WITI IHIMAERA UNDER SEIGE

Whatever the rights and worngs of this sad affair one can't but help feel sorry for Ihimaera, one of our most feted writers, who must feel as if the sharks are circling him. As more and more academics weigh into the matter, from both New Zealand and abroad, the media are certainly having a field day, fuelling the issue for all its worth.

The NZ Listener, who originally revealed 16 non-attributed passages of text in their issue of November 14, have again in the issue of November 28, on sale tomorrow, given the story major treatment with a double page spread near the front of the magazine. The article by Joanne Black gives much space to Professor Margaret Soltan at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. who on her blog has taken a swipe not just at the author but at the University of Auckland as well. Her blog can be found at - www.margaretsoltan.com. One imagines she will be having a record number of visitors to her site this week.
The Listener also quotes Dr.Mike Reddy of the University of Wales and Geoff Walker of Penguin Books. Both Soltan and Reddy have particualr interest in plagiarism.

Joining in the fray at the Sunday Star Times today are writers Rosemary McLeod and Steve Braunias.
One wonders who will be next!

From The Times
November 21, 2009
The week’s crime fiction: November 21, 2009 Cold to the Touch by Frances Fyfield, Rain Gods by James Lee Burke,Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard
by Marcel Berlins

Seeking isolation, Sarah Fortune — Frances Fyfield’s attractively eccentric heroine lawyer turned very selective hooker (a small clientele of men she really likes) — rents a seaside cottage belonging to her friend Jessica’s mother. Jessica herself stays in London, in a vain and obsessive pursuit of the man she loves and who, she persuades herself against all the evidence, is equally besotted with her.
But there’s another reason, a mysterious one that Sarah cannot discover, why Jessica doesn’t or cannot come home to the village where she spent her youth and where her irascible mother still lives. Then Jessica disappears from e-mail and phone contact, and the worried Sarah finds out more dark facts hidden by the family and the village.
At the hub of the action is butchery, with the vast Smithfield Market in London at one extreme and Sam the local butcher at the other. Fyfield is incapable of writing a description that doesn’t reek with menace and foreboding, or of inventing a family bereft of sinister secrets. This is Fortune’s sixth appearance and her most beguiling.

In Rain Gods, James Lee Burke demonstrates (again) that he can stray from his usual patch, David Robicheaux’s Louisiana, and produce an absorbing novel of depth and intelligence far superior to all but a few of his fellow crime writers. The setting is a sad, seedy town in southern Texas, where Hackberry Holland, a Korean War veteran in his seventies, brooding on his emotionally painful past, has become sheriff. He unearths the bodies of nine murdered Asian prostitutes and is propelled into a whirlpool of violence and evil, at its centre a truly frightening God-driven killer known as Preacher (a little reminiscent of the hitman in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men). Burke is the most lyrical and poetic of US crime authors, his central characters the most three-dimensional, his atmosphere the most moody.

Road Dogs joyfully unites three characters who have appeared separately in previous Elmore Leonard novels, most prominently Jack Foley, the perpetrator of 127 bank robberies and the hero of Out of Sight (played in the film by George Clooney). Foley is back in prison, sentenced to 30 years (by Judge Maximum Bob, another Leonard regular).
He makes friends (“road dogs” means prison mates who look after each other) with the wealthy Cuban hustler Cundo Rey, who arranges for a smart lawyer to have Foley set free. Rey’s constant fear is that his sexy wife, Dawn Navarro, a fake psychic, would not have remained faithful to him during his own seven-year stint in jail.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to ask Foley to make sure of her chasteness pending Rey’s release. Beyond prison, the wildly witty plot includes a multiplicity of low-life characters, double-crosses, scams, betrayals and dead bodies. Above all, Leonard provides the fizziest and cleverest dialogue in crime fiction. A total delight.

Cold to the Touch by Frances Fyfield (Sphere, £19.99; 242pp) Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (Orion, £18.99; 434pp) Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £18.99; 262pp)

Check out The Times book pages.

The Independent, Friday, 20 November 2009,

Michael Crichton's 'Pirate Latitudes' published posthumously

On November 24, Michael Crichton's final complete novel will be published internationally by HarperCollins. Pirate Latitudes was discovered as a complete manuscript in the author's files after his death in 2008.

Written contemporaneously with 2006's Next, Pirate Latitudes is an adventure story set in the Caribbean in 1665, when the English colony of Jamaica is holding out against the Spanish Empire. It is the first of two of the author's posthumous works Harper Collins will publish; the second, due out in fall 2010, will be a technological thriller based on a narrative Crichton had begun in notes and files.

Michael Crichton's novels, including State of Fear, Prey, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Timeline, have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. They have been translated into 36 languages, and 13 have been made into films.
Pirate Latitudes will be available from 24 November at bookstores worldwide.

Bryce Courtenay writes stories about people, for people
Article from Brisbane's Courier Mail:
by Madeline Healy
November 20, 2009

WHEN Bryce Courtenay began his writing career at the age of 55, he had a big decision to make.Would he become a literary author analysing every word or would he become a storyteller who simply let the tale tell itself? After much agonising, Courtenay decided to follow his heart, a decision that has led to him becoming Australia's all-time bestselling author.
"I've had an education that would allow me to be a literary writer but I am a storyteller and that is the important thing for a writer. It's about the telling of stories about your people, for your people," Courtenay says.

Perhaps best-known for his sweeping family sagas including The Power of One and The Potato Factory, Courtenay's latest novel The Story of Danny Dunn (Viking) is the story of a Balmain boy living in the aftermath of the Great Depression on the eve of World War II.
It is a saga of three generations of family touching on themes familiar in all Courtenay's 19 books – poverty, ambition and tragedy, with the effects of post-traumatic stress at its centre.
"I didn't want this book to be about silly stuff," he says of the book's sometimes tragic outcomes."Life doesn't always work out the way you want it to."

Courtenay should know. Born out of wedlock and brought up in an orphanage in Africa, much of the suffering and poverty he describes in his books is written from personal experience.
He was beaten, neglected, ignored and bullied by the older boys in the orphanage, and the nurses looking after him. But he knew he had a talent."One day I said to the other boys 'If you don't hit me today, I'll tell you a story'. They agreed but I never told them the ending so they wouldn't beat me again," Courtenay said."They always had a reason to leave me alone."

Then one Saturday night, while he was out collecting wood to heat water for his one hot bath of the week, Courtenay severely cut his finger with an axe.He was ordered to walk 7km to the nearest hospital where, after many hours of waiting, the doctor stitched his finger up and told him to go home.Too weak to go back from the loss of blood, Courtenay instead curled up underneath the doctor's house."I was leaning on a box which turned out to be a crate of books. I picked up one and took it with me because it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen."

It was while he was in the orphanage that he met Ms Bornstein, a teacher who was visiting from Johannesburg. He showed her the book and asked her to read it to him Within a couple of months, he had memorised every page and Ms Bornstein began sending him four books a month to read.
He took his exams at the age of 11 and was awarded a scholarship to a prestigious private school, a move that would take him from the depths of poverty to selling millions of books throughout the world."I'm constantly reminded of her and amazed that it can take just one person to change a life."

When he spotted Ms Bornstein on the train platform as he arrived at his new school, she gave him a kiss on the cheek."I fell in love," Courtenay says. "She was the first woman who had ever touched me in a loving way.""I love women," Courtenay laughs. "Until my mid-20s I was terrified of large, fat women because all of the nurses at the orphanage were like that."

Courtenay finished his school years in Africa and then moved to London to study journalism where he met his former wife. The pair then moved to Australia.He went on to have three children before tragically losing his son Damon from medically-induced AIDS in 1991.
During this time, Courtenay was writing his first novel The Power of One, which went on to sell seven million copies around the world. However, the book that elicited the biggest response was his tribute to Damon called April Fool's Day.
"He died in front of my eyes, begging me to write that book. It took everything I had to write it and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Courtenay says."When I wrote April Fool's Day I got 32,000 letters. Everyone had a story to tell. We are not the only ones that suffer and life is not easy."

Women feature prominently in his new book, no doubt pleasing the majority of his readers, who are females aged 18 to 80. There is Brenda, Danny's mother, a tough Irishwoman who runs the Balmain pub The Hero, and Helen, who becomes Danny's wife while rising to the top of Australian academic life.
"People have no concept of how bad it was during the Depression," Courtenay says. "It was too awful for words. It really ended when the Second World War started but people were doing it extraordinarily hard – but they got out of it because of the women, not because of the men."
Courtenay says Australians think of themselves as a masculine society but he believes strong Australian women are the ones who "keep it together".The Story of Danny Dunn also looks at the heartache of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by many people returning from war zones.
After six or seven years researching the topic and after writing Smokey Joe's Cafe, which dealt with Vietnam veterans, Courtenay says he felt he had to write a more substantial book about the condition to highlight the problems it creates.
"Between 25 and 30 per cent of males who have been to war zones are affected physically and mentally, which is more than enough to permeate an entire society – we are all damaged goods," Courtenay says. "We're all involved one way or the other."

Another theme is Australia's obsession with sport and our desire to succeed.In The Story of Danny Dunn, Courtenay has created Danny's daughter, Samantha, who is driven by her father's desire to see her enter the Olympic Games as a swimmer.
Courtenay touches on the saga surrounding Dawn Fraser and the stolen flag during the 1964 Olympics, which led to the Australian Swimming Union suspending her for 10 years."She could have been the greatest athlete that the world has ever known but she was stopped. She was a working class girl and the swimming elite decided to put her in her place," Courtenay says."Samantha is pushed by her father to be someone he wants her to be. But children should be able to have a life and live the life of a kid."Parents who push their children in to the sporting life are robbing them of their childhood."

When he is not trying to save the natural environment from government development, Courtenay spends most of his time at his home in Sydney's Southern Highlands.He has a 40-year-old garden which he says has been carefully tended by "real gardeners" over the years and spends time walking, feeding the chooks and ducks, before he sits down to write at about 6.30am.
He writes until 6.30pm with a goal of 6000 to 8000 words a day."I need to write that much eight months of the year to produce a new book every year. That is my goal," he says.
"When I used to run marathons – and I've run 37 – I used to start a book and by the end I would have the complete outline to work on."

Courtenay has also competed in 15 ultra-marathons but for now, his back and knees have made walking a little more realistic.At 75 years of age, though, Courtenay has no plans to slow down in any other area of his life.
He will be in Brisbane next week for his annual lunch with eight of his biggest fans, who won the privilege to dine with him through a Facebook competition.
"I just love these lunches because I get the chance to really talk to people about their lives and what they do," he says."Everyone has a story to tell."

Brisbane's Courier Mail has an excellent book review section, check it out here.

Publishers try to get into our good e-books
Rosemary Sorensen ,From: The Australian
Saturday,November 21, 2009

E-BOOKS are about to catch on here after a slow start, predict some book industry leaders, and within a year the market for hand-held electronic book reading in Australia could grow to more than 10 per cent of total book sales.
Although the take-up of e-readers, the devices dedicated to book and other print downloads, is less predictable, even some dedicated readers of paper-based books will find the e-book option irresistible.

Digital books inevitably will be cheaper, but if they get too cheap in the battle for market share the publishing industry will be depleted, affecting profit, authors' royalties and the ability to publish new books, according to experts.
E-versions of old, out-of-copyright books have been available for download for years thanks to Project Gutenberg. Free book downloads are challenging games as the most popular applications on mobile phones. Google has been working through a range of complaints about its use of out-of-print but still-in-copyright books, but the search-engine giant next year hopes to launch Google Editions, a bookshop with access to 500,000 titles.

E-readers, in particular the Kindle launched by by Jeff Bezos's US-based online retailing giant Amazon.com, are available in Australia. So it is possible to purchase thousands of e-books from leading publishers within the terms of copyright agreements. US book chain Barnes& Noble is bringing out an e-reader called Nook, Sony has one too, and books can also be downloaded on to smartphones such as Apple's iPhone.

As Elizabeth Weiss, publisher at Allen & Unwin, says, the e-reader provides "instant gratification . . . It's not like browsing online, and it's not nearly as satisfying as walking into a bookshop, but I have to say I find it pretty attractive.
"The printed book is still not going to go away, but e-books will definitely take market share in the near future and this will [affect] the sales of printed books. It's a period of instability and, if e-books continue to grow, they could be at 5 or 6 per cent [of] market share very soon."
Read the full piece in The Australian online.

From The Times
The 100 Best Books of the Decade

If you missed this last weekend in The Times do be sure to have a look at the list now, most interesting.

Number 20: White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)

Photo byFrancesco Guidicini.

No experience necessary - Ebury ad raises ire
Liz Thomson in Book Brunch

An job ad posted on Guardian Jobs by Random House is causing a good deal of Twittered discontent and consternation for its suggestion that little or no experience is required to be a commissioning editor - merely full engagement with celebrity culture.

WHSmith has ended talks about buying troubled bookseller Borders UK, raising doubts over the specialist’s future.
From Retail Week

Borders was approached by WHSmith last week, but it has not proved possible to strike a deal and talks were terminated this morning. An alternative buyer of Borders is being sought and the retailer is understood to have received several expressions of interest.

Borders has battled to carve out a profitable position in the book retail market as grocers devote more attention to the category, sales increasingly transfer to online giants such as Amazon and HMV-owned Waterstone’s occupies the leading high street position.

The end of talks with WHSmith adds to the pressure facing Borders. Last week, a Borders supplier issued a winding up petition against the bookseller. That has since been withdrawn, but illustrates Borders’ difficulties.

In July, Borders UK chief executive Philip Downer bought the business from tycoon Luke Johnson’s private equity business, Risk Capital. Downer was backed by Valco, the private equity arm of restructuring specialist Hilco. It is understood that Valco has since increased a loan to Borders from £5m to £8m and Borders is not in breach of terms on that loan.

Johnson bought Borders in 2007 for a maximum of £20m, but the retailer struggled. Earlier this year auditor Ernst & Young expressed doubts about Borders’ ability to continue trading.

MESSAGE FROM THE VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OR AUCKLAND ON THE MATTER CONCERNING WITI IHIMAERA

I am communicating directly with staff and students on the matter concerning Professor Witi Ihimaera which has received considerable media publicity. Much of the public comment has been ill-informed and made in ignorance of the facts. This is notwithstanding our explanations to the media of how this matter was handled and the procedures involved.

On 3 November, Professor Ihimaera alerted the University to claims of plagiarism against him which were being investigated by the Listener. In accordance with the University’s “Guidelines for the Conduct of Research (Part 2, Procedures for Dealing with Concerns of Misconduct in Research)” his Head of Department, Professor Tom Bishop, then conducted a preliminary assessment of the allegations. This found that a small amount of material in Professor Ihimaera's novel, The Trowenna Sea, had been published without attribution or acknowledgement. On the basis of his review of the material of concern and Professor Ihimaera’s response, Professor Bishop concluded that the material had been inadvertently included in the novel without proper acknowledgement and that the instances were not sufficient to constitute misconduct as defined in these Procedures.

Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and Professor Ihimaera has publicly acknowledged that he erred in using unattributed passages as he did. He has repeatedly apologised in public and is taking appropriate steps to remedy his error. The book has been withdrawn from sale at considerable financial cost to Professor Ihimaera. This will enable him to undertake a review of the text and to check it against the sources upon which he drew. The review will determine the acknowledgements and referencing to be included in a future edition of the book.

There have been claims in the media that Professor Ihimaera has been treated leniently and that a severe sanction, including dismissal, should have been imposed. It is also being said that different standards would have applied to a student in the same position. These claims are patently untrue. Students and staff are subject to essentially the same policies and procedures in cases of alleged plagiarism. The University does not condone plagiarism, but recognises the need to take into account a range of factors such as intention, seriousness and extent. Were a small amount of unattributed material to be discovered in a doctoral thesis, for example, the student would be required to rewrite the thesis with appropriate attribution — precisely the action Professor Ihimaera will be taking of his own volition.

The University deplores plagiarism in any form and has robust processes for dealing with allegations of academic misconduct by either staff or students. The University’s approved process for addressing allegations of staff misconduct in research was followed scrupulously in this case. To do otherwise would be to breach Professor Ihimaera’s rights as an employee of the University.

Stuart N. McCutcheon
Vice-Chancellor

Link here to NZH report on the Vice-Chancellor's letter.

Once upon a time, a book festival grew too big to fit inside its home

Published Date: 20 November 2009
By BRIAN FERGUSON in The Scotsman

It has been an oasis of calm amid the cultural frenzy of Edinburgh in August for 26 years.
The New Town pleasure garden in Charlotte Square has played host to many of the biggest names in literature at the capital's annual book festival.
But followers of the two-week celebration face having to leave their much-loved site under plans to expand the festival into new venues.
New director Nick Barley has revealed moves to ease pressure on Charlotte Square and boost attendances by staging events in suitable nearby locations.

City council officials are to help the festival seek out new venues after admitting it had "outgrown" the garden.
But Mr Barley denied reports that the festival will quit the square completely, insisting the move would be an expansion of the existing programme there.

Possible venues to host festival events include the Royal Society of Edinburgh's headquarters and the masonic halls on George Street, church halls on George Street and Shandwick Place, and the Filmhouse and Usher Hall, on Lothian Road.
Property tycoons David Murray and Walter Scott, who own many of the buildings on Charlotte Square, are not thought to have any suitable buildings.

Launched in 1983 as a biannual event, the book festival has been staged every year since 1998 and it now attracts more than 200,000 visitors. Most events sell out in advance and 80 per cent of all tickets have been sold for the last two years in a row.

Jim Inch, director of corporate services at the city council, said: "The event has grown and it is proving difficult to maintain in its current venue."
Mr Barley told The Scotsman: "It is true the festival has reached full capacity in Charlotte Square, but we have absolutely no plans to leave the garden.
"However we are very much open to new ideas such as using other venues. There may be certain events that are better suited to another venue for one reason or another. It's something we will definitely look at."

Bob McDevitt, publisher of Hachette Scotland, said: "It would be a good thing for bigger authors. The biggest venue at the site only holds 500 and for some authors you could attract far more. I suppose the danger is you might lose some of the atmosphere in Charlotte Square, where there is always a chance of bumping into a famous author if you're having a coffee."

Rod White, head of programming at the Filmhouse, said: "We've held screenings related to book festival events and we'd certainly be interested in seeing how we can work together."

Both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Universal Arts, the promoters who run the masonic halls as a Fringe venue, said they would be keen to explore staging book festival events.

A city council spokeswoman said: "Senior officers are planning to meet the new book festival director to hear about his vision for the festival."

The Wall Street Journal November 19, 2009,

Oprah Winfrey’s Exit: The Publishing Fallout

Oprah Winfrey’s spokeswoman said today that the talk-show host plans to end her long-running program in 2011. The loss of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will be missed in particular by the book publishing industry.

“It’s a blow,” said Lorraine Shanley, a partner in the consulting firm Market Partners International Inc., who earlier this week watched former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin promote her book on Ms. Winfrey’s show.

“Oprah Winfrey has supported many authors, and her book club has had a huge impact on America’s reading habits,” added Ms. Shanley. “She made Faulkner a best seller again. She also promoted an eclectic group of authors and created publishing successes for many commercial writers.”

Oprah’s Book Club, started in 1996, has selected dozens of titles over the years. The books are discussed on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” promoted on the show’s Web site, and given a seal of approval that’s placed on the book’s cover.

Over the years, the book club has helped to bring the works of well-known writers such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy to even broader audiences. The show has also introduced writers such as Edwidge Danticat to millions of readers.
Read the full story at WSJ online.

Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to Google Deal, Sets Feb. 18 for Final Hearing
By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 11/19/2009

Judge Denny Chin has given his preliminary approval to the Google Book Search settlement agreement and established a timeline to move the agreement toward a final resolution. A final settlement/fairness hearing has been set for February 18 at which Judge Chin will hear arguments to determine whether the agreement is “fair, reasonable, adequate;” consider whether to certify the class for purposes of the settlement; and to make a determination whether to approve the agreement.

Prior to the hearing, the judge has ordered that supplemental notices about the amended agreement be sent beginning December 14, and he set a January 28 deadline for objections to be filed with the court. In his order, Judge Chin reiterated that only objections to the amended agreement will be considered, noting that previously submitted comments will be considered and do not need to be re-filed. Preliminary approval of the deal had been widely expected, but does mark a major step toward a conclusion.

How to Explain the Unexplainable

Editorial by Amy Koppelman wtriting for Publishing Perpectives

Four years ago, when my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, my children asked my husband and me so many questions, most of which we couldn't answer: "What is cancer? "Why does it happen?" "How is it diagnosed?" "How is it treated?" "Is it contagious?" I began Googling cancer books for children. There were several on the market, but they were either very childish (a story about a dinosaur's mother) and/or scary (pictures of tumors and children with bald heads). I was looking for a book that explained cancer, one that said: this is what cancer is, this is how cancer develops in a person's body, this is how it spreads, these are the ways to treat it and so on.
(read on ...)

Bonus Material: Is a Kids Book About Cancer Too Tough to Sell?
By Edward Nawotka

What would happen if someone I knew was suddenly stricken with cancer and I had to explain it to a child, what would I do? Apparently, calling a bookstore would be a bad idea. As Amy Koppelman explains in our lead editorial, few books exist to explain such traumatic topics to children in a forthright manner. War, terrorism, and disease are all difficult subjects that we want to shelter our children from as much as possible, so it's no surprise that even if the books do exist, there are few of them available on store shelves.
(read on ...)

THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Sunday 22 November 2009 from 1-2.30 pm
FREE SESSION at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 30 The Octagon, Dunedin


To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, now known as the New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize, Dunedin Art Gallery hosts a panel session with Owen Marshall, Philip Temple, Fiona Farrell, (pic left at Oamaru Library), and current Burns Fellows, Michael Harlow.

These prominent South Island writers will talk about their experiences of living in France, writing in a room at the Villa Isola Bella where Mansfield once lived, and about the impact this unique fellowship has had on their literary career.
Chair: Richard Cathie

This session is dedicated to the late Janet Frame who was also a previous holder of the fellowship.

BOOK TRADE OPPORTUNITY

Retail Sales Manager

vicbooks based at Victoria University of Wellington’s Kelburn and Pipitea Campuses requires a Retail Sales Manager to join its successful team.
This is a new position reporting to the General Manager and forming part of our senior management team.

The key responsibilities of this role are to:

· Drive sales across the shop floor by leading, developing and motivating the sales team through effective communication of the company’s goals and objectives;

· Take an entrepreneurial approach to growing sales through identifying new markets and new products;

· Be an advocate for excellence in customer service;

· Coordinate visual merchandising across the company.

Required skills and experience:

· Proven ability to lead a team which has produced exceptional results in both sales and service;

· Ability to communicate clearly and effectively to a wide range of external and internal stakeholders;

· Demonstrated understanding of budgets, wage costs, sales targets and margin;

· Knowledge of and passion for the book industry;

· Innovative approach to visual merchandising.

Please email your cv with covering letter to Juliet.Blyth@vicbooks.co.nz by Friday December 4, 2009.

New book, exhibition shed new light on life and work of Len Lye

“Kinetic art is the first new category of art since pre-history”.

With this bold statement, uttered in 1964, Len Lye (1901-1980) left little doubt that he would hold an integral place in New Zealand’s artistic landscape. Today, the filmmaker, kinetic sculptor, painter, photographer and writer is recognised as one of the most original artists to emerge from this country.

Len Lye’s life, work and “big idea”—that movement could be the basis for a completely new kind of art—is explored in a new book by University of Auckland Emeritus Professor Roger Horrocks, (phto left, Marti Friedlander), opan experienced writer and filmmaker, and the founder of The University’s Department of Film, Television and Media Studies.

Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye (Auckland University Press) illuminates what Lye called the “mystery of movement” in all forms of art-- from dance to film-- and in our own lives. Roger Horrocks traces these connections and reveals much that is new about Lye, including behind-the-scenes information about how the artist dreamed up and applied his new methods of filmmaking and created his kinetic sculptures. He also covers the remarkable story of how Lye’s unfinished projects are being built in New Zealand today and the controversy this has sometimes aroused.

Art That Moves will be launched alongside an exhibition of the same name at the University’s Gus Fisher Gallery. The show-- the first public gallery exhibition of Len Lye’s works in Auckland since 1980-- features a sculpture which will be on display for the first time. A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary programme of events will accompany the exhibition, comprising author talks, musical performances, and discussions with engineers, composers and filmmakers.

“Len Lye was one of the twentieth century’s most innovative artists and in Art That Moves his friend and biographer Roger Horrocks brings Lye’s sculptures and films to life again in a spectacular book and DVD. Auckland University Press is proud to publish this first full-scale assessment of the work of a great New Zealand artist,” says Sam Elworthy, Director of AUP.

"Lye has a world reputation as a filmmaker and was a pioneer of kinetic (motorised) sculpture, but many people are aware of only one of these sides of his work. Lye saw that films and sculptures are aspects of the same 'art of motion'. I wanted to show the links between them and I felt that the verve and originality of his ideas on the subject were still not fully understand. Hence the book and the exhibition -- to combine the sculpture and the films, and to uncover the theory behind the art," says Roger Horrocks, who worked as Len Lye’s assistant during the last year of the artist’s life and wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed 2001 biography of Len Lye.

Appropriately for a book about movement, Art That Moves includes a DVD with four of Lye’s best films and some superb footage (directed by Shirley Horrocks) of his sculpture in action. It also contains a new eighteen-minute film directed by Roger Horrocks, a dramatic portrait of Lye in his early years.

The Art That Moves exhibition runs from 28 November – 6 February at the Gus Fisher Gallery (74 Shortland Street). A vibrant and eclectic public programmes calendar is detailed below. For more information visit www.gusfishergallery.auckland.ac.nz

Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye
(Auckland University Press) - available from bookstores from 30 November. RRP $59.99.

Ihimaera plagiarism row has a few chapters left
By John Drinnan in his weekly MEDIA column in the New Zealand Herald, 20 November, 2009


The literary establishment and Auckland University are taking Witi Ihimaera's plagiarism in their stride.
Amid the storm over The Trowenna Sea, they appear to be treating it as an irritating disturbance they'd like to say is not so important.
Ihimaera was even named an arts laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation for his lifetime work. There are no plans to delve further with plagiarism checks on Trowenna Sea or other works to close the issue.

Tomorrow, the New Zealand Listener - in which reviewer Jolisa Gracewood broke the story two weeks ago with examples of plagiarised content - reveals more unattributed lines in The Trowenna Sea from other people's work.
It is not clear whether these have been acknowledged by Ihimaera.
The latest Listener quotes Margaret Soltan, a professor of English at George Washington University in Washington DC, who criticises Ihimaera. But she mostly criticises Auckland University, where Ihimaera is a distinguished professor and lecturer. She says the university has too-readily accepted the author's word that the plagiarism was inadvertent.
"Pretending it did not happen is the sort of thing a very provincial university will do," she says.

Read John Drinnan's full story in his Friday MEDIA column at NZH online.

THE STEPHENIE MEYER PHENOMENON ROLLS ON

So the Woman You Love Has the Hots for a Vampire. What Does That Say About You? Each month, thousands of women go to Forks, Washington, to indulge their passion for Edward Cullen of Twilight. If your wife or girlfriend is one of them, you better start buying flowers.

By Jeff Gordinier writing in DETAILS magazine 17 November, 2009

Jude Larrimore has come here—to this sleepy Pacific Northwest town with a population of 3,175—looking for love. Which doesn't mean that she's prowling for a fling. She has been comfortably married for 17 years to a guy named Matt, and though Matt is back home in Colorado this September weekend, he was game enough to tag along on one of her previous Twilight pilgrimages to Forks, Washington, and he is such a gentleman that he has accompanied her four times to see the movie.
On her own, Larrimore has seen Twilight 28 times, she estimates. She is, to put it mildly, obsessed with it. Obsessed with Stephenie Meyer's four best-selling Twilight books; obsessed with the high school romance between the two main characters, vampire Edward Cullen and human Bella Swan; and obsessed, on a deeper level, with what that all-encompassing, skin-tingling, pulse-quickening romance tells us about love and how it's supposed to feel.

"It reminds me of first meeting my husband and falling in love," she says. She's sitting at a long table in the auditorium of Forks Congregational Church on Spartan Avenue, sipping from a souvenir coffee thermos that says BITE ME! "Of course, that's changed, because everything changes, but it's nice to be reminded. That devotion. The appetite—and I don't mean just for sex, but for the other person. Remember when that half hour before that person came by was the longest of the day?" She smiles, sighs. "I read somewhere that only a vampire can love you forever."

Larrimore is 38. She comes across as calm and sane, which cannot be said of everyone in the room. The church auditorium is full of Twilight fanatics from around the world—women, mostly, who have traveled from the South, from the Midwest, from as far away as Australia to see, firsthand, the fog-banked burg where the Twilight saga takes place—and their excitability level is so high that it's not uncommon to hear them break into unprompted gasps, giggles, and squeals.

Traditionally those are the sounds of teenage girls, but what's striking about the majority of fans who have trudged to the Olympic Peninsula to celebrate the Forks Chamber of Commerce's Stephenie Meyer Day (which in fact consumes an entire weekend) is that they haven't been teenagers since the heyday of Benetton and Bananarama. Most of the folks lining up for Bella Swan's birthday breakfast this morning are wives and mothers, dutiful employees and corporate executives, people you live next door to—grown women—and more than a few are acting like someone slipped a psychotropic agent into their Bonnie Bell lip gloss.

Of course, the man they are swooning over does not exist. Twilight has taken their hearts and glands hostage because of a poetic, protective fiction known as Edward Cullen, a love-addled bloodsucker who is played, in the first Twilight movie and its upcoming sequel, New Moon, by young British heartthrob Robert Pattinson.

"I dream about him," says Tanna Noble, a 46-year-old Twihard from Eatonville, Washington. Dangling from her neck is an ancient-looking pendant that represents the Cullen family crest. "I dream explicit dreams about Edward. You can't put down what I dream about Edward. It is very, very erotic. It's not Rob Pattinson. It's Edward."
Read the rest of Jeff Gordinier's story at Details magazine online.

Parsons Bookshop - Auckland Art Precinct Open Day - Sunday 22nd November
www.artprecinct.co.nz

Parsons Bookshop and the Galleries in the Art Precinct will be open this Sunday, 22nd November 2009.
Watch for the yellow logo stickers in our windows and the yellow balloons at our doorways.
To celebrate this special day, there will be a Parsons 20% Discount Voucher available to all customers visiting the shop on Sunday.
The Parsons 20% Bookshop Voucher will also be available to pick up on the Sunday from the Art Precinct Galleries www.artprecinct.co.nz

The Open Day coincides with the Auckland Art Gallery’s Big Day Art.
The Auckland Art Gallery and Parsons Bookshop are in the same building; New Gallery Building.

Auckland’s definitive art experience, this Sunday!

Parsons Bookshop Auckland
26 Wellesley Street East
Auckland 1010, NZ

Women illustrators dominate the short-list for the inaugural Gavin Bishop Award for Picture Book Illustration

The judging for the inaugural Storylines Gavin Bishop Award for Picture Book Illustration has just concluded and the judges were impressed by the high standard of entries received. The judges for the award are Gavin Bishop,(pic right), Crissi Blair and Alan Gilderdale from Storylines, and Jenny Hellen, Deputy Publishing Director at Random House New Zealand.

The judges were delighted by the quality of the entries and by the broad range of media and creative approaches that illustrators took; it was heartening to see so much excellent work and a huge pleasure to judge them. They acknowledge the amount of time and effort contestants took in putting their entries together; creating the storyboard, roughs and pieces of final art is a demanding process.

The quality and standard of entries made judging a very difficult task and took a full working day to complete. However, in the end six entries stood out for their quality and diversity.

The list of finalists comprises five women and one man, with an equal geographical spread between the North and South Islands; three of the finalists hail from Christchurch. The finalists are: Sara Acton from Christchurch; Heather Arnold from Auckland; Harriet Bailey from Wellington; Stephnie Junovich from Christchurch; Gary Venn from Hamilton; and Neroli Williams from Christchurch.

Libby Limbrick from Storylines said ‘Storylines is delighted with the exceptional response to the Storylines Gavin Bishop Award for Children’s Book Illustration and the quality of the submissions. Children’s literature in New Zealand will be the richer through the inauguration of this award. Storylines is grateful to Random House for the sponsorship of this award.’

In addition to a $1,500 monetary prize, the winner of this award will receive mentoring and support from celebrated children’s author and illustrator, Gavin Bishop, and may also receive an offer of publication by Random House New Zealand. The winner will be announced at the Storylines Margaret Mahy Day in March 2010.

Judges Comments
We were delighted by the quality of the entries and by the broad range of media and creative approaches that illustrators took – it was heartening to see so much excellent work and a huge pleasure to judge them. The judges acknowledge the amount of time and effort contestants took in putting their entries together; creating the storyboard, roughs and pieces of final art is a demanding process.
The shortlist of six are all of a very high standard and all very diverse. There were a number of other entries that were excellent in many ways but some aspects of their production let them down. In general these were:
· Frequently the drawing of people was not as strong as the drawing of the bears.
· There was a tendency among some illustrators to draw very realistic bears and a cartoon-like Goldilocks. There needs to be a consistency
· In some entries there was only minimal illustration of people. We suggest that illustrators include more roughs including people to show their ability in one of the most difficult aspects of illustration.
· It’s important to pitch illustration to the right age group for the story. Some of the entries were pitched at teens or adults.
· Some entries displayed excellent design skills but the drawing ability did not match this.
· Sometimes the storyboards were full of promise but the final art was not strong enough.
· Some artists tried almost too hard to find a novel approach and in doing so produced work that looked over-worked and lacking in freshness.

101 BOOK BLOGS YOU NEED TO READ

Pardon my immodesty here but The Bookman was mightily chuffed to find his blog in this list, at number 85 !!
Check out the site, only when you have an hour or two to spare though because one can easily become severly distracted by the astonishing amount of comment, views and reviews that are out there.

Plagiarists 'like drug cheats'
By Jared Savage
Friday Nov 20, 2009

A doyen of New Zealand literature has compared plagiarism to drug cheating in sport because of the unfair advantage it gives over contemporaries.
Award-winning author and poet Vincent O'Sullivan, (pic left), an emeritus professor of English at Victoria University, was reluctant to comment directly on the "Witi Ihimaera situation" but said the drugs analogy was fair.
"It's a performance-enhancing technique that works at someone else's expense," he said.
"Apart from the personal ethical issues involved, plagiarism gives an unfair advantage over contemporaries and colleagues."

His comments follow further claims by Professor Keith Sorrenson, a University of Auckland emeritus history professor, that Ihimaera plagiarised his work in the award-winning novel The Matriarch and later apologised to him.
Professor Sorrenson says the latest plagiarism row - in which Professor Ihimaera has admitted using unattributed material from 16 other authors in his latest book, The Trowenna Sea - showed he had "learnt nothing" from the earlier incident.
Professor Sorrenson decided to not lay a formal complaint, but mentioned the plagiarism in passing to a journalist who wrote a story for a Wellington newspaper.

Professor Ihimaera did not respond to telephone messages or emails yesterday.
He has apologised for the "errors" but said the unacknowledged work in The Trowenna Sea was only 0.4 per cent of the 528-page book.
Read the full article in the NZH online.

Singapore Showcases Homegrown Literary Talent
By Marysia Juszczakiewicz in Publishing Perpectives

SINGAPORE: When one thinks of writing from Asia and Southeast Asia, one tends to think primarily of the big nations with long, established literary traditions, such as China and Japan. But there is just as much literary action elsewhere in the East. Singapore, for example, is on a mission to find, develop and nurture creative writing at home and establish an international platform for Singaporean voices.
(read on ...)

Colum McCann, Phillip Hoose Among National Book Award Winners
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 11/18/2009 11:10:00 PM

Novelist Colum McCann, (pic left, photo by Brendan Bourke), won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel Let the Great World Spin (Random House); Gore Vidal (awarded the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters) was rambling, witty and profound as he recounted his life while seated in a wheelchair at the podium; and master of ceremonies, humorist Andy Borowitz, sent everyone home at 10:45 p.m. with a crack about Sarah Palin’s new memoir, Going Rogue, being an early candidate for the 2010 NBA fiction prize.

The National Book Awards returned for the second year to Cipriani Wall Street in downtown Manhattan, and the elegant soaring room is starting to feel right. The NBA ceremony always manages to touch on current events and last night was no different: tough times for publishing, the digital book revolution and the ongoing war were all mentioned in one speech or another. Borowitz set the tone at the beginning, noting that he had always said to himself that the National Book Awards were so prestigious, he’d host them for free; “turns out that’s just what they had in mind,” he said to laughter from the crowd. “But that’s what publishing is all about,” he added. “A lot of work and then—nothing.”

The winners: Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (FSG/Kroupa), the story of the almost forgotten black teenage girl who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama nine months before Rosa Parks did the same thing, won the award for Young People's Literature. Hoose called winning the award “unreal” and said that Colvin “took a chance on me. She had never heard of me and was about to be forgotten by history and we saved her story.”

Keith Waldrop won the Poetry award for his book, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (Univ. of California Press), who asked wryly, “How will I live this down?,” adding, “I hope this award gets more people to read poetry.”
T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Knopf), won the award for Nonfiction and called it an “out of body experience.” Stiles said that books “are at the heart of our culture,” and went on to thank the vast army of workers—“ a complete eco-system” —that make books possible. “The editorial assistants, the copyeditors, the designers, agents, publicists, the guys in the mailroom, librarians—I hope e-books aren’t fooling us into thinking these people aren’t needed.”

The Fiction winner, McCann, an Irishman—he dedicated the prize to the late Frank McCourt—said he came down to the awards ceremony “on the subway with my brother and my wife, two parts of my life together, Ireland and New York/America. Stories are democracy. I came here from Ireland and it seems American literature can embrace the other."

Dave Eggers was humble and heartfelt in accepting the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community and hailed the high school kids he teaches. “This is an exciting and democratic time in publishing,” he said and held up those same kids as a symbol of the enduring power of the written word.
The full piece at PW.
And for Motoko Rich on McCann's win go to NYT.

Sony pre-orders "exceed expectations"

19.11.09 Katie Allen - The Bookseller

Pre-order demand for Sony's Daily Edition reader has "exceeded expectations" in the run-up to Christmas.

According to technology site techradar.com, the company, whose Sony Reader Daily Edition becomes available for pre-order in the US this week r.r.p. $399, expects "high demand" for the wireless 3G device.
The pre-order option for the Daily Edition is now live on the SonyStyle website, with shipping to US customers from 18th December.

Sony spokesperson Kyle Austin said it would be delivered to its customers on a "first come, first serve basis." He added, "The number of people that signed up . . . to be notified of the Daily's availability exceeded our expectations over the last few months and we expect high demand now that it's available."
The Sony Reader Daily Edition is not yet available in the UK, although a launch is expected in 2010.
Sony released a “rose-pink” Mills & Boon-themed reader on Monday (16th October).

TechRader

Atheist author Philip Pullman writes alternative ending for Jesus in Bible.
Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials, has written his own version of the New Testament in which the story of Jesus is given a "different ending".

By Tim Walker in The Telegraph
Published: 19 Nov 2009

The writer, left, has penned an alternative Bible passage imagining a different fate for Christ, who was executed by the Romans.Photo AP.

"He has written what would have happened if Jesus had had a fair trial," a friend told The Daily Telegraph's Mandrake column."He knows it will be controversial, but he has some serious points to make."
Pullman is due to read his "account" of Christ's last days at the Globe theatre on Thursday as part of an event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Reprieve, an organisation which campaigns for the rights of prisoners.

Books by Pullman, who is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, have been criticised by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. His critics often cite an interview in which he reportedly said: "I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief."

The fantasy novels His Dark Materials, with their religious allegories, have been seen as a direct rebuttal of The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis, the late Christian author, which have been criticised by Pullman.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has, however, proposed that His Dark Materials should be taught as part of religious education in schools.

Reprieve's party, which will be hosted by Jon Snow, will also feature John le Carré, and Martha Lane Fox.

Waterstone's rolls out secondhand bookstore

19.11.09 Philip Jones in The Bookseller

Waterstone's has become the latest online bookseller to begin selling secondhand books with the launch of Waterstone's Marketplace. The chain has also unveiled an online DVD store, and a "tickets" shop described as "an exciting way to buy tickets for hundreds of great events nationwide".

Waterstone's has launched a standalone Marketplace site in conjunction with Alibris, the giant online bookshop that sells used and rare books via a network of independent bookellers. In addition, individual book searches on the Waterstone's site now show secondhand copies, which are available to buy via a marketplace link.

Waterstone's said the development meant it could offer "access to tens of millions of items stocked by independent sellers from 45 countries around the world". Featured shops on the marketplace site include, Bailey Hill Book Shop, Castle Cary, Somerset; Literary Cat Books and Prints, Wales; Cromer Books; and Spinetinglers, Ballygowan.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders made the same deal in September thus year. Waterstone's will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books.

Alibris offers its affiliates a baseline 5% commission which can increase to 7.5% dependent upon sales. Any purchase made within 30 days of initial clickthough, will also pay out a commission.

Waterstone's tickets offers "exclusive tickets offers on The Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas, Oliver!, A Christmas Carol, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Legally Blonde - The Musical and The Shawshank Redemption". Meanwhile, Waterstone's DVD store is selling DVDs from "as little as £3.99".

NEIL GAIMAN ON HIS BIG WIN

The Bookman carried this story earlier today, here is Neil posting on his much-visited website about his great success:

"Anything I say about it would sound like bragging, so I'll just mention that The Graveyard Book won the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and leave it at that. I couldn't be there, so Chris Riddell accepted it on my behalf, and read out what I'd asked him to read. (The Booktrust site has an interview with me about it here.)

There's a terrific article/interview in the Guardian about it (I even like the photo, even though I cannot explain the hair) at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/18/neil-gaiman-graveyard-book-awards."

Well done Neil. See you in Wellington, NZ in 2010.

AUCKLAND BOOK TRADE XMAS DRINKS

This year the end-of-year social event will also double as a farewell to John Bentley who is retiring after almost 30 years in the book trade!
Let’s celebrate John's long and outstanding service while meeting up with trade colleagues and friends for an early Xmas drink or two.

When:
Wednesday 2 December, 6pm onwards.
Where:
Belgian Beer Café (Old Ponsonby Rd Post Office) corner Ponsonby Road & College Hill, Auckland.

All booksellers, publishers, friends & colleagues welcome.

ARCADIA BOOKSHOP OPENS IN FASHIONABLE NEWMARKET

Doris Mousdale’s long-heralded independent bookshop has opened in Newmarket’s Osborne Street
Booksellers report on their newest member and her hugely impressive bookshop. Photographs included.

Google Book Settlement - NZSA says it’s not time to celebrate yet

The removal of New Zealand from the proposed Google Book Settlement is welcomed by the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc.) whose objection to the settlement, filed with the US Court earlier this year, was instrumental in securing New Zealanders’ rights. The Society warns however this isn’t a complete resolution to the issues faced by New Zealand rights-holders.

Google still claims that copying, but only displaying limited amounts of work online, constitutes fair use in the United States, and, since it is not copying any books or inserts in New Zealand and is not making them available online in New Zealand, New Zealand copyright law doesn’t apply. It has therefore previously said that it will keep copying books without permission, no matter what.

Even if a rights-holder asks Google not to copy its book and not to display it online, there is no guarantee that Google will abide by that request. Nor is there any guarantee that Google will remove from its database New Zealand books that it has already copied without permission and which are now outside the settlement.

The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc.) has therefore sought assurances from Google that it will remove any New Zealand work from its database if it does not have the consent of the rights-holder, until such time as consent is obtained in writing, or an appropriate settlement has been negotiated. We have requested an opportunity to negotiate a fair arrangement that would enable New Zealand authors to opt into having their books or inserts displayed on the Google platform.

“The Society’s position has always been that, for some authors, the Google platform could be advantageous” says Tony Simpson, President, “but the terms of the Settlement were unacceptable. We would welcome an opportunity to work towards a fairer opt-in rather than an opt-out agreement, which would solve a lot of the problems and potentially benefit New Zealand as a whole”.

Rick Shera from Lowndes Jordan, who has been advising the Society on the Settlement issues, comments “It was a great irony in the original settlement that it allowed Google to copy New Zealand books without the consent of the individual rights-holder but, because display online would infringe New Zealand copyright, those copies were not going to be made available here. A fair opt-in agreement could solve most of the issues surrounding the Settlement. If an agreement could be reached that didn’t breach New Zealand copyright law or give Google a de facto monopoly, there is no reason why Google could not then make its Book Search Facility fully available here, for the benefit of all New Zealanders”.

The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc.) will continue to liaise with the Ministry of Economic Development and industry partners to ensure a way forward. The advent of digital publishing platforms plus developments in digital book readers and print on demand facilities make this an exciting time for authors.

The NZSA acknowledges the ongoing support of Lowndes Jordan.

ANOTHER IMPRESSIVE NEW WEBSITE

Check out the new Arts Foundation of New Zealand website. I'm impressed.

Bad sex award shortlist pits Philip Roth against stiff competition
Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Philip Roth is up against Amos Oz, Paul Theroux and Nick Cave on the bad sex award shortlist
Alison Flood, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 November

Pic above - Bad sex award nominee: Philip Roth. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag / Dagbladet / Corbis.
The story of the seduction of a lesbian by an ageing stage actor, which includes an eye-watering scene with a green dildo, has won Philip Roth the dubious honour of a place on the shortlist for the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award.
Roth can comfort himself with the fact that a roll call of literary fiction's great and good, from Booker winner John Banville to acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell and Whitbread winner Paul Theroux, have made it into the line-up for this year's bad sex prize, set up by Auberon Waugh to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".

On a shortlist of 10, singer Nick Cave was picked for his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro, about a sex-obsessed door-to-door salesman. "Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," said Anna Frame at his publisher Canongate.

The Pulitzer prize-winning Roth makes the line-up for The Humbling, in which the ageing actor Simon converts Pegeen, a lesbian, to heterosexuality. The Literary Review singled out a scene in which Simon and Pegeen pick up a girl from a bar and convince her to take part in a threesome.
Simon looks on as Pegeen uses her green dildo to great effect. "This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be," writes Roth. "There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze."

'Roth is very anxious about his description of sex," said Jonathan Beckman at the Literary Review of the extract. "Why write of a scene that repeatedly features a green dildo, 'this was not soft porn', unless you're worried that it might be taken as such - in this case, with sentences like 'then she crouched above Tracy, brushing Tracy's lips and nipples with her mouth and fondling her breasts...', the worry seems justified. But it's the overcompensation that qualifies this passage for the award – the totems and shamans are an attempt to convince us that Roth's leering is actually giving some vital anthropological insight."

Sanjida O'Connell is the only woman to make the Bad Sex shortlist, selected for The Naked Name of Love, about a young Jesuit priest who is taught how to love by a gifted shaman woman on the eastern steppes of Mongolia.
Read Alison Flood's full story at The Guardian online.

Book-related guests on Saturday Morning with Kim Hill on Radio NZ National: 21 November 2009

Tom Feiling has made a film documentary about hip hop in Colombia; that country also features in his first book: The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World (Penguin). He joins Kim around 8.15am.

In Kate's Klassic at 9.45, Kate Camp will discuss the 1877 novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Classics).

Wellington food writer David Burton has revised and expanded his 1982 book, Two Hundred Years of New Zealand Food.
After 11.00am, he will talk about what is now titled David Burton’s New Zealand Food and Cookery (Bateman), and discuss (and consume) kina.

Full guest and programme details are available from midday Friday at www.radionz.co.nz/saturday

Ihimaera row should be taken seriously - CK Stead
NZ Herald, 10:04 AM Thursday Nov 19, 2009

CK Stead, (pic left, Sydney Morning Herald), says Auckland University needs to acknowledge the seriousness of what happened.

One of New Zealand's most respected authors has criticised Auckland University for minimising the seriousness of the Witi Ihimaera plagiarism controversy.

Ihimaera admitted tracts of his latest novel, The Trowenna Sea, had drawn on work from other writers without acknowledgement.
He said he was buying back all remaining stock of the novel and planned to republish it.
The edition would contain a new section by the author explaining the background and making full acknowledgement to writers whose work had been drawn on.
"I have taken this step to preserve the mana and integrity of the novel," Ihimaera said yesterday.
"Although I have already made the relevant apologies and have publicly undertaken to fully audit the book myself, it seemed appropriate to remove the first edition immediately and begin working on a corrected second edition."
Ihimaera is a professor of English and distinguished creative fellow in Maori literature at Auckland University.
University dean of arts, Associate Professor Jan Crosthwaite, said while concerning, Ihimaera's actions were not deliberate.
Ihimaera said the offending passages amounted to less than half a per cent of the novel, but respected author CK Stead said that was beside the point.
"It's really like saying 'well yes I did steal from 16 people but I only took a dollar from each'," he told Radio New Zealand.
Read the full piece at NZH online.

PUBLISHER MAKES BUYBACK OFFER TO STEM CRITICISM
Story from Waatea News

Author Witi Ihimaera, is offering to buy back copies of his latest novel.

Ihimaera, who was yesterday named an Arts Foundation laureate, has apologised for not crediting the original sources of some passages in The Trowenna Sea, which follows the story of five Maori imprisoned in Tasmania in the 1840s.

His publisher, Geoff Walker, says Penguin Books New Zealand will take back stock from any bookseller who wishes to return the book.

He says Ihimaera is at the forefront of New Zealand fiction writing, and Penguin is standing beside him.

“Some of his novels such as The Matriarch and Te Uncle’s Story and Bulibasha have been some of the best novels written in English and and have brought I think te ao Maori to a Pakeha readership to a considerable degree. That is one of the key features of his novels, and
The Trowenna Sea contains the same features,” Mr Walker says.

A revised edition of The Trowenna Sea will be published next year with a new section explaining the background and making full acknowledgement to writers whose work is drawn on.

Footnote:
The Bookman has received a number of annonymous comments on this issue which have not been published. Readers of my blog are welcome, encouraged even, to comment on any post made but names must be provided if they are of a negative or critical manner.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book wins the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009

Neil Gaiman, commonly known as the ‘rock star’ of the literary world, is revealed as the winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009.
His book The Graveyard Book saw off competition from five other authors including Patrick Ness who was nominated for a second year. Ness won the prize last year with The Knife of Never Letting Go.

The Graveyard Book tells the story of Nobody ‘Bod’ Owens, a child abandoned in a graveyard after the vicious murder of his parents and sister by The Man Jack. Raised and educated by the ghosts that live there, Bod encounters terrible and unexpected menaces in the horror of the pit of the Sleer and the city of Ghouls. It is in the land of the living that the real danger lies as The Man Jack is determined to find Bod and finish him off.
Neil Gaiman is listed as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. He is the creator of the iconic DC comic series The Sandman, the only comic to ever make the New York Times Bestseller list.

His books have been adapted for a number of successful films, most recently the animated adventure Coraline. His screenplay Beowulf starred Angelina Jolie and Ray Winstone, and his book Stardust was adapted for a film starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.

In his acceptance speech, Neil paid credit to the authors that had inspired him:

‘Sometimes when we look big, and seem to see further, it's because we are standing on the shoulders of giants. The field of children’s literature has seen many giants, and those of us who toil in the field make our contributions using what we've learned from those who came first. ‘I'm proud of The Graveyard Book. But I know I got to stand on the shoulders of giants in order to write it. There were two writers of children's fiction who influenced The Graveyard Book. Foremost, obviously, Rudyard Kipling, and his short story collection The Jungle Book; less obviously Pamela "P.L" Travers, and her Mary Poppins stories. And everyone else: the writers I learned from as a young reader, and the writers I've learned from as a writer: a host of other craftsmen and women I learned, or borrowed, or stole from, to build The Graveyard Book. ‘

Neil was awarded a cheque for £2,500 and a trophy at a ceremony in London at lunchtime today (Wednesday 18 November).

Judi James, Chair of Judges commented:
"The six shortlisted books for the Booktrust Teenage Prize Award 2009, were chosen by the judges, for their exceptional quality of writing and storytelling, ranging from Helen Grant’s superb first novel, to the highly acclaimed Neil Gaiman whose novel, The Graveyard Book was unanimously chosen the winner. ‘Nobody Owens’, won the hearts of all the judges, young and old as did the delightfully sinister, generous, eccentric and heart-warming characters that inhabit the old graveyard. Gaiman’s writing is gentle, fluid and humorous, and fundamentally uplifting.”

This year’s shortlist was:

Auslander by Paul Dowswell (Bloomsbury)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury)
Ostrich Boy by Keith Gray (Definitions)
The Ant Colony by Jenny Valentine (HarperCollins)
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant (Puffin)
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (Walker)

The Booktrust Teenage Prize was launched in 2003 to recognise and celebrate the best contemporary writing for teenagers. Booktrust administers the prize with the support of writers, publishers, teachers, parents and libraries. Publishers may enter works of fiction, including novels, collections of short stories and graphic novels, and non-fiction. The Reading Agency is promoting the Booktrust Teenage Prize in libraries across the UK primarily through coordination with public and school library services.

Previous winners include Mark Haddon for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) and Anthony McGowan for Henry Tumour (2006).

Footnote:
Bookman Beattie reckons this is great news for the organisers of the 2010 NZ Post Writers & Readers Week in Wellington (part of the NZ International Festival of the Arts) where Neil Gaiman will be one of the star attractions.

Andrew Motion to Chair The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010

Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, (pic left by Johnny Ring), is today (Wednesday 18th November) announced as Chair of the judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction – the most significant literary prize in the English language.

Andrew Motion comments, ‘It’s an honour to be asked to chair the Man Booker Prize, which has consistently been a focus for the best fiction of recent years. It's an exciting challenge too: a lot of difficult decisions lie ahead. I greatly look forward to a year of reading voraciously.’

Andrew Motion is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London and co-founder of the online Poetry Archive. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999 for a ten year term. He has received numerous awards for his writing. His group study The Lamberts won the Somerset Maugham Award and his authorised life of Philip Larkin won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. Andrew Motion was knighted for his services to literature in 2009.

The longlist, ‘The Booker Dozen’ – the 12 (or 13) titles under serious consideration for the prize - will be announced in late July. The shortlist of six books will be announced in early September. The Man Booker Prize 2010 winner will be announced on the BBC from London’s Guildhall at an awards ceremony on Tuesday 12th October 2010.

The struggle to survive as prices get hammered
Tom Jaine - Book Brunch

Spare the poor woolly publisher, pleads Tom Jaine

The prosperity and survival of small publishers is a constant preoccupation, whether lying in bed, giggling at our MPs, or pounding the keyboard. This is mere preface to a whinge, so divert now if you can’t take self-pity. For readers of that hue, I should immediately agree to the proposition that there are good small publishers and bad. The good survive, the bad do not.

I would plead for a third category: the woolly. The woolly are not bad, they might sometimes be good, but they are a trifle amateur; or they may be single-minded and unwilling to fuss with the necessary evils of success. Or they may just be a little woolly. In a kinder environment the woolly survive because their hearts are in the right place. Currently, the woolly have a tough time.

The structure of the British book trade is pretty weird. The necessary deductions from a book’s retail price before the publisher gets any revenue are surprising to say the least.
Read more...

The Kindle comes to Canada

November 17, 2009 By Stuart Woods, Quill & Quire

After delaying the Canadian release of the international version of the Kindle, Amazon announced this morning that it will begin selling the portable reading device north of the border.

At the time of this writing, Canadians can now order the Kindle through Amazon.com. The device retails for $259 (U.S.).

The Kindle will give Canadians access to more than 300,000 e-book titles and 90 newspapers, including the National Post and The Globe and Mail.

Dan Brown helps Random House to $23m e-book sales

18.11.09 The Bookseller
The Lost Symbol has helped Random House grow its e-book revenue by 400% in its first half, according to a leaked memo reported on Crain's.

According to an internal Random House report, sales of its Kindle e-books through September 2009 came to $22.6m, an increase of almost 700% over the $2.9m in revenue that the Kindle generated during the same period in 2008.

Crain's reports that the The Lost Symbol sold 100,000 e-books its first week out, or about 5% of total sales for the book. In the first half of 2009, Random House e-book revenue grew by 400%, a Random House spokesman added, a figure previously disclosed.

Celebration of crime writing is announced

The Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced a National Crime Fiction Week in 2010.
A nationwide celebration of crime writing, National Crime Fiction Week will run from Monday June 14, 2010 for one week.
Members of the CWA will take part in readings, discussions, readers’ group events and workshops all over the country, so look out for Murders in the Libraries, Bodies in your local Bookshops and Strawberries and Crime at village fetes.

A key part of the week will be the announcement of the winner of the Young Crime Writers' Competition, which will run from January 18 - 19 Feb, 2010. Organised by the CWA in partnership with library authorities nationwide, the entries will be judged by members of the CWA.

CWA Chair Margaret Murphy said: “Building on the success of our partnership with Oxfam Bookfest in 2009, The Crime Writers' Association is looking forward to promoting crime fiction through a variety of events.
“The Crime genre is very broad, ranging from spine-tingling suspense, through historical, to edge-of-seat thrillers. Add to that non-fiction - increasingly popular with readers fascinated by forensic aspects of crime - and events organisers can create a programme of events that will tempt the most fastidious palate."

Discount prices are killing bookshops

The Guardian, Wednesday 18 November 2009

Tim Hely Hutchinson asks why it is not a wonderful opportunity to buy Wolf Hall at £8.99, less than half its retail price – and less than an independent bookseller can buy it for – and get another book free (Letters, 14 November). One answer would be because Waterstone's is a capitalist enterprise and not in the business of making a loss; if it gives books away, it is going to demand a higher discount from the publisher to compensate. Ditto, the publisher which, to provide cheap stock for three-for-two offers, must increase prices on less-popular titles.

The ending of the net book agreement meant many small publishers and independent bookshops folded – out of 60-odd radical bookshops in the 80s, only half a dozen of us survive – and book prices as a whole rose. But this was a hard argument to put to the public, who were encouraged to equate discounting with cheaper books. Those who argued that books were different (as their zero-rate of VAT recognises), and needed retail price maintenance to avoid them becoming just another commodity to pile high and sell cheap, have been sadly proved right, with the book trade currently eating itself in an effort to compete on price with the supermarkets. Meanwhile, full-price books are perceived as expensive, despite them being cheaper than most nights out (and you still have the book the next morning instead of a hangover).

Waterstone's recently trumpeted "personal shoppers" in their new store in Liverpool. Surely these used to be called booksellers? And how many book-buyers realise that publishers pay to have their books promoted in a chain bookshop? At an independent you know if a book is visible, it's because we have chosen to recommend it to you. Many of our young customers have never encountered the individuality of a real bookshop and, having come in for a student text, are delighted with the treasure trove they discover. "Adapting" can be done in other ways than discounting, eg providing excellent customer service and, like ourselves, diversifying. We stock world music CDs and fair-trade crafts; and in contrast to an online bookseller, whose employment practices are pitiful, we are run by a women's co-operative and have our own ordering website – so now you can shop with the real Amazons.

Random House Reports Big Digital Book Increases
Book2Book
Tuesday 17 Nov 2009

Sources report that over the first half of the year, eBook sales at Random House have increased by 400 percent.
According to a leaked report obtained by Crain's NY, digital book sales at the company have increased dramatically. Despite impressive growth, the company called it "an incubatory period" for the digital book industry—a fraction of the company's overall revenues.

GalleyCat

Twilight: book breaks sales records Stephenie Meyer, the author of the phenomenally successful Twilight Saga books, has broken Waterstone's record for the fastest time to sell a million copies.
By Harriet Alexander reporting in The Telegraph

Pic left -Kristen Stewart (L) and Robert Pattinson in film Twilight Photo: BLOOMBERG

The Twilight books, which have been turned into a series of hit films starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, have broken Waterstone's sales records.
The teen vampire books by Stephenie Meyer have sold one million copies in little over two and a half years – beating the previous record set by Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

Sarah Clarke, buying manager for children’s books at Waterstone’s said: “This is by far the fastest climb to a million sales I’ve ever seen.
“Twilight was only published in March 2007 and it has taken off in a remarkably short time.
"Popular doesn’t even begin to describe it – the Twilight Saga is a phenomenon in its own right and like Harry Potter it has generated a global sensation that crosses several media.“

Ursula Mackenzie, CEO and publisher at Little, Brown, said that the success was down to broad appeal of Stephenie Meyer's books.
“Her appeal is universal; she touches on themes – rebellion, angst, and finding your place in the world against tough odds – that resonate with girls and boys, teens and adults.
"I suspect this universality is the reason the Twilight Saga is so beloved.“

The Twilight films – the second of which, New Moon, is released in the UK on Friday – have also proved to be lucrative.

The teen vampire film took over £1 million in the UK on its first day in December 2008, and hopes are high for New Moon.

'Questions You’re Not Supposed to Ask'
by Tony Williams
New Holland, RRP $24.99)

Funny, irreverent and factual to the core, 'Questions You’re Not Supposed to Ask' provides enlightenment on the taboo topics of the world. The aim of the book is to arm the ordinary person with the sort of knowledge that The Powers That Be do not want them to have and so release the individual from the chains of ignorance.

Open these pages to answer the questions we all care about – sex, relationships and marriage, the human body, money, governments, taxation, grammar – and those you should have asked, tried to ask or in fact did ask, but never got a proper response to.

Some of the questions refer to bodily functions (Why is sex so much fun?), some debunk government falsehoods (Why do we pay tax?) while others delve into the supernatural (Is there more to life than meets the eye?) and others simply explain how things operate (What is physics?).

Bursting with information ranging from life’s big questions to fascinating trivia, this an entertaining read from start to finish. The ultimate stocking-stuffer for the member of your family or freind who has everything. Just published this week

Tony ‘Baloney’ Williams is a writer, performer, director and producer. He has written 36 published books, performed over 500 solo shows, directed for film and theatre and founded Wangawood Film Studio. His comedy feature film The Big Fat One is currently in post production.
His most recent books include 101 Incredible Kiwis: New Zealanders who changed the world and Rugby Skills, Tactics and Rules. Tony is based in New Zealand but regularly travels the world.

HAVE YOU READ DOROTHY FOWLER?

Crime fiction reviewer, editor and blogger Craig Sisterson takes a look at another NZ crime fiction author in the latest in his series - visit his blog here.

Hunting Cinema’s Magic 100

100 Essential New Zealand Films
by Hamish McDouall
Awa Press ($40).

‘Are there a hundred?’ This was the almost universal response when Hamish McDouall mentioned to anyone that he was writing a book called 100 Essential New Zealand Films.

In fact McDouall’s problem was the opposite. ‘There are now so many exceptional New Zealand films I had a lot of difficulty deciding what to leave out. Many people continue to be entranced by Hollywood blockbusters, but a lot of the most fresh and original films are being produced here at home, and always have been’ McDouall says.

100 Essential New Zealand Films, just published by Awa Press is set to stimulate interest and debate among movie-goers. As well as obvious high-flyers such as The Piano, Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider, The World’s Fastest Indian, and (of course) The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, the book includes such lesser known gems as David Robertson’s 1992 short Lovelock, Florian Habicht’s 2004 cinema documentary Kaikohe Demolition and Tama Tu by rising director Taiki Waititi, one of the few New Zealand films currently available for download on iTunes US.

McDouall, whose interests also extend to cricket (he’s the author of a biography of Chris Cairns) and quizzes (he was New Zealand’s youngest ever Mastermind), spent the greater part of a year sitting in darkened rooms watching nearly every New Zealand film ever made, a mind-boggling immersion in the 109 years since the first surviving reel was shot.

The book includes details of where many New Zealand films can be watched, including at Film Archive libraries in Wellington and Auckland, on website New Zealand Onscreen, and from specialist stores such as Wellington’s Aro Street Video.

This is a must-have for every NZ film buff. Colour throughout. I had a great time recalling movies from the past that I had forgotten about. Right up to date too with The Topp Twins:Untouchable Girls there too.

ENID BLYTON

The BBC banned Enid Blyton for nearly 30 years because the corporation considered her work to be ‘second-rate’. Some archived documents which have been made public for the first time explain how the creator of The Famous Five and Noddy had her work dismissed.

In 1938, the head of the BBC Schools department, Jean Sutcliffe, wrote that she felt that the stories might do for Children’s Hour but that they did not have enough literary value for her department.
Blyton’s work was eventually heard on radio – on Woman’s Hour in 1963 – five years after her death.

Above item from Ibookcollector © , published by Rivendale Press Ltd.

HOWARDS END IS ON THE LANDING
A Year from reading at home
Susan Hill
Profile Books - $39.99

What a treasure, an absolute joy. Every booklover should own this book.

Here is what Ian Pindar writing in The Guardian on Saturday 31 October 2009 had to say about it:

Searching for Howards End one day in her seemingly infinite Gloucestershire farmhouse, the novelist Susan Hill encounters a mountain of unread Booker prize winners and Richard and Judy recommendations. She resolves thenceforth to stop buying books for a year and to explore her own voluminous bookshelves instead.
It's a purely personal exercise. After a year, Hill has drawn up a list of 40 titles that "I think I could manage with alone, for the rest of my life".

This is not a list of the 40 best books ever written. It has essentially the same quality as an inventory of favourite puddings, and is similarly comforting. Trollope and Wodehouse have two titles each on the list, which tells us something about Hill's tastes, as does the absence of any European authors. What we are left with is a mind-map of a novelist in her late 60s who has spent her life reading and writing books.
Read the rest of Pindar's review at The Guardian online.

Susan Hill, (pic right by Ben Graville), has been a professional writer for fifty years and is the author of thirty-seven books.

LETTERS TO ASTON
Martin Hawes
Penguin Books - $40

This is a surprising book. I am generally not interested in books on financial subjects and am somewhat suspicious of books that purport to tell you how to invest well to improve your financial position so that you become wealthy.
But lured into reading the book by its title and cover, and the respect I have for the author, I ended up reading it in one long sitting last night (not the recommended way to read it by the way), and found it highly readable, most accessible and in fact rather interesting. I wish that I had had access to the book and its sage advice 20 or more years ago while still in corporate life and thinking about retirement investment strategies.

When Martin started thinking about the types of things he’d like his first grandchild, Aston, to know, he settled on writing a series of letters to capture and distil the financial lessons he himself has learned. He also decided to collate those letters into a book.

“I’m writing these letters in case I’m not there to help Aston when he has grown up. I don’t expect him to start to read these letters for a good while yet (he is after all only three) but I’d love to think that later in life and throughout his life he can stand on my shoulders and benefit from the things I learned. These letters contain the fundamental, enduring principles, the foundations of investment that apply for all time, and at all times. If Aston can grasp these then I know his life will be solid in at least that area. The details will follow later, naturally, when he applies them.”

At the beginning of the book there is a most interesting author's note which the author and publisher have kindly allowed me to reproduce here:

Aston James Saunders was born on 13 October 2006 to Mike
Saunders and Golda Hawes. His parents thought they were
having their first baby – but they weren’t: they were having my
first grandchild. On the day Aston was born, I took one look at
him and instantly became so besotted that I rang my lawyer to
change my will. Since then I have several times changed my will
further (when he first smiled, when he first said ‘Granddad’ . . .).
This kid knows how to get ahead and probably doesn’t need
financial advice.
At the moment, Aston is a happy little chap. And why shouldn’t
he be? He’s doted on by everyone around him, waited on hand
and foot and indulged at every turn. Spoilt? Maybe – in any event,
may his family long continue to have the ability and resources to
look after him as well as they do now.

These letters are what I want to say to my grandson when he
grows up. I expect Aston to be bright (given his genetics), but
he may not be that interested in money and finance. Bright or
not, interested or not, he will at some stage need to make some
investments and that is the one thing I know I can help him with.

These letters contain the enduring principles of investment, not
the detail like tax rates and the latest investment products, which
come and go over time. There are some fundamental truths
about finance which Aston needs to know and to stick to if he
is to manage his money successfully – if he can appreciate the
fundamental principles, the detail will follow when he needs it.
These letters are about the big building blocks of investment, the
things every successful investor has to know. If Aston can grasp
these, I know he will be solid in at least one important area of
his life.

About the author:
Martin Hawes is probably New Zealand’s most widely-known and trusted finance writer. He is certainly the most prolific as in addition to his regular columns, he is the author of fifteen books including one on family trusts that has sold over 100,000 copies.
Martin is also President of Save the Children New Zealand, lives in Queenstown with partner Joan Baker, and enjoys rock climbing, mountaineering, cycling, fishing and skiing. He is clearly besotted with being a grandfather!

Letters to Aston: Lessons learned from a lifetime of investing by Martin Hawes, published by Penguin Books, November 2009, RRP NZ$40

UNITY BOOKS AUCKLAND HAVE A FAB NEW WEBSITE

Unity Books Auckland has just finished revamping what was a somewhat tired little website into something pretty impressive: reviews, interviews, paypal options, event listings, great links and interesting notions.
They have just gone live.
The address is the same: www.unitybooks.co.nz but everything else is rather different...
Check it out.

Congratulations to Lily Richards who led the site's conversion, she might now become known Unity Auckland's brand manager!

Photo above courtesy The Aucklander, NZ Herald.

David Mitchell hosts the 2009 Colman Getty PEN Quiz

Monday 23 November 2009, 6pm-12pm
At RIBA, Portland Place, London

Tension will be high as London’s press and publishing giants rival for the ultimate trophy of the media year. The going will be tough but the night will be tinged with the comic genius of this year’s Quizmaster.

David Mitchell joins a distinguished list of former Quizmasters including Bamber Gascoigne, Jeremy Paxman, Clive James, Dara Ó Briain, John Sergeant and Mariella Frostrup.

Last year the Association of Authors’ Agents took first place, just pipping publisher HarperCollins to the post. Learned members of the winning team, led by the literary agent Derek Johns, were Giles Foden, Daisy Goodwin, Martin Rowson, Louisa Young, David Miller, Paul Marsh and Natasha and James Fairweather.

Marcus Berkmann, author of several quizzing books, has been invited back to set the questions for a second year - they will be entirely Google-proof and guaranteed to get even the most knowledgeable of brains working over-time.

Kathy Lette will take on the role of rafflemaster. Prizes in this year’s raffle include a week’s stay in a Dorset cottage; a Special Edition of J. K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard; services of a personal shopper and the Personal Style Service at Liberty’s of London; an electric donut maker; 'London's Top Afternoon Tea' for two at Brown's Hotel in Mayfair; the 2010 Man Booker Prize shortlist – signed by the authors; a free consultation with leading psychoanalyst Darian Leader and an on-the-spot caricature by Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson.

The Colman Getty quiz is English PEN’s main fundraising event of the year and raises essential funds to support PEN’s work defending freedom of expression, campaigning on behalf of persecuted writers worldwide and promoting literature and literacy.

This year and for the fourth year running, Colman Getty, the culture and campaigning consultancy, is the principal sponsor of the quiz.

So far the tables have been taken by the Association of Authors’ Agents, Bloomberg, Colman Getty, Faber and Faber, The Guardian, Hachette, HW Fisher, HarperCollins, The Literary Consultancy, Little, Brown, London Book Fair, The Observer, Orion, Penguin, Poet in the City, Prospect/Political Quarterly, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, the Romantic Novelists’ Association and The Times.

For more information on English PEN please contact Jonathan Heawood on 020 7713 0023 or at jonathan@englishpen.org.

For all other press information please contact Lucy Chavasse, Colman Getty on 020 7631 2666 or lucy@colmangetty.co.uk.

Ihimaera wins $50,000 arts prize despite plagiarism row
By Andrew Koubaridis writing in the New Zealand Herald
Wednesday Nov 18, 2009

Witi Ihimaera alluded at the ceremony to the furore. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Author Witi Ihimaera was last night presented with a prestigious arts award and a $50,000 prize - a week after he was caught up in a plagiarism row.
The writer of Whale Rider was embarrassed by revelations that his latest novel, The Trowenna Sea, contains passages by other authors without attribution.
He apologised for the oversight, which he said amounted to less than 0.4 per cent of what had been published, and promised any future editions of the book would include proper acknowledgments.
Despite the controversy, he has been named a laureate by the Arts Foundation. The honour comes with a cheque for $50,000.

Ihimaera made no specific mention of the scandal, but in as speech that lasted about 10 minutes alluded to the furore. "I would rather be someone else this week. Any of you are welcome to be Witi Ihimaera."

Yesterday, Arts Foundation executive director Simon Bowden defended the selection of Ihimaera so soon after the controversy.
"The award itself is for a lifetime of work and is an investment in someone's future ... He's an extraordinary artist."
Mr Bowden accepted the plagiarism was a "serious matter" but said Ihimaera was trying to make things right "as much as he can".
Ihimaera had told the foundation of the plagiarism claim before it became public and it did generate discussion among the selectors.
The full report in NZ Herald.

Larceny, she wrote: Patricia Cornwell sues Best-selling crime writer claims millions in earnings have gone missing

By David Usborne, US Editor, The Independent
Monday, 16 November 2009


The $10m-a-year author Patricia Cornwell acknowledges she is 'much luckier than most', but adds: 'I don't want to complain about this, except that it's not right'. Getty photo.

A flashy Ferrari disappears. Then the aggrieved owner begins to suspect that her bank accounts have leaked tens of millions of dollars without explanation. If this was the plot of an airport suspense novel, you'd expect violence before 20,000 feet. If it was real-life America, you'd expect a fat lawsuit.
We are in lawsuit territory here. But the plaintiff, as it happens, is none other than Patricia Cornwell, the crime writer who specialises in skulduggery and, indeed, the occasional murder. Better still, her latest book featuring, as ever, the forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, called The Scarpetta Factor, is partly about victims of a giant crooked Ponzi scheme of the Bernard Madoff variety.

While touring for the new book, the 17th in the Scarpetta series, Ms Cornwell was peppered with questions about a lawsuit quietly filed last month against a New York-based financial management firm, Anchin, Block & Anchin, which looked after all her affairs until July. She is claiming that she should be about $40m richer than she is and is accusing them of mismanaging her funds.

Because the case is ongoing, Ms Cornwell, 53, has so far restricted herself to only the occasional, oblique comment about her cash reserves (she is reported to earn about $10m per year as one of the world's most prolific best-selling novelists) and what it was that the defendants may or may not have done.
The details of the complaint include: that since 2005, the company has been negligent in handling rental properties and other assets and that one of the partners of the firm wrote a cheque for $5,000 for the bar mitzvah of their daughter on funds in a Cornwell account. The writer had not even met the young lady.

And there is the revealing snippet that she blurted at the weekend to an interviewer with the Courier-Mail newspaper of Australia, about the vanished sports car. "We have no records of what happened to one of my Ferraris," she said. "You trust someone to sell it for you and you don't have any idea what you got for it."
She acknowledges that all this partly echoes the narrative of the new book. "It's weird that I would write that and then find myself in a very similar situation," she says, before also conceding that, whatever her problems, she is not exactly a pauper. "I'm so much luckier than most people ... I don't even want to complain about this, except that it's not right."

It isn't the first time that Ms Cornwell's private life has fallen under public scrutiny. That she is a lesbian – she is married to Harvard University neuroscientist Staci Gruber – became widely known in 1992 after she had an affair with an FBI agent that went awry when the agent's jealous husband tried to murder his wife.
More at The Independent.

From Harper's Weekly

Sarah Palin published a memoir, "Going Rogue," in which she offered her views on evolution ("I didn't believe in the theory that human beings--thinking, loving beings--originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea"), the war on terror ("I knew the history of the conflict, to the extent that most Americans did"), and political experience ("There's no better training ground for politics than motherhood").

Report from Publishers Lunch:
Harlequin Adds Self-Publishing Line

Following the same model as Thomas Nelson's recently-announced WestBow Press, Harlequin has started a self-publishing line. Like Nelson, they are outsourcing most of the work to Author Solutions as their partner. Unlike Nelson, they aren't afraid to use their own name for the line, which is called Harlequin Horizons.

As they say on the site: "The intent behind creating Harlequin Horizons is to give more aspiring romance writers and women's fiction writers the opportunity to publish their books and achieve their dreams without going through the submission process with a traditional publishing house.

"However, we understand you may aspire to be published with a traditional house - a noble aspiration. While there is no guarantee that if you publish with Harlequin Horizons you will picked up for traditional publishing, Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through Harlequin Horizons for possible pick-up by its traditional imprints."

Harlequin Horizons site

THE TIMES PROVIDES A MOST USEFUL SUCCINCT SUMMARY ABOUT THE GOOGLE SITUATION FOR THE LAYMAN
From Times Online
November 17, 2009

Q&A: GOOGLE'S ONLINE LIBRARY Google's new library will enable tens of thousands of British writers to profit as readers gain access to millions of works

Q: What? Google’s scanned in every book in the world?
Google started a “secret” books project in 2002. It started scanning the pages of millions of books. The aim was, one day, to launch an online service enabling people to access pages and works. Google Books has done ten million so far

Q: Did Google get away with it?
No. In 2004 Google announced its Google Library Project: agreements with libraries to digitise books, including books protected by US copyright law. Several authors and publishers sued, claiming Google had infringed their copyrights

Q: Who won?
Google offered to pay $125 million to the Authors Guild of America. The deal was criticised and last week amended. Now books published only in the US, UK, Canada and Australia will be part of Google Books

Q: Who benefits?
The authors and publishers, known as the “rights-holders” of out-of-print and “orphan” books

Q: An orphan work? Is that worse than being out of print?
According to Google, a book that is “not commercially available” is considered out of print, ie, if you can’t buy it online, or if it’s not stocked in traditional booksellers. An orphan work is an out-of-print work where normal copyright laws apply, but whose rights owner is unknown

Q: How will “rights-holders” be paid?
First they have to be found. A new registry will track down authors of out-of-print works and hand over payments in the countries where the settlement applies. With “orphan” works, if the rights holder can’t be found, revenues from their work will be collected for ten years. After that, the money will be used in the continued effort to find copyright owners

Q: How much will they receive?
Authors will pocket at least $60, if their book has been scanned, is out of print and they choose not to opt out of the system. After that, they will get revenues from any sales of their works on Google Books. About two thirds of proceeds go to copyright owners, while Google receives about a third

Q: How many British authors stand to gain?
More than 20,000 Britons whose works are out of print, but whose books are stored in US libraries and resurrected by Google, will benefit

Q: Great. What’s the objection?
Unless, you say otherwise, you’re presumed to have opted in to the project. With that comes the loss of rights. You can’t sue Google for copyright infringement, and many lawyers think that that makes the deal questionable, if not illegal. Also, it gives Google extraordinary power. From having zero market share in publishing, suddenly they stock ten million books, seven million of which you’re not likely to find anywhere else

Q: When can I read these online books?
Not yet. Most believe the deal is likely to be held up by legal battles in the US. The deal only allows US readers to access the service. Google says it hopes to launch the service in the UK at some point.

50 YEARS OF COMIC BOOK ART
A Gallery of Heroes, Up for Sale
By George Gene Gustines
Published: November 16, 2009, New York Times

Joe Kubert, a comic book artist since 1938, has little interest in the accumulated work of his last seven decades; his focus is on new projects, he said recently. But comic book fans who feel differently about this celebrated illustrator will have a chance to peruse and even own some of that older work this week, when 18 covers and interior pages, published from the 1940s to 1990, are put up for sale.

Pic left - Joe Kubert Collection Librado Romero/The New York Times
A large detail of the original art by Joe Kubert for the cover of “The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told.”

Mr. Kubert, 83, has turned over a large trove of his original work to Heritage Auctions in Dallas, which will hold the first of several auctions, live and online, on Friday.

“Joe’s obviously one of the very small handful of great artists that has worked in comics over the last 50-plus years,” said Todd Hignite, a consignment director for Heritage who specializes in original comic art. Mr. Hignite searched through Mr. Kubert’s home, business office and storage space in northern New Jersey to amass the selection.

For serious fans of the medium it’s a tantalizing collection, though Mr. Kubert himself seems more amused than anything.

“I have no undying love for any of the stuff,” he said during a recent interview at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, N.J., which he founded in 1976 and where he still teaches. “I’m constantly looking toward the next job.”

Mr. Kubert sat near a drawing board bearing pages from a superhero story for DC Comics that he is illustrating with his son Andy. On a conference table sat a galley of a graphic novel, “Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1965.” The book, based on a true story of an American Special Forces team and written and illustrated by Mr. Kubert, will be released by Vertigo, an imprint of DC Comics, in May.
More at NYT.

BRING BACK THE TRADITIONAL BOOKSHOP
Posted by Stuart Walton Monday 16 November 2009 ,The Guardian.

No more lounging in Waterstone's or browsing in Borders – turn over an old leaf with the starchy, strait-laced booksellers of old
When the Borders Group first imported its corporate ambience to the UK in 1998, it seemed the book business had been made anew. Here were stores in which not only could you get away with browsing noncommittally, you were positively encouraged to do so. There were armchairs for lolling in while you read a chapter or two, as well as coffee-shops that offered cappuccinos and a range of sugar-laden treats to keep your energy levels up while lolling.

It wasn't long before Waterstone's followed suit, the bigger branches kitted out with the kinds of squashy brown leather sofas they have in the Groucho Club, sweet little window seats, and the de rigueur waft of Costa Coffee fumes. It's all so much more civilised than yesteryear. We have left behind the brutally commodified atmosphere of the old book chains, and seen it replaced with a proper air of studious contemplation more appropriate to the business in hand.

Except, I've had enough now. It may be lovely to be able to read a chunk of a book in an unhurried fashion while deciding to buy, but I don't believe that's what most of these sofa-lollers are doing. Bookshops have now taken on the atmosphere of municipal libraries, with people killing an empty hour or so between arrangements, or else just waiting for the rain to stop. I caught a man in Waterstone's in Piccadilly, London, with his feet up over the end of the sofa, settling himself agreeably while leafing through a large work of war history.

Furthermore, since people now expect to be able to sit and read, there is an unspoken battle for sofa-space, with the result that, if every seat is taken, they make do with the floor, transforming the place less into the local library than the departure lounge at Gatwick. A pair of backpackers in the Charing Cross Road Borders had set up camp in front of (wouldn't you know it?) Philosophy, spreading out their gear and sitting cross-legged at the foot of the shelves to read graphic novels, impervious to the Excuse-mes of those of us trying to get to the Badious (I know, I know, it's what we deserve).

The smell of coffee-machines is now the default aroma of the urban environment in Britain, beguiling enough when you're on the point of flagging, vaguely sickening when you're already satiated with caffeine. Once held mythically to be a great way to sell your house, it now hovers like a bilious miasma over the business of book-buying, for no other reason than to smarten up those profit-margins that have been dented by encouraging people to lounge about with no intention of buying a book.

There will be people who still feel it's good to be able to sit and think, without being pressured into making a decision. I do remember a fearsome manager at the WH Smith of my childhood, who used to follow you about tidying up the shelves every time you put back a book you had just briefly looked at. But I also remember a small independent bookshop, staffed only by a man who looked far too young to be wearing a cravat, and who only looked up from his own book in order to tie up your purchase in brown parcel paper and string.

That to me is a more gemütlich experience than the Borders/Waterstone's approach. Nobody used the place as a railway station waiting-room (there was nowhere to sit), and nor were you likely to be sold a Danish pastry with which you could then gum up the pages of the next book you started leafing through.

The backlash starts here.

Footnote:
Stuart Walton is the author of Humanity: An Emotional History (2004) and Out Of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication (2001), which, between them, have been translated into seven languages. He lives in Brighton.
Check his blog here.

From The Times
November 17, 2009
Google opens new chapter as millions of books go into its online library Murad Ahmed, Technology Reporter, and Mary Bowers

Controversial plans by Google to digitise millions of out-of-print books to create the world’s biggest online library have been approved by British publishing groups and authors.
The landmark deal between Google and authors’ associations in America is a watered-down version of the original plans. The new deal will still enable tens of thousands of British writers to profit, as readers can search millions of works, read extracts online and buy full copies.

Works from the US, Britain, Canada and Australia will be used, but under the proposals about 95 per cent of non-US books from the original deal will not be covered. Although the service will be available only in the US, Google said that it would expand to other countries including Britain. The company said that it had already copied ten million books, seven million of which were out of print. It could not say which ones yet because of legal reasons.

It emerged last week that Google had amended a multimillion-dollar settlement made with the Authors Guild in America last year. That deal would have given the internet company the right to scan any published works in the world as part of the book search service. American internet users would then access the books online. Proceeds from any sales would be split between Google, the publishers and authors. The agreement, worth $125 million (£75 million), would have automatically included all books, even those not published in the US, unless objections were raised.

But the settlement was criticised around the world, especially in Europe and Asia, with governments and publishers claiming that the move would have infringed the copyright of many international authors.
Complaints were also raised by the US Department of Justice, forcing Google to revise the settlement.
Yesterday executives from the the Publishers Association and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), the trade groups that represent the majority of British authors, welcomed the deal. “Undeniably, there’s an element of pragmatism at work here,” said Simon Juden, chief executive of the Publishers Association. “You can argue as to whether this should exist or not. But given that it does, we think that it is the best course to take.”

The ALCS said that more than 20,000 British authors, whose books formed part of the service, could profit. Authors will receive a lump sum of at least $60 for allowing digital copies of their books to be made. They will then receive the majority of proceeds from any online sales via Google Books and also get about two thirds from other online book sales. Google will take the rest.

Rights holders will be able to set the price for the book on the service, but if they do not, Google said that it will use a “pricing algorithm” to calculate the cost of the book. The ALCS said that the move will provide “an important source of revenue” for out-of-print authors.

The publishing industry in Britain is worth £1.8 billion, with about 270 million books being sold in 2008.
A spokesman for the Society of Authors in Britain said: “Although far from perfect, the scheme does provide a way of giving a wider access to books.”

However, not all publishers have welcomed the development. “We should be extremely cautious about ceding rights to any organisation in this sort of default manner,” said Anthony Cheetham, director of Atlantic Books, which published the Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
“It is generally felt that if somebody wants to reproduce they have to seek the owner’s permission, not that they can use it and then say ‘we didn’t ask you but we’ll give you a proportion of the takings’. Somebody said that it was a bit like the burglar coming in and taking all your possessions and calling you afterwards and saying that he was selling them on.”
Read the rest at The Times.

Stephenie Meyer's enthusiasm dims for another Twilight book
'I'm burned out on vampires right now', author of Bella and Edward blockbusters tells Oprah
Alison Flood, guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 November 2009


Stephenie Meyer. Photograph: Corbis / David Howells
With sales of more than 70m copies she is the queen of teen vampire romance, but Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has announced that she's "a little burned out on vampires".

Asked on the Oprah Winfrey show if she'd consider writing another book in the Twilight quartet, Meyer said that she had no immediate plans to return to the story of human teenager Bella and her vampire love interest Edward. "I think I need a little break," she said. "I've got to cleanse the palate ... I'm a little burned out on vampires right now."

Her next book, she said, was likely to be a follow-up to her one adult novel The Host – about the invasion of earth by a species which takes over the minds of humans while leaving their bodies intact – which she sees as a trilogy, but it could also be something "completely different". "I have another book that's kind of been itching in the back of my brain, that's completely unrelated, totally fantasy. So fantasy it'll have a map in the front – that's always the judge, right?" she said.
Having envisioned it as a longer series and "know[ing] what happens" to Bella and Edward in the future, Meyer said she "may" come back to the world of Twilight, but "I wrapped up [fourth novel] Breaking Dawn in a way that I felt satisfied with, so if that moment didn't come I'd feel OK".
She's also musing over whether to go back to Midnight Sun, which tells the story of the romance from the perspective of vampire Edward. An unfinished draft was leaked on the internet last year, prompting the author to put the project "on hold indefinitely".

"I need to feel alone with something to be able to write it and I do not feel alone with that manuscript at this point. So many people have chimed in on it," she said. "I'm over the shock of it but not over the feeling that everyone's involved now, and it doesn't feel like mine so much anymore. I 'm hoping that with a little time, time to write something else, get my head out of it for a while ... it's so clear in my head, I'd like to go back to it."

The film of New Moon, the second book in the series, is released this week.

Chinese writer Su Tong wins Asia's top literary prize
Tue Nov 17, 2009
By James Pomfret writing in Reuters

HONG KONG, Nov 17 (Reuters Life!) - Chinese writer Su Tong has won Asia's top literary prize with a bleak novel about a disgraced Communist Party official's attempts to rebuild his life, trumping a clutch of Indian writers on the shortlist.

Su's novel, "The Boat to Redemption" is about a womanising Party official who castrates himself after being banished to a river barge with his young son just after the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. It won the Man Asian Literary prize, the regional equivalent of the Man Booker prize.

"I feel this prize is independently judged," Su told Reuters.

"So it's important to me because I'm a writer who is not famous for winning prizes. I'm more famous for not winning prizes," added the writer whose dark, provocative works are popular but have sometimes put him at odds with the authorities.

The panel of three judges, including Indian writer Pankaj Mishra and Irish writer Colm Toibin, described Su's novel as a picaresque, political fable as well as "a parable about the journeys we take in our lives, the distance between the boat of our desires and the dry land of our achievement."

Su is perhaps best known for his novella "Wives and Concubines", written in 1989 and which was adapted into the art-house favourite and Oscar-nominated film, "Raise the Red Lantern", by Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

He has written six novels including 2006's "Rice and My Life as Emperor".

The Man Asian Literary Prize aims to recognise the region's top writers and give them a platform to reach a broader, international audience. It is awarded annually to a work not yet published into English, with the inaugural prize in 2007 won by China's Jiang Rong for "Wolf Totem".
Reuters.

Canadian writers among first to reject new Google deal
17.11.09 Philip Jones in The Bookseller

The Writers' Union of Canada has become the first significant group affected by the new Google Settlement to reject the revised deal.

According to the Canadian book trade magazine Quill & Quire, TWUC said the new deal did not adequately deal with issues surrounding orphan works, or issues surrounding library use.

The new deal, unveiled late Friday (13th November) now only includes books with a "shared legal heritage", including those published in the US, Australia, Canada and the UK. It is supported by the UK's Publishers Association, which said it would be "beneficial for all UK publishers who choose to remain in the settlement".

But Quill & Quire reports that the Association of Canadian Publishers and the Canadian Publishers’ Council are both taking a wait-and-see approach, preferring to consult with their members before taking any public position. The Writers’ Union of Canada, meanwhile, has decided not to endorse the amended settlement.

Toronto lawyer Grace Westcott told the magazine there was much in the amended settlement for Canadians to be pleased about, including the change to "commercial availability" and likelihood that the money Google has set aside to reimburse rightsholders would now go further, since 60% of titles digitised had now been excluded.

In Europe, the Federation of European Publishers, which had wanted European works excluded from the deal, issued a a non-committal statement, saying it needed "to analyse better the implications of this exclusion and the practical effects of the adopted definition, which includes also non-English books under certain conditions".

But, the FEP said the definition of commercial availability had been "significantly improved", adding that provisions over orphan works, particularly regarding tracking down rightsholders, appeared to signal a positive move.

Newswire Deutsche Press noted that Gottfried Honnefelder, chairman of the Boersenverein, the German booksellers' and publishers association, voiced concern that they had now been excluded, despite objecting to the original deal.

He predicted this would reinforce the global dominance of the English language. "The market that Google is supplying will still exist. We'll be outside it and will not listed," he is reported to have said.

Honnefelder called for Europeans to come up with enough money and ideas to rapidly create a computer system of their own, comparable to Google's planned digital public library for the world.

In New Zealand, while some authors wondered why they had been left out of the deal, Kathy Moore, chief executive of Copyright Licensing Ltd, welcomed the revised settlement agreement, saying it reinforced the exclusive rights of copyright owners to authorise use of their works.

She told Scoop: "Although some New Zealand publishers and authors were happy to be part of the Google Book Search, the revised agreement ensures that the right to digitise and provide access to a copyright work remains firmly with the creator. It also leaves it open for New Zealand authors and publishers to commercialise and exploit works that may no longer be available in print form by digitising them and making them available online."

Settlement will not give Google dominance, says Authors Guild

17.11.09 Catherine Neilan - The Bookseller

The Google settlement will not give the internet giant a significant hold over the publishing industry, because it has "zero market share" in in-print books, the Authors Guild has said.

At yesterday's press briefing on the Google settlement, Paul Aiken, executive director of the AG, said "no one" expected the deal to change the current landscape of book retailing.

"As far as market share goes, there is no contest. Google entering the market for out of print books just doesn't change the equation."

Speaking with The Bookseller subsequently, he added: "Some people are afraid that the settlement gives Google dominance over the book industry, but that is so far from true, since it is about out of print books.

"Google has zero market share in books right now, and we don’t see that them being able to offer online versions of out of print books will change that in any way."

Aiken said it would increase online competition, which would be a "good thing for everybody - authors, publishers and readers". But, he added: "Amazon's hold is pretty strong."

It is expected that the Open Book Alliance, of which Amazon is a member, will lodge a formal appeal against the revised settlement. Shortly after the amendments were announced, the co-chair of the coalition Peter Brantley branded them a "sleight of hand" and "surgical nip and tuck".
But Aiken said the AG would oppose any move of this kind.

"We would just be defending our settlement," he said. "We think it’s a good thing for authors, publishers and readers – and we think their opposition is more about, at least in Amazon's case, protecting their position as the dominant player online."

After 25 Years, Wasafiri Still Pushing Britain's Literary Boundaries By Belinda Otas for Publishing Perpectives


LONDON: The Southbank is one of Europe's largest arts centers and is celebrated worldwide for the diversity of its artistic programs. Similarly, a wide diversity of races, ethnicities and nationalities gathered in late October to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Wasafiri, the acclaimed London-based magazine of contemporary international writing.

Wasafiri is a Kiswahili word and translates as "travelers." Susheila Nasta says the name was chosen "because many of those who created the literatures in which Wasafiri was interested have all been cultural travelers, either through migration, transportation or else in the more metaphorical sense of seeking an imagined cultural 'home.'"
(read on ...)

Bonus Material: Are African and Asian Writers Compromised by Writing in English?
By Edward Nawotka

In our profile of the international literary magazine Wasafiri, Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o suggests that Africans and Asian writers who want a global audience need to be published in English.
English does offers both a gateway to a broader international readership and a larger pool of potential translators. That said, it's also a form of compromise for some: "Obviously, for Africans and Asians, our base is our languages, and we want visibility without becoming invisible in our own languages," said wa Thiong'o "At present we are visible by being invisible in our own languages."
(read on ...)

Major Changes to Google Settlement Affect New Zealand Authors & Publishers

New Zealand authors and publishers can now sue Google Book Search for digitising their works under a just-reached revised settlement agreement.

Objections raised by rightsholders (authors and publishers) in a number of countries including New Zealand have led to the new agreement filed last Friday. It affects all local authors whose works have been scanned by Google.
The changes restrict the books made available under the Google Book Search to those published in the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada. To be eligible to participate in the Amended Settlement, books need to have been published and registered with the US Copyright Office or published in Canada, the UK or Australia prior to 5 January 2009.
The revised settlement agreement requires Court approval to proceed.

Kathy Moore, CEO of Copyright Licensing Ltd welcomes the revised settlement agreement and says that it reinforces the exclusive rights of copyright owners to authorise use of their works.

‘Although some New Zealand publishers and authors were happy to be part of the Google Book Search, the revised agreement ensures that the right to digitise and provide access to a copyright work remains firmly with the creator. It also leaves it open for New Zealand authors and publishers to commercialise and exploit works that may no longer be available in print form by digitising them and making them available online.’

New Zealand rightsholders can visit http://books.google.com/books-partner-options to learn about Google’s current policies with respect to the removal of works from its database. This page will be updated with further information on options available to former settlement class members once the Court has set up a schedule for the Amended Settlement Agreement.

Other changes to the settlement include amendments to the definition of “commercially available” works, representation of Canadian, UK and Australian rightsholders on the Board of the Book Rights Registry to be established to administer the rights and inclusion of a fiduciary representative for orphaned works.

As a copyright collective representing publishers and authors in New Zealand, CLL is currently working towards providing an appropriate mechanism to digitise and make NZ works available through New Zealand libraries and other channels.

For further information, contact:

Kathy Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Copyright Licensing Ltd
Email: kmoore@copyright.co.nz
Phone: (09) 486 6250, 021 480 271

Samoan language lives on abroad

A new Samoan language coursebook written by Victoria University Senior lecturer Galumalemana Afeleti Hunkin shows the growing prominence of the Samoan language in New Zealand and the world.
Published by the University of Hawaii Press, the revised edition of Gagana Samoa: A Samoan language coursebook highlights the growing international dimension of the Samoan community.

The Samoan language is the third most spoken language in New Zealand, and in some areas such as Porirua, West and South Auckland, it is the second most spoken. Samoan is used in a number of government and community services, as well as being taught in New Zealand classrooms.
The challenge of answering the needs of many people eager to learn the Samoan language was recognised by Hunkin.

"I have people from all walks of life calling and asking where the language can be learned, from members of the police, other public servants, people with a personal connection to the Samoan community, and an increasing number of New Zealand-born Samoans." the Senior Lecturer says.
"Night classes and formal classes don't always suit people’s time tables; there needed to be an easily accessible, modern way for them to learn the language."

Hunkin describes the book as a "modern, up-to-date text". It features an optional supportive CD which can be downloaded from the University of Hawaii Press website, helping with pronunciation.
Approximately 225,000 Samoans live in Western and American Samoa, with another 500,000 Samoans living throughout the world.

As felt by the recent impact of the Samoan tsunami, the Samoan community have become an integral part of many countries and cities. The United States release of this Wellington-authored book on the Samoan language shows the new, international face of the Samoan language.

Charlize Theron to play lead role in film of Barry's 'Secret Scripture'
Ken Sweeney, Entertainment Editor, www.tribune.i.e.

Theron: character to age from girlhood to 100 years

Actress Charlize Theron has been lined up to play the lead role in a film version of Sebastian Barry's novel, The Secret Scripture. The film, which will be shot in Ireland, and produced by Noel Pearson, will see Theron age from a young girl to a 100-year-old inmate of an asylum.

Sources close to the film say actor Alan Rickman is being considered to play one of the main characters.
The script is one of two adaptations of Sebastian Barry novels being made for the big screen by Pearson, whose past credits include My Left Foot and The Field.

An adaptation of A Long Long Way was due to be filmed on location in Flanders in France next summer, but due to financial restraints has been relocated to Co Wicklow.

Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend
November 16, 2009 | OUP USA blog

Birds are singing, the sun is shining and I am joyful first thing in the morning without caffeine. Why you ask? Because it is Word of the Year time (or WOTY as we refer to it around the office).

Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary prepares for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. This announcement is usually applauded by some and derided by others and the ongoing conversation it sparks is always a lot of fun, so I encourage you to let us know what you think in the comments.

Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.
As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”
“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.
Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

Wondering what other new words were considered for the New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year? Check out the list below.

Technology
hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets
intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle
netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory
paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
sexting – the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone

Economy
freemium – a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
funemployed – taking advantage of one’s newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests
zombie bank – a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support
Politics and Current Affairs
Ardi – (Ardipithecus ramidus) oldest known hominid, discovered in Ethiopia during the 1990s and announced to the public in 2009
birther – a conspiracy theorist who challenges President Obama’s birth certificate
choice mom – a person who chooses to be a single mother
death panel – a theoretical body that determines which patients deserve to live, when care is rationed
teabagger -a person, who protests President Obama’s tax policies and stimulus package, often through local demonstrations known as “Tea Party” protests (in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773)

Environment
brown state – a US state that does not have strict environmental regulations
green state – a US state that has strict environmental regulations
ecotown - a town built and run on eco-friendly principles
Novelty Words
deleb – a dead celebrity
tramp stamp – a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman

To read the full list go to OUP USA Blog.

Greenleaf's "Publishing Incubator" Puts You in Control, For a Price
By Edward Nawotka - Publishing Perpectives

Self-publishing, whether online or in print, has become an attractive option for many. But it's not for everyone. Many authors find companies like Xlibis and Lulu.com wanting. But for those that are looking for a more robust and professional approach, companies like Greenleaf Book Group have emerged to bridge the gap between bare-bones do-it-yourself publishing and working with a traditional publisher.

Greenleaf, which is based in Austin, Texas, offers a fee-based suite of publishing services to clients who want to retain control of the rights to their work. In exchange for anywhere from $10,000 to as much as $250,000, Greenleaf handles editing, design, printing, distribution, marketing and sales of a client's book. In return the author gets a 70% royalty rate on all copies sold.
(read on ...)

Bonus Material: Is DIY Publishing a Sign of Confidence, Desperation or Something In-between?
By Edward Nawotka

For a fee, Greenleaf Book Group promises to offer high-level professional services with a hands-on approach, going from concept to publication. The cost is not insignificant-it ranges anywhere from the price of a Smart Car up to that Lamborghini-but the upside is that you get to keep total control of the process and, most importantly, all the rights.

One potential savings you'll have in using this model is the 15% that you'd pay to a traditional literary agent, provided you don't hire a lawyer or consultant of your own to vet the details.
(read on........)

PRINCESS ROYAL LAUNCHES CRIME FICTION ANTHOLOGY
Nicholas Clee reporting for Book Brunch

HRH The Princess Royal joined crime authors and volunteers from Victim Support Scotland at Edinburgh Castle to mark the 25th year of Victim Support Scotland with the publication of Shattered: Every Crime has a Victim (Polygon).
The collection includes stories by Lin Anderson, Ray Banks, Christopher
Brookmyre, Karen Campbell, Gillian Galbraith, Alex Gray, Allan Guthrie, Stuart MacBride, GJ Moffat and Louise Welsh, all of whom are donating royalties to the charity.

Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists
By Alice Rawsthorn
Published: New York Times, November 15, 2009

Dirt. Noise. Crowds. Delays. Scary smells. Even scarier fluids swirling on the floor. There are lots of reasons to loathe the New York City subway, but one very good reason to love it — Helvetica, the typeface that’s used on its signage.


Left - Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
The New York City subway uses Helvetica as the typeface on its signage.

Right below - Courtesy of Swiss Dots, a still of Helvetica metal type from the film "Helvetica."

Seeing the clean, crisp shapes of those letters and numbers at station entrances, on the platforms and inside the trains is always a treat, at least it is until I spot the “Do not lean ...” sign on the train doors. Ugh! There’s something not quite right about the “e” and the “a” in the word “lean.” Somehow they seem too small and too cramped. Once I’ve noticed them, the memory of the clean, crisp letters fades, and all I remember are the “off” ones.

That’s the problem with loving typography. It’s always a pleasure to discover a formally gorgeous, subtly expressive typeface while walking along a street or leafing through a magazine. (Among my current favorites are the very elegant letters in the new identity of the Paris fashion house, Céline, and the jolly jumble of multi-colored fonts on the back of the Rossi Ice Cream vans purring around London.) But that joy is swiftly obliterated by the sight of a typographic howler. It’s like having a heightened sense of smell. You spend much more of your time wincing at noxious stinks, than reveling in delightful aromas.

If it’s bad for me (an amateur enthusiast who is interested in typography, but isn’t hugely knowledgeable about it), what must it be like for the purists? Dreadful, it seems. I feel guilty enough about grumbling to my friends whenever I see this or that typographic gaffe, but am too ignorant to spot all of them, unlike the designers who work with typefaces on a daily basis, and study them lovingly.

“I think sometimes that being overly type-sensitive is like an allergy,” said Michael Bierut, a partner in the Pentagram design group in New York. “My font nerdiness makes me have bad reactions to things that spoil otherwise pleasant moments.” One of his (least) favorite examples is the Cooper Black typeface on the Mass sign outside a beautifully restored 1885 Carpenter Gothic church near his weekend home in Cape May Point, New Jersey. “Cooper Black is a perfectly good font, but in my mind it is a fat, happy font associated with the logo for the ‘National Lampoon,’ the sleeve of the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ album and discount retailers up and down the U.S.,” Mr. Bierut explained. “I wouldn’t choose it as a font for St. Agnes Church even as a joke. Every time I go by, my vacation is, for a moment, ruined.”

If you are interested in typography be sure to read the rest of this story at NYT.

Meet publishers' enemy No. 1: Cory Doctorow Doctorow’s books are free to download from his website, but his last book was still a bestseller.
Sci-fi novelist Cory Doctorow is shaking up the traditional book-selling model, and apparently getting rich doing it

Toronto - John Barber in Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Nov. 13, 2009

The traditional publishing industry's worst nightmare arrived in Toronto this week when science-fiction author Cory Doctorow addressed the TD National Reading Summit on the burning question of “How to Destroy the Book.”

As one of the world's most successful bloggers, a writer who freely gives away his work as well as selling it – and not least, a genuine expert in the suddenly fraught world of international copyright – this Toronto-born phenom knows as much about wrecking traditional publishing as anyone alive.

“ I don’t think people write 26,000-word license agreements in order to give you more rights. They only do it to take away your rights.”

For serious students of the art, Doctorow is currently conducting an experiment in both giving away and selling his latest work of self-published fiction, Makers , in every way possible – and scrupulously documenting the financial results in a series of columns in Publishers Weekly .

The novel, about the struggles of technology hackers in a future economic upheaval, is being made available in a dizzying variety of forms – from downloads and “aps” to a deluxe limited edition of 250 copies made at a family-owned bindery near Doctorow's London home, priced at $250 a piece. But like Little Brother, Doctorow's bestselling young-adult novel of 2008, Makers will be free on his website to any reader with the hard-drive space to store it. Those who want a $15 paper copy will be able to order it from print-on-demand publisher lulu.com.

As a service to other writers, Doctorow said in an interview conducted while he stood on the platform between carriages of a speeding British train, he is experimenting in ways to “delaminate” the traditional publishing industry.

“Right now, we have this vision of the publisher as a monolithic service entity that proves everything from typesetting and printing to distribution to sales support, marketing and PR,” he said. “But there's no reason it has to do all those things in one go.”
Read the rest at the Globe and Mail online.

100 books that defined the noughties Zadie, Nigella, Steig and, of course, the boy wizard. The decade has seen publishing phenomenons like no other, but which books, for better or worse, have summed up the noughties? by Brian MacArthur
Published: The Telegraph, 13 Nov 2009

Never in the history of bookselling has there been such a phenomenon as Harry Potter; JK Rowling’s series sold in tens of millions and appealed to adults as well as children. The great success of the British book trade this decade was the Richard & Judy Book Club. It ran in the late afternoon on Channel 4, and made instant bestsellers of Victoria Hislop, Audrey Niffenegger and Zoë Heller, among others. The 100 titles they selected sold 30 million copies.

A decade defined in Britain by Tony Blair is represented in this list by two revealing books about the making of New Labour and the rivalries, quarrels and often poisonous relationships among the leading personalities – Cherie Blair’s memoir and Alastair Campbell’s diaries.

Across the world, it was a decade defined in blood by al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks on America, which precipitated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – see books by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Ed Husain, Ahmed Rashid and Khaled Hosseini.

It was also the decade of often tawdry celebrities, such as Russell Brand and Ashley Cole, and those, such as Katie Price, who didn’t even pretend to write their own books. Alan Hollinghurst won the Man Booker Prize for an explicitly gay novel; Ian McEwan rose above his rivals as the country’s pre-eminent literary novelist; and a black man became president of the United States – and wrote two bestsellers.

For Brian McArthur's list of 100 titles link to The Telegraph online. I'll wager you will be as surprised as I was at some of the selections. And you can leave online comments if you wish.

WATERSTONE'S DEFENDED BY LEADING PUBLISHER

Watershed in high-street bookselling
The Guardian, Saturday 14 November 2009

Stuart Jeffries laments the passing of the "old" Waterstone's without acknowledging many good things the "new" Waterstone's has to offer (Sold out, G2, 10 November). There are 300 branches of Waterstone's on high streets around the UK, staffed by people with a passion for their trade and carrying a vast number of books for all tastes. Of these only a carefully selected number are price-promoted at any one time. The details of a particular promotion might be confusing, but the outcome is wonderful for the consumer.

Jeffries cites Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning Wolf Hall: 800 pages of great literature for £8.99, £10 off its RRP. If, instead of criticising, the buyer referred to in the article had taken up the offer, she could have had another book completely free. Why is this anything other than a wonderful opportunity?
When Waterstone's first opened in 1992, a customer might place an order for a book and wait up to 28 days to receive it. Now that can take as little as 24 hours. Stores stay open later and longer and more people than ever go to festivals and events – many organised by Waterstone's – to meet authors and discuss their work.

Our buying habits have completely changed. We expect to be able to buy everything we need from anywhere at the best price and stores that do not adapt, including many of the biggest high street names in 1992, do not survive.
It is in all our interests: publishers, readers, authors and other retailers – that Waterstone's flourishes. Without them we will have 300 more high streets without a stock-holding bookshop where you can browse, order books, listen to authors and be advised by knowledgeable and dedicated staff.

Tim Hely Hutchinson
CEO, Hachette UK

Open Book Alliance contests revised Google settlement

16.11.09 Catherine Neilan in The Bookseller

The Open Book Alliance has accused Google and its partners of "performing a sleight of hand" with the amended Settlement, which was announced late on Friday (13th November).

Co-chair of the coalition Peter Brantley said, based on the group's initial review of the revised deal, it remained "a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners".
He added: "None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest.

"By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP [American Association of Publishers], and the AG [Authors Guild] are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution; usurp Congress's role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class action process."

The Open Book Alliance, which comprises Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon as well as librarians, legal scholars, authors, publishers, is now reviewing the new settlement in depth and is planning to provide additional feedback "shortly".

Key among its objectives is to prevent Google from obtaining "an exclusive set of rights (de facto or otherwise) or result in any one entity gaining control over access to and distribution of the world's largest digital database of books. It is clear that Google has failed to meet these requirements".
The objections come in the face of other support for the new deal, notably from the Publishers Association. On Saturday, The Bookseller revealed the trade body had moved to approve the deal, after key changes had been negotiated to improve the settlement for UK publishers and authors.
Previously, the PA had maintained a neutral stance.

PA to support Google Settlement
16.11.09 Catherine Neilan in The Bookseller

The Publishers Association has filed a letter in support of the Google Settlement with the New York district court, after negotiating for some of the changes announced in the amended agreement. The trade body had retained a neutral stance to the settlement up unti now.

Following widespread criticism by non-US publishers, claiming that class members were not fairly represented, the PA said it would offer its support on behalf of UK publishers on the proviso that the " substantial revisions" would be made.

The amended settlement agreement, announced late Friday night, now only covers books that are either registered with the US Copyright Office or published in the UK, Canada, or Australia. The PA said this would give UK rightsholders "more control over their works, and substantially decrease the risk of works being exploited without their explicit authorisation". It also guarantees representation for UK publishers on the Book Rights Registry’s Board of Directors.

Simon Juden, chief executive of the PA, said he was “happy the changes give us what we need”. He added: “I’m confident that the revisions we were able to negotiate on condition of our support are beneficial for all UK publishers who choose to remain in the settlement. The alternative, which would have been to withhold our support and have UK works excluded from the scope of the Settlement, would have deprived UK rightsholders of control over how their works are exploited."

However, not all UK publishers are able to join with the PA in supporting the new terms. The trade body said it "explicitly acknowledge[d]" that members such as Hachette UK would be unable to give the deal its backing, following the objections filed by its parent company before the initial deadline in early September. "The PA’s support is without prejudice to the positions of its members which remain reserved," the association said.

Juden offered his thanks to Macmillan for its "invaluable support for the PA’s negotiating position as well as the expertise freely contributed for the wider benefit of the industry in its own negotiations as plaintiff".

The PA is now planning a seminar on 1st December, for both members and non-members, to provide further practical guidance on what steps they should take next. More information will be available shortly at www.publishers.org.uk.

PA guide to changes to the amended Google Settlement

Google: UK publishers named as plaintiffs
16.11.09 Philip Jones in The Bookseller

Rightsholders from the UK, Australia and Canada have been named as plaintiffs in the revised Google Settlement that was finally placed with the US Court late on Friday (13th November), after a four-day delay. But other foreign works have now been excluded.
A statement about the agreement said that the "plaintiffs decided to narrow the class to include only these countries, which share a common legal heritage and similar book industry practices". A number of European governments, trade bodies and publishers had objected to the original deal. British, Australian, and Canadian rightsholders will now be named as plaintiffs and will also be represented on the board of the Book Rights Registry, as had been previously agreed.

The settlement also makes it clear that books which are for sale as new internationally are considered commercially available, meaning Google will not display any of their content by default.

Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director, wrote on the Google Public Policy blog: "The changes we've made in our amended agreement address many of the concerns we've heard (particularly in limiting its international scope), while at the same time preserving the core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rightsholders with ways to sell and control their work online."

He added: "We're disappointed that we won't be able to provide access to as many books from as many countries through the settlement as a result of our modifications, but we look forward to continuing to work with rightsholders from around the world to fulfill our longstanding mission of increasing access to all the world's books." Google said it remained interested in working directly with international rightsholders, including those in countries excluded from the settlement, to reach similar agreements to make works available worldwide.

Under the revised settlement Google has said that the algorithm used to establish consumer purchase prices will simulate the prices in a competitive market, and prices for books will be established independently of each other. The revised agreement has given the BRR the right to license unclaimed works to other parties without ever extending the same terms to Google. It also states that any book retailer will be able to sell consumers online access to the out-of-print books covered by the settlement, including unclaimed books.

But it also sets up an independent body, which will be responsible for the interests of the missing rightsholders of orphan works. Unclaimed proceeds from orphan works will be used to try to locate absent rightsholders and be held for at least 10 years before being distributed to "literacy-based charities in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia".

The Court will now set a timeline, which will likely include a notice period, an objection period, and a Final Fairness hearing in early 2010.

Google Public Policy Blog

Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign
By Michiko Kakutani
Published New York Times: November 14, 2009


Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska on the campaign trail in September, 2008 with Senator John McCain.




GOING ROGUE An American Life
By Sarah Palin
413 pp. HarperCollins. $28.99


“Going Rogue,” the title of Sarah Palin’s erratic new memoir, comes from a phrase used by a disgruntled McCain aide to describe her going off-message during the presidential campaign: among other things, for breaking with the campaign over its media strategy and its decision to pull out of Michigan, and for speaking out about reports that the Republican Party had spent more than $150,000 on fancy designer duds for her and her family.
The most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the news media, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million advance for writing this book.

In what reads like payback for disparaging comments by John McCain’s aides about her after the ticket’s loss to Barack Obama, Ms. Palin depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunderheaded — slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy, insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy. She also claims that the campaign billed her nearly $50,000 for “having been vetted.” The vetting, which was widely criticized in the press as being cursory and rushed, was, she insisted, “thorough”: they knew “exactly what they’re getting.”

Although Ms. Palin writes that she is “proud of the senator” for being bold enough to put her on the ticket, some of her loudest complaints in this volume are directed at the McCain campaign’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt, ironically enough, was one of the aides to most forcefully make the case for putting her on the ticket in the first place, arguing to Mr. McCain, as Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson reported in their recent book, “The Battle for America 2008,” that she would shake up the race and help him get his “reform mojo back.” Over the weekend McCain aides fired back at Ms. Palin: Mr. Schmidt was quoted on Politico.com saying that charges about him were “all fiction.”

Back in 2008 Robert Draper reported in The New York Times Magazine that neither Mr. Schmidt nor Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, apparently saw Ms. Palin’s “lack of familiarity with major national or international issues as a serious liability,” and that Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot, saw the idea of upending the chessboard as a maverick move.

All in all Ms. Palin emerges from “Going Rogue” as an eager player in the blame game, ungrateful to the McCain campaign for putting her on the national stage. As for the McCain campaign, it often feels like a desperate and cynical operation, willing to make a risky Hail Mary pass to try to score a tactical win, instead of making a considered judgment as to who might be genuinely qualified to sit a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

In “Going Rogue” Ms. Palin talks perfunctorily about fiscal responsibility and a muscular foreign policy, and more passionately about the importance of energy independence, but she is quite up front about the fact that much of her appeal lies in her just-folks “hockey mom” ordinariness. She pretends no particular familiarity with the Middle East, the Iraq war or Islamic politics — “I knew the history of the conflict,” she writes, “to the extent that most Americans did.” And she argues that “there’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood.”
A CNN poll taken last month indicates that 7 out of 10 Americans now think Ms. Palin is not qualified to be president, and even as ardent a conservative as Charles Krauthammer lamented in September 2008 “the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.”
Yet Mr. McCain’s astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of Alaska, and before that, two terms as mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town with fewer than 7,000 residents) as his running mate underscores just how alarmingly expertise is discounted — or equated with elitism — in our increasingly democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow policy arguments and actual knowledge. Ms. Palin herself had a surprisingly nonchalant reaction to Mr. McCain’s initial phone call about the vice president’s slot, writing that she was not astonished, that it felt “like a natural progression.”

Read the full story at NYT.

MR.BEAN AT THE LIBRARY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyDY0hiMZy8
The Library [Mr. Bean]

From Library Link of the Day.

Exposed: The most intimate secret of erotic blogger By Arifa Akbar NZ Herald, Monday Nov 16, 2009

A former call girl whose blog became an internet phenomenon has finally been unmasked.

As an anonymous blogger, Belle de Jour became an internet phenomenon with her Diary of a London Call Girl, and a publisher's dream with her bestselling memoirs explicitly detailing her many encounters.

Now, Belle, who has ended six years of fervent speculation by revealing her identity, is hoping repeat her literary success with the publication of her first novel under her real name: Brooke Magnanti.
Whether her fans will want to read the fictive writings of a 34-year-old research scientist from Bristol, rather than the scintillating memoirs of a prostitute commanding £300-an-hour prices, will be revealed when her book is published by around 2012.
to
But at least she can go to her book launch. She had to forgo the parties her publisher, Orion, has thrown for her since her debut, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, was published in 2005, for fear of being found out.

Ms Magnanti, from Bristol, who specialises in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology, at the Bristol Institute of Child Health, turned to prostitution to fund herself while completing a PhD in London.
Her decision to reveal her identity was hastened by a former boyfriend who threatened to expose her.
Go to the NZ Herald to read the rest.

BE THE FIRST IN NZ TO SEE THIS TIE-IN COVER

The first title in the hugely successful Millennium Trilogy is now a major motion picture starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace

The Millennium Trilogy is a publishing phenomenon with over 22 million copies sold worldwide
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has sold over 180,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand and has been in the local bestseller lists for months. Those many of us who have read and loved this book are not at all surprised about this.

The movie – opening in New Zealand cinemas on Boxing Day 2009 – is most likely to increase the awareness of the
trilogy even further, bringing it to the attention to a whole new audience.
The film adaptation stars Michael Nyquist and Noomi Rapace and has already grossed over $100 million
at the box office in Europe.

Praise for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

"....what a triumph. I quickly became totally immersed in the complex plot and seduced by the wonderfully drawn characters and the evocative sense of place."
Beatties Book Blog

‘A seriously addictive fusion of violent political thriller, sinister family saga and ambiguous love story’ –
The Australian

‘The plotting and pacing are masterful. No wonder Europe has gone wild over Blomkvist and his riveting
sidekick’ – The Sydney Morning Herald

‘Larsson sends out the tendrils of plot, until the tales become one ... Larsson adeptly weaves in ...
diversions and subplots that heighten the intrigue’ – The Age

‘(Lisbeth Salander) is a wonderful creation’ – The Daily Telegraph

Author Profile
Stieg Larsson was the editor-in-chief of the Swedish anti-racist magazine Expo. He was a leading expert on right-wing extremist organisations. He died in 2004, soon after delivering the text of the novels that make up the Millennium Trilogy.

Footnote:
For the Bookman's review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at time of publication go here.

Booklover - Herald on Sunday - 15 November, 2009

Mark Crysell is the Europe correspondent for TVNZ News & Current Affairs

The book I love most is....the nominees are: The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, a haunting white trash epic, devastatingly written. Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, beautiful evocative writing about why we travel. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, a classic, I've read it five times and each time I get something different out of it. The Book Of Fame by Lloyd Jones, the story of the 1905 All Blacks beautifully written as a team diary and about being a wide-eyed New Zealander overseas. And the winner is The Book Of Fame – it just seems right for where I am right now.

The book I'm reading now is....Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard, America's greatest living crime writer in my humble opinion.

The book I'd like to read next is....A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre. I love le Carre and his characters. He’s survived the Cold War better than any other spy novelist. And also D-Day by Antony Beevor, a historian who writes about great battles with the skill of novelist and a feel for the ordinary soldier.

Thanks Mark, some great choices there, and thanks to the Herald on Sunday for permission to reprint this.

TE TAI TAMARIKI CALENDAR 2010


Available in bookshops throughout New Zealand, RRP $19.95.
Featuring many fine NZ children's book illustrators including Trevor Pye, Dick Frizzell, Tina Matthews and Bruce Potter.

NEWS FROM THE NEW ZEALAND BOOK COUNCIL

The School Library is our new publication produced especially for our school members, featuring reviews from leading children’s book reviewer Crissi Blair, editor of New Zealand Children's Books in Print.

Inside The School Library you will find book reviews for children of all ages plus Writers in Schools writer interviews, and news and commentaries from the children's book world here in New Zealand.

* Current issue
* Reviews searchable archive
* The School Library PDF archive

Julie Biuso’s Never-ending Summer
Julie Biuso
New Holland- $45

Julie Biuso's new cookbook offers more than 100 stunning recipes to be relished in your favourite places whenever the mood grabs you. If the sun’s out, simply fire up the barbecue, but if the weather is unfriendly you’ll also find instructions for cooking conventionally inside. It’s food for cooking all year round – irresistible dishes that are simply too good-looking to ignore.

Open the cover for food to whet all appetites – light snacks and stacks for an easy brunch; sizzling satays and stir-fries to pique the senses; food over flames, seared to perfection; smart salads and seductive sauces; sweet endings to round things off beautifully.

As well as her marvellous recipes, Julie shares dozens of culinary tips and gives generous notes on ingredients honed from years of experience as a leading food writer. Selected recipes also contain links to her website, www.juliebiuso.com, where you can watch her prepare them, and where you’ll also find an extended glossary and further information on everything to do with barbecuing.

The Bookman was immediately tempted by a number of the salads with delicious names. (and beautiful photographs to match by food photographer extraorinaire Aaron McLean), such as lamb & aubergine salad with chickpeas and roasted tomatoes, seared vine tomatoes with feta, pork chops with lychees and micro salad, but in the end decided on vietnamese herb salad with fish - and it was divine! And easy to prepare and cook.
The publishers have kindly agreed to me sharing this recipe with you:

vietnamese herb salad with fish
Serves 4

Time to prep 25 minutes
Time to cook 7 minutes
Lovely clean flavours make this dish ideal for summer dining and it’s even better if you have caught the fish yourself! If you want to make the dish lighter, steam the fish instead of barbecuing it.

½ large telegraph cucumber
1 bunch spring onions
¹⁄³ cup small mint leaves (if large, tear into small pieces)
½ cup coriander leaves
500g skinned and boned white fish fillets (gurnard, snapper, red mullet or bream)
canola or peanut oil for hot plate
salt
¼ cup dry-roasted peanuts, chopped, optional

Dressing
3 Tbsp fish sauce
5 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp sugar
1 fresh hot red chilli, finely chopped
1 large clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 Tbsp peeled and finely grated ginger

1
Peel cucumber, cut in half lengthways, scoop out seeds with a pointy teaspoon and cut flesh into half moon shapes. Trim spring onions, discarding most of the greenery and cut into long, thin strips. Put spring onions in a bowl with cucumber, mint and coriander. Cover and chill.
2
To make the dressing, whisk everything together in a small bowl. Cover
and chill.
3
Rinse fish and pat dry with paper towels. Cook fish on a preheated oiled barbecue hot plate over medium heat until golden. Flip fish over and cook the second side briefly, just to seal. Alternatively, cook fish in a little oil in a large frying pan until lightly browned and barely cooked through or steam it. Transfer to a platter as it is done, cool for 5 minutes, then pour off liquid. When all the fish is ready, season lightly with salt and transfer to bowls for serving.
4
Mix salad and dressing together and arrange on top of the fish in the bowls. Sprinkle peanuts on top, if using, and serve immediately.

From - Julie Biuso's Never-ending Summer: Stunning barbecue dishes to tempt you all year round, photography by Aaron McLean, New Holland Publishers, RRP $45.00

About the author:
Julie Biuso has had a long and successful career in food journalism and on radio and television. She is currently Food Editor of Taste and Your Home & Garden magazines, runs a successful website www.juliebiuso.com and is a regular on Radio New Zealand National.

Julie has an impressive list of credits to her name. Her books have received a Montana Book Award and seven Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, all for previous titles published by New Holland. (Sizzle, her last book, was awarded Best Barbecue Cookbook in the History of the Awards in 2008.)
She has also been awarded the University of Canterbury Food Journalism Award and a Gold Ladle in the World Media Awards, and been elected the NZ Guild of Foodwriters’ Feature Writer and the Montana Food & Wine Writer of the Year.

In 2007 she was given a Special Award of the Jury at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
Her focus is on fresh seasonal food, and her commitment is to provide well-tested recipes which are easy to prepare and cook with the aim of keeping families cooking and eating together.

Other titles from Julie Biuso and New Holland:

Viva L’Italia
Fresh
Take a Vine-ripened Tomato
Hot Nights, Cool Days
Sizzle

About the photographer:
Aaron Mclean is one of New Zealand’s leading food and lifestyle photographers. He contributes regularly to a number of quality magazines including Cuisine, Taste, Dish and Life & Leisure. This is Aaron’s twelfth book.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - THE MOVIE
CHARITY SCREENING

Date: Sunday 6 December

Time 6.00pm

Where: Tivoli Theatre, Matakana Cinemas

Price: $20

*A percentage of ticket donated to Warkworth Christian Food Link.

*Ticket holders are invited to the Village Bookshop, Matakana to celebrate the festive season from 4.00-6.00pm on 6 December for bubbles & refreshments.

*All who are shopping at this time will receive a discount of 10% on their purchases.

*Tickets available at Village Bookshop and Matakana Cinemas.

Should You Judge this Book by its Cover?
Julian Baggini
Granta/Allen & Unwin, $35
Reviewed by Mark Broatch

Proverbs are cultural wisdom; the institutional knowledge of a society. But, of course, not all knowledge is valuable or useful, and it changes over time. And so we get the seemingly contradictory "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" against "Out of sight, out of mind". Or "Look before you leap" against "He who hesitates is lost."

Julian Baggini, a British philosopher, notes that it's not that such oppositions cancel each other out, but that each saying only captures part of the truth. Baggini takes 100 aphorisms, many of them proverbs, and separates the specific truth from the universal claim, quoting other sayings to compare and contrast. If there is one thing we can never do enough of these days, it's making our thinking clearer.

For WB Yeats' "The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity", Baggini notes suicide bombers, political ideologues and religious zealots have replaced Ireland's sectarian hatreds. But he pulls apart the idea that it might be an endorsement of apathy. Noting Burke's claim that good men doing nothing allows evil to success, Baggini says the timely answer is two-fold: the good need to weaken the convictions of the bad or gain a bit more passion themselves. "It is not enough to trust our own decency." We must, he says, win the argument against fanaticism or be prepared to defend our values with more passion - though not, surely, more violence.
Occasionally I was left asking for more clever exploration, but some terrific wisdom lies within these pages, and I was alerted to the some proverbs I did not know and the truth of some I thought I did. The Spanish: "Appetite comes from eating" and "Pay for love with love; everything else with money." That it is not "Revenge is a dish best served cold" but "Revenge is a dish that can be served cold." Revenge becomes not a dirty but sometimes necessary business to "something we should schedule to maximise our enjoyment".
Modesty, something many New Zealanders prize as a core of their national personality, is the highest form of arrogance, reckon the Germans. It is a brave politician who says a problem deserves fixing, but it is better to do nothing as current solutions would only make it worse. On the other hand, it would be anti-progressive conservatism to apply the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule to, say, slavery. The key word in "Charity begins at home", argues Baggini, is "begins". Rather than being a justification for not giving to overseas causes, it should be a blueprint for extension. "Far from the eyes, far from the heart" is the French take on "What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over". And martyrdom is clearly no longer, as GB Shaw naively thought, the only way to fame without ability.
One thing that might occur to rationalists is that the Bible is possibly the first example of advocacy journalism. "You are my friends if you do what I command," John reports. Baggini argues that the message of this and the Good Samaritan "undermines the kind of sectarian, parochial thinking that fuels conflict between peoples" and is one of Jesus' "most progressive messages".
The author's final words, however, are the wisest in the book: if we stop thinking about what phrases or quotations mean, we oversimplify or misunderstand them and their insight is lost. "To be wise is not to achieve a state of maturity from which one never regresses, but to keep one's understanding sharp by persisting in a habit of constant questioning and a refusal to take things for granted."

Footnote:
Mark Broatch is the editor of the Sunday Star Times Books pages and the author of the word reference In a Word (New Holland). His review was first published in the Sunday Star Times, 15 November and is reproduced here with permission.

THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY
by Philip Hensher
Harper Perennial - $26.99
Reviewed by David Hill

The paperback edition of last year's 700-plus page Man Booker shortlist novel is set mostly in Sheffield, from the Thatcher 1970s onwards.
It's a time of miners' strikes and social distress, when individual lives, local industry and urban traditions are being wrenched apart, and Hensher tells us ... well, he tells us surprisingly little about such things.
That's mainly because the protagonists are middle-class suburbanites, for whom iron mills and coal mines are alien worlds. Their lives are more concerned with living room suites and what nibbles to serve at neighbourhood parties. Daniel Glover grows from sneering adolescence to comfortable early middle age as a restaurateur, barely registering that his trendy eatery was once an industrial site.

It's people, not politics that interest Hensher. They're a hard-working, sometimes faceless lot, though Daniel does break out into tango dancing, and younger brother Tim rips a blouse before meeting a damp end. Mind you, Tim has been traumatised since his Mum stomped his pet snake to death and the girl next door got him to undo her bra.

Local and period colour abounds. Revisit 1970s gold-tasselled sofas, mushroom vol-aux-vents, women in beehive hairdos, men in vivid blue suits with flares, Jackie magazine for girls, white-painted wall units, small boys wearing bow ties to birthday parties. We hear a great deal about food. And about local architecture and drainage.
You have to call it "sprawling". Some parts feel dictated rather than written. Breakfast arrangements for a house-moving team take three pages; getting a cup of coffee takes four. Sydney Harbour, when one character visits, means a whole tourist essay. Then there's buttering the cat's paws ...

The author is always present, and can't leave a tone unturned: "... she said in a not exactly unfriendly way"; "now she was surely being deliberately childish".
Hensher is excellent on the camouflages of family life, the feral cruelty of kids, the quotidian compromises of adulthood, and the meshings or jostlings of class structure. But he doesn't seem sure whether this is thriller, bildungsroman, moral fable or social comedy. Almost by default, he appears to have settled for epic, in ambition if not in execution. And I do mean "a tone unturned". Sorry.