Book Buzz

Anne Enright's novel of love and betrayal is set in Ireland's boom years "I just can't believe it. That all you have to do is sleep with somebody and get caught and you never have to see your in-laws again. Ever. Pfffft! Gone. It's the nearest thing to magic I have yet found." That's the Anne Enright voice all right wry, disabused, reckless, candid, funny. The hardened, suffering speakers in her recent fine story collection, Taking Pictures , use this tone; the grim damage of her Booker-winning The Gathering is energised by all that darkly comic unflinchingness. The Forgotten Waltz , as its romantic title suggests, has more of a soft centre than she usually allows herself. Each chapter is headed by the title of a tear-jerking pop song ("Will You Love Me Tomorrow"; "Stop! In the Name of Love"; "Save the Last Dance For Me"), and the woman who tells the story has to keep telling us how deeply in love she is: "This is what...

This week: Thomas McGuane, author David Friend and best sellers. Popout Original audio source (02bookupdate.mp3)

Cartoonist Adrian Tomine's 'prenuptial memoir' lays bare the fiasco of the modern wedding with acid wit Do you have a friend who is in the process of turning into Bridezilla (or even Groomzilla, since women certainly don't have a monopoly on wedding madness)? Then I have the perfect gift for her though on second thoughts, perhaps this is a treat best left until after her nuptials when, one hopes, your friend will miraculously recover her mislaid sense of humour. Adrian Tomine, author of the brilliant Shortcomings and a cartoonist at the New Yorker , has written a "prenuptial memoir" called Scenes from an Impending Marriage in which he lays bare, with ruthless efficiency, the bizarre effect that organising a wedding can have on even the sane and the cynical (and Tomine, as fans will know, is nothing if not cynical). Is it accurate? Yes, as a laser. Is it hilarious? All I can say is that it will make you if not your good pal Bridezilla snort like a dragon. ...

Anatol Lieven's clear-sighted study asks if Pakistan has lost control of its international narrative Pakistan, Anatol Lieven writes in his new book, is "divided, disorganised, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism". It is easy to conclude, as many have, from this roll call of infirmities that Pakistan is basically Afghanistan or Somalia with nuclear weapons. Or is this a dangerously false perception, a product of wholly defective assumptions? Certainly, an unblinkered vision of South Asia would feature a country whose fanatically ideological government in 1998 conducted nuclear tests, threatened its neighbour with all-out war and, four years later, presided over the massacre of 2,000 members of a religious minority. Long embattled against secessionist insurgencies on its western and eastern borders, the "flailing" state of this countr...

One can take an awful lot of sex and violence if it's artfully done Would you rather be a werewolf or a vampire? Merely changing into a big dog and eating people once a month seems to pale in comparison with being able to fly. And while vampires live for ever, werewolves last only 400 years. On the other hand, vampires can't have sex; and, being immortal, they tend to suffer more ennui. So goes the lore, at least, in Glen Duncan 's gorily ludic romp. The vampires actually have only walk-on (or fly-on) parts; the hero is a werewolf, Jake Marlowe, whom we first meet in modern-day London as he learns that he is the only one left. Now the monster-hunters (the World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena) are after him. Marlowe is a witty and jaded commentator on our mores and his own condition "Two nights ago I'd eaten a forty-three-year-old hedge fund specialist. I've been in a phase of taking the ones no one wants" and an inveterate raconteur. (N...

It's time for a fresh look at a poet who yearned to break free from authority Poetry bloomed in Scotland during the postwar decades, with a range of remarkable figures, including George Mackay Brown, Sorley MacLean, WS Graham, Norman MacCaig and Iain Crichton Smith. The variety and power of this work is stunning. For various reasons, Crichton Smith somehow got less attention than the others, yet his work will surprise and delight readers. This New Collected Poems marks a revival of interest in his verse. I met him only once, 40 years ago, as a student at St Andrews, but his image stays with me: a blisteringly bald man with a sly wit, a modest bachelor until his mid-50s, a schoolteacher in small villages who wrote with compulsive energy in a variety of forms poems, novels, stories, plays in two languages, English and Gaelic. Over the years, I've been drawn to his rueful, intensely lyrical poems, which have kept me good company. "We need a new music," he once wrote. ...

The writer-director of I've Loved You So Long brings his oblique touch to a delicate study of friendship between two old men This novella, by an award-winning French writer (the author of Brodeck's Report , winner of last year's Independent foreign fiction prize) who is also the writer-director of the Baftawinning film I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime), would be extremely difficult tomake into a film not only because itfeaturesa narrative "trick" that would translate awkwardly to the screen, but also because the author takes pains to avoid pinning down the story to one particular decade or location. The side-effect of this deliberately nonspecific narration is to give the story a hazy, romantic quality, like Vaseline on a camera lens or the sepia tint of an oldphoto. Lack of specificity can read, in other words, as sentimentality: sentimentality about Indochina, and about war, from which the protagonist, an old man named Monsieur L...

The other day, I was scheduling a teleseminar that I have on Monday, and I got totally paranoid again about time. Again. See, I keep missing calls because Ill plan something for Eastern and the other person will plan it for the same time Central or Pacific. Deals have been lost. Hearts have been broken. So, Im starting a movement to do away with time zones. From now on, well all just be on the same giant time zone. Because its convenient for everyone currently in my office, well use Eastern time as the standard. So when I say noon, well all know what I mean. Lets just try and do it today or tomorrow, though, if we could, because my teleseminar is Monday. (And yeah, I know that there are scheduling programs that will convert for you, but changing the earths time distribution just seems like so much less hassle.) Reporting from 10:37am Universal Standard Time, heres what happened this week on Copyblogger: Monday: Why Nobody Cares About Your Content (And What to do About it) This from the...

If you liked Eat, Pray, Love, you'll hate this In Brock Clarke's very funny novel An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England (2007) the protagonist, Sam Pulsifer, goes to a bookshop and is amazed and appalled by the range of titles in the memoir section. "Who knew that there were so many people with so many necessary things to say about themselves? I flipped through the sexual abuse memoirs, sexual conquest memoirs, sexual inadequacy memoirs, alternative sexual memoirs, remorseful hedonist rock star memoirs, twelve-step memoirs, memoirs about reading ... and even a handful of how-to-write-memoir memoirs." Truly, an embarrassment of riches. There are now hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of memoiristic sub-genres for readers to choose from: memoirs about dogs and cats; memoirs purportedly by dogs and cats; memoirs by the abused; memoirs by the families of the abused who deny that the abused were abused; and myriad forms of shtick lit, in which author...

My son Jason, age 6, just won his first medal. A bronze plastic medal that he so proudly wore, even when we made a pit stop at the hospital on the way home from the Sarawak Stadium. His event was the gunny sack relay. His team was way behind when he took over for the second leg and he hopped down that field in record time. One of his teammates fell, but quickly scrambled to his feet, and they all made it to the medal standings. It was truly a team effort. His second event, he had to blow up a balloon until it burst and then run for the finish line. Out of the eight individuals, only three managed to burst that balloon. He didnt even get a chance to run! It was over. I went over to console him, but he didnt need to be consoled. He was determined to burst that balloon as we walked back to the bleachers. Then he did it. He was so happy, and I felt proud. Long after the race was finished, he was determined to succeed and he did. This was not about winning; this was about sheer determinatio...

Author Andrew Kessler found a clever way to market his book. The New York Times reports that Kessler opened a Manhattan bookstore, Ed's Martian Book, that sells only his book, Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix Mars Mission. The bookstore's shelves contain about 3,000 copies of his book about NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission. Kessler, who calls himself a Monobookist, told the New York Times, "This makes books feel like an art installation. We should care about them." You can read more about the book here . Permalink | Facebook | Twitter | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds

This Week: "The Emperor's Children", behind the scenes, best sellers, and the novel that never was Popout Original audio source (26bookupdate.mp3)

This horror story for children is unusually well written It begins in a cemetery, with a ghostly figure materialising in front of a tomb. It continues with shape-shifting dead children, a terrifying live scarecrow and demons enough to make Hieronymus Bosch proud on all these counts, a book I would not normally pick up. The horror, the horror is not for me. But wait, this is different. The ghost and shape-shifter is Mr October, who recognises in Ben Harvester a gift (ah yes, the gift; nothing new there). Not just his artistic skills, though they do become relevant, but the fact that Ben can see him at all is a talent to be nurtured. So soon Ben is working for the Overseers. Names come in to the ministry by telegraph every day and have to be typed on to index cards on an ancient typewriter the new technology and this kind of story don't fit well together before being filed in the records office. "The space was impossibly huge, far too big for the building to contain it. White...

Is there anybody out there or are we really alone in the universe? The title is a reference to Enrico Fermi's famous question: "Where is everybody?" In its context, what he meant was: "if there are alien civilisations, why haven't we seen any evidence of them yet?" This is a book about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence written by someone who knows whereof he speaks, for he is chair of Seti's post-detection science and technology taskgroup. In other words, if everything goes according to protocol (which it probably won't, but never mind), he gets to say "hello" first to any aliens who say "hello" to us. This might seem an awesome responsibility, but Professor Davies is used to dealing with concepts that are somewhat out of the ordinary. The last book by Davies that I reviewed, The Goldilocks Enigma , was full of mind-blowing stuff, intelligibly and plausibly presented. And here is more of the same, or similar. You could ...

England's Queens: The Biography by Elizabeth Norton UK Release Date: June 1, 2011 US Release Date: not known at this time, will keep you updated SYNOPSIS Her story not his, the English monarchy through the private and public lives of the queens of England. Nearly eighty women have sat on the throne of England, either as queen regnant or queen consort and the voices of all of them survive through their own writings and those of their contemporaries. The primary role of the queen over the ages was to provide an heir. Catherine of Aragon found this to her cost, divorced by Henry VIII for failing to produce a healthy son. Anne Boleyn was executed shortly afterwards for the same reason. The birth of an heir was also a route to power for a queen and Eleanor of Aquitaine became the most powerful woman in Europe during the reigns of her sons. Emma of Normandy was so desperate to be queen mother that she manipulated her three sons in an attempt to ensure that one would be king. O...

May Day by John Sommerfield describes a society on the edge. The parallels with today are obvious but it's the differences that make it worth reading It might have associations with people in funny clothes performing arcane rites and with Oxford students getting smashed off their gourds, but most us don't think about Tories when we think about May Day. As several union leaders have already pointed out , the party's current desire to replace May Day with Trafalgar Day (supposedly to "lengthen the holiday season") is not practical so much as ideological. May Day might feel like a natural part of the calendar but it has only been marked by a bank holiday since 1978, introduced by a Labour government to mark international workers' day. And that, of course, is why the rightwingers don't like it. They'd like it even less if they picked up the book that I've just been reading: May Day by John Sommerfield . This was written in 1936, but has just been rei...

This week: "James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon," "I Feel Bad About My Neck," best sellers, and writers colonies. Popout Original audio source (19bookupdate.mp3)

Yesterday, Penguin Press announced details about a biography of To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee that was being written by former Chicago Tribune reporter Marja Mills. Penguin said in its news release that author Harper Lee cooperated with the biography. This was significant news since Harper Lee rarely grants interviews or talks to the press. Now, the New York Times is reporting that Harper Lee has issued a statement through her sister's law firm denying she had anything to do with the biography. Here is the statement Harper Lee released. "Contrary to recent news reports, I have not willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills. Neither have I authorized such a book. Any claims otherwise are false." Permalink | Facebook | Twitter | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds

Jonathan Freedland In the latest episode of the podcast, Jonathan Freedland talks with Emily Greenhouse about gilded-coach celebrity in an era of austerity , the hereditary principle, and why all bets are off when it comes to Wills and Kate. Andrew Milligan/Press Association/AP Images Prince William and Kate Middleton visiting the University of St. Andrews, February 25, 2011 Emily Greenhouse: What part does gender play in the monarchy? Jonathan Freedland: Gender is massively important, partly because its one of the very few places left where theres still, by law, male precedence. If William and Kate have three girls and one boy, in that order, it will be the boy, the youngest, who becomes king. There are very few places where there is still egregious and blatant gender discrimination like that, and not only is it not against the law, which it would be any workplace, it is actually enshrined in the law. In that sense, the royal family is fascinating, because it enshrines the vi...

Wearing a mock sloth and with no speech prepared, the science-fiction author was as witty and bold as her novel, Zoo City There's something cruel about the fact that the occasions when most writers are dragged blinking into the light, away from the security of their computer screens, they are also made to feel supremely nervous. They are placed in competition with their fellows, they are told they are within one step of getting something that will both make their career and land them a shitload of cash. Convention then dictates that they should try to appear blase and none too hopeful about that prospect. All of which probably explains why so much cheap wine is consumed at literary prize giving events. The Arthur C Clarke awards is always slightly different, however. Contrary to popular image, science fiction writers are actually far better at coping with the glare of flash bulbs and stares of eager readers than most. Perhaps it's the convention circuit and the close-knit worl...

Thanks to the re-issuing of Ciji Ware's novels by Sourcebooks I have become a huge fan of the author and am super excited to see that the next to be re-issued is Midnight on Julia Street ! It sounds a little different than what I normally read but she hasn't steered me wrong yet, so I am definitely checking it out! Midnight on Julia Street by Ciji Ware Release Date: August 1, 2011 SYNOPSIS Ciji Ware's acclaimed time slip novel weaves together romance and history with the sultry and timeless flavor of two eras of New Orleans. TV reporter Corlis McCullough's investigation of a century-old mystery involving spectacular 19th-century buildings under the threat of the wrecker's ball brings her back into the orbit of her old college nemesis King Duvallon. But now they're mature and companionable, and King shows Corlis a fascinating, hidden side of New Orleans society. Then she begins to be pulled back into the past where corruption, violence, and greed mirror t...

Writers like Orwell, Proust and Churchill liked doing it. Could it have been because writing in bed can help access the unconscious? In one of the interviews to promote her new book, Untold Story , about the alternative life of Princess Diana, Monica Ali revealed that she preferred to write in bed. This puts her in some interesting company: Edith Wharton, Winston Churchill, Colette, and Mark Twain all wrote in bed. To say you write in bed is partly to say that you are treating the activity with a certain airy nonchalance. I know, for instance, that among contemporary British writers A.N. Wilson, who cultivates a delightful detachment, likes writing in bed. There must be others, especially in the age of the laptop. It was not always so easy. The dying George Orwell used to prop his typewriter up in bed, and hammer away at the final draft of 1984 . I once spoke to the doctor who treated him in Glasgow. All he could remember was the sound of typing and the fog of cigarette smoke in Orwel...