The Guardian's Blog, page 114
July 31, 2014
A book for the beach: August Folly by Angela Thirkell
If, like me, horror is your reaction to lying on a beach with sand in all your crevices and wobbly bits on display as you attract the attentions the local insect population, then you need a seaside read to take you away from your current hell.
Angela Thirkell's August Folly instantly transports me to a golden summer day between the wars. It's not too hot, perfect cardigan weather, and on a verdant lawn that undulates down to a brook, beautiful young people in spotless white outfits play croquet until the gong signals that its time to dress for dinner. It's that kind of novel.
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August's Reading group: The Alexander trilogy by Mary Renault
Just as I was wondering what we should discuss in the Reading group for August three books landed on my doormat: Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games, Mary Renault's celebrated Alexander the Great trilogy.
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July 30, 2014
The Goldfinch: who should direct and star in the movie?
Warner Bros has bought the rights to film Donna Tartts bestseller. Who do you think would be perfect to play Theo Decker and company and who should direct?
The excitement surrounding The Goldfinch seems to have no end in sight. When its not it being lauded with the Pulitzer prize, its crowds flocking to see the original artwork by which Donna Tartts novel was inspired, or articles praising the book as one of the best of the year. Now the inevitable movie version is on its way it doesnt even have a director, a screenwriter or a cast yet, but at this rate its becoming one of the most hyped movies-to-be of the year.
After the news that it was most certainly going to be made into a film (or TV miniseries), now we have confirmation that the deal has been signed by Warner Bros, which also bought the rights for Tartts 1992 novel The Secret History (but havent yet filmed it). It will be produced by Brad Simpson, Bafta-Winning Hunger Games franchise producer Nina Jacobson and Brett Ratner, director of the current summer blockbuster Hercules.
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A book for the beach: Duma Key by Stephen King
On holiday with my family in Portugal, aged around 11 or 12, I found a stash of deserted books left behind by former residents of the place we were staying (and isn't that one of the nicest things about holiday reading, picking up someone else's unexpected leftovers?). I ventured into The Silence of the Lambs, probably much too young, and was disturbed by the dark imaginings of Thomas Harris. I also, furtively, picked up a creased old paperback of Different Seasons by Stephen King, read Apt Pupil, and discovered for the first time the delights of being thoroughly terrified. So began a love of horror, and particularly of King, which lasts to this day. For me, holiday reading, and particularly beach reading, is best when it's scary, because there's little to compare to the thrill of a proper chill in hot sunlight.
Duma Key, one of King's more recent novels (it was published in 2008) more than accomplishes this. I first read it of course I did, I'm an addict on publication, and have a clear memory of being about halfway through, drying my hair, and having to repeatedly stop and turn the hairdryer off, it had made me so ridiculously jumpy. I've reread it over the past few weeks, and it's had just as strong an effect on me.
"What I was doing didn't work just because it played on the nerve-endings; it worked because people knew on some level they really did know that what they were looking at had come from a place beyond talent. The feeling those Duma pictures conveyed was horror barely held in check. Horror waiting to happen. Inbound on rotted sails."
"Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through."
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Your Edinburgh: share your festival photographs
Whether youre cracking up on the Fringe, hanging out with bookish types at Charlotte Square, performing, working, or just generally going down with festival fever, share your pictures with us via GuardianWitness
Are you going to be in Edinburgh this August? If the answer is yes, we would love to see how your experience is looking. Whether you are attending, performing or working at the .Fringe, browsing the books festival or even passing by, please share your best photos.
While we work to bring you the best coverage, including news, reviews, interviews, features and live blogs, we want you to be an active part in it: we will include your best photos in our reporting as it happens, and we will publish a selection of the best on the Guardian site.
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School reports on writers deliver very bad reviews
It's been a long time since I faced the terror of a school report myself, but it all came back after I landed upon this Slate article, pointing towards Charlotte Brontë's. Made available online by the British Library as part of its fabulous new digital English literature resource, the write up is hardly glowing. Apparently, the girl who would go on to pen Jane Eyre "writes indifferently" and "knows nothing of grammar, geography, history, or accomplishments". The eight-year-old is, however, "altogether clever of her age", but "knows nothing systematically".
The report is taken from the school register of the Clergy Daughters' School, at Cowan Bridge, and published in the Journal of Education. It also mentions Emily Brontë, then aged 5 ¾, who "reads very prettily, and works a little", and, poignantly, Elizabeth and Marie Brontë, then aged nine and 10, both of whom left "in ill-health", and died later in 1825.
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July 29, 2014
A book for the beach: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Beaches, like books, offer a dislocation from reality, and when taken together the effect is multiplied many times. I love getting lost in a narrative then being jarred out of it by a noisy fellow holidaymaker and looking up, blinking, to remember I'm lying awkwardly on a towel on some sun-kissed shore, miles from home.
Like the terra firma of a beach bordering the seemingly endless sea spooling out and away from the land, Neil Gaiman's American Gods offers that same sense of being anchored to reality but at the same time being merely a bulwark against something massive and frightening and ultimately unknowable.
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Which books by women have had the biggest impact on you?
The most influential books by women include To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, according to a public vote organised by the Baileys fiction prize. We are sure lesser-known books have shaped your life too. So tell us which books written by female authors have had an impact on you - and why
A list of "the most life-changing books by women" that includes To Kill a Mockingbird, The Handmaid's Tale, Wuthering Heights and The Bell Jar is brilliant, but hardly surprising. These were the titles that came up when the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction asked readers and influential writers about the books written by women that have had the biggest impact on their lives.
The hashtag #thisbook got the conversation going on Twitter, thousands voted, and today Baileys unveiled the 20 titles. Several authors joined in on the social media channel:
@BaileysPrize ...and I adored Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles (but I kept saying Song of Apollo in interviews - kind of a title dyslexia)
My #ThisBook is Alice Walker's The Color Purple. It had such an impact on me. It made me realise that maybe I too could be an author.
#ThisBook Another book that had left a big impact on me:TheHeart is a Lonely Hunter,here'sTurkish cover @BaileysPrize pic.twitter.com/vQgHFfNC2J
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee #thisbook @BaileysPrize pic.twitter.com/2upzVxVtJF
Women talking about their inspiring female authors. Me, Jennifer Saunders, Lionel Shriver, Dawn O'Porter: http://t.co/Tr6RRqXLVf #thisbook
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Reading American cities: New York in books
From the "gilded age" of Edith Wharton and Henry James to the rhythms of the Harlem Renaissance and Beat poets, writers have long been drawn to the east coast's biggest city. The New York Times has planned a holiday itinerary based entirely around literary landmarks, but what would be the perfect reading list to accompany a visit?
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July 28, 2014
Not the Booker prize: vote for the shortlist
Last week, the Booker judges released their longlist. This year, there was a certain amount of grudging admiration for the books they chose, alongside the typical complaints. These mainly centred on the fact that people called David appeared to be almost as well represented as women and better represented than people from Asia. Good points. Curiously, no one pointed out that the longlist wasn't actually that long. I mean: 13 books? That's nothing. Now, this is a long list:
Mark Alder - Son of the Morning (Gollancz)
Louis Armand - Cairo (Equus)
Maurizio Ascari - Faded Letters (Patrician Press)
Edward St Aubyn - Lost For Words (Picador)
Nicholson Baker - Travelling Sprinkler (Serpent's Tail)
Nicola Barker - In the Approaches (Fourth Estate)
Susan Barker - The Incarnations (Doubleday)
Sue Barnard - The Ghostly Father (Crooked Cat Publishing)
Sebastian Barry - The Temporary Gentleman (Faber)
Hannah Beckerman - The Dead Wife's Handbook (Penguin)
Lauren Beukes - Broken Monsters (HarperCollins)
Ned Beauman - Glow (Sceptre)
James Benmore - Dodger of the Dials (Heron books)
Tony Black - The Last Tiger (Cargo Publishing)
Robin Black - Life Drawing (Picador)
Joanna Bolouri: My Year of Sexual Adventures - The List (Quercus)
Joseph Boyden - The Orenda (Oneworld)
SJ Bradley - Brick Mother (Dead Ink)
Carys Bray - A Song For Issy Bradley (Hutchinson)
Jessie Burton - The Miniaturist (Picador)
Noah Cicero - Go To Work and Do Your Job. Care For Your Children. Pay Your Bills. Obey The Law. Buy Products. (Eraserhead Press)
Jennifer Clement - Prayers For The Stolen (Hogarth)
Julian Cope - 131 (Faber)
Mark Z Danielewski - The Fifty Year Sword (Cargo)
Rene Denfeld - The Enchanted (W&N)
Lucy Duggan - Tendrils (Peer Press)
PS Duffy - The Cartographer of No Man's Land (Liveright)
Doug Durst & JJ Abrams - S (Canongate)
Dave Eggers - The Circle (Hamish Hamilton)
Rhian Elizabeth - Six Pounds Eight Ounces (Seren)
Juliet Escoria - Black Cloud (Civil Coping Mechanisms)
Roopa Farooki - The Good Children (Tinder Press)
Karen Fielding - American Sycamore (Seren Books)
Richard Flanagan - Narrow Road to the Deep North (Chatto & Windus)
Matthew Francis - The Book Of The Needle (Cinnamon Press)
Anna Freeman - The Fair Fight (W&N)
Damon Galgut - Arctic Summer (Atlantic)
Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (Telegram)
Lesley Glaister - Little Egypt (Salt)
Bradley Greenburg - When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (Sandstone)
Nicola Griffith - Hild (Farrar Strauss and Giroux)
Xiaolu Guo - I Am China (Chatto & Windus)
Nick Harkaway - Tigerman (William Heinemann)
Emma Healey - Elizabeth Is Missing (Viking)
J Paul Henderson - Last Bus To Coffeeville (No Exit Press)
Charlie Hill - Books (Tindal Street)
Carly Holmes - The Scrapbook (Parthian)
Anna Hope - Wake (Doubleday)
Kerry Hudson - Thirst (Chatto & Windus)
Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World (Sceptre)
Heidi James - Wounding (Bluemoose)
Cynan Jones - The Dig (Granta)
Gabriel Josipovici - Hotel Andromeda (Carcanet Press)
Meena Kandasamy - The Gypsy Goddess (Atlantic)
Balraj Khanna - Indian Magic (Hoperoad)
Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake (Unbound)
Charles Lambert - With a Zero at Its Heart (The Friday Project)
Malcolm Mackay - The Sudden Arrival of Violence (Pan Macmillan)
Anneliese Mackintosh - Any Other Mouth (Freight Books)
Valerie Martin - The Ghost Of Mary Celeste (W&N)
Laura McBride - We Are Called To Rise (Simon & Schuster)
Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Viking)
Grace McCleen - The Professor Of Poetry (Sceptre)
David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks (Sceptre)
Lisa Moore - Caught (Chatto and Windus)
Neel Mukherjee - The Lives Of Others (Chatto & Windus)
Benjamin Myers - Beastings (Bluemoose)
Michael Nath - British Story (Route Publishing)
Claire North - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (Orbit)
Jenny Offill - Dept. Of Speculation (Granta)
Laline Paull - The Bees (Fourth Estate)
Sarah Perry - After Me Comes The Flood (Serpent's Tail)
Richard Powers - Orfeo (Norton)
Gareth L Powell - Hive Monkey (Ack-Ack Macaque) (Solaris)
Zia Haider Rahman - In The Light Of What We Know (Picador)
Mahesh Rao - The Smoke Is Rising (Daunt Books)
Danny Rhodes - The Fan (Arcadia)
Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things (Fourth Estate)
Nikesh Shukla - Meatspace (The Friday Project)
Kathryn Simmonds - Love And Fallout (Seren)
Alex Smith - Devilskein and Dearlove (Arachne Press)
Richard Smyth - Wild Ink (Dead Ink)
James Smythe - No Harm Can Come To A Good Man (Borough Press)
Neil DA Stewart - The Glasgow Coma Scale (Corsair)
Simon Sylvester - The Visitors (Quercus)
Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (Little, Brown)
Lavie Tidhar - The Violent Century (Hodder & Stoughton)
Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues Of Men (Corsair)
Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda (Atlantic)
Dan Tyte - Half Plus Seven (Parthian)
Emma Jane Unsworth - Animals (Canongate)
Iman Verjee - In Between dreams (Oneworld)
Willy Vlautin - The Free (Faber)
Tom Vowler - That Dark Remembered Day (Headline)
Sarah Waters - The Paying Guests (Virago)
Jemma Wayne - After Before (Legend Press)
Will Wiles - The Way In (Fourth Estate)
Naomi Wood - Mrs Hemingway (Picador)
Starr Wood - Once Upon A Timepiece (Bo Tree Books)
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