The Baltimore City Paper recently ran a well-written and heartfelt appreciation of the novelist Octavia Butler, perhaps best known for her novel Kindred, in which a woman from the 1970s is transported back to the time of slavery in the United States. Give the article a read at
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=13075.
Author: Michael Janairo
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Octavia Butler, an appreciation
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What were your favorite books of 2006?
Novelist Roger King lives in nearby Leverett, Mass., and recently spent some time working on a memoir at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs before traveling to London. I caught via e-mail long enough for him to weigh in on his top reads of the last year:“2006 was the year I rediscovered Marguerite Duras. I picked up an old copy of The Ravishing of Lol Stein in a Rockland Maine bookshop cafe. I only remembered having read The Lover, the best known of her books (later a Renais films), and the screenplay for
her intricate and brilliant Hiroshima Mon Amour. I rowed Ravishing back to the sailboat I was sleeping on, and that evening had my heart and mind lifted and intoxicated by the sheer nerve of her writing. She explains nothing, yet you experience everything as deep and true. There is no trimming to court morality, nor any padding to court intellect, and the reader is flattered by this. Every sentence packs a punch. Nearly every sentence breaks the rules. It should not be possible to write like this, but she does. I went on to read Four Novels with similar entrancement, and also two of the shortest books I’ve ever read, The Malady of Death, and The Man Sitting in the Corridor. The latter must be among the sexiest, and most lacerating three thousand words ever written. I have a secret ambition to write books this short with content this full. It’s also true that while I feel entirely alive when reading Duras, I also often forget the detail of what I’ve read; she does not offer the lifeline of a simple storytelling logic. I notice the last New Yorker fiction issue included an old Duras piece (she died in 1996) – not her best – so perhaps I am not alone in my rediscovery.”Born in London, Roger King is the author of three previous novels, Horizontal Hotel, Written on a Stranger’s Map, and Sea Level. He has worked throughout Asia and Africa as a socio-economist for various United Nations agencies and charities. In 1990 he moved to the United States to teach and concentrate on writing fiction. Since 1997 he has lived Western Massachusetts, writing and recuperating from M.E.Disease. Recently he has advised UN agencies on reconstruction aid for Afghanistan, and is executive producer of a documentary(with Mira Nair) about indigenous peoples, being filmed in 2003in Northeastern India. “A Girl From Zanzibar” was finally published in November 2002, by Helen Marx Books/ Books and Co., after facing extended delays and controversies with other publishers.
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Scripter award finalists
USC Libraries Scripter Award finalists have been named. The Scripter is awarded annually by the University of Southern California Libraries to honor writers for the best achievement in adaptation among English-language films released during the previous year and based on a book, novella or short story. This post could go in my colleagues movies blog, as well, but since it is about literary adaptations, it fits for a books blog, especially since the movie adapted from Saratoga Spring’s own Steven Millhauser’s short story is on the list.
Here are the finalists:This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order by film title, are: screenwriters Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby for “Children of Men,” based on the book by P.D. James; screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and author Lauren Weisberger for “The Devil Wears Prada”; screenwriter Neil Berger for “The Illusionist,” based on the story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” by Steven Millhauser; screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock for “The Last King of Scotland,” based on the book by Giles Foden; and screenwriter Patrick Marber and author Zoe Heller for “Notes on a Scandal.”
The selection committee voted to determine these five finalists from among the year’s 45 eligible films.
The full story is available here:
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/scripter/index.shtmlThe winner will be announced Jan. 12.
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10-year-old author inspired by Russell Banks
From the Adirondack Daily Enterprise:
At 10 years old, Saranac Lake resident Justus Stewart is fulfilling his aspirations of becoming a writer.
Stewart published his first novel, “Kyle Oaks: The Fight for the Throne,” in December using an online publishing service, iUniverse.com.
The Petrova Elementary School fifth grader said he worked on the 52-page book for about year before trying to find a publisher.
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Stewart said he wants to be a writer of some sort when he grows up, especially after having met his favorite author, Russell Banks, of Keene, who inspired him to write a book of his own.
You can find the full story here.
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Harpe Lee steps out
This is from an AP report:
Reclusive author Harper Lee attended a high school play based on her book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” on Wednesday, then met with students who appeared in the production.
What next? J.D. Salinger book signing? or Thomas Pynchon writing liner notes on an album? Oh, wait, he already did that with the band Lotion.
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A new writing contest at Gather.com
So the Sobol award is gone, now here comes a new award contest. Here’s the skinny from Gather.com:
Today, I’m exceptionally excited to announce Gather’s newest writing competition, one of our most promising programs to date: The Gather.com First Chapters Writing Competition. First Chapters offers thousands of aspiring, but unpublished, authors the opportunity to win a guaranteed publishing contract with Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, promotion and distribution by Borders, and a $5,000 cash prize from Gather.com. This competition will launch the career of one talented Gather member and introduce many others to the industry.
Maybe this contest will actually work.
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A little Menken in the morning…
On of the book blogs I check out often is Of Books and Bicycles. In a recent post, Of Books responds to a post on a different blog — BlogLily — about book reviewing and feeling sheepish about criticizing someone who has put so much work into a book AND has gotten it published. A worthy read, of course, would be the list of rules for reviewers that John Updike wrote and is now posted at the blog of the National Book Critics Circle (I am member of the organization, by the way). But it is also good to review the words of HL Menken:
A book review, first and foremost, must be entertaining. By this I mean that it must be dexterously written, and show an interesting personality. The justice of the criticism embodied in it is a secondary matter. It is often, and perhaps usually, quite impossible to determine definitely whether a given book is ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ The notion to the contrary is a delusion of the defectively intelligent. It is almost always accompanied by moral passion. But a critic may at least justify himself by giving his readers civilized entertainment …. If he is a well-informed man and able to write decently, anything he writes about anything will divert his readers.
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Facts, figures about reading and books
In catching up on my reading of what the Times Union offers readers (in print), I came across a Harvey McKay column in the business section that focuses on reading. Though he doesn’t attribute his facts, I present them here for your reading pleasure:
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HVCC Reads “Ironweed”; UAlbany reads “Field Notes from a Catastrophe”
HVCC READS is a community reading program designed to encourage students, faculty and staff to read and discuss the same book — William Kennedy’s Ironweed. Meanwhile, at UAlbany, the campus will be reading Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert.
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