The Guardian's Blog, page 107

Raiding John Updike's rubbish a trashy pursuit

As well as being intrusive, bin diver Paul Moran has recovered very little for his alternative archive that was worth saving

Did you know that there was a man who used to steal John Updike's bin bags? No, nor did I. But in the wake of the Great Naked Celebrity Photo Leak of 2014, this coolly played piece in the Atlantic, in which Adrienne LaFrance interviews the man who shall henceforth be known as the Updike bin diver, Paul Moran, becomes perhaps even more timely.

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London's book benches readers' photos

Visitors to London this summer have had an extra attraction to seek out book-shaped benches scattered across the capital. Not only are they are a beautiful tribute to some of the best London-themed literature, but they are raising money for a great cause. We challenged readers to track them down, and here is a selection of the photos you shared with us. See all the contributions on GuardianWitness

And we have some exciting news! A bench dedicated to Neverwhere (by Neil Gaiman) will be installed at the free Guardian Gallery very soon. This was the book voted by our readers as the the one they would most like to sit on. Gaiman himself nominated Chris Riddell to design the illustration. Watch this space for details!

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Not the Booker prize shortlist: a long look at First Time Solo by Iain Maloney

The story of a tyro pilot in the second world war isn't awful, but it's hard to find any warmer endorsement

Early on in First Time Solo, Jack Devine, a farmer's son from Aberdeenshire, is called up to the RAF in 1943 and travels to London to join his fellow trainees. Then we get this:

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Poem of the week: An Autumn Sunset by Edith Wharton

Best known for her fiction, the novelist was also an occasionally glorious poet, as this reflection on a fiery sky shows

There's a faint Keatsian flavour to this week's poem, An Autumn Sunset, by the multi-talented American novelist Edith Wharton. "Some ancient land forlorn" echoes the Ode to a Nightingale's "faery lands forlorn", and the rich colouration and sturdy construction might seem Keatsian, too. But Wharton's vision, technique and range of vocabulary are clearly her own. Overall, the structure is more classically Ode-like than Keats's studies in the form, and the effect suggests a "back to basics" invigoration. It was first published in 1894, in Scribner's Magazine, and perhaps some spirit of the fin de siècle looms over it, too.

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Readers holiday photos from the past your memories, in pictures

Summer is nearly over, and were taking a nostalgia trip that started out when Guardian Review invited you to join a group of authors in reminiscing about your own memorable holidays by sharing a photo and a story. From 1980s beach huts to travels down the coast of America in a Volkswagen or across the Saharan Desert here is a selection of your anecdotes and pictures

See all the photos and contribute your own on GuardianWitness
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Bruce Springsteen is Boss of rock but can he rule picture books?

He may be king of the stadium anthem, but commanding an audience of toddlers is actually a tougher challenge

The Boss can belt and the Boss can croon but can he tell a bedtime story? Writing anthems which have been adopted en masse by thousand-strong audiences and solo by runners pushing themselves to to the limit, and almost everyone else between, is a good test of any writer. But even that may not be enough for a picture bookto.

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How to pick a Man Booker prizewinner

John Dugdale wonders whether it is possible to determine a Booker winner on the strength of their first sentence

Plenty of readers of the dazzling opening to Hilary Mantel's 2012 winner, Bring Up the Bodies "His children are falling from the sky", both a tease and a foreshadowing as Cromwell is watching falcons named after his children and the book will trace the fall of his daughter-like former ally Anne Boleyn will have wondered if the judges could have skipped the longlist and shortlist stages to give her the cheque immediately. Other recent winners' openings have similarly fused brevity and subtlety Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending begins a list with "I remember, in no particular order", Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question starts "He should have seen it coming."

Brevity is also the dominant trend in the first sentences of the 2014 longlist, favoured by Jacobson again in J ("Mornings weren't good for either of them"), Paul Kingsnorth in his 11th-century novel The Wake ("the night was clere though i slept i seen it"), Joshua Ferris in To Rise Again at a Decent Hour ("The mouth is a weird place") and Richard Flanagan ("Why at the beginning of things is there always light?") in The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

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Space Opera strikes up again for a new era

From Guardians of the Galaxy to Ancillary Justice, sci-fi is returning to alien worlds where distinctly earthly, political dramas play out

Science fiction is not a genre. The most successful literary tradition of the 20th century is as impossible to neatly categorise as the alien life forms it sometimes imagines. But "sci-fi" does contain genres. The rigorous scientific speculation of Hard SF. The techno-cynicism of Cyberpunk, or its halfwit cousin Steampunk. The pulp fictions of Planetary romance and the dark visions of the sci-fi Post-Apocalypse. These genres flow in and out of fashion like the solar winds. After years condemned to the outer darkness of secondhand bookshops, Space Opera is once again exciting the imagination of sci-fi fans.

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Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic spirit lives on

A timely Google doodle reminds us that, two centuries after his birth, the writer's sophisticated variations on vampire and ghost stories retain their eerie power

The latest Google doodle a wispy, fanged blonde girl-head floating over a sleeping dark-haired woman commemorates the 200th birthday of the Irish novelist Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73). The image honours his most famous story, Carmilla, first published in 1871 in a magazine called The Dark Blue, then incorporated a year later into the important collection In a Glass Darkly.

The novella is notable for tackling a vampire theme decades before Le Fanu's countryman Bram Stoker wrote Dracula (which contains several deliberate echoes of Carmilla) and presenting an eroticised view of predatory female friendship which earns it a place on the list of early (if veiled) depictions of same-sex relationships in literature.

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Roald Dahl's children's rhymes really are revolting, but that is no bad thing

Aldi's decision to withdraw his book from sale in Australia is unfair to children, who appreciate and need a taste of rude reality

Roald Dahl's perennially popular children's literature has serious form for perturbing parents and other responsible adults, even as it launches kids with a whizz and a bang into the dangerous, joyful world of independent reading. I vividly remember my primary school English teacher denouncing Danny the Champion of the World because it encouraged pheasant-theft and underage driving (neither of which I tried, though I'll admit to having been tempted by both).

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