Alice Munro wins the Nobel!. . .

  

Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature!

Most Canadian women of a certain age (ahem, mine) probably read either The Lives of Girls and Women or Who Do You Think You Are? during their teenage years and became a fan for life. I am just over the moon at this news and I wonder - will it give short stories (she's never written a novel) a new prestige and popular boost among the reading public? I think it's definitely time to reread some of her work.

2012 Man Booker Prize Longlist. . .

Mmmm - some really interesting books on the longlist this year.  I've not read any of them yet although I have a copy of Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (still have to read Wolf Hall though).  The one that intrigues me the most is Alison Moore's The Lighthouse because it's the story of a man coming to grips with his life on a walking holiday, the author is from Manchester, and well, could there be a hint of homage to Woolf in it?

I also love Michael Frayn so am looking forward to reading Skios which promises his usual farce.  Will Self's Umbrella is set during the end of the First World War about a woman in a coma who only wakes up fifty years later. Communion Town by Sam Thompson bills itself as the story of a city in ten chapters as its citizens walk through it.  And The Teleportation Incident by Ned Beauman just looks like a lot of fun.

Those are the five that are on my list to try and read before the shortlist comes out on September 11th. One great thing about living now in the UK is that presumably all the books will be available now or very soon.  I notice that Umbrella has a January 2013 release date in North America, though I imagine that will change if it wins or makes the shortlist.

Best Translated Book Awards. . .

The 25 book longlist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Awards has just been announced and there are some really interesting books to explore if, like myself, you love reading international literature.  I've alas only read two of the books on the list, but can wholeheartedly recommend them:  Peter Stamm's Seven Years, translated by Michael Hofman, which is a fascinating dissection of a modern marriage and an obsessive affair, and Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vilas-Matas, translated by Anne McLean, which is an amusing take on trying to write in a garret in Paris, some decades after Hemingway.

I do have several others waiting on the shelves so I can delve more deeply into the list. There's Zone by Mathias Enard, translated by Charlotte Mandel, a five hundred page book constructed entirely in one sentence (not everyone's cup of tea I do acknowledge, but I love literary experimentation), and Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad, translated by Deborah Dawkin, which promises to be Scandinavian literature that's a bit more on the light side, The Truth About Marie by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated by Matthew B. Smith  (I do love quirky French novels), and Kornel Esti by Dezso Kosztolanyi, translated by Bernard Adams (I loved Kosztolanyi's previous novel Skylark) have also moved to the nightstand pile.

So a list well worth checking out.  You can see the full longlist here and the Three Percent blog will be dedicating a detailed post about each book in the coming weeks.  Run by Open Letter Books, it's nice to see their work has been recognized by some nominations for this award too - they publish very attractive books and I've been introduced to many fascinating authors through them.

Crowing for the Rooster!. . .

Hooray, it's back!  I'm talking about the Tournament of Books in which a list of sixteen novels from 2011 go head to head in several rounds until a winner is chosen and awarded the prestigious Rooster. What makes this exercise so much fun is the commentary by the judges on why they selected one book over another, which is then taken apart and analyzed by the "booth announcers" Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner.  There's also a Zombie round where a book that's been booted out is resurrected based on readers' votes. It's all very entertaining.  And they have a terrific shortlist this year which includes five books I've read in full or partially (I'll admit I'm stalled in the middle of Murakami's 1Q84),  and several more that are definitely on my radar.  The shortlist and judges were announced today; the tussle starts in March.  All info is located here and you can vote for your favourite as well.

2012 IMPAC Longlist Announced. . .

The incredibly long longlist (147 titles) for the 2012 IMPAC award has been announced.  Nominated by librarians, this is an award that I always look forward to as it usually produces a very worthy winner and has personally introduced me to the writing of Per Petterson and Gerbrand Bakker. I always hope to have read at least ten titles on the list; I'm doing well this year with having read fourteen, and of those, I'd cast my vote for David Grossman's To The End of The Land , translated by Jessica Cohen which I was delighted to see was nominated by the Toronto Public Library, or The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, translated by Polly Mclean, both very powerful and emotional books about the long-term effects of war.  You can see the full longlist by title here or by nominating library here.

New Literature Prize. . .

It's fairly crowded in the world of literary awards; I work in the industry and even I can't keep track of them all.  But according to this article in The Bookseller,  The Literature Prize - started in part as a response to the Man Booker Prize allegedly too concerned with the "readability" of its shortlist - seems set for the spring of 2012.  There are a few things about this award that look promising. The judges will be chosen from a group of 40 - 50 members of an academy of writers and critics who are "immersed full-time in the world of books", and founder Andrew Kidd promises that the award will, "unashamedly embrace the idea of the book as art . . . and that has to do with language, form, ideas, and storytelling, and the unity of all those things." There will also be no longlist, just a shortlist.

Bring it on.

Hooray!

I'm so pleased that Julian Barnes has taken the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of An Ending - this has been one of my favourite reads all year and well deserves the honour.  I think his writing has gotten better and better with each recent book.  I loved Flaubert's Parrot, but the novels in between were hit and miss for me.  I started reading him seriously again with his non-fiction mediation on death - Nothing to Be Frightened Of - and I loved his last collection of short stories, Pulse.

Not the Booker Prize Shortlist. . .

So while we wait for the Man Booker shortlist to be announced (fingers crossed for Julian Barnes), the Guardian has released the shortlist of the Not The Booker Prize, voted on by readers. You can read about it here. It's all a bit tongue in cheek - one of the authors promised to post a picture of himself in the buff if he won - but I am pleased to see Lars Iyer's Spurious on the list (yes, my love for Melville House continues). But it really is a fun and quirky read. I started laughing from the moment I first saw the clever cover and continued to giggle throughout its chapters. It's about two friends (sort of), who are convinced they could have brilliant lives if they could only get off their butts and do something about it. Procrastinators rejoice. Along the way there are meditations on writing (or the lack of), philosophy, house mold, travel trials, and whether things would really be much better in Canada. In Dogma, the sequel coming out next spring, the two journey to the American South, in the company of Canadians no less, to start a new religion. Again, the cover is just terrific.

I was reminded of Spurious when I saw Michael Winterbottom's latest movie The Trip, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. They also play two friends driving around the beautiful Yorkshire countryside, ostensibly to review pretentious food for a newspaper. They instead spend most of their time affectionately bickering about their lifestyles, their careers, ABBA lyrics, and who has the better Michael Caine impersonation. And the scenery is just gorgeous! If you like the sarcastic, self-deprecating, taking-the-piss humour of the Brits (and who doesn't?) then I can highly recommend all of the above.