Showing all posts about books
Only in 2114 can books in the Future library be read
30 September 2022
Since 2014, The Future Library, located in the Deichman Library in Oslo, Norway, has been going about assembling a collection of one hundred manuscripts, at the rate of one work per year. When the library reaches capacity, in 2114, the collection will be made available to one thousand people who have purchased certificates allowing them, or a descendent, access to the writings.
The ‘Silent Room’ where the manuscripts are to be kept is built using wood from the original trees felled to make way for the trees planted for the project. Katie Paterson has been working with the architectural team to design this part of the new public library. The collected works will be on display but the manuscripts will not be available for reading.
The library, which is the brainchild of Scottish visual artist Katie Paterson, has so far invited prominent authors, including Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, and Ocean Vuong, to submit manuscripts. I like the idea, but I’m not sure about having to wait almost one hundred years to read what’s in the collection, even if I knew I’d still be around by then.
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2022 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist
30 September 2022
The 2022 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist was announced on Tuesday 27 September 2022.
- Two Afternoons in the Kabul Stadium, by Tim Bonyhady
- Signs and Wonders, by Delia Falconer
- The Asparagus Wars, by Carol Major
- Mafioso, by Colin McLaren
- Mortals, by Rachel E. Menzies and Ross G. Menzies
- Here Goes Nothing, by Steve Toltz
Held in conjunction with Waverley Council, in Sydney’s east, the Nib Award, which was established in 2002, is the only Australian literary prize of its kind presented by a municipal council.
The winner of the prize, valued at A$20,000, will be named on Wednesday 16 November 2022.
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Australian literature, books, literary awards
My Sweet Guillotine, by Jayne Tuttle
26 September 2022
My Sweet Guillotine (published by Hardie Grant Books, September 2022), is the second book by Australian author Jayne Tuttle.
Like her debut title, Paris or Die, My Sweet Guillotine is a memoir about her time living and working in Paris. Here though, Tuttle focuses adjusting to life following a freak accident in the French capital that almost killed her.
In the wake of a bizarre, shocking accident in Paris, Jayne finds herself back in the city in a strange limbo. Ignoring the past, she tries to move forward. There is theatre. Love. New friendships. A new neighbourhood. But the accident haunts her, forcing her to confront herself and the experience in ways she could never have predicted.
Sally Pryor, writing for The Canberra Times, describes My Sweet Guillotine as a book for those who enjoy reading about the lives and experiences of others:
Above all, My Sweet Guillotine is also a love letter – an older, wiser love letter to Paris, a place that has a majestic, wonderful indifference to her and her needs, and yet seems able to fulfil them so completely.
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Australian literature, books, Jayne Tuttle
Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto talk with Michaela Kalowski
13 September 2022
Melbourne based Australian authors Emily Bitto and Miles Allinson discuss their recent novels, Wild Abandon and In Moonland respectively, with Michaela Kalowski, in an interview recorded at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Having penned two of the past year’s most acclaimed novels, Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto come together to discuss their stories of characters searching for identity and meaning within fractured realities. Miles talks about In Moonland, a family portrait of three generations that stretches from the wild idealism of the 70s to the fragile hopes for the future. Emily sheds light on Wild Abandon, her tale of a lonely outsider who travels from Australia to America’s heartland trying to find his place in a late-capitalist world.
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Australian literature, books, Emily Bitto, Miles Allinson
Dystopian stories might sell, but do they change the world?
12 September 2022
Can dystopian stories bring about positive change, or do they dull readers into accepting the grim inevitable? Climate change will destroy the world. Governments will soon control our every thought. And so on. British novelist and critic Olivia Laing suggests stories that are more positive, may bring about — you know — positive outcomes.
We become accustomed to what we once found shocking. The bad future lives inside people’s heads, gathering its own momentum. It seems to me we’ve put too much faith in the inoculatory power of terrifying simulations, rather than realising that for certain viewers they might suggest appetising possibilities, while for others they confirm dread, magnifying the emotions that contribute to paralysis and foreclosing on any more liberating or enlivening alternatives.
This doesn’t mean the world needs more stories with conflict-free plots, rather outcomes that might inspire readers instead of disheartening them.
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ManyBooks fifty-thousand free fiction titles to read
12 September 2022
ManyBooks is an online book resource offering free access to over fifty-thousand titles. That should keep you occupied for a while.
ManyBooks was established in 2004 with the vision to provide an extensive library of books in digital format for free on the Internet. Many of the early eBooks are from the Project Gutenberg archives, which means you will be able to find a lot of classics on the site.
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Alice Pung named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize
9 September 2022
Melbourne based author and lawyer Alice Pung was named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize last month. The prize, which recognises the work of women and non-binary writers, is one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards.
I recently read Pung’s 2021 novel One Hundred Days, which was shortlisted in both the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards. The story centres on sixteen year Kuruna, and her fraught — to put it mildly — relationship with her overbearing mother, which becomes all the more strained after Kuruna falls pregnant. Not an easy read, if I’m honest.
On the subject of the 2023 Stella Prize, entries are presently being accepted until Wednesday 12 October 2022.
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Alice Pung, Australian literature, books, literary awards
The Age Book of the Year prize 2022 winners announced
9 September 2022
In Moonland by Melbourne based Australian author Miles Allinson, which I’ve written about previously, has won the fiction prize in The Age Book of the Year prize 2022.
Meanwhile Leaping into Waterfalls by Sydney based writer and literary critic Bernadette Brennan — a biography of late Australian short story writer and novelist Gillian Mears — has taken out the award for non-fiction.
The winners of the prize, which was re-booted last year after a nine year hiatus, were announced on the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The Dinny O’Hearn Poetry Prize was in the past awarded to works of — you guessed it — poetry, but this doesn’t appear to have been presented since 2012.
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Australian literature, Bernadette Brennan, books, literary awards, Miles Allinson
The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist
7 September 2022
The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist has been unveiled:
- Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
- Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
- The Trees by Percival Everett
- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeid by Shehan Karunatilaka
- Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
Featured above is the cover of Shehan Karunatilaka’s shortlisted title The Seven Moons of Maali Almeid. It would win the disassociated prize for best book cover on the Booker Prize shortlist, if there were such a thing.
The winner will be announced on Monday 17 October 2022.
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Booker Prize, books, literary awards
Apollo Remastered, beautifully enhanced photos of the Apollo flights
5 September 2022
Image courtesy of NASA.
The above image is of Aquarius, lunar module of the ill-fated Apollo 13 Moon flight of April 1970.
Here it is seen moments after being jettisoned by the Apollo crew. For those who came in late, Aquarius acted as a “lifeboat” for much of the shortened Apollo 13 mission, after an explosion damaged Odyssey, the command module. Without Aquarius the crew may never have returned home.
I’m not sure though if it features in Apollo Remastered, the new book by British author and science writer Andy Saunders, which contains a veritable trove of photos from the Apollo missions. Saunders has spent the last few years enhancing four hundred previously grainy images, making them far sharper and clearer than those originally released.
Some before and after examples of the remastered photos can be seen in this BBC report by Jonathan Amos. And if you’re not familiar with the Apollo 13 story, American filmmaker Ron Howard’s 1995 feature of the same name is well worth a look.
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