Cornflower Books

Winners

    Thanks to all those who entered the draw for copies of Cliff McNish's very scary story The Hunting Ground. I've pulled names out of the hat in the usual fashion, and the winners are:

    Litlove

    The Victorian Librarian

    Dark Puss

    The Bibliomouse  (Sarah C.)

    Simon S.

    I already have real names and addresses for The Victorian Librarian and Dark Puss, but if everyone else would email me (the link is under 'ABOUT' in the right hand sidebar) and give me their details, I'll pass them on to Orion who will be sending out the books. One last thing, The Hunting Ground is published by Orion's young adult imprint, Indigo, and as I said in my post on it, it's not one to give to younger children.

                                              ~~~~~

    On the subject of winners, and following on from last night's brief post on the Costa Book of the Year, on this morning's edition of Breakfast on Radio 3 Petroc Trelawny asked listeners whether they take particular notice of the winners of the major book prizes, whether they make a point of buying those books straightaway, and if so, how soon they then read them.

    It's a question which had occurred to me, too, and while I would certainly like to read Andrew Miller's winning novel Pure, I'd do so on the basis of the book per se, not because it has won the prize. While of course the publicity generated by the award may be the very thing which brings the book to a reader's attention, the accolade itself is not enough for me to pick up a book which on the face of it doesn't particularly appeal. That said, subsequent favourable reviews from trusted sources may persuade me to revise my initial opinion, so I suppose it's a cumulative process, one which demonstrates the power of blogs even where books have the massive spotlight of a major literary prize shining on them.

Pure and simple

    Just announced, the Costa Book of the Year 2011 (and there's more on it on the BBC website) is Pure by Andrew Miller, a historical novel set in Paris in 1785, "so gripping you'll put your life on hold to finish it"! 

    A young provincial engineer is charged with the excavation and destruction of the city's oldest cemetery, now overflowing and insanitary, but there is more to this labour than a simple job of work.

    Reviews praise, among other things, "the exquisite writing". Have you read it? I'm keen to do so.

A few miscellaneous links

 

      I'm catching up after a couple of days away, so here are a few miscellaneous links:

 

  -  Happily, our route down to the Forest of Bowland took us through St. Boswells, so The Mainstreet Trading Company made the perfect place to stop for refreshments and a little light book-buying. I also came away with a Love Your Indie loyalty card to be used in participating bookshops (full details here).

  -  In case you haven't already seen them, here are the shortlists for the 2011 Costa Book Awards.

  -  Although I've yet to read any of her books, I follow the blog of Canadian crime writer Louise Penny, and here's a recent post of hers on the publishing process, a subject I'm always interested in knowing more about.

 -  Jojo Moyes' article on the changing face of children's literature prompted a nostalgic moment over breakfast this morning. I don't have a copy of Moorland Mousie on my shelves, but I do still have all my old Pullein-Thompson, Pat Smythe and Ruby Ferguson books, and some of them were read and enjoyed by my daughters (but not my son - though he is nowadays the only one of the three who rides).    

A round of applause

    I've spent all day today on work for Mindroom - all, that is, but the last hour which was devoted to getting the computer to 'recognise' the printer so that I could see the fruits of my labour in hard copy, and it did finally work, thank goodness - but I've no time or energy left for a long post. Instead, let's have a round of applause for some literary prize-winners:

    The Wellcome Trust Book Prize, which celebrates 'medicine in literature', has gone to Alice LaPlante for her first novel Turn of Mind, "a tale of a family’s secrets exposed by murder and a brilliant mind in terminal decline" - full details here - so many congratulations to her (and yes, I was rooting for Ann Patchett's State of Wonder because I was so taken with it, but as it is the only one of the shortlisted books I've read, I can't really 'compare and contrast'!).

    Meanwhile, the Dylan Thomas Prize has gone to Lucy Caldwell for her book The Meeting Point, "a beautifully written novel that manages to address the momentous subjects of love and loss, and faith and betrayal, with a calm and quiet grace". Annabel Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece which I was talking about (and from which David Tennant was reading) last week was also on the shortlist, but didn't take the prize.

    And finally today, lots of us here are big fans of Linda Gillard's books, so it's great to see that her popularity continues to grow as Amazon have selected her recent House of Silence (post on it here) as one of their Kindle Top 10 Best of 2011 in the Indie Author category, and well-deserved that is.

The Man Booker Prize 2011

    The winner is:

Julian Barnes for The Sense of an Ending

    After all the discussion there has been about this year's prize, the comment - informed or otherwise, the invective, the derision even, the judges have made their decision, so let us congratulate the winner.

Literature and medicine

 

    The shortlist for this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize has just been announced, and I'm especially pleased to see that it includes Ann Patchett's enthralling, fascinating novel, State of Wonder (post on it here), a book with many questions of medical ethics at its heart.

    The prize itself is an unusual one in that it "aims to stimulate interest and debate about medicine and literature, celebrating those works that explore ideas relating to our health and wellbeing", and it encompasses both fiction and non-fiction - you can see the contenders here. While State of Wonder is the only one of the six I've read, I do have Louisa Young's My Dear I Wanted to Tell You waiting - has anyone read it or any of the other books on the list?

    I see that the judges will be appearing at the Cheltenham Literature Festival this Saturday, discussing the most memorable deathbed scenes in literature, and their importance and impact from a literary, historical and scientific point of view! Which book would you nominate for passing with flying colours that "true test of a novelist's mettle"? I haven't a clue. 

Booker half dozen

 
    On the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize are:

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie  

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English

A.D. Miller, Snowdrops

More details here.

Which of these books fits Arnold Bennett's description of a good novel, I wonder.

The winner will be announced at a dinner at London's Guildhall on Tuesday, 18th. October. 

Britain's oldest literary prize

 

    Based at the University of Edinburgh, administered by the senior staff in the department of English assisted by a reading panel of postgraduate students, the James Tait Black prizes are the oldest literary prizes in Britain. They date from 1919 when they were founded by Mrs. Janet Coutts Black in memory of her husband James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house A&C Black Ltd, and since 2007 they have been awarded at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I was at this evening's prize event, chaired by Sally Magnusson who remarked on the "exhilarating summer's reading" she's had in preparation for tonight.

    On the shortlist for the fiction prize were:

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

La Rochelle by Michael Nath

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

and for the biography prize:

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin

A Life in Pictures by Alasdair Gray

E. M. Forster: A New Life by Wendy Moffat

Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China by Hilary Spurling

    And the winners were - Tatjana Soli for The Lotus Eaters, a novel about the Vietnam war from the point of view of a female photographer, which "reads cinematically and shows the war from the inside", and Hilary Spurling (who also today got a new grandchild!) for Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China, described by Sally Magnusson as "unputdownable".

Booker's dozen

 
    On the longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize are:

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Sebastian Barry, On Canaan's Side

Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

Yvette Edwards, A Cupboard Full of Coats

Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child

Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English

Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days

A.D. Miller, Snowdrops

Alison Pick, Far to Go

Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb

D.J. Taylor, Derby Day

    From a list which includes a former winner, Alan Hollinghurst, and four authors - Kelman, Miller, Edwards and McGuinness - making their debuts, I have five of the thirteen books, but have read only one so far, and that is Snowdrops, which I thought was good but not great. I'm very pleased to see D.J. Taylor there, however, as I am a fan of his work and would expect Derby Day to be a dazzler. 

    The shortlist will be announced on 6th. September.

Quotation of the day

    "The Booker is designed to make people cross with one another."

    Margaret Drabble.

She goes on, "Look what it did to Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. In the mid-eighties, I thought it was getting out of hand and how right I was. That was before my sister won [for Possession in 1990]."

The full interview with Dame Margaret (mother of lovely Joe!) is here.

Here again, Hare again

    Thankyou so much for all the Bill Bryson comments; one thing I love about having this blog is that no matter which author or book I mention, the extremely well-read Cornflower readership will have an informed opinion!

    I've had a very busy few days and they've been non-reading ones (apart from a page or two last thing at night) so I'm not back up to speed with things here, nor have I caught up with my email (apologies if you've written and not yet had a response). It's odd being out of my usual quite immersive reading routine and feeling a bit detached, but I shall work my way back to normal soon, I hope, although the first thing that must be tackled is the state of my desk as a recent huge influx of books have left it far from the uncluttered space it was quite recently, and like it, I'm 'all throughother', to use a good phrase.

    In book news, though, I see that the wonderful 'Hare'* has won another prize, and also on that shortlist was Patrick Barkham's The Butterfly Isles: A Summer In Search Of Our Emperors And Admirals which I have waiting and am very keen to read. I love that the Ondaatje Prize is for a distinguished work (fiction, non-fiction or poetry) which "evokes the spirit of a place" - there's something quite refreshing and very appealing about that as a criterion.

*If you haven't already seen it you may like to read Saturday's World of Edmund de Waal.

Quick links

 

   A handful of links to things which may be of interest to you:

- Fast Fiction: short stories for the Kindle by the likes of Hilary Mantel and Carol Shields.

- Thousand Readers: David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet was one of my 'books of the year' in 2010; if you'd like the chance of winning a signed, limited edition paperback, click here and follow the instructions.

- Critical thinking: unpublished writers may find the fledgling site iwritereadrate useful for getting feedback. All details there, or have a look at the accompanying blog.

- Constructive advice: for writers looking for an objective view of their work and that all-important editorial eye, The Writers' Workshop may be the place to go.

- Romantic gesture: Heywood Hill will gift-wrap a parcel of books and send them to your sweetheart for Valentine's Day!

- Best of Beryl: five times the bridesmaid, never the bride - despite her multiple shortlisting, Dame Beryl Bainbridge never won the Booker Prize, but in tribute to her there is now to be a Man Booker Best of Beryl prize for the shortlisted book of hers which the public considers the most deserving. Follow that link to vote (I'm ineligible as I've never read her).

Glittering prizes

   Just announced, the Costa Book of the Year 2010 is Jo Shapcott's Of Mutability - that's poetry winning two years in a row! 

   Also today, the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature has gone to Candia McWilliam for her memoir What to Look for in Winter.

Briefly ...

- Following on from Monday's post, I'm delighted to hear from Millrace Books that they plan to bring out another Jane Duncan novel, My Friend Monica, in the Spring.

- Oxslip kindly told me about a free poetry app from the Poetry Foundation - follow that link to her site for more information - and as Burns Night approaches, fans of his poetry may like to know that there is a Burns app, too!

- The South Bank Sky Arts Awards will be decided in London this week, and from the list of nominees (follow that link and scroll down) I noticed Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes in the literature category. I've now read it and I can certainly see why it is getting all these plaudits.

- Aspiring writers of fiction may be interested in the five day creative writing course Finding the Plot which takes place at Oxford's Corpus Christi College in April and is part of The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.

- Click here and scroll down to 'Memorable motto' and read about writer Jeremy Dyson's 'Shelf of Joy'. What a lovely idea!

A winner and another draw

 

     To all those who entered the Cornflower Books 2nd. birthday draw, thankyou. The winner, chosen at random, is Juliet, and her prize - a favourite book of mine from last year, a corner of which is shown cryptically here - will go off to her soon.

 

    But the fun doesn't end there because, thanks to the kind souls at Chatto & Windus, I have another book to give away, this time a copy of Edmund de Waal's family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance. I mentioned it last week when it won the Costa Biography Award, and it also won the New Writer of the Year award at the Galaxy Book Awards 2010. I haven't read it yet, but Mr. C. - who is no slouch in these matters - says it was the best book he read last year, and I've heard similarly high praise from many other reliable sources.

    If you would like to enter the draw to win a copy of The Hare with Amber Eyes, please just leave a comment on this post, and I'll pick the winner in a few days.

Hare and hand

 

    The Costa Book Awards announced their category winners last night, and I was very pleased to see that the novel prize went to Maggie O'Farrell for The Hand That First Held Mine, one of my favourite books of last year. The biography prize was won by Edmund de Waal for The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, a book I have yet to read but one about which Mr. C. (among many others) is raving.

    There are details of all the winners here, but I was particularly struck by this story concerning Jason Wallace who won the Children's Book category for Out of Shadows - all credit to him for persevering in the face of so many rejections.

     Which book will be the overall winner? We shall find out on January 25th.

Monday miscellany

     We haven't had a miscellaneous post for a while, so let's put a few oddments together today:

Books and cakes: The Bridge of San Luis Rey now has its accompanying baked goods - falling apart, like the bridge itself, but very moreish nevertheless.

Books in unsual places: leafing through the catalogue of the mail order company Culture Vulture, I found amid the jewellery, accessories, ornaments and what-have-you, three Bloomsbury Group books including my favourite.

Books and the Booker: judge Tom Sutcliffe talks about reading 140 novels in just a few months for this year's Man Booker Prize.

Books to recommend: Mr. C. has just finished The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal. He couldn't put it down.

Books and Babel: have you ever wondered about what goes on at the Frankfurt Book Fair? Read what an editor writes (I find the remark about the "clarity of purpose and a vivifying sense that all things are possible" heartening).

The Man Booker Prize 2010

     And the winner is ...

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson: "transfixing", "plangent, forthright, subtle".

Star!

   

     Breaking news: a poll to find the most romantic novel of the last fifty years has been conducted by Woman's Weekly in conjunction with the Romantic Novelists' Association. The results were announced this morning, and the runners up are Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance and Trisha Ashley's Every Woman for Herself, but I'm delighted to see that the winner is the wonderful Star Gazing by Linda Gillard!

    I'm not sure how many times I've written about Linda's novel - there was the original post and subsequent mentions when it was up for various awards, but it's a super book, enormously enjoyable, and I'm so pleased that it and its creator are getting some of the recognition they deserve. Congratulations, Linda!

Edited on Friday to add: do read Linda's comment on this post, and you may also like to visit the RNA website which has only today mentioned her win.

Man Booker 2010 - the shortlist

 

 The Man Booker dozen has been reduced to just six books:

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America 

Emma Donoghue, Room

Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question

Andrea Levy, The Long Song

Tom McCarthy, C

So, no David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - that's a poor show.

The winner will be announced on 12th. October.