World book night top 100 lets make it a fresh list !!!
04 Aug 2011 25 Comments
in #translationthurs, A LIFE IN BOOKS, around the world, book awards, book news, questions, reading challenge, thoughts, world book night Tags: 2011, 2012, musings, NEW VOICES, TRANSLATIONS, world book night
Beside the sea world book night
This years world book night giveaways are to be decided by us the public by choosing our top ten books .I looked at the current top 100 and have to agree with Meike from Peirene it is a bit bland and from the perspective of winstonsdad the translation choices which there are at this moment ten book are what I would call the ones people think they should read or put in a list even if they’ve not read to look good (sorry needs to be said) .I love Murakami and Marquez but some diffeernt book here would be great open peoples eyes.Well Meike has suggest if we could all choose Beside the sea by Veronique Olmi it is a lovely french gem and is one of my all time favourite reads any way ,at moment 35 votes will get it in the top 100 I ve vote so 34 would do it come on lets help the nymph and the lovely ladies of Peirene make the list ,all of us bloggers and tweeters know how much effort this publisher puts into social media and interaction with its readers more than any major publisher does .So put your hand up and say yes I want the small guy to win for once because we all love the underdogs in this country lets for once get them there ,Meike has written a blog post about this too here ,thanks stu .I will be put up for giving away this time as I was too shy to volunteer last year .
My top ten -
Beside the sea by Veronique Olmi – reason a french gem touching and it will make you gasp if you’ve not read it !
Rings of saturn by W G Sebald reason started my love of translation and it is a book that can be reread and still make you think .
Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes – reason the first novel it has all in it that has followed since a true master piece .
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges reason he was a genius flash fiction avant grade fiction all look at this as a starting point
If on a winters night a traveller by Italo Calvino reason I love it and I know many people hate it but who can’t love a book that talks to you ?
My century by Gunter grass - reason short interlocking pieces covering the 20thcentury from the German master not his best but it is a good insight into Germany .
Cities of red night by William S Burroughs - reason he was a one off writer this book has all a young guy could want from a book and men shou,ld read more !
The last brother by Nathacha Appananah – reason a unheard corner of post ww2 history jewish refugees stuck on a tropical island told touchingly through two young boys tale .
Goodbye to all that by Robert Graves – reason my favourite memoir war is bad and read this you know it is ,a poets eye goes to war .
Walden by Henry David Thoreau – reason if more people had read this would the world be the way it is the simple life as he spent time in nature thinking whilst living in a wooden hut .
What are your choices ?
Booker longlist reaction
28 Jul 2011 11 Comments
in book awards, booker Tags: 2011, booker prize, FUTURE READS, prize winners
Well susan Hill had promised a fresh list of books for the longlist .But in my opinon what we got was ground shaking .Books new to most people ,the shock wave on twitter was noticable as people tried to find out more about the listed books ,also why the list was so different than peoples ideas of what shoulkd have been there .The fact smaller publishers have been picked is good thing in this modern age .
• Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending
• Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side
• Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie
• Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
• Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues
• Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats
• Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child
• Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
• Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days
• AD Miller Snowdrops
• Alison Pick Far to Go
• Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb
• DJ Taylor Derby Day
so there it is, of the titles I ve read none I have two on my tbr pile ,a quick trip to library yesterday came back blank .Some of them aren’t out yet thou .From the list the ones that grab my eye are Patrick Mcguiness the last hundred days set in the dying days of the Ceauceaus regime in Romania from the small publisher seren ,snowdrops Andrew miller set in Russia a thriller about a young Englishman struggling with the temptations of new Russia .I ve sister brother and strangers child on tbr ,I m not sure what others I will read maybe wait to see what makes shortlist .Is this shake up of longlist a good thing ,in some ways as there are a number of smaller publishers on the list ,but you have to question why so many people got so few books that are on the list right .Are we seeing the depth of English writing or a small choice by five judges set on shaking the booker order for the sake of it ? I don’t know the answer as many of you know I am more interested in translations and world lit ,but always look at the booker as the barometer of what is good or interesting in English at the moment .so in that respect I think they have got it wrong and a good few books have missed out on the longlist .
What are your thoughts ?
Did the booker need shaking up ?
Purge the Prize winner
10 Dec 2010 2 Comments
in book awards, Uncategorized Tags: 2010, prize winners
winner 2010 sofi oksanen
Sofi Oskannen together with Robert Saviano for a essay called beauty and Hell won the Le PrixLivree europeaan the European book prize in its third year the award site is here .This goes with the Nordic Council prize Purge won earlier this year .My review is here
Windows on the world by Frederic Beigbeder
08 Dec 2010 5 Comments
in book awards, books from, france Tags: 2010, prize winners, TRANSLATIONS
Frederic Beigbeder is a french writer ,commentator and lit critic .He word as an advertising executive and work with the french communist party .He also had a talk show on the french tv channel Cannel+ called the hypershow .he has written many novels in french with a couple in translation .This is like many of his books autobiographical in many way .although I enjoyed reading this book I found it hard to review .
Windows on the world is set mainly in new york during the 9/11 attacks and imagines what happened over this time to the people in the windows on the world restaurant .The book is two stories really the first on 9/11 is the tale of a texas estate agent Carthew Yorsten who is having breakfast with his sons in the windows on the world you find out about them ,but I always feel sorry for them as I know what is coming ,maybe that sounds strange but I found it hard to connect with imagined people on this day when I knew what would happen to them .The second story is the writer writing the story and recalling his visits to new York eating at the windows on the world before the attack also,where he was the day of the attacks,I connected more to this section of the book I think Everyone remember what they where doing that day .The story unfolds minute after minute with each really short chapter defining a minute of the time from the attack to the tower collapsing .
8:56
Everyone knows precisely where they were on september 11 ,2001 .Me I was in the basement of my publisher Grasset ,giving an interview for culture pub at 2:56 PM french time ,when the presenter Thomas Herve ,was informed via cellphone that an airplane had Just flown into one of the world trade center towers .At the time ,we both thought it was a small tourist plane and went on with the interview .
the writer remember where he was that awful day .
Well I enjoyed this book any book on 9/11 is hard to talk about ,for me I was getting ready for work that awful day and remember seeing it on tv just before I went to work and being stunned in to disbelief .As my family lived in Ulster and some still do, bombs and troubles are something I got use to hearing about. But 9/11 was terrorism on a new scale ,Frederic has caught and tried in a sympathetic way to connect with his feeling and emotions due to this .I ve read a couple of other 9/11 inspired novels and this is the best I ve read so far but is still flawed ,maybe some subjects need space and time before you can write about them and I think 9/11 is one of these events .the translation is top draw but Frank Wynne is a great translator and this book won the Independent foreign fiction prize in 2005 .
Have you read this book ?
THE END BY SALVATORE SCIBONA
28 Oct 2010 10 Comments
in american fiction, book awards, U.S.A Tags: 2010, NEW BOOKS, NEW VOICES
SOURCE REVIEW COPY FROM JONATHAN CAPE .OUT NOV 4
Salvatore Scibona is an american writer ,he was named on the recent New Yorker twenty under forty list .He grew up in Cleveland Ohio and went to the creative writing course at university of Iowa ,he is from an Italian american family
The End is his debut novel it is set in his native Ohio in the early fifties ,well 15th august 1953 mainly .we focus on Elephant park an Italian community we open meeting Rocco the local baker who has just received word that his son has died in a Korean P.O.W CAMP ,the day is Assumption day a carnival is due as the novel progress we see Rocco meet people and also we are sent back to Rocco’s youth in Scilly .We see poverty community and also a crime ,we meet a number of characters a seamstress ,a jeweller .as Rocco comes to terms with his loss whilst the is this carnival and other things happening in his life .
He was Five feet one inch tall in his street shoes ,bearlike in his round and Jowly face ,hulking in his chest and shoulders ,nearly just as stout around the middle but hollow in the hips and lacking a proper can to sit on (though he was hardly ever known to sit ) and wee at the ankles and girlish at his tiny feet ,a man in the shape of a lightbulb .
the opening and we meet Rocco .
This is a stunning debut novel ,assured with a unique voice ,he has been compared to the greats Joyce ,Faulkner and Bellow ,some are deserved, setting most of your events on a single day will always be compared with Joyce but in reality they are two completely different books this is about a community .Bellow is probably nearest to him of the comparisons in a lot of ways it is like bellows early books ,like seize thew day which follows a similar aged man over a day I wonder if part of this comes from stories Salvatore heard growing up around the dinner table .The characters in this book are beautifully drawn and realistic.Its nice to read a book about the Italian american community that avoids the obvious clichés of that community .He richly deserves to be on the new yorker list and also for this to be a national book award shortlisted book in 2008 .This is like a Edward hopper painting come to life or the kiss photo that is so famous it evokes the fifties and the struggles of that time for a working class community post WW2 struggling with another war .
C BY TOM McCarthy
02 Oct 2010 14 Comments
in book awards, booker, ENGLAND Tags: 2010, booker prize, english classics
This is my second booker shortlist read this year ,Tom McCarthy is considered the next big thing in british lit and this book as very technically clever .Well I enjoyed it ,at times found it very hard going .The book centres on the life of Serge Carafax a young man born on the cusp of a new century the twentieth century ,he is born ,to a family working at a deaf school,he soon becomes fascinated by the new technologies that are appearing and becomes a expert in radio and electrical equipment this sends him through the main events in the first few decades of the twentieth century ,he loves the planes in the first world war and ends up getting caught and made a prisoner and at a prisoner of war camp getting involved in escape plans and caring for his fellow prisoners ,post war he ends up in the swinging twenties of london and the drug scene ,then becomes a wireless operator for what was the internet of its day as it was a front row technology of the day and led many a young man like Serge to the far-flung corners of what was the British empire then ,well that is the simple overview of the book .but this book is like a cryptic crossword each page has layers and meanings ,there is a great deal of symbolism about technology and its place in society,war drugs ,travel many things cleverly woven .McCarthy has firmly placed himself in the top echelons of British writers .
The static’s like the sound of thinking .Not any single person thinking ,collectively ,It’s bigger than that, wider – and more dialect .It’s like the sound of thought itself,its a hum and rush .Each night ,when Serge drops in on it ,it recoils with a wail ,then rolls back to the crackling waves that carry him away ,all rudderless ,untill his fingers nudging the dial , can get some traction on it at all ,
opening of chapter 3 shows Serges connection with radios and there workings .
I m not going say I got this book completely I d be lying, it is a book that maybe takes a couple of readings to break its shell completely but as my first reading I loved it ,echos of Pychon and Bolano as it says on the cover maybe even early Ballard in places .If it wins the booker it will be a worthy winner . This is my last of the shortlisted reads ,Did have Finklers question from library but they wanted it back ,so will read at a later date .
DID YOU LIKE THIS BOOK ?
WHO DO YOU THINK WILL WIN THE BOOKER THIS YEAR ?
translation blog award
30 Aug 2010 10 Comments
in book awards, thoughts, TRANSLATIONS Tags: 2010, ARAB FICTION, BOOKS, NEW BOOKS, NEW VOICES, TRANSLATIONS, twitter
I ve set another blog to run a blog prize focusing on books in translation and reviews from different places best blog ,interview so pop over to translation award blog .Let me know what you think .
200 UP and a giveaway
05 Aug 2010 20 Comments
in book awards Tags: 2010
This is the 200th post on winstons dad and I ve choosen to do a giveaway ,two great books Nobel winner Hertha Muller’s passport a wonderfully surreal book and Aravind Adiga booker winning white tiger a wonderful yale of how a village man gets corrupted in the big city .The competion open world wide closes 26 august state book you want and e mail andwinston will choose the winner some how at random .
man booker 2010 longlist my feelings
26 Jul 2010 18 Comments
in book awards
To be truthful I m reading less and less modern british fiction these days so my thumb is a bit of the pulse but have a few ideas and here they are have read a couple and have a couple on tbr pile .so here are my views on who may be on the longlist tomorrow .Well see what Andrew Motion and his fellow judges pick
Iain McEwan – Solar .
David Mitchell -The thousand autumns of Jacob DE Zoet
Peter Carey – Parrot and Olivier in America
Christoph Tsiolkas – the slap
Peter Temple – truth
Andrea Levy – long song
Mike Thomas – pocket notebook
Damon Galgut – In a strange room
Mick Jackson – widows tales
Martin Amis - the pregnant widow
Jaspreet Singh – chef
Neel Mukherjee – A life apart
Tom McCarthy – c
Jon McGregor – Even the dogs
Johanna Moran – the wives of Henry Oakes
Jonathan Coe -the terrible privacy of Maxwell sim
There they are I ve read 2 and have the three in my t.b.r pile ,
there are other choices here at
books this week
23 May 2010 8 Comments
in book awards Tags: library
Here are some of the books this week a Winston towers .the first is a prize from twitter -
The prince of mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
This is the first in a series of 4 young adult books that he wrote before shadow of the wind they were a huge success in his native spain .I enter a comp to win the book two bookmarks and poster on twitter by the lovely Nina Douglas the P.R for Orion books .
IN THE POST AND LIBRARY BOOTY -
The other day Simon over at savidge reads said he was missing Eva and her Vlog library post so am i ,well here is my library choices had few to take back -
from a good friend
There are five from the library they are The belly of paris by Zola I haven’t read any Zola in a while and like the look of this one about a man returning to find a changed paris in the 1850′s disgusted at the affluent rich in paris ,The twin Gerbrand Bakker win of the 3 percent translated fiction prize ,a book set in a remote part of Holland the story evolves round some twins and the death of one of them ,Human love by Andrei Makine story set in africa and about love ,communism and the cost of idealism ,sounds good and he has been compared to Proust and Nabokov the writer grew up in Siberia ,Blaugast by Paul Leppin a novel of decline it says on the cover published after the writers death set in Prague follows a bored clerk on a downward spiral ,settlement by Christoph Hein ,this book is up for the impac award and by the descriptions of the books on the list appeal to me ,Hein grew up in East Germany and is respected as on of the fore most voices in germany this book follows one man’s tale for 50 years as told through 5 of his friends .
Now the other two books are via my fellow blogger and huge twitter friend Simon at insidebooks ,if you take advice on one blog to read that you may be don’t i d say Simons a hugely knowledgable blogger with similar tastes to my self .Tofu landing is from quartet and Simon did a great interview with the writer .the second book is Natascha by a writer born in Latvia that now lives in Canada ,the book follows russian Jews living in Toronto .
