Category Archives: Reading

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 |

Readers "can't live without" classics

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Keren

Worldbookday.com conducted a survey of books people can’t live without.  Here are the results:

The top ten are as follows:

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5% 8) 1984 – George Orwell 6%
= His Dark Materials  – Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%

The full list and a breakdown by region are available here (pdf).
The Guardian says:

Richard and Judy’s television show, legendary for creating bestsellers, appears to have little influence on this list. Virtually none of the chart-topping titles of recent years, except for Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and no high-grossing celebrity biographies reached the top 100.

Instead, the top 100 bristles with provenly enduring quality, from Joseph Heller, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne to John Steinbeck, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad, Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day) and Conan Doyle. The last three titles to squeeze in are a characteristic mix: Hamlet, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Contests, Reading |

On authors who write writers

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Keren

The Guardian has an interesting article about authors who have writer characters in their books.

Most authors seem to be drawn at some point to create a character who is an author, either as a jokey wave to their readers or a therapeutic exploration of another kind of writer they might have been. And, while such potentially self-indulgent conceits might be considered the kind of trick favoured by the type of writer who wins prizes rather than sells copies, two of the most populist writers in English-language fiction have been among the keenest players of these postmodernist games.

The interest of novelists in inventing novelists has both a practical and a psychological explanation. Realistic fiction demands that the details of a character’s job should be as convincing as possible, and the creation of a creative writer uses research already accrued, without the long Googling and interviewing necessary to portray a convincing undertaker or dentist.

But there is also a deeper mental explanation. Most writers have had a literary equivalent of the actors’ experience of self-division: the sense that their writing comes from someone or something separate.

Read the rest of the article here.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Reading |

Alexander McCall Smith novel excerpt

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Mark

Scotsman.com has an exclusive excerpt of Alexander McCall Smith’s new novel, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive:

It is useful, people generally agree, for a wife to wake up before her husband. Mma Ramotswe always rose from her bed an hour or so before Mr JLB Matekoni – a good thing for a wife to do because it affords time to accomplish at least some of the day’s tasks.

Click here to read the full excerpt (around 3,600 words).

Posted in Authors, Reading, Upcoming releases |

Literary readings in NYC laundromats

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Keren

Instead of burying their head in a book or heading to the nearest coffee shop to beat the boredom of laundry, New York writer Emily Rubin has organised a series of readings called “Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose,” at laundromats in New York.

“Just mixing laundry and writing seemed completely natural to me because truly in life and metaphorically as a writer, everyone has dirty laundry,” said the Brooklyn native who started the series last year.

She contemplated holding the readings in various neighborhood venues including shops but said a laundromat seemed “a natural fit.”

People can wash their dirty laundry while listening to a poem or short story or just attend the readings. During the first of the 2007 series writer Carolyn Turgeon read some of her work while people loaded the dryers and washing machines.

Link to the Yahoo! News article

Posted in Articles, Events, Reading |

Free copies of Kidnapped distributed in Edinburgh

Posted on February 12, 2007 by Keren

In a program to promote awareness of the importance of Edinburgh on the current and historical literary scene, copies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Kidnapped are being given away for free this month in the city.

All this February, readers can pick up one of 25,000 free copies of the book from a variety of public libraries across Edinburgh, with plans afoot to leave further copies on buses and park benches and in cafes and bars. Added to this, a month-long events programme encompasses talks, readings, storytelling, drama workshops, film shows, discussions and puppetry.

Copies of Kidnapped will be available in an abridged version, in an unabridged version, and as a specially-commissioned graphic novel.

Read the full Guardian article here.

Posted in Articles, Events, Graphic novels, Reading |

Harry Potter 7 date announced

Posted on February 1, 2007 by Keren

Anticipation over the ending of the best-selling Harry Potter series reached new heights today as J. K. Rowling announced today on her site that:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be published on Saturday 21st July 2007 at 00:01 BST in the UK and at 00:01 in the USA. It will also be released at 00:01 BST on Saturday 21st July in other English speaking countries around the world.

BBC News says:

[Bloomsbury] said it would publish a children’s hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.

As well as making Rowling a dollar billionaire, the books have been credited with bringing children back to reading and reviving the British film industry.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Book Release, Children's books, Reading, Science fiction/fantasy, Upcoming releases, Young Adult |

British Library faces budget cuts and possible introduction of fees

Posted on January 30, 2007 by Heidi Kathleen

…according to the British Library, government-imposed spending cuts may soon put the proud traditions of a national institution at risk. Ahead of the Treasury’s 2007 spending review, library officials have drawn up a briefing paper outlining measures they would have to take if the widely speculated cuts of between 5% and 7% come to fruition.

You can read the rest of the article over here.

Posted in Articles, Education, Reading, Resources |

Oprah chooses Sidney Poitier memoir

Posted on January 27, 2007 by Keren

After putting her book club on ice for a year after her showdown with memoirist James Frey, Oprah has stuck with autobiography for her new selection: Sidney Poitier’s spiritual autobiography The Measure of a Man, published by Harper SanFrancisco in 2000. The selection appears well timed for an Oscar season in which an unusually diverse group of actors are up for awards. Poitier was the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field in 1963.

From the Publishers Weekly article; read the Yahoo! News article on the same subject here.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Non-fiction, Reading |

Librarian: Why books are a hard sell

Posted on January 24, 2007 by Keren

Interesting Washington Post article by a high-school librarian about the decline in literacy among today’s youth:

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. “A lot out there is conspiring to distract you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s your opinion about books. It doesn’t make it true.” To her, the idea that reading might benefit the mind was, well, lame.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Posted in Articles, Education, Reading |