Category: links
Adding to the list (16 March 2011)
I’m a little stuck on some reviews at the moment, so instead, here’s what I’ve plumped up my virtual TBR list with recently.
Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid
- Wendy Williams (via Omnivoracious)
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
Hunger: A Novel
And finally, the Orange Longlist is here!
I’ve only read Emma Donoghue’s Room, which has won awards of all kinds already, so obviously I can’t say anything about what the shortlist/winner will be like! But I’m adding many of these to my TBR list, and some of them are already on the list, such as Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Krauss’ Great House (I’ve been on the waitlist since September… and I’m now No. 3 on the hold queue), Russell’s Swamplandia!, and Winter’s Annabel. Most of the authors are new to me, so I’m looking forward to seeing what their writing is like.
Leila Aboulela – Lyrics Alley
Carol Birch – Jamrach’s Menagerie
Emma Donoghue – Room
Tishani Doshi – The Pleasure Seekers
Louise Doughty – Whatever You Love
Jennifer Egan – A Visit from the Goon Squad
Aminatta Forna – The Memory of Love
Tessa Hadley – The London Train
Emma Henderson – Grace Williams Says it Loud
Samantha Hunt – The Seas
Joanna Kavenna – The Birth of Love
Nicole Krauss – Great House
Wendy Law-Yone – The Road to Wanting
Téa Obreht – The Tiger’s Wife
Julie Orringer – The Invisible Bridge
Anne Peile – Repeat it Today with Tears
Karen Russell – Swamplandia!
Lola Shoneyin – The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
Roma Tearne – The Swimmer
Kathleen Winter – Annabel
What have you added to your list recently?
Bookish links (10 February 2011)
More articles on the literature gender gap (here’s the VIDA report, with pie charts)
Conventional wisdom among professionals in the children’s book business is that while girls will read books about either boys or girls, boys only want to read about boys. Could it be that this bias extends into adulthood, with the preference among boys for male characters evolving into the preference among men for male authors? Or it could be that many male readers simply doubt that women have anything interesting to say.
I speculated that independents—more iconoclastic, publishing more work in translation, and perhaps less focused on the bottom line—would turn out to be more equitable than the big commercial houses. Boy, was I wrong.
- TNR’s Ruth Franklin weighs in
The lists give the impression of finitude, of the possibility of completion and coherence. Yet the prospect of completing them seems designed to be impossible.
- The lure of lists
(like the 1001 books one which of course I love to check off)
