Taksim Square Book Club

We've all been aware of the protests and violence across Turkey over the past few weeks but, once again, books have shown their amazing power to make us all stop and think.

Days after the authorities evicted all protesters from Taksim Square in Istanbul, performance artist Erdem Gunduz, the 'Standing Man' took silently to the Square. He stood there for eight hours in silence, facing a statue of Kemal Ataturk - the first President of Turkey - until the police stepped in.

Although the police did appear, Gunduz's symbolic stand inspired thousands of people over the next few days to follow his lead, many of whom stood with their books and read.

Although public reading was a feature of the protests in Turkey beforehand, several images have since emerged of readers in Taksim Square that subsequently lead to the coining of the Taksim Square Book Club, a moving image of silent contemplation while violence continues to erupt across the country.

George Henton of Aljazeera English took these photos from Taksim Square and you can see more here, as well as his original article.

Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis

So I know I told you all about my weekend in Bath last week but what I didn't say was my highlight: finding a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Latin... who knew?! No offence to Caecillius, but Latin could have been a whole lot more interesting learning about Dominus et Domina Dursley and Harrius Potter.

JK Rowling's Potter series has been translated into over 70 different languages and variations now but just how do you translate all the spells, incantations and place names? To readers of English, the latin phrases are, in most cases, recognisable without too much explanation, but what if you're reading in Asia or Africa? Of course you could just leave the words as they are but some translators have gone the extra mile and created different names that have more meaning to their readers. For instance, in Hindi editions of the novels, the Sanskrit has been used to create the same effect.

   

   

Jane Austen in Bath

I spent last weekend out West and after seriously pulling some muscles in the Cheddar Gorge, ended up in Bath. For any of you that don't know, Bath was established as a spa (with the latin name Aquae Sulis) by the Romans, just twenty years after they arrived in Britain. It is now a beautiful city, built largely in golden Bath stone during the Georgian era and, despite having somehow managing to lose the massive source of natural hot water, is now a popular tourist destination with its famous Roman baths at its centre.

What does Bath have to do with books, though? I was starting to ask myself the same question as, for some reason, I was thinking Bath would be full of quirky little second hand bookshops and yet on arrival I could barely count two or three. Saying that, Bath does have something up its sleeve, though, as it was once the home of literary giant, Jane Austen. When I say literary giant, that makes it look like Jane herself were enormous. I wish this was the case, that the bigger the literary name, the bigger the author. Unfortunately not. Anyway, she lived in a number of different houses in the city and there is now a museum at Gay Street, just a few doors down from number 25, where Jane Austen lived herself.

It's not surprising, then, that Bath appeared in Austen's novels. In Persuasion, "lodgings in Gay Street" meet Sir Walter Elliot's "satisfaction" when the Admiral and Mrs Croft reveal they will be staying there. The website for the Jane Austen Centre also provides this quote from Northanger Abbey:

They arrived in Bath. Catherine was all eager delight; her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already. They were soon settled in comfortable lodgings in Pultney Street.

 

The Jane Austen Centre

40 Gay Street

Queen Square

Bath

BA1 2NT

http://www.janeausten.co.uk/

Other Posts:

Jane Austen Anniversary Stamps

Iain Banks Dies of Cancer, Age 59

Iain Banks wrote an impressive 27 novels in his career as a novelist, a career that earned him a number of awards and high praise across the world. His first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984 and in a 1997 poll was named one of the top 100 novels of the Twentieth Century. He has gone on to write both commercial and science fiction titles, the latter written under the name Iain M Banks (the 'M' standing for his adopted middle name, Menzies).

In April 2013, Banks wrote a moving note to his fans via his website announcing that he had terminal cancer. Unsurprisingly, Banks received a large wave of public support, which he was said to have been deeply moved by. The note, beautifully written of course, said that Banks was unlikely to survive a year but on 9th June, only two months later, his family released a statement to say that the Scottish writer had passed away.

Sadly, despite a big effort on the part of his publisher Little, Brown, Banks was not able to see the publication of his final novel, The Quarry, which will be published on 20th June 2013.

You can read Banks' eloquent letter here.

Writing in a Digital Age

Literary conferences are definitely the best kind of conference. You get to talk about books, your keynote speaker is nearly always some wonderfully quirky, amazingly talented writer who can actually entertain rather than throw dull information the audience's way and even the 'facts and figures' element is more interesting when they're all about books. So yeah, last Friday, I got to go along to the first day of The Literary Consultancy's (TLC) Literary Conference, 'Writing in a Digital Age'.

The keynote speaker this year was Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry as well as a number of illustrated books, her latest of which, Raven Girl, having just been adapted into a ballet at the Royal Opera House. Niffenegger used her great sense of humour and honesty to take us through a mixture of history and personal experiences in relation to books, writing and the ever-growing digital era. Interestingly, Niffenegger held on to the eBook rights in TTW for some time before publishing under new digital imprint, Zola Books.

I personally loved Niffenegger's approach, which I found to be a brilliant antidote to the serious, overly-techie and downright miserable tone that seems to dominate whenever booky people get together and talk about 'the state of publishing'. Unfortunately Niffenegger's positive outlook on the state of the book market, that we needn't be worried about the future of books, was later dismissed by other speakers.

That said, it's not surprising. Waterstones is quickly slipping through our fingers and it feels like soon you won't be able to find a physical book on the high street. Bowker's Books & Consumers survey has pinpointed that eBook sales in certain genres (including Crime, Romance and Classics) are reaching 20% of overall sales.

While I wouldn't say I learnt anything entirely new about the state of the book market, it did confirm to me that no one has a clue what the future holds and there really isn't much point in speculating. All we do know is that the industry is changing but people are still reading.

Learn more about the TLC and what they do here.

Other relevant posts:

Her Fearful Symmetry  by Audrey Niffenegger

To Kindle or not to Kindle

AM Homes wins Women's Prize for Fiction

So finally Hilary Mantel's winning streak has been broken. I always feel that the winner should always be "the best book" rather than "the best book but not by that frickin' woman who won last time". What's the point in winning something if the only reason you won was because someone else wasn't allowed to win. However, I think everyone feels a little sigh of relief that someone else can have some time in the limelight after Mantel's historic last year.

I've never read a novel by A.M. Homes so I couldn't pass judgement on whether or not she is a valid winner but what I can say is that she is an American author, originally from Washington DC who has written, I believe, 7 novels as well as many short stories and some non-fiction. She has also written for the American TV series, The L Word and has been working on her own television series, which she describes as "a cross between Desperate Housewives and Grapes of Wrath."

The novel she won with is called May We Be Forgiven:

Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet, regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer, with a murderous temper.They have been uneasy rivals since childhood.Then one day George's loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life. 

To learn a little more, I recommend watching AM Homes' interview with Jeanette Winterson. I could have regurgitated it all and pretended I am the almighty knower of all things fiction and AM Homes, but that is plagiarism and I'm pretty sure people who like books aren't massively keen on that so here you go:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what did really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? And what was left in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war...

I'm pretty sure 'gone girl' has become an official publishing term, if not a new international adjective. "You've just got to buy this, it's sooooo Gone Girl. It's started to appear in hopeful unsolicited submissions - 'I like to think my novel is a cross between Gone Girl and Da Vinci Code.' I too would like to think that. Unfortunately it is 99.9% unlikely to be true.

A friend said the other day that Gone Girl's success is just genius marketing of a great concept. All I could think was that you could arguably say that of any successful novel. But after a couple of days I can kind of see what she means. It's entirely in first person so you can't exactly say it's 'beautifully written', albeit that the voices are well crafted. What makes it really different is Flynn's use of an unreliable narrator. 

It's scary how we automatically trust certain people, notably protagonists in novels, and then how disconcerting it is when you're forced to question that natural assumption. It's even more unnerving when the person is your husband/wife/long term partner. Gillian Flynn plays with both of these in this 'domestic thriller' - which is a new genre I have coined... just now... but has probably been used in publishing sales teams for centuries...

Another clever thing that Gillian Flynn has done is make it virtually impossible to talk about it! Which is incredibly frustrating... Everyone hates it when someone goes 'well you'll just have to read it'. Bleh. But it's a clever little ploy which ultimately plays on our predictable human reaction... buy the book. And voila, an international bestseller. Any budding writers out there? Take note. Although now this has already been done, you're already too late. Sorry.

So yeah, can't really talk much about this without giving it away but it's good... it's a classic page-turner with plenty of twists and turns. 8.5/10