Costa Book Awards

Admittedly, I'm a week late with this post but I'm quite a fan of the Costa Book Awards and so I couldn't let it slip by entirely... I mean, come on, Costa coffee and books... could life get much better?

Some of the books on this years list are familiar to me - Moira Young's Blood Red Road was being published while I was working for its publisher and I was "lucky" enough to do some photocopying for Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens (and I'm going to a talk by her next week). I'm not a massive fan of poetry and Carol Ann Duffy isn't my favourite person but I can't deny that her book, The Bees, is absolutely beautiful. If you judge books by their cover (and who doesn't?) then this might be one for you. Booker winner, Julian Barnes, was also on the list but, as you will see below, was pipped to the post by Pure by Andrew Miller. Set in pre-revolutionary Paris - it's Miller's historical novel that has made the headlines and has been paralleled to the likes of 2009 Booker winner, Hilary Mantel.

These awards are great for the general reader - they pick out some great titles that you will actually enjoy rather than have to struggle through because some intellectuals told you that you should. I've included the shortlist and winners below for you to have a browse...

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Novel:

The Sense of Ending, Julian Barnes(Jonathan Cape)

A Summer of Drowning, John Burnside (Jonathan Cape)

Pure, Andrew Miller (Sceptre)

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, Louisa Young (HarperCollins)

First Novel:

City of Bohane, Kevin Barry (Jonathan Cape)

The Last Hundred Days, Patrick McGuinness (Seren)

Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, Christie Watson (Quercus)

Pao, Kerry Young (Bloomsbury)

Biography:

Thin Paths: Journeys In and Around an Italian Mountain Village, Julia Blackburn (Jonathan Cape)

Henry’s Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son’s Story, Patrick and Henry Cockburn (Simon & Schuster)

Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas, Matthew Hollis (Faber and Faber)

Charles Dickens: A Life, Claire Tomalin (Viking)

Poetry:

The Bees, Carol Ann Duffy (Picador)

Night, David Harsent (Faber and Faber)

Fiere, Jackie Kay (Picador)

November, Sean O’Brien (Picador)

Children’s Book:

Flip, Martyn Bedford (Walker Books)

The Unforgotten Coat, Frank Cottrell Boyce (Walker Books)

Small Change for Stuart, Lissa Evans (Doubleday)

Blood Red Road, Moira Young (Marion Lloyd Books)

Book vs. Adaptation: Birdsong

It seems that the opening episode of Birdsong, despite getting 6 million viewers, didn't wow very many people. It lost 0.7 million viewers last night. I, personally, enjoyed it - Eddie Redmayne aside. Although the structure, alternating between past and present, didn't entirely work for me.

Abi Morgan wrote the screenplay, (she's behind two Oscar hopefuls this year (The Iron Lady and Shame), but was not the first person to try. The novel was published in 1993 and, like War Horse, it even made it to the stage before TV (directed by the brilliant Trevor Nunn and starring the lovely Ben Barnes). I saw it just over a year ago and it was great - the scenes in the tunnels were particularly good and had much more humour than the BBC version.

As with most adaptions, Morgan played around ever so slightly with the plot and I'd say, as great as she is, Poesy was a bit young as Isabelle. The basis, though, was there and it captured some of the novel's most memorable scenes perfectly for me. I won't go in much detail so as not to ruin it but generally the characters were well-done, it was filmed beautifully and the acting was spot on (even if I did, on occasion, chuckle at Wraysford's slow motion smoldering stares...). The second half, I thought, was better than the first and completely determined to make me cry! The film's treatment of the WW1 front line was impeccable; the roll call following battle and the tunnel scenes were scarily convincing and had me holding my breath and stifling back tears.

In the end, I think I probably did enjoy the book more but they did do a great job.
If anyone hasn't seen it, I'd recommend it - but don't go watching the first episode with your mum... and don't go seeing Shame either... Morgan writes some pretty vivid sex scenes...

Introducing... Richard Yates

As anyone who knows me will know, Richard Yates is one of the few authors where I'll pick up the book primarily because it's written by him. He was born in New York but an unstable home moved him from place to place before eventually joining the army and serving in Germany and France during WW2.

His background would come as no surprise if you read his books; largely frighteningly realistic looks at the failed American Dream amongst post-war East Coast suburbanites. Sounds miserable and you're probably right, but the thing is, the writing is just so GOOD. I chuck these books everyone but you really have got to try him. Here are some of my favs:

Revolutionary Road (1961) - His first novel and his most famous (helped by Kate and Leo re-teaming on its film adaptation in 2008). It's centred around the Wheelers, a seemingly perfect suburban family (nice house, money, 2 kids etc) but they think they're meant for more than that, that they're better than other people.

Easter Parade (1976) - Again, seems that Yates was inspired by his own family troubles: "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce."

The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (2001) - Put together since his death, this is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to get an idea of Yates' writing before starting on a novel.

"If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy." Richard Yates, Boston Review (Oct '99)

Stanfords, Long Acre

Stanfords is a well-known travel shop on London's Long Acre, near Covent Garden. It's huge and filled to the brim with maps of places all over the country and the world. It also supplies travel books, accessories, stationary and a great selection of books.

Most of the times that I've been in this shop, I've gone to just have a poke around and see what oddities I might find, book-related or not. There was also the time I went in there to buy a map of Uzbekistan...

You may wonder, though, why you would go to Stanfords to buy a book, when London is full of much more widely stocked bookshops and libraries. What makes Stanfords different is that its bookshelves are organised into countries. If you're about to head off to Eastern Europe, Thailand, Mid-West America, Spain or even Yorkshire, why not take a book with you that's set in your very destination?? Yes, that is a question I often ask myself...

It's a complete geek-fest in there but, honestly, it's great. You go in for a look around and end up coming out with a stash of books and an inflatable globe - what more could you want!

12 - 14 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LP
www.stanfords.co.uk
Open until 8pm Mon-Sat!

Book Club: The Interpretation of Murder

So, I finished reading On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming today but, as it's a Book Club book, I'm not going to review it until we meet in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I thought I'd review the first book we did back in November!

Manhattan, 1909. On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first - and only - visit to the United States, a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents' home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory and to piece together the killer's identity. It is a riddle that will lead them on a thrilling journey - into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.

I chose this book largely because my dad had read it and because it was the winner of the Galaxy Book Awards' Best Read... and I liked Galaxy chocolate... Oh and it has Freud in it! In the end, we all had interesting thoughts on this widely credited novel but, in brief:

The backdrop against Manhattan’s emerging skyline and cosmopolitanism was a hit. I'd recently come back from a brief trip to NYC and had been on a tour at the Tenement Museum, which allowed you to follow a poor immigrant family's life at this time, so it was particularly fun for me to read! Admittedly, this isn't about immigrants... but Freud was an outsider and he definitely gets treated like one... 

Littlemore, one of the junior detectives on the case, was a favourite in terms of characters and it had some exciting moments, too, especially when a couple of the characters become very literally under pressure…

The main concern was its length and just how much was crammed in to its 400+ pages. So much seemed to happen and little really added much to the central plot. It was clear that Rubenfeld was fascinated by Freud and his history and, while his knowledge was impressive, he ended up seeming to show this off a bit...

Aside from that, we all enjoyed the book and gave it a healthy 7/10

Introducing... Virginia Woolf

Ok, so most people hear the name Virginia Woolf and freak out: her books are tough and no sane person reads them outside lecture halls. I agree but, call me crazy, she's also one of my favourite literary figures. I say 'literary figure' because, aside from writing, she's simply a fascinating person.

To give you a taster, she was, hilariously, involved in the Dreadnought Hoax, which I won't go in to other than to say it involved skin darkeners and turbans... and is really worth Googling. On the flip-side, she suffered from depression, which tragically led to her suicide in 1941.

Her books aren't easy but they're short and you feel a massive sense of achievement when you finish one! Here are some of my favs...

Between the Acts (1941): The first VW novel I read - set just before WW1, an English village is putting on a play. The plot's simple, making up for any other complexities, and so definitely a good one to start with. Interestingly, it was published posthumously.

Mrs Dalloway (1925): Arguably her most famous novel but I have to admit, I only had a crack at reading it after I read Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which gives a clear idea of the Mrs Dalloway story and an insight into Woolf herself.

A Room of One's Own (1929) - A brilliant essay and, in the days of meaningful msn statuses, would have been a fab quote source... It's feminist but not aggressive, exploring women and writing at a time when literature was dominated by men.

Other books by Virginia Woolf: The Voyage Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), Jacob's Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), The Years (1937)

The Riots: is there much left to write about?

Tonight I went to see a talk given by Paul Lewis (Guardian) about the riots last summer and the subsequent research project he is working on with LSE. Really impressive research, great talk and loads of great questions at the end. If you get the chance to see @PaulLewis speak, I'd definitely recommend it. He's obviously passionate and was kind enough to respond to a question I later asked him via Twitter about rioter remorse.

I'd love to see him write a book but that's not to say there aren't already some great looking books out there on the subject of riots, centring around those that happened just 6 months ago. I shamefully haven't read any of these myself but tonight's talk made me realise that it doesn't matter how much you hear about something, how much you think you know, if something is as dramatic, confusing and fascinating as the 2011 riots, reading, listening and learning about it will always be worth doing. Paul Lewis showed some of the research they had collected and it was amazing to see the distance between the causes that the rioters described and those that the general public and the media were reporting.

I'd be really interested to know if anyone has read either of the two books below or any other good reads on the subject!