The Guardian's Blog, page 3
June 13, 2016
Poem of the week: Death makes dead metaphor revive by Denise Riley
With nods to both Emily Dickinson and the hymns of Isaac Watts, this finds a mineral solidity in its metaphors of life and death
Death makes dead metaphor revive
Death makes dead metaphor revive,
Turn stiffly bright and strong.
Time that is felt as “stopped” will freeze
Its to-fro, to-fro song
June 12, 2016
Deep in the American West: meet Harry Koyama, a beet farmer with an artist's soul
One of the few Asian Americans in the Yellowstone Valley, artist Harry Koyama paints flamboyant canvases of wildlife, wild places, and people that make up Montana. Writer Carrie La Seur is awestruck
Gallery: Harry Koyama’s magnetic paintings
By Carrie La Seur for Public Streets by Public Books, part of the Guardian Books Network
Montana Avenue in Billings is a startlingly urban raft on the vast, grassy sea of rural southern Montana. It has microbreweries, artists, a cowboy hat–fixing genius, solar-powered lofts, and huge summer street events, along with homeless people, addicts, and the occasional break-in or fatal stabbing in an alley. Saucer-size rodeo buckles, business suits, elaborate mustaches, and sleeve tattoos co-exist. Shop doors stand open on summer evenings, when the draw of Harry Koyama’s narrow gallery strengthens to an irresistible force. Harry himself is the lure, as much as his flamboyant canvases of wildlife, wild places, and the vivid people who populate southern Montana. His presence pulls in locals who normally wouldn’t think of buying original art.
“You end up doing a lot of explaining,” Harry says, hands on knees on a straight-backed chair in the small studio behind his shopfront, having given a visitor the comfortable sofa that dominates the space. “Most people have some kind of enjoyment of art whether they know it or not.” In his 60s now, Harry came to painting late, after 35 years farming east of Billings. His hands are smooth but still bear the signs of rough work. He is slight and brown, with thinning hair and a face that falls into smiling lines even when he isn’t smiling.
Related: Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter
Continue reading...June 10, 2016
Flash Friday: Drought – a story set in California
A Californian deals with the effects of climate change on her literal doorstep, in this short story by Joy Lanzendorfer
By Joy Lanzendorfer for Flash Fridays by Tin House, part of the Guardian Books Network
Lindy’s yard was studded with containers of rainwater: buckets, trashcans, a red wagon, rubbery industrial barrels that once held Greek olive oil. Already, blossoms were budding on the nectarine tree. Winter in California is a brief affair. One day as Lindy was putting her kids in the car, she glanced at the wheelbarrow half-filled with water. It was glassy, and the part of her brain that noticed inconsistencies told her to move the water to the rain barrel before it stagnated. The sun beat on her hoodie, and she wished, as she got into the SUV, that she wasn’t wearing a long-sleeved shirt. She forgot about the water as she drove onto the highway.
The hills hadn’t turned at all and time seemed frozen in perpetual summer
The tops of the containers turned the green of swamps, the green of hot, humid places
Continue reading...How sci-fi simulates simulated reality
Elon Musk caused a stir last week by suggesting ours is not the real world, but sci-fi writers have been speculating about this for at least 70 years
“There’s a one in billions chance that this is base reality,” announced Elon Musk at the Code conference last week in California. The billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX and PayPal stoked new fire under one of pop philosophy’s most debated questions: are we all living in a computer simulation?
While the idea of living in a computer simulation is fun to consider, the consequences of such a reality are quite frightening. If belief in a creator god lets humans off the hook for our destiny, or if belief in a mechanical universe drops us into nihilistic despair, what might believing that we are all sims in a video game do? The possibilities are both wondrous and horrifying.
Continue reading...June 9, 2016
Most YA fiction is grown-up fiction in disguise
The boom in Young Adult fiction is fuelled by adult stories, told by adults in a grown-up fashion – but where does that leave teen readers?
The director of the children’s programme at the Edinburgh international book festival is worried. According to Janet Smythe: “YA fiction, the major publishing creation of the last decade, means many readers will never experience some wonderful writing.” Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps all those MAAs (middle-aged adults) and OAs do feel all those major publishing creations aren’t for them. But I’m not worried about adult-adults missing out on YA fiction in the slightest.
Figures from Nielsen show that 80% of YA literature is read by people over 25. It’s a pretty astonishing and, to me, disturbing statistic. It strongly suggests that something has gone horribly wrong in publishing. (And, possibly, with those readers …) Most people involved in publishing YA books would claim that these are intended to be read by teenagers. If this figure is correct, then they are missing that target. By decades. And that’s important, because many children stop reading when they reach the teenage years – especially boys. The world, it seems, suddenly holds pleasures greater than losing yourself in a great book. Could this be because the books that should belong to them, inhabiting their hearts and brains, are actually (consciously or subconsciously) directed at older readers?
Continue reading...June 8, 2016
Battle for the bulge: Jilly Cooper's Mount! is no return to saucy covers
Her publisher controversially cleaned up last year’s reissue of Riders. Will readers keep their cool over the 50-Shadesian packaging of her new book?
The talk on the books desk this morning has strayed away from the imminent revelation of the winner of the Baileys prize to Rupert Campbell-Black’s jodhpurs, following the revelation of the cover for Jilly Cooper’s forthcoming new novel, Mount! (The exclamation mark is the author’s.)
Related: Our sexed-up culture is the reason for Jilly Cooper’s Riders makeover
Continue reading...Beyoncé is not shining a light on African literature – it's the other way round
Everyone has celebrated how Beyoncé’s celebrity power has elevated Warsan Shire’s work to global attention. But African literature should not only attain universal value when endorsed by the west, argues Ainehi Edoro
By Ainehi Edoro for Brittle Paper, part of the Guardian Books Network
When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was featured on Beyoncé’s track, she became, according to elle.com, “Beyoncé’s Favorite Novelist.” In the months following the collaboration, there was much talk about how being linked to Beyoncé had somehow upgraded Adichie into a truly global celebrity. Lemonade shows Beyoncé looking to Africa yet again for its wealth of literary production – and sadly, the discourse hasn’t changed.
The media seems confused about Beyoncé’s investment in Warsan Shire – they have interpreted it as artistic generosity
Lemonade has become proof of the powerful influence that African literature is having on global aesthetic forms
Related: Warsan Shire: the Somali-British poet quoted by Beyoncé in Lemonade
Continue reading...June 7, 2016
Reading group: The Master and Margarita is our book for June
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Soviet fantasia novel was chosen by several readers as our fiction in translation for this month – and the hat agreed. Let’s read!
The Master and Margarita is this month’s Reading group choice. It was nominated by commenter Saorsa and seconded by several others, one of whom called it “one of the best novels ever written”.
Certainly, it’s a book that has stood the test of time. In fact, as luck has it, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first attempt to bring it to publication, following a tortuous gestation.
Related: The Master and Margarita showed me just how easy it is to mess up a nation | Viv Groskop
Continue reading...June 6, 2016
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including reads on vegetarianism, friendship, love, America’s economic collapse and Germany’s war guilt.
fingerlakeswanderer was moved by The Vegetarian by Han Kang:
It’s a disturbing novel about an ordinary woman’s decision to be a vegetarian and how it has an effect on her family. We only get rare glimpses of what’s going on inside her head. The whole story is told from the three perspectives of those in her family who watched the consequences of her actions. It was profoundly sad. For me, it was another reminder of how women’s decisions over their own bodies are frequently treated as an affront to others. It seems that everyone had an opinion over her decision to stop eating meat, and yet, Han Kang never lets us inside the head of the woman who sets in motion a chain of events that ultimately destroy a family.
It’s quite extraordinary, it’s divided in three parts that seem to interweave throughout the book (though you don’t find that out until the end). Ballooning, Sarah Bernhardt, and then... aside from the astonishing sadness, where do such ideas come from?
What can I say? This is my first Shriver. If the rest of her work is like this, I’m a fan for life. America is in the midst of economic collapse as the dollar goes into meltdown and the “uber-rich” plunge into poverty, struggling to survive in an era of soaring inflation where money is worthless, hoarding of the slightest quantity of gold illegal, etc, etc.
Shriver paints this dystopian world with a deftness almost amounting to magic as she traces the misfortunes of the Mandible family, at one time on of the richest families in Washington DC. Each family member is lovingly characterised, from Grand Old Man and his second wife Lulu, suffering dementia, his two elderly children and their children and children’s children so that you really care what happens to them.
... which means I will have to read it again to make sure I haven’t missed anything. This is a novel in three sections which tells the story of the Second World War through the eyes of three non combatants, three innocents. [...] What made this little book so special was the quality of the writing. The language was simple, the writing controlled, and the three sections complemented each other so well. The emotional tension increases through the stories until [the character of] Michael is faced with coming to terms with the truth about his heritage – and then moving past that as his Turkish partner has a baby and the new life has to be celebrated, the past somehow assimilated and then left behind. A fine but devastating piece of writing.
Related: Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter
Continue reading...Poem of the week: Of a Poynted Diamond … by John Harington
A gift from Elizabeth I’s ‘saucy godson’ to his wife brings lusty and sparky life to the epigram form
Of a Poynted Diamond given by the Author to his Wife, at the Birth of his Eldest Son
Deare, I to thee this diamond commend,
In which a modell of thyself I send.
How just unto thy joints this circlet sitteth,
So just thy face and shape my fancy fitteth.
The touch will try this ring of purest gold,
My touch tries thee, as pure though softer mold.
That metal precious is, the stone is true,
As true, and then how much more precious, you.
The gem is cleare, and hath nor needes no foyle,
Thy face, nay more, thy fame is free from soil.
Youle deem this deere, because from me you have it,
I deem your faith more deer, because you gave it.
This pointed Diamond cuts glass and Steele,
Your love’s like force in my firme heart I feele.
But this, as all things else, time wastes with wearing,
Where you my jewels multiply with bearing.
Related: Poem of the Week: Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister by Robert Browning
Continue reading...The Guardian's Blog
- The Guardian's profile
- 9 followers
