Campaign for the American Reader (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
A panel at the Times (of London) came up with a list of the 100 best books of the decade.Number One on the list:The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)Cormac McCarthy’s gripping, shattering novel walks in a long line of tradition. Mary Shelley tried her hand at the literature of post-apocalypse with The Last Man, published in 1826; Russell Hoban’s 1980 novel, Riddley Walker, sets the aftermath...
paperpools (Free subscription) | 10/24/2009
Daniel Maia has started up Arga Warga (courtesy of Russell Hoban) to publish graphic novels and art books; his blog (in Portuguese) tells more .
JSBlog (Free subscription) | 09/11/2009
On Topsham Carnival Day recently, one of the pubs had a promotion by "Jägerettes", young women who go around in orange vests promoting Jägermeister , a love-it-or-hate-it German herbal spirit. I'd seen the drink before, but never at close enough quarters to ponder the bottle logo , which is rather familiar as the "hart of the wud" that forms an important motif in Russell...
Classroom Free - Home Education Blog (Free subscription) | 09/08/2009
Hmm, odd title isn't it? But it is a quote from our darling Callum. He decided to "free" his whale bath toy. How? By flushing it down the toilet of course, along with a flannel to wash with, and a pen in case he wants to write to us. Oh dear. Yes, the toilet got blocked and needed to be removed from the wall to un-block it - hence us finding the culprit. Goodness only knows what else has...
Italy Down Under (Free subscription) | 08/24/2009
The Frances Audio Collection by Russell Hoban The Frances Audio Collection by Russell Hoban Audio Book CD - click here This collection includes four endearing favorites, Bedtime for Frances; A Baby Sister for Frances; Bread and Jam for Frances; and A Birthday for Frances. Children will cheer for Frances as she cleverly avoids her bedtime, stubbornly refuses [...]
Divers and Sundry (Free subscription) | 08/20/2009
Cloud Atlas is a fascinating book by David Mitchell . Structured in a way that has the first plot stop mid-sentence and conclude at the end of the book, the entire book is made of nested stories. Each story takes place further in the future than the last, with the one uninterrupted plot at the center of the book taking place in a far-future post-apocalyptic society of isolated primitives, and each...
Campaign for the American Reader (Free subscription) | 07/20/2009
The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Nicholas Ostler, author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World and Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin.His entry begins: I'm reading Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, a novel from 1980 written in deformed, but in the end curiously readable, colloquial English, which speculates on Iron Age life in Kent some centuries after a nuclear
Main Section (Free subscription) | 07/03/2009
Published in 1974 by Jonathan Cape, Russell Hoban's How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen is probably one of my favorite of Quentin Blake's picture books. That and maybe Cockatoos and the Green Ship ... I think Blake's illustrations, although fantastic in black and white, benefit greatly from his use of watercolour. He makes it all look so easy when you see that some of the colour wash...
Divers and Sundry (Free subscription) | 07/03/2009
AwardAnnuals.com has a list of science fiction books in order of how many awards they've won. Here are the top 100 award winners: 1 The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood 2 A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge 3 The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer 4 The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson 5 Neuromancer, by William Gibson 6 The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter 7 Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis 8...
Divers and Sundry (Free subscription) | 06/26/2009
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel: 2008 In War Times, Kathleen Ann Goonan 2007 Titan, Ben Bova 2006 Mindscan, Robert J. Sawyer 2005 Market Forces, Richard Morgan 2004 Omega , Jack McDevitt 2003 Probability Space, Nancy Kress 2002 Terraforming Earth, Jack Williamson (tie) The Chronoliths, Robert Charles Wilson 2001 Genesis, Poul Anderson 2000 A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor...
bookfutures (Free subscription) | 06/12/2009
I’ve been meaning to write about the Reader Organisation whose workshop I attended in Manchester a few weeks ago. The Reader Organisation is "a charity dedicated to bringing about a Reading Revolution - making it possible for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to enjoy and engage with books on a deep and personal level". Dynamic founder and Director Jane Davis has developed...
normblog (Free subscription) | 04/21/2009
Meg Sanders co-writes (with Annie Ashworth) both fiction and non-fiction. Their sixth novel, under the name Annie Sanders, is Getting Mad, Getting Even, to be published by Orion in September. Below Meg discusses Russell Hoban's The Mouse and his Child....
Divers and Sundry (Free subscription) | 03/16/2009
From Suvudu (via SFSignal ) comes this list of their "Top 10 Apocalyptic Tales": The Gate to Women’s Country, Sheri S. Tepper Earth Abides, George Stewart On the Beach, Nevil Shute Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. Without Warning, John Birmingham The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood And two examples from...
Thoughtcat (Free subscription) | 02/04/2009
As The Times admirably notes, today is author Russell Hoban's 84th birthday. (The interview the Times piece quotes from is here .) As Thoughtcat readers will already know, 4th February is SA4QE day, when fans of Russ leave their favourite quotes from his books in public places - usually, but not always, on sheets of A4 paper. SA4QE stands for the Slickman A4 Quotation Event, named after Neo-Futurist...
Bill Totten's Weblog (Free subscription) | 01/23/2009
Here's how we could solve the credit crunch without giving anything to the banks. by George Monbiot The Guardian (January 20 2009) In Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker (1980), the descendents of nuclear holocaust survivors seek amid the rubble the key to recovering their lost civilisation. They end up believing that the answer is to re-invent the atom bomb. I was reminded of this when I read the...
Videos