll-up and writing a Dear John letter to your intellectually challenged yet insipidly beautiful beloved on the wallpaper with a fountain pen that once belonged to Sir Walter Scott that you bought for 18000 quid.

A dire situation to find yourself in, I'm sure you'd agree.

All this is apropos of our stand that we can rate and review books dependent on our mood, fancy or size of pay-off we are getting from the publisher. (Sigh, this last one hasn't happened but we can only hope, one day, some day, our literary ethics will be compromised and we will find ourselves swimming through the Venetian canals. We will be so rich we will have had them cleaned.)

AND, this goes to say that other websites should also be able to rate books as they see fit. Like Amazon. TECHNICALLY, they can organise their ratings any way they see fit.

HOWEVER, if it is true that they have removed the sales rankings from literature it classifies as 'adult' (which includes themes of homosexuality) then I am horrified and demand the fascists attend a seminar on 'Getting By in the 21st Century When You Have the Emotional Intelligence of a Medieval Frog'.

Newbery not Newbury

For those not in the know: Neil Gaiman = Love.

And the good people who are in charge of awarding the Newbery Medal obviously agree seeing as The Graveyard Book was just announced as the 2009 winner. Can I get a hells yeah? This news made me breathe a sign of relief...perhaps not all is lost in the world of children's book awards. To elaborate...

For the past couple of years there has been a worrying trend in the winners of children's book awards such as the Newbery Medal, and the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Awards. The books being named as winners are often not books which are suitable (or enjoyable!) for children to read. Take last year's winner of the CBCA Picture Book of the Year award: Requiem for a Beast by Matt Ottley. While this book is indeed stunning to look at, and visually powerful, it was described by the CBCA judges themselves as 'neither a comfortable nor a happy read'. Now I am the last person who would ever say that picture books are just for children, there are numerous picture books, Ottley's included, which you have to be an older reader to understand. However, I feel that an award put out by the CBCA should honour books which are in fact suitable for children. Similarly, last year's winner of the Newbery Medal, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schiltz, has been described as 'a book most children would find inaccessible'.

Basically, who cares if kids are scared/confused/bewildered... the important thing is the book 'has a message'.

Ridiculous.

So...The Graveyard Book...

When he was just a baby, Nobody 'Bod' Owens managed to escape from the (sociopathic) killer who murdered the rest of his family. He wanders into the nearby graveyard where the local ghosts decide to take him in. He is raised halfway between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and educated by a nomadic vampire. This is Gaiman's answer to Kipling's The Jungle Book. Instead of Baloo the Bear, we have Silas the Undead. Told in a similar episodic manner to The Jungle Book, we get to see Bod slowly grow up, and come to the realisation that perhaps he isn't the most normal of children.

You have only to read Gaiman's profanity laden reaction to the news that he won the Newbery to realise that perhaps he isn't what most people would think of when they picture a children's book author, but his books are always right on target.

So go out and read it now, I promise you won't regret it.

8/10.

Costa Book Awards 2009

Let's just do a quick review of what the Costa Book Awards are, shall we? Named by wikipedia as one of the U.K.'s most prestigious literary prizes, they were originally called the Whitbread Book Awards. Most people may not know that Costa is actually a subsidiary of Whitbread, so essentially sponsorship has stayed within the company. So basically, they were sponsored by a hospitality giant and now are sponsored by a coffee chain. They often award the prize for best novel on populist terms, weighing the quality of the literature against the appeal it has to the masses. I like to think of them as the book award that caters (hah) to the lowest common denominator.

That being said, we shouldn't begin to judge the winner until we have actually opened the covers and had a bit of a read.

Just like we shouldn't assume greatness with the Man Booker or Pulitzer awards. I mean, what happened in 2006? The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai beat out several promising contenders, none more so than The Secret River by Kate Grenville. The latter had all the fixings of a modern-day masterpiece and Grenville's predigree to back it up. Instead, the award went to Desai, who wrote a well-written, nicely thought-out story.

Period.

No X-factor = no award in my mind, but I'm not on the judging panel.

Don't even get me started on the PUH-LEASEitzer. I'm not suggesting Geraldine Brooks isn't a wonderful author. However I've only ever seen this wonderful authorship in one novel: The Year of Wonders. It's always a bad sign I feel when everyone considers your first novel your best. Better to stop right there and be a one-hit wonder than slowly peter towards the pedestrian. March, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer (maybe it was something about that year) was nothing more than glorified fan fiction. And People of the Book was interesting in the historical sections, but ruined by the interspersing of the most annoying 'modern' woman Brooks could conjure to tie the story together.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry has just been announced the winner of this year's Costa Book Awards. It was actually nominated for the Man Booker last year, which is why I realised it sounded so familiar, yet was also sure I hadn't read it. I'm not sure the actual award is a consolation prize for missing out on the Booker, (COFFEE award people, it's a COFFEE AWARD), but I'm sure the 25 000 pounds will help.