Devon Book Club discussion
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Shortlists and Prizes
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http://www.costa.co.uk/costa-book-awa...
any views?
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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...
Yes, I've read it Ian. It tells the story of the ending of the Peterson's marriage - and portrays a very dysfunctional family! I enjoyed reading it, but it didn't blow me away - I rated it 3 stars (but it was probably a 3.5 in reality). I didn't really relate to any of the 3 main characters (Douglas - a stuff, uptight biochemist who adores his wife but always seems to get everything wrong in her eyes, Connie - a bohemian artistic ebullient character, and Albie - a typical teenager who hates his father but adores his mother) and the idea that you would still head off on a European road trip after your wife announces she thinks she wants a divorce is a bit far fetched to me. Having said that, it is well written with both comic and sad elements to it. Definitely worth a read.
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well, you've really sold that one! Interesting how authors find their way to winning these prizes. I quite enjoyed One Day - which I did read in a day (just after I broke me arm so had nothing much else I could do)- but thought that was, whilst enjoyable enough, not really up to the hype.
I've read it too. Absolutely loved it. Had my tablet on my lap looking at the pictures they were talking about. Got a 5* from me because it made me laugh and I have been to many of the places they talked about it and seemed authentic - especially the sunburn in Sienna! The very short 'chapters' made it easy to pick up when only had a short time to read.
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http://gu.com/p/486q5/sfb
I'm sure some of the writers in this group must be eligible to enter for the Winston Graham prize - "The Prize will be £3000 awarded for an outstanding published work of historical fiction based in the South West of Britain. Published’ works (including self-published) are defined as any works published in the last three years that have been distributed to the public either by sale or other transfer of ownership, rental, lease or lending including electronic publication distributed through the internet."
Deadline is 31 July, and all the info is here:
http://www.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk...
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"The Prize will be £3000 awarded for an outstanding published work of historical fiction based ..."
Thanks for letting us know Ruth. Be great to think that those members whose work fits the criteria could get some more support through the prize, either through winning or by being on a shortlist or recognised in some other way.
Ian wrote: "Just published the Booker International finalists - some really intersting authors featured and the interviews with them worth a readhttp://gu.com/p/486q5/sfb"
Thanks for that Ian, and the other listings. The 'Satantango' is stunning, one of the best books I've ever read, and Krasznahorkai László has recently won a major international prize. I was surprised Mabanckou, Alainis there - I hadn't realised he had such a large body of work, maybe they're not translated, 'though it is imposible to keep abreast of all. Thanks again - I'm trying to make my Summer reading all books in translation, but I'm hopeless at sticking to reading schedules.
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http://gu.com/p/486q5/sfb"
Thanks for that Ian, an..."
My pleasure. An interesting list. I've nor started on those authors yet bur will do so. Spending too much time on the Book Club that I'm nor reading half so much but its all good fun and its good to be making si many new friends.
Just seen [via Michael Orthofer's 'Literary Saloon' website] that North Devon author Nina Lane is shortlisted for 'The Novella' award, for 'The Harlequin' see: http://thenovellaaward.com/shortlist-.... I don't know her work, but she has published several novellas, so maybe someone to watch.
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Thanks Carol - I am not familiar with Nina's work but have just sent her a message on her website to see if we can connect with her. We have such a lot of talent in Devon - it is great to see local writers doing so well. I'll also put a post on our Facebook page
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http://time.com/3976615/man-booker-lo...
Read any of them, anyone?
usually a Booker nomination tells me that I should run as far in the opposite direction as I can, although Spool of Blue Thread is supposed to be really good, if library reservations are anything to go by it's quite popular, although they can never remember the title properly!
I used to be very interested, and followed the debates and blog. This largely followed on from Kingsbridge Library Reading Group being involved in the 2007 Booker, and being invited to the Shortlist Party. That was a good year - although 'Darkmans' should have won!! I think it began to go downhill with all the wittering about 'page turners' from the Head of Judges one year, and then making the prize accessible to US novels signalled a 'losing out' by both women and many writers from Canada, India, etc. The last year I took any interest was when Mantel's 'Bring Up the Bodies' won - it is good, and I was okay with the choice, but really (IMNSHO) Will Self's 'Umbrella' was the best ... just not an easy read.
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I always think the Booker will be a struggle - and the winners often are (for me). I have read The Green Road and A Spool of Blue Thread and enjoyed both. Hated The Gathering so was pleasantly surprised. Have ordered 3 more from the library so fingers crossed one of them will be successful. Most of the ones that appeal to me don't make the shortlist!
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Yes, I agree but I do like to hear about new authors so will explore some of those unfamiliar names in duie course
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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...
Booker longlisted. Very sad and there were some loose ends in this story of abuse. Three elderly ladies on pilgrimage to the same temple are also main characters. I'll never know whether my guesses were correct .... And I hate that!
Ian wrote: "Not a ringing endorsement then!"No it was very skillfully written and there was lots to think about. A sense of place is very important to me and it certainly had that. It just left me with too many unanswered questions. But I HAD to finish it!
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http://www.themanbookerprize.com/…/ma...…
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Hi Sue - thats a shame. The blurb is intriguing, if a little hard to pin down. What didn't you like about it?
No sense of place, didnt like the characters much - no development of characters except 1. Bits were interesting but no real plot. I do like a beginning, middle and end ☺. Could see why it had been shortlisted as it was innovative. (Well to me anyway)
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Hmm - not a lot to recommend it then.
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Anyone read it yet?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainme...
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https://youtu.be/dZ60FcGeom4
Ian wrote: "What a worthy winner of the "Best of the Best" of the Bailey's Women's Prize. Half of a Yellow SunA wonderful book.https://youtu.be/dZ60FcGeom4"
Yes, it was brilliant!
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https://www.theguardian.com/childrens...
Well done Tanya! Brilliant to be shortlisted for such a prestigious award.
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I like the look of David Szalay (Canada-UK) - All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape) and Madeleine Thien (Canada) - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
There was an interesting programme on saturday - Artsnight - which went through them all. Should be on iplayer if anyone's interested. Have got His Bloody Project from the library.
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Thanks Sue - I recorded that but haven't watched it yet. His Bloody Project looked interesting but I want more escapism than reality at present haha
Heard Madelaine Thien on the world service in tbe middle of the night and her book did sound interesting. From what I remember , it's about the life of her characters leading up to the events in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
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Thats right - the blurb says
In Canada in 1991, ten-year-old Marie and her mother invite a guest into their home: a young woman called Ai-Ming, who has fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests.
Ai-Ming tells Marie the story of her family in Revolutionary China - from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao’s ascent to the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and the events leading to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. It is a story of revolutionary idealism, music, and silence, in which three musicians - the shy and brilliant composer Sparrow, the violin prodigy Zhuli, and the enigmatic pianist Kai - struggle during China’s relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to. Forced to re-imagine their artistic and private selves, their fates reverberate through the years, with deep and lasting consequences for Ai-Ming – and for Marie.
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Martin John was shortlisted for the Goldsmith Prize in 2016 - which celebrates innovation in writing. Definitely one I want to read.
Joanna Walsh (Goldsmith's judge) on Martin John
An unwinding of damaged minds through internalised language, Martin John traces the lives of a sex offender and his mother, as they try to keep him on the straight and narrow. The book is an extraordinary engagement with the words we use to ourselves, to each other, to think about the unthinkable: to deal with the harm we do within families, via systems of punishment and care, as well as the harms we suffer ourselves. Most extraordinarily, Martin John is not only a virtuoso evocation of troubling states of mind: it's alarmingly funny too.
Anakana Schofield, Martin John
Martin John must put a stop to it. They have an agreement, he and Mam. Get out to Aunty Noanie on Wednesday. Stop talking rubbish. Don’t go near the buses and don’t go down on the Tube. Keep yourself on the outside. Get a job at night. Get a job at night or else I’ll come for ya.
But Martin John can’t stop. Meddlers are interrupting him and Martin John doesn’t like Meddlers. If he’s interrupted he can’t complete his circuits; if he can’t complete his circuits, bad things may happen. That’s a fact.
Written with all the electrifying humour of her award-winning debut Malarky, exhibiting a startling grasp of the loops and obsessions of a molester’s mind, Martin John is a testament to Anakana Schofield’s skill and audacity—and stands as a brilliant, Beckettian exploration of a man’s long slide into deviancy.
About the author
Anakana Schofield won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Debut-Litzer Prize for Fiction in 2013 for her debut novel Malarky. Malarky was also nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and named on many Best Book of the Year lists for 2012 and 2013. Martin John, her critically acclaimed second novel, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Schofield contributes criticism and essays to the London Review of Books Blog, The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Globe and Mail and more.
The next round of the Winston Graham historical fiction prize is open for entries! This time they are saying that they'd prefer books with "a clear connection to Cornwall" but Devon is really very close, no?http://www.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk...
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Close geographically, certainly but is it the same world haha? You entering?
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Since their launch in 1971, the awards have rewarded a wide range of excellent books and authors across all genres.
Among them is Devon poet, Alice Oswald for her collection "Falling Awake"
The prize has five categories - First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book - with one of the five winning books selected as the overall Costa Book of the Year. It is the only prize which places children’s books alongside adult books in this way.
Books are entered by publishers, and entry for the Awards closes at the end of June each year. The Category Winners for 2016can be found here:
http://www.costa.co.uk/…/45…/2016-cat...
About Falling Awake:
Mutability – a sense that all matter is unstable in the face of mortality – is at the heart of this collection, and each poem is involved in that drama: the held tension that is embodied life, and
life’s losing struggle with the gravity of nature. Working as before with an ear to the oral tradition, these poems attend to the organic shapes and sounds and momentum of the language as it’s spoken as well as how it’s thought: fresh, fluid and propulsive, but also fragmentary, repetitive. These are poems that are written to be read aloud.
About the author:
Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her collections include Dart, which won the 2002 T S Eliot Prize, Woods etc. (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), A Sleepwalk on
the Severn (Hawthornden Prize), Weeds and Wildflowers (Ted Hughes Award) and, most recently, Memorial, which won the 2013 Warwick Prize for Writing. ‘Dunt’, included in this collection, was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
What the judges said:
“We were all in awe of this book – please read it!”
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The Desmond Elliott shortlist has just been announced:http://www.desmondelliottprize.org.uk...
The prize was founded in memory of Desmond Elliott "to enrich the lives of new writers".
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http://www.desmondelliottprize.org.uk...
The prize was founded in memory of Desmond Elliott "to enrich the..."
hi Jane - thanks for letting us know - and what a wonderful shortlist - have you read any of them?
Hello Ian, I have a copy of the Cocozza: 'How to be Human' I plan to read. The idea of the transformational encounter with the urban fox is intriguing: "He has looked at you and you have looked at him. As if he has something to tell you and you have something to tell him".
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Great line - sounds really unusual - let us know what you think
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The 2019 longlist, or ‘Booker Dozen’, of 13 novels, is:
Margaret Atwood (Canada), The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
Kevin Barry (Ireland), Night Boat to Tangier (Canongate Books)
Oyinkan Braithwaite (UK/Nigeria), My Sister, The Serial Killer (Atlantic Books)
Lucy Ellmann (USA/UK), Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
Bernardine Evaristo (UK), Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
John Lanchester (UK), The Wall (Faber & Faber)
Deborah Levy (UK), The Man Who Saw Everything (Hamish Hamilton)
Valeria Luiselli (Mexico/Italy), Lost Children Archive (4th Estate)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)
Max Porter (UK), Lanny (Faber & Faber)
Salman Rushdie (UK/India), Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)
Elif Shafak (UK/Turkey), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)
Jeanette Winterson (UK), Frankissstein (Jonathan Cape)
https://thebookerprizes.com/…/2019-bo...…
Devon Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Travelling in the Dark (other topics)Satantango (other topics)
His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae (other topics)
His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae (other topics)
Half of a Yellow Sun (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
László Krasznahorkai (other topics)László Krasznahorkai (other topics)
Alain Mabanckou (other topics)
http://www.waterstones.com/blog/2014/...