Reading Copy Book Blog

The finalists for the 2008 Locus Awards have been announced. Awards to be given out on the 21st of June

SF NOVEL
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
Halting State, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Spook Country, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL
Endless Things, John Crowley (Small Beer Press; Overlook)
Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
Territory, Emma Bull (Tor)
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)

With all of the floggings that memoirs and self-published books alike have recevied in recent months (years?) seeing that headline in the Guardian supprised me. However it appears to be true.

Jane Haynes’s Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? revolves arround a psychotherapist and her patients, thus far the critics have been kind.

The entire shortlist for the prize is as follows:
Ed Husain’s The Islamist
Miranda Seymour’s In My Father’s House
Dannie Abse’s The Presence
John Lanchester’s Family Romance
Jane Haynes’s Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?

The winners for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize have been announced. This years winners are:

Fiction
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Drama
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

History:
What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe

Biography:
Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson

Poetry:
Time and Materials by Robert Hass and
Failure by Philip Schultz

General Nonfiction:
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander

The winner of the annual pimp my bookcart contest has been announced. This years winner took the design of a UPS truck, complete with working lights. The slogan “What Can Brown Do For You” refers to the school librarian, Mr. Brown.

Not too long ago I got the chance to have a quick chat with Elizabeth Hand. Her new book Generation Loss looks really good!

We were given a very lovely signed copy to give away to a booklover of our choosing, so please enter the contest.

If your having trouble with the contest question, remember google and wikipedia are a good friend =).

Today is National Poetry day in the UK so in honor of that here’s a round-up of poetry news.

Sean O’Brien wins 3rd straight Forward Prize

The Guardian’s Poem of the week is back

Ginsberg: 50 years later more obscene than ever

Profile on Canadian poet Peter Sanger

The Guardian single handedly improves your cocktail small talk skills for the next month by breaking out digest versions of the Booker Prize shortlist

Filed under “because we love you,” AbeBooks is offering up a pair of Weekend Passports to the Steinbeck Festival and two night’s stay (August 3&4) in a hotel just a stone’s throw away.

This year’s festival them is John Steinbeck and the 1960s - A Culture of Discontent, and takes place from August 2-5 in Salinas, California, the heart of Steinbeck Country.

All you have to do to enter is visit our Steinbeck Festival Contest page and tell us which Steinbeck novel began with the line “The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.”?

Contest closes July 26!

From July 26-29, Byron Bay will become the centre of the Australian book and writing community as it hosts the 11th annual Byron Bay Writers Festival.

We had a little chat with the Festival director Jeni Caffin where she told us a little bit of what goes on at this great event.

Any Aussies that want to attend this three day event can enter our competition to win a three-day pass.

Keeping with the theme of the event, all you have to do to win is write book review for your favourite Australian author.

If you’re a super serious Harry Potter fan, or happen to live in London, JK has organized a midnight book signing at the Natural History Museum in London on July 21. Those wishing to attend can apply for free tickets via Bloomsbury’s website.

A total of 1,700 will be chosen and all of them will get a free copy of The Deathly Hallows and have it signed by Rowling.

The first 500 randomly selected winners will also be invited to attend a midnight reading of the book by the author.

*UPDATE*
P.S. - For North American fans Scholastic added a contest giving 7 fans airfare and three nights in London to attend this event. Catch to this one is you must be UNDER 21 years of age.

The reaction to the AbeBooks’ Harry Potter bookshelf contest has been amazing and the contest has barely been going for 24 hours. Hundreds of amazing poems about the Boy Wizard have been submitted so far. People bemoan the state of literacy but last night hundreds of people around the world sat down and composed poetry all about Harry Potter. We’re impressed - keep those Potter Poems coming.

Wow!

You probably think you’ve seen everything Harry Potter-related? Well, AbeBooks.com has a totally unique Harry Potter bookshelf (pictured) built entirely from actual Harry Potter books by an incredibly talented sculptor who specialises in book art….and we’re giving it away.

But here’s the catch - we’ll give it away to the person who comes up with finest poem devoted to Harry Potter and the whole Hogwarts phenomenon. We’re launching the contest today and you’ve got plenty of time to work on your Potter Poetry - the contest closes on July 6 and is open to anyone. You can submit any sort of poem - a limerick, an elegy, a sonnet. Just be creative - AbeBooks staff are judging the poems so make us smile.

For instance, this poem isn’t going to win….

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Is Harry dead?

The ending’s taboo.

We’re also got a fascinating interview with Jim Rosenau, the sculptor who was commissioned by AbeBooks to create this unique piece of art that’s also a functional item of furniture. Find out more about Jim and his work here.

Good luck.

The Associate Press is reporting that author David Halberstam died yesterday in a car accident.  Halberstam was on his way to an interview when the crash occurred.

Halberstam began his writing career as a journalist but in 1967 he left daily journalism and began writing books.  His topics varied from politics to sports to civil rights.  In 2002, he was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for his bestseller, War in a Time of Peace.

A list of best books for children over the last 70 years has caused some controversy due to the absence of several authors that many deem to be inevitable choices for such a list.  Among those authors that didn’t make the list are Enid Blyton, C.S.  Lewis and JK Rowling.

The list however, is not without bias.  It is after all the Carnegie Anniversary Top Ten and is put together by the orgainzers of the Carnegie Medal. This means only authors who have received the medal made the list.  (Enid Blyton, for example never won the Carnegie Medal.) 

The defense is that the list was meant to be controversial thus stirring passion for the subject.  Do you feel passionate about it?  The public is invited to vote on their favorite Carnegie medal winner so you too can have a say.

The Carnegie Anniversary Top Ten includes:

A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly
His Dark Materials: Book 1 Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
Junk by Melvin Burgess
Skellig by David Almond
Storm by Kevin Crossley-Holland
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
The Family from One End Street By Eve Garnett
The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall
The Owl Service by Alan Garner
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

We have teamed up with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to give a pair of lucky AbeBooks visitors a chance to win tickets to the Nebula Awards banquet and two nights stay at the event hotel.  It sounds like it is going to be quite the event with lots of author signings, free books and several discussion panels.  There may not be such a thing as a free lunch but you get a free dinner out of this one!