The finalists in the fiction category offered a mixture of veterans and new authors. The five nominees include Home, the third novel by Marilynne Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for her 2004 novel “Gilead”; Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen, a founder of the Paris Review; and The Lazarus Project, by the Bosnian author Aleksandar Hemon. They [...]
The White Tiger, a debut novel by Aravind Adiga has won the 2008 Man Booker prize and with it the £50,000 prize. The novel is described as a ‘compelling, angry and darkly humorous’ novel about a man’s journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. It was described by one reviewer as an ‘unadorned portrait’ [...]
Last night I was looking at my book shelves—I might have been looking for myself. I remember once when a neighbor was over, he studied the shelves and then told me that he understood me better; he knew who I was. I swallowed hard; he not only knew who I was, he also knew who [...]
Tomorrow nearly every book blog, this one included, will tell you who won the Man Booker prize. Then, on Wednesday you’ll see the shortlist for our own National Book Award. But I find myself wondering whether or not the real news is in who will win and who will make the shortlist, or rather in [...]
As of this morning, the Dow dipped below 8,000 and our president is telling us that our anxiety is feeding our anxiety—I tend to think a more than 40% drop in the Dow and record foreclosures are enough to feed our anxiety, but, hey, what do I know? I go through each day stubbornly searching [...]
Obviously, I was wrong. I had my money on Amos Oz, but that’s all right—I didn’t actually place the bet anyway. As it happened, according to Ladbrokes, there was a flurry of last minute wagers that made Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio the favorite to win. Makes one wonder whether or not word leaked since Le [...]
For reasons I’m not totally sure of, the Nobel prize seems to have been established as literature’s highest honor—it must have something to do with the 1.3 million dollar prize. But, still, I find it hard to believe that when we find it difficult to choose a winner of the Booker in this country, some [...]
Let’s assume you’ve spent the last two or more years writing the great American novel and now you want someone to publish it. You don’t have an agent and have decided against the expense of self-publishing. Yet you’re convinced that if you could just get the book to a few people, the publishing world would [...]
Yesterday, I was given a copy of The Writer Magazine. I haven’t looked at one of these in a long time and I’m truly sorry I did now. To say it was maddening, would be a gross understatement. Magazines such as this one, perhaps born of noble intentions, have become nothing more than another means [...]
Forbes magazine has just released their list of the top 10 writers. Of course, making the Forbes list has very little to do with quality, and everything to do with quantity. Of dollars! For the year, which runs from June 1, 2007 to June 1, 2008, Forbes listed the 10 writers who earned the most [...]
