The Guardian's Blog, page 42

Stephen Hawking demonstrates Relativity for National Poetry Day

Bridget Smith’s film of the physicist reading Sarah Howe’s poem is part of a star-studded project hoping to inspire readers to explore light through poetry

Physicist Stephen Hawking and actors Samantha Morton and Sean Bean have joined forces with leading artists to make a series of short films encouraging people to dispense with prose for a day and “make like a poet”.

Organisers of National Poetry Day are hoping to inspire readers to record their own creative responses to poetry, as part of a competition culminating with a display of the winning words, images and videos in the Blackpool Illuminations on Thursday 8 October 2015. This year marks the 21st anniversary of this annual celebration of poetry, with a week-long series of events all over the UK on the theme of light.

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Poster poems: parody

Parodies range from the sweetly celebratory to the viciously unforgiving. So sharpen your quills – it’s time to deliver poetic justice

One of the marks of the serious poet is that they develop a unique, instantly recognisable style of their own, a trademark voice that means regular readers of verse can tell their Shakespeare from their Milton, their Browning from their Dickinson, at a glance. The flip side of this is that the more distinctive a style is, the easier it is to send up. Indeed, many of our most original poets have found themselves the subject of numerous parodists, whose work can range from gentle, affectionate ribbing to witty but well-placed literary stilettos.

Joan Murray’s We Old Dudes is on the gentle end of the spectrum. Her Republican-voting, golf-playing pensioners are a fine balance to Gwendolyn Brooks’ seven pool-playing juvenile delinquents in the poem that inspired Murray’s parody, a poem that could, itself, be read as a gentle poke in the ribs of the Beats. As is the case with many such send-ups, Murray is also making a serious point: everyone has a story and everyone ends up in the grave.

After reading the take-off of Hiawatha, it’s hard to read the original without smiling

There is an air of portentousness about TS Eliot’s writing that is catnip to the eager imitator

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Books can reconnect children with nature

Getting children interested in the natural world is about storytelling - and that’s where books come in, argues author Piers Torday

I live in London now but my world was shaped by the valleys of the south Tyne, overlooked by moorlands up top and cloaked in deepest forest down below. In the 1980’s Northumberland felt massively undeveloped, especially in terms of housing and roads. My brother and I benefited from unfettered access to acres of rough pasture, gnarled copses, and shady pools. Often, in the summer holidays, not another human voice or passing car could be heard for hours, and the only soundtrack to our playing would be our panting dog alongside us and bees buzzing in the garden.

Or at least, that’s one version. Another is that my parents were always nagging me to put my book down and get outside for a change.

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Philip Pullman: how drawing helped me to see the world differently

Taking part in this year’s Big Draw festival reminded the author how drawing offers tremendous insight and pleasure

Related: Chris Riddell and friends launch The Big Draw 2015

The best sort of activity is one that combines mental effort with sensuous delight. That’s why I love drawing. The sheer physical pleasure of making a line with a good pencil on paper with enough tooth, or roughness, to put up a little resistance is inexhaustible; and the challenge of making the line resemble (as much as possible) the landscape, or still life, or face that we’re looking at is enough to put us on our mettle each time we try.

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Eimear McBride on the 2015 Goldsmiths prize: why experimental fiction is dear to my heart

From Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone to Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, this year’s shortlist is irresistible, even if all male

Related: Goldsmiths book prize shortlist: Lennon, Jesus and life at the edges

When I agreed to sit on the panel for the Goldsmiths prize last year, I hadn’t really considered what an odd thing it is to judge a literary prize. With its remit “to reward fiction that breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form”, a cause dear to my heart, I was just happy to agree. On Thursday, we announced the shortlist. Beatlebone by Kevin Barry is a storm of a novel – unsettling and mesmerising. It’s formally interesting also, with the novelist choosing to step on and off the page. Calling Richard Beard’s Acts of the Assassins an update of the martyrdom of the apostles does it no justice. Although playing a game of genre – it’s a whodunit, featuring a jaded, compromised detective – it is a book about Faith and the layers of Time on which we walk. Max Porter’s exquisite Grief Is the Thing With Feathers works both as a poem and an essay on the afterlife of bereavement and by the end movingly resolves its characters’ situation, and its form into a novel. Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island is a hard diamond – highly allusive and infuriatingly intangible, it is at once rare, of tremendous clarity and very much look-but-don’t-touch. Any attempt to pin Magnus Mills’s strangely wonderful allegorical tale The Field of the Cloth of Gold to a single time or place would be a mistake. Finally, the plot of Lurid and Cute by Adam Thirlwell, a novel full of unnerving linguistic juxtapositions, plays with readers’ expectations while the internal dysfunction of the narrator makes disturbing, self-justifying sense of it all.

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Comic relief: should writers and artists charge fans for autographs?

Some creators say fans should pay a fee for signatures at comic conventions, but can the magic of science fiction and fantasy survive the market in autographs?

At every comic convention you’ll find panel discussions, caped crusader costumes and very long queues. But some of the waiting fans have more on their mind than meeting one of their idols. A signature from an artist or writer can make a huge difference to the value of a rare back issue or a copy of the latest hot collection. And this market in signatures cuts both ways, with some creators charging for their signatures – sometimes as much as $30 (£20) per item.

The issue has sparked a debate at the Baltimore Comic-Con. According to Richard Johnston, in a post on the website Bleeding Cool, veteran comics artist Neal Adams – one of the classic Batman illustrators – got into a discussion with another creator about charging for signatures. Adams charges $30; the other didn’t charge at all.

Related: Even superheroes queue – Scotland’s Comic Con collages

Related: Kapow! The unstoppable rise of female comic readers

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Girls behaving badly – the thrilling rise of the YA antiheroine

They’ve been too nice for too long, but now mean, monstrous and even murderous girls are revitalising young adult fiction

Antiheroes don’t feature in a lot of kids’ or young adult fiction. Likability, someone to root for, victims of clear-cut injustice – classic main characters tend to the plucky and put-upon, à la Harry Potter or Sara Crewe. And dislikable, amoral, even monstrous girls are especially few and far between – girls in fiction, as in real life, it seems, are under more pressure from their readership than their male counterparts to be “nice”. Where are the female Tom Ripleys – or even the Patrick Batemans – of YA? At long last, I’ve noticed some mean girls – not quite a monstrous regiment, but a sinister strike force, at least – popping up in YA and older middle grade (MG) fiction.

In her first novel, Pretty Bad Things (2010), CJ Skuse sketches a bright, acidic portrait of Paisley, one half of the teen Wonder Twins, who go on a crime spree through Vegas en route to find their long-lost dad. Paisley and Beau have both had a traumatic upbringing, witnessing their mum’s death and being farmed out to separate schools by a manipulative grandmother who hides their father’s letters and steals from their trust fund. But, unlike her brother, Paisley hasn’t been crushed into fearful acceptance by the experience. Instead, she’s emerged with a rapier wit (disgustedly describing the girl who sleeps with her boyfriend as “Paris Hilton in a smashed mirror”), a total disregard for boundaries, and an inability to suffer fools and hypocrisy gladly – or, indeed, at all. Written off by umpteen headmistresses as a “bad seed”, Paisley’s bull-in-a-china-shop relish for poor choices, foul language and instant gratification make for a satisfyingly memorable antiheroine, who many good girls might secretly wish to emulate.

Related: Why I love writing dark books for teenagers

Related: Bookseller YA book prize goes to feminist dystopia

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No sense of an ending: which books have lost the plot?

A disappointing denouement can ruin a novel, leaving readers feeling disappointed or even angry. Now’s your chance to vent your frustration – if you can stand the spoilers

Plot twists – or lack thereof – near the end of books can be a huge irritant to readers. “Life is too short to be spent reading bad prose,” said reader fingerlakeswanderer recently on our weekly Tips, links and suggestions blog, after forcing herself to finish reading a book, worried that she’s “become too lazy as a reader and give up on books too soon”:

I was reading Orient by Christopher Bollen, one of those big fat summer mystery books, and I had zipped through the first third of the book with no problem. Then it began to drag. Only my desire to know whodunnit was the reason that I slogged through about a hundred pages of going-nowhere story, and then felt rewarded when the last 200 pages went back to being a hoot to read. And then. The last forty pages annoyed the hell out of me. The murderer turned out to be someone that a reader could not possibly have guessed because there was one allusion to the existence of this person. It felt as if I had worked my way through 500 pages of prose to be told that “it had all been a dream” or “the murderer was a ghost” or some such BS ending.

I had a similar reaction to a book by Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand. I felt completely ripped off – I can’t remember any other time in my life when I wanted to chuck a book against the wall. – ozgongo

It’s not a mystery but I felt something similar after I read Big Brother. In that case the twist ending was plausible but it made the story commonplace and less interesting than if the twist hadn’t occurred. –ameliaposte

I thought that book was great fun, but the ending was so ridiculous it made me feel stupid for having liked the book so much. I wondered where Flynn’s editor had been. Hadn’t the editor wanted to argue with her about her ending? –fingerlakeswanderer

@GuardianBooks Drood by Dan Simmons drove me mad. Massive book (800pp) and no payoff with the lame ending.

@GuardianBooks The ending of The Music of Chance is the closest I've ever come to actually flinging a book across the room...

The Girl on the Train is probably the most recent one. I wanted a twist! @GuardianBooks #nospoilers

@GuardianBooks The Rabbit Back Literature Society. I loved the style and I was really enjoying it until the end which was a farce!

@GuardianBooks The Martian. Felt rushed and anti-climatic

@GuardianBooks Life of Pi, totally lost me towards the end, it's just like he wasn't sure quite where to take it. Horrendous epilogue imo

@GuardianBooks D Tartt's The Secret History. 98% is utterly, utterly amazing & the climax is stunning, but dreamy epilogue feels v off key.

@GuardianBooks Ian McEwan's 'Saturday' - created such a sense of menace - for it to all to dissolve in the improbability of the ending...

@GuardianBooks I love All The Light We Cannot See, but the last couple of chapters were really unnecessary.

@GuardianBooks The Luminaries. Seemed to fizzle out at the end.

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Lousy at punctuation? Fear not – so was Wordsworth

Though one of the greatest poets who ever lived struggled with commas, many of us are infuriated by rogue apostrophes and other printed solecisms. How did this come to be?

Imagine this. You are a celebrated poet unsure of your punctuation, so you decide to write to the greatest scientist you know to ask him to correct the punctuation of a poetry book you’re preparing for press. You’ve never met him. Moreover, you ask him to send on the corrected manuscript to the printer, without bothering to refer back to you. And he does it.

An unlikely scenario? Not so. This was William Wordsworth, preparing the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads. On 28 July 1800, at the suggestion of Coleridge, he wrote to the chemist Humphry Davy:

You would greatly oblige me by looking over the enclosed poems, and correcting anything you find amiss in the punctuation, a business at which I am ashamed to say I am no adept.

Related: Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation review – hissy fits about apostrophes

Yesterday Mr. Hall wrote that the printer’s proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.

I give it up. These printers pay no attention to my punctuation, Nine-tenths of the labor & vexation put upon me by Messrs Spottiswoode & Co consists in annihilating their ignorant & purposeless punctuation & restoring my own.

This latest batch, beginning with page 145 & running to page 192 starts out like all that went before it – with my punctuation ignored & their insanities substituted for it. I have read two pages of it – I can’t stand any more. If they will restore my punctuation themselves & then send the purified pages to me I will read it for errors of grammar & construction – that is enough to require of an author who writes as legible a hand as I do, & who knows more about punctuation in two minutes than any damned bastard of a proof-reader can learn in two centuries.

Our share of night to bear -

Our share of morning -

Our share of night to bear,

Our share of morning,

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Happy International Coffee day – 10 great coffee quotes from literature

Never mind if you’re a latte, an espresso or a cappuccino type, today is the chance to forget your differences for an international celebration of the black stuff. Here are some of our top caffeinated quotes from books. Let us know yours in the comments

Take it from someone who recently underwent an excruciating coffee detox, this drink is worth celebrating. While scientists argue about whether it’s good or bad for us, and how many cups we should drink a day, we’ve been looking into the proud literary history of the black stuff.

Thursday 1 October has been designated the first International Coffee Day, as decided by the International Coffee Organisation, which describes it as an occasion both to celebrate the drink and “support the millions of farmers whose livelihoods depend on the aromatic crop”. Many areas, including most English-speaking countries, have had a head start, holding their own celebrations two days earlier. Confusing as that may be, go here if you’re interested in finding out more about related events around the world today.

I’d rather take coffee than compliments just now. ― from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self. ― Thud! by Terry Pratchett. Recommended by DMU Bookshop.

I went out the kitchen to make coffee – yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men. ― from The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

She poured the coffee, which was so strong it practically snarled as it came out of the pot, and then sat down herself, taking the small cat on to her knee. ― from The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks. Recommended by MrsC

Good. Coffee is good for you. It’s the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave. ― from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.― from Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

‘Well, one can die after all: it is but dying; and in the next world, thank God! there is no drinking of coffee, and consequently no – waiting for it.’ Sometimes he would rise from his chair, open the door, and cry out with a feeble querulousness – ‘Coffee! coffee!’ ― from Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers by Thomas De Quincey [about Immanuel Kant]

That’s something that annoys the hell out of me – I mean if somebody says the coffee’s all ready and it isn’t. – from The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.

DECEMBER 16. I’m sick for real. Rosario is making me stay in bed. Before she left for work she went out to borrow a thermos from a neighbour and she left me half a litre of coffee. Also four aspirin. I have a fever. I’ve started and finished two poems.” The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

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