The Compulsive Reader News

CR Newsletter Jan: Odoevsky, Bloch, le carre, Bernstein, Flanagan and more

2012-01-05T16:14:25Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 13, Issue 1, 6th January 2012
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IN THIS ISSUE

New Reviews
Literary News
Survey News
Competition News
Coming soon

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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of Two Princesses by Vladimir Odoevsky

There is a sense in this story of how Russia was changing; and it is clear as well that Odoevsky approved of the change and trusted the younger generation. What’s noteworthy also, besides a fetchingly emphatic eulogy to wine, is the artistic way in which the story is told: through an assemblage of letters and conversations. Not entirely an epistolary tale, but close. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/73sblsm

A review of The Man Who Collected Psychos Critical Essays on Robert Bloch edited by Benjamin Szumskyj

And this novel, Bloch’s most famous, encapsulates what is certainly his main theme: human beings’ capacity for violence, the inexplicable nature of evil. Bloch wrote about this with black humour, an acute grasp of abnormal psychology, a storyteller’s art. And he entertained, as all good writers do. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/7eg397x

A review of The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre

Let me come clean and admit that I didn’t quite follow the plot; indeed, in places I found it quite perplexing. But I read on because I was held by le Carre’s world, precarious and peril-ridden. He writes at one point that ‘silence, not gunfire, was the natural element of the approaching enemy’ and he uses this element too. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/7bfko83

A review of The Philosophers’ Madonna Eclectics & Heteroclites 8 by Carlo Emilio Gadda

A couple of reasons for gratitude, to end. Firstly to Antony Melville for a superb translation, at once joyfully idiomatic and full of delightfully complex syntax. The second Thank You is because The Philosophers’ Madonna has been a jaunty stimulus to seek out the work, and explore the worlds, of Carlo Emilio Gadda, a writer hitherto unknown to me. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/7p9lcew

A review of Prayers waiting for God by David Barnes

The blurb on the back says it all: “This is David Barnes’ first and last book.” That David ever came to be a poet is a kind of miracle in itself. He’s an unlikely candidate. A ward of the state, placed in institutions and physically and sexually abused - there was little likelihood that he would become a functioning adult, let alone a loving one who could have a happy relationship, a much-loved son a self-deprecating sense of humour – or a writing career. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/7q3nyza

A review of Becoming: The Life & Musings of a Girl Poet by Nadia Janice Brown

Subjects such as your purpose in life, planning and preparing for change, living your dream, procrastination, and overcoming the author’s blues come alive under this author’s pen. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/73f3tp6

An Interview with Nadia Janice Brown

The author of Becoming: The Life & Musings of a Girl Poet and Unscrambled Eggs talks about her books, about being published and self-publishing, the impact that being published has had on her life, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/77jv7d4

A reviw of Spirit Junkie: A Radical Road to Self-Love and Miracles by Gabrielle Bernstein

In our busy world where achivement and ticking boxes seems to take priority over everything else, the message is a critically important one, however it's delivered. Call it "ego", or fear, or self-sabotage, and talk about God, spirit, '-ing', or simply our own inner, innate capabilities. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that Bernstein's book is powerful and effective, infused with extraordinary energy and passion. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/6qkrqkr

A review of The Lost Stories (Ranger's Apprentice #11) by John Flanagan

The stories read quickly, and are very easy to follow and get into, which speaks to the appeal these books have for reluctant readers. There is a good mix between action, reflection, and dialogue, and the stories are well written, with the wholesome theme of good conquering evil in a variety of forms keeping everything positive without descending into corniness. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/6urz4cn

Interview with John Flanagan

John Flanagan talks about his 11th Ranger's Apprentice book, The Lost Stories, the 12th book and its potential setting, his characters, the upcoming film, his new series Brotherband, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/7zf5yy9

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,933 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

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"A story of what it means to take responsibility for one's own happiness." Just $1.29 (US)
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LITERARY NEWS

Hello everyone, happy new year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that 2012 brings you all the reading you could hope for. In the literary news this month, Author Catherine Hall has been named the winner of the Green Carnation literary prize 2011 for her second book, The Proof of Love. Chair of the judges, Simon Savidge, said: “I am thrilled, along with all the other judges, that Catherine Hall has won this year's Green Carnation prize with her extraordinary second novel The Proof of Love. Winner Catherine Hall said “I’m utterly delighted to have won the Green Carnation Prize – a completely unexpected pleasure, especially given the calibre of the other writers on the shortlist. It’s a great way of raising the profile of LGBT writing, which I think can only be a good thing.”

The announcement of the finalists for the Booktrust Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, which recognizes and celebrates "the best children's authors, the most fascinating fact books and the greatest reads for children," has been overshadowed, the Guardian wrote, "by news that Andy Mulligan's Trash, initially selected by judges, was dropped from the finalists on the grounds that it was unsuitable for the BBC programme's younger fans." The 2012 shortlist includes: Discover the Extreme World by Camilla de la Bedoyere, Clive Gifford, John Farndon, Steve Parker, Stewart Ross and Philip Steele, The Official Countdown to the London 2012 Games by Simon Hart, The Considine Curse by Gareth P. Jones, A Year Without Autumn by Liz Kessler. The shortlisted books will be judged by more than 200 young Blue Peter viewers drawn from 10 schools across the U.K., with the winner of the Blue Peter Book of the Year announced March 1, 2012, to coincide with World Book Day.

Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman has won the Galaxy book of the year award. A public vote crowned the journalist's semi-autobiographical tome the winner ahead of titles by Dawn French, Claire Tomalin and seven others. Moran's title was named most popular non-fiction book at the National Book Awards last month.

The Booker Prize winner Penelope Lively has been made a Dame, with artists, musicians and members of the fashion industry also honoured. Lively, 78, was also recognised for services to literature. Her first successful book was Astercote, written for children in 1970. She published her first novel for adults, The Road To Lichfield, seven years later. It was the first of three works shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won in 1987 for Moon Tiger, the story of a dying woman looking back over her life. Lively was appointed OBE in 1989, and created CBE 12 years later. Lady Rachel Billington, who started writing in 1968 and is the author of 24 novels, was appointed OBE for services to literature. She is the daughter of the prisons reform campaigner Lord Longford and one of seven brothers and sisters who include the writers Lady Antonia Fraser and Thomas Pakenham. Poet Geoffrey Hill, elected last year as Oxford's professor of poetry as also been knighted. For the full list of the new year honour list for the arts, visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/31/new-year-honours-art-awards.

Copyright on James Joyce’s works in the European Union expired at midnight. From today, writings published during Joyce’s lifetime – Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – are available for publication and quotation without reference or payment to the Irish author's estate. Joyce died on January 13th, 1941; originally, copyright in these works in Britain and Ireland extended for 50 years, until 1991. However, some two years after that date, EU copyright law was harmonised to bring it into line with German practice and the period was extended to 70 years. The end of copyright protection will enable creative artists and theatre companies to stage adaptations and re-enactments. Public broadcast will also be possible. Joyce’s solitary play, Exiles, can also be freely staged, and productions are likely.

The Costa Book Awards 2011 winners in the Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book categories have been announced. Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread PLC, Costa announced its takeover of the sponsorship of the UK's popular and prestigious book prize in 2006. 2011 marks the 40th year of the Book Awards. The five successful authors who will now compete for the 2011 Costa Book of the Year are: Poet and debut biographer Matthew Hollis, who won the Costa Biography Award for his first work of prose, Now All Roads Leads to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas, Andrew Miller won the Costa Novel Award with his sixth novel, Pure. Debut novelist and former Great Ormond Street nurse, Christie Watson, won the Costa First Novel Award for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, set in the Niger Delta. Carol Ann Duffy won the Costa Poetry Award for The Bees, her first collection since being appointed Poet Laureate in 2009, and debut children's writer, Moira Young won the Cos ta Children's Book Award for Blood Red Road, currently being adapted for film by Scott Free, Ridley Scott's production company. The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will receive £5,000, were selected from 568 entries. The five books are now eligible for the ultimate prize - the 2011 Costa Book of the Year. For additional information go to www.costabookawards.com

Finally, Jo Shapcott, was named the latest recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for her body of work, including Of Mutability, which won the Costa book of the year prize in 2011. She was chosen by a committee of "eminent men and women of letters" selected by British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the Guardian reported.

Have a great month. Maggie
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SURVEY NEWS

Our current survey picks up on the literary controversy caused by new Booker Judge (and former MI5 Chief and spy thriller author) Stella Rimington, who decided to add the criteria of "readibility" to the judging criteria. What do you think? Should prizes take into account readibility? The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. Please send me comments directly, and if anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime.

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Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Robin Rabie, Donna Dorothy, and Cate Sparks, who each won a copy of Home Front by Kristin Hannah.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of 3 copies of The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Whisperer and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of January.

Good luck everybody!

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COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Letters to Stanley Chapman by Boris Vian, Stealing Faces by Michael Prescott, The Confessions of Becky Sharp by David James, The Fate of Pryde by Mary Martin, Heidegger's Glasses by Thaisa Frank, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site - now ad free) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen an interview with Lesley Singe, author of Mountains Belong to the People Who Love Them, If you use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show.

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Cline, Ebine, Lewis, Wilson, Palma, and more

2011-12-08T05:28:41Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 12, 8th December 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

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PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, one of my readers has asked me to put the news after the reviews. I aim to please, so thought I'd give it a try this month. If you have an opinion or prefer this the old way, please drop me a line and let me know and hopefully I'll be able to please the majority at least. I also wanted to mention that I've now got a Facebook Author page at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Magdalena-Ball-Author/154205247984373
with lots more giveaways, literary news, bloggie stuff, videos and more. Do please drop by and have a look.
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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

While I didn’t find myself showering with my copy of Ready Player One, I did find it an enjoyable read. However, I feel that fans of virtual gaming will get far more from this story than I did. Young adult males, in particular, will eat this up. Ready Player One is Willy Wonka with balls; it’s Total Recall meets The Matrix meets the Mario Brothers. It’s scarily familiar and horribly possible. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/6vj23xj

A review of Gandhi : A Manga Biography by Kazuki Ebine

The best part of the artwork in Gandhi: A Manga Biography is that Kazuki Ebine creates characters that are true to life rather than being the large eyed cutesy figures of many of the Manga tales. Kazuki Ebine shows many scenes of action and pain and suffering as well as determination and the will to continue. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/7l3cqvc

A review of Nemonymous Night by D F Lewis

Even upon ending, the reader unfamiliar with DF Lewis’ work isn’t sure whether one has reached an understanding of self or the dream or made it to reality again or whether they should perhaps start over and read once more. It is a very well wrought book that many fantasy lovers will enjoy for the statement it makes by unmaking. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3fpkb58

A review of Running Away To Home By Jennifer Wilson

Wilson and her family certainly didn’t take the easy way out. For most of us, a “major life change” would still keep us pretty close to our comfort zone. Getting a new haircut is risky for some of us. But Wilson and her family weren’t looking for easy. Her ancestral homeland wasn’t even in the more modern, populated part of Croatia—she writes that the region of Gorski Kotar, where her ancestors lived, seemed to be an area where time literally stopped a century ago. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/74gkuw3

A review of The Map of Time by Félix J Palma

Primarily, though, The Map of Time warns of the hazards of manipulating history; this could loosely be read as a modern commentary on the written records of history–records that now include an increasing magnitude of unreliable records located on the World Wide Web. To a lesser extent, Palma explores the familiar modern anxiety of privacy: time travel would ultimately establish ‘a world where privacy would no longer exist’ and an individual could no longer sustain control—or permanency—over their actions. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/8ymtemg

A review of The Dashwood Sisters Tell All by Beth Pattillo

Pattillo includes enough references to important British landmarks to keep both Anglophiles and Jane Austen fans engaged in the plot. The Dashwood Sisters Tell All is a fun and intelligent nod to the great novelist, and modern-day audiences may want to read out Austen’s works to understand why she remains such an inspiration to today’s writers. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/782th4d

A review of Pirate King by Laurie R. King

The series is most appealing because of its intellect combined with delectable humor, particularly shown through the pithy dialogue of husband and wife. Mary Russell’s voice is strong – profound, most definitely British, and delightfully independent. Her relationship with Holmes, while they dash across the globe to solve mysteries and rescue innocents, is what hooked me from the beginning, particularly its dry humor and subtle eroticism. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/6lqnr63

A review of Take 100 The Future of Film by Cameron Bailey and 10 others

The essays are generally perceptive and insightful, or at the very least serviceable, and they renew your memory and appreciation of those films that you have seen, while whetting your appetite for those that you’ve not yet got around to. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/82ga4nh

An Interview with Angela Slatter

The author of the magnificent mosaic, Sourdough and Other Stories, talks about her book; about fairy tales, red hair and writing; and about much else. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/72sqnm4

A review of Sourdough and Other Stories by Angela Slatter

These stories are stupendously good and offer many distinct pleasures: a strange yet superbly realised world, compelling characters and, above all, beautiful prose that has the power to move. One of those characters mentions of her lover’s failings that ‘he could not realize how all women are, in one way or another, “her kind” [i.e. a witch], even his dear departed mother.’ And that could be a coda for the book. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/6lschj9

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,913 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

My Bess, by Sheila Brandon Hart.
"A story of what it means to take responsibility for one's own happiness." Just $1.29 (US)
http://tinyurl.com/74xu56s

=================================================

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

=================================================
LITERARY NEWS

Hello everyone, in the literary news this month, Chilean poet Nicanor Parra has won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour. The prize comes with a cash award of 125,000 euros (£107,000), and honours a writer's body of work. Parra, now aged 97, is considered one of the most important poets of Spanish language writing. Also a mathematician, his "anti-poetry" - which mixes colloquial language with old-fashioned verse - is very influential in Latin America. He published his first collection of verse in 1937 and won Chile's National Literature Award in 1969 and 1981.The Cervantes Prize will be handed out on 23 April, the anniversary of the Don Quixote author's death in 1616.

Author Emma Donoghue joins fellow Irish writers Tana French and Paul Murray among the 147 long-listed for the 2012 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The full long-list for next year's €100,000 prize. The three Irish novels will be serious contenders for the IMPAC. But there are some strong rivals on the long-list, including 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' by Jennifer Egan, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; 'The Memory of Love' by Animatta Forna, winner of the 2011 Commonwealth Writer's Prize; and 'Cool Water' by Dianne Warren, winner of the Governor General's Award in Canada last year. The award is organised by Dublin City Libraries and supported by the IMPAC management consultancy. The full long-list for the 2012 award can be viewed on http://www.impacdublinaward.ie.

Calgary-born novelist Esi Edugyan has prevailed against almost 150 other Canadian novelists to win the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, worth $50,000. Regarded as Canada’s pre-eminent literary prize, the well-promoted and televised Scotiabank Giller Prize routinely transforms winners into bestsellers. Originally published in an edition of a few hundred copies, last year’s winner – The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud – went on to become one of the best-selling novels of the year. Named for literary journalist Doris Giller, the prize was founded and endowed in 1994 by her husband, Jack Rabinovitch, with the intention of drawing greater attention to Canadian literature and stimulating sales. Co-sponsored by Scotiabank since 2005, the prize has so far generated more than $60-million in book sales, according to organizers.

The third Wellcome Trust Book Prize has been awarded to Alice LaPlante for her debut novel 'Turn of Mind', a tale of a family's secrets exposed by murder and a brilliant mind in terminal decline. It is the first work of fiction to win the Prize, triumphing ahead of Philip Roth's study of a polio epidemic in wartime Newark, 'Nemesis', and Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of cancer, 'The Emperor of All Maladies'. The £25 000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. The full list of shortlisted books and judges bios can be found here: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2011/WTVM053388.htm

A Belfast-born author and playwright has won the £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize for her second novel. Lucy Caldwell was presented with her prize at an awards ceremony in the late Welsh poet's home city of Swansea. Judges called her novel The Meeting Point "a beautifully written and mature reflection on identity, loyalty and belief in a complex world." The prize is awarded annually to a young writer of a novel, play, poetry or travel book. More details about the book and the award can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-15659330

The nominees for the Costa Book Award have been announced and includeJohn Burnside, Andrew Miller and Louisa Young pitched against 2011 Man Booker Prize
winner Julian Barnes in the Novel category. For poetry, the nominees include Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy shortlisted alongside Jackie Kay, David Harsent and Sean
O’Brien. The category winners will be announced on 4 January, while the overall honour is revealed in London on 24 January. For the full list visit:
http://www.costabookawards.com/book-awards-this-year.html

The Canada Council for the Arts announced the 14 winners of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, worth $25,000 each. Eleven of the 14 winners are receiving the award for the first time. This year’s fiction winner is Patrick deWitt, whose comic Western, The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press), also won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction. Despite the mild controversy surrounding this year’s poetry shortlist, the prize went to Phil Hall’s Killdeer, one of three titles from alternative Toronto publisher BookThug. The drama prize went to Erin Shields for If We Were Birds (Playwrights Canada Press). Each winner received $25,000 from the Canada Council of the Arts.

The 62nd National Book Awards went to Thanhha Lai for Inside Out & Back Again (Young People's Literature), Nikky Finney for Head Off & Split (Poetry), Stephen Greenblatt for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Nonfiction), and Jesmyn Ward for Salvage the Bones (Fiction). Mitchell Kaplan, the co-founder of the Miami Book Fair International and owner of Books & Books, received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. John Ashbery received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

The 2011 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award winners included Neil Jordan, who won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year for Mistaken. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney was given the Bob Hughes lifetime achievement award and Crannóg Bookshop, Cavan, was named the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Bookshop of the Year. Approximately 33,000 members of the Irish reading public voted for their favorite titles. You can find a complete list iof Irish Book Award winners here:
http://www.irishpublishingnews.com/2011/11/17/and-the-bord-gais-energy-irish-book-award-2011-winners-are/

Finally, An over-reliance on coy terms such as "family jewels", "back door" and "front parlour" has won acclaimed American novelist David Guterson the dubious accolade of the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award. Guterson, who took the literary world by storm in 1994 with his bestselling debut Snow Falling on Cedars, snaffled the bad sex prize for his fifth novel, Ed King, a modern reimagining of the Oedipus myth.

As this is the last issue of the year, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy holiday and all the best for a healthy new year full of reading.

Until next month. Maggie
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SURVEY NEWS

Thanks to everyone who voted last month on what book Carolyn Howard-Johnson and I should focus our energy on. Thanks to your advice, we've decided to create a poetry cookbook! More on that as the book progresses. In the meantime, we've got a new survey that picks up on the literary controversy caused by new Booker Judge (and former MI5 Chief and spy thriller author) Stella Rimington, who decided to add the criteria of "readibility" to the judging criteria. What do you think? Should prizes take into account readibility? The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. Please send me comments directly, and if anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime.

==========================================================

Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Patricia Hill, Ruthie Bloszinsky, and Mary A. Hebda, who each won a copy of The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of 3 copies of Home Front by Kristin Hannah. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Home Front and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of The Lost Stories (Ranger's Apprentice #11) by John Flanagan (including an interview with Flanagan), Spirit Junkie: A Radical Road to Self-Love and Miracles by Gabrielle Bernstein, The Life & Musings of a Girl Poet by Nadia Janice Brown (including an interview with Brown), Prayers waiting for God by David Barnes, The Philosophers’ Madonna Eclectics & Heteroclites 8 by Carlo Emilio Gadda, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site - now ad free) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen an interview with Mike French, author of The Ascent of Issac Stewart, If you use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show.

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(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Jonquet, Dylan, French, Meadows, Harstad and more

2011-11-07T05:39:26Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 11, 7 November 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

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PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello and a big special welcome to all of our new readers - we've had a big surge over the past few months and I'm so pleased to have you here. Big thanks to our long termers too for being a wonderful ongoing community. The love of books really brings people together. Even this past week I was at the doctors with my daughter and while she was getting pricked with a needle I spoke to her about the new Paolini Inheritance book which is coming out next week to distract her. The doctor piped in (he's a fan) and before we knew it we were having a right old literary conversation and that little needle faded into insignificance. A review of course will follow, as soon as I can wrestle the book away from my children, who have been arguing for 3 months about who will get it first.

On that note, and in the news this month, the German Book Prize winner has been annouced as Eugen Ruge for his novel In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts.World English rights have gone to Graywolf, and the working English title appears to be 'In Times of Fading Light'. The foreign rights page provides an overview of the novel here: http://www.rowohlt.de/sixcms/detail.php?template=rr_verlag_fr_detail&id=2796361

The Canada Council for the Arts announced the 68 finalists for this year's Governor General’s Literary Awards. which celebrate the excellence of Canadian writers, illustrators and translators in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature (text and illustration) and translation. Category winners will be named November 15, and honored November 24 at a ceremony in Ottawa. Notably absent from the shortlisted novels was Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table. Quillblog reported that the five-time winner of the award requested that his novel be withdrawn from consideration, stating: "This was done as I have received it many times and felt I should not enter a book again. The GG award has been very important to me and I greatly respect it and what it has done for our literature."

The 20 finalists for the National Book Awards have been annouced. The finalists for fiction are Nicole Krauss for her third novel, “Great House,” Lionel Shriver for “So Much for That,” Karen Tei Yamashita for “I Hotel,” Jaimy Gordon for “Lord of Misrule,” and Peter Carey for “Parrot and Olivier in America,” The nonfiction finalists include books set in war and foreign locales. They are Barbara Demick for “Nothing to Envy,” John W. Dower for “Cultures of War,” Megan K. Stack, for “Every Man in This Village Is a Liar,” Justin Spring for “Secret Historian,” and Patti Smith for “Just Kids.” The winners in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young adult literature will be announced at a ceremony on Nov. 17. Eligible books were written by an American citizen and published in the United States between Dec. 1, 2009, and Nov. 30, 2010.
Almost a third (31 per cent) of UK adults are too embarrassed to admit to loving a particular book, according a new poll from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). In contrast, blind and partially sighted readers face a dramatically limited choice of titles - just 7 per cent of all books are available in fully accessible formats. Released on the eve of the charity's annual fundraising appeal Read for RNIB Day, the survey reveals that more than one in three (36 per cent) of UK adults have a guilty pleasure author that they love to read in private but would not necessarily admit to reading in public. Books topping the list of guilty pleasure reads for those that admit to them are JK Rowling's Harry Potter (31 per cent) series, with The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (28 per cent) following second, and Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding (19 per cent) third. In stark contrast to this, new research released today by RNIB shows that just 7 per cent of books are avai lable in formats accessible to blind and partially sighted people - braille, large print and audio books.* As it is predicted that by 2050 the number of people with sight loss in the UK will double to nearly four million, the charity's work is becoming increasingly important and in demand.

Roberto Saviano won the 2011 PEN/Pinter International Writer of Courage Award. David Hare made the announcement in accepting the PEN/Pinter prize, which is awarded annually to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Harold Pinter's Nobel speech, casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world, and shows a "fierce intellectual determination... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies." The prize is shared with an imprisoned writer of courage selected by English PEN's Writers in Prison Committee in association with the winner. This half of the prize is awarded to someone who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs. Italian writer Saviano's work exposed the organized crime of the Neopolitan mafia, which led to his living in hiding under 24 hour police protection.

Rabindranath Maharaj won the $11,000 Toronto Book Award for The Amazing Absorbing Boy, "less than four months after winning the Trillium Book Award for the same novel," the National Post reported. Toronto Councillor Gary Crawford, who was representing Mayor Rob Ford, said the winning novel "gives a unique perspective about our diverse city, and was selected from 78 book submissions. All of these authors tell great stories about Toronto and can be very proud of their work." The other finalists were James King, Alissa York, Nicholas Ruddock and James FitzGerald.

Javier Moro has won this year's €600,000 (US$830,000) Premio Planeta award, the prestigious prize for novels in Spanish, for his book El imperio eres tu (The Empire, It's You). The book "is based on the life of Brazil's first Emperor Dom Pedro I (1798-1834), who backed the nationalist cause against imperial power Portugal," AFP reported.

Julian Barnes has finally won the literary prize that has eluded him on three previous occasions when he was tonight presented with the Man Booker prize for his short novel, The Sense of an Ending. His victory came after one of the most bitter and vituperative run-ups to the prize in living memory - not among the shortlisted writers, but from dismayed and bemused commentators who accused judges of putting populism above genuine quality. I've got a copy of The Sense of an Ending anxiously awaiting my attention.

The shortlist for the TS Eliot Prize for poetry has now been announced. The judges, Gillian Clarke, Stephen Knight and Dennis O'Driscoll, chose six collections to accompany the four Poetry Book Society choices to make up the ten collections on the shortlist. These include: John Burnside, Black Cat Bone, Carol Ann Duffy, The Bees, Leontia Flynn, Profit and Loss, Jonathan Cape, David Harsent, Night, John Kinsella, Armour, Esther Morgan, Grace, Daljit Nagra, Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!, Sean O'Brien, November, Picador, Bernard O'Donoghue, Farmer's Cross, and Alice Oswald, Memorial.

The shortlisted authors for the DSC South Asian Literature Festival have been announced. The jury for this year’s $50,000 prize includes renowned literary figures Dr. Alastair Niven, Dr. Fakrul Alam, Faiza S. Khan and Marie Brenner. Ira Pande, chairperson of the jury, reveals the difficult task of intense deliberation over the 16-book longlist, choosing the following six books that made it onto this year’s hotly anticipated shortlist for the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. These include U.R. Ananthamurthy: Bharathipura (Oxford University Press, India, Translated by Susheela Punitha), Chandrakanta: A Street in Srinagar (Zubaan Books, India, translated by Manisha Chaudhry), Usha K.R: Monkey-man (Penguin/Penguin India), Shehan Karunatilaka: Chinaman (Random House, India), Tabish Khair: The Thing About Thugs (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins India), and Kavery Nambisan: The Story that Must Not Be Told (Viking/Penguin India). The winner of the second DSC Prize f or South Asian Literature will be announced at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival on 21 January 2012.

The winners of the 2011 ReLit Awards, which honour the best writing from Canada’s independent publishers, were revealed on Friday night. Dani Couture won the poetry award for her collection Sweet, published by Pedlar Press; Tony Burgess won the story story award for his collection Ravena Gets, published by Anvil Press; and Craig Francis Power won the best novel award for Blood Relatives, also published by Pedlar Press. Each winner receives a custom ring, designed by Christopher Kearney. The awards were founded by author Kenneth J. Harvey.

Twelve novels from Japan, Iran, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Bangladesh made this year's longlist for the Man Asian Literary Prize. The shortlist will be announced January 10, with a winner named March 15 in Hong Kong. The 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize longlist includes The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad, The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam

Rebirth by Jahnavi Barua, The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya, The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy, Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin, The Valley of Masks by Tarun J. Tejpal, Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, and The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

The 2011 Galaxy Book of the year award is now open for voting. Shortlisted authors include: Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson, Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin, A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French, The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst, Room by Emma Donoghue, The Good Cook by Simon Hopkinson, How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman. If you're based in the UK or Republic of Ireland, you can vote for the winner, and have a chance to win a National Book Tokens Gift Card worth £100 yourself. Voting is here: http://www.channel4.com/play-win/the-galaxy-book-awards-vote/the-galaxy-book-awards-vote-competition/index.jsp
Finally, a biology teacher has won France's top literary prize with a novel about the country's colonial wars. Alexis Jenni received the Prix Goncourt for his debut, L'Art Francais De La Guerre (The French Art of War). As is traditional, the 10 Euro (£8.60) prize was handed out at the Drouant restaurant in Paris. The prize virtually guarantees high book sales. Past recipients include Marcel Proust in 1919 and last year's controversial winner, Michel Houellebecq. The Goncourt prize, which was first handed out in 1903, is presented annually to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year".

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

Look At Me Now
“A novel of gaining strength as an independent woman...inspiring and entertaining, highly recommended.” - Midwest Book Review
Just $1.99(US)as a Kindle or Nook ebook: http://tinyurl.com/3m5orjj
Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/3vmwxvw
Also available at Amazon.co.uk: http://tinyurl.com/3sa9f7f

=================================================

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

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SURVEY NEWS

Our survey that asked how you are reading books these days is now done. Results are as follows:

In print format, always - can't be a treebook: 30%
In print now, but that could change: 22%
E-books and print books - whatever I've got: 33%
E-books only. I love my reader: 10%
Magazines only - who has time to read?: 1% (that's 3 people - surprised we got any for that since this is a reading site!)
Other 1% (though we had no comments)

For my new survey, I've taken a little deviation from the norm and would like to know what you want to read. My writing partner Carolyn Howard-Johnson and I are planning a new book, and rather than brainstorm our own ideas (we did have a go at it), we thought we'd ask you - the ideal readers! So what would you like? Please join in with your response and if none of the suggestions appeal to you, please drop me a line and let me know what you do want to read and we'll write a book just for you! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime.

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Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet

Thierry Jonquet’s novel owes a little something to David Goodis’ Dark Passage, but it is probably best seen as a neo-noir reworking of a Symbolist tradition best exemplified by Rachilde’s Monsieur Venus or even Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s The Future Eve. (Lafargue calls his new creation Eve, incidentally.) As a yarn, it is both crazy and yet somehow psychologically plausible; it has a kind of warped logic. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3tg7m99

A review of Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown by David Yaffe

He devotes a chapter to Dylan’s voice, an incredible instrument, the thing that primarily differentiates him from a poet of the page. Another chapter, the second, looks at Dylan and cinema: films he has made (e.g. Renaldo and Clara), films that have been made about him (e.g. Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There). For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4xk5ry6

A review of The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet

His life was brief, but Radiguet’s achievements were immense. With The Devil in the Flesh he created an extraordinary novel, complex and cruel, excoriating of self and society. And reading the novel as a portrait of alienated adolescence, only Chandler Brossard’s brilliant The Bold Saboteurs comes close. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/45xkkom

A review of The Ascent of Issac Steward by Mike French

Issac's longing suffuses the work, continuing to strain towards Mamre Wood and the Dandelion Tree that somehow he knows he must ascend to join his family. This does carry the work forward, forming a constant even as the morphing characters intermingle, shoot and stab one another. At times, the narrative becomes theatre, complete with scene changes, fade in and outs. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4yyxl4x

A review of The Key to Starveldt—The Rare: book 2 by Foz Meadows

With its shades of Alice in Wonderland, Misfits, Supernatural—and others—this series will delight the Twilight generation. Meadows has handled her large cast of characters with ease; each is as multi-layered and complex as the plot—which really is a slippery thing: easy enough to grasp, but not so easy to hold onto. It twists, squirms and folds back on itself, all the while keeping readers guessing. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3m6lfo4

A review of Dina’s Lost Tribe by Brigitte Goldstein

Dina’s Lost Tribe is an interesting, at times engrossing read. The author does a skillful job in keeping each story distinct in flavor from the other. I’m not a historian so I can’t comment on the veracity of the facts, but from a reader’s point of view, the book seems extensively researched. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3zlnltc

The Leading African-American Literary Critic of His Generation: Henry Louis Gates Jr. and his book Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Critical Theory in the African Diaspora

In England, writer Zadie Smith and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and rock singer Kele of Bloc Party have made their own giant splashes, as had the androgynous singer Ephraim Lewis, before he died; and Ejiofor played a cross-dressing designer in Kinky Boots, and Kele is gay and alludes to that experience in his songs. For the full article visit: http://tinyurl.com/4yhygae

Interview with Johan Harstad

The author of Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion talks about his first novel, his characters, about fame and obscurity, The Faroe Islands, about music in his work, about Buzz Aldrin himself, the television series, on international translations, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/4y4x3ro

A review of Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion by Johan Harstad

Buzz Aldrin himself and his trip through space is as evocative a backdrop to the story as Mattias' hometown of Stavanger, Norway, and the moonlike Faroese Islands, where Mattias takes his own life-changing first steps. This is a lovely, delicately written novel whose power lies in the balance between Mattias' awakening, and his acceptance that there are many kinds of glory, and many different ways to create meaning and leave footprints. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3ndped4

A review of Mole Hunt—The Maximus Black Files: book 1 by Paul Collins

Readers are treated to a viewpoint that alternates between Black and Longshadow and are expertly drawn into a plot that’s tighter than the traps these two characters set for each other. The pace would give Matthew Reilly a nose bleed, and the attention to technological detail is impressive to say the least: I don’t know how much fact is woven throughout the narrative, but it all has a ring of truth and that’s what counts. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/44arcgm

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,895 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Jim Lynam, Tricha Leary, and Michelle St. James, who each won a copy of How the Mistakes Were Made by Tyler Mcmahon (we got 3 copies in the end)

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of 3 copies of The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Silk and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

Good luck everybody!

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COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Sourdough and Other Stories by Angela Slatter (including an interview with Slatter), The Dashwood Sisters Tell All by Beth Pattillo, The Map of Time by Félix J Palma, Running Away To Home By Jennifer Wilson, Nemonymous Night by D F Lewis, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site - now ad free) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our interview with Mike French, author of The Ascent of Issac Steward (see above). If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show.

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(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR October Newsletter: Flinn, Ivanoff, Smiley, Himes and more

2011-10-07T03:21:42Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 10, 7 October 2011
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IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

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PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, The shortlist for this year's $11,000 Toronto Book Award, which honors "authors of books of literary or artistic merit that are evocative of Toronto," Quillblog reported, are: What Disturbs Our Blood by James FitzGerald, Étienne's Alphabet by James King, The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj, The Parabolist by Nicholas Ruddock, and Fauna by Alissa York. The total value of the annual prize is $15,000. Each finalist will receive $1,000, while the winner, who will be announced on Oct. 13, will receive the remaining $11,000.

Kim Scott won the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's richest literary award, for That Deadman Dance, which "explores the relationships between 19th-century British settlers and the indigenous people on the coast of Western Australia," the Wall Street Journal reported. In June, Scott's novel won the Miles Franklin Award, making him the first indigenous writer to earn that prestigious award twice (his novel Benang won in 2000). That Deadman Dance is scheduled to be released in the U.S. and Canada in January.

The Longlist of 16 titles for the 2012 edition of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was announced today. The longlisted books, which represent the best works of fiction pertaining to the South Asian region, include an interesting mix of established as well debut novelists, along with three translated entries. The longlist for the prestigious US $50,000 award was chosen from close to 60 entries received by the DSC Prize Secretariat earlier this year and reviewed over the past 3 months, by a five member jury comprising Dr. Alastair Niven, Dr. Fakrul Alam, Faiza S Khan, Ira Pande (Chair of the jury) and Marie Brenner. The Jury has assessed and identified these exemplary works of fiction that voice the dynamic and eclectic nature of the South Asian region and culture. For the full list of winners visit: http://dscprize.com/dsc-prize-longlist-for-2012-2/

The winners of the English-Speaking Union Ambassador Book Awards are American Studies: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Poetry: Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman, Biography: The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century by Alan Brinkley, Fiction: The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg. The award for a book of special distinction went posthumously to The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt, and Janet Malcolm won the lifetime achievement award.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named 22 new MacArthur Fellows, who will receive $500,000 in "no strings attached" support over the next five years. Included among this year's "genius grant" winners are former U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan, "whose immediately distinctive and tightly woven verse is grounded in incisive explorations of seemingly familiar language, ideas, and experiences"; Peter Hessler, who "writes with a novelist's attention to detail and structures his stories around the compelling characters he encounters"; Jacob Soll, "a historian whose meticulously researched studies of early modern Europe are shedding new light on the origins of the modern state"; and A. E. Stallings, "a poet and translator mining the classical world and traditional poetic techniques to craft works that evoke startling insights about contemporary life."

Irish author Edna O'Brien won the €35,000 (US$48,282) Frank O'Connor prize for her short-story collection Saints and Sinners, the Guardian reported. O'Brien topped a shortlist that included Colm Tóibín, Yiyun Li, Alexander MacLeod, Suzanne Rivecca and Valerie Trueblood to win the prize, in what judging panel member Thomas McCarthy said was a "fraught" judging session: "The vote was split but everyone was happy with the decision. It seemed an apt choice."

Poet John Ashbery will receive the 2011 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 62nd National Book Awards on November 16 in New York City. Also that evening, Mitchell Kaplan, bookseller and co-founder of the Miami International Book Fair, will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Actor, writer, and musician John Lithgow will host the event. Ashbery is the twenty-first recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which was established to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Previous recipients include Toni Morrison, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe. Ashbery won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which also won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Jonathan Dee Won $50,000 St. Francis College Literary Award, which is aimed at encouraging mid-career authors to continue honing their craft, for his novel The Privileges (Random House). "So much of being a writer is about disappointment and discouragement. Tonight I feel the exact opposite. I feel nothing but encouraged," said Dee after being honored during the Brooklyn Book Festival last weekend. Dee's novel bested a shortlist that included Kevin Brockmeier's The Illumination (Pantheon), Joshua Cohen's Witz (Dalkey Archive), Yiyun Li's Gold Boy Emerald Girl (Random House), Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat (Tin House Books) and Brad Watson's Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton).

An international jury representing nine countries selected critically acclaimed Indian-Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry as the 2012 laureate of the $50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, the Neustadt family and the international magazine World Literature Today, The choice was made during deliberations Sept. 29 on the OU Norman campus. The Neustadt Prize, awarded every two years, is the only international literary award for which poets, playwrights and novelists are given equal consideration. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international prize after the Nobel Prize in Literature and, in fact, is often referred to as the “American Nobel” because of its record of 28 laureates, candidates or jurors who in the past 41 years have been awarded Nobel Prizes following their involvement with the Neustadt Prize. The 22nd Neustadt laureate to win the prize, Mistry will accept the award at OU in fall 2012 .
The Scotiabank Giller Prize has announced its 2011 shortlist. The six finalists were selected by an esteemed jury panel made up of award-winning Canadian writer and 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Annabel Lyon; American author, memoirist and Guggenheim fellow Howard Norman; and acclaimed UK playwright and prize-winning novelist Andrew O’Hagan. This is the 18th year of the prize. The shortlist was winnowed down from an unprecedented longlist of 17 books. The original field of submissions was a record-breaking 143 titles put forward by 55 publishing houses from every region of the country. The 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists are David Bezmozgis for his novel THE FREE WORLD, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, Lynn Coady for her novel THE ANTAGONIST, published by House of Anansi Press, Patrick deWitt for his novel THE SISTERS BROTHERS, published by House of Anansi Press, Esi Edugyan for her novel HALF-BLOOD BLUES, published by Thomas Allen Publisher s, Zsuzsi Gartner for her short story collection BETTER LIVING THROUGH PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES, published by Hamish Hamilton Canada, and (of course), Michael Ondaatje for his novel THE CAT’S TABLE, published by McClelland & Stewart.

John Burnside, who had made the shortlist three times previously, finally broke through to win the £10,000 (US$15,467) Forward Poetry Prize for his collection Black Cat Bone. The Guardian reported that Rachael Boast's Sidereal took the £5,000 award for best first collection and the late R.F. Langley won for best single poem.

Finally, after many years of being considered a frontrunner, Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2001, Graywolf published The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer, chosen and translated by Robert Bly, to critical acclaim. The news was announced this morning in Stockholm. Tomas Tranströmer was born and educated in Stockholm. He has written thirteen books of poems and is the recipient of such honors as the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, Germany's Petrarch Prize, the Bellman Prize, and the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize. His poetry has been translated into over sixty languages

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

Look At Me Now
“A novel of gaining strength as an independent woman...inspiring and entertaining, highly recommended.” - Midwest Book Review
Just $1.99(US)as a Kindle or Nook ebook: http://tinyurl.com/3m5orjj
Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/3vmwxvw
Also available at Amazon.co.uk: http://tinyurl.com/3sa9f7f

=================================================

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

=================================================

SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter.

==========================================================

Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A Conversation with Kathleen Flinn

The author of The Kitchen Counter Cooking School talks about her new book, her inspiration, the instructional language of recipes and how to decipher them, finding good recipes online, her own kitchen, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/42pgwv9

A review of Gamers’ Challenge by George Ivanoff

After reading the above, one might be forgiven for thinking this is nothing more than an entertaining story aimed at an electronic game-mad audience. But don’t be fooled, Gamers’ Challenge is far more than that. What this story does is challenge our notions of reality. It raises all the big existential questions, offers some answers and then turns everything on its head. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3ausx6a

A review of Private Life by Jane Smiley

Though Private Life is far from a happy book, the subtle beauty of its perceptions and the richly drawn tapestry of the characters that revolve around Margaret and her intensely private life provide the reader with a powerful and utterly engrossing work. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3nxzg7k

A review of The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

Casual violence, the cancerous effect of drugs, race hate and the fallout from slavery, the oppression of women by men both black and white, the peer pressure and perverted pride of being in a gang, the improvised stupidity of career criminals: it’s all to be found here in The Real Cool Killers. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3fuu58

A review of Exchanges on Light by Jacques Roubaud

In Jacques Roubaud’s exhilarating work, which is perhaps closer to one of Thomas Love Peacock’s novels rather than being a poem as such, six people discuss light over some six nights, and they pretty much go at it from all directions. Some take the scientific route, while others are by turns poetic, theological, mystical, down to earth, cosmological… the drive swerves and the roads are many and varied. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/44jr2la

A review of Never Fear Cancer Again: How to Prevent and Reverse Cancer by Raymond Francis

The simplicity of the Beyond Health model makes it very attractive, and certainly for those of us who are interested in staying well and avoiding diseases of all kinds the advice in this book is easy to accept and very worthwhile. Eating less junk food and more fresh vegetables and fruit and raw healthy grains, sprouts and nuts can only do us good, as can reducing our exposure to toxins and perhaps supplementing with a good multi-vitamin and fish oil at least. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3rbke57

A review of To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal

To Be Sung Underwater is a perfect example of a typical love story told in a unique and beautiful way, complete with an ending I certainly didn’t see coming. I can only imagine how much work it took Tom McNeal to produce writing that seems so effortless. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4x96yjg

A review of The Fall of the Iron Prow by Timothy Kearns

Fall opens in Constantinople (modern Istanbul), in 1219. The throne of the Queen of Cities is vacant, and up for grabs. The regent for the emperor is taking two years to reach the city, leaving Constantinople open, as Kearns puts it, open to any man with the nerve for the gamble. Young Niall Alreksson's father, a leader in the Guard, seems to have had the nerve, and betrayed the city when Niall was a child. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3lctvwn

It’s Going to Be a Long Fifteen Minutes: On Lady Gaga and Her Generation

Gaga is one of an emergent generation that has acquired great attention in the last three years or so; among them, Taio Cruz, Jason Derulo, Ke$ha, Bruno Mars, Travie McCoy, Owl City, Katy Perry, Mike Posner, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift, performers whose songs do possess a certain seduction, an energy and personality that are first irritating, then persuasive, and finally irritating again. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3sn5vq3

A review of Among the Departed by Vicki Delany

How do people carry on with their lives when someone has not only departed, but vanished? How do they cope privately with the not-knowing, and endure the public scrutiny? What becomes of them? The novel gives the reader an insight into those living out their lives among the departed. This aspect of the novel is particularly compelling, thought provoking, and heart-rending. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3mnd5ct

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,876 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Ann Hengst, who won a copy of The Kitchen Counter Cooking School and special edition magnet by Kat Flinn (see our interview above).

Congratulations also to Sue Farrell, Jane Robinson, and Barbara Andersen, who each won a copy of The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen.

Our new monthly giveaway is for a copy of How the Mistakes Were Made by Tyler Mcmahon. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Mistakes and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

Good luck everybody!

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COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Alternate Beauty by Andrea Rains Waggener, All in the Woods by JR Poulter, Young Törless by Robert Musil, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion by Johan Harstad (including a fantastic interview with Harstad) and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site - now ad free) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen Johan Harsad read from his novel Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Delaney, Bissell, Loory, Bakewell, Boddie, White and more

2011-09-08T05:54:34Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 9, 8 September 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

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PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize committee announced that its first Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award will be given to novelist and nonfiction writer Barbara Kingsolver. The ten-thousand-dollar prize, formerly known as the Lifetime Achievement Award but renamed to honor the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, celebrates an author for a body of work that promotes peace and understanding. The finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, given annually for a book of fiction and a book of nonfiction, include, for fiction, The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books), How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead Books), Beneath the Lions Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (W. W. Norton and Company), The Gendarme by Mark Mustian (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam), and Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne (HarperCollins Publishers). For the full list visit: http://www.daytonli terarypeaceprize.org/2011-finalists.htm

The NAIBA Books of the Year, chosen by members of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, are:Fiction: The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht (Random House), Nonfiction: Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House) , Trade Paperback Original: Extra Indians by Eric Gansworth (Milkweed Editions), Picture Book: Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown (Little Brown), Middle Readers: Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson (Atheneum), and Children's Literature and YA: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly (Random House). Authors will receive their awards at the NAIBA Awards Banquet on Tuesday, September 20, during NAIBA's Fall Conference.

The Fitzhenry Family Foundation announced shortlists for the Lane Anderson Award, which recognizes two Canadian books--one for adults, one for young readers--published in the field of science, Quillblog reported. Winners, who will be named September 14, receive $10,000 each. Adult reader finalists include Einstein Wrote Back: How Einstein Changed Everything by John W. Moffat (Thomas Allen Publishers), Keeping the Bees by Laurence Packer (HarperCollins Canada), and The Ptarmigan’s Dilemma: An Exploration into How Life Organizes and Supports Itself by John and Mary Theberge (McClelland & Stewart). Young reader finalists include Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be by Daniel Loxton (Kids Can Press), The Sea Wolves: Living Wild in the Great Bear Rainforest by Ian McAllister and Nicholas Read (Orca Book Publishers), and Ultimate Trains by Peter McMahon; Andy Mora, ilus. (Kids Can)

Pan Macmillan South Africa announced the finalists for this year's Citizen Book Prize. The winner receives R10,000 (US$1,392) from Citizen and "either publication by Pan Macmillan SA or a spot on a top S.A. creative writing course," Book Live reported. Until August 31, the public will have an opportunity to vote for its favorite of the 10 synopses shortlisted, after which results will be announced. "Please only vote once," Books Live noted. "Getting your granny, all your cousins and anyone who'll accept a bribe to log on will not ultimately make a difference--the judges' choice is final. Helping them accurately gauge the response to each title is far more valuable." The full list, including synopses, can be found here: http://panmacmillan.bookslive.co.za/blog/2011/08/11/2011-citizen-book-prize-longlist/

From 116 entries, more than twice the submissions for the first prize two years ago, St. Francis College is proud to announce the six authors on the short list for the second $50,000 Literary Prize awarded to a mid-career author. The six writers, competing for one of the richest awards in North America, are a diverse mix of authors, coming from across the United States and around the world.

The writers and their nominated books are: Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination (Pantheon); Joshua Cohen, Witz (Dalkey Archive Press); Jonathan Dee, The Privileges (Random House); Yiyun Li, Gold Boy Emerald Girl (Random House); Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat (Tin House Books); and Brad Watson, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (W. W. Norton & Company). The prize winning author will be announced Saturday, September 17 at the opening night gala for the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival.

Finalists for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize, have been named. The winner will be announced in October. This year's Not the Booker Prize shortlist includes Jude in London by Julian Gough, The Dead Beat by Cody James, King Crow by Michael Stewart, Fireball by Tyler Keevil, Spurious by Lars Iyer and English Slacker by Chris Morton

The James Tait Black Memorial awards are given to one work of fiction and one work of biography each year. Theatre critic Hilary Spurling claimed the biography prize
for her book Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China. American author Tatjani Soli won the fiction prize for her first novel The Lotus Eaters, which is set in the final days of the Vietnam War. Previous winners include Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy and A S Byatt. The winners of the prizes - awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh - were announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. They are the only major British book awards judged by scholars and students of literature. Also shortlisted for the £10,000 fiction prize this year were debut novelists Julie Orringer and Michael Nath, and acclaimed writer David Mitchell. The James Tait Black Prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black, to commemorate her husband's love of books.

Renovation, the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the 2011 Hugo Award winners. These include, for best novel, Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra), for Best Novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean), Best Novelette, "The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010), and Best Short Story, “For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010). For the full list visit: http://www.thehugoawards.org/2011/08/2011-hugo-award-winners/

The longlist has been announced for the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, which honors the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English. The shortlist will be revealed October 4, with the winner announced in Toronto November 8. This year's longlisted titles include The Free World by David Bezmozgis, The Meagre Tarmac by Clarke Blaise, The Antagonist by Lynn Coady, The Beggar's Garden by Michael Christie, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt , Extensions by Myrna Dey, Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner, Solitaria by Genni Gunn, Into the Heart of the Country by Pauline Holdstock, A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnston, The Return by Dany Laferrière (translated by David Homel), Monoceros by Suzette Mayr, The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, A Good Man by Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Touch by Alexi Zentner. Myrna Dey's debut novel, Extensions, is alrea dy an early winner, having picked up the most votes in the Readers’ Choice contest launched this year in a Scotiabank Giller Prize campaign that invited the public to choose a book for the longlist.

The three finalists for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor, sponsored by Thurber House, are Mike Birbiglia for Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories (Simon & Schuster), David Rakoff for Half Empty (Doubleday), and Rick Reilly for Sports From Hell: My Search for the World's Dumbest Competition (Doubleday). The winner will be presented at a ceremony at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City on October 3.

Playwright David Hare has won the PEN/Pinter prize, given annually to a "British writer of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Pinter himself on winning the Nobel prize in 2005, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world, and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies,' " the Guardian reported. The £1,000 (US$1,641) prize is "shared with an imprisoned writer who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs." This year's co-winner will be chosen by PEN's Writers in Prison Committee, in association with Hare, and announced at the award ceremony October 10, the Guardian wrote.

The shortlists for the 2011 ReLit awards have now been announced. The annual awards recognize books published by Canadian independent literary presses. Winners will be announced at the Ottawa International Writers’ Festival in October. The nominees include, for best novel, The Cube People, Christian McPherson (Nightwood Editions), Book, Ken Sparling (Pedlar Press), Blood Relatives, Craig Francis Power (Pedlar), The Find, Kathy Page (McArthur & Company), Krakow Melt, Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp Press), The Goon, Jerrod Edson (Oberon Press), The Bourgeois Empire, Evie Christie (ECW Press), One Bloody Thing After Another, Joey Comeau (ECW), Good Evening, Central Laundromat, Jason Heroux (Quattro Books), and Sweet England, Steve Weiner (New Star Books). For a full list that includes short fiction and poetry visit: http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2011/08/26/ 2011-relit-shortlists-announced/

Jackie Kay's autobiographical novel Red Dust Road won the £30,000 (US$48,844) Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year award. Kay "was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish nurse and a Nigerian student, then adopted at birth by a white couple from Glasgow," BBC News reported. The novel traces her search for her birth parents. "I happened to write the book, but it feels like my whole family is the winner. The book doesn't just belong to me," she said. "And now it seems like it has a whole life of its own in the heart-warming and unexpected way that readers have been finding connections to their own life in it."

Syrian poet Adonis became the first Arab writer to win Germany's €50,000 (US$72,286) Goethe prize, awarded every three years on Goethe's birthday to an individual whose work reflects the spirit of the German master. The Guardian reported that the jury called him "the most important Arab poet of our time," and praised his "eminent literary talent, his cosmopolitanism and his contribution to world literature." "Just as Goethe popularized Arabic poetry with [his book] West-Eastern Divan, Adonis carried the accomplishments of European modernity into Arabic cultural circles, with great effect," said the jury.
This year's longlist for the £10,000 (US$16,247) Guardian First Book Award--open to all first-time authors writing in or translated into English, across all genres--is "fiction-heavy," with six novels, three works of nonfiction and one poetry collection. The Guardian reported that a "series of regional reading groups, run in partnership with Waterstone's bookshops, will now assist the judging panel with choosing a shortlist."

Carl Lennertz has won the 2011 NAIBA Legacy Award, sponsored by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association and honoring "individuals whose body of work contributed significantly to the realm of American arts and letters." Lennertz, who this week left HarperCollins to become executive director of the U.S. branch of World Book Night, was cited for being "a tireless cheerleader for authors and independent bookselling" during a career that has included being a bookseller, sales rep, author, editor, teacher, blogger, a stint at the American Booksellers Association and more. He will be honored at the Awards Banquet Tuesday, September 20, during NAIBA's Fall Conference in Atlantic City, N.J.

Finally, Julian Barnes, Carol Birch, Patrick deWitt, Esi Edugyan, Stephen Kelman and A.D. Miller have been announced as the six shortlisted authors for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The judges’ selection includes two first time novelists - Stephen Kelman and A.D. Miller – while four of the books are from independent publishers. Of the six writers, two have enjoyed success with the prize in the past. Julian Barnes has been shortlisted three times for Arthur and George (2005), England, England (1998) and Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), while Carol Birch was longlisted in 2003 for Turn Again Home. Two Canadian writers feature on the shortlist - Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan – along with four British novelists. The shortlist was announced by Chair of Judges, author and former Director-General of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington, at a press conference held at Man’s London headquarters.The winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on T uesday 18 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC.The winner will receive £50,000 and each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their book. For a full list of winners, interviews, and excerpts, visit: http://www.themanbookerprize.com/

Have a great month. Maggie

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Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

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SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter.

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To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of Among the Departed by Vicki Delany

How do people carry on with their lives when someone has not only departed, but vanished? How do they cope privately with the not-knowing, and endure the public scrutiny? What becomes of them? The novel gives the reader an insight into those living out their lives among the departed. This aspect of the novel is particularly compelling, thought provoking, and heart-rending. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3mnd5ct

A review of A View of The Lake by Beryl Singleton Bissell

Sometimes thoughtful, often humorous, and ever delightful, the work spans topics dealing with the life of “newcomers” in the town of Schroeder to an intimate and stirring connection with the great outdoors. From encounters with bear, moose, deer, and rare bird species, to a private viewing of the Northern Lights, to poignant experiences with neighbors, this assortment of day-in-the-life type stories will charm the most jaded reader. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3cwaclh

An interview with Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

The author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day talks about his book, about the difference between writing short stories and writing screenplays, his inspiration, his editing and selection process, about genres, the value fo short fiction, and lots more. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3dbbuta

A review of Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun by Liza Bakewell

Liza Bakewell is a linguistic anthropologist but Madre is not an academic tome; more like a dance through the linguistic history and difficulties of a word in the Spanish language that does not just mean ‘mother’. Madre, it becomes clear, can take on all sorts of meanings depending on the context of its use. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3te5sn5

A review of Friends of Dorothy Monologues Act I by A. Scott Boddie

Monologues are driven by characters thinking aloud, expressing their inner thoughts. Sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous, the monologues in this collection are riddled with true situation, expressions, and voices. The monologues are about no one and regarding everyone, but they aren't for the faint of heart. They are gritty and unnerving, a wonderful insight into gay dimensions rarely given voice. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3dvera9

A review of The Beach Trees by Karen White

White is purposeful in her choice of setting. While Julie and the Guidrys rebuild their lives—both together and separately—they come together to physically rebuild the Guidrys’ beach house, River Song. The house will come to represent a new beginning for everyone, although as Monica’s grandmother Aimee explains, rebuilding and starting over is nothing new for the Gulf Coast residents—it’s simply a part of life. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3pcytt8

A conversation with Brandi Lynn Ryder

The author of In Malice, Quite Close talks about her first novel, her characters, about Rimbaud and his poem that inspired the title and provided the epigraph, about the notion of malice, about Nabokov, her setting, her feline inspiration, her next novel, and lots more. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3vcmyoe

A review of String Bridge by Jessica Bell

Above all, this is a novel about music. Music drives the plot as Melody's desire for music becomes the motivating catalyst for change in her life. Her guitar and voice underpin the narrative in all sorts of ways, from the songs that open each chapter, to the lullabyes Melody sings for her daughter to the musical career she attempts to resurrect. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3s8t2w5

A review of Embassytown by China Miéville

Embassytown may start like a fun, inventive good novel, but by the time you reach the 300th or so page, it become clear that this is indeed a great novel. Rich with nuance, meaning, and power that never comprises the overall fictive dream, or even the pure fun of its fictional world, this is a novel to read, re-read, and then re-read again. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3rukor8

A review of Finders Keepers by Russ Colchamiro

There are cosmic, lateral ideas in this novel. Maybe the travelling to-ing and fro-ing slows the pace somewhat but it has just the right level of sexual activity to keep promiscuous readers happy. I just wished the jar had opened in Theo’s rucksack and we saw the whirlpool of creation. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3slk6uv

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,845 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Patsy Hagen, who won a copy of Mice by Gordon reece.

Congratulations also to Maxine Urso, Jeanette Jackson, and Claudette W. Camp, who each won a copy of Crossing by Sebastian Rotella.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of three copies of The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Revisionists and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of The Kitchen Counter Cooking Book by Kat Flinn along with a special edition magnet to giveaway. To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Kitchen Counter and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

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COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal, The Fall of the Iron Prow by Timothy Kearns, Never Fear Cancer Again: How to Prevent and Reverse Cancer by Raymond Francis, Exchanges on Light by Jacques Roubaud, The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site - now ad free) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Jane Smiley. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter for August: Gordon Reece, Thomas Mann, Fiona Scott-Norman, Stefan Zweig and more

2011-08-11T19:44:04Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 8, 12 August 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

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PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, just a quick note to let you know that I now have a Facebook fan page for my writing projects. If you’re a Facebooker, please check it out and “like” me! There have already been and will continue to be loads of giveaways for all you competitionistas:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Magdalena-Ball-Author/154205247984373
and some new books too! The newest poetry book in my 'celebration series' with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity, is now out, and my new novel Black Cow "...a beautifully crafted, utterly timely novel about a family, and economy, in crisis" is coming very soon! If you'd like to be on the review list for an advanced reading copy, please drop me a line as I'm working my publisher right now to pull together that list.

Now for the literary news. Zimbabwe's NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa's leading literary award, for her short story entitled 'Hitting Budapest', from The Boston Review, Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010. The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Hisham Matar said: "The language of 'Hitting Budapest' crackles. Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language." NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She recently completed her MFA at Cornell University, in the US, where she is now a Truman Capote Fellow a nd Lecturer of English. Another of her stories, 'Snapshots', was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN/Studzinski Literary Award. NoViolet has recently completed a novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, and has begun work on a memoir project. Once again, the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity to take up a month's residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC as a 'Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence'. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

Finalists have been named for the €35,000 (US$48,930) Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the world's richest prize for a short story collection. The winner will be honored September 18 during the Cork International Short Story Festival. This year's shortlist includes:Gold Boy by Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li, Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod, Saints and Sinners by Edna O'Brien, Death is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca, The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín, and Marry or Burn by Valerie Trueblood.

This year's shortlist for the £10,000 (US$16,105) Forward Prize for Poetry includes Clavics by Geoffrey Hill, Night by David Harsent, November by Sean O'Brien, Black Cat Bone by John Burnside, A Hundred Doors by Michael Longley and Voices Over Water by D. Nurkse, the Guardian reported. Finalists for the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection of poetry are Sidereal by Rachael Boast, Loudness by Judy Brown, Tokaido Road by Nancy Gaffield, Confer by Ahren Warner, Waterloo Teeth by John Whale and Sound Archive by Nerys Williams. Winners will be announced in October on the eve of National Poetry Day.

The second Award Ceremony of the People's Book prize took place at the elegant Stationers Hall on Wednesday 20th July in the presence of their patron Frederick Forsyth CBE. Authors, publishers, presenters and members of the press including Talent Television and Octopus MT attended the glittering evening. The People’s Book annual prize was awarded to the top authors of Non-Fiction, Fiction and Children and the Beryl Bainbridge Award for First Time Author, to honour the memory of the founding patron. This year The People's Book Prize has introduced a new award for special achievement. For fiction, the winner was Making Shore by Sara Allerton (Saraband), For nonfiction, it was Eradicating Ecocide by Polly Higgins (Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd), The Beryl Bainbridge award was Alex McLean Time Traveller by Morag Ramsay (Seven Arches Publishing), and TPBP Special Achievement Prize went to Yes We Can Read by Libby Coleman and Nick Ainley (Gatehouse Media Ltd). The full list of winner s is here: http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/winners2010.htm

Anh Do's memoir The Happiest Refugee was honored by the Australian Booksellers Association as book of the year, newcomer of the year and biography of the year (won jointly with Paul Kelly's How to Make Gravy) during the Australian Book Industry Awards ceremony over the weekend, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Other ABIA category winners included Chris Womersley's novel Bereft (literary fiction), Jessica Watson's True Spirit (general nonfiction), Kate Morton's The Distant Hours (general fiction), Julie Goodwin's Our Family Table (illustrated book), Alison Lester's Noni the Pony (younger children) and Gabrielle Lord's Conspiracy 365 (older readers).

Bookmakers William Hill have installed previous Man Booker winner, Alan Hollinghurst as the 5/1 favourite to win the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Julian Barnes is second favourite in the betting with his novel 'The Sense Of An Ending'. With three Canadian authors in the running for the prestigious prize, Hills are offering 4/1 that one of them will be the eventual winner. The full longlist can be found here: http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1514

Each year the English department at San Jose State University sponsors the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a writing competition which pays homage to Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the man responsible for one of the hackiest opening lines in literature: “It was a dark and stormy night.” The idea is to create an awful opening line for a fake work of fiction. This year’s overall winner was University of Wisconsin Oshkosh professor Sue Fondrie, who submitted the following: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.” Notably, it is the shortest winner in the contest’s 29 year history. Full list can be found here: http://flavorwire.com/197208/bulwer-lytton-bad-fiction-award-2011

The "very long list" of nominees for the 2011 ReLit Awards, which celebrate novels, poetry, and short fiction titles published by Canadian independent presses, has been announced, Quillblog reported. Category winners will receive a ReLit Ring, which features four moveable dials--each one struck with the entire alphabet--for spelling words. The ring was designed by Christopher Kearney of Newfoundland. It's such a long list I won't provide all the names here, but if you'd like to check it out, visit: http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2011/08/08/2011-relit-longlist-revealed/

The PEN American Center announced the winners and runners up for the 2011 PEN Literary Awards. This year PEN will present 17 awards, fellowships, grants and prizes. Winners and runners-up will be honored at the PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on October 12 in New York City. Highlights include: PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize ($25,000): Shared by Susanna Daniel for Stiltsville (Harper Perennial) and Danielle Evans for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Riverhead), PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award ($10,000): Siddhartha Mukherjee for The Emperor of All Maladies (Scribner), PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for a Fiction Writer in Mid-Career ($10,000): Aleksandar Hemon, and PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000): Robert Perkinson for Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (Metropolitan Books).

Finally, if you're game to be a judge yourself, you can drop by the Guardian Books website and vote for your favourite novel on their shortlist for "Not the Booker Prize 2011": The six books that receive the most votes will proceed to the next round. Anyone can vote for one book. All you have to do is to write a review for the book you wish to vote for of 150 words or more. Actually it's a little complicated, but in the name of readership, I decided to have a go on your behalf so I could tell you how - you go to the longlist page:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/10/not-booker-prize-2011-nominations
Pick the book you want to nominate for the shortlist and write a brief review. That's it. I've done an excerpt of my full review of Embassytown by China Mieville (next newsletter...) in you want to see an example.

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================

SPONSORED BY:

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

=================================================

SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter.

==========================================================

Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

***********************************************************

NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

An interview with with Gordon Reece, author of Mice

The author of Mice talks about his new book, bullying, about the imaginative leap into other people’s lives, other historical times, other realities, his plotting twists and turns, his characters, challenges, favourite novels, and lots more. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4ya2c6a

A review of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

In refusing to take Time for granted, but continually analyzing it in its different manifestations, the way it seems to pass, I think The Magic Mountain is indeed in the modern category. In this connection, I can't help thinking of Einstein, who -- also early in the 20th century -- was making us look at Time in a whole new way. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3u9awst

A review of Don't Peak at High School edited by Fiona Scott-Norman

Scott-Norman's book provides fifteen different nuggets of wisdom from some of Australia's most popular, dynamic and confident stars. All of them were bullied, some so badly that you have to wonder how they managed to make it through at all, much less to rise to the heights of success that they did. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4xglm59

A review of Journey into the Past by Stefan Zweig

In many respects, this is a typical Zweig yarn: there is passion and psychological complexity and tensions which become more tortuous and stark as events come to a head. Oh, and as for the novella’s structure there are some pleasant to-and-fro time shifts. One take-home message might be: there’s a window when love can find fulfilment, but after that matters become decidedly dodgy. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3cptr85

A review of “Remember You’re a One-Ball!” by Quentin S. Crisp

Crisp strides on without a safety net (OK, that may not make much sense) and burns his bridges as he goes (which makes some sense, provided there are rivers and streams where he is striding). He is a dangerous writer and you feel that this novel has been written at some personal risk. However, any danger must surely extend (and why should this come as a surprise?) to his readers also. You’ve been warned. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3garl2u

A review of The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

There’s a lot to enjoy about the novel, not least the mystery: Hammett generally wrote tightly plotted novels and, in that respect, The Thin Man satisfies in spades. The banter between Nick Charles and his wife is also very enjoyable and his wisecrack about a man needing a shot of whiskey in the morning to ‘break the phlegm’ is one that most men will identify with. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3j2fd8h
A review of Unrequited by James Bennett

Unrequited is a touching narrative providing a passion driven admonitory allegory about heart ache driven reprisal for anyone who has suffered from a broken heart whether at the hands of a cruel parent, or a cruel supposed friend or lover. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3vgke2n

A review of A Place to Die by Dorothy James

Ms. James writes smoothly, with no annoying typos or needs for extra editing which seems to be more and more prevalent these days when books are converted to Kindle format. This book was beautifully formatted and of very high caliber. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3fpchw5

A review of Shape Of My Heart (Art & Poetry Series) by Sting

This book marries the sorrowful lyrics by Sting and 31 infamous paintings by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) into one work of art. These two artists teach us a good lesson and that is to never to give up on our own innate abilities and never quit doing what we love to do despite and inspite of others. Making art was integral to Sting and Picasso’s wellbeing and gave substance to their sense of self and heart’s desires. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3teroby

A review of My School by Maralyn Parker

This book would be of particular value to someone moving to Australia for the first time as it provides a very good overview of the idiosyncrasies of the Australian school system, including how to make best use of that system. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3gfeu3s

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,845 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Laura Benjamin, who won a copy of Echo Chamber by Luke Williams.

Congratulations also to: Tim Younger, who won a copy of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of three copies of CROSSING by Sebastian Rotella. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Crossing and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of Mice by Gordon Reece (see interview above) to giveaway. To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Mice and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Embassytown by China Mieville, String Bridge by Jessica Bell, interviews with Brandi Lynn Ryder and Ben Loory, Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun by Liza Bakewell, The Beach Trees by Karen White, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Fiona Scott-Norman. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

Resend: CR Newsletter: Winton, Williams, Sloterdijk, James and more

2011-07-08T04:29:12Z

Hello readers. It looks like the last newsletter went out truncated so I'm trying again. If it's still truncated, just follow this link to the full version:

http://compulsivereader.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive/CRNews/newest/

Sorry for any inconvenience. Maggie

***************

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 7, 8 July 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

***********************************************************

PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, David Logan's Half Sick of Shadows and Michael Logan's Apocalypse Cow were named joint winners of Terry Pratchett's inaugural £20,000 Anywhere but Here, Anywhen but Now prize, the Guardian reported. More than 500 writers submitted entries. The winners, who are not related, will receive publishing contracts from Pratchett's publisher Transworld and split the prize money. After judging the prize with Tony Robinson and experts from Transworld and Waterstone's, Pratchett noted that both books "stood out in their different ways and I wish their creators the best of luck in their writing careers."

To the End of the Land wins this year's Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, beating the winners of this year's Booker and Costa prizes. "Grossman's To the End of the Land is the great anti-war epic of our time," said Editor of the Jewish Quarterly, Rachel Lasserson. Commenting on the winning book Lisa Appignanesi, chair of the judging panel, said: "Each of the books on our short-list could have been an outstanding winner. But in a year which brings us David Grossman's To the End of the Land, the judges all concurred that this towering novel had to be the one. At once magisterial and moving, this is a profoundly humane work of fiction. Grossman's Ora is vibrantly alive in all her particularity. She will come to stand beside Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina as one of the great characters in literature". Former winners include Imre Kertesz, Amos Oz, Zadie Smith, WG Sebald and Oliver Sacks. This year's judging panel was Lisa Appignanesi, Daniel Glaser, Emily Kasriel and Michael Prodger.

Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, was the surprise winner of this year's £30,000 (US$49,188) Orange Prize for Fiction. At 25, Obreht is the youngest winner in the award's 16-year history. Her victory "meant defeat for better established writers Emma Donoghue--the bookies' favorite for the bestselling Room--and Nicole Krauss for Great House. Many had also fancied the chances of Aminatta Forna for her rich and engrossing The Memory of Love," the Guardian reported. The other shortlisted novels were Kathleen Winter's Annabel and Emma Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud.

Edith Pearlman has won the 2011 PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the "art of short fiction," according to the AP. Pearlman is the author of several short story collections, including Binocular Vision (Lookout Books) and How to Fall (Sarabande Books). She wins $5,000.
The winners of the 2011 Arab American Book Awards, sponsored by the Arab American National Museum, are: Fiction: Loom: A Novel by Thérèse Soukar Chehade (Syracuse University Press), The Evelyn Shakir Nonfiction Award: Arab Americans in Toledo: Cultural Assimilation and Community Involvement edited by Samir Abu-Absi (University of Toledo Press), Poetry: Tocqueville by Khaled Mattawa (New Issues Poetry & Prose), Children/Young Adult: Saving Sky by Diane Stanley (HarperCollins Children's)

Irish author Colum McCann has won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award for his latest novel, Let The Great World Spin. McCann's book was chosen from 10 shortlisted titles to win the world's most lucrative literary prize worth 100,000 euro (£88,000). Judges praised the author's story of colliding cultures set in 1970s New York as a "remarkable literary work". It beat 161 other titles nominated by 166 libraries worldwide. McCann is the second Irish author to win the prize after Colm Toibin's success in 2006 for The Master. Let The Great World Spin was the most popular choice of libraries worldwide, receiving 14 nominations from libraries in countries including Ireland, Germany, Greece, Norway, the US and Canada. Other finalists included Michael Crummey's Galore, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, The Vagrants by Yiyun Li and David Malouf's Ransom. Also shortlisted were Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates, Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, Colm Toibi n 's Brooklyn, Love and Summer by William Trevor and Evie Wyld's After the Fire, a Still, Small Voice.

Rabindranath Maharaj won the $20,000 Trillium Book Award, which honors the best writing by Ontario authors, for his novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy, the National Post reported. "Both familiar and strange, this story of a large Canadian city seen through the wide eyes of a naive and inexperienced young immigrant--wise in the culture of comic books--is both hilarious and heartbreaking," the judges said. The winner of the French-language Trillium Book Award was Estelle Beauchamp for Un souffle venu de loin. Jeff Latosik won the $10,000 Trillium poetry prize for Tiny, Frantic, Stronger and the winner of the French-language Trillium for children’s literature was Daniel Marchildon for La première guerre de Toronto.

John le Carré has accepted the honor of being one of this year's recipients of Germany's Goethe Medal, given to individuals who "have performed outstanding service for the German language and international cultural dialogue," the Guardian reported. The Goethe Institut praised him as "Great Britain's most famous German speaker," who "has always been convinced that language learning is the key to understanding foreign cultures." The Goethe Institut also noted that le Carré, a "master of the political and psychological crime novel, condensed Germany's difficult role during the era of the cold war" in his books, and "vividly brings to life the global fields of conflict.... Viewing language and knowledge of a country as a prerequisite for penetrating world history and understanding ideologies, religions and peoples--these are the aspects that characterize the life's work of John le Carré."

Kim Scott has won his second Miles Franklin Literary Award for his book, That Deadman Dance, about relations between Aborigines and the first European settlers. One of the judges, Morag Fraser, said That Deadman Dance was an astonishingly original work. The 50,000 award was presented at Melbourne’s State Library of Victoria, the first time the ceremony has been held outside Sydney in a bid to refresh the award and bring it to a broader audience. Mr Scott became the first indigenous person to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2000, for his novel Benang. "I hope I'm wiser and cooler about the whole thing, it is rather intimidating the first time," he said, adding his rivals have been extremely supportive. "None of this temperamental, artistic, prima donna stuff, even without winning this matters a great deal," he said. Mr Scott, who works full-time as an academic at Curtin University, hopes his win will put a spotlight on issues such as prese rvi ng Aboriginal languages.

Amazon.com is purchasing the Book Depository International, the U.K. online book retailer that in parts of the English-speaking world outside the U.S. has been a growing competitor to Amazon for online book sales. (It is also well-known for its "watch people shop" feature, allowing users to see book purchases around the world as they take place.) The Bookseller estimated Book Depository annual sales at £120 million ($193 million). The Book Depository was founded in 2004 by Andrew Crawford and has some six million books available at its fulfillment center in Gloucester and ships free. It also offers some 200,000 e-books. The Book Depository boasts a million customers, and its Dodo Press has re-published more than 15,000 out-of-print or rare titles, available both as books and e-books. Unlike Amazon, the Book Depository has retained a focus on selling books. The deal will be studied by the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading to determine whether it will lead to " ;a substantial lessening of competition" in markets in the U.K., according to the Bookseller. If the Office finds that competition will be lessened, it will refer the matter to the Competition Commission for investigation and a report. The Office of Fair Trading has already issued an "invitation to comment" and aims to reach a decision by August 30.

Frank Dikötter won the £20,000 (US$32,128) Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction for his book Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, the Guardian reported. Chair of judges Ben Macintyre called Mao's Great Famine the book of the year: "This is not just an important book now, but it will become in some ways more important, as China becomes more powerful in the world and a greater part of global consciousness. To understand why China is the way it is, you almost have to read this book."

Finally, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Arts Minister, Simon Crean, today announced the winners of the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Stephen Daisley won the fiction prize for his novel Traitor while the award for non-fiction went to Rod Moss for his book The Hard Light of Day. The young adult fiction category was won by Cath Crowley for Graffiti Moon and the children’s fiction award went to author Boori Monty Pryor and illustrator Jan Ormerod for their picture book Shake a Leg. Now in its fourth year, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards recognise and reward excellence in Australian literature. In 2011 the winner in each category was awarded $80,000 and each shortlisted author received $5000. For more information visit www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

=================================================

SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter.

==========================================================

Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

***********************************************************

NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Yes, it’s a great Australian novel, full of people and places that are both inherently part of their time and true to that space. Above all though, what elevates this book from a cracking good yarn to something that is great, is the magic. The book is rife with magic, so purely woven into the story you might miss it on a first reading. It’s a magic that comes straight from a love of humanity – a generous, funny magic that picks up on all that is truly beautiful, even amidst our flaws. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3uljhqt

An interview with Luke Williams

The author of The Echo Chamber talks about the value of creative writing courses, the relationship between the historical record and the imaginative process, his settings, his aural sense (and the value of long ears), collaborations, on taking the point of view of a woman, his influences, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/44vxtgt

A review of Derrida, An Egyptian by Peter Sloterdijk

Do any of you know what ‘introscendent’ might mean? No? Then how about ‘onto-semiological materialism’, do I have any takers? Now ‘chora’, I know what that is all about, it’s a kind of carnivorous Turing machine; and Sloterdijk touches upon the notion here, albeit briefly. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3ujvf3c

A review of I Am Gold by Bill James

James is, by my book, the best British crime writer in the business. And this novel is as funny, savage, satirical and satisfying as any of his previous novels. He’s as inventive, both stylistically and structurally, and as iconoclastic as ever, the very antithesis of a formulaic writer. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4x4ow3e

An interview with Eric Maisel

The author of Mastering Creative Anxiety talks about his latest book, about why creating produces so much anxiety, his best tips for either avoiding, or managing anxiety, how to 'get a grip on your mind', the relationship between making meaning and anxiety, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/3gy9emg

A review of Mastering Creative Anxiety by Eric Maisel

If you’re an artist–an author, a painter, a musician or an actor–who has chosen to live a creative life, you can’t avoid anxiety. It’s part of the process, inherent in the work you do. Coming to grips with that anxiety can be the difference between working and not working, which can be the difference between a fulfilled life that has meaning and one that is unsatisfying and meaningless. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3j5vjaq

A review of Scimitar by Robin Raybould

Raybould has remained scrupulous in relating all the elements of Eduardo’s story; I did not perceive any discrepancies, inconsistencies, or ‘holes’ in the plot—complex and extensive as the novel is, this is an impressive achievement. But there are altogether too many elements, and although these are systematically terminated without leaving any lose ends, I found the result seemed as a whole divided into parts. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3bkgmtc

A review of Caesar's Fall by Dorien Grey

Grey’s Elliot Smith Mysteries are filled with interesting, well fleshed characters, set against a backdrop filled with the sights and sounds of Chicago. I can almost see those buildings Elliot searches out to renovate. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3zxc7lk

A review of Brothers of a band by B.J. Lambesis

This is an appealing, quick read exploring the way in which diverse stages of our lives interconnect in multifaceted manner to widen into totally unanticipated results. Brothers of a Band is packed with more than a little wit, satirical descriptions of life, memory piquing insight into the life of little musicians, peeks into what it's like for those serving in the military, and day to day living in general from childhood to old age. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3jxa3ug

A review of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

So Writing Down the Bones isn’t just a guide for writers to write better, it’s a guide for living better and for integrating that life with work that is immensely meaningful. This is a book that will open doors of perception that won’t be closed again when you close the pages. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/43zk9m5

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,817 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Robert Noll, who won a copy of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal.

Congratulations also to: Cathy Burkhead, Ellie Lewis, and Robert Noll (again!) who won a copy of The Wreckage by Michael Robotham.

Our new monthly giveaway is for a freshly minted copy of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory. The prize will be drawn at the beginning of August from entrants. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Stories for Nighttime and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of Echo Chamber by Luke Williams (see interview above) to giveaway. To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Echo Chamber and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Shape Of My Heart (Art & Poetry Series) by Sting, Don’t Peak at High School edited by Fiona Scott-Norman, Embassytown by China Mieville, A Place to Die by Dorothy James, Unrequited by James Bennett, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Aaron Lazar. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show! Coming soon is an interview with The Drawing Lesson’s Mary Martin.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Winton, Williams, Sloterdijk, James and more

2011-07-08T02:02:25Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 7, 8 July 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

***********************************************************

PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, David Logan's Half Sick of Shadows and Michael Logan's Apocalypse Cow were named joint winners of Terry Pratchett's inaugural £20,000 Anywhere but Here, Anywhen but Now prize, the Guardian reported. More than 500 writers submitted entries. The winners, who are not related, will receive publishing contracts from Pratchett's publisher Transworld and split the prize money. After judging the prize with Tony Robinson and experts from Transworld and Waterstone's, Pratchett noted that both books "stood out in their different ways and I wish their creators the best of luck in their writing careers."

To the End of the Land wins this year's Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, beating the winners of this year's Booker and Costa prizes. "Grossman's To the End of the Land is the great anti-war epic of our time," said Editor of the Jewish Quarterly, Rachel Lasserson. Commenting on the winning book Lisa Appignanesi, chair of the judging panel, said: "Each of the books on our short-list could have been an outstanding winner. But in a year which brings us David Grossman's To the End of the Land, the judges all concurred that this towering novel had to be the one. At once magisterial and moving, this is a profoundly humane work of fiction. Grossman's Ora is vibrantly alive in all her particularity. She will come to stand beside Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina as one of the great characters in literature". Former winners include Imre Kertesz, Amos Oz, Zadie Smith, WG Sebald and Oliver Sacks. This year's judging panel was Lisa Appignanesi, Daniel Glaser, Emily Kasriel and Michael Prodger.

Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, was the surprise winner of this year's £30,000 (US$49,188) Orange Prize for Fiction. At 25, Obreht is the youngest winner in the award's 16-year history. Her victory "meant defeat for better established writers Emma Donoghue--the bookies' favorite for the bestselling Room--and Nicole Krauss for Great House. Many had also fancied the chances of Aminatta Forna for her rich and engrossing The Memory of Love," the Guardian reported. The other shortlisted novels were Kathleen Winter's Annabel and Emma Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud.

Edith Pearlman has won the 2011 PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the "art of short fiction," according to the AP. Pearlman is the author of several short story collections, including Binocular Vision (Lookout Books) and How to Fall (Sarabande Books). She wins $5,000.
The winners of the 2011 Arab American Book Awards, sponsored by the Arab American National Museum, are: Fiction: Loom: A Novel by Thérèse Soukar Chehade (Syracuse University Press), The Evelyn Shakir Nonfiction Award: Arab Americans in Toledo: Cultural Assimilation and Community Involvement edited by Samir Abu-Absi (University of Toledo Press), Poetry: Tocqueville by Khaled Mattawa (New Issues Poetry & Prose), Children/Young Adult: Saving Sky by Diane Stanley (HarperCollins Children's)

Irish author Colum McCann has won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award for his latest novel, Let The Great World Spin. McCann's book was chosen from 10 shortlisted titles to win the world's most lucrative literary prize worth 100,000 euro (£88,000). Judges praised the author's story of colliding cultures set in 1970s New York as a "remarkable literary work". It beat 161 other titles nominated by 166 libraries worldwide. McCann is the second Irish author to win the prize after Colm Toibin's success in 2006 for The Master. Let The Great World Spin was the most popular choice of libraries worldwide, receiving 14 nominations from libraries in countries including Ireland, Germany, Greece, Norway, the US and Canada. Other finalists included Michael Crummey's Galore, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, The Vagrants by Yiyun Li and David Malouf's Ransom. Also shortlisted were Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates, Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, Colm Toibi n's Brooklyn, Love and Summer by William Trevor and Evie Wyld's After the Fire, a Still, Small Voice.

Rabindranath Maharaj won the $20,000 Trillium Book Award, which honors the best writing by Ontario authors, for his novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy, the National Post reported. "Both familiar and strange, this story of a large Canadian city seen through the wide eyes of a naive and inexperienced young immigrant--wise in the culture of comic books--is both hilarious and heartbreaking," the judges said. The winner of the French-language Trillium Book Award was Estelle Beauchamp for Un souffle venu de loin. Jeff Latosik won the $10,000 Trillium poetry prize for Tiny, Frantic, Stronger and the winner of the French-language Trillium for children’s literature was Daniel Marchildon for La première guerre de Toronto.

John le Carré has accepted the honor of being one of this year's recipients of Germany's Goethe Medal, given to individuals who "have performed outstanding service for the German language and international cultural dialogue," the Guardian reported. The Goethe Institut praised him as "Great Britain's most famous German speaker," who "has always been convinced that language learning is the key to understanding foreign cultures." The Goethe Institut also noted that le Carré, a "master of the political and psychological crime novel, condensed Germany's difficult role during the era of the cold war" in his books, and "vividly brings to life the global fields of conflict.... Viewing language and knowledge of a country as a prerequisite for penetrating world history and understanding ideologies, religions and peoples--these are the aspects that characterize the life's work of John le Carré."

Kim Scott has won his second Miles Franklin Literary Award for his book, That Deadman Dance, about relations between Aborigines and the first European settlers. One of the judges, Morag Fraser, said That Deadman Dance was an astonishingly original work. The 50,000 award was presented at Melbourne’s State Library of Victoria, the first time the ceremony has been held outside Sydney in a bid to refresh the award and bring it to a broader audience. Mr Scott became the first indigenous person to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2000, for his novel Benang. "I hope I'm wiser and cooler about the whole thing, it is rather intimidating the first time," he said, adding his rivals have been extremely supportive. "None of this temperamental, artistic, prima donna stuff, even without winning this matters a great deal," he said. Mr Scott, who works full-time as an academic at Curtin University, hopes his win will put a spotlight on issues such as prese rving Aboriginal languages.

Amazon.com is purchasing the Book Depository International, the U.K. online book retailer that in parts of the English-speaking world outside the U.S. has been a growing competitor to Amazon for online book sales. (It is also well-known for its "watch people shop" feature, allowing users to see book purchases around the world as they take place.) The Bookseller estimated Book Depository annual sales at £120 million ($193 million). The Book Depository was founded in 2004 by Andrew Crawford and has some six million books available at its fulfillment center in Gloucester and ships free. It also offers some 200,000 e-books. The Book Depository boasts a million customers, and its Dodo Press has re-published more than 15,000 out-of-print or rare titles, available both as books and e-books. Unlike Amazon, the Book Depository has retained a focus on selling books. The deal will be studied by the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading to determine whether it will lead to " ;a substantial lessening of competition" in markets in the U.K., according to the Bookseller. If the Office finds that competition will be lessened, it will refer the matter to the Competition Commission for investigation and a report. The Office of Fair Trading has already issued an "invitation to comment" and aims to reach a decision by August 30.

Frank Dikötter won the £20,000 (US$32,128) Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction for his book Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, the Guardian reported. Chair of judges Ben Macintyre called Mao's Great Famine the book of the year: "This is not just an important book now, but it will become in some ways more important, as China becomes more powerful in the world and a greater part of global consciousness. To understand why China is the way it is, you almost have to read this book."

Finally, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Arts Minister, Simon Crean, today announced the winners of the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Stephen Daisley won the fiction prize for his novel Traitor while the award for non-fiction went to Rod Moss for his book The Hard Light of Day. The young adult fiction category was won by Cath Crowley for Graffiti Moon and the children’s fiction award went to author Boori Monty Pryor and illustrator Jan Ormerod for their picture book Shake a Leg. Now in its fourth year, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards recognise and reward excellence in Australian literature. In 2011 the winner in each category was awarded $80,000 and each shortlisted author received $5000. For more information visit www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards

Have a great month. Maggie

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Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

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SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter.

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To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Yes, it’s a great Australian novel, full of people and places that are both inherently part of their time and true to that space. Above all though, what elevates this book from a cracking good yarn to something that is great, is the magic. The book is rife with magic, so purely woven into the story you might miss it on a first reading. It’s a magic that comes straight from a love of humanity – a generous, funny magic that picks up on all that is truly beautiful, even amidst our flaws. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3uljhqt

An interview with Luke Williams

The author of The Echo Chamber talks about the value of creative writing courses, the relationship between the historical record and the imaginative process, his settings, his aural sense (and the value of long ears), collaborations, on taking the point of view of a woman, his influences, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/44vxtgt

A review of Derrida, An Egyptian by Peter Sloterdijk

Do any of you know what ‘introscendent’ might mean? No? Then how about ‘onto-semiological materialism’, do I have any takers? Now ‘chora’, I know what that is all about, it’s a kind of carnivorous Turing machine; and Sloterdijk touches upon the notion here, albeit briefly. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3ujvf3c

A review of I Am Gold by Bill James

James is, by my book, the best British crime writer in the business. And this novel is as funny, savage, satirical and satisfying as any of his previous novels. He’s as inventive, both stylistically and structurally, and as iconoclastic as ever, the very antithesis of a formulaic writer. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4x4ow3e

An interview with Eric Maisel

The author of Mastering Creative Anxiety talks about his latest book, about why creating produces so much anxiety, his best tips for either avoiding, or managing anxiety, how to 'get a grip on your mind', the relationship between making meaning and anxiety, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/3gy9emg

A review of Mastering Creative Anxiety by Eric Maisel

If you’re an artist–an author, a painter, a musician or an actor–who has chosen to live a creative life, you can’t avoid anxiety. It’s part of the process, inherent in the work you do. Coming to grips with that anxiety can be the difference between working and not working, which can be the difference between a fulfilled life that has meaning and one that is unsatisfying and meaningless. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3j5vjaq

A review of Scimitar by Robin Raybould

Raybould has remained scrupulous in relating all the elements of Eduardo’s story; I did not perceive any discrepancies, inconsistencies, or ‘holes’ in the plot—complex and extensive as the novel is, this is an impressive achievement. But there are altogether too many elements, and although these are systematically terminated without leaving any lose ends, I found the result seemed as a whole divided into parts. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3bkgmtc

A review of Caesar's Fall by Dorien Grey

Grey’s Elliot Smith Mysteries are filled with interesting, well fleshed characters, set against a backdrop filled with the sights and sounds of Chicago. I can almost see those buildings Elliot searches out to renovate. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3zxc7lk

A review of Brothers of a band by B.J. Lambesis

This is an appealing, quick read exploring the way in which diverse stages of our lives interconnect in multifaceted manner to widen into totally unanticipated results. Brothers of a Band is packed with more than a little wit, satirical descriptions of life, memory piquing insight into the life of little musicians, peeks into what it's like for those serving in the military, and day to day living in general from childhood to old age. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3jxa3ug

A review of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

So Writing Down the Bones isn’t just a guide for writers to write better, it’s a guide for living better and for integrating that life with work that is immensely meaningful. This is a book that will open doors of perception that won’t be closed again when you close the pages. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/43zk9m5

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,817 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Robert Noll, who won a copy of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal.

Congratulations also to: Cathy Burkhead, Ellie Lewis, and Robert Noll (again!) who won a copy of The Wreckage by Michael Robotham.

Our new monthly giveaway is for a freshly minted copy of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory. The prize will be drawn at the beginning of August from entrants. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Stories for Nighttime and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of Echo Chamber by Luke Williams (see interview above) to giveaway. To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Echo Chamber and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Shape Of My Heart (Art & Poetry Series) by Sting, Don’t Peak at High School edited by Fiona Scott-Norman, Embassytown by China Mieville, A Place to Die by Dorothy James, Unrequited by James Bennett, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by our all new revised Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Aaron Lazar. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show! Coming soon is an interview with The Drawing Lesson’s Mary Martin.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Lazar, Seal, Gaughran, Hewett, Dingli and more

2011-06-07T08:36:43Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 6, 7 June 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

***********************************************************

PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, the shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced. The Caine Prize, widely known as the 'African Booker' and regarded as Africa's leading literary award, is now in its twelfth year. Selected from 126 entries from 17 African countries, the shortlist is once again a reflection of the Caine Prize's pan-African reach. The winner of the £10,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 11 July. The 2011 shortlist includes NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) 'Hitting Budapest' from 'The Boston Review' Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010, Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) 'Butterfly dreams' from 'Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda' published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010, • Tim Keegan (South Africa) 'What Molly Knew' from 'Bad Company' published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008, Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) 'In the spirit of McPh ineas Lata' from 'The Bed Book of Short Stories' published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010, and David Medalie (South Africa) 'The Mistress's Dog' from 'The Mistress's Dog: Short stories 1996-2010' published by Picador Africa, 2010. The winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity of taking up a month's residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a 'Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence.' The award will cover all travel and living expenses. Last year the Caine Prize was won by Sierra Leonean writer Olufemi Terry.

The Poetry Foundation has announced that J. Patrick Lewis has been selected as its new Children’s Poetry Laureate. Presented to Lewis on Wednesday in a ceremony at the foundation’s Chicago headquarters, the award entails a two-year tenure and includes a $25,000 cash prize. The laureateship aims to raise awareness that children have a natural receptivity to poetry, especially when poems are written specifically for them. Lewis has written more than 50 books of poetry for children, including The Last Resort and A Hippopotamusn’t: A Book of Animal Poems, and his work has been widely anthologized. He is the third poet, after Jack Prelutsky and Mary Ann Hoberman, to receive this honor. During his laureateship, Lewis will give two major public readings for children and their families, teachers, and librarians. He will also serve as an advisor to the Poetry Foundation on children’s literature. The foundation made Lewis’s appointment with input from a panel of children’s literature experts.

A TOUCHING story about a little owl who falls from his nest and sets off on a journey across the forest floor to find his mum won the top prize yesterday in this year's Bisto Awards for children's books. The top prize, worth €10,000, was given to author Chris Haughton for his book for young children entitled 'A Little Bit Lost'. It's the first book by Mr Haughton (32), from Killiney, Co Dublin, who now works as an illustrator and designer in London. The judges said his brilliantly simple text and psychedelic illustrations captured both the anxiety and thrill of being lost.

Philip Roth has been announced as winner of the fourth Man Booker International Prize at a press conference at the Sydney Opera House. Roth was chosen from a list of 13 eminent contenders including, for the first time, two Chinese novelists. The Man Booker International Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language. It has previously been awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Alice Munro in 2009. Philip Roth’s most recent book, Nemesis, was published in 2010. However, author and publisher Carmen Callil was so angered by the decision to hand the award to the 78-year-old Pulitzer prize-winning American author that he has withdrawn in protest. Callil said: "He goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single bo ok. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe". The award, worth £60,000, is presented every two years for achievement in fiction on the world stage and Roth, 78, beat 12 rival authors - including Rohinton Mistry, Philip Pullman and Anne Tyler - to the award.

A poetry collection, travel novel and sci-fi story are among the works shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. The English-language titles are What the Water Gave Me by Pascale Petit, Cloud Road by John Harrison and Alastair Reynolds's Terminal World. On the Welsh-language list are Caersaint by Angharad Price, Lladd Duw by Dewi Prysor and Bydoedd by Ned Thomas. Both winners - one in Welsh and one in English - will receive £10,000 each and all four runners-up will recieve £1,000.

Geordie Williamson, chief literary critic at the Australian, has won this year's Pascall Prize. The annual $15,000 Pascall Prize, is awarded to ‘a critic whose work has significantly contributed to the public appreciation, enjoyment and understanding of the arts'. Williamson was chosen from ‘over 30 contenders'. The judging panel said that if it was ‘the critic's job to help readers see more, Geordie Williamson enlarges our thinking in every way. He also makes his reviews and essays accessible to readers who might not be familiar with his subject, and he invites them in very gently'. Williamson has been chief literary critic of the Australian since 2008, and his works have appeared in Australian publications including the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Book Review, Best Australian Essays, and the Monthly as well as overseas publications. The Pascall Prize is named after the writer and critic Geraldine Pascall. For more information see www.pascallprize.o rg.au.

The winners of the 2011 Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, are, for Best Novel: Connie Willis for Blackout/All Clear, Best Novella: Rachel Swirsky for The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window, Best Novellette,: Eric James Stone for That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made, best Short Story (tie): Kij Johnson for "Ponies" and Harlan Ellison for "How Interesting: A Tiny Man", The Bradbury Award: Christopher Nolan for Inception, and The Norton Award: Terry Pratchett for I Shall Wear Midnight

The winners of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize have been announced. Critically acclaimed international literary titles for Best Book and Best First Book were awarded to Best Book Winner – The Memory of Love, Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone), and Best First Book Winner – A Man Melting, Craig Cliff (New Zealand). Now in its 25th year and supported by the Macquarie Group Foundation, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is unique in offering both established and emerging writers the opportunity to showcase their work. The Best Book winner claims £10,000 while the writer of Best First Book wins £5,000. Details about the winners can be found at: http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/Howwedeliver/Prizes/CommonwealthWritersPrize/2011prize

"Pitch-perfect in its haunting evocation of time and place", Edmund de Waal's much-praised biography of his family's history, The Hare with Amber Eyes, has been named winner of the £10,000 Ondaatje prize. The Royal Society of Literature award is given annually to a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which best evokes "the spirit of a place". De Waal's book saw off titles including the Booker-shortlisted In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut, which tells of a young man's travels through Greece, India and Africa, and Guardian journalist Patrick Barkham's survey of British butterflies The Butterfly Isles. De Waal, who took the new writer of the year trophy at the Galaxy Book awards, also won the Costa biography award earlier this year, although his book missed out on the Costa book of the year prize to poet Jo Shapcott's Of Mutability.
Arts Minister Simon Crean has announced the 20 great Australian titles that have made it onto the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlists. The fiction shortlist included: Traitor by Stephen Daisley, Notorious by Roberta Lowing, When Colts Ran by Roger McDonald, Glissando by David Musgrave, and That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott. This year the winning book attracts a tax-free prize of $80,000 with $5000 going to a maximum of four shortlisted titles in each of the Award categories. The judges have considered 379 entries and have recommended shortlists and winners for each of the four categories—for adult fiction, young adult fiction, children's fiction and non-fiction—to the Prime Minister. More information about the 2011 shortlist, including the other shortlisted titles, can be found at: http://www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards/shortlists.

John Banville has won the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for literature. The accolade, administered by the Prague-based Franz Kafka Society, is awarded annually for a body of work of “exceptional literary creation”. The society was established shortly after the collapse of communism in 1989 to promote the legacy of Kafka and other German and Jewish writers from Prague. The award – a scaled-down model of the monument to Franz Kafka in Prague and a cash prize of $10,000 (€7,100) – was established by the society in 2001. The Wexford-born writer, chosen from a 15-strong candidate list, is the 11th recipient of the award. Previous winners include British playwright Harold Pinter, US writer Philip Roth and Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Czech writer and former president Václav Havel received the award last year. Banville, who also writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, has published 18 novels, including The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 20 05.

Poet and singer Leonard Cohen won Spain's Prince of Asturias literature award for a body of work deemed by the jury to be of "immutable merit," AFP reported. The jury said Cohen's writing "has influenced three generations of people worldwide through his creation of emotional imagery in which poetry and music are fused in an oeuvre of immutable merit... The passing of time, sentimental relationships, the mystical traditions of the East and the West and life sung as an unending ballad make up a body of work associated with certain moments of decisive change at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century."

Finally, Winners of this year's $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize are Gjertrud Schnackenberg's Heavenly Questions (international categpory) and Dionne Brand's Ossuaries (Canadian category). Schnackenberg bested an international shortlist that included Seamus Heaney's Human Chain, Khaled Mattawa's translation of Adonis: Selected Poems by Adonis and Philip Mosley's translation of The Book of the Snow by François Jacqmin. The other finalists in the Canadian category were Suzanne Buffam's The Irrationalist and John Steffler's Lookout.

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

=================================================

SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter.

==========================================================

Book lovers of the world unite! Please forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommendation form: http://tinyurl.com/eex

To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

***********************************************************

NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of FireSong by Aaron Paul Lazar

The story of the Underground Railroad is also compelling and Lazar handles the history beautifully, deftly weaving it into the story, and allowing the reader to discover and enjoy each piece of information along with Gus and Camille. Managing a delicate balance between action and reflection, Lazar’s latest book FireSong is a delightfully satisfying read full of warmth, humour and drama. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3flsabm

Interview with Mark Seal

The author of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit talks about the serendipity that gave rise to his book, his main character, his research, and more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/3vcfmed

A review of If You Go Into the Woods by David Gaughran

If You Go Into the Woods is probably not best suited to readers who prefer their stories neatly boxed with all the answers lined up. But for those readers who, like me, love punchy, entertaining reads with a bit of mental gymnastics thrown in, you can’t go wrong with this one. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3gxcwuh

A review of Selected Poems of Dorothy Hewett edited by Kate Lilley

By the time the work gets to “Days of Violence days of Rages”, the extended poem becomes an incantation of pain moving Alice through an entire lifetime of sex, communism, childbirth, betrayal, loneliness, illness and death. It’s both intensely powerful and at the same time, self-indulgent and bitter. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3sj9s7g

A review of The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children by Brendan Connell

The horror of self when seen in clarity may never match your ideals in reality. Yet they provide an interest fall into the dark side of mankind in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe, but without any sappy love poem. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3qdvhso

A review of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by Mark Samuels

What makes this a fun collection to read is the mode of writing in the same style as those early horror tales with formal language and settings built as if they existed in the netherworld. These are stories where everyone seems to whisper and creep, except they aren’t very predictable. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3tuthfj

A review of The Moral Lives of Animals by Dale Peterson

Dale Peterson takes the unusual angle of examining how evolution has shaped animal behavior in the area of cooperation. He uses research in cell biology to talk about the limbic brain, emotional responses to things like tickling, fear, grief and love. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3qqx33h

A review of Instant Poetry (Just Add Words!) by Larry Berger

Instant Poetry (Just Add Words!) is a collection of forty-eight poems. I was surprised at the author's creativity, good humor, and, at times, depth about the human condition. Some of these poems were performed on stage along the West Coast and New York and were created in interactive poetry readings. It is a unique and ingenious concept. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3f7nx7n

For Love and Justice, in the American Grain: the album Voice of My Beautiful Country by singer Rene

Flack’s interpretation has great power within restraint; and Rene Marie pursues great animation, believable impersonation. Rene Marie’s selection of patriotic songs—“America the Beautiful,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”—is shrewdly ambitious, admirably epic. Rene Marie’s album, Voice of My Beautiful Country, is, as intended, a major work. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3wx5krn

A review of According to Luke by Rosanne Dingli

It isn’t just the natural world that is richly described, but also the iconic places that the characters visit, from the Saydnaya convent in Damascus to the Rabat Priory in Malta, along with the many paintings and sculptures, all described with the kind of meticulous detail that helps the reader sympathise with the love that Jana has for the places and work. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3ekytxb

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,791 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Dusty Johnson, who won a copy of The Beach Trees by Karen White.

Congratulations also to: Lisa Garrett, Annette Estell, and Naghma Husain, who each won a copy of A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of three copies of The Wreckage by Michael Robotham. The prize will be drawn at the beginning of July from entrants. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line The Wreckage and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal to giveaway. To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Rockefeller Suit and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, Brothers of A Band by B.J. Lambesis and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by The Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Chad Hautmann. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show! Coming soon is an interview with FireSong’s Aaron Paul Lazar.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Baker Karpin, Elliot, Pollack, Wingrove, Biss and more

2011-05-10T00:52:52Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 4, 10 May 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

***********************************************************

PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, this year’s shortlist for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award has been published. The full shortlist includes: Galore by Michael Crummey (Canadian) Doubleday Canada, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (American) Faber & Faber, HarperCollins, USA, The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Chinese / American) Random House, USA, Ransom by David Malouf (Australian) Random House Australia, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Irish) Bloomsbury, UK, Random House, USA, Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates (American) Ecco Press, USA, Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (Australian) Allen & Unwin, Brooklyn by Colm Toibín (Irish) Viking UK, Scribner, USA, Love and Summer by William Trevor (Irish) Viking, UK, and After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld (Australian) Pantheon Books, USA

Turkey's Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2006, is one of six writers shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Pamut, who won the first such award in 1990, is shortlisted for The Museum of Innocence, a tale of forbidden love in Istanbul translated by Maureen Freely. Authors from Peru, Venezuela, Germany, Argentina and Norway are also cited. The £10,000 prize is given to a living author whose book has been translated into English and published in the UK. The award acknowledges both the winning author and his or her translator, both of whom share the prize money. Norwegian writer Per Petterson, who previously won the prize in 2006, is nominated again for I Curse the River of Time, translated by Charlotte Barslund. Three novels originally written in Spanish have been shortlisted - Red April by Peru's Santiago Roncagliolo; Kamchatka by the Argentine Marcelo Figueras; and The Sickness, the debut novel from Venezuelan author Alber to Barrera Tyszka. Visitation, the third novel by German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, completes the shortlist. The winner of the prize - funded by Arts Council England - will be announced at a London ceremony on 26 May.

Finalists for the for £30,000 (US$49,164) Orange Prize for Fiction, which "celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world," were named yesterday. The winner will be honored June 8 in London. This year's shortlist includes: Room by Emma Donoghue, The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna, Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson, Great House by Nicole Krauss, The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, Annabel by Kathleen Winter.

A pair of debut novelists, Sam Leith and Manu Joseph, are among the finalists for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, which celebrates a novel published during the past year that best captures the comic spirit of P.G. Wodehouse. The five shortlisted novels are: Serious Men by Manu Joseph, Comfort and Joy by India Knight, The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith, The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn, and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.

Literature Wales announced the Long List of Wales Book of the Year 2011 on Wednesday 13 April 2011. The awards, worth £10,000 to the winners, are presented to the authors of the best books of the year in English and Welsh. The English language judges are: writer and editor Francesca Rhydderch (Chair); fiction writer and Wales Book of the Year 2009 winner Deborah Kay Davies; and author and broadcaster Jon Gower. The list includes M. Wynn Thomas’ book In the Shadow of the Pulpit which explores the culture of Welsh Nonconformity, and In the Frame by Dai Smith which recaptures life and culture in the Valleys between 1910 to 2010. John Harrison is also long listed for his journey through South America in Cloud Road: A Journey through the Inca Heartland. Tyler Keevil and Gladys Mary Coles are nominated for their debut novels Fireball and Clay respectively; and long listed author for both the Booker Prize and twice for the Orange Prize with earlier novels, Stevie Davies is on the list with her recent novel Into Suez. A novel by science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds, Terminal World, has also been nominated. There are three collections of poetry on the Long List: What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo by Pascale Petit, Jilted City by Patrick McGuinness and Doctor Placebo by Alan Wall.

James Richardson won the $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize, given annually to an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition. The award's sponsor, Poets & Writers magazine, said the award is designed "to provide what all poets need: time and the encouragement to write." "Distinct, lively, and apparently effortless, James Richardson's voice has evolved, over the course of seven books, into a remarkable presence in contemporary poetry."

The Pulitzer Prizes for 2011 include, for fiction, "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A. Knopf), for drama, "Clybourne Park" by Bruce Norris, for poetry, "The Best of It: New and Selected Poems" by Kay Ryan (Grove Press). There are 21 Pulitzer categories. In 20 of those categories the winners receive a $10,000 cash award each and a certificate. The Public Service category of the Journalism competition is awarded a gold medal. The Public Service prize is always awarded to a newspaper, not an individual, although an individual may be named in the citation. For the full list, visit: http://www.pulitzer.org/node/8501

This year's Miles Franklin award has the shortest shortlist in seven years for Australia's most prestigious award for a work of fiction. The three left standing are Roger McDonald's When Colts Ran, (Vintage, Random House Australia), Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance (Picador) and Chris Womersley's Bereft (Scribe Publications). "They stood out like beacons," said literary critic and award judge, Morag Fraser, announcing the successful authors in Sydney this morning. The award is presented for the novel of the year that is of the highest literary merit and depicts Australian life in any of its phases. Fifty-five books were submitted for this year's award. The judges pared back the field to a long list of nine, which included works by three women authors. Womersley is the only new face among this year's finalists. Before her death in 1954, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin bequeathed her estate to establish the award, now worth $50,000. Each shortlisted author re ceives $5000 from the Copyright Agency Ltd. The Miles Franklin was first awarded in 1957 to Patrick White for Voss. Last year's winner was Peter Temple for his novel Truth. The winner will be announced at the awards dinner in Melbourne on June 22.

The winner of the 2011 Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award is Rohan Wilson for his novel The Roving Party. In an exciting new initiative, the ebook version has been made available for purchase straight away from Booki.sh and Readings and through other ebook retailers. The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award is one of Australia's richest and the most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of thirty-five. Offering publication by Allen & Unwin and prize money totalling $20,000, the Vogel Award has launched the careers of some of its most successful writers, including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, Brian Castro, Mandy Sayer and Andrew McGahan. Vogel-winning authors have gone on to win or be shortlisted for other major awards, such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Booker Prize.

Finalists for the £3,000 (US$4,953) Orwell book prize for political writing were announced this month. The winner will be named May 17. This year's shortlisted titles are The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham, Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus by Oliver Bullough, The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore, Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens, Death to the Dictator! by Afsaneh Moqadam, and Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan by D.R. Thorpe. The winners of the Orwell Prizes – each worth £3000 – will be announced at an awards ceremony at Church House, Westminster, on Tuesday 17th May. The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing. Every year, prizes are awarded to the work – for the book, for the journalism and for the blog – which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’.

The Mystery Writers of America has announced the winners of the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2010. BEST NOVEL was The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur Books), BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR was Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva (Tom Doherty Associates – Forge Books), and BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL was Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard (Random House - Bantam). For a complete list, visit: http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html

Finally (phew), The 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were awarded April 29, in a ceremony at the Los Angeles Times building. Key winners include Biography: Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience & Redemption (Random House), Current Interest: Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (W. W. Norton & Company), Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Peter Bognanni, The House of Tomorrow (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam), and Fiction: Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf). For the full list visit: http://events.latimes.com/bookprizes/

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

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SURVEY NEWS

Our poll that asked how relevant books are today is now done. Results were as follows:

Books are critical-they enlighten, expand, inform 58 %
Books form opinions - they matter! 7 %
Books are difference bet. civilisation and Barbary 4 %
Without books there is no life 16 %
Books are okay - but let's not go overboard 3 %
Books are entertainment only - same as any media 2 %
Books are changing-they're not what they once were 4 %
Books don't matter at all anymore. 2 % (that was 8 people! Don’t tell me who you are!)

We have a new poll that asks what format you’re reading in. Please join in with your response! The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter (with a link back to your website if you want).

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We encourage you to forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommend us form: http://tinyurl.com/eex
To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

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NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of How to Survive a Natural Disaster by Margaret Hawkins

How to Survive a Natural Disaster is, in turns, a disturbing and very funny novel of frailty, change, and a kind of survival. Each of the characters makes multiple transformations, both internal and external, that move between appearance and the reality underneath. Artifices come and go and finally disappear by the book’s end. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3mwh5bw

A review of After-Thoughts: New Poems by Florence Baker Karpin

Reminiscence and profound yearning for times of yore permeate throughout a variety of poems and establish a contrast between nature’s revolving tranquility and human’s desire to re-experience lost time. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3zh6bhz

A review of Dying To Read by John Elliot

Which line of investigation will get to the real ‘truth’ of the matter? But in this novel, ‘truth’, at least the ‘whole truth’ is ‘no easy matter’ and, as is astutely pointed out by one person of interest in the case, it is a ‘slippery thing’ because it ‘depends on who owns it.’ For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3zd7yzu

Interview with John Pollack

The author of The Pun Also Rises talks puns - his favourite puns, punning duels, the world pun championship, the pervasiveness of puns, and lots more. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3kalj6b

A review of Chung Kuo 1: Son Of Heaven by David Wingrove

This book is brutal and unforgiving. The author is not afraid to graphically depict the consequences of violence, he is not afraid to introduce you to a lovable character and kill them off later in the story, and he is not afraid to let the characters become increasingly unhinged and desperate. He uses gritty dialogue, gritty events and gritty locations to depict a world in the throes of the greatest change it has ever seen. And all these things are just right for a story such as this one. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3np8w7o

A review of The End of the World—A Tale of Life, Death and the Space In Between by Andrew Biss

While it’s unlikely anyone could possibly write something new on this subject, what Biss has done with The End of the World is to create characters who express various viewpoints on what I assume Biss sees as the most noteworthy issues affecting our species, and rather than give us the answers—which, of course, he doesn’t have—encourages us to chew on these questions for ourselves. In this he has succeeded. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3brw5a2

A review of The Dead Detective Agency by Peg Herring

Thanks to Peg Herring, I am now informed on ‘selling away’, the underhand practise of cheating both the firm and client to the profit of a swindler. It is this practice that ultimately led to Tori’s death, and that of others in this action novel. In an interesting way this is Financial Swindling for Dummies. Thanks! For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3g6lk8g

A review of Buffalo Unbound by Laura Pedersen

Through her nostalgic but realistic lens, readers may find themselves looking at their own hometowns in a new way—one that is not the idyllic memory of childhood, but more true to life, warts and all. It is clear that Pedersen makes no apologies for Buffalo’s hardscrabble past, but instead chooses to celebrate the unique spirit and character of her hometown. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3trujom

A review of Whose Cries Are Not Music by Linda Benninghoff

I especially liked when she reaches a moment of spirituality in “Dream” that has a happy, feel to it “… Your eyes quivering in the light / Where is God / But in a dream where / the light between us, always yellow …” hints that there is something more one can obtain beyond our life. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3rma5g7

A review of Injuring Eternity by Millicent Borges Accardi

This is an unusual collection of insightful moments, people, relationships and life throughout the day into evening. Many will find something of value just by randomly opening the pages and selecting something new, including births, deaths, lovers, children, snooping, guns, the down side of Las Vegas, soap operas and birthdays. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3fyojq2

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,773 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Tamarak Harris, who won a copy of Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington.

Congratulations also to: Brooke Shevlin, Betty Curran, and Debbie Koenig, who each won a copy of The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of three copies of A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block. The prize will be drawn at the beginning of June from entrants. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Lawrence Block and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of The Beach Trees by Karen White to giveaway (check out the book’s trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw26kTLLkMQ ).To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Beach Trees and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of According to Luke by Rosanne Dingli, Selected Poems of Dorothy Hewett, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Fire Song by Aaron Lazar, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by The Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Sue Collier. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show! Coming soon is an interview with Magic & Grace’s Chad Hautmann.

************************************************
(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

Subscribe to The Compulsive Reader News via email by entering your email address below:

CR Newsletter: Rose, Harrington, Burden, Hawkins, Ross and Collier, and more

2011-04-09T06:37:36Z

The Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html

Volume 12, Issue 4, 9 April 2011
==============================================
IN THIS ISSUE

Publisher Notes
New Reviews
Survey news
Competition News
Coming soon

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PUBLISHER NOTES

Hello readers, in the news this month, The Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK's only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, has announced the 2011 longlist. Celebrating its sixteenth anniversary this year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing throughout the world. According to The Guardian, “Debut novelists will make up nearly half of the Orange prize for fiction longlist, which this year tackles strikingly difficult subjects: incest, sadistic cruelty, polygamy, child bereavement, hermaphroditism and mental illness. There is, though, also alligator wrestling in the 20-strong list, and Susanna Reid, the BBC Breakfast news presenter and judge for this year's prize, insisted there was much joy to be derived from the books.” The full long (it’s long!) list is here: http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/prize.html

Australian independent booksellers named Anh Do's The Happiest Refugee as their choice for Indie Book of the Year. Simon Milne, general manager of Leading Edge Books, said the title "was chosen by an overwhelming number of independent booksellers.... Last year was an important year for nonfiction, and this is the first time a nonfiction book has won this award. Anh Do's story--of his family's struggle to reach Australia, and the life they have created since then--touched booksellers and readers alike." One bookseller described The Happiest Refugee as a story that "will reach into every heart of every reader who is fortunate enough to be absorbed from page one. The story of the family, their hardship and the love and humor that gets them through put this book on a par with A.B. Facey's A Fortunate Life. I hope lots of Australians get to read his book and appreciate Australia through Anh's eyes."

Acclaimed Chinese author Bi Feiyu on Thursday won Asia's top literary prize for his "Three Sisters", set during the Cultural Revolution. Bi edged out four other shortlisted authors to secure the $30,000 Man Asian Literary Prize with the story of three women who "strive to change the course of their destinies" in one of China's most chaotic political periods. "When I entered the shortlist, all of my friends said, 'Impossible, there's no way a Chinese writer (could win),'" Bi said through an interpreter after winning the prize. "They said, 'Don't even bother going to Hong Kong -- there is no point.' But I had to come." Bi added that he hoped the book would make clear that "we should never forget the Cultural Revolution at any time". His book edged out four other shortlisted submissions, from India and Japan, to take the top award. The prize, limited to Asian authors whose books are either written in English or translated int o English, was founded in 2007 and shares the same sponsor as the Man Booker Prize, among the world's top literary awards. Bi's competition on the shortlist included debut Indian novelist Manu Joseph for his "Serious Men" and Japan's Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, for "The Changeling".

The David Cohen Prize for Literature 2011 has been awarded to the English novelist, essayist and short story writer [and one of my personal favourites. Ed] Julian Barnes for his lifetime's achievement in literature. The prize, worth £40,000, was presented by the chair of judges Mark Lawson at a gala ceremony hosted at the British Library this evening. Julian Barnes is one of England's foremost fiction writers. Shortlisted on three occasions for the Man Booker Prize (for Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and Arthur and George), he is as lauded overseas as in his homeland. The French Ministry of Culture named him Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004 and he has also been awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literature. As well as three Man Booker nominations, Barnes has received several honours for his writing including the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Prix Médicis, E M Forster Award, Gutenberg Prize, Grinzane Cavour Awar d and the Prix Femina. The winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature also chooses the recipient of the Clarissa Luard Award, which is worth £12,500. The award, funded by Arts Council England, is given to a literature organisation that supports young writers and readers or an individual writer under the age of 35. Julian Barnes presented the 2011 award to The Reading Agency to support their reading initiatives for young offenders.

The Authors' Club is has announced the shortlist for its Best First Novel Award of 2011. The shortlisted books are: Farundell by L.R. Fredericks (John Murray), Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson (Sceptre), London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp (Myriad Editions), The Still Point by Amy Sackville (Portobello), Dry Season by Dan Smith (Orion), and Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai (Beautiful Books). The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is presented to the most promising debut novel issued by a British publisher in the previous year. The shortlist is selected by a panel of Club members.

The Jewish Book Council has named Austin Ratner the winner of the $100,000 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in fiction for his debut novel, The Jump Artist (Bellevue Literary Press). The council also named Joseph Skibell, author of A Curable Romantic (Algonquin), the 2011 runner-up and recipient of the $25,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Choice Award.

Peter Forbes won of the £50,000 (US$81,248) Warwick Prize for Writing for his book Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage. The biennial prize from the University of Warwick "is an international cross-disciplinary award open to any genre or form of writing." The Warwick Prize shortlist also included The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna, The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences by Peter D McDonald, What Color is the Sacred by Michael Taussig and White Egrets by Derek Walcott.

Seamus Heaney has won the Irish Times Poetry Now Prize at the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Poetry Now Festival in Dublin. Heaney’s Human Chain was awarded the €5,000 prize on Saturday beating Sara Berkeley (The View from Here), Ciarán Carson (Until Before After), Dermot Healy (A Fool’s Errand) and Paul Muldoon (Maggot). This is Heaney’s second victory of the prize in recent years, his previous collection, District & Circle, won the prize in 2006.

FOLLOWING his recent Oscar success Australian illustrator and author Shaun Tan has won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Sweden - the largest children's literature award. The award, which amounts to 5 million krona ($764,6000), was announced in Stockholm. Melbourne-based Tan has illustrated more than 20 books, including The Rabbits (1998), The Lost Thing (2000), The Red Tree (2001), The Arrival (2006) and Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008). His award citation read: "Shaun Tan has reinvented the picture book by creating visually spectacular pictorial narratives with a constant human presence." In February Tan won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for his 15-minute film The Lost Thing. Thirteen writers have made it on to the judges' list of finalists under serious consideration for the fourth Man Booker International Prize, the £60,000 award which recognises one writer for his or her achievement in fiction. The authors come from eight countries, five are published in translation and there are four women on the list. One writer has previously won the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction and two have been shortlisted. Famously, another, John le Carré, asked that his books should not be submitted for the annual prize to give less established authors the opportunity to win. The thirteen authors on the list are Wang Anyi (China), Juan Goytisolo (Spain), James Kelman (UK), John le Carré (UK), Amin Maalouf (Lebanon), David Malouf (Australia), Dacia Maraini (Italy), Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada), Philip Pullman (UK), Marilynne Robinson (USA), Philip Roth (USA), Su Tong (China) and Anne Tyler (USA). The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2011 consists of writer, academic and rare-book dealer Dr. Rick Gekoski (Chair), publisher, writer and critic Carmen Callil, and award-winning novelist Justin Cartwright. The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The Man Booker International Prize winner will be announced at the Sydney Writers' Festival on 18 May and the winner will be celebrated at an awards ceremony in London on 28 June 2011.

Finally, The New York Public Library has announced the finalists for the eleventh annual Young Lions Fiction Award. The award honors the works of young authors carving deep first impressions in the literary world. The winning writer will be awarded a $10,000 prize on May 9, 2011 at a ceremony hosted by actor Ethan Hawke held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The finalists for 2011 Young Lions Fiction Award are: Citrus County by John Brandon (McSweeney’s), Vida by Patricia Engel (Grove Press), The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s), Death Is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca (W.W. Norton & Company), Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne (Harper Perennial). The Young Lions Fiction Award is given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or collection of short stories. Each year five young fiction writers are selected as finalists by a reading committee of Young Lions members, writ ers, editors, and librarians. A panel of award judges, including Maile Chapman, Andrew Sean Greer, and Kelly Link will select the winner of the $10,000 prize.

Have a great month. Maggie

===============================================
SPONSORED BY:

Bestsellersworld.com is the place to go for all your reading needs. We have book reviews, book giveaways and many other interesting places to visit. Visit: http://www.bestsellersworld.com

=================================================

SURVEY NEWS

Our current poll asks how relevant books are today. The poll is on the front page. Just tick your answer, press enter, and results will appear instantly. If anyone wants to suggest topics for our poll, please drop me a line anytime. If you’ve got a comment, send it to me so I can publish it (with your permission) in the newsletter (with a link back to your website if you want).

==========================================================

We encourage you to forward this newsletter to other book lovers, or you can use our fast and very easy recommend us form: http://tinyurl.com/eex
To become a new subscriber, visit the site and sign up. It is free, easy and all subscribers go into our terrific monthly draws and have access to our regular giveaways.

***********************************************************

NEW REVIEWS AT THE COMPULSIVE READER

A review of A Parent’s Guide to Facebook by Kathryn Rose

Kathryn Rose explains how to monitor your child’s activity online without preventing them from networking, making friends and playing games that so many enjoy. This is a really useful resource for those that like a guide to using a computer or aren’t sure what everything means. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3cenpsp

An interview with Laura Harrington

The author of Alice Bliss talks about her upcoming debut novel, her characters, the musical that gave rise to the book, the war behind the story, her inspiration, her writing regimen, and lots more. For the full interview visit: http://tinyurl.com/3vpcnme

A review of Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden

Although the memoir is sharp and humorous, none of the episodes are laughable matters. Much of it is deeply shocking and despairingly sad: Wendy’s grandfather translates as a disgraceful chauvinist, her grandmother as flatulent and flippant, and her mother as mostly absent and displaying a frightful penchant for sunburning herself; all three of them are unabashed alcoholics. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3f42pls

A review of How We Got Barb Back: The Story of My Sister's Reawakening After 30 Years of Schizophrenia by Margaret Hawkins

The quiet joy that Margaret takes in rediscovering her sister is inspirational. What we find at the end is not the old Barb, but rather, Barb as she is and has become. How We Got Barb Back is an important book, not just for those looking for answers and understanding about a relative struggling with mental illness, but for everyone. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/42osgae

A review of The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing, fifth edition by Marilyn Ross and Sue Collier

If you are serious about going the whole hog and self-publishing one, or many books, then you are going to become a publisher and trying to do it without this guide could be a big mistake. The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing is one of the most seminal, practical and valuable books on the topic on the market and it belongs on every self-publisher’s shelf. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3urglhg

A review of These Trespasses by Kenneth W. Cain

Hive? Yes, the aliens have built at least one and their human captives occupy it. Weird and yet it works, mainly because of what I said at the beginning. I would go so far as to say that in spite of several typos, and head-hopping point-of-view flips, These Trespasses is a master class in characterization. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3palw9u

A review of Five Bells by Gail Jones

This is a novel that, like Slessor’s poem, explores time, and the way in which it flows between and across character. When Ellie, James, and their pivotal teacher Miss Morrison learn about the Clepsydra – the Chinese clock that consists of vessels that leak time, Ellie and James are excited. Time is a process “of emptying and filling, a fluent time-passing, not one chopped into pieces.” For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/4ss6wqw

A review of Djibouti by Elmore Leonard
What you get here is great storytelling, a diverse collection of interesting characters, Leonard’s trademark prose which is idiomatic and innovatory and honey-flowing (by which I mean very readable, euphoria-inducing, addictive almost; all of these at once). Who else can tell a story by letting you know how he’s telling a story? For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3sokg6y

A review of The Tales of Belkin by Alexander Pushkin

Originally published in 1831, these ludic (yet insidiously compelling) yarns touch on honour, vengeance, love, duels, elopement; and in one story myriad macabre happenings that turn out in the end to be a dream… Fairy-tale tropes are in evidence and so too is the storyteller’s familiar, Coincidence. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3gydcrq

A review of The Murderer’s Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers

Having experienced domestic violence first hand and gone on to work with the perpetrators of such violence, there is no one better equipped than Meyers to write a story like this. I would categorise, The Murderer’s Daughters as faction—a skilful blending of fact and fiction. For the full review visit: http://tinyurl.com/3hdnpe3

All of the reviews listed above are on the front page, so if you have any problems getting directly through to them, or if you want to browse, just drop by. Older reviews (all 2,747 of them, including film and theatre reviews, the best collection of chess books reviews on the internet, an extensive and eclectic music review section, and more) are kept indefinitely in our categorized archives, which can be visited here: http://tinyurl.com/eex

***********************************************************

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Sandra Tarling and Carol Bartley Brown, who each won a galley of Geraldine’s Brook’s new book Caleb’s Crossing.

Congratulations also to Laurie Genishi, Ellen Hudock, and Jane Robinson, who each won a copy of The Complaints by Ian Rankin.

Our new monthly giveaway is for one of three copies of The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell. The prize will be drawn at the beginning of May from entrants. If you’d like to win, send me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Bayau and your postal address. I’ll choose a winner at random from all entries that reach me by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a copy of Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington to giveaway (see our interview with Harrington above)! The book is set for release in June and the winner will receive the copy just after the release date. To win, me an email (maggieball@compulsivereader.com) with the subject line Alice Bliss and your postal address. I’ll pick the winner from the first 200 entrants.

Good luck everybody!

***********************************************
COMING SOON

We will shortly be featuring reviews of Buffalo Unbound by Laura Pedersen, Whose Cries Are Not Music by Linda Benninghoff, Injuring Eternity by Millicent Borges Accardi, Dread Detective Agency by Peg Herring, and lots more reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Don’t forget to drop by The Compulsive Reader talks (see widget on upper left hand side of the site) or at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader to listen to our latest interview with Gail Jones. If you like The Compulsive Reader talks and use iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show and get updates automatically. Just find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader – we’re the first result that will appear, and then click subscribe. Then you’ll never miss a show! Coming this week is an interview with The Complete Guide to Self Publishing’s Sue Collier.

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(c) 2011 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety

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