Lists! Patrick Ness recommends 10 “unsuitable” books for teens. Also, flavorwire highlights 10 scrumptious memoirs by chefs. I’ve never wanted to read one before, but I’m going to have to pick up a copy of Blood, Bones and Butter now.
- Awwwwwww… Australian author Christopher Currie proposes to his girlfriend in the acknowledgments of his novel The Ottoman Motel (not – yet – available through our suppliers, a sad fact of life for far too many Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and South African authors).
- Spotify or Lastfm for literature: meet 24symbols.com. This would mean more to me if I knew what Spotify or Lastfm was.
Roald Dahl on UK cereal boxes? What a brilliant idea! Excerpts of some of his stories will be printed on cereal boxes for millions of sleepy-eyed kids to peruse – I know mine would be reading (although over here it would have to be on a box of hagelslag).
- First there were vampires, then there were fallen angels, and now dystopian futures are the thing to read if you’re a teen (or simply young at heart). Includes some excellent title suggestions!
- Alas, another book that needs to be pulped: about 30,000 copies of the Italian translation of YouCat (short for Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church) will never see a shelf because a translation error changed the Church’s stand on contraception to “by all means, use them!”
Awards! The 2011 Jackson Poetry Prize (for “American poets of exceptional talent who deserve wider recognition”) went to James Richardson, whose books include By the Numbers and Vectors. The shortlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction (the controversial Girls Only literary award) has been announced, and the books and their ladies selected are: Room by Emma Donoghue, The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna, Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson, Great House by Nicole Krauss, The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, and Annabel by Kathleen Winter (she gets my pick for Most Arresting Cover). The award will be presented on June 8th.
Tags: antiques, awards, Bookbits, booknews, Fiction, Food & Cooking, lists, literary proposal, literature on cereal boxes, Photography, Poetry, pulped books, unsuitable juvenile fiction, writers and their dogs
Regarding Jill Krementz: I can also recommend her book The Writer’s Desk, with portraits of some great authors. Out of Print, but still available second hand.