From the HarperCollins Prosecast:
In this edition of our literary podcast, we have a real event. Best-selling author, Wally Lamb, talks about his new novel, The Hour I First Believed. This American epic follows the fortunes of Caelum Quirk, a failed husband and disenchanted teacher, as he tries to make sense of our 21st century world.
>Listen here.
Michael Rosen doesn’t like how schools teach kids:
“Testing does something to children, and it does something to teachers. It does something to the whole rhythm of education,” he says, flailing one of his baboon-like arms. (His appearance has been likened to a Quentin Blake illustration – long, baggy and slightly startled-looking.)
“As far as primary schools are concerned, there is no reason for Sats. They get in the way of what I would call education. They ask questions of stories that are almost irrelevant. The questions we should be asking are: ‘How do you encourage litera-ture? How do you encourage poetry?’ Not: ‘How do you count the adjectives in The Cat Sat on the Mat?’” [more...]
Steve Rubel wants to make a bet:
I want to make a bet with you today. By January 2014 I will wager that in the US almost all forms of tangible media will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct. I am not just talking about print, but all tangible forms of media - newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, boxed software and video games. [more...]
[via Mitch Joel]
40,000 ebook dowloads-a-day. I’ve got 35 of them sitting on my iPod. If you are a publisher, think long and hard about that number.
The reason I have 35 books downloaded onto my Stanza is: a) it is easy, b) it is free.
What does this mean for your business model? I don’t know, but I assure you that when I finish War & Peace, I’ll be buying a hard copy. And I also assure you: I love reading on that little thing.
From GalleyCat:
Lexcycle, creators of the popular Stanza digital reader for mobile phones, announced today that their application has been downloaded 500,000 times–reaching a vast readership in four months.
The application allows users to read books on the iPhone and iPod Touch, offering free downloads of titles that range from The Prince to Moby Dick. From the release: “Each day, over 40,000 books are downloaded wirelessly from Stanza’s Online Catalog, which offers a wide range of free books and periodical content from a variety of sources in more than 20 languages.” [more...]
It’s dirty poem Monday at Book Oven’s favourite indie publisher, Bookkake. Today, Ondaatje’s Cinnamon Peeler:
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon…
[more...]
Literary Review’s Bad Sex Shortlist, including:
The Whole World Over by Julia Glass (Hutchinson)
‘You’re a sexy lady, know that?’ Stan whispered as he unzipped her pants.
She had no answer; she kept her eyes closed and sank into the music. His naked penis, when she felt it against her bare skin, was a shock, mostly for the desire it beckoned from Saga’s marrow.
‘So touch me, Story Girl,’ he said.
Still she said nothing and kept her eyes closed. She felt Stan’s pubic hair, like a prickly sea creature, move in circles on her thigh. Then, another shock, she felt his fingers. …
When he raised himself slightly away from her again, she opened her eyes only long enough to see that he was taking a condom out of a drawer in the table that held the books and the phone. She closed her eyes again and let herself sink further down, or come more fully to the surface, she wasn’t sure which. …
And then before her inner eye, a tide of words leaped high and free, a chaotic joy like frothing rapids: truncate, adjudicate, fornicate, frivolous, rivulet, violet, oriole, orifice, conifer, aquifer, allegiance, alacrity … all the words this time not a crowding but a heavenly chain, an ostrich fan, a vision as much as an orgasm, a release of something deep in the core of her altered brain, words she thought she’d lost for good. It nearly deafened her (but not quite) to the other, more alarming wave - the groaning and happy cursing that came from Stan. [more...]
I’ve finished my book at last. At least, I like to say so. But then I find myself confronted with a question anxiously discussed in schools of creative writing: how do you know you’ve finished? A much revered writer once told me that a certain novel of hers - a novel later shortlisted for the Booker prize - was finished when her publisher sent a courier on a motorcycle to take it away. As my new one is a historical novel, I can claim that it’s finished when I’ve dealt out the last few facts on to the page. We arrive at July 6 1535. Thomas More is executed. The paperwork is done; the head is spiked on London Bridge; his prayer-book is examined for blood-splashes and disposed of. And Henry VIII goes on his holidays. [more...]
The winner of the second annual Man Asian Literary Prize has a Canadian connection – the 31-year-old Filipino author lives in Montreal, where he works as a copy-editor at The Gazette.