The Guardian's Blog, page 75
March 5, 2015
Kazuo Ishiguro thinks his fantasy novel is not a fantasy novel. Are we bothered?
Ursula K Le Guin has hit back on behalf of SFF – but so long as people read The Buried Giant, it’s actually a welcome opportunity to dismantle the walls built around different schools of fiction, writes David Barnett
See Kazuo Ishiguro talking about The Buried Giant at the Guardian Live event on Sunday 8 March
Another day, another argument about whether a book about dragons is fantasy or not. The latest volume under dispute is Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, his first novel for 10 years, which boasts a fantastical Arthurian setting, a dragon, mention of ogres and a quest.
Well, if it walks like an orc, quacks like an orc, and generally behaves like an orc, it’s fantasy, right? The author isn’t so sure. In an interview with the New York Times he said: “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”
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Reading Britain’s readers: we love crime fiction best – and prefer coffee to tea, and dogs to cats. Apparently
Survey released for World Book Day produces some intriguing, if tangential, results
It turns out I’m not the average reader. That’s according to a new survey, from the Folio Society – one of endless such analyses to cross our desks in the run-up to World Book Day (did you know that “over 60% of parents and children say that humour is a key factor in encouraging them to read together”, and that “the BFG tops the list of most talked about Roald Dahl books on Twitter”? Now you do.)
Anyway, the Folio Society interviewed 2,149 UK book readers online – a “nationwide sample, reflecting a spread of age and gender” – discovering that the most preferred genres are crime (enjoyed by 64%), followed by autobiographies (55%) and historical fiction (53%). Just over two thirds, 67%, read books on a daily basis, they read 2.7 books per month, and they far prefer to read in print (76% compared to 21% ebook and 3% audio).
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March 4, 2015
Mal Peet, a great writer and a great friend
Transcending the young adult genre, his work was as warm and perceptive as he was, writes Meg Rosoff
When Mal phoned to tell me he had cancer, I rebuked him sternly. “For Christ’s sake,” I said, “I have a long list of people I’d quite like to drop dead. You’re nowhere on it.”
“I know, darling,” he said. “I’m not on my list either.”
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World Book Day costumes: fun for children, horror for parents
For the last four World Book Days, my daughter has gone to school dressed as Alice. This is not because she particularly likes the Alice books. In fact, she hasn’t read the Alice books. It’s because I am a terrible parent and every year I forget about World Book Day until my daughter walks out of the front door in her usual uniform, spots her classmates spilling down the street in Paddington duffels and Where’s Wally? bretons, turns tail and demands I rectify my terrible oversight. And every year I do so with a blue pinafore, a jar with “Drink me” hastily scribbled onto it, a white Miffy the rabbit and a headband. Alice. Done.
My children tolerate this lackadaisical approach to dressing up because neither of them like it that much. There has never been much demand for me to create effigies in papier-maché and homestitched felt. Early in my parental career, when it still seemed important to make an obvious effort, my son’s preparations for his first World Book Day mostly involved him bargaining me down till I’d agreed to a costume that he could play football in. In the end, he was Charlie from Charlie and Lola: a normal boy in normal jeans and a normal sweatshirt, on which he permitted me to ink a meticulous serif C in fabric pen. This was my greatest success until the year he got a tiger onesie and realised he could roll straight out of bed and off to school as a Winnie-the-Pooh character without even getting changed.
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March 3, 2015
Mal Peet, award-winning children's author, dies aged 67
Tributes pour in for ‘one of the greatest YA authors’, who died on Monday
Authors and readers have taken to the internet to mourn the death – and celebrate the life – of the award-winning novelist Mal Peet who died on Monday night.
Peet, winner of the Carnegie medal and the Guardian children’s fiction prize, discovered he was terminally ill at Christmas.
Mal Peet, one of the greatest YA writers and a man I greatly admired (even when we disagreed!) has died. http://t.co/GR2dudYZtN
“He used to say the uglier things are the longer they live, and the ugliest things live forever.” -Mal Peet
I am sad beyond measure to hear of the death of my friend, the GREAT Carnegie Medal winner and YA writer Mal Peet. A gent & a genius. :-(
@justine_jordan @Patrick_Ness Joining in this sadness. Goodbye to a good, thoughtful, funny person. Mal Peet.
Such sad news about Mal Peet. A wonderful writer and a lovely man.
So sad to hear of the death of wonderful author Mal Peet: http://t.co/elA1dHzjJG
Incredibly sad to hear that Carnegie Medal winner and all time great man and writer Mal Peet has died. Gutted.
Very, very sad to hear about Mal Peet. Keeper is one of the best children's books I've ever read.
Very upset to hear the news about Mal Peet's passing. He was such fun to work with. Such sad news.
Just heard the sad news about Mr. Mal Peet. He was so encouraging to me as a new writer on the block, and shall never forget his kindness.
Oh, for christ sake, now Mal Peet has died? Now, I have a very sad face.
So sad about Mal Peet. Thinking of his family and all friends lucky enough to work with him. http://t.co/ubaWRtaP2N
Mal Peet died last night. Selfish to mourn the unwritten books; still, I do. Thoughts and prayers with his family.
Yes me too. Sad that is. Mr Mal Peet has left the world with some lovely books. Thank you.
I think my heart just cracked. What an enormous loss. http://t.co/N5B6u8sJzW
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Game of Thrones on Business, and other career lessons from literature
With 11,000 business books published each year, titles have had to be lavish with their promises – How to Be a Star at Work, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive – and systematic with their diagnoses (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Six Thinking Hats, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) to stand out from the crowd. Now canny authors Tim Phillips and Rebecca Clare have seized on the power struggles and psychopaths of Westeros to write Game of Thrones on Business, which promises to “turn you into an outstanding leader and transform your business”, hopefully without losing any body parts along the way.
The book draws parallels between George RR Martin’s fantasy kingdom and “today’s frenetic business world”, comparing icy patriarch Tywin Lannister to Steve Jobs (neither favoured “a mothering style of leadership”, apparently), applauding Littlefinger’s nefarious networking and Daenerys Targaryen’s leadership skills (free your subteam and they will follow you across desert wastes) and pointing out that insufficient “scenario-planning meetings” can lose you your head, a la Ned Stark.
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Baddies in books: Woland, Bulgakov’s charming devil
The seductive rogue who haunts the pages of The Master and Margarita is a very complex kind of Satan
Two men, an editor and a poet, walk through Moscow’s Patriarch’s Ponds one afternoon in Stalinist Russia. As the editor lectures his friend on the non-existence of Jesus Christ, a foreigner appears, introducing himself as Professor W, and tells them what he insists is the true story of the meeting of Christ and Pontius Pilate. The man has one eye that is blank and completely black, another that is crazed. What happens next is a mirror of these two eyes: within minutes, the editor is dead; by morning, the poet is mad and locked in an asylum.
From the moment we meet the “enigmatic professor” Woland in The Master and Margarita, he is a disorienting figure. Witness reports of the opening accident describe his appearance in confusing, varying detail – “one says he was short, had gold teeth, and was lame in his right foot. Another says that he was hugely tall, had platinum crowns and was lame in his left foot. Yet a third notes laconically that he had no distinguishing features whatsoever.” Though we come to understand that Woland is the devil, Bulgakov is rarely explicit, preferring to use other titles, as if to feed the idea that to meet him will drive you insane. Throughout the book, Woland is “a stranger”, “a visitor”. Then, after he mysteriously acquires a gig at the Variety Theatre, he is “a visiting celebrity”, “a famous foreign artiste”, a “magician”. Only the Master, the poet’s neighbour in the asylum, sees who he truly is. “He’s unmistakeable, my friend!”
“… who are you, then?
I am part of that power
which eternally wills evil
and eternally works good.”
March 2, 2015
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
Read more Tips, links and suggestions blogsWelcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Brooke Sherbrooke shared her cheerful discovery:
Life is difficult, reading dark literature is my norm, all of it can send me into a funk. So, I’ve taken a side-step in my TBR pile, and am just finishing up David Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.
No author has ever made me laugh out loud like Mr Sedaris. He is irreverent and of my vintage so I fully engage with his references. And, this is not to be missed, he writes very well indeed. Some of the stories are from his life and point of view, some of the stories are penned by fictional characters with entirely different points of view.
I’m a big fan of Val McDermid and I’m fascinated by forensic science so I am LOVING this book. She explains each branch of forensics clearly with relevant case examples where each has been used. Forensics would definitely have been my career choice had my Chemistry teacher not told my mum I should stick to art!
I’m lucky that my library is starting a reading group devoted to literature in translation (called Found in Translation, if you see what they did there ...) Its first meeting is next week, and while at that we will have a chance to put forward suggestions for books, we’ve been told that the book for April is Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck. I must hang my head in shame as neither the author nor title is familiar to me. I’m sure, however, that one of you will know it. Just wondering what anyone who’s read it thought of it?
Oh my. Visitation. Hope they serve stiff drinks at your book club. Lots of moments that required me to pause, close the book physically and sit still, thinking and trying not to think, before taking a breath (which I had to catch first) and continuing.
It’s beautifully written, unusually structured and quite oddly shaped. It felt at once expansive (social, cultural and political history, WWII, post-war Europe, Soviet Europe) and claustrophobic (individual lives, small lives, under beds, in cupboards, in solitude by a tree).
I’d forgotten how exciting and gothic the book is. Also I was sure Helen Burns, Jane’s friend at Lowood, died after being made to stand out in the rain for hours, but this doesn’t happen in the book. She dies of consumption. I think I must be remembering one of the many dramatisations I’ve seen. I think the book transcends them. I remember Michael Jayston as a particularly appealing Rochester but have never seen any actor who fits Bronte’s description. Sad to say, her description calls up Gordon Brown for me . . .
Five minutes ago I finished a book. I’m not ready to talk about it. But this community deserves to know what it is. It ticks a few boxes, in an unusual genre, for me.
Female author; in translation.
@GuardianBooks Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai alongside the film adaptation by Bela Tarr (chapter by chapter) - astonishing and mesmeric
@GuardianBooks I'm reading Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood in bed and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng on the train. I like both so far
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The Road to Little Dribbling: Bill Bryson is releasing a new book and I can’t wait
This autumn sees the publication of Bryson’s first travel book in 15 years, and it’s about the British. Twenty years after Notes from a Small Island, what will he make of us?
News from The Bookseller that Bill Bryson is due to deliver his first travel book in 15 years has me itching to dig out my walking boots. It was Bryson’s chronicle of his hike along the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, that led to me taking a long walk of my own, and to one of my favourite holidays – even if camping along the Cornish coast path wasn’t quite as exotic and remote as the author’s trip.
It’s been a long time since I read a Bryson book – basically, I stopped when he stopped writing about travel. But, in the 90s, I enjoyed his takes on the English (Notes From a Small Island), on America (Notes From a Big Country and A Walk in the Woods) and on Australia (Down Under).
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February 27, 2015
Tracey Emin and Henry Miller: a perfect match
It’s taken too long for Tracey Emin and Henry Miller to find each other. The artist has provided cover artwork for the new Penguin Modern Classics editions of Miller’s novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. They are scribbles and Schiele-esque swirls, shadowy dark smudges of bodies in motion. They are perfect.
Emin has corrected a long-standing problem with the bodies that have graced the covers of these books. I never objected to their nakedness per se – there are a lot of naked ladies on the inside, so it seems only natural they should appear on the outside too. What seemed wrong was their pertness, their perfection. The specifics may have changed, as one edition replaced another, but the bodies remained the same: so soft focus, so 1930s erotica in nostalgic black and white. Miller introduces Tropic of Cancer by saying: “This is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty … ” So to represent the book with a beautiful, unsullied (usually headless) young woman with a perfect body was always a fundamental mismatch.
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