BW31: The Man Booker Prize Long List for 2013

The long list for The Man Booker Prize for 2013 has just been announced this past week and there are some very interesting books on the list, some of which I've already added to my wishlist.  The Booker Prize foundation is a registered charity sponsored by The Man Group, an alternate investment management business.  The prize is awarded to the best full length novel written by an author who is a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland and published in the United Kingdom for the first time in the year of the prize. The story must be written in English and can not be self published.

The nominees are:

A Tale for the Time Being by  Ruth Ozeki

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw 

 

Harvest by Jim Crace

The Kills by Richard House 

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Luminaries by  Eleanor Catton 

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by  Eve Harris 

The Spinning Heart by  Donal Ryan 

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin 

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann 

Unexploded by Alison MacLeod 

We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo

The shortlist will be announced September 10, 2013 and the winner on October 15, 2013 and the prize to the winner is £50,000.

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BW30: More book news!

I'm sure everyone has heard the news about J.K. Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling which was written under a pseudonym, Robert Galbraith.  I recently downloaded and will let you know what I think.   When Harry Potter first came out, I didn't give it a thought. But when I heard the hype about it and calls to ban the book, well of course I had to read it. And fell in love with the characters and the story. Same thing happened with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.  Read it twice and loved it.   Rowling was a bit upset about the leak revealing she wrote the book.  I guess she hoped it stand on its own merits and sell not because of her name.  There are many authors who have written stories under different pseudonyms including Don Delillo who published under a book under a woman's name. Even Stephen King wrote a few novels under the name Richard Bachman back in the 70's and 80's. 

And for those of you who are armchair traveling around the world with me.  A Pack of Fun, one of the gals from Well Trained Mind, shared a link to A Year of Reading the World where a writer, Ann Morgan talks about a challenge she set for herself to read one book from every country in the world in one year.  Be sure to check out her list of books. You may just end up adding a few to your wishlists.

Speaking of wishlists and bucket lists - here's a few authors with birthdays this week to add.


July 21 - Ernest Hemingway / John Gardner
July 22 - Emma Lazarus / Mark McGarrity
July 23 - Raymond Chandler /  John Nichols
July 24 - Alexandre Dumas / Zelda Fitzgerald
July 25 - David Madison /  Robyn Carr
July 26 - George Bernard Shaw / Aldous Huxley

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BW29: Calvino Readalong

If not for Susan Wise Bauer's Well Educated Mind, I would have never heard of Italo Calvino's 1979 novel If on a winter's night a traveler.  It is another one of those intriguing, weirdly written books that I seem to gravitate to every few weeks.  According to Amazon:

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.  

It's a story within a story and begins with the narrator telling you how to to read the book.  The odd chapters are from a second person point of view with instructions or preparation for the next chapter and the even chapters are the story and in a variety of points of view. I'm going to be diving into the story within the next week or so.  Some of the ladies on the Well Trained Mind have decided to join me as well.


Books like these always remind me that reading is a visceral experience, a journey through a writer's creative mind and sometimes I just need to take the time to slow down, absorb, and enjoy the ride.  I was thumbing through the book and saw this sentence "An odor of frying wafts at the opening of the page, of onion in fact, onion being fried" and immediately upon reading the word wafts smelled onions even before getting to the end of the line. Now I'm hungry.  *grin*

Come along and join me in reading If on a winter's night a traveler.

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BW28: Christy Awards

The Christy Awards, named in honor of Catherine Marshall's most famous novel Christy, are given for excellence in Christian fiction:

The Christy Award is designed to:

• Nurture and encourage creativity and quality in the writing and publishing of fiction written from a Christian worldview.
• Bring a new awareness of the breadth and depth of fiction choices available, helping to broaden the readership.
• Provide opportunity to recognize novelists whose work may not have reached bestseller status.

The 2013 Winners were just announced and they are:

Contemporary Romance:  The Breath of Dawn by Karen Heitzmann from her Spencer Family series.
Nominees included Lethal Legacy by Irene Hannon and Wildflowers from Winter by Katie Ganshert

Historical Romance: Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden.
Nominees included Be Still My Soul by Joanne Bischof  and Love's Reckoning by Laura Frantz

 Contemporary Sequels, Series and Novellas:  You Don't Know Me by Susan May Warren
Nominees included Two Destinies by Elizabeth Musser and Waiting for Sunrise by Eva Marie Everson

Suspense:  Rare Earth by Davis Bunn.
Nominees included Downfall by Terri Blackstock, The Last Plea Bargain by Randy Singer and Submerged by Dani Pettrey

To see the rest of the categories, winners and finalists check out The Christy Awards website.  More books to add to your wishlists and mine.

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Link to your reviews:    Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.