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Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Wins the Man Booker Prize!

October 6, 2009 in award, publishing by Kim | 1 comment

Apparently any competition can induce betting.  Bookies have been setting odds for the winner of the Man Booker Prize since the short-list was announced last month.  The early leader and correct bet, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, started with odds of 12 to 1, then shot to 2-1 with such support that one bookie worried about covering the bets, turns out they had cause for concern.  The suspense is over and the bookies are distributing the money because Wolf Hall  is the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize.  Unfortunately, the waiting isn’t over for those of us who want to read it and several of the other short-listed nominees since several of the novels are not yet published in the United States.

shortlistphotoMs. Mantel had stiff competition, reviewers with access to all of the short-listed books (wish that had been me) are excited about them:

A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book is published in the United States today.

Summertime by J.M. Coetzee will be available on Christmas Eve (heads up to my husband, hit the bookstore on the 24th).

Adam Foulds’ The Quickening Maze was published last month, so pick it up with Byatt’s book.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel won’t be released until October 13th, guess where I’ll be next Tuesday?

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer does not appear to have a US publishing date but is available from UK booksellers.

Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger (nominated twice before, she is in danger of becoming the Susan Lucci of the Man Booker Prize) is available.

Nominees for the prize must be a novel released in the previous year, written in English, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, or the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe.  Publishers contribute potential nominees Read the rest of this entry »

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What Do Publishers Do With All of Those Extra Books?

September 20, 2009 in publishing by Kim | No comments

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The Printing of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

September 15, 2009 in book review, Literary Event, publishing by Kim | 2 comments

Bought your copy yet?  Claire and I sitting on the sidelines right now.  I’ll buy it before my next trip to DC, I heard it has the addresses of the various locations so I can design my own “Dan Brown tour.”  For us, the hubbub surrounding the book is more exciting than reading it.  A whole week of Today show segments on just one book and only a select few were chosen to read and review the book.  I love how Janet Maslin in the NYT review describes Brown’s ability to use “dashing” as an adjective and a verb in reference to Langdon.

There has been endless discussion on how independent booksellers should market the book since the large discounts given by Amazon and the big box stores can’t be matched.  One solution is to pair it with other suggested books, a take off on Amazon’s “if you like The Lost Symbol then you’ll like this book also.”  Booksellers were pros at this long before Amazon arrived on the scene and they are suggesting choice second books via Twitter using #buy+brown.  Next Chapter Bookshop in Milwaukee will give customers a free copy of The Lost Symbol if they purchase $100 worth of books in one transaction.  I would love that deal, I could make a dent on my Christmas list. 

My favorite Dan Brown hype is a video by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group showing what it takes to print 5 million copies of a book and keep the plot a secret.  Kudos to them for pulling it off!

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Logrolling for the Non-Lumberjack

July 30, 2009 in publishing by Claire | 2 comments

Should you trust blurbs on the back of books?

One of the many reasons I never want real, live, actual bookstores to disappear from our lives is because browsing through books is one of life’s most enjoyable activities.  Even if my night table is stacked to the ceiling with books I should be reading, I can waste hours in a nice little bookstore, glancing through tables of books the owners specifically chose to display, picking up the ones whose covers or titles pique my interest, reading the first page or two . . . and checking to see what kind of blurbs it got. 

I admit with only a certain amount of shame that I’m likelier to check out a book that someone has called “sexy” or “fun” or “fast-moving” on the cover and a little less likely to pick up one that’s described as “moving,” or “thoughtful,” or “emotionally devastating.”  But that’s just me.

I’ll also make a point of scrutinizing books that boast a blurb from an author I already know and love.  If Robin Hobb puts her stamp of approval on a fantasy novel by an unknown author, I may well take give that new author a try.  Same with graphic novels and Alan Moore.  And if Jane Austen were around to recommend modern women’s fiction, I’d be grabbing at anything she said was worth reading.

The funny thing is, I know better than to trust blurbs.  Because . . . you know . . . I write them. Read the rest of this entry »

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I Want to Get Lost in Translation

April 11, 2009 in book review, publishing, translation by Kim | 9 comments

Last fall, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary to the Swedish Academy that picks the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature said “[t]he US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.”  After a moment of nationalistic irritation and a fleeting thought that Phillip Roth shouldn’t expect the Nobel anytime soon, I started to list which current books I’ve read in translation.  The list is short, less than one hand of fingers.  And I’m not alone, only three percent of the books published each year in the US are translated, so very few people are reading them.   If The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is an example of what other countries are producing, I’m missing out on a lot. 

I fell in love with The Elegance of the Hedgehog on the first page after I looked up “eructaton” (burp or fart):  “There he stood, the most recent eructation of the ruling corporate elite–a class that reproduces itself solely by means of virtuous and proper hiccups.”  The book is told through the voice of Renee, the concierge of  a fashionable Paris apartment building (the quote is her description of a tenant), and Paloma, the 12 year old daughter of one of the tenants.  Both hide their intelligence and lead largely solitary lives, but discover one another when a new tenant, Ozu, arrives. 

Character development rather than plot moves the book forward.  Before Ozu arrives, Renee and Paloma judge their world quite harshly.  Both assume most people are dumb, Renee is bitter about the class structure that she works overtime to keep in place and Paloma finds life useless.  Ozu, as the new person in the building and a cultural outsider, sees them clearly for who they are.  Their relationship with him and each other gives them the security and space to stop hiding, both physically and figuratively.

Muriel Barbery’s only private west coast appearance will be at a National Endowment for the Arts benefit sponsored by Literary Affairs on Saturday, April 25th, the tickets are quite reasonable.  Book Soup will be donating 10% of its sales at the event to the NEA.  I’ll be there, let me know if you’re coming also.

Muriel Barbery weaves together threads of philosophy (I prefer reading about philosophy than actually reading it), the meaning of Art, literature (now I want to read Proust), music (a completely unique Mozart “Requiem” experience), film, Japanese culture, and descriptions of food that will make Read the rest of this entry »

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