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“By hook or by crook this peril too shall be something that we remember”

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I hope you remember back in August, when we covered the live reading of The Iliad that took place between the British Library and the Almeida Theatre in London.  It was, as I said at the time, by far and away the greatest-super-colossal-fantastic days I can remember, and proof positive that people telling people stories is still one of the most powerful forces in the world.

Indeed, because the event was live-streamed and covered by Twitter, the reading became a worldwide phenomenon–I even understand some of you lovely patrons were able to watch parts of it!  For those who missed it, here is the link to all 16 hours of readings.  As mentioned, one of the most memorable moments was when and Marco Brondon read his passage out loud on the bus from the British Museum to the Almeida Theatre in order to ensure that the marathon would not flag.

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Well, thanks to the enormous acclaim and overwhelming success of The Iliad, and no doubt because of my near-hysterical promotion of it to anyone who will listen, the good people at the Almeida are upping the proverbial ante….

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Oh, hello Homer.

That’s right, beloved patrons.  In honor of the end of The Greek Season, the Almeida is planning a marathon reading of The Odyssey, another epic poem attributed to the poet/poets known as Homer, and the second oldest extant piece of literature in the ‘Western’ canon.

Now, at 12,110 lines, The Odyssey is noticeably shorter than The Iliad (which is 15,693 lines, for those of you who need to know these things), which should, logistically speaking, make this piece somewhat easier to manage, right?

Scoff, scoff.  The good people at the Almeida are never ones to take the easy route–a statement as factual as it is now literal.  Because this performance is going to be an actual Odyssey, performed at five as-yet-undisclosed locations throughout the city of London.  Listeners in the City will have the opportunity to listen to readers for up to 90 minutes at a single site, and there apparently are plans to read on public transport, and even the Thames.

When will all this wonderfulness take place?  November 12, 2015, 9am BT (4AM EST).

How will it look?  What will happen?  Who knows?  But I know that I’ll be watching on the Almeida’s live stream site and via Twitter (#Odyssey & ).  And I hope you will be, too!

For those of you would like to get into the spirit of things beforehand, here are some ideas to get in you in the mood for a day of high-stakes adventures, startling adventures, and sweet homecomings.  And a Cyclops or two.  It’s just no fun otherwise.

2599829The Odyssey: Perhaps a bit of an obvious first choice, but there is no better way to get into the Odyssey than by traveling along with Odysseus and his beleaguered crew who suffer the wrath of Poseidon in their desperate attempt to return home.  It stands to reason that, since the Almeida used Robert Fagles’ translation of The Iliad, it’s a pretty fair bet they’ll be using his translation of The Odyssey as well.  Truth be told, it’s a very accessible translation that sounds simply wonderful when performed aloud–but don’t take my word for it.  Check it out for yourself!

 

2033697The Odyssey: Against all odds, this 3.5 hour adaptation of Homer’s epic (co-produced by the Hallmark Channel, who would have thought?) is actually quite good, overall.  With excellent performances, and special effects that are pretty impressive for turn-of-the-century television broadcast, this is a highly entertaining way to get introduced to Odysseus’ tale for those who don’t have the 12+ hours it is estimated to take to get through the print version.

 

3150458Torn from Troy: Patrick Bowman’s YA spin on The Odyssey stars Alexi, a fifteen-year-old Trojan boy who is made Odyssey’s slave following the conclusion of the Trojan War.  The trilogy of Alexei’s journey may parallel the events of The Odyssey, but this is by no means a simple re-telling.  As an outsider, and a conquered slave, Alexei’s view of Odysseus, and his analysis of his actions, are very different from Homer’s narrative, and Alexei’s personal story adds a very human dimension to this sweeping adventure story.  These books are a fun read no matter what your age, especially because they allow so many most characters in the story to come forward and tell their own stories and journeys.

 

2313233The Penelopiad: And for those of you who are a little tired of all the men unable to find their way home and seemingly unconcerned about their lack of punctuality, Margaret Atwood presents a cycle of stories about Odyssey’s wife Penelope, who appears here as a much more complicated figure than any of us ever expected.  Inspired by the “hanging of the maids” reference in the original text of The Odyssey, Atwood set out to reimagine Penelope’s world, her birth and childhood, as well as the events that took place after her marriage and during the timespan of The Odyssey.  The result is a woman who is strong and enigmatic, proud and secretive and, overall, utterly compelling, as is everything that Margaret Atwood writes.

Be sure to check back for more news regarding this performance, and see you on Thursday for the live-streaming of The Odyssey!

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The Baileys Prize: The Best of the Best!

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We’ve talked before about the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and what a remarkable award it is, and how critically important it is to recognize women’s writing.  Well, it turns out that the Baileys award people, including the dynamic women on the Fiction Board have given us some new reasons to celebrate this award, and all that it stands for in the publishing and reading word.

For the prize’s tenth anniversary–when it was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction–the Fiction Board presented a “Best of the Best” segment on the BBC’S Woman’s Hour, featuring a round-up of the ten winning books of the past decade.  And on Monday, in honor of the prize’s twentieth birthday, the Fiction Board (headed by co-founder and chair Kate Mosse) named a new “Best of the Best” from amongst the Bessie winners of the past decade.  And yes, the award’s name is Bessie, bless her heart.

The award ceremony itself was preceded by two weeks’ worth of programs on Woman’s Hour, including readings from all the winning books, and interviews with the authors that were insightful in an of themselves, but also offered readers the chance to discover these marvelous works–again, and for the first time.  Finally, today, the ceremony itself featured readings from stars like Stanley Tucci and Sheila Hancock, and a celebration of all the diverse, funny, heartbreaking, mind-blowing and intensely creative art that these women have produced in the past ten years.

Before announcing the winner, here is a list of the ten books considered for the “Best of the Best” of the Baileys Prize’s second decade:

unknown_005002a2300194Zadie Smith: On Beauty (2006)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun (2007)

Rose Tremain: The Road Home (2008)

Marilynne Robinson:  Home (2009)

Barbara Kingsolver: The Lacuna (2010)

Téa Obreht: The Tiger’s Wife (2011)

Madeline Miller: The Song of Achilles (2012)

A.M. Homes:  May We Be Forgiven (2013)

Eimear McBride:  A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing (2014)

Ali Smith: How to Be Both (2015)

And, after lively discussion from the judges, a public vote, and much speculation, the winner is…..

 

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie!!!

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria, where her father was an statistics professor at the University of Nigeria, and her mother was the University’s first female registrar.  Though she initially studied medicine, she switched to creative writing and moved to the United States in 2003.  Since then, she has presented talks at worldwide forums, including a sensational TED Euston talk entitled “We Should All Be Feminists“.

CS1XzzuWcAALNh6Her novel takes place during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70), and charts the intertwined stories of five characters: the twin daughters of an influential businessman, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy who survives conscription into the Biafran army, during and immediately after the war.  By jumping back and forth in time, Adichie is able to tell a uniquely complex, and yet undeniably human story.  On one level, this is a novel of love, betrayal, and empowerment, while at the same time it deals with broad cultural and political themes, such as the scars of imperialism on Nigeria’s history that can never fully heal, the way the media shaped and, ultimately controlled the Nigerian Civil War, and whether there is any academic, rational way to affect positive change in a society that has been so fully corrupted by western influences.  This is both a tremendously wise book, and a very readable one, that touches at the heart of some issues more precisely than most non-fiction works can.

At the time of its publication, The Washington Post stated that it was a “transcendent tale about war, loyalty, brutality, and love in modern Africa. While painting a searing portrait of the tragedy that took place in Biafra during the 1960s, her story finds its true heart in the intimacy of three ordinary lives buffeted by the winds of fate. Her tale is hauntingly evocative and impossible to forget.”

Muriel Gray, who served as the Chair of Judges for the 2007 award said of Adichie’s work: “For an author, so young at the time of writing, to have been able to tell a tale of such enormous scale in terms of human suffering and the consequences of hatred and division, whilst also gripping the reader with wholly convincing characters and spell binding plot, is an astonishing feat.  Chimamanda’s achievement makes Half of a Yellow Sun not just a worthy winner of this most special of prizes, but a benchmark for excellence in fiction writing.”

For the record, Adichie will be receiving a special Bessie, cast in manganese bronze (and if anyone knows quite what that is, we would love to hear).  You can watch her joyful acceptance video here:

And I’m sure you’ll help the Free For All offer sincere congratulations to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and all the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction Winners, for changing our ideas about what fiction is, and what is can do for twenty remarkable years!

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Publisher’s Weekly Tells You What To Read


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I’ll be honest…I’m always a little uncomfortable about “Lists of Best Books”.  There is no way anyone could ever read all the books published in a year (though I am tempted to try…), and there is also no way to measure how  a book will affect all readers, or if a certain book will arrive at the right time to save you, as so many of the best books do.

Nevertheless, Publisher’s Weekly can give you an idea of what books made headlines, made waves, changed the way people think, or changed the ways in which people saw each other.  And those are some pretty neat accomplishments.  So have a look at this list and then stop by and check them out.  And let us know what you think should be a top-picks list for 2015!

Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten Books of 2015:

3650622Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates: In this book, written as a letter to his teenage son Samori, Atlantic writer Coates reflects on just what it means to be black in America, from a historical, as well as a personal perspective.  “I love America the way I love my family — I was born into it.”  Coates said in an interview with NPR.   “…But no definition of family that I’ve ever encountered or dealt with involves never having cross words with people, never having debate , never speaking directly. On the contrary, that’s the very definition in my house, and the house that I grew up in, of what family is.”

3658391The Invention of Nature : Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World,  by Andrea Wulf: Prussian-born naturalist, explorer, and writer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) may not be a household name today, but his work was quite a mover and shaker during his time, not only for his diplomatic work, but for his “Humboldtian science”, which held”nature is perfect till man deforms it with care”.  As a result, he has been recognized as the first scientist to consider the possibility of climate change and human influence on the planet.  Andrea Wulf’s biography makes great strides into putting Humboldt’s name back in the books, and making readers realize for just how long humans have been compromising their world.

3644749The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante, trans. from the Italian by Ann Goldstein: Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels have grown wildly popular, and this is the second time that PW has listed them amongst their favorite books of the year.  In this installment, the brilliant, bookish Elena uses details from her own life, and friendship with the dazzling Lila in her work, and recalls all the vagaries, fights, reconciliations, and escapades that have brought them to this point in their lives.

3680297Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan: A writer for The New Yorker, and a lifelong surfer, Finnegan recounts his love for–and addiction to–the art of surfing, along with all the friends he’s met and wild adventures that he’s had in pursuit of his love, as well as his struggle to balance all those adventures an encounters alongside a family and successful career.  This book is also being hailed as brilliant travel memoir, as Finnegan recounts the incredible and the mundane places that he’s explored in his drive to find the next big wave.

3606718Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham: This is one of those books that is downright impossible to sum-up briefly, but here goes…Hannaham’s book is a metaphor for addiction (Scotty, one of the narrators, is the actual embodiment of crack), a southern gothic/horror novel (the titular farm that holds the characters captive is simply chilling), and a deeply emotional tale about love, family, and recovery.  To truly get into the complexity of this novel–you’re simply going to have to read it for yourself!

3637441Imperium, by Christian Kracht, trans. from the German by Daniel Bowles: These are the kind of “based on a true story (no seriously, this actually did happen)” books that I love to read: In 1902, a German named August Engelhardt fled his homeland, and founded a sect of sun worshippers that were lived as cocoivores–coconut eaters.  As in, they ate nothing but coconuts.  Kracht envisions this island paradise (located on an island in what was then German New Guinea known as Kabakon, to which Engelhardt brought about 1,200 books), the idealism, and the inevitable disaster that befalls Engelhardt’s attempts to reinvent society in a way that is both haunting and touchingly funny.

3654339Beauty Is a Wound, Eka Kurniawan, trans. from the Indonesian by Annie Tucker: A native Indonesian herself, Kurniawan’s debut novel tells the tale of a prostitute named Dewi Ayu, who rises from her grave after twenty-one years.  Though the tale is bound up in the lives of Dewi and her four daughters, this is also a novel about the destruction, violence, and lasting scars of colonialism in Indonesia’s history, and a love letter to a place, a time, and a culture that is sure to surprise and entrance American readers.

3585739Crow Fair, by Thomas McGuane: PW is hailing this McGuane’s newest release the best collection of short stories to come out this year, and it they are not alone.  This compendium of sixteen stories set in the rugged Montana wilderness, and full of characters who are shaped by its terrain, are by turns terrifying, funny, mysterious, and wonderfully realistic.  Best of all, McGuane is a master at redeeming even the most rascally characters, providing readers with plenty of emotion, in addition to his wonderful landscapes and plotlines.

3637116The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson: There are lots of intellectually, jargon words thrown around in regards to Nelson’s memoirs…it is a work of ‘autotheory’, it challenges ‘homonormativity’….but at its heart, Nelson’s story is about finding love, and a language to talk about it.  Her life and love with queer film-maker Harry Dodge is full of far-flung adventures, and also deeply personal moments of self-realization, and wonderfully sympathetic tales of making and raising a family.

3652522Black Earth : The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder: While Snyder’s book is a story of the Holocaust, it is also about the circumstances that created it, the environmental, the interpersonal, and the political.  And his book is also a warning…that the various climates that we are creating around us today are perilously close to that which existed in the 1920’s and 1930’s, forcing us to confront not only where we have been, but where, precisely, we are headed as a ‘civilization’.

So what do you think, beloved patrons?  Any books you would add to this list?

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Amanda Palmer and the Art of Asking


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Once upon a time last Saturday, two members of the Library staff attended the Boston Book Festival in order to witness the keynote address provided by Amanda Palmer in conversation with Neil Gaiman.   The talk was primarily focused around the paperback release of Palmer’s book The Art of Asking, which is hereby highly recommended, and was followed quickly by the news that the audiobook (read by Palmer, as well) was nominated for a Grammy in the Spoken Word Category.

 It has taken a week for both attendees to overcome their gleeful, emotional reaction to the event and assemble their thoughts in (somewhat) rational fashion.  For those of you who would like to see the interview, and understand what we are going on about, here is the link to the Patreon site: http://www.patreon.com/posts/3646070

So, without further ado, here are our thoughts regarding Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, and the brilliant event they created for us all.  In the course of their adventures, our correspondents decided to adopt literary pseudonyms, because it sounded quite fun.  If you get the reference, you probably shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.

The crowd:

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Lady Pole: The crowd was somewhat surprising. As a somewhat regular Boston theatergoer, I know that Boston crowds tend to be pretty reserved, but considering Amanda Palmer is a little less mainstream, I expected a bit of a more active crowd. Everyone was so well-behaved! As the moderator said, they were all really attune to social cues.  You could have heard a pin drop! I found this astounding even for such a bookish crowd. There wasn’t any low murmur or people talking amongst themselves. Clearly they were all rapt with attention (as I was, so maybe it’s not so surprising?)

Arabella:  I’ve haunted the Boston Book Festival for years, in part because it’s one of the few ‘big, social, crowded’ events I can attend without wanted to curl up in the corner and hum quietly to myself.  The BBF seem to be somewhat unique, in so far as it tends to attract introverts and The Bookish.  Thus, when people do talk to each other, they tend to be around a bookcart, and are apologizing for trodding on people’s toes, commenting on how much the enjoyed the book that another person is holding, or asking if this seat it taken.  Otherwise, it’s kind of like a library, in the sense that everyone is there for the books and stuff.  So I was right at home nestling in amongst the bookish.

Amanda Palmer:

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Lady Pole: I feel badly saying that I was surprised at how incredibly articulate she is, but I was. I knew she was impressive and artistic, but initial impressions of her nontraditional artistic path somewhat belies her depth. She’s thoughtful and engaging and I was extremely impressed by how seriously she took the audience members’ questions. Clearly the PR aspect of this event worked on me because I immediately borrowed the audiobook version of “The Art of Asking” from the South. I’m genuinely excited to hear what she has to say in the book after hearing her talk about it at the BBF.

Arabella: I, too, knew very little about Amanda Palmer beyond the cursory, and was genuinely awed by her coherency and thoughtfulness, and especially how honest she was in front of a crowd of strangers.  Not the kind of “here are my intestines” honest, but a “here is my soul” honesty that was as inspiring as it was touching.  I usually come away from these events going “man, I wish one day I could do something half as cool as those people”.  After hearing Amanda Palmer encourage everyone to create something and to take risks because life is just too short not to, I came out thinking “I have to go do something wonderful now!”

Neil Gaiman:

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Lady Pole: I could gush excessively as to how delightfully charming and British he is, but then I run the risk of being completely fan-girlish. Instead, I’ll talk about how he is clearly a seasoned professional at this book-tour thing. He kept everything running smoothly and on-schedule but still casual, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to segue into audience questions.

Arabella: I will admit to having very similar thoughts upon seeing Neil Gaiman walk on to the stage as I did the first time I saw Stephen King in person: “Holy cow, he’s real!”  Once I was able to overcome this, I was also really impressed with how incisive his questions were; he stated early on that he knew the book nearly as well as Amanda, which could have made question-asking difficult, but instead, it allowed them both to get right to the heart of the book as quickly, and yet as sympathetically as possible.

The chemistry:

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Lady Pole: I think my favorite part of the whole night (aside from the song) was the chemistry that Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer have together. They are clearly very much in love, but there’s an air of mutual respect that’s almost palpable. They’re attentive when the other speaks. It’s nice to see such engagement that seems to be equal on both sides.

Arabella: I couldn’t agree more.  The only thing I can add here is that when they brought their surprise guest (Maria Popova of Brain Pickings), to discuss her Afterward to the paperback, which is a tribute to love and the uniqueness of not having to ask, once you’ve found Your Person, both Neil and Amanda reached for the other’s hand.  Which just made my heart happy.

The song:

 

Lady Pole: Holy cow, the song! I’ll be honest, Amanda Palmer doesn’t have the best voice I’ve ever heard, but I don’t think that’s the point. I think she went into music because she had something to say and felt that was the best way she could get her message across. And the message in the song she sang was beautiful. She sang about self-doubt and acceptance and in her vulnerability it didn’t matter whether the notes were perfectly in-tune. I found the official video of the song on YouTube and it was still good, but the live version still gets me a little misty.

Arabella: Yup.

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Making History

Our patrons, I’m sure,will know that books still have–and will always have–the power to change and challenge the world, but last week was an especially fruitful one for books in the news: we were treated to the awarding of the Man Booker Prize, as well as the announcement of the National Book Award nominees; but we also encountered some controversy.

36374313651769It all began last Monday on the BBC Radio 4’s morning program, Start the Week.  The show’s guests were both authors whose books had recently been released: Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley, whose book, Golden Age rounds out her Last Hundred Years trilogy, and Professor Niall Ferguson, whose latest release is the first volume of his authorized biography of Henry Kissinger.  Things were going pretty civily, overall, until Smiley began to articulate what she saw as the difference between history and historical fiction: “history and memoir tell us what happened, but novels tell us or have a theory about how it felt”.

On the whole, this seems to be a perfectly sensible statement, and one that also allows the existence and necessity of both genres.  Her statement, however, didn’t sit particularly well with Professor Ferguson, who immediately launched into a defense (mansplaining?) of non-fiction history, sadly, at the expense of historic fiction.

I’ll let the resulting debate, as recorded by The Telegraph, stand for itself:

niall_jpg_2129056b“Historians are as much concerned with how it felt – the difference is we are actually basing it on research rather than our imaginations,” Ferguson said.

An affronted Smiley replied: “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t base it on research? I didn’t realise that.”

But Ferguson continued: “It seems to me that whether you’re reading Tolstoy or Jane Smiley, people who write historical fiction are telling you what it must have felt like. But that’s not what it felt like, because essentially they’re projecting back, in this case early 21st century ideas, on imaginary characters.”

Smiley: “How do you think that I discovered what it must have felt like? I did research and read what people said it felt like.”

Ferguson: “But your characters are imaginary, Jane. Not to disparage what you do, but we need to recognise that it’s different because these aren’t real people. You’re just telling us what these imaginary people must have felt…Historians are in the business of reconstituting past experience but from primary sources, from things that people wrote down. We’re not allowed to just make it up.”

Smiley, ultimately, had the last word in this debate, however, when she published a letter in The Guardian addressing both Professor Ferguson’s comments and elaborating on why she writes historic fiction:
Jane-Smiley-009“I do not consider literary forms to exist in a hierarchy; I think of them as more of a flower bouquet, with different colours, scents and forms, each satisfying and unsatisfying in its way, but if there is one thing that I do know about history, it is that it must be based on the author’s theory of what happened. He or she may change the theory as the research is completed, but without a theory, and if the research doesn’t fit into the theory, then the text has no logic, and therefore makes no sense. If it makes no sense, then readers will not read it.”

As a historian, as well as a reader, I would just like to state here and now that “what happened and how it felt” are, generally speaking, two totally and completely different things–neither are ‘better’ or ‘worse’–they are just very, very different.

It’s probably fair to say that getting injured in war hurts, regardless of whether it’s 1148, 1916, or 2015–but I would never conjecture to tell you how it hurt.  Even more importantly, I would never, ever, ever, put on my Historian Hat and presume to tell you what it felt like to watch the Titanic sink, or what, precisely, goes through a person’s mind as they wait for a battle to commence, or watch a sunrise.  One can infer a good deal by virtue of being part of the same species, and generally be afraid of things that might kill you, or interesting in colorful, shiny things, but I think it’s fair to say that is as far as one can go.

And that, as Smiley notes, is part of the beauty of historic fiction.  By virtue of being fiction, these stories can go where history simply can’t–into the moments that don’t make it into the archive, into the minds of people whom history didn’t remember, and into the hearts of those who didn’t record their feelings to paper.  By virtue of the research performed by their authors, they can bring a period of time to life in a way that history has neither the space nor the time to do.  A straight-up history of the First World War can describe uniforms and trench conditions, but historical fiction can take the time to linger on details–the scratchiness of wool tunics in the July sun, the smell of sweat and carbolic power, what men experienced putting them on…  What to history might be some atmospheric detail is the stuff of life for fiction.  And because of this, they can serve as an ideal compliment to history, feeding our imaginations and hearts, as well as our brains.

 Don’t believe me?  Come in and check out these sensational historic fiction books for yourself!

3104313Vlad: The Last Confession:  I’ve gone on (and on) about how this is one of the greatest books ever, so I’ll spare you today.  C.C. Humphreys, however, originally intended to write a biography of Vlad Dracula.  However, when he couldn’t find any new sources, he decided to write a fictionalized biography, using all the details he learned to create a fully three-dimensional world and an enthralling portrait of a man who was both a monster and a hero–and what it was like to love and hate him.

2057534Speaks the Nightbird: Though Robert McCammon’s tale of witchhunting is set in the Carolina colony in 1699, this is still quite a timely suggestion.  The sights, smells, fears, and superstitions that fill the world of this book are completely transporting, and makes the battle of laws and wills that ensues over the fate of an ostracized widow in the community that much more intense.  McCammon may be a bug name in the horror genre, but this book, and the resultant series, proves he can tackle historical fiction with equal aplomb.

3092040The Return of Captain John Emmett: Speaking of the First World War, Elizabeth Speller’s debut novel is an evocative and occasionally stunning pieces of historic fiction that captures, in heartbreakingly simple prose, what everyday life was like for those who survived the war.  Though not as successful as a mystery, the stark descriptions of grief, loss, and utter bewilderment that her characters endure helps readers understand the true impact of the war on an individual, as well as a collective basis.

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Seriously, I have waited all day to post this:

The Free-For-All would like to congratulate Marlon James on winning the 2015 Man Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings!

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This is only the second year the award is open to all English-writing authors, and, as a result, James is the first Jamaican writer to win the £50,000 award.  He is also the first author ever whose prize-winning book was published by an independent publisher (Oneworld).

3554591In describing the book, which was inspired by the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the 1970’s, and the long-reaching consequences of that event, Man Booker Prize chairman Michael Wood called James’ work “startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation. It is a representation of political times ad places, from the CIA intervention in Jamaica to the early years of crack gangs in New York and Miami.

“It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about. It moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times.”

The judges were unanimous in their decision, Wood continued:  “We started, as we have done for the whole year, talking about all the books,” said Wood. “As we talked certain books sounded further away than other books. At a certain point it dawned on us this was the book.”

Diedre Mills, Jamaican Deputy High Commissioner has also released a statement about James’ success: “We are very proud but not too surprised. Jamaicans excel at whatever they do.”

This BBC article has video of the prize announcement, in which the selected book is carried onto the stage swathed in a white cloth and dramatically revealed, James’ joyful reaction, and his acceptance speech.

Be sure to come in and check out A Brief History of Seven Killings soon, as well as all the past winners of the illustrious (and delightfully dramatic!) Man Booker Prize, soon!

*For those who have already read the book, and/or for those who prefer some ambiance to your reading, James has also released a playlist to accompany his book, which you can find here, complete with audio recordings.

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Bookish Pets!

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The UK’s largest bookseller recently put out a request via Twitter; the staff at their flagship store were looking for a fictional pet….

Which got me thinking about bookish pets, and pets in books…Though our library doesn’t have any pets (that aren’t imaginary), there are a few Library Animals around the world whose stories are truly epic, and serve to highlight what a great place libraries are for the two-legged and four-legged visitors alike!

Check out, for example, Library Cat, the sort-of-official-stray cat of The University of Edinburgh Central Library.  According to this article from the Scotsman, “Jordan” was originally adopted by a local friary in the hopes that he would catch mice.  “Jordan” had much loftier ambitions, however, and a love of heated libraries and turquoise chairs.  When he began appearing regularly in the nearby library, and tolerating the affection of staff and patrons, he was given a library card, a new nickname, and allowed free reign of the building.  His fame grew to such an extent that when Library Cat decided to spend a few nights with his Friar Friends, rumors of his demise caused such turmoil that a national newspaper investigated, and offered conclusive evidence that Library Cat was alive, well, and very grumpy after being woken from his nap.  

Library Cat is apparently also exceptionally tech-savvy, updating his Facebook account and Twitter on a regular basis, and keeping in touch with the Keele University Squirrel and the University of Portsmouth Penguin, whose name is Pablo, and is so cute I can hardly bear it.

From Library Cat's Facebook page: "Books, he suddenly thought. Books! When I need restored faith in the kindness of humans, I turn to books."
From Library Cat’s Facebook page:
“Books, he suddenly thought. Books! When I need restored faith in the kindness of humans, I turn to books.”

 

Library-Cat-235x187In Russia, Kuzya the Cat made international news when he was actually hired as a member of staff in Novorossiysk, a city on the Black Sea.  Kuzya was a stray who showed up at the library in October of 2012.  The staff welcomed him inside, as all good library staff do, and Kuzya quickly decided that the library was a lovely place to stay.  However, because he was a stray, Kuzya lacked the appropriate documentation required by Russian law (which mostly involved a rabies vaccine and micro-chip).  The staff quickly got that sorted, and even acquired a cat passport for Kuzya (which is a thing in Russia, apparently), but he was so cute, so public-spirited, and so talented at bringing people into the library, that he was soon promoted to “Assistant Librarian”.

Kuzya can still be found in the Novorossiysk Library, wearing a bowtie, because that is what gentlemen do, and, according to sources,  plays “Pushkin the Cat Scientist” in plays for children, in addition to his vigorous routine of napping in the stacks, napping in the newspaper racks, and napping in the comfy chairs before snacktime.

 

Kuzya's passport and letter of employment
Kuzya’s passport and letter of employment

 

So, in honor of the library pets* around the world, across the universe, and in other realms entirely, here are some nominees for Best Literary Pet.  Any suggestions for our Library Pet are entirely welcome.

downloadMog the Cat: Judith Kerr based a good deal of her series about the forgetful and often perplexed Mog the cat on her own family, including the names of the children in Mog’s house, and Mog’s south London neighborhood.  It’s nearly impossible not to fall in love with the portly, adorable Mog (who was brought to life through Kerr’s illustrations), and her adventures are the kind of funny, slightly absurd tales that parents will enjoy right alongside their kids.

1220764Tock the Dog: Aside from being one of the most wonderfully original, imaginative, unforgettable books you will ever read, The Phantom Tollbooth also features Tock, the watchdog–whose body is part watch–who guides the hapless Milo through his adventures. Tock is also a guard dog who protects against, you guessed it, wasted time.  Though vigilant in his duties, Tock is also a stalwart friend to Milo, staying by his side, flying him out of the Mountains of Ignorance (because, of course, time flies…), and offering some of my favorite advice in all of literature to Milo when he winds up in the Doldrums: “Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.”

1496430Gruffalo: Julia Donaldson wrote The Gruffalo as an adaptation of a Chinese folktale involving a fox and a tiger.  However, when she couldn’t think of a rhyme for ‘tiger’, she created an animal whose name would rhyme with “know”…and hence, the Gruffalo, a hybrid animal who lurks in the forest, was born.  Her beloved tale offers a wonderful lesson in courage and bravado, and has been adapted into a film and now has a sequel, The Gruffalo’s Child, which continues to play on the idea of myth and reality.

HarryHedwig-200Hedwig: I think it goes without saying that Harry Potter’s snowy owl, Hedwig, would make this list.  As heroic as her illustrious owner, and as brave as any human in the world of the Harry Potter series, Hedwig has a personality all her own: she disdains the immaturity of other owls, isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and will even go so far as to peck Harry’s friends to remind them to write to him regularly.

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*A note: we were unable to find any Library Dogs, per se, but very much encourage you to take a look at the Library Dogs website, dedicated to service dogs and the wonderful work they do with children in libraries across the country.