We have a winner
November 23, 2009
So the Bible ended up going for $15,407.53 in the end. Not quite $35,000 but still…
$6,600
November 19, 2009
Moving on up to $6,600 with three days one hour left. 64 bids on the table to date, the reserve met. Will there be a rush of ferocious bidding right at the last moment? Will the bible break $10,000 (easily I reckon), $20,000 (hmmmm maaaybe), $30,000?!?!
Stay tuned.
Learn from the Best
November 18, 2009
The Wall Street Journal seems like a strange place to have an article on novel-writing, but regardless of where it’s published it’s definitely interesting read. The bulk of the article is examples of the writing methods of renowned authors, with greats such as Anne Rice, Junot Diaz, Amitav Gosh, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Hilary Mantel and Kazo Ishiguro (among others) recounting how they manage to squeeze their novels out of their brains and onto the page.
Beware: The WSJ page kept on freezing up on me and almost crashing my computer… not sure if that’s the website’s fault though, or due to having a crappy computer… maybe a combination of the two…??
$5,200
November 17, 2009
$5,200 with 5 days two hours left. Maybe $100 thousand was optimistic… or maybe there’ll be a rush at the end, whatever, I’m going back to my original $35 thousand guess.
Following on from this…
100 best books of the decade
November 17, 2009
In the run up to Christmas the Times have composed a 100 best books of the decade list (both fiction and non-fiction). I’m sure this will be one in a slew of ‘best of the decade’ lists (the Guardian are in the middle of surveying the public for the decade’s top 100 books while the Times published a top 100 films of the decade list a little while ago) however, with publishers holding back what they consider to be potential bestsellers for release in the Christmas market, might this list not be a little premature? Could there not be a hidden gem amongst this years Christmas fodder of minor TV star autobiographies, festive cookbooks and novelty items that wouldn’t sell well normally but that publishers are hoping will catch the public imagination and sell, like, a gazillion copies.
No?
The list in the Times is 17 pages long (complete with descriptions and, at one point, a mix up in numbering), definitely check the Times pages out because titles you don’t know you skip over without any blurb and from the list I’ve already found four or five books I really want to read, plus some of the titles on the Times list are weblinked… but just to save time here is the list alone…
100 The Position by Meg Wolitzer (2005)
99 The Lost Leader by Mick Imlah (2008)
98 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2007)
97 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
96 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda’s Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (2006)
95 The Emperor’s Babe by Bernardine Evaristo (2001)
94 Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta (2005)
93 The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (2008)
92 Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (2009)
91 My Father and other Working-Class Football Heroes by Gary Imlach (2005)
90 Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (2005)
89 The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (2008)
88 Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr (2006)
87 The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007)
86 District and Circle by Seamus Heaney (2006)
85 Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 by Antony Beevor (2002)
84 Unless by Carol Shields (2002)
83 This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (2008)
82 Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel by Gordon Burn (2008)
81 The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud (2006)
80 The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (2008)
79 Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (2000)
78 Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel (2003)
77 Collected Poems by Michael Donaghy (2009)
76 England in Particular: A Celebration of the Commonplace, the Local, the Vernacular
and the Distinctive by Sue Clifford and Angela King (2006)
75 The Damned Utd by David Peace (2006)
74 War Music by Christopher Logue (2001)
73 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami (2005)
72 True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2001)
71 Experience by Martin Amis (2000)
70 The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson (2000)
69 My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (2001)
68 Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (2005)
67 The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (2009)
66 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
65 Peeling the Onion by Günter Grass (2007)
64 Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times edited by Neil Astley (2002)
63 The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker (2002)
62 Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
61 The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
60 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (2005)
59 Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith (2005)
58 Dart by Alice Oswald (2002)
57 Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin (2004)
56 If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor (2002)
55 Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2007)
54 Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (2003)
53 Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver (2004)
52 Youth by J. M. Coetzee (2002)
51 Home by Marilynne Robinson (2008)
50 No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies by Naomi Klein (2000)
49: The Ghost by Robert Harris (2007)
48 A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2003)
47 Collected Poems of Ted Hughes (2003)
46 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
45 London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (2000)
44 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005)
43 Thursbitch by Alan Garner (2003)
42 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2006)
41 The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (2008)
40 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trans Simon Armitage (2007)
39 Runaway by Alice Munro (2005)
38 The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression by Andrew Solomon (2001)
37 William Trevor: The Collected Stories (2009)
36 How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (2004)
35 The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006)
34 Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (2001)
33 Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (2004)
32 Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (2002)
31 The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006)
30 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
29 The Accidental by Ali Smith (2005)
28 The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross (2007)
27 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
26 Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)
25 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (2003)
24 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
23 The 9/11 Commission Report (2004)
22 The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2000)
21 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
20 White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
19 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
18 Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (2008)
17 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (2007)
16 Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy (2005)
15 The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006)
14 Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (2003)
13 Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald (2001)
12 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000)
11 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, in a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007)
10 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)
9 Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
8 Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood (2008)
7 Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002)
6 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
5 Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (2006)
4 Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers trans Robert Bringhurst (2002)
3 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (2004)
2 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)
1 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was… misspelled / illegible / handwritten
November 15, 2009
There are two handwritten bibles up for auction on Ebay, the progeny of the Bible Across America Project. 31, 173 people helped write the bibles, which toured though 90 cities in 40 states. Each manuscript is nearly 10 inches thick (though I’m not sure why metric America is using inches?)
When this was posted up on Galley Cat (Nov 12th) one of the copies of the bible was on ebay with a bid of $305, it’s now Nov 15th and the bible’s up to $5,000 with 7 days 5 hours left and the reserve’s still not been met.
He might not approve… but place your bets as to the final price? I’m thinking around $35,000 at the moment… or is that lowballing it? I don’t know, $50 grand? $75 grand? It’s America, and it’s religion… $100 grand? More?
Quote #3
November 14, 2009
Haiku Book Review
November 13, 2009
Really not that many there so far, but very funny.
In case of zombies / Gather non-perishables / …And destroy staircase || The Zombie Survival Guide
No, no. It’s not mine! / It is a gift for my niece. / (I better hide this…) || Twilight
They make us feel safe / And make criminals think twice / But who watches them? || The Watchmen
Go to the page here: http://twitter.com/HaikuBookReview
So far I’ve got:
Big Brother is here / Beware of the Thought Police / Poor, poor Winston Smith || Nineteen Eighty Four
If you think of any let me know and I’ll stick them up here, and on HaikuBookReview.
Quick reminder, a haiku is (traditionally) three phrases consisting of 17 syllabyles, 5 in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 again in the third. According to Wiki the typical length of haiku in English is 10–14 syllables and few have a syllabically symmetrical line arrangement such as 5-7-5 or 3-5-3. It seems like HaikuBookReview are going for the three line, 5-7-5 syllable make up.
_____________________
The only other site I can find with haiku book reviews is Piker Press; dozens of reviews but just doesn’t seem as fun.
Love this.
November 12, 2009
Ctrl.Alt.Shift
November 12, 2009
The ‘Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption’ exhibition features an
eclectic mix of comic book and graphic novel work in a bid to politicise a new generation of activists through the medium of popular comic culture.
The exhibition is hosted by the Lazarides Gallery on Greek Street in Soho, London.
A limited edition comic book in association with the event is available (and cheap at £4.99 plus a couple of quid postage).
