What's been, what's to come, what's inbetween...
This is a kind of catch-up post, where I'm putting up links to recent reviews of mine as well as articles I've found interesting. Plus I'll provide a quick look ahead to some books I'm going to be reviewing (and would like to read on the side, if I get the chance).
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First up, the articles:
A writer friend, Helen Fitzgerald, alerted me to this. It's from 2004, but it holds up today about the perils of being a midlist writer (although I think I would consider ever having had a $150,000 advance a mark of success, no matter what came after): http://www.salon.com/2004/03/22/midlist//. What's more worrying, than the drop in advances, is the lack of will to publish at all.
And yet, this year's Booker shortlist is a heartening counterpoint to that, with three indies among the authors listed: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/booker-prize-2012-hilary-mantel-in-the-running-to-become-first-british-writer-to-win-the-literary-prize-twice-8125426.html.
More and more independents are scooping up the more challenging stuff that major publishers' sales depts are rejecting, and it'll be interesting to see how this situation develops. It's cheering, too, to see one of nominees, from Salt publishing on the Booker shortlist, after they got their arts council grant removed three years ago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/may/27/poetry-salt-publishing?INTCMP=SRCH. We need our indies, probably more than ever before.
The pressure to sell is even making the big guns resort to low tactics, as this story claimed. Pan Macmillan now stand accused of posting up fake reviews of their authors:
http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/42879/nl, and a Waterstones bookseller is similarly accused of 'trolling' a self-published author with bad reviews on Amazon: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/12/waterstones-bookseller-trolling-self-published-author. The 'sockpuppet' scandal uncovered by Jeremy Duns in the last few weeks isn't going to go away any time soon. It looks like it might just be casting its net even wider....
And finally, men and mothers - separately, though.
Here's Amanda Craig talking about how Maeve Binchy was childless and that meant there were certain situations she couldn't write about as well (but at least had more time to concentrate on writing). I'm slightly perturbed - to say the least - by the suggestion we have to experience first-hand what we write about, and that motherhood offers the pinnacle of emotional experience. But I would say that, wouldn't I, not being a mother myself. Guess I'll have to make do with being a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, etc etc: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9446816/If-Maeve-Binchy-had-been-a-mother-....html
Second up, a look ahead to titles I'll be reviewing in the next few weeks. I'm excited about all of these:
Linden MacIntyre's Why Men Lie (Jonathan Cape);
Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary (Viking);
Thomas Keneally's The Daughters of Mars (Sceptre);
Judith Flanders' The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (Atlantic) and Rosemary Ashton's Victorian Bloomsbury (Yale University Press).
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First up, the articles:
A writer friend, Helen Fitzgerald, alerted me to this. It's from 2004, but it holds up today about the perils of being a midlist writer (although I think I would consider ever having had a $150,000 advance a mark of success, no matter what came after): http://www.salon.com/2004/03/22/midlist//. What's more worrying, than the drop in advances, is the lack of will to publish at all.
And yet, this year's Booker shortlist is a heartening counterpoint to that, with three indies among the authors listed: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/booker-prize-2012-hilary-mantel-in-the-running-to-become-first-british-writer-to-win-the-literary-prize-twice-8125426.html.
More and more independents are scooping up the more challenging stuff that major publishers' sales depts are rejecting, and it'll be interesting to see how this situation develops. It's cheering, too, to see one of nominees, from Salt publishing on the Booker shortlist, after they got their arts council grant removed three years ago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/may/27/poetry-salt-publishing?INTCMP=SRCH. We need our indies, probably more than ever before.
The pressure to sell is even making the big guns resort to low tactics, as this story claimed. Pan Macmillan now stand accused of posting up fake reviews of their authors:
http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/42879/nl, and a Waterstones bookseller is similarly accused of 'trolling' a self-published author with bad reviews on Amazon: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/12/waterstones-bookseller-trolling-self-published-author. The 'sockpuppet' scandal uncovered by Jeremy Duns in the last few weeks isn't going to go away any time soon. It looks like it might just be casting its net even wider....
And finally, men and mothers - separately, though.
Here's Amanda Craig talking about how Maeve Binchy was childless and that meant there were certain situations she couldn't write about as well (but at least had more time to concentrate on writing). I'm slightly perturbed - to say the least - by the suggestion we have to experience first-hand what we write about, and that motherhood offers the pinnacle of emotional experience. But I would say that, wouldn't I, not being a mother myself. Guess I'll have to make do with being a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, etc etc: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9446816/If-Maeve-Binchy-had-been-a-mother-....html
And apparently, Men are Not Dogs, so could writers please stop making them so nasty, pleads one male author: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-nova/channeling-betty-friedan_b_1865181.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003. Doesn't he know the devil gets all the best tunes?
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Second up, a look ahead to titles I'll be reviewing in the next few weeks. I'm excited about all of these:
Linden MacIntyre's Why Men Lie (Jonathan Cape);
Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary (Viking);
Thomas Keneally's The Daughters of Mars (Sceptre);
Judith Flanders' The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (Atlantic) and Rosemary Ashton's Victorian Bloomsbury (Yale University Press).
I'd also love to check out the new novels by T C Boyle, A M Homes and Joseph O'Connor, plus the memoir by Edna O'Brien, Country Girls, due out October 4th.
And I've just filed reviews of Jenny Uglow's The Pinecone (Faber) and Alexandra Popoff's The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (Pegasus - the Norton imprint, not the self-publishing 'Pegasus' just to note).
If I get the chance, I'd like to read Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds (Sceptre), Naomi Wolf's Vagina (stop tittering at the back), Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate) and Alison Moore's The Lighthouse (Salt), just for my own interest (please can I have a busman's holiday and read them by a pool? It's been a while....)
If I get the chance, I'd like to read Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds (Sceptre), Naomi Wolf's Vagina (stop tittering at the back), Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate) and Alison Moore's The Lighthouse (Salt), just for my own interest (please can I have a busman's holiday and read them by a pool? It's been a while....)
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And finally....a couple of my most recent reviews:
Henrietta Garnett: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/wives-and-stunners-the-preraphaelites-and-their-muses-by-henrietta-garnett-8081152.html?origin=internalSearch,
Rose Tremain: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/features/book-review-merivel-by-rose-tremain-1-2488958
I've never murdered anyone, so by Amanda Craig's reckoning I shouldn't have written most of the books I have. I also am not a woman, which rules out another two of my books. Does she think Bram Stoker was a vampire?
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, was he a Dad? I've never seen a male author's abilities questioned according to whether he'd had kids or not! James Joyce did say something once about Jesus not having enough experience because he'd never lived with a woman but I digress...
ReplyDelete