Pete Townshend calls Apple 'a vampire'

31 October 2011 - BBC News

Pete Townshend said "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored"

The Who guitarist Pete Townshend has urged Apple's iTunes to use its power to help new bands instead of "bleeding" artists like a "digital vampire".

Townshend made the comments in BBC 6 Music's inaugural John Peel Lecture, named in honour of the legendary DJ.
He also argued against unauthorised file-sharing, saying the internet was "destroying copyright as we know it".
"The word 'sharing' surely means giving away something you have earned, or made, or paid for?" he said.
The rock legend listed eight services that record labels and music publishers have traditionally provided to artists, such as editorial guidance and "creative nurture".

"Is there really any good reason why, just because iTunes exists in the wild west internet land of Facebook and Twitter, it can't provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire, like a digital Northern Rock, for its enormous commission?" he asked.

Apple should employ 20 talent scouts "from the dying record business" to give guidance to new acts and provide financial and marketing support to the best ones, he added.
ITunes accounts for more than 75% of all legal downloads. An Apple spokesman declined to comment on Townshend's remarks.
The guitarist also said that people who downloaded his music without paying for it "may as well come and steal my son's bike while they're at it".
If someone "pretends that something I have created should be available to them free... I wonder what has gone wrong with human morality and social justice", he said.
But he also told listeners: "It's tricky to argue for the innate value of copyright from a position of good fortune, as I do. I've done all right."
Full piece at BBC News

Watch Pete Townshend deliver the lecture

Plagiarism case heads to court as Canadian authors file lawsuit against Zhang, Penguin Canada

Quill & Quire, 31 October, 2011

The controversy surrounding Ling Zhang’s novel Gold Mountain Blues continues to escalate, as a group of Canadian authors are now taking their allegations of plagiarism to court. On Thursday, Wayson Choy, Sky Lee, and Paul Yee filed a lawsuit against Zhang’s publisher, Penguin Group Canada, for copyright infringement, the Toronto Star reports. The trio of authors are seeking $6 million, plus $1 million each in punitive damages from Pearson Canada, Penguin Canada’s parent company. Also named in the suit are Zhang, for “purposely copying multiple elements” from the plaintiffs’ published works, as well as Nicky Harman, the book’s U.K.-based English-language translator who conducted a review of the plagiarism allegations for Penguin.
Gold Mountain Blues was originally published in 2009 in China, where it garnered literary awards, became a bestseller, and was optioned for film and TV. It was released on Oct. 8 in Canada and 11 other territories. According to the Star:

The suit says the Canadian authors now face “significant potential losses” when they are eventually published in China because “it will appear to Chinese readers in China that the plaintiffs have copied portions of Gold Mountain Blues” when the authors were long-published before the book came out. The suit says the authors have identified more than 50 key examples of original elements that have been substantially copied.

The Star has previously published a list of similarities between Gold Mountain Blues and works by Choy, Lee, and Yee, provided by the plaintiffs’ legal counsel, May Cheng. The list highlights comparable plot points, character backgrounds and dynamics, and historical settings.
Full story at Quill & Quire

Is it a mad, bad, Amazon world?

Posted on Petrona on October 29, 2011 by Maxine

Do you know, I really don’t mind that Amazon is being allowed to acquire the Book Depository* by the UK office of fair trading. Competition is a healthy thing, and it would have been better if the BD could have carried on in business independently. But as it couldn’t, the acquisition is not a bad thing – certainly not the horror some have portrayed it to be. Amazon has been around for a while now and as a reader I have benefitted from its presence immensely. (As have customers using or buying content from Amazon’s other partners, such as the Internet Movie Database, LoveFilm or Audible.)
Similarly, I don’t mind that Amazon is publishing books. As a reader, I can judge an Amazon book just as easily as any other kind of book. Existing publishers may see this as a threat just as booksellers have suffered at the hands of Amazon – through not acting quickly enough themselves to provide the service to their readers that Amazon came along and did instead.

Don’t misunderstand me – I don’t believe in monopolies and I would prefer it that Amazon’s competitors could equal or better its service. But so far, Amazon has done a pretty good job for readers. I might like it to do things a bit differently in some details, eg provide a translated fiction category, or ensure that independently published books are more clearly delineated from self-published books. But these are details. Amazon isn’t just about making vast amounts of money (its recent figures show just how much it has invested in e-readers at the expense of profits), it is about customer service. It has always encouraged customer rankings and comments on its website, long before most sales sites ever dreamed of it – and I, as a reader, also benefit from this, or I can ignore the social side of Amazon if I like, it is up to me. Buying books at Amazon is simple and pleasant, and if the price goes down between ordering and delivery, they drop it to the lower price (how many “street” booksellers would price-match an ordered book in this way? It has never happened to me).
Full story at Petrona.

Tinker Tailor, Shame and Tyrannosaur lead Film Awards

BBC News - 31 October 2011 

Gary Oldman has been nominated for best actor for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Three films including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy have tied for the most nods at this year's British Independent Film Awards (Bifa).

Shame and Tyrannosaur join the spy thriller with seven nominations each.
The releases will compete against each other in the best British film, director, actor and supporting actor or actress categories.
We Need to Talk About Kevin and Kill List garnered six nominations each.
Nominations for best actor include Brendan Gleeson for The Guard, Michael Fassbender for Shame, Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Peter Mullan for Tyrannosaur and Neil Maskell for Kill List.
Rebecca Hall (The Awakening) will compete with Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre), MyAnna Buring (Kill List), Olivia Colman (Tyrannosaur) and Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin) for the best actress award.
The best supporting actor and actress shortlists include Vanessa Redgrave, Carey Mulligan, Kathy Burke, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Wim Wenders 3D dance film Pina, about the late choreographer Pina Bausch, is nominated in the foreign independent film category, along with Animal Kingdom, Drive, A Separation and The Skin I Live In.
Special prizes, including the Richard Harris Award recognising an actor's outstanding contribution to British film, will be announced at a later date.
Other awards, including prizes for best screenplay, documentary, British short and promising newcomer, will be handed out at a London ceremony on 4 December.
Winners will be decided by a jury of professionals from the British film industry including broadcaster Edith Bowman, actor David Thewlis and Screen Daily editor Mike Goodridge.

broadsheet 8 features UK-based NZ poet John Gallas

"broadsheet is pleased to confirm that UK-based New Zealand poet John Gallas will feature in broadsheet 8 due for publication in November 2011.
Gallas left New Zealand in 1972 to study Old Icelandic and has lived in the UK ever since. He is currently based in Coalville, Leicestershire. 8 of his books have appeared from Carcanet in Manchester and in 2011 he published a trilogy of chapbooks, F***ing Poets, through Roger Hickin’s Cold Hub Press in the South Island of New Zealand.
Other poets confirmed for broadsheet 8 are: Craig Cliff, Michael Duffett (USA), Roger Hickin, Rex Hunter, Cameron La Follette (USA), Chris McCabe (UK), Mary McCallum, Michael O’Leary, Harry Ricketts, Laura Solomon, Yilma Tafere Tasew, Paul Wolffram and F W N (Nielsen) Wright.
Web site:
http://broadsheetnz.wordpress.com/"

A Store of Images, From a Time When ‘Cut and Paste’ Meant Just That

By NOAM COHEN, New York Times , -Published: October 30, 2011

Photo - Andrew Testa for The New York Times - The Dover Bookshop, where a collection of animal illustrations from the 19th century is the best-selling book.

THE sign in blue lettering read “Copyright-Free Images,” which may not rank with “Zero Percent Financing” or “Everything Must Go” when it comes to sales pitches. But it does have “free” in it, and it was enough to catch my eye while visiting London.

The sign was displayed on the storefront of the Dover Bookshop on Earlham Street in Covent Garden, tucked among the Japanese clothing outlets and graphic design stores. You won’t find best sellers or works of great literature there, or even many large, glossy coffee-table books. The books that dominate the shelves — large paperbacks with prosaic titles like “Animals” or “Plants” or “Hands” — are more like catalogs of random images that have one thing in common: their age.
Dating largely from the 19th century and culled from old magazines, advertisements and books, these pictures are not covered by copyright laws. Artists around the world can use the images any way they want — cut and copied, altered or combined. No one “owns” them anymore.
Artists describe these books of “clip art” as a spur to creativity — a way to conjure up the curved outline of a lion or the way a hand grasps a hammer. But they are also ready-made images, often of high quality, that can be easily reused or repurposed.
“We get graphic artists, designers, tattoo artists, people in education in schools,” said Stuart Tegg, 44, the assistant manager of the store, as he helped pack up a book of old maps and medieval illuminated letters for a man who said he was a book-jacket designer from Edinburgh.
“Sometimes they are looking for inspiration, sometimes a specific image — they chat you up, ‘Do you have a certain image?’ ” Mr. Tegg said.
Tattoo artists like to look at the drawings of old pistols, he said. One recent customer asked if any of the books had a picture of “a fruit pie.” Mr. Tegg found one in a book of Victorian-era illustrations, and made a sale.
The experience of browsing this bookstore, which opened in 1986, is thoroughly pre-Internet; you walk down short aisles, stopping to page through images that often come printed in different sizes so they can literally be cut and pasted onto a design. What’s more, the store challenges the idea that the Internet has created a mash-up culture, whether in the sampling of older music in new songs or the combination of two images using Photoshop.
Full story at New York Times.

A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age

 Library of Congress - October 31, 2011

The Working Group of the Future of Bibliographic Control, as it examined technology for the future, wrote that the Library community’s data carrier, MARC, is “based on forty-year-old techniques for data management and is out of step with programming styles of today.” [1] The Working Group called for a format that will “accommodate and distinguish expert-, automated-, and self-generated metadata, including annotations (reviews, comments, and usage data.” [2] The Working Group agreed that MARC has served the library community well in the pre-Web environment, but something new is now needed to implement the recommendations made in the Working Group’s seminal report. In its recommendations, the Working Group called upon the Library of Congress to take action. In recommendation 3.1.1, the members wrote:

“Recognizing that Z39.2/MARC are no longer fit for the purpose, work with the library and other interested communities to specify and implement a carrier for bibliographic information that is capable of representing the full range of data of interest to libraries, and of facilitating the exchange of such data both within the library community and with related communities.” [3]

This same theme emerged from the recent test of the Resource Description and Access (RDA) conducted by the National Agricultural Library, the National Library of Medicine, and the Library of Congress. Our 26 test partners also noted that, were the limitations of the MARC standard lifted, the full capabilities of RDA would be more useful to the library community. Many of the libraries taking part in the test indicated that they had little confidence RDA changes would yield significant benefits without a change to the underlying MARC carrier. Several of the test organizations were especially concerned that the MARC structure would hinder the separation of elements and ability to use URLs in a linked data environment.
With these strong statements from two expert groups, the Library of Congress is committed to developing, in collaboration with librarians, standards experts, and technologists a new bibliographic framework that will serve the associated communities well into the future. Within the Library, staff from the Network Development and Standards Office (within the Technology Policy directorate) and the Policy and Standards Division (within the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access directorate) have been meeting with Beacher Wiggins (Director, ABA), Ruth Scovill (Director, Technology Policy), and me to craft a plan for proceeding with the development of a bibliographic framework for the future.

Below this cover note, you will find our thoughts about the way ahead. We have identified the requirements for the new bibliographic framework, based on the recommendations made by both the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control and the final report on the RDA Test.
We at the Library are committed to finding the necessary funding for supporting this initiative, and we expect to work with diverse and wide-ranging partners in completing the task. Even at the earliest stages of the project, we believe two types of groups are needed: an advisory committee that will articulate and frame the principles and ideals of the bibliographic framework and a technical committee that has the in-depth knowledge to establish the framework, itself.
When MARC was created in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the Library community, along with computer scientists, took a bold step that led to libraries being able to share bibliographic data. This was an extraordinary achievement in that individual libraries became nodes in a much larger network of library resources. A side benefit is that the cost of cataloging was significantly reduced. The new bibliographic framework we are aiming for will broaden participation in the network of resources, librarians will be able to do a much better job of linking their patrons to resources of all kinds (from the library and from many other sources), and costs can be better contained.

The MARC standard is responsible for the creation of millions of bibliographic records from all parts of the globe. We recognize the need to continue supporting MARC during the transition, and, most likely, for years to come as libraries determine their timetable for making a change. The amount of legacy data, though, does not deter us from taking responsible actions for the next generation of libraries and librarians. The problem has been well defined by our partners. We now turn to partners of many types to help us find a durable solution.

We are posting this general plan for your comments. Please let us know what you think. We are grateful for your interest, and we appreciate suggestions for improvement. We encourage you to post your thoughts to the Bibliographic Transition listserv.
Full report at Library of Congress.

How Freemium Self-published Fiction Is Taking Over China

Publishing Perspectives In China, nearly 195 million people are hooked on a kind of literature that is virtually unknown in the West, but that is rapidly transforming its authors and publishers into stars. Web literature or “original fiction,” as it’s called in China, is a new form of serial literature which theoretically allows anyone to become a best-selling author. 
READ MORE >>

DISCUSSION:
Will the Freemium Fiction Publishing Model Work in the West?
Will freemium fiction be able to attract a large enough audience among Western readers, where cheap e-books are readily available?

TUESDAY POEM

David Howard - at the Tuesday Poem hub   

Pyrotechnic professional David Howard (right) is the appropriate choice for the Tuesday Poem hub in a week that ends with Guy Fawkes. 

Howard's poem - selected by fellow Cantabrian Catherine Fitchett - is from his new collection the incomplete poems and is called Country Life. In the TP sidebar you can find 30 Tuesday Poets who post poems by themselves or others they admire. This week you can find a video of Bill Murray reading Emily Dickinson, and another Emily Dickinson poem on the page about Halloween. There are also more Keith Westwater and Tim Jones poems (the two poets have new collections out and are currently on a Poetry Tour of the country), as well as poems by US Tuesday Poets like Melissa Green and Eileen Moeller, and local Zireaux. Have a look. As one Tuesday Poet said in a blog comment today: 'it beats TV.'  

New Zealand sculptor, photographer and installation artist Bill Culbert will present his work at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013

Art critic and cultural curmudgeon Hamish Keith (above) is more than a little displeased by Bill Culbert's selection pointing out in his always entertaining, sometimes acerbic column in this week's Listener that  he has "no problem with Bill Culbert's reputation and value as a sculptor'  but that "regardless of what it might say on his passport or birth certificate, he is a British sculptor, and has been one for half a century".

Anyway regardless of Hamish Keith's views (and I think they will have widespread support) Auckland's splendid specialist art bookseller Parsons is not letting the opportunity of the announcement pass without getting in a little promotion for Culbert related titles:

New Zealand sculptor, photographer and installation artist Bill Culbert will present his work at the 55^th Venice Biennale in 2013. Culbert has sustained a busy exhibition schedule throughout his career, with more than 100 solo exhibitions in New Zealand, England, Europe, the United States and Australia since 1960, and many more group exhibitions and major public art commissions.

Ultramarte; Contemporary Art from New Zealand Casa Museo Benlliure Valencia, Spain 2007.

$39.95

Catalogue from Valencia featuring six New Zealand artists (including Bill Culbert). Text in Spanish and English.

Art + Object Important Photographs

$20.00

Oceania: Imagining the Pacific  

BROCHURE $5.00 or  CATALOGUE$39.99

Bill Culbert 180 Degrees Sarjeant Gallery 2009

ANDERSON GREG

$9.95

Sport 19 Lightworks; 78 Photographs by Bill Culbert

BROWN JAMES & BARROWMAN FERGUS EDIT

$19.95

This issue of Sport features 78 black & white photographs by Bill Culbert.

Ralph Hotere; Ultimate Ground

BURKE GREGORY & ROBERTS K & DOERR C

$3.00

Drive Power Progress Desire CATALOGUE

BURKE GREGORY & SCOTT HANA

$34.95

Fault By Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere

MANHIRE BILL

$12.00

Art and Industry 2000 Biennial Contemporary Visual Arts Festival 1ST BIENNIAL OF THE NZ COMMUNITY TRUST

MCCORMICK DEBORAH & PRINGLE WARREN

$14.95

Light Wine Things; Bill Culbert BOOK DUNEDIN ART GALLERY 2005

PATON JUSTIN

$34.95

Catalogue of the exhibition 'Light Wine Things' that toured NZ between 2003 and 2006.

Bill Culbert Colin McCahon

SMYTHE LUKE

$9.95

From the VUW Art Collection: In View

$19.95

Bill Culbert Making Light Work MONOGRAPH 

WEDDE IAN

Parsons Price $49.95 (RRP $99.95)

Life and works of Bill Culbert from 1956-2007.

Listed by Bryn Roberts

and sent by Helen Parsons

Parsons Bookshop Auckland
26 Wellesley Street East
Auckland 1010
New Zealand
Ph +64 9 303 1557

books@parsons.co.nz
www.parsons.co.nz
www.artprecinct.co.nz
http://twitter.com/ParsonsBookshop

BLACK - Where it belongs

A couple of days after the Penguin Books RWC title, Champions, Harper Collins published their version. In comparing the two I guess it is fair to say that the Penguin title has more photos while the Harper Collins title has a much more comprehensive text, written too by top rugby writer Bob Howitt. It should also be noted that Howitt's book covers all of the games – not just the All Black ones
If I were judging the two I'd give the nod to Black- Where it Belongs. Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, they both have the same cover image. I guess if you are a rugby enthusiast you are going to have to buy both titles but if you can't afford both then get Black - Where it Belongs. It is $7 dearer but worth it.

Black- Where it Belongs is then a highly illustrated, comprehensive 136-page review package and includes:

·       Introduction to the 2011 tournament

·       Pool Games: detailed review of each New Zealand game in Pool A, along with statistics and a review of Pool A in its entirety, and statistics and reviews of Pools  B, C and D

·       Quarter-finals — review of each quarter-final game

·       Semi-finals — review of each semi-final game

·       Bronze Final — review of the Wales v Australia playoff

·       The Final — review of the New Zealand v France Final and the All Blacks receiving the Webb Ellis Cup, including a critique of Graham Henry’s coaching career and accompanying statistical survey

·       Players of the  Tournament — the top six performers of the 2011 tournament

·       Tournament XV — the dream team emerging from the tournament’s top performers

·       Statistics — wrap-up of the key match and tournament stats.

Photographs include  action photographs of the games as they unfold, and a selection of colourful spectator photos from around the venues, the opening ceremony, and a shot from the ticker-tape parade in Auckland the day after the Final.

About the author:

Bob Howitt has spent a lifetime studying and writing about rugby. Auckland Star correspondent for a decade, editor of the iconic Rugby News and its annuals for 25 years, and founder editor of NZ Rugby World magazine. In addition to his long journalism career, he has published 19 books and remains a sought-after commentator in the media on sporting news and events. A long-serving member of the New Zealand Sports Journalists Association, Bob is a past winner of the New Zealand Sports Journalist of the Year award. 

Harper Collins - $24.99


And a rave review in the Dominion Post.

The 20th Century in Poetry

 This ground-breaking anthology presents in chronological order over 400 poems written in the 20^th century. From war to peace, from industry to strikes, from artisans to technology, here is history seen through the poets’ eyes.

Starting with Thomas Hardy and John Masefield and finishing with Carol Ann Duffy and Jeffery Harrison, the editors – both experts in their field – organize the poems in chronological order giving an overview of each period in history, helpful notes where required and concise biographies of each poet. Alongside familiar names come poets rescued from oblivion such as the suffragette who wrote a compelling poem about her mistreatment in Holloway Prison in 1912 or the medical officer who went into Belsen with the British troops producing an eye-witness poem of lasting power.

Choosing poems from all over the English-speaking world, this engrossing collection makes invaluable reading for poetry lovers and students everywhere and is an essential addition to any poetry collection.

Be warned it is a real door-stopper at 860 pages. A handsome hardback.
Ebury Press - $59.99

About the editors:

Michael Hulse and Simon Rae are both award-winning poets and have drawn on years of experience in selecting the poems in this anthology.

MichaelHulse currently teaches poetry at the University of Warwick, and regularly does reading tours around the world.

Simon Rae is a playwright, novelist and broadcaster and previously presented Radio 4’s ‘Poetry Please’. He lives in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

The Gloomster - Axel Scheffler

Superbly miserable, brilliantly surly and oddly cheering, gloominess has never been so appealing. 
Music depresses me.
Dancing distresses me.
Everything turns out wrong.
That’s why, the whole day long,
I feel so gloomy.
                        Ludwig Bechstein
Inspired by Ludwig Bechstein’s nineteenth-century poem, acclaimed illustrator Axel Scheffler has created a set of delightfully dark depictions of misanthropic misery. Julia Donaldson, Axel’s collaborator on The Gruffalo, has penned a wry, witty new translation of the original German. The result is a triumph of negativity, in the macabre yet merry spirit of the late great Edward Gorey.
The Gloomster is a quirky little book that is ideal as a present for that grumpy old man or woman in your life!
Faber - $24.99

Preposterous Proverbs - Why fine words butter no parsnips

If you'd like to meet Max and get a copy of Preposterous Proverbs, he will be visiting Birkenhead Library, Auckland, on Sunday 20th November from 4 p.m. - 6 p.m.

For details see http://www.shorelibraries.govt.nz/Whats-On/Author-talks/Max-Cryer--Preposterous-Proverbs-.aspx

For more details on the book link here.

HarperCollins to Buy Thomas Nelson

By Jason Boog on Galley Cat,  October 31, 2011 3:42 PM

HarperCollins Publishers revealed today that they have sealed a “definitive agreement” to buy Christian publisher Thomas Nelson. Terms of the deal were not revealed, and will be finalized by the end of the year.
Follow this link to read the complete release. Thomas Nelson publishes many inspirational titles, including books by authors like Billy Graham, Max Lucado and Dave Ramsey. In 1988, HarperCollins acquired the Christian publisher, Zondervan.
HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray had this comment in the release: “Founded in 1798 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Thomas Nelson shares a long and rich heritage with both New York’s Harper Brothers and Scotland’s William Collins & Sons. It is thus with great pleasure that I look forward to welcoming Thomas Nelson to the HarperCollins family.”

Novels Of Epic Scale And Ambition Head 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize Longlist

SINGAPORE – Twelve novels from Japan, Iran, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Bangledesh were announced over the weekend as the long-list for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize at the Singapore Writers Festival.

Featuring works of epic proportions by Haruki Murakami and Amitav Ghosh, the longlisted books deal with a wide range of subjects including the Opium Wars, the Iranian revolution, the rise of fundamentalism, the plight of aids sufferers in China as well as exploring relationships between the individual and family, parent and child. Featuring many million-copy selling books which have been translated into English for the first time, as well as debut authors and literary titans, the longlist for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize is the most diverse to be announced in its five year history, showcasing a panoply of tales from right across Asia.

The judges for this year's Prize are Pulitzer-prize finalist and author of The Surrendered, Chang-rae Lee, and Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A which was filmed as the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. The judging panel of three is completed by BBC Special Correspondent Razia Iqbal, who is also chair judge.
90 books were submitted for entry in 2011 and the longlist of 12 books is as follows: AUTHOR, Country – Title (Publisher)
•JAMIL AHMAD, Pakistan – The Wandering Falcon (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
•TAHMIMA ANAM, Bangladesh – The Good Muslim (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
•JAHNAVI BARUA, India – Rebirth (Penguin India/Penguin Books)
•RAHUL BHATTACHARYA, India - The Sly Company of People Who Care (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
•MAHMOUD DOWLATABADI, Iran – The Colonel (Haus Publishing)
•AMITAV GHOSH, India - River of Smoke (John Murray/Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)

•HARUKI MURAKAMI, Japan -1Q84 (Harvill Secker)
•ANURADHA ROY, India– The Folded Earth (Quercus/Maclehose Press/Hacehette India)
•KYUNG-SOOK SHIN, South Korea – Please Look After Mom (Alfred A. Knopf)
•TARUN J TEJPAL, India – The Valley of Masks (HarperCollins India/4th Estate)
•YAN LIANKE, China - Dream of Ding Village (Grove Atlantic)
•BANANA YOSHIMOTO, Japan - The Lake (Melville House)
Chair Judge, Razia Iqbal said, "In scope, range and subject matter, our longlist presents us with the epic as well as the quotidian, the established writers as well as some on the cusp of greater success. But what connects them is a thing that happens when we read good fiction: the cumulative impact of sentence after good sentence is transforming for the reader. So, while it is hoped that the list reflects among the best of what is coming out of Asia, it also presents Asia to itself, an equally important mirror to hold up."
Chair of Directors of the Man Asian Literary Prize, Prof. David Parker said, "What this longlist shows is that if we are looking for books of the epic scale and stature of the great European nineteenth century novels, we must turn to Asia. Haruki Murakami's massive magnum opus 1Q84 and Amitav Ghosh's three volume epic of the Opium Wars, of which River of Smoke is the second volume, have a scale and ambition we don't often see in Western writing these days. Could it be that as the world's economic centre of gravity is moving eastwards, so too is its artistic energy and ambition?"
The longlist announcement was made at Singapore Writers Festival by judge Vikas Swarup and can be seen at YouTube.com/ManAsianLitPrize. The Prize can be followed on Twitter at @MALPrize and #MALPrize11, as well as on Facebook at facebook.com/MALPrize
The shortlist for the Prize will be announced on January 10th with the winner announced on March 15th at a black tie dinner in Hong Kong, the home of the Prize.

A surprise in Wellington yesterday for The Bookman

I was in Wellington for the day yesterday and was surprised when I went to check out the fate of the very large Borders store in Lambton Quay to discover it had morphed into a Whitcoulls store. I had planned to write about that on the blog today but author/maritime historian Joan Druett has saved me the bother and given the story a nice write up on her blog. Here it what she has to say:


Borders metamorphoses into Whitcoulls at 226 Lambton Quay

A mysterious something has happened in Lambton Quay

Up until the last time I looked, 226-256 Lambton Quay was a big Borders store.

Lambton Quay is one of Wellington's premier shopping streets, so its situation, opposite iconic department store Kirkaldie & Stains, and cheek-by-jowl (almost) with a Farmers Department store, was enviable.

The only fly in the ointment, I guess, is that the Wellington flagship store of the Whitcoulls book chain was just a short gallop down the street.

As we all know, both chains were bought by David and Anne Norman. I wondered what would happen to this particular Borders, and was assured by a polite young man at the checkout counter that it was going to become Whitcoulls.
And, he has been proved right. As I passed in the bus yesterday, the store was sporting natty new signs and lots of enticing advertising.
It is now definitely a Whitcoulls store. So far, the Whitcoulls store down the street is still intact and running. Long may it stay that way.

Visit Joan Druett's blog here.

Juiciest Bits From the Royal Exposé

Oct 30, 2011 The Daily Beast

Behind the scenes: A new book has revealed a number of the inner secrets of the royal family, from how one servant has to iron Charles' shoelaces to the correct protocol for using the Buckingham Palace swimming pool

Not in Front of the Corgis, from monarchy chronicler Brian Hoey, is out in June and provides a tantalizing peek inside palace life. Tom Sykes gets his hands on a U.K. copy and offers the best tidbits, from Prince Charles’s shoelace-ironers (and massive staff) to a royal murder.

(Page 1 of 2)

The Corgis Access All Areas

Brian Hoey writes that he was once in Buckingham Palace when he passed two young footmen whispering together in a corridor. “I jokingly asked them if they were conspiring, to which they replied, ‘Please Sir, not in front of the Corgis.’”

The footmen meant that when they saw the corgis—the breed of dog beloved by the queen—they knew the monarch would not be far behind.

“Because the dogs hold such an important place in Her Majesty’s affections, the staff are careful not to offend them in any way,’ writes Hoey. “They dare not utter a remark in Royal hearing criticizing the animals. The Queen’s Corgis are allowed unrestricted access to any part of any Royal residence; nowhere is off-limits.” The royal chef prepares their food and they are never fed canned food, Hoey writes. But they are not universally popular: “The Palace footmen loathe the animals, as they are yappy and snappy. They also are not fully house-trained so a supply of soda water and blotting paper is kept at hand just in case of any ‘little accidents.’”

Prince Charles Is a Clotheshorse Who Gets His Shoelaces Ironed

Prince Charles employs 133 staff to look after him and Camilla, more than 60 of them domestics: chefs, cooks, footmen, housemaids, gardeners, chauffeurs, cleaners, and his three personal valets—gentleman’s gentlemen—whose sole responsibility is the care of their royal master’s extensive wardrobe and choosing what he is to wear on any particular day. A serving soldier polishes the prince’s boots and shoes every day—he has 50 handmade pairs each costing over £800 by Lobb of St James’s—and a housemaid washes his underwear as soon as it is discarded. Nothing Charles or Camilla wears is ever allowed near a washing machine. Particular attention is paid to handkerchiefs, which are monogrammed and again all hand-washed, as it was found that when they were sent to a laundry, some would go missing—as souvenirs. HRH’s suits, of which he has 60, cost more than £3,000 each, and his shirts, all handmade, cost £350 a time (he has more than 200), while his collar stiffeners are solid gold or silver. Charles’s valets also iron the laces of his shoes whenever they are taken off.
Full extensive story at The Daily Beast

Note:
Illustration at top of story from The Daily Mail.

Man Booker Prize 2011: Sales for all the Booker Prize winners, including Julian Barnes

The Man Booker Prize 2011 has been won by Julian Barnes. Does winning guarantee a boost in sales? And which of the previous winners has sold most? With latest sales data for the 2011 longlist

Katy Stoddard - Our Daily Read

The Man Booker Prize 2011 was awarded to Julian Barnes on 18 October for his novel The Sense of an Ending.

All six shortlisted works have been experiencing the biggest bump in sales the Booker prize has seen.
The latest data from Nielsen Bookscan clearly demonstrates this Booker effect. In the week following the prize ceremony, Barnes' novel sold 14,534 copies, almost twice as many as AD Miller's Snowdrops (7,684), which has been this year's Booker success story so far. In the week before the win (to 15 October), The Sense of an Ending sold only 2,535 copies.
The shortlisted books have all benefited from their Booker approval. Weekly sales of all five runners up increased considerably in the days following Barnes' win, while sales of the other seven longlisted novels tailed off.
AD Miller's Snowdrops is still ahead, selling 51,944 copies overall (worth £340,958.38) to 22 October and outselling all other longlisted books, including The Sense of an Ending (though that and Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child have raised more revenue).
Will winning the Booker Prize guarantee Barnes a long-term boom in sales? We've pulled together the latest sales figures of all 44 winners of the title since its inception in 1969 (the prize was a tie in 1974 and again in 1992).
Nielsen's data runs from 1998 onwards, so sales of older books aren't directly comparable, but the runaway winner of recent years is Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which won in 2002 and has taken over £9.5m and sold 1.3m copies so far. That's almost twice as much as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, in second place with sales of £5m (587,851 units). Sales of this year's shortlist pale by comparison.
And if you really have your heart set on a Booker, the words to include in the title of your novel are Sea, Ha, God, Tiger, Late, Life and Road, as our Wordle shows.
Check out the spreadsheet for sales figures of all the previous winners, as well as links to the Guardian's book pages, reviews and data on the 2010 and 2011 shortlists. Let's see what you can do.

E-readers get heavier with each book

E-readers are meant to let bookworms carry their entire libraries with them without any additional weight – but the devices actually get heavier every time a new text is downloaded.

By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

30 Oct 2011

The weight difference is unlikely to make much difference to holidaymakers' baggage allowances, however, because each new tome is about as heavy as a single molecule of DNA.

Filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram

Prof John Kubiatowicz a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, explained in the New York Times last week that storing new data involves holding electrons in a fixed place in the device's memory.

Although the electrons were already present, keeping them still rather than allowing them to float around takes up extra energy – about a billionth of a microjoule per bit of data.

Using Einstein's E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Prof Kubiatowicz calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g.

This is roughly equivalent to the weight of a small virus, while the equivalent number of books – about 3,500 – would weigh approximately two tons. 

Kimmage surprise entry on William Hill shortlist

31.10.11 | Graeme Neill - The Bookseller

Paul Kimmage is the surprise inclusion in this year's William Hill Sports Book of the Year shortlist, after he was left out of the longlist.
His book Engage (Simon & Schuster), a biography of England Under 21 rugby player Matt Hampson who was paralysed after a scrum collapsed, joins titles examining the suicide of German international footballer Robert Enke, the culture of Spanish bullfighting and the range of different sporting fan cultures.
William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said: "Although the book had not been submitted for the prize at the time our longlist was announced, the members of our judging panel nevertheless agreed to consider it once it was brought to their attention, the outcome being that they have indicated they feel it merits inclusion on the shortlist.
"We would normally have selected six titles for the shortlist but the addition of Engage means there will be a magnificent seven titles this year, so no other author has been denied a place by its inclusion. This decision takes into account the feeling that it would be unfair to penalise a blameless author and subject."
It is the first time a book has been added to the shortlist despite it not originally featuring on the longlist. Simon & Schuster managing director Ian Chapman said: "I'm immensely thrilled and proud for Matt that the book is on the shortlist."
The winner will be announced on 28th November.
The shortlist in full:
Among The Fans: From Ashes to the Arrows, a Year of Watching the Watchers by Patrick Collins (Wisden Sports Writing)
Into The Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight by Alexander Fiske-Harrison (Profile Books)
The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop by Bill Jones (Mainstream Publishing)
Engage: The Fall and Rise of Matt Hampson by Paul Kimmage (Simon & Schuster)
Racing Through The Dark: The Fall and Rise of David Millar by David Millar (Orion)
A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke by Ronald Reng (Yellow Jersey Press)
32 Programmes by Dave Roberts (Bantam Press)

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Kobo GM: Why Buy Books From Amazon?

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World - 28 October, 2011

Toasters, coffee machines and vacuum cleaners are all perfectly good things to buy on Amazon, the general manager of Toronto-based Kobo told us yesterday when we sat down with him for a product demo of the company’s latest e-reader tablet, but not books.

Books, according to Matt Welch, general manager at the e-reader manufacturer and bookseller, are best read on the Kobo Vox, the company’s new seven-inch, touch-screen, color tablet that ships to consumers today and retails at $199.
As we reported last week, the Vox signals several important trends for publishers, authors and e-book producers and distributers. And next week, we’ll be giving you the inside scoop on the Vox – what works, what doesn’t, and whether it’s really better than the competition, as Welch and Kobo product lead Jason Gamblen asserted in our sit-down yesterday.
For now, here are some salient points from our talk and a subsequent email exchange, including Kobo’s differentiators, what Kobo has to say to publishers and why Welch thinks nobody should be buying books from Amazon.
Jeremy Greenfield: What sets this new tablet apart from the Kindle Fire, for instance?
Matt Welch: We’re about reading, they’re not. In the 10,000 word press release they put out about the fire, only about two things mentioned reading. The Vox is all about reading.
JG: What do you say to publishers who have to worry about getting their books formatted and up on Amazon, the Barnes & Noble store, your store and others?
MW: If I were them I would want to sell a lot of books and I would want people to discover books. How people discover books is social and Kobo is social.
JG: That’s true. But through apps like Subtext, which made a splash this week with its new social app, other e-readers can be social, too. Will Kobo, which runs Android 2.3, allow Subtext and other social apps to be downloaded on the Vox and work with the reader?
MW: We don’t stop anyone from installing and using outside apps. We’re open. There are 15,000 free Android apps available on the Vox.
JG: What about the Kindle app?
MW: That, too.
JG: Speaking of Amazon…would you say that the best place to read Kindle books is the Vox?
MW: The best place to read Kindle books is nowhere, in my opinion. Why would anyone buy an e-book from Amazon? Freedom is a value held dearly in America and around the world. People should be able to transfer and read their books on any e-reader they wish, and don’t like being trapped in one ecosystem, which would be the case if they started building a Kindle e-book library. More and more people are realizing this, and are saying they don’t want to get stuck in the Amazon. They paid for their e-books after all. Why are they held captive? Readers get quite irritated (understandably so) when they learn they can’t they take their kindle e-books with them if they decide to upgrade to the Kobo social e-reading experience. I get it. This lack of freedom seems like a very un-American idea to me, coming from a very American company like Amazon. That said, I recently bought a very nice toaster, a coffee machine and a vacuum cleaner from Amazon, so I think it makes perfect sense to buy myriad different types of products from Amazon. Just not e-books.*
JG: So, what’s next for Kobo? Will we see a 10-inch tablet next year?
MW: I’m going to give you the old Steve Jobs answer – we don’t comment on product roadmap.

Read more at DigitalBookWorld.com: Kobo GM: Why Buy Books From Amazon? | Digital Book World http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/kobo-gm-why-buy-books-from-amazon/#ixzz1cNg0dtOo

KATHERINE MANSFIELD AND CONTINENTAL EUROPE

An International Conference hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Letters,

Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia

in association with the Katherine Mansfield Society

27-29 June 2012

 Keynote Speakers:

Angela Smith, C. K. Stead, Maurizio Ascari,

Gerri Kimber, Claire Davison-Pégon

Having arrived in London from New Zealand in 1908 to commence her life as a writer, Katherine Mansfield travelled widely in Europe during the 1910s and early 1920s. Rarely was this for pleasure; the notion of escaping from a situation, people, and later her search for a cure for tuberculosis, predetermined much of her journeying. The resonances of this constant travelling and immersion in foreign cultures can be perceived in both her personal writing and her creative endeavours.

A highlight of the conference will be an optional trip on 30 June to nearby Krakow, the home of Poland’s most celebrated artist, Stanislaw Wyspianski, with a visit to see the internationally renowned Wyspianksi museum and the stained glass window in the Franciscan church, the inspiration for two of KM’s poems.

Please send 200 word abstracts for individual papers of 20 minutes, or 500 word proposals for panels of 3 papers to Dr Janka Kaščáková at janka.kascakova@ff.ku.sk   by 1 November 2011.  Late submissions considered if they come in soon! Decisions will be announced by 15 December 2011.

The Guardian's Halloween reading list includes title by NZ author, and he is in fine company

Some ideas for different ways to unsettle, disturb and terrify yourself this year

Darragh McManus - guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 October 2011 

Halloween horror of a different kind … Richard Attenborough as Pinkie in the 1947 film of Brighton Rock. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Halloween is my favourite holiday, though I'm not quite sure why. It may be some blood-deep ethnic link to the ancient Celtic festival from whence it came; it may be the fact that I'm crazy-stupid for slasher movies and monkey nuts. Either way, Halloween puts the frights on Christmas, terrorises Easter and sends Valentine's Day bawling for its mommy. And one of the best ways to spend 31 October is by curling up with a creepy book, in a room lit by candles, with stiff drink and loaded revolver close at hand. Just in case.

However, being the très cool, alternative trendies that we are, let's not settle for any old horror novel. Sure, American Psycho or The Shining will scare the bejeesus out of you, guaranteed. But that's a bit too easy.

Instead, I've put together an alternative Halloween reading list in preparation for next Monday: novels that are eerie, horrifying or disturbing in unusual and different ways. (And please, no jokes about Jeffrey Archer or Cecelia Ahern being truly gruesome … mainly because I've just made one.)

Manual by Daren King
Fetishism, psychic dislocation, unhealthy sexual obsession – Manual isn't an easy book to warm to, but it will linger in the mind afterwards. Sometimes gruelling, but worth it if only for the wholly original style: terse, often unrelated sentences, tiny explosions of descriptive power … like reading a series of connected haikus.

The Return of the Player by Michael Tolkin
Sequel to the novel that inspired the Robert Altman movie, but this is much darker and creepier, in tone and theme, than that relatively playful piss-take. Fundamentally about death, it's a fearful lament for the end of things.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Because Pinkie is one of the most terrifyingly believable sociopaths ever created … and the horror that awaits Rose after the final pages in indescribable.

Shirker by Chad Taylor
Set in New Zealand, this tale of one man cheating death is one of the best crime novels I've ever read. Beautiful artful prose, a great, twisting noir story, and a seriously spooky, sexy atmosphere. You'll feel all sorts of chills running along your spine.

Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino
A tone of strange, spooky reverie permeates this fantasy from the incomparable Calvino. A group of wayfarers meet in the forest and, struck dumb, tell their stories through tarot cards.

High-Rise by JG Ballard
It opens with a man roasting an alsatian over a burning phonebook, and doesn't relent from there on in. Most of Ballard's incredible body of work is disturbing enough, but High-Rise was the one that most freaked me out.

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
It's a sort of ghost story – or is it? Reality, delusion and memory blur into one another in DeLillo's short novel about the titular body artist dealing with bereavement.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Any one of a number of dystopian novels could have made the cut – Riddley Walker and Swastika Nights are particularly powerful – but Atwood's "speculative" novel is so unsettling because everything that happens is a possible, and often probable, consequence of what we're doing now.

The Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver
Deaver might not be a literary artist, but he's a very, very skilled craftsman. The Vanished Man has a deliriously serpentine plot – and a chameleonic villain who gets right under your skin because he can get under anyone's skin.

Odyl Aims to Make Facebook Marketing for Authors Easy, Ubiquitous

Publishing Perspectives For authors and publishers looking to engage readers on Facebook in more meaningful ways, Odyl's Facebook app might be the solution. According to Odyl's Director of Product Strategy, Neil Baptista: "Facebook has become so huge now that it's almost like most companies have a web strategy and a Facebook strategy; they’re parallel but separate." 
READ MORE >>

DISCUSSION:
How Much is Social Media Visibility Really Worth?
Does your number of Facebook fans translate into book sales? How can publishers develop meaningful reader communities on social networks?

THINKING CAP - Mark Pirie

Thinking Cap is Mark Pirie’s latest collection of poetry. It consists of over 80 epigrams written over the past year.

Following in the footsteps of New Zealand verse satirists like Denis Glover, Rex Fairburn, Karl Stead, Harry Ricketts, R G Park and Niel Wright, Pirie updates the New Zealand epigram in contemporary settings of pop culture and literature.

The book has been divided into six sections: ‘General’, ‘Film/TV’, ‘Music’, ‘Literature’, ‘Love’ and ‘Public’.

Witty, ribald, and biting, Pirie runs a knowledgeable eye over many aspects of contemporary society and history.

TITLE                   Thinking Cap: A Book of Epigrams
AUTHOR              Mark Pirie
PUBLISHED         2011
CATEGORY         Poetry
FORMAT             Paperback
EXTENT               A6 24 pages
ISBN                    978-1-86942-130-4
PRICE                  NZ  $5.00

Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories from the Golden Age of Jewish Baking

Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg

Camino Books, 2011. US$24.95

Traditional Eastern European Jewish baking, along with the culture in which it evolved, is rapidly disappearing. Younger generations of American Jews are becoming increasingly assimilated into mainstream society. Small, family-run Jewish bakeries that once lay at the heart of their communities have fallen victim to the demise of the old-school bakers, shifting demographics and the economic firepower of diversified corporate food processors.

Inside the Jewish Bakery chronicles the history and traditions--as well as the distinctive baked goods--of Ashkenazic Jewry in Eastern Europe and America. Drawing on sources as diverse as the Talmud, Sholom Aleichem and the yizkor books that memorialize communities destroyed in the Holocaust, the authors have crafted an "edible history" that endows their recipes with a sense of time and place. 

Here, home bakers of all skill levels will learn to recreate the authentically Jewish breads, pastries, cookies and cakes that once filled the shelves of neighborhood bakeries. The recipes themselves are based on the professional formulas used by America's Jewish bakers during their Golden Age, adapted and tested for home kitchens.