March 2012
14 posts
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Russian avant garde books →
Author Aliya Whiteley pointed me at AbeBooks selection of rare Russian avant garde books. Ms Whiteley also happens to have a new website. You can find that here.
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For F***'s Sake... →
Scott Pack is offended by the forced absence of swearing in a new book from Hammer, and there’s also a nice little aside about the perversity of the English language in the fifth comment down.
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Odious Comparisons
Ralph Rochester’s new book, a bittersweet tale in illustrated verse, is a real family affair. It’s been produced as a limited edition (300), hand-bound with Hessian covers by the author’s daughter Kate, and I heard about it from Sophie, his other daughter, and the brains behind The Literary Platform. What’s more, Rochester’s wife Barbara had no small hand in the...
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John Steinbeck's six tips on writing →
Brain Pickings have been compiling writing tips from some literary heavyweights. Steinbeck’s are refreshingly practical. Here’s his third tip:
Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that...
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Vintage sex
Upon my recent weekly trip to the bookshop, my eyes were seduced by these lovely D.H. Lawrence covers, reissued last year by Vintage Books, featuring the work of Dutch photographer Carla van de Puttelaar.
Widely exhibited across Europe, her work focuses on the human form, almost always female. And almost always set against a backdrop of deep endless black. Her colour palette is muted, her...
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Avast, ye seadogs
Unless you’re a lily-livered landlubber or have been living under a barnacle-festooned rock the past score and eight month, you’ll no doubt be aware that The Pirates!: in an Adventure with Scientists comes into port at cinemas from Dover to Dartmouth in a couple of weeks time.
What you may be less aware of is that Aardman’s latest big-screen outing is based on a great little...
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The magazine that doubles up as a bookmark →
Fallon London are crowd-sourcing material, both writing and illustration for this little number.
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Crawley WordFest 2012
For anyone of the bookish persuasion and based in the southeast of England, Crawley’s WordFest organisers have just unveiled the programme for their second year of events, which kick off on the 24th of this month.
A large proportion of the town’s residents will be reading Julia Crouch’s Cuckoo, which has been selected as this year’s One Town, One Book choice. (Last...
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Underground New York Public Library →
This quaint photography Tumblr documents the book-reading public on NYC’s subway system.
It would be great to see an international version, with photographs taken on public transport across the world.
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Jean Rhys remembered
There’s a great article on the Independent today about Jean Rhys, who is to be honoured by a blue plaque in Paulton’s Square, London.
Rhys was the author of WIde Sargasso Sea, the post-colonial perspective prequel, if that’s not too much alliteration for you, to Jane Eyre.
Her somewhat overlooked ouvre explored the role of the woman outsider, a position she sadly understood...
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Seven books with, er… non-realistic elements →
I don’t agree with his terming these books ‘literary fantasy and science fiction’ (rather than forcibly adopting books into a genre where they don’t fit, it makes more sense to me to ignore the genre distinction in the first place), but Damien G Walter nonetheless has a roundup of some very good books over on his blog.
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World Book Day →
Should have probably mentioned earlier that it’s World Book Day today, of course. Assuming you knew. I got sent a Fay Weldon novel with a cover that means no man anywhere would ever buy a copy for himself. Thanks, Aliya.
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Faber & Faber/Stylist crime novel competition
The gals over at Stylist Magazine have a couple of book competitions running at the moment. One is to design a cover for one of a selection of classic titles, and the other more interesting less-free-pitchy but equally rights-gobbling sees them partnering with Faber to find a new crime novel.
They want a 6,000 word sample, a 300 word outline (that doesn’t reveal the story’s ending)...
