The Observer asked 74 writers and “other cultural figures” what books they enjoyed most this year. View the article here - and don’t forget that there’s a second page.
Full list of writers and cultural figures who contributed:
The Guardian reports:
The British author Doris Lessing has won the 2007 Nobel prize for literature. Lessing, who is only the 11th woman to win literature’s most prestigious prize in its 106-year history, is best known for her 1962 postmodern feminist masterpiece, The Golden Notebook.
Announcing the award, the Swedish Academy described Lessing as an “epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”. It singled out The Golden Notebook for praise, calling it “a pioneering work” that “belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.”
Lessing, who was shopping at the time of the Nobel announcement, was typically irreverent in her response to the news. “I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I’m delighted to win them all, the whole lot,” she said to the reporters gathered outside her home in north London. “It’s a royal flush.”
The ‘complete archives’ of science fiction grand master Robert Heinlein will be available online, San Jose Mercury News reports (requires free signup):
Other collections soon to be added to the online archive will feature Robert and Virginia Heinlein’s business and personal correspondence, scrapbooks, photo albums, and unpublished works, including communications with Heinlein’s editor and agent.
Via Futurismic.
From the Dragonmount website:
It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain.
George R. R. Martin put up a blog post on the topic:
Although he had been fighting amyloidosis for several years, the news of his death still came as a shock to many, including me. He was so optimistic and determined that you had to think that if anyone could beat the disease, it would be him.
So what happens to A Memory of Light, the unpublished final book in the Wheel of Time series? According to wotmania:
[Jason] said that Jordan has been dictating outlines and plot lines and everything else related to the final book. He used the phrase “army of writers” to talk about the people that were converting those tapes into written form.
It would appear that the final book will still be published, I’m sure details regarding that will work themselves out.
James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces - which you’ve probably heard of, but here’s the Wikipedia link if not - is working on a novel now:
The publisher of Harper Collins told The Associated Press that the novel, "Bright Shiny Morning," was a "kaleidoscopic" portrait of modern Los Angeles.
The book is set to come out in summer 2008. View the full story here.
BBC News reports:
JK Rowling has said she is back at work, just days after her final Harry Potter book was published.
In an interview with the USA Today newspaper, the author said she was sad the Harry Potter series had come to an end, but would not stop writing.
“I’m sort of writing two things at the moment,” she said. “One is for children and the other is not for children.”
Rowling, 41, said she expected to drop one of her two new books, which is what happened when she started writing Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone in the 1990s.
“The weird thing is that this is exactly the way I started writing Harry,” she said. “I was writing two things simultaneously for a year before Harry took over. So one will oust the other in due course, and I’ll know that’s my next thing.”
So, here it is at last: The final confrontation between Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the “symbol of hope†for both the Wizard and Muggle worlds, and Lord Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named, the nefarious leader of the Death Eaters and would-be ruler of all. Good versus Evil. Love versus Hate. The Seeker versus the Dark Lord.
View the full New York Times review here. There are some small spoilers but nothing, in my opinion, that would affect your enjoyment of the book.
Austrian Nobel-winning author Elfriede Jelinek is combining novel-writing with her affinity for cyberspace:
Jelinek, 60, has been posting chapters of the new book, “Neid” (German for “Envy”), as she writes them. The first two chapters of the work she describes as a “mixture of blog and prose” are already available on her site, www.elfriedejelinek.com, and there are more to come.
“It’s a wonderfully democratic method, publishing a text on the Internet,” Jelinek told the AP.
Although the German-language work will never appear in traditional book form and is primarily meant to be read on the screen, “anyone who wants to can download it or print it out,” she said.
Read the rest of the Chicago Tribune article here. Link to Jelinek’s site (via BoingBoing)
