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Two major bookstores in Israel have taken Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, off its shelves following the Irish author’s recent decision not to permit the book to be translated into Hebrew.

Rooney’s novels were previously available from Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim, but the books have now been removed from their websites, and will be pulled from physical shops too. The retailers have more than 200 branches between them.

The title of The Quiet at the End of the World brings to mind the line here at the quiet limit of the world, from a poem called Tithonus, written by Alfred Tennyson in the nineteenth century. In my mind the words take me to any deserted stretch of coast bordering the Mediterranean, and carefree summers spent ambling around Europe.

Tennyson’s verse, on the other hand, is about an immortal man yearning for death. Go figure. Needless to say, I decided to learn more about The Quiet at the End of the World (published by Walker Books, March 2019), by British author Lauren James, before choosing an inclination inspired by the book’s poetic title. That turned out to be a good idea. A devastating virus has rendered the population of the planet infertile, and Lowrie and Shen are the last remaining teenagers in the world. They live with a small group of elderly survivors from across the globe congregating in London.

Aside from the fact humanity faces an inevitable extinction, Lowrie and Shen lead exceedingly comfortable lives. But that all changes one day, when a new mystery disease begins striking down the older people around them. The teenagers need to figure out what is happening, and find a way to save the remaining residents of their community, before there they are the only humans left on Earth.

Apollo 11 was apparently out of contact with Earth for two minutes shortly before the Moon landing in July 1969. You can only imagine what happened during that period of radio silence. But if you didn’t, plenty of others have. One “explanation” (of many) posits mission controllers pulled the plug on the public broadcast of the Apollo transmissions because the crew had sighted a space ship of unknown alien origin “parked” on the Moon. So that’s it. Do you think the vessel is still sitting there? Hmm, might be a novel idea in that…

The “break” in Apollo 11’s transmission forms one of the threads running through the plot of Moonfall (trailer) the new film by Roland Emmerich. Also in the mix, by the looks of it, are echoes of the idea the Moon is hollow (I don’t think it is…) and a book called Who Built the Moon. To get back to Moonfall though, long story short, an unknown force or event has sent the Moon on a collision course with Earth. A small group of people think they know what’s caused it, and how to stop it – the Moon that is – from crashing into our planet.

Last month I noted that severe frosts had affected coffee bean harvests in Brazil, which is likely to result in price rises as supply is reduced. Now some Australian coffee producers in northern NSW have run into harvest problems, a lack of available labour being one issue. I’d say this is partly occasioned by COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions, as many farm workers and fruit pickers are backpacking travellers. Long story short, be prepared to pay more for coffee imminently.

A late item of news to hand… the EnQueer Sydney Queer Writers’ Festival is on now until tomorrow, taking place in Sydney and online. Read more about the event here:

[EnQueer] aims to bring together people of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, disabilities, faiths, cultures, and backgrounds at a literary forum which appreciates and acknowledges the power of diversity. Stories and experiences of people with diverse backgrounds truly reflect modern Australian values and the festival seeks to bring them to the fore.

Deep Wheel Orcadia (published by Pan Macmillan, October 2021), written by Leith based Scottish writer and performer Harry Josephine Giles, is a science fiction story with a difference. For one, it is written in the Orkney language, and is said to be the first full-length book published in the dialect in fifty years. And then there’s the poetic verse with which the story is told.

The setting is a space station called Deep Wheel Orcadia. The station has seen better days, but it continues to function, as it trundles its way through space. To Deep Wheel comes Astrid. She’s an art student on her way home, having recently finished schooling on Mars. She’s also searching for inspiration, but is a space station, somewhere in the interstellar voids, the place to be looking?

But it is here Astrid meets Darling. Darling cannot find acceptance, and is looking for somewhere to hide. Perhaps Deep Wheel is the perfect place for her to be? Deep Wheel Orcadia, with its poems written in Orkney, and translated into English lower down the page, has the makings of an incredible story. I’m also intrigued by the enigmatic space station. I’d like to visit. Anyone know how I might get there?

South African author Damon Galgut has been named the winner of this year’s Booker Prize, with his book The Promise. After the shortlist was announced in mid-September it was clear the judges had their work cut out in selecting a winner. Maya Jasanoff, chair of the judging panel, described how they made their choice:

We arrived at a decision after a lot of discussion and arrived at a consensus around a book that is a real master of form and pushes the form in new ways, that has an incredible originality and fluidity of voice, and a book that’s really dense with historical and metaphorical significance.

Don’t we all love a great love story? Especially when it’s ours? (I walked into a bar one night. That was lucky because I hardly ever walk into bars…) But walking is what Brisbane based Australian journalist and novelist Trent Dalton did as well. He walked the streets of Adelaide and Brisbane, looking for stories: stories of love.

He’d set up a portable table somewhere, place an old typewriter – left to him by the late mother of a friend – on it, and then stop passers-by to ask them to tell him a story. Maybe you saw him. Did he ask you to tell your story? Would you, if he’d asked? Of all the things you could ask a total stranger at random, I get the feeling it’s a question a lot of people would be happy to answer. Because who doesn’t like telling a story of love? The fruits of this labour, which sometimes saw Dalton at his mobile workstation for eight hours a day, is Love Stories (published by HarperCollins, 27 October 2021).

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and I could only imagine how wondrous, raw, inspiring, and even heartbreaking this collection of stories is. Dalton was recently a guest on Words and Nerds, a podcast show hosted by Dani Vee, where he talked about Love Stories, and what prompted him to write the book. It’s a heart-warming discussion well worth listening to.

I don’t know how many times I’ve used the word in the last eighteen months, but I’m sure happy its use has been sanctioned by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Good news for Jane Austen fans who like, or are one day hoping, to visit the house in the English village of Chawton, Hampshire, where she spent the final eight years of her life, and wrote several of her novels… funds have been raised to repair the roof of her old cottage, which was built in the seventeenth century.

The roof was last refurbished in 1948 before the House opened to the public. Over 70 years on and over a million visitors later, major repairs are required to ensure the watertightness of the building and preserve the museum collection.