Beattie's Book Blog - unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community

John Dybvig writes............

2012-02-02T14:25:00.000+13:00

Thisis my latest project....my book is now available to be downloaded on Appleitunes in the States....you can also listen to it with me reading it....

iTunes - Books - The Two Of Me by John Dybvig

Dec 14, 2011 ... Get a free sample or buy The Two Of Me by John Dybvig on the iTunes Store.

You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod ...

itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-two-of-me/id489315357?mt=11

DIGITAL CAMERAS THE EASY WAY

2012-02-02T14:17:00.002+13:00

I stumbled on to this pocket-size reference book last week. It costs a mere $15 and explains in simple terms (has to be simple for me when it comes to cameras) all the essentials you need to know to understand your manual, learn to use your digital camera and to improve your photos and images you send to friends and family.
I'm not at all surprised to learn that boutique Dunedin-based publisher Lifelogs has sold over 10,000 copies.
It is simple, sensible and most helpful.

Author - Brian Miller
Publisher - Lifelogs Ltd.
P.O.Box 39,
Dunedin 9054.
mail@lifelogs.co.nz
www.lifelogs.co.nz

The Gun - The Story of the AK-47

2012-02-02T12:58:00.001+13:00

The AK-47, or ‘Kalashnikov’, is the mostabundant and efficient firearm on earth. It is so light, it can be used bychildren and it never jams. It has transformed the way we fight wars, and itsstory is the chilling story of modern warfare. It is the everyman’s gun, usedby guerrilla, terrorists and dictators everywhere. The Gunfeatures villains and idealists, profiteers and killers, superpowers andrevolutionaries and tells the incredible story of how the Kalashnikov hastransformed the way we fight.

C. J. Chivers’s extraordinary and hugely detailed new book, which I found fascinating and frightening in equal measures, tellsan alternative history of the world as seen through these terrible weapons. Hetraces them back to their origins in the early experiments of Gatling andMaxim, and examines the first appearance of the machine-gun – a weapon thatfirst created the ‘asymmetric’ colonial massacres enjoyed by the British inAfrica but which then led to the nightmarish stalemate of the First World War.The quest for ever greater firepower and mobility culminated in the AK-47 at thebeginning of the Cold War, a weapon so remarkable that, over sixty years afterits invention and having broken free of all state control, it has becomecentral to civil wars all over the world.

“They don’t break, they can be used by children, and there are up to 100 million of them. The AK-47 has changed war” – Sunday Times

A book for history buffs (me) and those fascinated by guns (not me).

About the author:

C. J. (ChristopherJohn) Chivers is a seniorwriter for The New York Times. He was an infantry officer in the USMarines from 1988 to 1994 and served in the First Gulf War. He is the recipientof numerous prizes, including a shared Pulitzer for International Reporting in2009 for coverage of the war in Afghanistan.He has reported from many of the major war-torn areas of the world. Hecurrently lives in Rhode Island, United States of America.

The NZ Book Council promotes books through the power they have to inspire and shape a person

2012-02-02T12:52:00.001+13:00

Very cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FCNsqxTNhs

Jamie Raab Interview Sparks eBook Royalty Debate

2012-02-02T12:49:00.002+13:00

By Maryann Yin on Galley Cat, February 1, 2012

GalleyCat contributor Jeff Rivera interviewed Grand Central publisher Jamie Raab for mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? feature today.
In the interview, Raab (pictured, via) defended her imprint’s standard practice of giving authors a 25% royalty rate for eBooks: “We have an infrastructure to support.” She outlined the values of what traditional publishers have to offer whether they are new in their writing career or established New York Times bestselling authors.
When asked on whether or not she fears big-name writers will take a less traditional publishing route, she replied: “I think about that a lot because I know it’s on authors’ minds. And I think it’s incumbent on every publisher to do a better job than they’ve ever done before — more creative on marketing and eBooks, working in partnership more closely with their authors, keeping them in the loop, publishing more strategically.”
What do you think? Should eBook royalties be higher?
Several members of the industry have given their reactions to Raab’s interview including Smashwords founder Mark Coker, literary agent Peter Riva, Drama High author L. Divine and author Seth Godin.
Seth Godin: “eBook royalties should be significantly higher and the reason is simple: there’s no marginal cost of paper, shipping, returns, etc., to be paid for. If publishers started paying cash money to get better eBook distribution and sales, that’s a very different story. But right now, the gross margin is much much higher than it is on a print book.”
Mark Coker: “I’m impressed by Jamie Raab’s spirit and passion. She typifies the publisher of the future who will survive and thrive because she and her team are doing for authors what many authors cannot do for themselves…[However,] until publishers learn how to clearly communicate this in a way that authors understand, believe and agree with, some authors will continue to feel shorted.”
Peter Riva: “Remember I favor authors, but unless the company is strong, there will be no traditional publishing all too soon.”
L. Divine: “That [interview] was just what I needed to validate my own announcement this morning…I’ve worked with editors who don’t edit, and most of the marketing comes from my own footwork. So, I am going to jump on this eBandwagon with my series and see where it takes me.”

Announcing the 2011 Discover Great New Writers Award Shortlist (Fiction and Non-fiction)

2012-02-02T06:40:00.001+13:00

Dear Readers,

David Guterson received the very first Discover Great New Writers Award for Snow Falling on Cedars in 1994. Other winners include Chang-rae Lee for Native Speaker, Elizabeth McCraken for The Giant's House, Hampton Sides for Ghost Soldiers, and David Sheff for Beautiful Boy.

Safe to say that the authors on the 2011 shortlist are in great company.

The 2011 Discover Great New Writers Award shortlist:
Fiction:

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Untouchable by Scott O'Connor (Tyrus Books, a division of F+W Media)
Volt by Alan Heathcock (Graywolf Press)

Non-fiction:

Day of Honey by Annia Ciezaldo (Free Press)
Kosher Chinese by Michael Levy (Henry Holt & Co.)
[sic] by Joshua Cody (W.W. Norton)

Full piece including comments on each shortlisted title.

Alex Preston's top 10 literary believers

2012-02-02T06:29:00.001+13:00

From Dostoevsky to Zadie Smith, the novelist picks his favourite portrayals of characters struggling with faith

Alex Preston - guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 February 2012

Gillian Armstrong's 1997 film version of Oscar and Lucinda.

Alex Preston was born in 1979. He lives in London with his wife and two children. His first novel, This Bleeding City, was published in 2010. His second, The Revelations, is published this month by Faber and Faber. He also writes reviews for the Observer and the New Statesman and a regular panellist on the BBC Review. He tweets as @ahmpreston.

" Steady, plodding relationships are not the stuff of great literature. As we all know, happiness writes white. Friction, fissures, flaws – love stories take their energy from impediments, they thrive under the heat of conflict. The same goes for belief. Quiet, placid faith fails to stir us. It's the dark night of the soul that we want in our fiction, the adolescent torment of Salinger's Franny or the guilt-ravaged Bendrix coming reluctantly to God in The End of the Affair.

"In previous centuries authors would have presupposed both faith and familiarity with the scriptures in their audience, but now religion has withered in the bright glare of science (at least in Britain), and our churches are increasingly Larkin's 'accoutred frowsty barn[s]'. Yet we still, some of us, feel the God-shaped hole, and courses and cults have sprung up to cater to those looking for meaning disenchanted world.

"I have always been fascinated by the outer reaches of religious experience, by the titanium-plated smiles of the born-again, by the visitations and mass-hysteria of Christian evangelicals. It's not only the secrecy and intrigue of those closed worlds; it's the way their members seem to have found an answer to so many of life's great questions. Frankly I'm envious. So when I read and write about believers, it's partly that I'm trying to find an authentic way into what they've got. So far I've not had much luck. Perhaps this is why it's characters in books who struggle with, rather than revel in, their faith who attract me.

"The four young friends in The Revelations all believe, but their conviction is tested to breaking point by the tragedy that unfolds over the course of a weekend religious retreat. Doubt stalks their every footstep, the charismatic priest who leads them suffers his own crisis of faith; that some of them are still believers at the end of the book is a kind of miracle."

1. Franny in Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

Marcus and Abby Glass, two of the heroes of The Revelations, take their surname from Salinger's precocious family. Franny's breakdown in the second story perfectly captures the headrush of adolescent spirituality (and its resultant comedown). I have always been a little bit in love with her which is, I suppose, creepy, now I'm over 30 and she's still at college.

2. Alyosha Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alyosha is a novitiate Russian Orthodox monk, Jesus-like, compassionate but totally powerless. He clashes with his brother Ivan, a rationalist and an atheist. Alyosha isn't divorced from the real world, though; he is a realist. As Dostoevsky says: "Faith, in the realist, does not spring from the miracle. But the miracle from faith."
Read the full list at The Guardian.

Stories don’t need morals or messages

2012-02-02T06:24:00.001+13:00

A "stupid" test shows that the Puritan ethic lives on. Why do we insist on learning lessons from the books we read?

By Laura Miller - Salon.com - Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012 2:00

(Credit: iStockphoto/Yayayoyo via Shutterstock)

What is the purpose of reading stories, especially made-up stories? That’s the question lurking behind a recent posting to the New York Times’ education blog, SchoolBook. Ann Stone and Jeff Nichols, the parents of twins, wrote about taking their kids’ third-grade English Language Arts test with some friends as a party game on New Year’s Eve. The group read an inane little story about tiger cubs learning to tear bark off logs, but, to their surprise, couldn’t agree on a single answer to the multiple choice question that followed: “What is this story mostly about?”
Tests like this, the couple asserts, do students “a double disservice: first, by inflicting on them such mediocre literature, and second, by training them to read not for pleasure but to discover a predetermined answer to a (let’s not mince words) stupid question.” The problem, they feel, stems from the standardized testing regime, which forces the learning experience into a too-rigid structure. Even a “banal” story like this tiger-cub number admits “multiple interpretations,” and the prod to “reduce the work to a single idea” does a disservice to both reader and text.
I’m sure Stone and Nichols are right that the current, reductive obsession with standardized testing has made this propensity worse, but discomfort with fiction — with all its slippery, non-utilitarian qualities — goes back to the beginning of American culture. As the historian Gillian Avery observed in her “Behold the Child: American Children and Their Books, 1621-1922,” 17th-century Puritans had big doubts about any kind of non-scriptural storytelling, for adults as well as for children. They were as determined to teach their kids to read as any modern helicopter parent, if for other reasons: For Puritans, reading the Bible was essential to getting into heaven, rather than into Harvard (though to hear some people talk today, you wouldn’t think there was much of a difference).
Full piece at Salon.

The work of Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, has been compared to “Mills & Boon” authors in a damning attack by the Oxford Professor of Poetry

2012-02-02T06:13:00.002+13:00

Duffy, who grew up in a 'bookless house' and is a passionate advocate of poetry teaching in schools, became Poet Laureate in May 2009 Photo: REUTERS/Phil Noble

By James Orr - The Telegrpah - 31 Jan 2012

In a lecture entitled Poetry, Policing and Public Order, Sir Geoffrey Hill criticised the 56-year-old for her eagerness to ‘democratise’ the art form.

The Scottish poet and playwright has previously sparked controversy by arguing children who used social networking sites and text messaging were “perfecting” their poetry skills.

But Sir Geoffrey, who was once widely tipped to receive the Poet Laureateship himself, said she must “consider that she may be wrong”.

Speaking at a lecture in Oxford, Sir Geoffrey referred to an interview Duffy had given to the Guardian in which one of her early poems about the death of an old English teacher was discussed.

He said: “For the common good she is willing to have quoted by the Guardian interviewer several lines from a poem by herself that could be easily be mistaken for a first effort by one of the young people she wishes to encourage.
Full report at The Telegraph.

Gold medallist Mark Todd Autobiography to Orion

2012-02-02T06:09:00.000+13:00

01.02.12 | Charlotte Williams - The Bookseller

Orion has acquired the autobiography of double Olympic gold medallist eventing champion Mark Todd, who has also won four times at the Badminton Horse Trials, and five times at Burghley.

Orion managing director Susan Lamb and Weidenfeld & Nicolson publisher Alan Samson bought world rights, Europe and Far East exclusive, to the title, Second Chance, directly from the eventing champion. Orion will publish in hardback on 19th April, priced £20.
Todd is the only rider since 1932 to have won back-to-back individual titles at the Olympics, which he did at Los Angeles in 1984 and Seoul in 1988. After the Sydney Olympics in 2000 he retired from eventing to take up a career as a racehorse trainer and breeder in his native New Zealand.
He made an eventing comeback at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and last year won Badminton. He will compete at the London Olympics this summer.
Samson said: “We’re thrilled to be publishing one of the best known and most successful eventing champions in the world. And it really will be a must-have book for anyone interested in eventing, and beyond.”
Todd said: “When I was in the lead after the cross-country at Badminton last year, it did occur to me that it would be an amazing story if I won. It shouldn’t really have been possible, and yet it happened.
"In fact, the whole story has been extraordinary; when I started competing, I considered myself a dairy farmer who rode a bit. When I won an Olympic gold medal, I realised I might be able to make it.”

A Band of Determined Eccentrics - Indie Booksellers

2012-02-02T06:03:00.001+13:00

01/31/2012 - Huffington Post - William Petrocelli

In early January Frommer Guides arranged for a New Orleans literary group to lead a band of booksellers on a "Literary Pub Crawl" of the Big Easy. The guide's spiel got more and more colorful after each watering hole. When asked about local eccentrics, he responded thus:

There are different ways of looking at eccentrics. In New York, they ignore them. In Los Angeles, they arrest them. But in New Orleans, we encourage them.

In a way, that was a metaphor for the independent booksellers who were gathered that week in New Orleans for the annual Winter Institute of the American Booksellers Association. If "eccentricity" can be defined as having a vision that departs from the conventional wisdom, then independent booksellers have it in abundance. An unexpected optimism was in full bloom among the booksellers at that meeting.
But how could that be? Independent booksellers have been written off for years by experts who sit in their offices and watch Main Street America from a distance. And there are plenty of statistics that seemingly support the doomsayers. In the 1990s the growth of chain bookstores led to a doubling of the amount of bookselling space in America without any growth in the number of readers. That -- along with a rash of unfair pricing tactics -- left many independent booksellers fallen by the wayside. A few years later, the growth of online bookselling had an even greater impact. Once again, there was an increase in cut-throat competition -- again with no real increase in the number of book-reading customers. But this time the casualties included the giant book chain Borders, which came crashing to the ground in 2011. And all of that occurred before the full advent of e-books.
So, why the optimism? What accounts for an upsurge in confidence among independent booksellers?

Read William Petrocelli's full essay here.

Footnote:
William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney.
For the past thirty years or so he has been the co-owner with his wife Elaine of Book Passage, a retail bookstore in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California.

He is the author of Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders (McGraw Hill) and co-author of Sexual Harassment on the Job: What it is and How to Stop it (Nolo Press). He is also the author of the forthcoming novel Women For Peace.

AAP eBook Sales Nudge Back Up In November, As Children's Hardcovers Shine

2012-02-02T05:56:00.003+13:00

PublishersLunch

eBook sales as reported by a small butgrowing group of publishers to the AAP remained lower than their peaks earlierin the year in November, at $77.3 million up modestly from October's reported$72.8 million. Overall, ebooks comprised 16 percent of trade sales, compared to12.6 percent in October. The peak during 2011 was February, when high ebooknumbers and low print shipments made digital 29.5 percent of the month'sreported sales. Further skewing the month-to-month and year-over-yearcomparisons, the number of publishers reporting ebook sales to the AAP keepschanging from month to month. For November, 8 more university presses havestarted reporting ebook sales, making 26 reporting publishers in all. (ColumbiaUniversity Press and Rizzoli have dropped off this month, but are expected toreport again in the future.) Last December, there were only 12 reportingpublishers.

Following the year's pattern, the gain of$30.7 million in ebook sales over last November couldn't make up for the largerdrop in print shipments, as total AAP trade sales declined $29.7 million or 5.7percent for the month. (Indeed, for the 11 reported months, overall tradedollars are down 5.8 percent compared to 2010, which isn't bad considering thedisappearance of Borders and the growth of lower-priced ebooks.)

Children's and YA hardcovers were thebiggest gainers after ebooks in the month, at net shipments of $87.2 million up27 percent compared to a year ago. That made children's hardcovers the secondlargest trade segment for the month (with ebooks once again just barely infourth place). Religious books--which we don't count as trade, but the AAPdoes--also rose slightly for the month.

A Self-Help Rights Guide for Independent Publishers

2012-02-02T05:52:00.000+13:00

Publishing PerspectivesPetra Hardt, Foreign Rights Director at Berlin's Suhrkamp Verlag, has written'Rights: Buying. Protecting. Selling' to help publishers make the best choices.

Read here.

DISCUSSION:
Whatis the Appropriate Term for a Book Contract?
With digitization offering authors new opportunities faster that publishers cantake advantage of them, long book contracts grow increasingly unattractive.

Calling for applications for Iowa International Writing Program

2012-02-01T16:41:00.001+13:00

CreativeNew Zealand is calling for applications from New Zealand fiction andnon-fiction writers, poets and playwrights to take part in the renownedUniversity of Iowa International Writing Program in the United States.

The result of a 20-year partnership between Creative New Zealandand the university, the three-month residency is an opportunity forwriters to participate in a programme which has hosted more than 1400 writersfrom a 140 countries since its inception in 1967.

Emerging or established writers, with a publishing track record,will have time to work on an approved project and take part in literaryactivities, field trips and excursions with other writers from all over theworld.

New Zealand’s 2010 recipient writer David Hill (right) described the programmeas a “writer’s paradise”. “For three months I was able to write ina state of financial security, intellectual stimulation and professionalcollegiality.”

The residency includes travel costs, accommodation, a stipendand is supported by Creative New Zealand. It will run from late August tomid-November, 2012 and the recipient will be expected to have completed, orsubstantially completed, a body of writing.

The deadline forapplications isFriday 9 March 2012.

To find out more about how to apply please goto our website or to forward to potential applicants click on the ‘Pass iton’ link on the right hand tool bar
About the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program

Alan Hollinghurst in Sydney next month

2012-02-01T14:45:00.000+13:00

Sydney Writers' Festival presents a very special event withAlan Hollinghurst.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for his brilliant satire ofThatcher's London, The Lineof Beauty, Hollinghurst will discuss his latest novel, The Stranger's Child.

The Stranger's Child casts alonger gaze, beginning with the story of two families and two houses on the eveof World War I then coursing through the 20th century to tell a larger story ofEngland -- and of its truths secreted by time.
Alan Hollinghurst will appear in conversation with SydneyWriters' Festival artistic director Chip Rolley.
Tickets on sale now.
Location: VerbrugghenHall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Date: Friday 9 March 2012
Time: 7.00pm - 8.15pm

News from the Arts Foundation

2012-02-01T14:07:00.002+13:00

Derek Lardelli (Laureate) and has beenawarded a new academic position. He becomes an Associate Professor to Tairawhiti’sEastern Institute of Technology.

Derek is recognised nationally forthe revival of Ta Moko and as a key figure in the field of kapa haka. Hehas been the cultural advisor to the All Blacks since 2005 and responsible forthe branding of the Athens and Kuala Lumpur New Zealand Olympic teams, amongmany other projects.

Pop-up literature

2012-02-01T14:02:00.001+13:00

Exciting news from the Institute of Modern Letters Newsletter

Wellingtonis to have a temporary Literaturhaus,courtesy of the Goethe Institute. The first week’s programme runs 7-11February, and includes presentations by Kate de Goldi andLloyd Jones and a poetry cabaretwith Lorenzo Bühne, BillManhire and Chris Price.

The poetry cabaret takes place at Meow, which hosts another poetryevening a week later, at which Poet Laureate Ian Wedde reads alongside AmyBrown, Aleksandra Lane and Lynn Jenner. More here.

Further comment on the New Zealand Hierarchy of Book Publishing

2012-02-01T13:02:00.002+13:00

This was Kauri Bookend's opening gambit posted on the blog last week:
Following my post yesterday on the international Hierarchy of Book Publishing, Kauri Bookend has left a new comment suggesting his/her NZ top twenty. My thanks to Kauri Bookend. Here it is for your amusement and/or comment with a few pics I have added:

1. Unity Books Auckland and Wellington: Simply the best
2. Bill Manhire : Done more to raise the quality of NZ Fiction and Poetry than anyone else
3. Geoff Blackwell : Shame he isn’t running one of the local multi-nationals. He should be
4. Lloyd Jones : Our pre-eminent novelist with a five star track record.
5. The Editors: especially Barbara Larson, Jane Parkin and Anna Rogers: Making good books better.

6. Neil Cross{Wellington]: Lead writer on Spooks, creator of Luther, author of nine great books including the Booker listed Always the Sun. Photo-SST
7. The other independent booksellers: apart from that grumpy bugger in Timaru.
8. The Reps- a diminishing breed but still a vital link between publishers and booksellers who care.
9. Karen Ferns – keeping Random House head and shoulders above the rest.
10. Neil Hyndman – proving it is possible to make real money out of publishing.
11. The Agent – Ray Richards. Are there any others?

12. Tony Fisk – probably the smartest MD in NZ Publishing – why isn’t he Prime Minister?
13. The team at Craig Potton – Carrying the flag for quality small publishers after the disappearance of Godwit, Shoal Bay, Tandem, Longacre and Mallinson Rendell
14. Bill and Phil [Noble and King] University Booksellers Supreme
15. Publishers – The Magnificent Seven : Harriet Allan, Fergus Barrowman, Jane Connor, Sam Elworthy, Nicola Legat, Rachel Scott, Bridget Williams. Quality rules.
16. Elizabeth Knox : An author with a great depth and breadth of talent and a hard-won international reputation
17. Joan Mackenzie : Has it in her power to make a real difference for New Zealand Publishers. I am sure she will use it wisely

18. Maurice Gee: now why hasn’t he been knighted?
19. The bloggers: especially Rachel King, Vanda Symon, Chris Bourke, Auckland and Christchurch libraries. Oh alright – also that Beattie chap.
20. The readers – where would be without them??

Brian Phillips then responded as follows:

Hard to resist responding to this…
Whilst I agree with most of Kauri Bookends’ selections I would venture to add afew more..
In no particular order [as they say on the X factor] I would offer
The two Fionas – Farrell(right) and Kidman(left). Wonderful women writing wonderful books
Carole Beu – if all booksellers were as active and enthusiastic we would sellmore books….
The retirees – especially David Elworthy, Ros Henry and Bob Ross. They may nolonger be involved in commercial publishing but all continue to do ‘bookish’things. Long may they flourish.
The broadcasters – especially Kim Hill and a special mention for theincomparable Elizabeth Alley.
Jill Ewing at Random House. This company is regularly voted Distributor of theyear by booksellers. Jill runs Random’s distribution. Enough said.
Belinda Cooke at New Holland – quietly running a small but perfectly formedcompany.
The third party book distributors – big and small – without them many smallerpublishers would have no cost-effective way of getting their books into themarketplace. As I am a naturalised Cantabrian special mention must go toNationwide Books at Oxford.
Those who run Writers Festivals throughout the country. Love them all.
Finlay Macdonald. Also Guy Somerset, Philip Matthews, Iain Sharp and DavidEggleton.
PS Who is the grumpy bugger in Timaru? Can't think of anyone who fits thatdescription...

Today Old Timer has commented:
Kauri Bookend’s top twenty was an excellentcontribution. Old Timer offers a commentor two.

There is a small clash between #four Lloyd Jones and # 18 Maurice Gee; another between # nine Karen Ferns and #12 Tony Fisk.

Publishers who have disappeared, add: Avery, Bascands, Beckett Sterling, BentonRoss, Booker & Friend, Caxton, Dunmore, Millwood, Moa,Pacific/Whitcoulls. Paul’s, Pegasus,Sweet &Maxwell – where have all the roses gone?

And Bookman Beattie has decided to have his pennethworth too:

Significant other players worthy of mention include:

Nielsen Book Scan - in spite of Whitcoulls attempt to scuttle their weekly statistics they continue to provide an invaluable service

Book Publicists - tireless workers, almost exclusively women, this blog would be a lesser place without them.

Book designers - designing books in NZ of world class standards

Bureaucrats running those key organisations - Lincoln Gould (Booksellers), Anne de Lautour (Publishers), Maggie Tarver (Authors) and Catriona Ferguson (Creative NZ).

Literary journals, especially but not only Sport and Landfall.

All those wonderful, informed indie booksellers out there, especially at my favourite weekend haunt. the Village Bookshop at Matakana.

Media book page editors especially Linda Herrick, Mark Broatch, Guy Somerset and Philip Mathews.

The Listener - widespread book coverage week in and week out.

Facebook & Twitter

The Guardian & The New York Times - daily book reviews and book news.

PW & The Bookseller - keeping the trade informed on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world

Martin Taylor - the man who led the push into digital publishing in NZ.

Anyone else got further nominees? Feel free to comment.

Neil Gaiman & Todd McFarlane Settle Decade-Long Dispute

2012-02-01T11:21:00.000+13:00

By Dianna Dilworth on Galley Cat, January 31, 2012

Fantasy authors Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane have settled their decade long dispute about who owns the copyright to Spawn characters that Gaiman created for McFarlane’s comic book in a guest appearance.
In 2002, Gaiman filed his first suit claiming that he co-owned Medieval Spawn, among other characters that he had created. In 2010, Gaiman won a suit in which a judge determined that he should be paid royalties.
The Daily News has more about the settlement: “Jeffrey Simmons, one of Gaiman’s attorneys, said terms of the agreement were confidential … ‘This is intended to put an end to the whole thing. It’s fair to say both parties are pleased to have this resolved,’ Simmons said.”

Barnes & Noble Stores Will Not Stock Books Published By Amazon

2012-02-01T11:18:00.002+13:00

By Jason Boog on Galley Cat, January 31, 2012

Barnes & Noble has decided not to stock books published by Amazon in their physical stores, keeping the new publisher out of the country’s largest network of brick and mortar bookstores.
Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Brad Stone called it “a declaration of war,” breaking the news with a statement from B&N’s chief merchandising officer, Jaime Carey. The bookseller will offer Amazon titles in their online store. Last week, Amazon revealed that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will distribute print books from Amazon Publishing.
Check it out: “Our decision is based on Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent. These exclusives have prohibited us from offering certain eBooks to our customers. Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content. It’s clear to us that Amazon has proven they would not be a good publishing partner to Barnes & Noble as they continue to pull content off the market for their own self interest.” (Via Sarah Weinman)

The Book: A Life Cycle - The Inaugural Symposium

2012-02-01T11:10:00.002+13:00

for the Centre for theBook at Otago University

Thursday29 March 2012: Dunningham Room, Dunedin Public Library

7.00pm - Prof David Skegg – Opening address

7.20pm - "the old rag and bone shop" John Quilter, Quilter’sBooks, Wellington

Friday30 March 2012: Barclay Theatre, Otago Museum

9.00:Introduction/Opening

DrShef Rogers (English) *this session may alter if Prof. Howsam is here.
9.30:Futures of the Book

HowardAmos (University Librarian)

DrErika Pearson (Media and Communication)

PenelopeTodd (Rosa Mira Books)

10.30– coffee break

11.00-12.00:Research Potentials in Print Culture

Prof.Tony Ballantyne (History) – ‘Print and writinghistories of colonialism’

AnthonyTedeschi (Rare Books, Dunedin Public)

DrLachy Paterson (Te Tumu)- ‘Indigenous Texts,Indigenous Histories’

12.00–1.00 Lunch

1.00–3.30: Life Cycle of the Book

Author- Vanda Symon (Independent writer)

Design– Ralph Lawrence (Independent Designer)

Publisher– Barbara Larson (ex-Longacre; Commission editor for Random House)

Sales– Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb (UBS)

Survival– Sharon Dell (Hocken Library)

3.30– afternoon tea break

4.00– 5.00: Issues & Wrap Up

Prof.Helen Leach – The Non-conformist Cookbook

DrRoger Collins – Revisiting Louis-Auguste de Sainson: Bibliography, Bibliophilyand Biography

NoelWaite, Dunedin City of Literature – The State of the Play?

DonaldKerr/Shef Rogers

Registration for the full day is $25 (waged); $10 (unwaged).

To register e-mail books@otago.ac.nz for an electronic registration form.

Time Out Bookstore in Auckland's Mt.Eden features on Localist.

2012-02-01T09:33:00.001+13:00

There’s nothing quite so magical as a bookstore; the smell of print, the promise of fresh new worlds between crisp white pages.
Sadly, the future of bookstores is becoming precarious. With the advent of Amazon and internet shopping, and E-readers like Kindle, the little local bookstore is somewhat of an endangered species.
Luckily for bibliophiles like me, there are some well-loved little stores that are bucking the trend.
Time Out Bookstore in Mt Eden village is one such store. Opening in 1988, it has a well-deserved reputation as one of the best bookstores in the country. It has a huge range of literary fiction, a wonderful kid’s section, and a mind-boggling, eclectic range of non-fiction, with everything from architecture and sport, to travel and religion.
But best of all, it has a cat.
The first Time Out cat, Oscar, was somewhat of a local identity in Mt Eden. He was a big Burmese, who lived the life of Riley, was generally adored and pampered by shoppers and staff, and often seen lounging in the shop window, attempting to lure in passing punters.
Sadly Oscar died recently, but a new kitty, the lovely Lucinda, has taken his place as the store mascot.
The staff at Time Out are great. They are all super friendly and knowledgeable. Their recommendations are spot on – they’ve introduced me to many great authors over the years.
They keep up-to-date with all the international trends in the book world, and make sure they stock all the award-winners as soon as they’re announced. If something is out of stock, they’ll order it in for you.
They are open 12 hours a day (9am-9pm), seven days a week, which is great if you’re in the village waiting for a takeaways, or for a mate to turn up for a drink.
If you’re a book lover, put this on the top of your list of shops to visit, and make a night of it in Mt Eden. What could be better than book shopping followed by a dinner and a drink at one of village’s great eateries?

Time Out Bookstore

432 Mt Eden Rd, Mt Eden Village, Auckland
email books@timeout.co.nz
Ph/fax +649 630 3331 Open 9am - 9pm, 7 days

Writers & Readers Week at the Fesival - MEET THE BEST IN LOCAL LITERARY TALENT

2012-02-01T07:50:00.002+13:00

Joining some great voices in contemporary literature from around the globe will be our own outstanding selection of local writers. New Zealand's first poet laureate Bill Manhire will search out exciting new poetic voices; Patrick Evans will delve into the imagined world of Janet Frame and Frank Sargeson; and join with fellow Christchurch writers Fiona Farrell and Jane Higgins for Christchurch Quakes: Changing Everything - a poignant session on writing and living through the Christchurch quakes. Also featured are some of our best emerging writers: Eleanor Catton, Hamish Clayton and Craig Cliff.

Photo above - Patrick Evans, Fiona Farrell and Jane Higgins are part of a stellar line-up of Kiwi writers.

B&N expands international content team

2012-02-01T07:21:00.001+13:00

31.01.12 | Philip Jones - The Bookseller

Barnes & Noble has grown its international content team, as the US bookseller seeks to establish further relationships with overseas publishers.
According to Publishers Marketplace, Emily Williams has joined Barnes & Noble as international content manager for digital products, reporting to Patricia Arancibia, who was recently promoted to director, editorial & publisher relations for international content. Williams was most recently digital content producer for Publishers Marketplace.
Barnes & Noble is looking to take its digital e-reader the Nook overseas and its reportedly close to revealing a deal to sell the device through Waterstones in the UK. It has also been growing its overseas content and non-English-language content for sale in the US through deals with foreign publishers. The New York Times reported over the weekend that B&N was working on a fifth iteration of its Nook device, with the new model expected to be unveiled in the spring.

What Do You Love About Your Dialogue?

2012-02-01T07:18:00.000+13:00

Posted by - mooderino

The general advice about writing dialogue tends to follow the same basic precepts. Conflict, goals, move the plot forward, don’t waste time with chit-chat, etc. That is certainly all useful stuff and will help keep the story moving.

But there’s more to dialogue than just getting across information.

People loves great dialogue. In books, in plays, in movies. In real life. Sparkling conversation holds the attention, even when it has nothing to do with anything. People like hearing it. It’s enjoyable to read. But it’s very difficult to write.

Sometimes, a memorable line is designed to be so. Everything builds up to it. A character gets teed up to say the thing that will define the rest of their life, and wham: Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. Beautiful. AFI’s most memorable quote of all time.

Sometimes, though, it is not quite as clear why a line enters the collective consciousness. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Who would have thought that would be the most enduring line from Star Wars?

Which is the thing about dialogue. It’s all about the context.

It is entirely possible to have a bunch of people gathered together just chatting, and for it to be entertaining. But those writers who excel at that sort of thing, whether it be Tarantino or Oscar Wilde, do more than just collect a bunch of witty epigrams.

Read the full essay here.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cancelled in India

2012-02-01T07:17:00.003+13:00

Oscar-nominated thriller withdrawn from release in India after director David Fincher refuses to cut 'unsuitable' sex scene

Ben Child
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012

Cancelled in India … Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

Oscar-nominated crime thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will not be shown in India after director David Fincher refused to cut scenes depicting rape and sexual intercourse.

India's Central Board of Film Certification had insisted five scenes be excised, including two in which actors Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara make love and another in which Mara's character Lisbeth Salander is raped by her legal guardian, the Wrap reports. Fincher refused to make changes to his film, and Sony Pictures abandoned plans for a 10 February release.

"Sony Pictures will not be releasing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in India," read a statement from the company's Mumbai office. "The censor board has judged the film unsuitable for public viewing in its unaltered form and, while we are committed to maintaining and protecting the vision of the director, we will, as always, respect the guidelines set by the board."

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second adaptation of the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, has not been an enormous box-office hit but picked up five Oscar nominations last week and is well on its way to a $200m global haul against a budget of $90m. Despite predictions to the contrary, production on the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is reportedly under way, with Mara and Craig set to return.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (US)
Production year: 2011
Countries: Rest of the world, USA
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 152 mins
Directors: David Fincher, Niels Arden Oplev
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Daniel Craig, Joely Richardson, Lena Endre, Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Peter Haber, Robin Wright, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard, Steven Berkoff, Sven-Bertil Taube, Yorick van Wageningen
More on this film

A Most Optimistic Unconference: Publishers, Libraries, and Independent Bookstores at Digital Book World 2012

2012-02-01T07:11:00.001+13:00

January 29, 2012 By Heather McCormack

If you’re lucky, at every conference there’s a revealing unconference going on inside of it. This was very much the case with Digital Book World 2012, which drew the usual cliques of publishers, authors, agents, entrepreneurs, editors, and marketers last week to New York. As at the 2011 show, keynotes, studies, and panels about international markets, metadata, ebooks, and DRM attracted large audiences. Amazon and Barnes & Noble reaffirmed their power (and rivalry) as manufacturers of dedicated e-readers and quasi-discovery centers and publishers.
Yet I sensed a markedly different psychology among the Big Six suits that has thus far gone unreported and wasn’t spoken of out loud near me during the show. Although a bit crooked-shouldered after suffering another year of disintermediation beatings by Kindle, these professionals are seeing straighter—and farther down the workflow. The damaging fear-induced myopia that took over publishing with the rise of ebooks in 2009 seems to be waning.
Four, even two years ago, dropping the term ecosystem was not a cool thing to do in the rarified corners of the culture business, the equivalent of conjuring a dirty hippie genie at a cocktail party. At Digital Book World, however, I heard more than one CEO use it, along with independent booksellers, it must be noted. The word, of course, encapsulates what librarians and library advocates have long argued for in the digital wars—capitalism that supports anyone with a stake in information and encourages fluid tiers of access. Or, if you will, a most beatific “United Nations of Reading,” to quote Eric Hellman, who was inspired last fall by Brian O’Leary’s excellent Books in Browers presentation, “The Opportunity in Abundance.”
Forget the supreme logic of leveraging your partners, or even your supposed competitors when you are dependent on the whims of a relatively small consumer base. The all-important data to buy into a new, bigger picture is compelling. At Digital Book World, Verso Media presented the findings of its 2011 Survey of Book-Buying Behavior. It reported that there are 70 million “avid book-buyers” in America and that they exhibit “split purchasing behavior.” In other words, they patronize online retailers, chain bricks-and-mortars, and local independent bookstores. This finding led the Verso team to recommend that publishers maintain and nurture “a diversified retail ecosystem [emphasis added]…because it mirrors consumers’ preferences.”
Attendees did not talk up libraries as a bona fide sales channel, despite OverDrive’s laudable efforts last summer to convert library catalog browsing to sales, and that’s fine by me because libraries serve a much more valuable function. The buzz word of Digital Book World 2012, discovery is being vaunted as that crucial bit of foreplay in the reader-book relationship (sorry, new metaphor). As communion cannot happen without a meeting ground, authorities ranging from Oren Teicher, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, to Ruth Liebmann, Random House VP director of account marketing, stressed the inestimable worth of a physical space for encountering just the right bit of textual stimulation.
Read Heather's full piece at Library Journal.

One takeaway from Digital Book World that is not to be missed

2012-02-01T07:05:00.001+13:00

The Shatzkin Files

Posted by Mike Shatzkin on January 30, 2012

I think just about everybody has fun at Digital Book World, but it is hard to have more fun there than I do. It’s damn near a year of work coming together over a couple of days with dozens of smart speakers making me personally look good for putting them on the program. So they work hard and satisfy the audience and I get congratulated. What could be better (for me) than that?
(OK, I did do a little bit of work. Besides emceeing the show and co-hosting the final panel, I delivered opening remarks trying to set the stage.)
There were a lot of great takeaways this year. Perhaps the biggest news was the final presentation before the wrap-up panel Michael Cader and I hosted. That was by Matteo Berlucchi, the CEO of Anobii, a UK-based ebook retailer that has substantial investment from Penguin, Random House, and HarperCollins. Matteo didn’t exactly “call for the end” of DRM, but he certainly described a better world without it. And the main point he made was, “I want to sell to Kindle customers and the only way I can do that is if we get rid of DRM.” The combination of the message and the messenger made this the most newsworthy presentation of the show, I thought.
But the factoid that most grabbed me was delivered on the previous day as part of the data developed by AllRomanceebooks.com about the romance readers market. Very superficially, the point being made was also about DRM, but that’s actually a distraction. There was a much larger point buried within.
All Romance is a specialized ebook retailer. To serve the romance reader community more effectively, they’ve built out the BISAC taxonomy for romance, adding more categories. And they’ve added a metadata element called “flames” which basically measure the frequency and explicitness of the sex scenes in any particular book.
The romance world, particularly among the cognescenti in it, is a very anti-DRM environment. And an outfit like All Romance, which has no “device lock-in” working for them — essentially everything they sell gets “side-loaded” somehow, and DRM can often make that more challenging — is right in step with their community sentiment. So the survey contained questions trying to get at the audience attitude about DRM.
There were two relevant stats that I recall. One is that only about 20% of even All Romance’s readers really resist books with DRM. That is to say: 80% don’t. But the factoid that grabbed me is that 96% (that’s not a typo: ninety-six percent) of the ebooks they sell do not have DRM.
All Romance also reports that 91% of the titles they have available are protected by DRM. That makes sense, since all the titles from all the Big Six publishers and all the titles from Harlequin except those from their new digital-first imprint, Carina, have DRM.
What this means is that the nine percent of All Romance’s offerings that do not have DRM are selling 96% of their units overall. And since only 20% of their customers find DRM as a strong deterrent to sales, that means those fledglings are outselling all the majors for other reasons.
This provokes two very important lines of inquiry to me, and neither of them have anything to do with DRM.
The first one would be top of mind to me if I were a major publisher. What are these books that are selling like hotcakes? Why are these books selling like hotcakes? Why can’t we publish these books that are selling like hotcakes?
Read the rest of Mike Shatzkin's File here.

Toshiba outlines e-book ambitions

2012-02-01T07:00:00.005+13:00

31.01.12 | Michael Fitzpatrick - The Bookseller

Toshiba, which will launch its first dedicated digital reader on 10th February, is aiming to be Japan’s biggest retailer of e-books by the spring.
Adding the colour LCD screened, Android-based BookPlace DB50 to its existing tablet line-up is aimed at bringing more readers to its expanding Bookplace e-book store which Toshiba has said it will beef up with over 100,000 titles by the end of March.
“We now have about 50,000 publications available that include books, magazines and comics,” a Toshiba spokeswoman told The Bookseller, although what percentage of that number is comprised of books was not disclosed. “But we plan to have 100,000 online by March.”
Even if such a target is reached, however, the figure underlines how poorly developed Japan’s e-book trade is, according to Tokyo-based publisher Robin Birtle. “Even though Toshiba have partnered with Booklive, one of the larger Japanese e-Bookstores, DB50 owners will be underwhelmed by their content choice,” he said.
Booklive is a unit of the Japanese printing giant Toppan.
Although late to the crowded tablet and e-reader market in Japan, Toshiba is anticipating the launch of the Kindle Fire, expected for the first time in Japan later this year. Priced at 22,000 yen the DB50 costs and dimensions are comparable.
The hand-sized Toshiba tablet is aimed at commuters who often have to stand on crowded trains reading with one hand.
Analysts do not see the new offering standing up to the appeal of a similar sized Kindle Fire, which unlike the Toshiba reader comes with non-glare, e-ink, when the Kindle finally does reach Japan.
“Toshiba has missed the boat on this one,” said publishing analyst Rob MacGregor at Tokyo-based Strategy Core. “The launch is 2-3 years too late. It has its appeals but the appetite for black and white e-ink based readers proves you don’t need a full-colour screen.”
At its launch in Tokyo, Toshiba suggested the new e-reader might be also sold abroad. The Toshiba spokeswoman confirmed this but declined to discuss such possibilities further.
Books that are available already through Toshiba’s Bookplace store include bestsellers such as the Steve Jobs biography from Kodansha priced at 2,000 yen. More typical Japanese authored books, particularly manga, are selling on the store for under 1,000 yen each.

Harlequin Acquires Heartsong Presents

2012-02-01T06:56:00.000+13:00

PW - January, 30, 2012

Harlequin has acquired the book club assets of Heartsong Presents Book Club, the inspiration book club owned by the Christian publisher Barbour Publishing. Heartsong Presents provides its members with four Christian romance novels a month, with a focus on inspiration, hope and faith, written by leading inspirational authors.

"We are thrilled to add Heartsong Presents to our portfolio," said Donna Hayes, publisher and CEO, Harlequin. "Our subscribers trust us to provide compelling stories that are delivered to their doorstep monthly. The Heartsong Presents editorial dovetails perfectly with that of Harlequin -- women's fiction and inspirational publishing -- making it a natural fit."

Estimate Puts Kindle Fire Sales at 6 Million

2012-02-01T06:52:00.001+13:00

PW - Jan.30, 2012

With Amazon set to release its fourth quarter—and year end—results Tuesday afternoon Stifel Nicolas analyst Jordan Rohan estimates that the company sold 6 million Kindle Fire tablets in the fourth quarter. Rohan had previously put the number sold at 5 million units.
Rohan believes the strong performance of the Fire will provide Amazon with ongoing benefits by increasing the amount of content, including e-books, that new Fire owners will buy.
As a result he has upped his revenue forecast for 2012 by over $2 billion to a total of $67 billion. And while Amazon is making no money on the Fire, Rohan notes that as more customers buy digital content, Amazon’s margins could improve because of lower shipping costs.

Siri Doesn’t Do Scottish

2012-02-01T06:47:00.002+13:00

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

Siri and Scotland are separated by a common language. The debut of Siri, Apple’s new virtual assistant, gave rise to a meme as excited customers tested out the new voice-recognition software. Except in Scotland, where the assistant appears unable to understand the Scottish brogue. A puzzled Siri responds to “What's the weather like today?” with “What's available in Labor Day?” Another request to “create a reminder” is greeted with a straight “I don’t understand,” and finally “I don't know what you mean” by “create Alamain.” Nevertheless, the new iPhone has sold well in Scotland.

Read it at The Los Angeles Times (Via The Daily Beast)

January 31, 2012

The Snow Child - an excited first-time author reports

2012-02-01T06:45:00.000+13:00

I have so much to tell you, I hardly know how to start this letter.
I want to tell you how wonderful the staff and readers are at Tattered Cover in downtown Denver, where I participated in my first official author reading and book signing. I want to tell you how heart-warming it is to be surrounded by talented authors, kind book lovers, a beautiful bookstore. I even had my uncle at my side as I signed copies of The Snow Child! It is a day I will never forget.
But I also want to tell you how much I’ve appreciated your emails, messages and tweets telling me where you have spotted The Snow Child. Here are just a few places where there have been “Snow Child sightings.”

Buffalo, New York
Hawaii
The Costco Connection magazine that goes out to Costco members and featured an interview with me and a review of The Snow Child this month.
New Mexico
Delaware
Barnes & Noble in Baltimore, Maryland
Kodiak, Alaska
Olympia, Washington
Florida
Laramie, Wyoming
Powell’s Bookstore in Oregon
Pittsburg, Kansas
South Hadley, Massachusetts at the Odyssey Bookshop
Lansing, Michigan
Reno, Nevada
Oprah Magazine, February issue, Page 111 (I had to see it to believe it.)
Northwest Book Lovers blog
Idaho
Chicago
Pennsylvania
Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City
Rome, Italy
Ireland
Corsica
Flagstaff, Arizona Barnes & Noble
Jerusalem
Boyd Farm in Palmer, Alaska

It’s simply amazing!

Read more at Eowyn's blog - Letters from Alaska
And have a look at her website too.

Supporters of Menlo Park Store Formalize As Kepler's 2020 Project

2012-02-01T06:37:00.002+13:00

PublishersLunch

Efforts to stabilize, preserve and redefineKepler's Books in Menlo Park, CA that we covered in January have taken shapeinto a formal Kepler's 2020 initiative, announced via press release and at thestore's web site. "The project aims to create an innovative hybridbusiness model that includes a for-profit, community-owned-and-operatedbookstore, and a nonprofit organization that will feature on-stage authorinterviews, lectures by leading intellectuals, educational workshops and otherliterary and cultural events."

As noted previously, entrepreneur PraveenMadan is leading "a volunteer transition team [that] has begun work on acomprehensive development, financial and operational plan" for the store.Among the initiatives they are considering are: POD, "an e-book friendlyin-store browsing experience; concierge services to provide 'literarymatchmaking' for customers, book swaps and other innovative programs to bringpeople of all ages together around their shared love of books; and a speaker’sbureau with readership development services for emerging authors." Theyare launching a new capital campaign this month to raise $100,000 to supportongoing operations at the store.
Release

Combining the Television and Publishing Mindset

2012-01-31T21:39:00.000+13:00

Publishing Perspectives

"We don't have editors," says Michael Fabiano, head of recentlylaunched NBC Publishing, "we have producers, and that's an importantdistinction."
Read here.

DISCUSSION:
AreReports of the Death of the Book App Premature?
Publishers say book apps "cost too much to produce." Of course theydo, after all, they are publishing companies, not production companies.

Poem of the week: Francesca of Rimini by Lord Byron

2012-01-31T21:35:00.005+13:00

This fascinating translation of Dante was intended to be faithful, but presents its English reading in a distinctly Byronic fashion

Carol Rumens - guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012

Lord Byron, as pictured in a copy of a portrait by by Thomas Phillips. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Lord Byron, described by EH Coleridge as "de facto if not de jure a naturalised Italian", was at pains to produce a faithful translation ("word for word and line for line") in his excerpt from Canto five of Dante's Inferno. The translation, "Francesca of Rimini", is this week's poem, but if it leads you back to the magnificent original, all the better.

Byron's work on Canto five, and his other Italian literary projects, were inspired by his young mistress, the Countess Teresa Guiccioli. Like Francesca, Teresa was a native of Ravenna, bound in a marriage of convenience to an undesirable husband, and illicitly in love. As for Paolo and Francesca, shared reading was an erotic spur to the relationship between Byron and Guiccioli.

Matthew Reynolds, in his recent fascinating study, The Poetry of Translation: From Chaucer and Petrarch to Homer and Logue, points out the connection between Byron's desire to be faithful to his girlfriend and to Dante. It's one of several intriguing connections. Dante's text (one Byron had, of course, previously visited in the first Canto of Don Juan) now offered to embody a far more personal and un-ironical story. It would permit impassioned self-disclosure, not only through the persona of Francesca, but through Dante's own ambivalent commentary.

For all his aspiration to fidelity, Byron cuts Dante's exposition altogether, so we lose the stunning imagery of the second circle of hell, with its whirling, lightless storm-winds buffeting like helpless birds the souls of those who, in life, could not control their lust. He even omits the first stanzas of Francesca's speech. The rhyming is usually deft, but the syntax often pays the price in convolution. The sentence in lines 7/8 (more simply translated as "Love, that excepts no one beloved from loving") is painfully inverted and suffers an awkward line-break. The repetitions of "yet" (line nine) suggest metrical padding as much as rhetorical intensity.

The tougher, sharper sounds of Byron's translation are not simply the result of the different sonorities of English, or the scarcity of feminine endings. They are related to interpretation. Byron, for example, hardens Dante's "doloroso passo" to "evil fortune": Dante's "desio" becomes the more emphatic "strong ecstacies" (the adjective "strong" occurs twice in a fairly short space of time). In Dante's text, Francesca names dispassionately the author/book responsible for the lovers' fall: "Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it." Byron omits Galeotto and substitutes, "Accurséd was the book and he who wrote it." Later, in the penultimate line, "smote" seems needlessly fierce. Even when Francesca talks, the poem has a forceful and slightly masculine tone.

Byron is an immense poet, combining the best of Augustan wit and intellect with the best of sensuously and politically charged Romanticism. For me, he is by far the outstanding Romantic, and he is as readable and relevant today as ever. The flaws in "Francesca of Rimini" do not diminish him. This is an occasional poem, as well as a translation, and it's foolish to demand that it be comparable with his original poetry, lyric or epic. However, the work is extremely interesting for the light it throws on poetry-translation itself, and the complexity of the relationships involved. A translation is never less than a transformation – and it may be, for the translator, self-revelation.

Taking the rough with the smooth, the reader can enjoy "Francesca of Rimini" as a poem in its own right. The personal touches – the infidelities, if you like – are not slips, but planned insurgencies, and part of the poem's tough vitality. And when Byron risks using feminine endings (surely associated in his mind with comedy and irony) there is pleasure for the ear, as well as a little humour ("the long-sighed-for smile of her"). The concluding lines have a sense of dramatic fatality that is hard to resist. Even the harsh "smote" earns its place by contributing to the rich alliterative music.

Francesca of Rimini
"The Land where I was born sits by the Seas
Upon that shore to which the Po descends,
With all his followers, in search of peace.
Love, which the gentle heart soon apprehends,
Seized him for the fair person which was ta'en
From me, and me even yet the mode offends.
Love, who to none beloved to love again
Remits, seized me with wish to please, so strong,
That, as thou see'st, yet, yet it doth remain.
Love to one death conducted us along,
But Caina waits for him our life who ended:"
These were the accents uttered by her tongue.—
Since I first listened to these Souls offended,
I bowed my visage, and so kept it till—
'What think'st thou?' said the bard; when I unbended,
And recommenced: 'Alas! unto such ill
How many sweet thoughts, what strong ecstacies,
Led these their evil fortune to fulfill!'
And then I turned unto their side my eyes,
And said, 'Francesca, thy sad destinies
Have made me sorrow till the tears arise.
But tell me, in the Season of sweet sighs,
By what and how thy Love to Passion rose,
So as his dim desires to recognize?'
Then she to me: 'The greatest of all woes
Is to remind us of our happy days
In misery, and that thy teacher knows.
But if to learn our Passion's first root preys
Upon thy spirit with such Sympathy,
I will do even as he who weeps and says.
We read one day for pastime, seated nigh,
Of Lancilot, how Love enchained him too.
We were alone, quite unsuspiciously.
But oft our eyes met, and our Cheeks in hue
All o'er discoloured by that reading were;
But one point only wholly us o'erthrew;
When we read the long-sighed-for smile of her,
To be thus kissed by such devoted lover,
He, who from me can be divided ne'er,
Kissed my mouth, trembling in the act all over:
Accurséd was the book and he who wrote!
That day no further leaf we did uncover.'
While thus one Spirit told us of their lot,
The other wept, so that with Pity's thralls
I swooned, as if by Death I had been smote,
And fell down even as a dead body falls."

March 20, 1820.

A New Honor for the Hatchet Job

2012-01-31T21:33:00.002+13:00

By JOHN WILLIAMS, New York Times

“A good hatchet job draws as much excited attention as a good book any day.” That’s the late, great critic Wilfrid Sheed, from a 1964 piece in which he laid out six rules reviewers should follow for “smoother, more satisfying demolitions.” On Feb. 7, The Omnivore, a British Web site that aggregates cultural criticism, will announce the winner of its first annual Hatchet Job of the Year Award for book reviews. Links to all eight finalists can be found here.
The Omnivore calls the new prize “a crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking.” This has the potential to be a crackling addition to the literary calendar, but the inaugural nominees are not a particularly vicious bunch. Some even err on the side of fair-mindedness, an unforgivable sin in this arena. Better to give in to hysteria, as Mark Twain did when he wrote to someone about Jane Austen: “Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
So how do the contestants stack up by the lights of Mr. Sheed’s guidelines? His first rule: “Hatchet jobs should never run an inch longer than the victim merits. Three sentences are always better than twelve — the length being in itself a form of comment. The critic who goes on swinging after the tree is down draws attention to himself; he becomes overexposed. After all, perhaps he isn’t such a hot writer either.” Mr. Sheed acknowledged that the second rule — to avoid too many “short aphoristic dismissals unless your taste in them is absolutely infallible” — was the “complete opposite” of the first. “The contradictoriness of these first two rules may serve as a warning,” he wrote. “Hatcheting is not as easy as it looks.”

Seven of the eight nominees for The Omnivore’s honor appeared in daily newspapers, and none take up enough space to outstay their welcome. As for aphorisms, the lack of quotable punchiness is notable, with rare exceptions — like Leo Robson’s line about the author of a Martin Amis biography: “Richard Bradford considers himself the man for the job, but I doubt that anyone else will.”
In his third commandment, Mr. Sheed wrote, “Almost any quoted matter, encapsulated in sneers, will do,” but he modified that with the fourth: “On the other hand, two or three short quotes, however well chosen, are barely enough. A make-believe massacre requires an appearance, at least, of massive forces.” Lachlan Mackinnon’s review of Geoffrey Hill’s “Clavics,” a poetry collection, earned its nomination entirely in its last paragraph, by referring to the book as “the sheerest twaddle,” and by sticking its landing: “Writing this bad cannot earn the kind of attention Hill demands; he is wasting his time and trying to waste ours.” But at little more than 500 otherwise tepid words, it lacks the shock-and-awe approach of a massacre.
Full piece at the New York Times.

Rage against the machines

2012-01-31T15:39:00.000+13:00

NZ Herald - Saturday Jan 28, 2012 - Stephen Jewell

Left - Anthony McCarten.

AnthonyMcCarten didn't intend to write a follow-up to his novel Death of aSuperhero when he embarked upon his latest work, In the Absence of Heroes. But after coming up with the premise for a story involving a triangleof characters, it dawned on the Gloucestershire-based New Zealander that he hadalready created three ideal protagonists in the shape of Jim and Renata Delpeand their elder son, Jeffrey. Set some time after the death of the Delpes'youngest son, Donald, In the Absence of Heroes finds the trio retreating into their ownseparate computer-generated fantasy worlds as they struggle to come to termswith his premature passing.
"I originally came up with anentirely independent idea that ostensibly required a father, a wife and ason," recalls McCarten, 51. "Then I realised I had already inventedthem in the last book so I thought I would try and see if I could marry the twotogether and it was a natural fit. It added so much more because I couldexplore aspects not covered in the first novel, which was pretty preoccupiedwith its central character.
"I knew they were a family that wasn't connecting with each otheras they had been cast into a state of grief and isolation from each other inthe aftermath of Donald's death. It was the perfect setting to justify thisdisconnect between all the characters."

Death of a Superhero saw terminally ill Donald delving intothe testosterone-fuelled world of comic books. This time, the internet andonline role-playing games initially provide 18-year-old Jeff and his father,Jim, with some solace in In the Absence of Heroes.
"One of the pleasures of writing both books was being able to playwith different ways to tell a story," says McCarten. "I stumbled uponthis journey with Superhero, where I couldalmost jump tracks in the narrative across to another level of reality butstill pursue it as a story with allegorical meanings. The reader would imputewhat I was trying to get at and then jump back to the main story. Thatbinarism, which I've been interested in playing with as a narrative device, ishopefully even more fitting in this book, which is about computers and whatthey're doing to our own lives."
According to McCarten, the internet has had a detrimental impact on ourlives. "I'm not a computer game person but I'm really interested in thehold it has on popular culture," he says. "If you go into my localBlockbuster, you used to be faced with a wall of new movie releases but it'snow almost entirely given over to computer games while movies have beenghettoised to the back corner."
As the father of two teenage sons, McCarten worries about the wideninggap between the generations. "I'm very aware of the changing face offamily and the shift in parental roles that's going on. In the old days, yourkids would go and play in the playground, but now they're disappearing wheneverthey've got an internet connection into games of mass murder.
"What's the long-term significance of this going to be? Kids havealways played with guns, but the veracity of these games and the fact youbecome so immersed in them is disturbing, and the simulation of killing andbeing killed is incredibly realistic."
But the net is all around us, as McCarten demonstrates during ourmeeting at a Notting Hill brasserie by pulling out his iPhone to check hisemails. "It's like a tidal wave," he laughs. "It's taken outevery village and we're all drowning in it. It's now considered sociallyaggressive if you're not connected; that there must be something wrong with youif you don't have a smartphone, an email address or a Facebook account. We'reall being dragged under by this tsunami."
Rest of story at the New Zealand Herald

Sr Citizen by Charles Olsen

2012-01-31T12:39:00.001+13:00

Charles Olsen was born 1969 in Nelson, New Zealand. He then lived in England for many years before moving to Madrid in Spain in 2003, where he lives now.

He is a talented painter and poet and Sr Citizen, an attractive and appealing slender volume, is his first collection to be published . It features both his poetry and art.
Most of the poems are written in Spanish and have English translations.
You can read his poetry at pensamientoslentos.blogspot.

And for bio info go here - http://www.artreview.com/profile/CharlesOlsen

How To Read Poetry

2012-01-31T12:17:00.000+13:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqlPKnPTz7s&feature=youtu.be

Not to be taken seriously !

Outstanding Australian cook book publishers

2012-01-31T11:55:00.000+13:00

I reckon the Aussies publish the world's best cookbooks and leading the way are three book publishers who are hugely impressive in this field. There are others too of course but these guys are the trend setters. I refer of course to Hardie Grant Books, Lantern and Murdoch Books.
To illustrate my point I am looking today at three books currently on the dining room table, all from Hardie Grant Books.
They are Four Seasons - A Year of Italian Good by Manuela Darling-Gansser which I wrote about late last year when it was published.

And then the two that arrived just as I was heading off for the Christmas holidays, both large, spectacular and totally captivating.

MARQUE - a culinary adventure by Mark Best and Pasi Petanen
and
The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon

MARQUE - a culinary adventure
Way back in 2000 Annie and I were fortunate enough to be warmly recommended this restaurant by some NSW friends so we made a booking (from New Zealand) and bowled along on one of our three nights in Sydney. Even then in its first year of operation bookings were heavy and the only time we could get in was at 6.30pm. A bit early but it was Hobson's Choice. What a wonderful experience it turned out to be even though the location was then in the rather down-at-heel suburb of Surry Hills. There has been much gentrification since!
Mark's wife Valerie was the host and when she found out that one of our main reasons for visiting Sydney was to eat at Marque she sat with us at our table a couple of times and we learned about the opening of the restaurant and how it was going. Then towards the end of our wonderful meal Mark emerged from the kitchen and we had a pleasant chat with him for a few minutes before he was called back.
We have never forgotten that experience and have been back twice in the intervening years although didn't make contact with Valerie or Mark on those visits.We are planning a winter visit to Sydney this year so I'll be calling them in advance to make another booking.
So you can imagine my delight when Mark's cookbook turned up.
Marque is a highly illustrated, contemporary recipe book, celebrating and reflecting on Marque, this highly succesful Sydney restaurant. Also included is the personal journey of chef and owner Mark Best and approximately 80 of Marque's signature recipes. Most are complete dishes but the book also contains a myriad of smaller recipes and techniques which are the backbone of Mark Best's creations. A stunning book to treasure as both a compilation of beautiful recipes and a record of one of the world's best restaurants. And for me a special souvenir.
I should add that Marque is one of only four Australian restaurants to make the coveted top 100 in the San Pellegrino World's Best Restaurant award. RRP $79.99

The Complete Asian Cookbook
Charmaine Solomon - $59.99

This is a completely revised and updated edition of Charmaine Solomon's influential and iconic book of the same title first published 36 years ago back in 1976.And what a handsome new edition it is - a big beauty I would call it.
It covers more than 800 classic and contemporary dishes from fifteen countries - India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, The Philippines, China, Korea and Japan.
Written with the home cook in mind, Charmaine's recipes are straightforward, simple to follow and work every time. Recipe and chapter introductions give valuable information about how local dishes are prepared and served, while the comprehensive glossary explains unfamiliar ingredients (which are steadily more commonplace in supermarkets today). The Complete Asian Cookbook is a book that should be in the kitchens of every household.

Accolade to publisher:
Hardie Grant I extend my warm thanks and hearty congratulations to you for all the outstanding cookbook publishing you deliver to us. I am proud to have your books on my shelf and to frequently use recipes from them as well as often just reading them for foodie reading pleasure.
I salute you and your chef authors, photographers, designers, editors, stylists, publicists and indeed all the team required to carry out such special publishing.

The Tuesday Poem

2012-01-31T11:54:00.003+13:00

Today's Editor, Helen Rickerby writes:

One of the cool things about the Tuesday Poem, and having your turn at being the editor of tis hub blog especially, is having the opportunity to share your favourite poems with other people. ‘Appointment with Sophie Calle’ is one of my favourite poems, and I would love to have shared the whole thing with you, but it’s a very long poem. So I’ve just chosen four little pieces, which are poems in themselves, to act as a taster. I hope you’ll go and seek it out and read the whole thing. You’ll find it in Making Lists for Frances Hodgkins, by Paula Green (left), which was published by Auckland University Press in 2007.

It's a wonderful book, but this poem (or poem sequence - with long poems divided into sections like this, there is always that dilemma of whether it's a poem or a sequence, or both) is a stand out for me, and one I've returned to over and over. The Sophie Calle of the title is a French conceptual artist - I hadn't heard of her before reading this poem, but her artwork is worth reading about. She is someone who weaves lives - her own and other people's - into art. One project involved getting her mother to hire a private investigator to follow Calle around and take photographs of her. He didn't know she knew he was following her, and she led him around places that meant something to her. The aim was an attempt 'to provide photographic evidence of my own existence'.

Full Tuesday Poem post - link here.

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

2012-01-31T11:40:00.000+13:00

Long-time book trade personality Andrew Rumbles reviews William Boyd's latest on his blog founded last November, AndrewTalksBooks .

J'aime Paris: A taste of Paris in 200+ culinary destinations

2012-01-31T11:07:00.000+13:00

Was there a more beautiful book than this one published anywhere in 2011? Not that I came across. Some adjectives that can be applied to this stunner include beautiful, alluring, awesome, magnificent, classy, dazzling, elegant, ravishing - I had better stop there but truly this is the most lavishly photographed book you will come across in a long long time.

I may never visit any of the famous and not so famous foodie haunts featured in it but I shall treasure this book as my souvenir of the twenty or so times I have been fortunate enough to visit that most appealing of cities. Believe me it is a stunning. And I must add too a snip at NZ$60.

In the book you join France's most celebrated chef, Alain Ducasse, on a personal journey around Paris as he reveals his favourite foodie haunts including restaurants, cafes, local bistros, patisseries and other artisanal stores. From a morning croissant on the Canal Saint-Martin to a magical dinner on the Eiffel Tower, Alain Ducasse takes you on a stunning gourmet tour of Paris. From his own 3-star restaurants to his favourite icecream store, to his insider's tip on the best local creperie in town, Ducasse share the stories, histories and encounters with the men and women who make up Paris' extraordinary culinary landscape. Spectacularly photographed, Paris by Alain Ducasse showcases the gourmet highlights of the capital, telling of the Chef's passion for cookery and his sincere love of Paris.

It is a work that will set all admirers of beauty, excellence and authenticity dreaming, wherever they may live. I am dreaming now, here in Auckland, NZ as I write this and again browse through the pages.

Also included, tucked handily in to the back inside cover, is a pocket size listing of all the places listed in the book complete with address details, websites, and a brief description of each. The book itself is 598 pages long - not one to take on a plane as it is likely to contribute to excess baggage problems! And the restaurant note book included runs to 56 pages.

Don't miss this one.

As Barnes & Noble Goes, So Goes the Future of Publishing

2012-01-31T10:44:00.001+13:00

From Sam Sattler's Book Case Blog. (always worth a visit).

A New York Barnes and Noble Location

Not all that long ago, I was able to choose between buying a a recently published book from Barnes and Noble, B. Dalton, Borders, Book Stop, Crown Books, and even a handful of really good, but much smaller, booksellers. Now there are just Barnes and Noble and the Books-A-Million chains, the latter of which has never had much of a presence in Houston. When they first appeared, all of the national chains were harshly accused of running out of business all the little guys that had been selling books locally for decades. The chains were most definitely cast as the bad guys, and they probably were. Now, however, I would kill to have them back because even the last standing giant, Barnes and Noble, may not be long for this world and the little guys are not likely to return even if that happens.

The CNBC website has posted a heartbreaking, and terrifying, New York Times article clearly presenting the predicament that traditional publishers are in today. The publishers recognize that the survival of Barnes and Noble is now closely tied to their own future survival. This is true, despite the fact, that the bookseller is walking a very fine line itself as it tries to compete with Amazon in the e-book market while not, as a result, entirely killing off so much of the demand for printed books that it has to close its brick and mortar bookstores. Without Barnes and Noble's bookstores, the future of printed books will be much different than today - and many experts are already predicting that Barnes and Noble has started down the path of a long, slow death spiral of its own.

Without Barnes & Noble, the publishers’ marketing proposition crumbles. The idea that publishers can spot, mold and publicize new talent, then get someone to buy books at prices that actually makes economic sense, suddenly seems a reach. Marketing books via Twitter, and relying on reviews, advertising and perhaps an appearance on the “Today” show doesn’t sound like a winning plan.

What publishers count on from bookstores is the browsing effect. Surveys indicate that only a third of the people who step into a bookstore and walk out with a book actually arrived with the specific desire to buy one.

While publishers’ fates are closely tied to Barnes & Noble, said John Sargent, the C.E.O. of Macmillan, it’s not all about them. “Anybody who is an author, a publisher, or makes their living from distributing intellectual property in book form is badly hurt,” he said, “if Barnes & Noble does not prosper.”

If, as a true book-lover, any of this scares you or makes you nervous, you should read the entire article. It will terrify you and make you wonder if Jeff Bevos, head of Amazon, is on the verge of killing off the industry dearest to our hearts...and yet, few of us can resist the lure of Amazon's cheap prices and quick delivery. Are we nuts?

‘The Help’ Wins Three SAG Awards

2012-01-31T10:43:00.002+13:00

By Maryann Yin on Galley Cat January 30, 2012

The film adaptation of Katheryn Stockett‘s The Help took three awards at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards last night, including Best Ensemble Cast.
Follow this link for the full list of winners. Lead actress Viola Davis and supporting actress Octavia Spencer (both pictured, via) also won SAG Awards for their roles as Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. Spencer recently received the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
Both Davis and Spencer have been nominated for Academy Awards. The Envelope had this quote from Spencer: “I love taking men home. I would be lying if I didn’t say to you I would love to win an Oscar. But we have a group of brilliantly talented actresses, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that because I’ve won these [awards] then I’ll win [the Oscar].” (Via The L.A. Times)

Mary McCallum's Tuesday Poem: The Barn

2012-01-31T09:20:00.001+13:00

Tuesday Poem: The Barn

Here, it is that we are
a breath outwards
returning, the gate –
on a slant – the paint pulling
from the wood – closes –
we let it,
let go of the road,
the run of fences, the tin-cut
tilting hills, the world’s rim, let
the dog out to run,
and we drive
with the windows wound
down - lavender -
olive trees - cypresses.
The barn, at last. Blushes! – there
you are.

Here, it is that we are
a breath outwards
returning, and not much
more than a breath this time,
not much more than skin
and bone,
rubbed thin by all
our comings and goings, all this
living in the light. We can see
through our scraps of selves
to paint the colour
of ox-blood wrinkling
like the skin on milk around
the double-hung windows.
In the exposed
wood, in the beginnings of
rot, in the rare blushing light.

Here, it is – (breath outwards)
a glimpse (returning) – that time –
when the paint clung so
tightly the timber groaned,
and in the stampeding wind –
in the hot sun – under the welt of stars –
the barn was an instrument
filled with our spit and wild
breathing. Daughter, plump
as a pigeon,
flapping on the ground
by a tree in a bag for planting,
and her brothers
snickering like ponies
on their way back from the frogpond –
their tins and string and
percussive boots.

Light is trickery.
The paint
blisters and peels,
and it’s all we can do
not to help it off.
My knuckles
rest
on the warm wood.
I lean close.
I feel it - or someone - humming.

Mary McCallum

This is a poem I worked on over the summer up at the place we call The Barn. It's ours and it's blssful - as a place to be alone and with family, and to write. There are some photos of our summer here with a glimpse of The Barn.

The poem was written to contribute to an exhibition as part of the Fringe Festival here in Wellington. It's called Translucent Landscapes and it's opening March 1. There are 11 of us involved: a number of visual artists (including installation artists, videomedia artists etc), a composer, and me. I have written four poems for the exhibition so far and am wondering how to present them now (follow the link to Translucent Landscapes above for some thinking on that.)

In this poem, the theme of the exhibition is concentrated around the line: 'Light is trickery' - the way light can 'show' us what's real and what's not - shining onto the present and yet somehow 'lifting' it like paint - summoning the past as real as if it's there in front of us - the paint - the wood - the paint - the wood - and the way light, too, can wear away at what's there now - 'too much living in the light' - so, again, the past comes through - bidden and unbidden ... these things preoccupy me...

At the Barn there's no internet connection - although I can use my phone when I need to. There's also no Mac computer, just an old laptop which is rather slow. So, I write a lot by hand at the Barn without interruption, which means poems written there are different somehow.

Do go and read the Paul Green poem taster at the Tuesday Poem hub - and the fascinating commentary by Helen Rickerby. Truly it's worth it.

BLOG STATS

2012-01-31T09:08:00.001+13:00

Almost 14,000 visitors last week, around 2000 more than the average week.

They came from:

51% New Zealand

12% USA

8% UK

5% Australia

2% each France, Canada, India

1% each Germany/Italy/Spain

15% Spread across 51 other countries

Excitement at the post office

2012-01-31T06:58:00.001+13:00

Three individual parcels in the mail, each containing a book, all special books:

LETTERS OF FRANK SARGESON
Selected and edited by Sarah Shieff
Vintage
Hardback - $49.99
Enthusiastically reviewed by Patrick Evans in the Sunday Star Times yesterday so far I have only dipped into it but I must say what I have read I have found riveting.

PHANTOM
Jo Nesbo
Harvill Secker - $37.99
Hey hey hey, yes, being published in NZ on 3 February (nearly 6 weeks ahead of the UK publication) the much anticipated new Jo Nesbo thriller featuring Harry Hole. Can't wait to get into this so it is promoted to number three in the bedside pile!

THE DAY SHE CRADLED ME
Sacha de Bazin
Black Swan - $37.99
A debut novel from this Nelson-based author. An historical novel, which the publishers say has been exhaustively researched, featuring the life of Millie Dean, the only NZ woman ever to be hanged, and a legendary figure in Southland.

Accused of infanticide and awaiting trial and then sentence, Minnie confides in the Reverend Lindsay. Alternating between these two contrasting personalities, the novel tells Minnie's version of events. From her oppressive upbringing in Victorian Scotland to adulthood in Southland, Minnie battles her own nature and the hardships of colonial life and social hypocrisy. Once Minnie is tried, she has to face her impending execution, while the Reverend Lindsay, who has become her unlikely ally, fights to prevent her paying the ultimate price for society's sins.
This book is going to attract a lot of attention.

About the author:

Sacha de Bazin (right) is a 38 year old mother of 5 children, who range in ages from 12 down to 2. Previously she was a primary school teacher, with a BA in English. She grew up in Tokoroa, studied in Auckland, raised children in Canterbury and recently moved to Nelson. This is her first novel.

New publisher, new New Zealand author

2012-01-31T06:57:00.001+13:00

An appealing looking novel arrived in the mail last week from Hachette NZ published under the Two Roads imprint. I had not heard of the Two Roads imprint before, it just said inside the book, a Hodder & Stoughton imprint, so I wrote and enquired about it. Two Roads Publisher Lisa Highton has now replied:

When I started Two Roads books just a year ago I found whatI wanted in a book, either to read or to publish, came down to just four words:stories voices places lives. Like many readers I wanted a strongpage-turning story, told in an original voice, transporting readers toother places and telling us about other people's lives and, thereby, ourown.

People often ask me 'how do I know I want to publish a book - fiction ornon-fiction?' It's actually a kind of magic, almost a physicalreaction...I knew I wanted to publish TheSea on Our Skin from the moment I set foot on theisland's beach, I could hear the waves, smell the sea and the firstwords seemed to say... let me tell you a story...and this is avery beguiling story from a new and talented writer. It seemed a perfectfit for a new fiction list.

On themorning of the wedding of Ioane Matete and Amalia Hoko, it rained. The cloudsthat had been waiting, dark and swollen for days, gave in to their impatienceand a torrent of water pounded the island. The damp between Ioane’s toes madehis feet itch and the itch in his feet made him desperate to move on. He was anexplorer, not used to staying still. As soon as the wedding – by which he meantthe wedding night – was over, he would leave his new bride and set out oncemore on his travels.

Surprisinglyfew books are set in the South Seas and maybe it took a travelling Scottishgirl to write one (after all there is precedent, with Robert Louis Stevensonaka Tusitala). Madeleine's writing has a kind of island rhythm as wefollow the story of Amalia, her marriage to Ioane and their four unusualchildren.

About the author:

Madeleine Tobert
Originally from Scotland, Madeleine spent several years in the Pacific islands. She tried to leave but found she just couldn’t. She now lives in Auckland with her Fijian husband. The Sea on Our Skin is her first book.
Madeleine’s website here

Footnote:

Thanks Lisa, The Sea on Our Skin looks most appealing, and is now in my reading pile.Best wishes with your new imprint.

The self-epublishing bubble

2012-01-31T06:51:00.002+13:00

In August 2011, Ewan Morrison published an article entitled Are Books Dead and Can Authors Survive?. Here, he tracks the self-epublishing euphoria of the last five months and argues that we are at the start of an epublishing bubble

Ewan Morrison - guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012

Unlikely to last very long ... a bubble rises. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

The internet is full of ironies. I, for one, could never have guessed that writing about the end of books would generate more income for me than actually publishing the damn things. I've been on an End of Books reading tour since August and it turns out that what the internet gurus say about consumers being more willing to pay for events, speeches and gigs, rather than buying cultural objects, is now becoming true.
At the other end of the political spectrum from me, among the epublishing enthusiasts and digital fundamentalists, similar ironies are playing out: there is now a boom industry in "How to get rich writing ebooks" manuals, as well as a multitude of blogs offering tips and services, and a new breed of specialists who'll charge you anything from $37 to $149 to get your ebook into shape.
This all seems like a repeat of the boom in get-rich-quick manuals and "specialists" that appeared around blogs and etrading. Did anyone actually get rich from writing blogs, you may ask? Well, according to Jaron Lanier (author of You are not a Gadget) there are only a handful of people in the world who can prove that they make a living from blogging: it's entirely possible that more money was made by those who wrote and sold the how-to manuals than by the bloggers themselves. But who cares, right? It's all part of the euphoria of digital change, and technological innovation is as unstoppable a force as fate. Reports show that paper book sales are "tanking" – down a massive 54.3% while ebook sales are up triumphantly by 138%. The revolution will be epublished, and we're all going to be part of it.
All of this ebook talk is becoming a business in itself. Money is being made out of thin air in this strange new speculative meta-practice: there are seminars, conferences and courses springing up everywhere, even at the Society of Authors (a writers' union which, until recently, was largely against epublication). Television and radio programmes are being made about self-epublishing (I've personally been asked to speak about it on 12 occasions since August). Everyone can be a writer now: it only takes 10 minutes to upload your own ebook, and according to the New York Times "81% of people feel they have a book in them ... And should write it"

Full story at The Guardian.

While at Galley Cat:

Should Entrepreneurs Self-Publish?

By Jason Boog on Galley Cat, January 30, 2012

Formula Capital managing director and author James Altucher wrote a TechCrunch post this weekend explaining “Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book.”
In the article, Altucher bashed the Penguin publicity team that worked on one of his earlier books and urged entrepreneurs to abandon traditional publishing. What do you think of his provocative article?
Check it out: “You’re an entrepreneur because you feel you have a product or an idea or a vision that stands out among your competitors (if you don’t stand out, pack it in and come up with a new idea). You know how to do something better than anyone else in the world. How do let the world know that you are better? A business card won’t cut it. People will throw it away. And everyone’s got a website with an ‘About’ button. Give away part (or all) of your ideas in a book.” (Link via Publishers Weekly; Image via Google Plus)

Erotic books popular with e-readers

2012-01-31T06:48:00.005+13:00

CBC News - Posted: Jan 28, 2012

Lady Mechatronic and the Steampunked Pirates is one of many popular erotic e-books offered by B.C.'s eXtasy Books. ((Devine Destinies/eXtasy books))

Sales have soared for erotic literature with the advent of e-readers such as Kobo and Kindle, with one company in British Columbia reaping the benefits.
Tina Haveman, who's based in Squamish, B.C., north of Vancouver, owns a busy digital erotic publishing company and she says there are a lot of “closet readers” who would never admit to liking that kind of literature.
“Customers are starting to discover them and finding that they can read certain books that they do not want other people to see and in privacy,” Haveman, who runs eXtasy books, told CBC Radio.
The e-publisher notes that sales took off in early 2010 and doubled last year. She expects them to triple in 2012 with a majority of downloaders being female. Xtasy has more than 1,000 titles in its “store” including ones such as the paranormal Dragon’s Pearl, the hybrid fantasy/Victorian Lady Mechatronic and the Steampunk Pirates and the Western-tinged Dead Man’s Diamond.
“Women read a lot more than men. It’s always been that way.”
But within that group, interests are wide: from inspirational romance to stories involving werewolves to gay romance – each selling for between $3 and $4 online.
Nathan Maharaj, Kobo’s merchandising director, called eXtasy a Canadian success story.
“It’s reduced barriers to entry for publishers as well as for customers looking to get into it.”
“You can actually, in some ways, enjoy the fact that you’re doing something a little bit naughty in public,” Knabe said. “You could be reading your e-reader on public transit.”
According to Maharaj, sexy books are regularly cracking bestseller lists: “At any given moment in the list of the top 100 most popular titles on Kobo in any given territory there’s always some work of erotica in there."

Russian billionaire leads a London bookshop revolution

2012-01-31T06:41:00.004+13:00

Adam Sherwin - The Indpendent - Saturday 28 January 2012

It is a literary innovation that will delight London's influx of Russians – and intrigue the intelligence services. Waterstones will open a Russian-language "bookshop" within its flagship Piccadilly store next month.

Russian-speaking assistants will be recruited for the shop, which is the personal passion of Alexander Mamut, the Russian billionaire whose A&NN Group bought the high-street bookseller last year in a £53m deal.
Mr Mamut, who says he enjoys reading high-quality literature in Russian and English, has named the new store "Slova", Russian for "words". It will be housed on the ground floor mezzanine level of the Piccadilly branch and contain almost 5,000 titles.
Slova is expected to become a meeting point for the more literary-minded Russians in the capital. As well as stocking the classics of Russian literature – Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov – it will showcase commercial writers such as Boris Akunin and Polina Dashkova, Russia's most successful crime author, who has sold 40 million books. The move is the next stage in Mr Mamut's plan to revitalise Waterstones under James Daunt, its new managing director, by serving local communities.Mr Daunt told The Bookseller magazine: "For Russophiles and the large, vibrant Russian community in London, we aim to make Slova an irresistible literary and cultural destination. One won't be surprised at the source of the idea, given Waterstones' ownership."

Full story at The Independent.

A statement from Peter Robertson, President of Interlitq (now at www.interlitq.wordpress.com)

2012-01-31T06:28:00.002+13:00

“Itwas, of course, disappointing that Arts Council England did not choose to lookoutwards but, in any case, we were notdefeated, but only strengthened by thatapparent setback, and Interlitq has now regrouped successfully in order toengage in its essential undertaking—which is to publish the finestinternational literature. And, to that end, publication of Interlitq has, forthe time being, migrated to

www.interlitq.wordpress.com

Theobjective of Interlitq is to continue to publish fine literature, in an arrayof languages, and on a daily basis, instead of publishing only every threemonths which was, in fact, limiting. Let me stress that Interlitq is alsocommitted to providing a continuous platform for outstanding New Zealandliterature and, to this end, we have on our new site already published work byNZ writers such as Martha Morseth:

http://interlitq.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/interlitq-is-delighted-to-publish-its-poem-in-english-for-today-13-01-11-on-achieving-by-new-zealand-author-martha-morseth/

http://interlitq.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/interlitq-is-delighted-to-publish-its-poem-in-english-for-today-19-01-12-at-night-by-new-zealand-author-martha-morseth/

JaneSeaford:

http://interlitq.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/interlitq-is-delighted-to-publish-its-prose-in-english-for-25-01-12-the-story-one-of-those-days-by-new-zealand-author-jane-seaford/

andKaren Zelas:

http://interlitq.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/interlitq-is-delighted-to-publish-its-poem-in-english-for-23-01-12-desire-by-new-zealand-author-karen-zelas-a-contributor-to-issue-11-of-interlitq-2/

http://interlitq.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/interlitq-is-delighted-to-publish-its-poem-in-english-for-25-01-12-lunch-with-cook-by-new-zealand-author-karen-zelas-a-contributor-to-issue-11-of-interlitq/

andwe will be publishing a further two poems by Karen Zelas this week, with thepoem “Waiting” being Interlitq’s poem for 30.01.12.

Furthermore,we are now looking forward to publishing many NZ writers over coming weeksalongside outstanding artwork by NZ artists.

Ivery much hope that you will all continue to enjoy Interlitq, which will continueto look outwards, to nurture literary talent across the world.”

PeterRobertson

Franzen: E-books Bad for Society

2012-01-31T06:19:00.001+13:00

The Daily Beast

First it was the iPhone, now it's the e-book. Jonathan Franzen, (left-Neilson Barnard / Getty Images) the author of Freedom and The Corrections, launched a passionate defense of the printed book—and an attack on e-books—at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia. “The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology,” said Franzen. “And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model.” Wondering whether nonelectronic print will be around in 50 years, he said he fears that “it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

Read it at The Telegraph

The Bookstore’s Last Stand - everyone has something to say about Barnes & Noble

2012-01-31T06:18:00.000+13:00

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times -William J. Lynch Jr., chief executive of Barnes & Noble, with a wall full of e-readers at its site in Silicon Valley, where 300 employees are building the company's digital side.

By JULIE BOSMAN - New York Times - Published: January 28, 2012

A magazine display at a Barnes & Noble store. The company's C.E.O. says the idea that e-readers will make bookstores obsolete is nonsense.

IN March 2009, an eternity ago in Silicon Valley, a small team of engineers here was in a big hurry to rethink the future of books. Not the paper-and-ink books that have been around since the days of Gutenberg, the ones that the doomsayers proclaim — with glee or dread — will go the way of vinyl records.

No, the engineers were instead fixated on the forces that are upending the way books are published, sold, bought and read: e-books and e-readers. Working in secret, behind an unmarked door in a former bread bakery, they rushed to build a device that might capture the imagination of readers and maybe even save the book industry.

They had six months to do it.

Running this sprint was, of all companies, Barnes & Noble, the giant that helped put so many independent booksellers out of business and that now finds itself locked in the fight of its life. What its engineers dreamed up was the Nook, a relative e-reader latecomer that has nonetheless become the great e-hope of Barnes & Noble and, in fact, of many in the book business.

Several iterations later, the Nook and, by extension, Barnes & Noble, at times seem the only things standing between traditional book publishers and oblivion.

Inside the great publishing houses — grand names like Macmillan, Penguin and Random House — there is a sense of unease about the long-term fate of Barnes & Noble, the last major bookstore chain standing. First, the megastores squeezed out the small players. (Think of Tom Hanks’s Fox & Sons Books to Meg Ryan’s Shop Around the Corner in the 1998 comedy, “You’ve Got Mail”.) Then the chains themselves were gobbled up or driven under, as consumers turned to the Web. B. Dalton Bookseller and Crown Books are long gone. Borders collapsed last year.

No one expects Barnes & Noble to disappear overnight. The worry is that it might slowly wither as more readers embrace e-books. What if all those store shelves vanished, and Barnes & Noble became little more than a cafe and a digital connection point? Such fears came to the fore in early January, when the company projected that it would lose even more money this year than Wall Street had expected. Its share price promptly tumbled 17 percent that day.

Lurking behind all of this is Amazon.com, the dominant force in books online and the company that sets teeth on edge in publishing. From their perches in Midtown Manhattan, many publishing executives, editors and publicists view Amazon as the enemy — an adversary that, if unchecked, could threaten their industry and their livelihoods.

Full story at the New York Times.

While over at PublishersLunch they have this to say:

Everyone Wants to Write About Barnes & Noble

Towards the end of the NYT business sectionarticle that follows the standard narrative, they note that in BN's 300-personPalo Alto division, "engineers were putting final touches on their fifthe-reading device, a product that executives said would be released sometimethis spring." The story also says that ceo William Lynch "plans toexperiment with slightly smaller stores."

Meanwhile, Amazon offers another nebulousgrowth statistic to the paper. For the nine-week holiday sales period, endingDecember 31, "Kindle unit sales, including both the Kindle Fire ande-reader devices, increased 177 percent over the same period last year."(Amazon will report earnings for the quarter on Tuesday afternoon.)

Separately, though Bloomberg doesn'texactly nail the details, it appears that Barnes & Noble's deal withWaterstones to bring the Nook to the UK has become less of a secret, though thelaunch is still a ways off.
NYT
Bloomberg

And at Book2Book:

B&N to ink first overseas Nook deal with Waterstones?

Barnes & Noble is developing a partnership with U.K.'s Waterstones Booksellers Ltd. to sell the digital tablet in its 300 locations this year. Analysts are skeptical of the success.

Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, and Fiona Allen, a spokeswoman for Waterstones, declined to comment.

crainsnewyork.com
theverge.com
Bloomberg

Perhaps the Greatest Comics Book Store in the World

2012-01-31T06:13:00.003+13:00

Publishing Perspectives

"People don’t revere the old comics enough," says Manuel Morin (above), ownerof Paris' BD Spirit, which offers 50-80,000 titles, many of them collectorsitems.
Link here for story.

DISCUSSION:
WhatMakes a Great Comic Book Store?
The one thing a great comics book store must do -- unlike a bookstore -- isensure you never forget your in a comic book store.

The Clark explores the art of copying ~ "Copycat: Reproducing Works of Art"

2012-01-31T06:10:00.005+13:00

Art Knowledge News - Posted: 29 Jan 2012 0

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.- The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute opened itslatest exhibition, Copycat: Reproducing Works of Art, on January 29. Exploringthe line between innovation and imitation, the exhibition features 50 printsand photographs that are both original works of art and repetitions ofdrawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, and architecture created by otherartists. The exhibition highlights the complex process of copying by studyingreplications of many rarely seen works from the Clark’s permanent collection,including those by Albrecht Dürer, Paul Cézanne, Eugène Delacroix, Rembrandtvan Rijn, Roger Fenton, and Édouard Manet, among others. The exhibition alsomarks the first public presentation of one of the Clark’s recent acquisitions,Jean Dughet’s series The Seven Sacraments. Copycat will be on view in theClark’s Manton Research Center building through April 1st.

WHITE CLOUD WORLDS - NZ Science Fiction and Fantasy Art Exhibition and Book

2012-01-30T15:14:00.000+13:00

White Cloud Worlds is a never-before seen collection of science fiction and fantasy artwork from New Zealand, 'The Land of the Long White Cloud'.

Embark upon a journey of exploration into a wealth of visually rich worlds and imaginings, conjured to life by 27 established and emerging artists.

The artists are profiled with a selection of their art accompanied by text written in their own unique voice, sharing their origins, inspirations and a rare glimpse into how they work.

White Cloud Worlds includes written contributions from some of the world’s most celebrated leaders in the fields of science fiction and fantasy art, such as Guillermo Del Toro, Richard Taylor, Alan Lee and John Howe.

This book honours the imaginations of the artists it showcases and gives readers a unique opportunity to be a part of their worlds.

White Cloud Worlds is published by Harper Collins.It is also available in a special slipcase edition which includes a limited edition signed print by one of the artists.

The White Cloud Worlds exhibition will open at the Lopdell House Gallery in Titirangi, Auckland on February 16th and will run through until the 15th of April.

‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and Its Sci-Fi Heroine

2012-01-30T14:46:00.000+13:00

By PAMELA PAUL - The New York Times - Published: January 27, 2012

Bookish girls tend to mark phases of their lives by periods of intense literary character identification. Schoolgirls of the ’70s had their Deenie and Sally J. Freedman and Margaret moments, muddling through adolescence in the guise of one Judy Blume heroine or another. And for almost a century and a half, girls have fluctuated between seasons of Amy and Meg and Jo March, imagining themselves alternately with blond corkscrew curls, eldest sister wisdom or writerly ambitions.

But for those who came of age anytime during the past half-century, the most startling transformation occurred upon reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Medal-winning classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It was under L’Engle’s influence that we willed ourselves to be like Meg Murry, the awkward girl who suffered through flyaway hair, braces and glasses but who was also and to a much greater degree concerned with the extent of her own intelligence, the whereabouts of her missing scientist father, the looming threat of conformity and, ultimately, the fate of the universe.

Meg Murry, in short, was a departure from the typical “girls’ book” protagonist — as wonderful as many of those varied characters are. Meg was a heroine of science fiction.

In 1962, when “A Wrinkle in Time,” after 26 rejections, was acquired by John Farrar at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, science fiction by women and aimed at female readers was a rarity. The genre was thought to be down-market and not up to the standards of children’s literature — the stuff of pulp and comic books for errant schoolboys. Even today, girls and grown women are not generally fans. Half of 18- to 24-year-old men say that science fiction is their favorite type of book, compared with only one-fourth of young women, according to a 2010 study by the Codex Group, a consulting firm to the publishing industry. And while a sizable portion of men continue to read science fiction throughout their lives, women don’t. Thirty-two percent of adult male book buyers are science-fiction fans compared with only 12 percent of women. When Joanna Russ, one of the few successful female science-fiction writers, died last year, her obituary in The New York Times referred to her as a writer who helped “deliver science fiction into the hands of the most alien creatures the genre had yet seen — women.”

Full story at The New York Times.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS

2012-01-30T14:38:00.001+13:00

So many people enthused to me about this book, it received so many positive reviews, and it was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, so in the end while on holiday I got myself a copy and read it. And I have to say I loved it.
From the terrific cover and great title to the captivating story I was enchanted; and even though the story is about a couple of hired killers,and is set in California during the gold rushes of the 1850's, it had me laughing out loud on several occasions.
I reckon the Cohen Brothers could make it into a great movie - that would have a nice ring to it - Cohen Brothers make the Sisters Brothers!
Allen & Unwin - $36.99

A local politician, a music reviewer and an author walk into a bar…

2012-01-30T11:28:00.001+13:00

Sound like the beginning of a good story?

Come along to True Stories Told Live on Monday 13 February and hear some fantastic stories, told by local politician Ray Ahipene-Mercer, renowned music store owner and reviewer Colin Morris, and authors Barbara Else, Fleur Beale (left), Catherine Robertson, with two artistic friends.

True Stories Told Live events brim with live, unrehearsed tales, told by people with a flair for storytelling. Stories make us laugh, cry and crinkle our foreheads – there is no better way to energise a quiet Monday evening.

The event, with the theme of family holidays, will raise funds for the Book Council’s Writers in Schools programme, which has been bringing books, authors and children together since 1973.

Education Manager Sarah Forster says ‘Family holidays bring out the best and the worst in people. Prepare to be enthralled and dismayed at the antics of these brilliant creative people.’

'At True Stories Told Live, the story must have a beginning, middle and an end, and it must be true, but that’s all’, says the Book Council’s Susanna Andrew.

Andrew says that past True Stories events prove that something happens in the exchange of a story. ‘What makes these events so special is not just the confessional quality of the performance. It's also the suspension of judgement that's required, a critical faculty we would normally employ, consciously or not, when we embark on a novel, start a film, or sit down in the theatre.’

Tickets are $15 for members of the Book Council, or $20 for non-members.
Go to www.bookcouncil.org.nz to book your tickets and learn more about us.

True Stories Told Live – Family Holidays
Where: Meow Café, 9 Edward St, Wellington
When: 6.15pm, Monday 13 February

Waitangi Day launch for Gavin Bishop's 'The House that Jack Built' in English and Te Reo Maori

2012-01-30T11:24:00.001+13:00

Gecko Press is pleased to launch a new edition of The House that Jack Built by Gavin Bishop, and the first Te Reo Maori edition - Koinei te Whare na Haki i Hanga - as part of Porirua's popular, multi-cultural Waitangi Day event, The Festival of the Elements . The Festival will take place from 11am till after 7pm at Te Rauparaha Park and Arena and Pataka Museum, Porirua on Monday 6 February.

Throughout the day, the book will be read in both English (by Gavin Bishop) and Te Reo Maori (by Moira Wairama) in the storytelling gazebo at NZ Community Trust Stadium (Te Rauparaha Arena). Readings will take place every hour from 11.30am to 4.30pm.

At 2.35pm, author/illustrator Gavin Bishop (left) and translator Piripi Walker will discuss The Story of the House that Jack Built: Art and Translation at the Helen Smith Community Meeting Room at Pataka Museum (duration: 45 minutes).

Throughout the day, children can help build a giant 'House that Jack Built' sculpture using natural materials, with artist Michelle Whale in the NZ Community Trust Stadium.

Martin Edmond reviews Road Markings

2012-01-30T11:19:00.000+13:00

A nation exacts a penance from those who dared to leave her wrote James Joyce, explaining why his only play was called Exiles; the line is much quoted but most people who do so leave off the next bit: payable on their return. Michael Jackson left his native New Zealand while still a young man, in the first instance for Melbourne, where he worked among the homeless and had his first encounters with Aboriginality. Later he did similar work in London and the Congo and later still went to Sierra Leone, beginning there the fieldwork that has distinguished his vocation as an anthropologist. He has been far more diligent in his repayments than JJ ever was, returning again and again and, each time, illuminating forgotten corners of what he calls the diffuse and dimly lit world of New Zealand’s collective imagination.

In Road Markings, published as a ebook by Rosa Mira Books of Dunedin and subtitled An Anthropologist in the Antipodes, Jackson sets out on a road trip through his natal land that is also an inquiry into the idea of firstness: the place of origin in our consciousness, the meaning of beginnings, the aura of the primary as a way of authenticating both personal experience and historical truth. This might sound daunting as a theme but his exploration of it is not: this is autobiographical writing of the highest order, in which the personal is resolutely explored but never just for its own sake: Jackson’s own history, that of his family and friends, his colleagues, his mentors, his literary heroes, are woven together to make, not so much a tapestry as a finely calibrated, gorgeously textured, many-coloured mahi harakeke.
To read Martin's full review link to his blog here.

My Week With Marilyn - reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

2012-01-30T07:06:00.000+13:00

In the 50 years since her death the legend of Marilyn Monroe has lost none of its power to fascinate. One of this summer’s must-see films is My Week With Marilyn starring Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench. It’s based on two diaries written in 1956 by Colin Clark, then an Oxford graduate who landed a job as a gofer on the set of The Prince And The Showgirl.

Usually I prefer to read the original book before I see the film and conveniently HarperCollins has just re-released the two diaries in one volume. My Week With Marilyn by Colin Clark ($24.99) is an engrossing period piece. It may not shed a great deal of light on who Marilyn really was beneath the veneer of fame and beauty – Clark like most men fell under her spell and this clouded his judgement – but it does provide a glimpse into an extraordinary and vanished world.

The reason two diaries cover the same period is Clark waited until after Marilyn’s death before publishing the details of his more intimate relationship with the star.

The first diary is the longest. It opens with Clark’s dogged attempts to get a job at Laurence Olivier’s film company. He gets his foot in the door partly because he is well-connected – his parents live in a castle and are friends with everyone from Olivier to Noel Coward. Still he seems likeable enough: cheeky but charming, a lover of parties and pretty girls, and breezily determined to break into the movies.

At first he’s unimpressed with the woman he refers to as MM. “She looked absolutely frightful,” he says of her first appearance on the film set. “Nasty complexion, a lot of facial hair, shapeless figure and, when the glasses come off, a very vague look in her eye.” Yet by the very next day she’s worked her magic and he’s describing her as looking “like an angel”. Soon he’s finding excuses for her behaviour: her chronic lateness, her reliance on her acting coach, her need for booze and pills.

Observant and smart, Clark is in pole position to record the few ups and many downs of filming. His insights are honest and interesting and he watches Marilyn especially closely, observing the contradictions in her character as well as her wonderful figure.

The second diary fills in the blanks Clark left in the first. It covers the nine days when Marilyn, whose new marriage to playwright Arthur Miller is already shaky, draws him close to her. First they share a chicken salad and confidences; then a day trip, a swim and a kiss on the lips; finally a night in bed.

Clark – who died in 2002 - is adamant “nothing improper” happened between them. I’m not convinced and neither does his account of their private conversations always ring true to me. Nevertheless I found both diaries intriguing and entertaining, and I’ll be queuing for my ticket for the movie version when it releases in New Zealand in March.

Footnote:

Nicky Pellegrino, (right NZH photo), a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 29 January, 2012

Five Hundred Buildings of New York

2012-01-30T07:05:00.000+13:00

Five hundred glorious photographs showcase the finest, most majestic and most interesting examples of architecture in my most beloved city outside of New Zealand, New York. The book represents a photographic neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood tour of the city, capturing stately and historic buildings, monuments and engineering structures. Each building is showcased on it's own page in a rich and beautiful fine resolution monochrome photograph. The accompanying text identifies location and date of completion/renovation, the building's distinctive features and historical context.

Having just come back from almost a month in that great city how could I possibly leave this stunning door-stopper of a book on the shelf at the wonderful Matakana Village Bookshop?

PS-I wonder how many photographs I own of the Flat Iron Building? Dozens!

Published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, NZ$50.

Women writers turn to the horror story - Jeanette Winterson and Helen Dunmore among famous names venturing into the horror genre this year

2012-01-30T06:51:00.001+13:00

Vanessa Thorpe - The Observer, Sunday 29 January 2012

Helen Dunmore: hoping to scare the wits out of her readers. Photograph: Christopher Jones / Rex Features

As an icy wind blows in from the east, the grip of a good horror story is tightening its hold on many of Britain's leading literary talents. Terrifying new novels from outspoken author Jeanette Winterson and from the acclaimed novelist and children's writer Helen Dunmore are at the head of a blast of chilling fiction heading for British bookshops.
Where once an accomplished "lady novelist" in search of a change might have attempted a neat whodunnit or perhaps a cosy "Aga saga", suddenly the unholy desire to create a horror or ghost story has seized a range of established talents. Even the television book club presenter Judy Finnigan has been drawn to the genre for her debut novel, a ghost story that will be out this autumn.
Winterson, who had her first success with the novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, will try her hand at scaring her readers witless this summer with a story based on the infamous Pendle witch trials held at Lancaster castle in 1612. Dunmore, the writer much loved for her children's books, poetry and award-winning novels, has followed suit. Her first horror novel, a supernatural thriller called The Greatcoat, has been published by Hammer Books, the imprint of the now revived film studios that brought British cinema audiences a succession of gory titles from the 1950s to the 1970s. Dunmore's debut marks the publisher's decision to commission a series of original works rather than rely on the novelisations of horror films which it also publishes.
"The interesting fiction at the moment is playing with genres, slipping between them," said Hammer publisher Selina Walker. "So we're approaching all the literary or established greats to see whether they would like to write something with a paranormal twist."
This week Hammer's film version of Susan Hill's 1983 novel The Woman in Black, one of the most popular British ghost stories of modern times, is out in cinemas, starring Daniel Radcliffe as the unfortunate solicitor Arthur Kipps. But for Dunmore the work of two other women writers with the gift of instilling fear provided the chief inspiration. "Elizabeth Bowen's work influences me a lot, particularly The Demon Lover. I also love Daphne du Maurier," said the writer, who has turned to horror after writing 11 mainstream novels, including the Orange Prize-winning A Spell of Winter and The Siege.
"I was drawn to the genre because it is intensely dramatic material," she said. "To some extent it is a psychological playground. You wonder what is the match between the ghost and the person who is haunted. What is there in the past that has driven them to this point?"
The key, Dunmore believes, is to make the experiences described as "palpable" as possible, to carry the reader into the darkness: "It has got to have a lot of sensory richness."
Full story at The Observer

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art Presents the First Major William Blake Exhibition in Russia

2012-01-30T06:44:00.000+13:00

Written by John Cairncross Saturday, 28 January 2012 - Art Knowledge News

Moscow.- The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art is proud to present "William Blake and British Visionary Art" on view at the museum from November 29th through February 19th 2012. This is the first major exhibition to present Blake’s visual art in Russia as well as being the first exhibition to explore Blake and his legacy. The exhibition is a collaborative project between the Tate and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art in partnership with the British Council.Drawn mainly from Tate’s Collection alongside works generously lent from other British collections, the exhibition consists of approximately 110 of Blake's works, including many of his best known images such as The Ghost of a Flea c.1819-20. It also includes the recently discovered hand-coloured etchings from the major prophetic work The First Book of Urizen 1796 c.1818.

Although mainly overlooked during his lifetime, Blake's impact and influence on later generations of artists, writers and musicians has been enormous. His visionary ideas, and his ability to convey these in both poetry and painting, remain a major reference point in British culture today and this show aims to reveal his remarkable art and its visual legacy to a Russian audience. The expression of spiritual values through bodily form is the hallmark of Blake’s visionary art and came to influence both the Symbolist art of the later nineteenth century and the neo-romantic revival of the 1930s. Many of the artists associated with these movements saw Blake as a pioneer in imagining infinite possibilities for sensory and spiritual experience. His work has been a reference point for artists nationally and internationally and this exhibition will include over twenty works by British artists who have been influenced by Blake including Samuel Palmer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Piper and Francis Bacon.

As part of the Blake in Russia project a new Russian translation of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience has been jointly published by the British Council and the State Library of Foreign Literature. Blake was not so much a poet, printmaker and artist but rather that his chosen form allowed all these things to come together on one page. His illustrations were never set along aside the poems, and the poems were not typeset. Rather he actually made prints of his poems and pictures together. This is the first time that Blake’s illustrations have ever been published alongside his poetry in Russia.

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The museum's name is misleading, as it has nothing to do with the famous Russian poet. It was founded by professor Ivan Tsvetaev (father of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva). Tsvetaev persuaded the millionaire and philanthropist Yuriy Nechaev-Maltsov and the fashionable architect Roman Klein of the urgent need to give Moscow a fine arts museum. The museum building was designed by Roman Klein and Vladimir Shukhov and financed primarily by Yury Nechaev-Maltsov. Construction work began in 1898 and continued till 1912. Ivan Rerberg headed structural engineering effort on the museum site for 12 years, till 1909. Tsvetaev's dream was realised in May 1912, when the museum opened its doors to the public. The museum was originally named after Alexander III, although the government provided only 200,000 rubles toward its construction, in comparison with over 2 million from Nechaev-Maltsev. Its first exhibits were copies of ancient statuary, thought indispensable for the education of art students. The only genuinely ancient items - Moscow Mathematical Papyrus and Story of Wenamun - had been contributed by Vladimir Golenishchev three years earlier.

After the Russian capital was moved to Moscow in 1918, the Soviet government decided to transfer thousands of works from St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum to the new capital. The entire collection of Western art from the Museum Roumjantsev was added too. These paintings formed a nucleus of the Pushkin museum's collections of Western art. But the most important paintings were added later from the State Museum of New Western Art. These comprised Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artwork, including top works by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Georges Dufrénoy and Henri Matisse. Among them Van Goghs "Le Vigne Rouge" apparently the only painting sold during the artist's lifetime. In 1937, Pushkin's name was appended to the museum, because the Soviet Union marked the centenary of the poet's death that year. The Pushkin Museum is still a main depositary of Troy's fabulous gold looted from Troy by the German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann and taken by the Soviet Army (Red Army) from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The International musical festival Svyatoslav Richter's December nights has been held in the Pushkin museum since 1981. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.museum.ru/M296

Books in the Sunday papers

2012-01-29T16:50:00.000+13:00

After last week's almost total absence of space devoted to books it is nice to see Nicky Pellegrino back with her usual page in the Herald on Sunday while over at the more serious Sunday Star Times, Books Editor Mark Broatch has four pages including an excellent review by Patrick Evans of the just published, and most impressive, LETTERS OF FRANK SARGESON, selected & edited by Sarah Shieff and published under Random House's Vintage imprint.

Bookends: Doors of perception

2012-01-29T16:34:00.000+13:00

Marcus Berkmann - The Spectator -21 January 2012

Unlike most of the old rockers he writes about, the esteemed US critic Greil Marcus is becoming more prolific as he enters his twilight years. An eccentric monograph on Van Morrison was swiftly followed last autumn by a luxuriant collection of his writings on Bob Dylan, and now arrives The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years (Faber £14.99).

Marcus doesn’t just inhabit the more rarefied and cerebral wing of rock criticism: he pretty much defined it. Unlike most rock hacks he is not particularly interested in the musicians and their often tarnished legends. No, he listens and listens to the music, listens some more, thinks about it for years, listens some more and then finally commits his thoughts to print.
It doesn’t always work: some of his more olympian judgments on Morrison were quite barking, and suggested a need to get out more. But The Doors is a much better book. It probably helps that their time together was so compressed, and so long ago (1966-71), and that Marcus hasn’t written much about them before.
So this is a fresh set of unlikely connections, for every moment in every Doors song seems to remind him of something else — a car, a vista, a Thomas Pynchon novel, Charles Manson, Lady Gaga.
His book is therefore as much a journey through his mind as through their back catalogue. It’s a fascinating ride, although a working knowledge of Doors bootlegs would certainly come in handy.

And another review, from The Atlantic.

NZ's top chefs fess up in their books

2012-01-29T11:06:00.000+13:00

By Geraldine Johns - NZ Herald Jan 19, 2012

Geraldine Johns asks six of our top chefs what their favourite cookbooks are — the ones that really inspire them — and why.

Simon Wright, executive chef and co-owner of The French Cafe. Photo / Richard Robinson

Any frequent visitor to restaurants or cafes can attest that the talent of a chef does not lie in their ability to spell. Or punctuate. Menu-writing sins are themselves worthy of a book.
It doesn't really make a lot of sense when you consider that chefs - good ones at least - love nothing more than devouring a good cookbook. Their collections don't just provide information and inspiration; they catalogue their life's journey.
SIMON WRIGHT
Executive chef and co-owner of The French Cafe
One of the city's finest dining establishments, The French Cafe restaurant regularly takes home the big gongs when the major culinary prizes are dished out. A few years ago, Wright - who was born and raised in England - penned his own coffee table cookbook. He gave it the same title as his restaurant, which he co-owns with his wife, Creghan Molloy Wright.
"I collect cookbooks - I've probably got a couple of thousand - so it's hard to choose just three. I treasure them all. Every time I read one, I always find something I missed. I never really copy anything out, I think to myself 'oh, that looks good' and I might then go off on a tangent and do my own recipe".

CELIA HARVEY
Food writer, and chef at Greys Avenue Deli
When Celia Harvey lived and worked in London, she spent four years at, among other places, The River Cafe. There she earned tremendous (and deserved) high praise. We are lucky to have reclaimed her as one of ours, she has a gift for making all her food work beautifully with seemingly little effort. Harvey is the chef at Greys Avenue, recognised as the first Kosher deli in New Zealand.
"As a child - I would have been 9 or 10 - I remember reading Mum's cookbooks, especially one by [food writer and Britain's first television chef] Marguerite Patten, which I looked at a lot. Mum and Dad were going through a time of being vegetarians and I wanted to cook meat - a crown rib roast with little paper chef's hats.
"Then I got into cooking at intermediate school. I'd make bread for our sandwiches and chocolate cake for our lunch boxes. Mum bought me the Junior Cookbook series by Mary Pat Fergus. I still remember some of the recipes: lemon delicious pudding, chocolate self-saucing pudding.
"The books were spiral-bound, with step-by-step illustrations and kept in the bottom of the kitchen drawer, where Mum still keeps her cookbooks today.

SIMON GAULT

Executive chef and part owner of the Nourish Group
Everyone knows who Simon Gault is by now. Three seasons as a judge on MasterChef does that to you. But Gault had a culinary life long before the telly came calling. Long, long ago he had his own restaurant in his own name. Then came Euro. Gault is now executive chef and part-owner of the Nourish Group - a restaurant empire (including Euro) spanning the North Island. But Gault's stellar culinary career has not been entirely land-based. He's also enjoyed a few high seas adventures, as chef on a super-yacht to an ocean-going multimillionaire. And he likes to take to the skies too, he's a glider pilot instructor and pilot of vintage military aircraft.
"The Edmonds Cookery Book would definitely be my first pick. When I went to work on a super-yacht, I couldn't carry a lot of books. But that one is a good one. It has all the basics.
"The Edmonds is not a total chef's cookbook - but sometimes it's not about fancy food - it's about the simple things that you know will work, and if you want to fancy it up, you can. This is the cookbook that's my little secret weapon that I keep in the cupboard.
"I've also got a book called Food Lover's Companion [written by Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst]. It offers comprehensive definitions of nearly 6000 food, drink and culinary terms. That sounds highly boring - but it is a fantastic tool. I can flick to any page in that book and it will tell you everything you need to know about anything you want; every trick there is.
"I know it sounds crazy, but it's a well-thumbed book - especially when I'm writing recipes.
Read their full comments plus those of three other top chefs at the NZH online.

Charlotte Bronte's lost love letters revealed

2012-01-29T09:13:00.000+13:00

Love letters which reveal Charlotte Brontë's infatuation with her Belgian professor are to be published. The Telegraph - 27 January, 2012

Charlotte Bronte as a young woman Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy

The letters were sent by the Jane Eyre novelist to Professor Constantin Heger, an older man with a wife and children.Heger tore them up in shock, but they were retrieved from a rubbish bin by his wife who sewed them back together and preserved them.

One, composed in French, reads: "If my master withdraws his friendship from me entirely, I shall be absolutely without hope."

Another, with a postscript written in English, reads: "I must say one word to you in English - I wish I would write to you more cheerful letters, for when I read this over, I find it to be somewhat gloomy - but forgive me my dear master - do not be irritated at my sadness - according to the words of the Bible: 'Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh', and truly I find it difficult to be cheerful so long as I think I shall never see you more."

The letter was written in 1844, two years after Bronte, then age 28, met Heger, her tutor, and three years before the publication of Jane Eyre, her first major work.

The story echoes the plot of her 1853 novel Villette, about a young women with an unrequited love for her Belgian teacher.
Full piece at The Telegraph.

Vladimir Putin plans 100-book Russian canon all students must read

2012-01-29T09:05:00.000+13:00

The Russian prime minister prescribes his top 100 books for the nation

Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 January 2012 1

Vladimir Putin talks to students in the Siberian city of Tomsk on January 25. Photograph: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images

Vladimir Putin has laid out his plans to compile a canon of 100 Russian books "that every Russian school leaver will be required to read" in an attempt to preserve the "dominance of Russian culture".
In an article running to more than 4,500 words in Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, the Russian prime minister writes that "in the 1920s, some leading universities in the United States advocated something referred to as the Western Canon, a canon of books regarded as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture", adding that "each self-respecting student was required to read 100 books from a specially compiled list of the greatest books of the Western world".
Putin, who is running for a third term as president in March, says that Russia has "always been described as a 'reading nation'", and proposes taking a survey of the country's "most influential cultural figures" and compiling "a 100-book canon that every Russian school leaver will be required to read – that is, to read at home rather than study in class or memorise. And then they would be asked to write an essay on one of them in their final exams. Or at least let us give young Russians a chance to demonstrate their knowledge and world outlook in various student competitions."
Journalist Alexander Nazaryan, who is writing a novel about Russian immigrants in New York, called Putin's "cultural-unity-through-literature proposal" the Russian leader's "most chilling [plan] of all".
"Social engineering through state mandated literature: Nothing else that Putin has done has been quite so nakedly Soviet in its desire to manipulate the human intellect into docility," writes Nazaryan, predicting that "the books that will benefit from Putin's new cultural policy will almost certainly be Soviet-era schlock churned out by Writers' Union foot soldiers who glorified their compatriots' miserable existence".
Whether Putin's choices will feature in the specialist Russian bookshop due to open in Waterstones' Piccadilly branch next month remains to be seen. To be called Slova – Russian for "words" – the store will stock nearly 5,000 Russian language titles as well as Russian books in translation, covering areas from history to children's books and run by Russian-speaking booksellers.
"For Russophiles, and the large, vibrant Russian community in London, we aim to make Slova an irresistible literary and cultural destination," said James Daunt, who took over as Waterstones managing director last year when the chain was acquired by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut. "One won't be surprised at the source of the idea, given Waterstones' ownership, but it is a good one and perfect for this magnificent shop."

Reconsidering the Genius of Gertrude Stein

2012-01-29T08:56:00.000+13:00

By LYNNE TILLMAN - New York Times - Published: January 27, 2012

Approaching Gertrude Stein’s writing critically is tricky. Because she strove to reshape literary conventions — syntax, language usage, narrative order and the sense of making sense — any comment on her choices may already be rebuffed in her poetics and practice. Stein is a trickster. This may be why, as I read “Ida” and “Stanzas in Meditation,” both reissued in corrected, authoritative editions from Yale University Press, I remembered a Jonathan Richman lyric I’ll paraphrase as “Pablo Picasso never got called a jackass.”

Illustration by Joe Ciardiello

IDA
By Gertrude Stein. Edited by Logan Esdale.
Illustrated. 348 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $18.

STANZAS IN MEDITATION - The Corrected Edition
By Gertrude Stein. Edited by Susannah Hollister and Emily Setina.
Illustrated. 379 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $22.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is called a genius, and it’s from that vantage her writing is read — or not read, since awe and reverence are regularly met by dismissal and ridicule. Curiously, not every “genius” is equally suffocated by the label. Readers know the extraordinary reputations of Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf, but some prefer “Richard III” to “Richard II,” or “Mrs. Dalloway” to “Orlando.” They feel at liberty to discriminate.

Fewer readers imagine they can create their own Stein; many feel she is beyond their capacity to understand. Maybe this is because she has been claimed as the sine qua non of the avant-garde. But she aligned herself with her time. Being part of the “contemporary composition” was central to her work, a point she made in her trenchant essay (originally a lecture) “Composition as Explanation”: “The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.” Here, Stein wielded the novelty and surprise of her prose partly to explain how novelty and surprise surface from generation to generation, and theorized why the new in art and writing may first be thought ugly, then later beautiful or classic. In that same essay, she declared: “No one is ahead of his time.” (Andy Warhol, who like Stein is both adored and mocked, once said, “I’m very much a part of my times, of my culture, as much a part of it as rockets and television.” There are other parallels between Warhol and Stein, including their renown as aphorists. Stein: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Warhol: “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” But people have called Warhol a jackass, and everything else.)

Rest of story at the New York Times

Writers & Readers Week at the Festival

2012-01-29T08:43:00.001+13:00

Writers and Readers for all ages
With two special youth-focused days during the week, there’s plenty to enjoy for the next generation of Writers and Readers. On Friday 9 March an address from explorer and environmentalist Tim Flannery will head Schools Day – a series of three talks for secondary students. Other Schools Day events are Magic Realism from Kiwi writer Elizabeth Knox and American fantasy slipstream writer Kelly Link; and Terrific Characters, Dystopian Worlds from award-winning New Zealand young adult fiction writers Bernard Beckett and Jane Higgins. Teachers can make Schools Day bookings directly through the Festival website.

Sunday 11 March sees three family sessions at Young Writers and Readers Day at Downstage Theatre, with the rare opportunity to experience three of New Zealand’s most-loved children’s writers - Lynley Dodd, Gavin Bishop and Margaret Mahy.
Our two great Writers and Readers multi-passes, the Bookmark Pass and Take Five Pass, are on sale now. These multi-passes offer generous discounts to Embassy and Downstage sessions, with the Bookmark Pass also entitling holders to a preferential booking period from Friday 27 January 2012. Public bookings for Embassy and Downstage sessions open on Friday 3 February. Tickets to all other Writers and Readers Week events are available through Ticketek.

SAVE WITH A WRITERS AND READERS MULTI-PASS
Buy your Bookmark or Take Five Pass before the end of January and you could win a massive stack of Writers and Readers books!

A literary crime wave
There’s nothing like a good crime novel to get the mind ticking and the pulse racing. Bestselling Norwegian author Jo Nesbø heads up a crime strand that features some of the finest exponents of this most popular of literary forms. Scottish novelist Denise Mina will discuss her works set on the mean streets of Glasgow and three of New Zealand’s own crime writers – Paul Cleave, Vanda Symon and Paul Thomas - will talk taking crime into a distinctly local setting.
Don’t miss the Wellington debut of the feature film Headhunters, based on the Jo Nesbø novel of the same name, screening at 8.30pm on the same evening as Nesbø’s Embassy Session.

Photo - VUP.

Kevin Lawson R.I.P.

2012-01-29T08:29:00.000+13:00

David McGill writes to a friend:

They build a world
Out of collected years;

They shelter in rooms the dust

That will be their death.

Kevin Lawson ‘The Tennants’ (sic)

Miscellany Published by the Glenco 1961

Editor David McGill, who pleaded with Kevin to contribute, and he did, two poems.

David Mitchell also contributed, including:

I walk silent, silent

By the brooding lake

Watching the moon.

When Mitch died only months ago, I took out his collection Steal Away, Boy referencing his son, and really him too, and at the Open Mic Night at the local pub joined Gill Ward (a year ahead of us, contributor to Matika edited by Howard Patterson; she told me of Howard also coming round to another person in his gaberdine raincoat to mend a motor, as he had with my motorbike at Eastbourne in 1960-61) and Michael O’Leary in a spontaneous reading by each of us of a poem from the collection. I could not continue for tears.

Lawson contacted me some years ago asking for I think your address. I suggested we get together and he said no, blunt as always. Did he enjoy being Sphinx-like, mysterious? Did it give him a sardonic satisfaction still, as he had been wont to do all those years ago in Paekakariki, reducing the naive McGill. You always seemed on equal and different terms with him. I never did fathom him. Mind you, he is not alone. I soldier on, pretending I have not been insulted, pretending a thick hide, maintaining an unspoken belief that all of us are equal, some assume a superior tone, underneath we are all naked. I think he knew I knew that, which was only cause for further amusement for a man who had a curious sense of humour. He had too a certain dignity, certain standards, implacably so, like Mitch. Both were part of the singular mix of that amazing place, T Coll Kelburn, Kowhai Rd, The Glen, Ngaio Road.

I have been back there in different phases, with several lady friends disporting at the Glen, always thinking of those days of wine and musings. I went back to look at the foliage that has overcome the prefabs where Keith Fox and George Webby presided, where I smoked alongside Anton Vogt and Merlene Cutten at the Lit Club, waiting for James K Baxter to come and talk with the tongue of angels. Miscellany is dedicated to Anton (to my father’s horror – the man practises free love, Dad exclaimed: I didn’t tell him about The Glen lecturer trying to seduce me). Merlene did the cover of Miscellany and contributed a poem. I recently sought contact with her through Gill’s contacts with Paul Young and Barry Lett (she visits a sick Paul in Thames frequently, they write poems still). No luck tracing Merlene, who was soo sexy and so available and I was soooo dumb. Baxter is in the Miscellany collection too, as is Garth C. Carpenter (what’s the ‘C’ for? – I should have asked him when he asked if he could be the astrology columnist for a magazine I edited in 80s). Other contributors: Pat Craddock, who ended up a producer of radio programmes for RNZ; George Webby, retired in Wairarapa, like Lawson not responding to invitations from me (I was too straight for George); porky Peter Browne in his appalling Fair Isle jersey, where is he?; Ngaire Atkinson, an austere intellectual, I must ask of her from Maureen Birchfield, in Paekakariki and a friend of Gill Ward; Kevin B. Davies, the phys-ed chap with a sensitive streak; Howard P; David Mundell –two poems; Mark Young; somebody called J.Williams (Judy?); Caroline Hancock, dead; last, Peter J R Blizard.

We might get out when you arrive the rare surviving copy of the few hundred Miscellany printed by John Milne at a cost of 30 pounds – I raised the money by selling them around T Coll and in Cuba St. Milne Printers is still going. I used them with Grant Tilly for a publication Harbourscapes.

Roly Vogt came with Maureen Birchfield and Gill Ward to the 2010 launch of Shaking 1960 at Eastbourne, but said it was best if I didn’t see Rosie Vogt, whom he lives with in Lower Hutt. She is not well. Then she looked like a young Sophia Loren. The mechanic she returned to from me died in a car crash.

And later in a street

Waiting for a tram

I wondered what you felt

While we talked of

The sun climbing

Back into the sea.

Kevin Lawson, RIP.

Birds of Clay by Aleksandra Lane - an invitation

2012-01-29T08:28:00.000+13:00

VUP and Unity Books

warmly invite you to the launch of

Birds of Clay by Aleksandra Lane.

With wild gypsy music from Melbourne

band Vardos & mesmerising acoustic

sounds by Arsen Karalic.

Saturday February 11^th, 6:30pm,

Thistle Hall, 293 Cuba Street,

Te Aro, Wellington.

News from Galley Cat

2012-01-28T11:00:00.002+13:00

Facebook Timeline to Be Mandatory Soon

Facebook announced this week that the Facebook Timeline feature will be mandatory for all accounts soon, inspiring excitement, concern and a Jeffrey Koterba cartoon. Check it out: "Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it." After editing... read more>>

Tom Isbell Lands 7-Figure Book Deal

Actor Tom Isbell has landed a seven-figure book deal at HarperCollins' children's division for a young adult fantasy trilogy. The first book is entitled The Hatchery. Literary agent Victoria Sanders negotiated the deal with acquiringeditors Alyson Day and Phoebe Yeh. A tentative publication date has been set for 2013. Isbell has starred in movies alongside Robert De Niro, Ed Harris and Harrison Ford. He has also written children's plays; he is currently adapting... read more>>

STUDY: Apple Has 58% Share of the Tablet Market

According to a new study from Strategy Analytics,the iPad is still the dominant tablet, but it has lost market share. The company estimates that Apple had a 58 percent share of the tablet market in the fourth quarter of 2011, down from 68 percent of the market in the same period the year before. Strategy Analytics director Peter King explained: "Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units... read more>>

First ever crime writing MA launched

2012-01-28T08:29:00.000+13:00

London's City University says creation of course is in response to student demand

Alison Flood - guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012

Den of crime writing ... City University in London. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

As the underworld steadily increases its grip on literary culture, City University in London is turning to crime, with the launch of an MA devoted to teaching crime fiction and thriller writing.
Launched in response to student demand, and to the growing popularity of the genre, the UK's first creative writing masters dedicated to crime and thriller novels is another harbinger of a "second golden age of crime writing".
The genre is the second biggest in the UK, according to official data, with sales of £87.6m in 2011, while debut thriller Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson topped the charts last week. The course will teach budding Agatha Christies and Ian Rankins everything from how to create suspense to new ways to tackle new crimes, thoroughly investigating all aspects of the genre, from police procedurals to psychological thrillers.
"Crime fiction is an increasingly popular genre. With writers like Tom Rob Smith and AD Miller appearing on Man Booker Prize long- and short-lists, the literary acceptance of the genre has never been higher," said programme director Jonathan Myerson, the novelist and playwright. "There is much talk that we are entering a second golden age of crime writing, though this time the country house has been replaced by the inner city estate. Social relevance is a major factor, as too is the quality and craftsmanship of the writing"
City already runs a masters on literary novels as part of its creative writing programme. Six years' worth of students have graduated, with six so far landing publishing deals. Tutors on the literary course include Sadie Jones, David Nicholls, Sarah Waters, Monica Ali, Naomi Alderman, Ronan Bennett, Sarah Hall, and Philip Hensher, and Myerson said he "would expect our tutors on the crime thriller MA to be of the same calibre". Authors are currently being approached, with the novelists Martyn Waites and Barry Forshaw already signed up.
"We take about 12 to 14 students each year on the literary course and would do about the same for the crime MA, and run them in parallel," said Myerson. "Both genres can learn from each other – literary novelists can learn an awful lot from the pacing of crime novels."
If the crime course takes off, Myerson said he would look at expanding the MA to include other genres. "We'll see how this goes, I think," he said. "Young adult would be the next market, though."

Fig Tree breaks with Lewycka cover style for new title

2012-01-28T08:26:00.000+13:00

27.01.12 | Charlotte Williams - The Bookseller

Penguin imprint Fig Tree is changing the famous retro Soviet-style cover for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, as it prepares to reissue Marina Lewycka’s three backlist novels (£7.99 each) along- side her new hardback, Various Pets Alive & Dead (£12.99, 1st March).

Various Pets Alive & Dead is the story of a couple, Marcus and Doro, and of their children, who crave order, independence and wealth in defiance of their parents’ commune-dwelling, idealistic past. The new look uses bold fonts and stripped-back colour palettes, integrating objects from the novels into the lettering. Publisher Juliet Annan said that it was a big decision to move away from the original look as it was so successful: "We have had it since 2005; we felt we had to make a change.
"Not all of Marina’s books are about eastern Europe. Various Pets Alive & Dead only has one eastern European character, so now seemed a good time to make a break with the old look."
Annan promised the new title would appeal to existing fans and new readers, saying: "I think she writes extremely funnily, yet like all comedy it is extremely serious, there is a dark subject in every single book. She’s always got several hobby horses she is whipping on, and this novel is no different."

Keith Richards writes to his aunt

2012-01-28T08:23:00.000+13:00

In today's Delanceyplace excerpt - the letter below was written by eighteen-year-old Keith Richards to his Aunt Patty. It came to light in 2009 and had not been read by anyone outside the family prior to the recent release of his autobiography. In it, he describes meeting Mick Jagger in 1961. Almost immediately, they were regularly hanging out and "trying to learn how to do it." They went on to worldwide fame as the founding members of The Rolling Stones:

6 Spielman Rd

Dartford

Kent

Dear Pat,

So sorry not to have written before (I plead insane) in bluebottle voice. Exit right amid deafening applause.

I do hope you're very well.

We have survived yet another glorious English Winter. I wonder which day Summer falls on this year?

Oh but my dear I have been soooo busy since Christmas beside working at school. You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles but one mornin' on Dartford Stn. (that's so I don't have to write a long word like station) I was holding one of Chuck's records when a guy I knew at primary school 7-11 yrs y'know came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry ever made and all his mates have too, they are all rhythm and blues fans, real R&B I mean (not this Dinah Shore, Brook Benton crap) Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Chuck, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker all the Chicago bluesmen real lowdown stuff, marvelous. Bo Diddley he's another great.

Anyways the guy on the station, he is called Mick Jagger and all the chicks and the boys meet every Saturday morning in the 'Carousel' some juke-joint well one morning in Jan I was walking past and decided to look him up. Everybody's all over me I get invited to about 10 parties. Beside that Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don't mean maybe. I play guitar (electric) Chuck style we got us a bass player and drummer and rhythm-guitar and we practice 2 or 3 nights a week SWINGIN'.

Of course they're all rolling in money and in massive detached houses, crazy, one's even got a butler. I went round there with Mick (in the car of course Mick's not mine of course) OH BOY ENGLISH IS IMPOSSIBLE.

"Can I get you anything, sir?"
"Vodka and lime, please"
"Certainly, sir"

I really felt like a lord, nearly asked for my coronet when I left.

Everything here is just fine.

I just can't lay off Chuck Berry though, I recently got an LP of his straight from Chess Records Chicago cost me less than an English record.

Of course we've still got the old Lags here y'know Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and 2 new shockers Shane Fenton and Jora Leyton SUCH CRAP YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD. Except for that greaseball Sinatra ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Still I don't get bored anymore. This Saturday I am going to an all night party.

"I looked at my watch

It was four-o-five

Man I didn't know

If I was dead or alive"

Quote Chuck Berry

Reeling and a Rocking

12 galls of Beer Barrel of Cyder, 3 bottle Whiskey Wine. Her ma and pa gone away for the weekend I'll twist myself till I drop (I'm glad to say).

The Saturday after Mick and I are taking 2 girls over to our favourite Rhythm & Blues club over in Ealing, Middlesex.

They got a guy on electric harmonica Cyril Davies fabulous always half drunk unshaven plays like a mad man, marvelous.

Well then I can't think of anything else to bore you with, so I'll sign off goodnight viewers

BIG GRIN

Luff

Keith xxxxx
Who else would write such bloody crap

Author: Keith Richards with James Fox
Title: Keith Richards - Life
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Date: Copyright 2010 by Mindless Records, LLC
Pages: 77-79

About Delanceyplace

Delanceyplace is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context. There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a non-fiction work, mainly works of history, are occasionally controversial, and we hope will have a more universal relevance than simply the subject of the book from which they came.

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Just Google it! Questions dumb people ask online

2012-01-28T08:16:00.000+13:00

Check out the questions at CNN.

Why a Book Editor Becomes a Literary Agent

2012-01-28T08:12:00.000+13:00

Publishing Perspectives

Rebecca Carter (left) is leaving the editorial department at Random House to become an agent for Janklow & Nesbit. "My motivation comes from wanting to work with writers on editorial," she says.

Read her story.

DISCUSSION:
Who is More Responsible for a Book's Text, Agent or Editor?
Is the cliché that "editors no longer edit" overstated? Or does the job of shaping a book's text fall largely to the agent?

Frank Lloyd Wright archival reproductions now available at 1000Museums.com

2012-01-28T08:07:00.000+13:00

Art Knowledge News 26 Jan 2012

SCOTTSDALE, AZ.- The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced a new licensing agreement with 1000Museums, the premier provider of archival reproductions from museums around the world. Now, with the help of print-on-demand technology, never-before-printed selections from the Foundation’s Archives will be available to admirers of Wright’s work. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives is the most complete collection of materials related to a single artist housed under one roof anywhere in the world. Wright’s work ranged from residences designed in the Prairie style in the late 19th century, to modern works including 'Fallingwater', the 'Usonian Homes', and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in the late 50's.

Bloomsbury launches high-flying Circus

2012-01-28T08:04:00.000+13:00

27.01.12 | Benedicte Page - The Bookseller

Bloomsbury is to launch a new literary imprint, Bloomsbury Circus, to accommodate its expanding publishing.
The imprint—which sports an aerialist logo adapted from the publisher’s traditional Diana—will feature fiction and very select non-fiction, with a focus on fine writing. It will include both début writers and established novelists, like Liz Jensen and Patrick McGrath, but not authors from the more traditional end of Bloomsbury’s stable. Alexandra Pringle, Bloomsbury’s editor-in-chief, said its books would be "fresh and sometimes surprising", comparing Bloomsbury Circus to “Picador when it started off”.
The books will be trade paperbacks in an unusual, square-ish format (royal width and demi height), with flaps and high production values, and all priced at £12.99. There will be just one title a month in 2012, growing to four a month thereafter. Bloomsbury currently publishes 30–35 fiction titles a year, which will rise to 50 in 2012 with the new imprint.
Pringle said it was unusual for a publisher of Bloomsbury’s size not to have had additional imprints up to now. "With our new global Bloomsbury, we are publishing a lot of books with our cousins in America, and that has meant we are growing the list," she said.
“With fiction, you can’t successfully publish more than four titles a month because, selling into the fiction buyer, you have to have your lead, second lead, dark horse and a crime title. If you do more, you lose the focus. If we are going to grow, we have to do it in an exciting, imaginative way. This is a way we can grow, and continue to offer the service we do.”
Bloomsbury Circus’ launch titles include The Trapeze Artist by Will Davis, whose début, My Side of the Story, won the Betty Trask Award in 2007. The story, featuring a gay love affair in a circus setting, is "incredibly accomplished" and narrated in the past, present and future tenses, Pringle said. Meanwhile, New Zealand writer Emily Perkins’ The Forrests is "reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves", telling of a woman’s life from birth to death "written in exquisite prose". Pringle said she had “the very highest hopes” for the novel, believing it has the potential to win a major prize.
Coming later on the list are novels from Liz Jensen and Jane Rusbridge, plus US début Wilderness by Lance Weller. All but one of the launch titles are being published with the US, and five of the first nine titles are US-originated.
Pringle said the imprint was intended to be very much one for the high street. "We hope Waterstones will love it, and it’s perfect for independents. It’s very much about the sort of books booksellers will read and recommend at Daunt’s, Foyles and Hatchards," she said.

Roald Dahl and CS Lewis among writers revealed to have refused honours

2012-01-28T08:02:00.001+13:00

Book2Book- Friday 27 Jan 2012

List of authors to turn down OBEs, CBEs and knighthoods also includes Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves and Evelyn Waugh. Photo left - Roald Dahl.

BBC

Guardian

Footnote: NZ poet Renee Liang suggested to me that a high percentage seem to be authors - interesting to muse on the reasons why, and whether there might be an equivalent list in NZ.

The Sex Diaries Project: What 1,500 Bedroom Diaries Can Teach Us About Sex

2012-01-28T07:57:00.000+13:00

Jan 27, 2012 - Jessica Bennett - The Daily Beast

What the not-so-private sex diaries of 1,500 Americans can teach us about relationships, love—and ourselves. Jessica Bennett on the new book The Sex Diaries ProjectArianne Cohen has learned a few things from poring over the sex diaries of 1,500 people.

For starters: relationships are a lot like careers. Sure, some of us work 9 to 5—but others stay home in pajamas all day, eating crackers in bed. It can get messy.

Second: Men and women aren’t all that different. (In fact, Cohen had trouble telling their diaries apart.) Except, perhaps, when it comes to one topic: porn. Men watch it. A lot.

Lastly—but perhaps most important—it turns out that what we think we know about American relationships and what we actually know are two wildly different notions. And what’s really going on is a lot less conventional than we might have imagined.

“There’s so much variation in how people do relationships,” says Cohen, a former magazine editor whose new book, The Sex Diaries Project: What We’re Saying About What We’re Doing, hits shelves next week. “We live in a society where there’s this idea that you’re either in a long-term relationship or taking steps to get there. But if you read diaries, what you find is, that’s not what a lot of people are doing.”
The full piece at The Daily Beast.

Image Source / Corbis

So Brilliantly Clever: Parker, Hulme and the Murder that Shocked the World

2012-01-27T16:30:00.001+13:00

Awa Press reports:

Last night a large space on the ground floor of Wellington Central Library was cleared to accommodate an unprecedented crowd who had turned up to hear Peter Graham speak about his new book, So Brilliantly Clever: Parker, Hulme and the Murder that Shocked the World. By 6pm with over 150 people present it was standing-room only. For over an hour and a half the spellbound audience listened to Graham describe the fascinating real-life events surrounding the 1954 murder of Honorah Parker in Christchurch by her teenage daughter Pauline and Pauline’s friend Juliet Hulme.

Graham then responded to numerous questions from the floor, including one from a retired policeman who wondered if Graham knew what had happened to the murder weapon. There was, Graham said, an unconfirmed report the half-brick had been used for some time as a paperweight on a detective’s desk in the Christchurch police station.

Afterwards, there was a long queue of people wanting Graham to sign the book, and, as commonly happens in his talks, a number turned out to have a long-term interest in or connection with the case. One woman showed Graham a caricature she had drawn of him during the talk.

So Brilliantly Clever, published by Awa Press in November, sold out before Christmas and an urgent reprint is now hitting bookstores. It was selected as one of the best books of the year by the Listener, Sunday Star-Times and Dominion Post and has been optioned for a television drama.

Photo courtesy Wellington Public Library.

Leading New Zealand Bookseller closing down

2012-01-27T12:32:00.003+13:00

From the Parsons Bookshop Auckland Newsletter January/February 2012

After 36 years of much fun and satisfaction selling books in Auckland and throughout New Zealand, Roger is retiring and Helen is morphing.

Roger says:

There are a number of mountains for me still to climb so I am off to Slovenia and Austria later in the year. Helen will run Parsons Library Supply from “The Alpine Hut” at home.

We have been unable to find someone to take over the shop.

So.... we now offer you the opportunity to obtain all those books you always wanted - at HALF-PRICE.

From 10am Saturday 28 January all existing stock is 50% discount.

We wish to thank you for all your support over many years.

Roger Parsons.

Please use any vouchers you may have.

A Little Parsons History:

Our New Zealand-wide business (50% mail order) has grown with the increasing interest and knowledge of New Zealand Art.

When Helen and I studied at Victoria University in the 1960's it was not possible to study Art History. Now the art world is a part of many kiwi lives. Our business was built on this interest.

Helen and I returned from overseas in 1975. I wished to move out of the diplomatic service - bookselling was a logical choice. Helen, as a young Mum had read every New Zealand book published in the Karori Library. My father, Roy Parsons, had the bookselling knowledge ( and the capital!). I had the passion to run our own business.

We started in large airy premises at the back of the National Insurance Building in Victoria Street in Auckland.

In the same year London Bookshop and the Book Corner came to Central Auckland. An article in the NZ Herald at the time questioned who would survive - we know the answer 36 years later.

From 1980 we also ran the Art Gallery Bookshop and Exhibition Shops in the Auckland Art Gallery.

In 1995 we moved in our current architecturally designed premises in New Gallery building.

The success of Parsons Bookshop Auckland has been very much the product of widespread support from our customers and from our well qualified and dedicated staff.

Bookselling has been our passion, our business and our livelihood. We have been very fortunate. And, somehow, Helen and I have succeeded in maintaining our personal and business partnership over all these years.

And from Helen:

At the end of last year we had builders around our home. One job was the refurbishing of our garden shed. It's now lined with plywood and fully wired and fit to live in.

And I'd been making noises about possibly doing 'order to order' library supply.

And suddenly it all fell into place over the last few days. Suddenly these two things literally came together......

From April 2012 I will work from home. I will morph into Parsons Library Supply. I will work from our garden shed, which we call ‘The Alpine Hut'. Photo below shows view from The Alpine Hut.

I will essentially do special orders for difficult to find titles - NZ, Maori & Pacific. I love sourcing those difficult titles. And I will continue supplying all NZ titles that I can find, to certain customers.

We do have standing orders for customers in place which can be carried on. I will also continue to send out lists of titles.

Roger says he will do the packing and write the cheques. It all sounds good fun. We're getting instant great responses from all our customers.

I also wish to thank our very dedicated and loyal staff. They have worked so hard for us; always with good grace and humour. Very special thanks to you all.

So....with kind regards.....

H.
PS This of course has no effect on Parsons Wellington which is owned and operated by Roger's siblings Julian and Beatrice

Parsons Bookshop Auckland

26 Wellesley Street East
Auckland 1010

New Zealand

Ph +64 9 303 1557
books@parsons.co.nz
www.parsons.co.nz
http://twitter.com/ParsonsBookshop

Footnote:The Bookman is feeling a little stunned by this news and I will write more about it during the next week.
At this stage .I will just wish Roger & Helen all the very best for the next stage of their lives and thank them most warmly for providing us with one of the best specialist art bookshops anywhere in the world and one of NZ's finest independent bookstores. We will miss you.

Pinterest Tips for Writers

2012-01-27T11:03:00.000+13:00

By Jason Boog on Galley Cat, January 26, 2012

The social network Pinterest is growing quickly–users post images and links to a virtual pinboard and share visual thoughts with other readers.
Check it out: “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”
Follow this link to request a Pinterest invite. We spent some time exploring the network to find out how writers, readers and publishers could use the new site.
1. Post your favorite books on your personal Pinterest page. You can add nice images of all the books you love in your life. Be sure to follow the site’s rule: “Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.”
2. Find other writers on Pinterest and follow their example. Novelist Shiloh Walker has a great Pinterest page, complete with sections for Characters & Clothing, Research & Scenes, and various themes from her books.
3. On your page, create separate “boards” (collections of visual links) about your influences. Just like a high school locker, this is a vivid way to show your readers what inspires you. The site offered this handy tip: “If you notice that a pin is not sourced correctly, leave a comment so the original pinner can update the source. Finding the original source is always preferable to a secondary source such as Google Image Search or a blog entry.”
4. Look for book recommendations or comment on other users’ libraries in the Film, Music & Books section.
5. Share beautiful writing tools, stationary, journals, books and other crafty items in the Gifts section of the site.
UPDATE: For publishers interested in learning more about the site, Chronicle Books added this comment: “We love Pinterest at Chronicle Books! It’s a great way to find and share inspiration around books and the topics you love. Here are our boards. And feel free to email me at community@chroniclebooks.com if you need an invite.”

Beattie's Book Blog - unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community

John Dybvig writes............

DIGITAL CAMERAS THE EASY WAY

The Gun - The Story of the AK-47

The NZ Book Council promotes books through the power they have to inspire and shape a person

Jamie Raab Interview Sparks eBook Royalty Debate

By Maryann Yin on Galley Cat, February 1, 2012

Announcing the 2011 Discover Great New Writers Award Shortlist (Fiction and Non-fiction)

Dear Readers,

Alex Preston's top 10 literary believers

From Dostoevsky to Zadie Smith, the novelist picks his favourite portrayals of characters struggling with faith

1. Franny in Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

2. Alyosha Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Stories don’t need morals or messages

A "stupid" test shows that the Puritan ethic lives on. Why do we insist on learning lessons from the books we read?

The work of Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, has been compared to “Mills & Boon” authors in a damning attack by the Oxford Professor of Poetry

Gold medallist Mark Todd Autobiography to Orion

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A Band of Determined Eccentrics - Indie Booksellers

AAP eBook Sales Nudge Back Up In November, As Children's Hardcovers Shine

A Self-Help Rights Guide for Independent Publishers

Calling for applications for Iowa International Writing Program

Alan Hollinghurst in Sydney next month

News from the Arts Foundation

Pop-up literature

The poetry cabaret takes place at Meow, which hosts another poetryevening a week later, at which Poet Laureate Ian Wedde reads alongside AmyBrown, Aleksandra Lane and Lynn Jenner. More here.

Further comment on the New Zealand Hierarchy of Book Publishing

Neil Gaiman & Todd McFarlane Settle Decade-Long Dispute

By Dianna Dilworth on Galley Cat, January 31, 2012

Barnes & Noble Stores Will Not Stock Books Published By Amazon

By Jason Boog on Galley Cat, January 31, 2012

The Book: A Life Cycle - The Inaugural Symposium

Time Out Bookstore in Auckland's Mt.Eden features on Localist.

Time Out Bookstore

Writers & Readers Week at the Fesival - MEET THE BEST IN LOCAL LITERARY TALENT

B&N expands international content team

31.01.12 | Philip Jones - The Bookseller

What Do You Love About Your Dialogue?

Posted by - mooderino

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cancelled in India

A Most Optimistic Unconference: Publishers, Libraries, and Independent Bookstores at Digital Book World 2012

January 29, 2012 By Heather McCormack

One takeaway from Digital Book World that is not to be missed

The Shatzkin Files

Posted by Mike Shatzkin on January 30, 2012

Toshiba outlines e-book ambitions

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Left - Anthony McCarten.

Sr Citizen by Charles Olsen

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J'aime Paris: A taste of Paris in 200+ culinary destinations

I may never visit any of the famous and not so famous foodie haunts featured in it but I shall treasure this book as my souvenir of the twenty or so times I have been fortunate enough to visit that most appealing of cities. Believe me it is a stunning. And I must add too a snip at NZ$60.

It is a work that will set all admirers of beauty, excellence and authenticity dreaming, wherever they may live. I am dreaming now, here in Auckland, NZ as I write this and again browse through the pages.

As Barnes & Noble Goes, So Goes the Future of Publishing

‘The Help’ Wins Three SAG Awards

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Excitement at the post office

About the author:

Sacha de Bazin (right) is a 38 year old mother of 5 children, who range in ages from 12 down to 2. Previously she was a primary school teacher, with a BA in English. She grew up in Tokoroa, studied in Auckland, raised children in Canterbury and recently moved to Nelson. This is her first novel.

New publisher, new New Zealand author

The self-epublishing bubble

Should Entrepreneurs Self-Publish?

IDA
By Gertrude Stein. Edited by Logan Esdale.
Illustrated. 348 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $18.

STANZAS IN MEDITATION - The Corrected Edition
By Gertrude Stein. Edited by Susannah Hollister and Emily Setina.
Illustrated. 379 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $22.