South Korean author Han Kang wins 2024 literature Nobel Prize

Showing all posts tagged: literature

South Korean author Han Kang wins 2024 literature Nobel Prize

16 October 2024

The Seoul based author is the first South Korean to be named a Nobel Prize literature laurate. Han Kang has written over a dozen novels since 1995, so if you’re a book reader, chances are you’ve seen at least one. The Vegetarian, published in 2016, won the International Booker Prize in the same year.

In her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.

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Hardcover, a Goodreads-like online social catalogue for books

11 October 2024

I’ve been trying out Hardcover, a social catalogue for book readers, founded by Adam Fortuna in April 2021. Like a few people I think, he was looking for an alternative to Goodreads (GR), which at the time was probably the big name in book social cataloguing. StoryGraph is one option, but Fortuna wanted to make something himself:

Hardcover was started in May 2021 after Goodreads announced they were discontinuing their API. At the time, I (hi 👋, I’m Adam!) was using that API to show what books I’d recently read on my blog. It would automatically update just by using GR. It worked great!

But when they announced the API was going away, that lit a fire under me to find (or make) a replacement. After some research and forming a team, we’ve been working to create an Amazon-free alternative ever since!

I’ve been a Goodreads member since June 2018, and while it’s a useful resource, I find it a bit clunky to use sometimes. If you’re a book reader, like I try to be sometimes, you can track me down at Hardcover if you wish, username the same as this website.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: early thoughts, reviews from critics

25 September 2024

I’m guessing a few people had a sleepless night on Monday/Tuesday, after getting hold of the new Sally Rooney novel, Intermezzo, at one of the midnight release events earlier this week. Book reviewers, meanwhile, were probably lucky enough to score an advanced reader copy (ARC), at some point beforehand.

Anyway, no spoilers here, just some brief excerpts from the thoughts of a few book reviewers. The consensus though, so far, being Intermezzo is different from Rooney’s previous three novels, but that’s not a bad thing.

Constance Grady writing for The Guardian:

Intermezzo is an accomplished continuation of the writing that made Rooney a global phenomenon.

Alexandra Harris writing for Vox:

I’m happy to report that Intermezzo is exquisite. While the experimental and polarizing Beautiful World stayed largely out of the minds of its characters, with occasionally chilly results, Intermezzo is all rich inner monologue, as deeply felt as Normal People.

Dwight Garner writing for The New York Times:

“Intermezzo” wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s a mature, sophisticated weeper. It makes a lot of feelings begin to slide around in you.

The crew at Melbourne based independent Australian bookshop, Readings, sound like they stayed up all night reading Intermezzo. Justin Cantrell-Harvey, a bookseller, described the novel thusly:

A slow burn that lingers with grief and ignites a longing for something just out of reach.

Laura Miller writing for Slate:

A casual reader (or dismisser) of Rooney might think all her books are the same. But her new novel is a darker, sadder departure from the formula — and it’s better for it.

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Be first in line for Intermezzo by Sally Rooney in Sydney tonight

23 September 2024

Tomorrow, Tuesday 24 September 2024, is the day Sally Rooney fans have been waiting for. That’s when the Irish author’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, is published. And from what I (and everyone else) can gather, anticipation is at fever pitch.

The good news, for some Australian fans of Rooney, is they don’t have to wait until bookshops open, as usual, on Tuesday morning. They can go along to Gleebooks, in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill, late this evening, where Intermezzo will be on the shelves, on the stroke of midnight.

We don’t see too many midnight releases of novels, so I’m hoping that says something about how good book number four is…

Update: since queuing this post late on Friday, I’m advised the Gleebooks event is fully booked. Sorry, Tuesday morning, regular bookshop opening times, it is, I’m afraid.

Update II: For those who missed out on the midnight release this evening, Dymocks George Street⁠, in Sydney CBD, will be selling Intermezzo from 8AM tomorrow, Tuesday 24 September 2024. A free coffee is on offer all day for anyone buying the novel.

I’m happy to cover for you, if you want to tell work you’re in a meeting with a content producer, for several hours while you go somewhere and read the book (thanks Sara).

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Authors slam NaNoWriMo neither for nor against AI stance

9 September 2024

National Novel Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo, the popular, twenty-five year old, write a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty-days challenge, infuriated authors last week, after organisers appeared to support the use of AI tools by participants. While they didn’t specifically endorse apps such as ChatGPT, they did not rule them out either:

NaNoWriMo neither explicitly supports nor condemns any approach to writing, including the use of tools that leverage AI.

NaNoWriMo’s neutral stance however has upset many writers. Not only do they feel generative AI tools threaten their livelihoods, some have also seen their own works used to “train” AI chatbots, usually without their permission or knowledge.

To these authors, the neutral position represents support of this conduct. But like many segments of society, NaNoWriMo, and its community of amateur and professional writers, have been grappling with the advent of AI technologies. Organisers say their (since amended) AI policy was intended to put an end to what had become inflammatory discussion on the topic:

In early August, debates about AI on our social media channels became vitriolic. It was clear that the intimidation and harassment we witnessed were causing harm within our community of writers. The FAQs we crafted last week were written to curtail those behaviors.

I don’t really know much about the NaNoWriMo community, but with over half a million members globally, it surely represents a wide and varied group of writers. Although some six-hundred NaNoWriMo manuscripts have gone on to be published, for many participants the writing challenge is simply a fun way to pass some time. The majority are not looking for publishing deals. I’d venture to say some participants may not be the greatest of writers. Others might struggle, for whatever reasons, to put a story idea they have, into words.

NaNoWriMo is saying they don’t have a problem with some of their members using AI tools, if it helps them with the process, be that drafting or proofreading. But they make an obvious caveat:

If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it. Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though.

I’m not in favour of using AI apps in any creative endeavours, particularly writing. Personally, I don’t think AI has any place in NaNoWriMo, for the precise reason organisers have stated above. AI defeats the purpose. But we’re getting to the point where it’s going to be hard to tell what work has been AI assisted, and what hasn’t. Plagiarism tools may be effective, but not if the AI apps stay one-step ahead. Imposing a ban on AI apps seems pointless. AI is here to stay, and is only going to more deeply embed itself in our lives. This is what we need to expend our energies on navigating.

Ireland: home of some of the best literature in the world

2 September 2024

Publication of Irish author Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, on 24 September 2024, nears. It promises to be quite the event. I don’t know about Australia, but in Ireland and the UK, some bookshops will open early on the day, so eager Rooney fans can get hold of her latest offering.

But Sally Rooney is only one of a cohort of popular Irish writers. The Emerald Isle* may not be the world’s most populous nation, yet it is up there with the best of them when it comes to literary output. Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch, and Edna O’Brien, are among Irish authors who are household names.

So, what’s the go? What makes Ireland a country of great writers? As Kate McCusker, writing for The Guardian discovered, the propensity to put pen to paper comes down to a number of factors.

One is the Irish love of entertaining and storytelling, of which I have some first-hand experience. Another is the diminishing influence of the Catholic Church. People no longer feel they need to restrain themselves, subsequently they can write about whatever they want, including divorce, gay marriage, and pre-marital sex. The things we all love to read about.

The Irish government is also arts-friendly. A few years ago they launched a three-year trial scheme that pays selected artists and creatives a basic weekly income. There’s an initiative that has to make a difference. Artists and writers can focus on being creative, and not getting distracted as they try to juggle day jobs and art.

* the term the Emerald Isle comes from a poem, written in 1795 by William Drennan, a doctor no less. Even non-professional writers make for great writers in Ireland…

The Ledge, a new thriller/whodunit by Christian White

8 August 2024

The Ledge is the fourth novel by Victoria based Australian writer, and master of twists that will leave you breathless and dumbfounded: Christian White.

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.

It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

White’s novels are chock full of the things readers of thrillers and suspense love: red herrings, blind alleys, smoke and mirrors, lies, deception, characters with multiple aliases, the list goes on. So far I’ve read The Nowhere Child, White’s 2019 debut, and The Wife and the Widow, which possibly has of one the most mind-blowing twists in the genre.

Wild Place, meanwhile, published in 2021, remains on my TBR list, where it will be joined by The Ledge, when it is published on Tuesday, 24 September 2024.

The Echoes, a new novel by Evie Wyld, author of The Bass Rock

5 August 2024

Cover image of The Echoes, a new novel by Evie Wyld.

London based Anglo-Australian author Evie Wyld’s 2021 novel, The Bass Rock, which won the Stellar Prize literary award in the same year, was a riveting read. Her new book, The Echoes, looks like it will follow suit, given it incorporates elements of The Bass Rock, including settings across several locations and time, and a dollop of the supernatural thrown in for good measure:

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and an autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them. It asks what of our past we can shrug off and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.

That time Douglas Adams unofficially signed copies of his books in Sydney, Australia

22 July 2024

If you enjoyed the novels of late British author Douglas Adams, you may enjoy this in-depth article about his later life, by Jimmy Maher.

Adams, it seems, did not restrict his particular brand of humour to the written word. A regular customer at a coffee shop I used to go to, told me about an encounter (of a sort) with Adams, in Sydney, Australia, sometime in the late 1990’s. My friend at the coffee shop once worked at a large bookshop in Sydney’s CBD.

He told of the day that Adams — who was presumably in Australia promoting his latest work — arrived at the shop unannounced, and made his way to the sci-fi section. Apparently, his most recent book, plus a selection of others, were on display in a promotional cardboard gondola, similar to what you see on this webpage.

Adams, without saying a word to anyone, pulled a pen from his pocket, and proceeded to sign random copies of his books. Before turning to leave, he scrawled his name across the top of the gondola, and walked out of the shop, again, without saying a word to anyone.

My friend told me how a huddle of bewildered bookshop staff quickly gathered at the gondola, trying to make sense of what had just happened. “Was that him?” was a phrase uttered numerous times apparently. Signed copies of Adams’ novels must have been a windfall for those who bought them…

Australian bookseller Booktopia in voluntary administration

3 July 2024

This is sad and concerning news.

The Melbourne based bookseller had become well ensconced in the Australian literary realm, since being founded about twenty-years ago. The company, which is also listed on the ASX (though trading of shares has been suspended), had been struggling financially in recent years though.

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