Reading Copy Book Blog

Sadie Jones has a new book out, her third, and she is living under a self-imposed Internet ban so she probably won’t be visiting our esteemed online organ. Her debut novel was The Outcast, her second was Small Wars and the third is called The Uninvited Guests. The Observer carried an interview with Jones yesterday. [...]

Eowyn Ivey is interviewed at the BBC about how she wrote her first novel, The Snow Child – which is going to sell many copies in 2012 and perhaps win awards too. The US-born author is named after a Tolkien character. She works in a bookshop, used to be a newspaper reporter, and she shoots [...]

YouTube might be stuffed full with videos of crazy cats and toddlers falling over, but it’s also an amazing archive like this opportunity to listen to David Foster Wallace express himself. This video was broadcast on March 27, 1997.

In 1976 photographer Jill Krementz decided to chronicle the day to day life of a 10-year-old student named Stephanie. The story follows her attendance at the School of American Ballet in New York through to being chosen for the starring role of Marie in George Balanchine‘s presentation of The Nutcracker. The book was called A [...]

Christie Watson, who is nominated for the UK’s Costa Prize for Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, is interviewed at the Daily Telegraph about her day-job (and night-job too) in nursing. Nursing has changed since then into something I almost don’t recognise. The capes have been replaced with pyjama-like scrubs. The fob watch is an iPhone loaded [...]

The ever-blunt illustrator R. Crumb talks about his art being rejected by The New Yorker.

The story of how Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, and three other people fell ill after eating wild mushrooms is like an Ian McEwan novel. It’s another example that real life can be stranger and more hard-hitting than anything written by a novelist or a screenwriter. The Guardian has an interview with Evans. [...]

Jarvis Cocker, frontman of Pulp and the man who invaded the stage while Michael Jackson performed because Jackson was attempting to be some “kind of Christ-like figure with the power of healing”, is the latest celebrity to move into publishing. He is following Pete Townsend, Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain. The Guardian interviews him and [...]

Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel, Damned, is now out and he’s interviewed by Shelf Awareness today. He was asked what was his favorite book was a child and he replied…. Anything involving Ellery Queen, I read it. Not so much for the murders, etc. I wanted to know why Ellery never got married. Why did he [...]

The Independent did a one-minute interview with Terry Pratchett as he sat in a hotel in Seattle. He revealed he was reading London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew. I’ll take a wild guess and say that most of you haven’t heard of this book. Mayhew was a Victorian newspaper journalist who detailed [...]