Exit Party, new novel by Emily St. John Mandel

Showing all posts about books

Exit Party, new novel by Emily St. John Mandel

9 October 2026

Exit Party is the seventh novel by Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel, and was published last month. But savour the trademark mind-altering synopsis:

2031. America is at war with itself, but for the first time in weeks there is some hope: the Republic of California has been declared, the curfew in Los Angeles is lifted, and everyone in the city is going to a party.

Ari, newly released from prison, arrives with her friend Gloria just as a fragile new era begins. But there are people at the party who shouldn’t be there. Something is very wrong…

Years later, living a different life in Paris, Ari remains haunted by that night. Whatever happened at the party fractured her sense of reality — and may hold the key to a very different world.

Mandel’s previous works include Sea of Tranquility, and Station Eleven, which was adapted for television. It’s my guess Exit Party ends up with a screen adaptation of some sort.

Books are one-hundred-percent AI free. No, maybe not

2 October 2026

E-books (not paper/print books) seem set to start shipping with extra AI features, akin to the bonus features that once came with film and TV DVDs:

Google recently announced a partnership with Bloomsbury, De Gruyter Brill, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan, O’Reilly Media, and Penguin Random House to enhance e-books from its Google Play store with AI, allowing readers to interact with the text of the books directly, ask questions and get answers, and develop tools such as quizzes and slideshows.

These add-ons may not be all bad. I like the idea of being able find out more about parts of a book I’m reading. There could be any number of reasons for doing this.

For instance, in Sally Rooney’s 2021 novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, two characters discuss the Late Bronze Age collapse, which occurred over three-thousand years ago. I’d not heard of it before, even though I visited ruins of the Hittite Empire, whose demised was hastened by the collapse, when I was in Türkiye. I paused reading the novel to find out more about this period of history.

Having access to this information through an e-book would save the bother of looking up a search engine. No surprise then Google wants to be at the forefront of this development.

The German Ward, a new novel by Australian author Pip Williams

1 October 2026

Adelaide Hills, South Australia, based author Pip Williams‘ third novel, The German Ward, was published recently. Her debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words, and second, The Bookbinder of Jericho, were set in Oxford, England, prior to, and during World War I, and share a few characters.

While The German Ward is a separate work, some events also occur during World War I:

France, 1915. An English nurse and German doctor fall in love. He is a prisoner of war; she has never cared for rules. Their love is visceral and urgent, forbidden and doomed, and it would have gone unrecorded if not for a series of drawings found more than a century later.

At first the drawings seem insignificant, but the woman who finds them glimpses moments of intimacy and can’t look away. The images become part of a puzzle she wants to solve: who were the lovers, what became of them, and what story of war was the artist trying to tell?

Williams is presently travelling across Australia until late November 2026, should you be interested in hearing her talk about her work.

Vale Terry Denton, illustrator of Treehouse children’s book series

23 September 2026

Australian illustrator and author Terry Denton died on Monday this week, aged seventy-six.

Denton collaborated with Melbourne based author Andy Griffiths for over twenty-five years, and are perhaps best known for the Treehouse series of children’s books. Together they produced eleven titles in the series over twelve years, between 2011 and 2023.

A Piece of Red Cloth wins 2026 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction

18 September 2026

A Piece of Red Cloth, written by Leonie Norrington, Djawundil Maymuru, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, and Djawa Burarrwanga, has been named winner of the fiction category in the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for 2026.

Australian works of literature are recognised annually across six categories: Australian history, children’s, young adult, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. A full list of recipients in all categories is here.

Unmasking Italian author Elena Ferrante, because we must

10 September 2026

There’s been yet more speculation as to the identity of the Italian author known as Elena Ferrante.

The writer of novels including the Neapolitan Quartet, and The Lying Lives of Adults, has always been upfront about their use of a pseudonym. And despite writing novels since 1992, her identity, their identity, has, so far, remained a mystery.

Nonetheless, the resolve to unmask the person, or persons, behind the works written under the name of Elena Ferrante, refuses to wane.

Of course people want to know who the author really is. For sometime there has been a consensus that Anita Raja, an Italian literary translator, writes the novels attributed to Ferrante.

In a more recent twist though, suspicion has moved towards Italian author and screenwriter Domenico Starnone, who is also Raja’s husband.

The plot thickens.

Starnone has denied the claim. For my part, I couldn’t care less. So far, I’ve enjoyed every of the novels attributed to Ferrante that I’ve read, and hope the writer continues publishing.

Although I’m sure someone will figure it out eventually, learning the identity of the actual writer (or writers) would be an anticlimax. A let down even.

Great going though, for keeping everyone guessing all this time.

Peter Jackson says he is writing a Tintin film sequel

8 September 2026

On the subject of less than faithful book-to-film adaptations, it sounds like a sequel to 2011’s the Adventures of Tintin might be on the way.

To be precise, New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson, who collaborated with Steve Spielberg to make the 2011 film, said, earlier this year, he was writing a screenplay for a sequel. There’s the possibility though things may go no further.

The full title of the 2011 film was The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Readers of the Tintin graphic novels though will tell you only elements of The Secret of the Unicorn, the eleventh book in the Tintin series, made it into the film.

There were smatterings — quite a lot really — of other stories in the mix on this occasion.

I doubt too many Tintin fans were bothered, though The Secret of the Unicorn, and its second part Red Rackham’s Treasure, contained sufficient material for the 2011 film. There was no need lift segments from other stories, but Spielberg and Jackson saw things differently.

If there is to be sequel, I’d like to see an adaptation — a moderately faithful one — of The Castafiore Emerald. This was the twenty-first Tintin story, and differed markedly from the others, in that it was set entirely at Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of accident prone series stalwart, Captain Haddock.

Not all fans were pleased by this, as they were accustomed to Tintin and friends visiting several countries, once even the Moon, in James Bond style, in each story.

But to my mind, the blend of intrigue, mystery, supposition, red herrings, and hilarity, made The Castafiore Emerald one of the best stories in the series. Bring on the adaptation.

The book is better than the film but does not need to be

8 September 2026

Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States, has lashed American film director Christopher Nolan’s recent adaptation of The Odyssey, in a recent London Review of Books article.

Wilson, who translated the version of the Odyssey, a poem traditionally attributed to ancient Greek poet Homer, used by Nolan, was less than impressed by the screenplay:

I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.

Stern stuff. Another of Wilson’s comments, in regards to book (or literature) to film adaptations, also caught my eye:

Adaptations needn’t and shouldn’t follow the original with anything like the exactitude of a translation.

In other words, there’s no need for filmmakers, who adapt a book to film, to follow the source material to the letter. A point-of-view many directors would say makes sense. In the same way perhaps cover songs shouldn’t be carbon copies of the original, but rather re-interpretations.

But try telling that to the fans of a book, who are often appalled by the screen version. The book-is-better-than-the-film people. But how might Nolan have fared with Odyssey had he taken the story in a different direction? Even though it can be argued his is not a faithful adaptation.

Everyone has a book in them, more so bloggers

4 September 2026

I’ve been reading Josh Ellis’ blog for a couple of years maybe, since finding a link there on Dense Discovery once. Ellis has been at it since 2004, so achievement unlocked. In his latest post, he ruminates about writing a book. Acquaintances of his have made the suggestion over the years.

I’ve had the same. “You blog; you should write a book,” people have said to me. And, in the recesses of my HD I have a WIP manuscript sitting there, waiting.

For what, I’m not wholly sure, possibly forty-eight hour days. I continue to rein in my impulse to write/publish though. For now. Like Ellis, I too fear anything I might get published may end up in a bookstore bargain bin. What a way to go.

But Ellis wasn’t just pondering the notion of writing a book; he has written a book, called Jaunty Hair. Congratulations Mr. Ellis, and achievement unlocked again.

Blogging for twenty-plus years however, is not his only claim to fame, Ellis has been writing a column for the North Dakota Burke County Tribune for over twenty-years.

Perhaps then I should shelve my ambitions, as a mere blogger, to write a book, given I lack the appropriate gravitas. Even if I did write a few articles for the Sydney Morning Herald, back in the day.

But here’s the thing. Ellis didn’t so much write a book, more so he realised he already had; in the form of twenty-plus years of blog posts and Burke County Tribune articles.

He complied a selection of his past works, and there was Jaunty Hair. It was a great idea. This is what I mean when I say everyone — well, specifically everyone who has a blog — has a book in them.

There’s a book publishing idea for bloggers, particularly those with a considerable volume of work behind them. The idea of curating previous of my blog posts — which I would refer to as a collection of essays — and publishing them in a book, is appealing. How about you?

But in a sense, publishing a book seems at odds with what I’ve been doing here, online, all this time.

Because there I was, back in the late 1990’s, embracing the web, and believing it would bring about the end of print. In my defence, I wasn’t the only one. Thankfully though, this paperless eventuality did not, or is yet to, come to pass.

Still, there is an allure to seeing one’s name on a book, on a bookshop shelf, even it is bound for the bargain bin. I may yet dust off the aforementioned manuscript, and feed it into a printing press.

When those forty-eight hour days arrive…

AI companies using rare books to train agents, while destroying them

19 August 2026

Emanuel Maiberg, writing for 404 Media:

A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination.

It’s one thing to use books to train AI without seeking the author’s permission, nor paying a royalty, but is there any need to destroy them as part of the process?

There is the point that being rare books, they may be older publications, and copyright has lapsed, but that still seems to be beside the point. I was about to suggest these titles be donated to schools or libraries, once no longer needed, but they’ve likely no longer in one piece.

Going further, the process strikes me as being a form of book burning. The AI companies are taking all sorts of liberties with copyrighted material, but destroying books takes bad form to new lows.

« older posts