Monthly Archives: March 2007

Misplaced novel found while tidying up

Posted on March 19, 2007 by Mark

This, folks, is why keeping your house clean can never hurt:

An 89-year-old Dutch novelist has stumbled on a pot-boiler she wrote that had been lost for decades, and plans to publish it later this year.

Hella Haasse’s “Sterrenjacht” (“Hunt for the Stars”) was published as a serial in a newspaper in 1950, but the manuscript was lost.

However, she saved clippings of each installment and recently found them among an “incredible pile of paper.”

Full story on Reuters.

Posted in Authors, Upcoming releases |

Top unread books in Britain

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Keren

You know all those books you buy, start, and can’t seem to pick up again?  A British survey reveals a list of the top five fiction and non-fiction books Britons buy but never finish.

Top 5 fiction:

  • Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
  • Ulysses by James Joyce
  • Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
  • Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Top 5 non-fiction:

  • The Blunkett Tapes by David Blunkett
  • My Life by Bill Clinton
  • My Side by David Beckham
  • Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
  • Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Though this list could be taken as a positive indicator of a books popularity (commercially, at least) and cultural standing, apparently some of the people behind these books didn’t take the results so well.  “These people must have the intelligence of plankton not to be able to get through 204 pages of a comic, readable book,” said Andrew Franklin, a publisher involved with the bestselling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Read more in the Guardian article.

Posted in Articles, Reading |

Deathly Hallows first printing: 12,000,000

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Mark

Publisher Scholastic Corp. said on Wednesday it would release a record-breaking 12 million copies for the first U.S. printing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which hits stores on July 21.

Reuters has the full story. To compare, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had a first printing of 10.8 million copies.

Posted in Publishers, Upcoming releases, Young Adult |

'300' tops box office

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Keren

Yahoo News reports:

The tale of the Spartan battle of Thermopylae as seen through the unique eyes of graphic novelist Frank Miller captured the top spot at the box office over the weekend, commanding a take of nearly $71 million to become the year’s first blockbuster.

The movie, an adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 (a superhero-style take on the battle of Thermopylae) was shot entirely indoors, with the movie’s impressive skies and landscaped added in later digitally. In an interview with Wired News, director Zack Snyder said, “I wanted to get at the book as much as I could. Shooting outside, we couldn’t control the skies and lighting to the extent I wanted to. And the landscapes are different than in real life. They don’t exist in the real world, only in Frank Miller’s imagination.”

For a taste of the finished product (and some eye candy), see this gallery of photos on the Wired site.

Posted in Articles, Film, Graphic novels, Interviews, Movie Adaptations |

Shortlist announced for Independent foreign fiction award

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Keren

The shortlist, drawn from 80 novels entered, is:

· The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
· The Story of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist translated from Swedish by Tina Nunnally
· Four Walls by Vangelis Hatziyannidis translated from Greek by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife
· Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream by Javier Marías translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
· Vienna by Eva Menasse translated from German by Anthea Bell.
· Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad translated from Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad.

The annual award, which was revived in 2001 after running from 1990-95, is supported by the Arts Council and celebrates English translations. The £10,000 prize money is shared between authors – who have previously included WG Sebald and Orhan Paumuk – and their translators.

The winner will be revealed at a ceremony in the National Portrait Gallery on May 1.

Link to the Guardian article

Posted in Authors, Awards |

Hamas rescinds book ban after public outcry

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Keren

The Hamas-run Education Ministry on Saturday rescinded its decision to pull an anthology of Palestinian folk tales from school libraries and destroy copies, reportedly over mild sexual innuendo, following a widespread public outcry.

Some 1,500 copies of the book [Speak Bird, Speak Again] were destroyed — the most direct attempt by the militant Muslim group to impose its beliefs on Palestinian society.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Articles, Banned Books, Children's books, Education |

Unpublished novel misplaced

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Mark

From BBC News:

An unpublished novel by renowned author Jeanette Winterson has been found at an Underground station in south London.

The Stone Gods, by the writer of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, is not due to be published until September.

Martha Oster, 27, said she was “amazed” when she found the 134-page manuscript lying on a bench at Balham station on Wednesday night.

View the full story on BBC.co.uk – and yes, they do explain of how it came to be there. For those interested, Jeanette Winterson’s official site can be found here.

Posted in Authors, Upcoming releases |

Pullman grants Butterfly Tattoo film rights

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Mark

Philip Pullman may have hit Hollywood paydirt by selling the rights to the His Dark Materials trilogy to New Line Cinema – but it seems his interest in film goes beyond the bottom line.

According to the Independent’s Pandora, the author has awarded the film rights to an earlier novel, The Butterfly Tattoo, free of charge to a small independent Dutch company that promotes educational projects for young people. Dynamic Entertainment now has the option to adapt the book, in exchange for 10% of any eventual revenues. Filming is expected to begin in August.

Guardian Unlimited Books has the full story, which includes a brief description of the story. It notes that the film’s budget is just 200,000 euros – quite a difference from the £83m being spent on The Golden Compass.

Posted in Authors, Movie Adaptations |

Camel book drive

Posted on March 4, 2007 by Keren

Kenya’s mobile camel-borne library is holding a book drive.  This is a great opportunity to send off some of your extra books and support a good cause in the process.

Though The Camel Bookmobile (HarperCollins, April 2007) is a novel, the camel-borne library actually exists. It operates from Garissa in Kenya’s isolated Northeastern Province near the unstable border with Somalia. It brings books to a semi-nomadic people who live with drought, famine and chonic poverty. The books are spread out on grass mats beneath an acacia tree, and the library patrons, often barefoot, sometimes joined by goats or donkeys, gather with great excitement to choose their books until the next visit.

But of course, the bush is hard on books and the traveling library needs more.

What can you do to help?

BOOKS FOR THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE can be mailed to:

Garissa Provincial Library
For Camel Library
Librarian in Charge, Rashid M. Farah
P.O. Box 245
Garissa, Kenya

Postage, economy, on a 5-pound box from the U.S. to Kenya is $23. Sending a 10-pound box is $33.75, and a 15-pound box costs $41.10. For a 25-pound box, the cost is $55.05.

Link (via Neil Gaiman’s journal)

Posted in Libraries |

Steampunk Magazine

Posted on March 4, 2007 by Keren

Before the age of homogenization and micro-machinery, before the tyrannous efficiency of internal combustion and the domestication of electricity, lived beautiful, monstrous machines that lived and breathed and exploded unexpectedly at inconvenient moments. It was a time where art and craft were united, where unique wonders were invented and forgotten, and punks roamed the streets, living in squats and fighting against despotic governance through wit, will and wile.
Even if we had to make it all up.

SteamPunk Magazine is a publication that is dedicated to promoting steampunk as a culture, as more than a sub-category of fiction. It is a journal of fashion, music, misapplied technology and chaos. And fiction.

The magazine is available in print for only $3, and as a free pdf download. Since it’s published under a Creative Commons license, it’s free to copy, share and distribute.

The first issue is already available, and the magazine is accepting submissions content (fiction, illustrations and more) for future issues.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Posted in E-books, Reading, Science fiction/fantasy |