Radio 4 - Today (Free subscription) | 9 hours ago
The winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction awards will be announced on Monday. The annual awards, now in their 17th year, celebrate the most embarrassing passage of sexual description in a literary novel from the last 12 months. Although last years winner was a women, Rachel Johnson, the shortlist this year suggest that the serial offenders are male novelists of a certain age. Authors Lionel Shriver and...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | yesterday
Naomi Alderman, Kate Clanchy, Sara Maitland, Jane Rogers and Lionel Shriver contend for £15,000 prize From the story of a family clash over cash by Lionel Shriver to Naomi Alderman's tale of a Jewish man who discovers an unforeseen devotion to the Hindu deity Ganesh, an all-female line-up has been announced for the BBC National Short Story award. Judges for the £15,000 prize, who include...
Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
All-women shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award This year’s BBC’s National Short Story Award will be an all female affair after the shortlist revealed that, for the first time, only women are in the running to win the award. The award, which celebrates the best of the contemporary British short story, is one of the most prestigious for a single short story with the winning author...
Open a Bookshop, what could possibly go wrong? (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
here's part 1 of the Big Green Bookshop favourite books of all time list. I shall expand on this when I get more time, but let's just cut to the chase shall we 50. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh 49. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks 48. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon 47. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 46. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 45. Shipping News...
ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
The Independent offers a debate on the question, with entries from, among others, theatre director Simon McBurney, novelist Lionel Shriver, Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones, and nine thoughtful readers. (Says Shriver, "This assignment is a formula for sounding like a prat.")...
SoulCulture.co.uk (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Book Slam @ The Tabernacle Saturday, 28th November, 2009 Powis Square, London W11 2AY Tickets: £6 in advance from bookslam.com/ £8 on the door Doors open 6pm, stuff starts around 8pm Featured performances to loo forward to at this Book Slam event include: LIONEL SHRIVER – author of the Orange Prize-winning, ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin‘, celebrating the rebirth of her...
Mel Menzies Blog (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
"Publishing takes men more seriously than women; female writing is regarded as second tier,” Lionel Shriver says in a Daily Telegraph article on sexism in the world of books. Ms Shriver, born Margaret Ann Shriver, is an American journalist, and author of the acclaimed novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin. Having disliked her female name and changed it to a masculine one at the age of fifteen,...
Mel Menzies Blog (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
"Publishing takes men more seriously than women; female writing is regarded as second tier,” Lionel Shriver says in a Daily Telegraph article on sexism in the world of books. Ms Shriver, born Margaret Ann Shriver, is an American journalist, and author of the acclaimed novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin. Having disliked her female name and changed it to a masculine one at the age of fifteen,...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Authors give their views on the high-street chain Blake Morrison I am ashamed to say I buy most of my books online these days, but Waterstone's in its early days was great, particularly for authors. They organised lots of readings and bookshop events. You had a real sense of individual managers being able to choose what they wanted. Then it all became very centralised. People romanticise the independent...
UK Commentators (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
As so often, it takes a minority spokesman (or woman ) to say the unsayable in this country : Europe is "dying" because its citizens are too selfish to have children, the chief rabbi has said, blaming a dwindling birthrate on a culture of "consumerism and instant gratification". Sir Jonathan Sacks accused people of caring more about shopping than spirituality and tied the secularisation...
Boswell and Books (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
So tonight we're reading Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It's an hour or so before we meet. Will I get one person like I did the first couple of months, or will this intrigue many and we'll get 12, our high point for Netherland? The answer is likely somewhere in between. While we did cause a sales pop (we sold 20 copies this year of the book, compared to 4 for the Downer Avenue Schwartz...
A.V. Club (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
Variety is reporting that Independent Film Company has picked up the international rights to Morvern Callern director Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of the acclaimed Lionel Shriver novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. Shriver's book is about a mother (to be played by Tilda Swinton) who reflects back on her life when her teenaged son goes on a bloody spree two days before his sixteenth birthday. We're big...
Variety.com (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
International News: Ramsay pic is based on Lionel Shriver novel -- Luc Roeg's Independent Film Company has picked up the international rights to director Lynne Ramsay's latest feature film, "We Need to Talk about Kevin."
Gerry Canavan (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
Wednesday catchup 2. * Duke University researchers have proven scientifically that Barack Obama kills Republican boners . * Also in Republican news: only 1 in 5 Americans now identify as a Republican. These numbers are terrible. It's hard to believe, but could we really be seeing the end of the GOP? * An interview with the prop master for Mad Men. * Chasing down the earliest common ancestor and the...
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
... Lionel Shriver: I sold my family for a novel . I always loved it when Lionel reviewed for me. She never, ever pulled her punches. And the result could be hilarious. I think she is little hard on herself when she says that she sold her family down the river for a manuscript. You gotta do what you gotta do. And Lionel is a novelist. I also always got the impression that she really respected and cared...
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