Two weeks ago I noted that half a year of reading time has already passed. This week I thought I'd turn my attention to anticipated and new books for 2011 that we can all look forward to reading and begin to make room next to our beds for a new TBR pile. After all, what better emotion is there than anticipation? Ahhh. . .more gluttonous ludic reading through the Dog Days and beyond.
Please check the Weekly Magazine Schedule published, as always, below for changes to the R&BLers' program. We welcome a new Editor, Floja Roja and the new mini-series on the fantasy saga by George R. R, Martin "A Song of Ice and Fire." You may have seen the Birth Announcement and are eagerly awaiting the first installment of what promises to be a popular series over the next month or so. Look for it MON 11 AM ET. Sadly, we bid good-bye to some other R&BLers regular featured content.
Please turn the page.
Before getting started on lists of books that will bring you future hours of pleasure, I wanted to mention a diverting article that caught my eye this past week on sentences that win Nobel prizes that appeared in Web page for Nobel Laureates, the Lindau Nobel Community. Says the article author, Lucas Browers,
Some descriptions are technical, some are lucid. Some are written in the active, and some in the passive voice. But they do have one thing in common. They are all excellent examples of exciting science at the cutting edge of our knowledge.
Here is a sampling of my favorites:
Sir Martin Evans describes the isolation of the first embryonic stem cells from mice:
“We have demonstrated here that it is possible to isolate pluripotential cells directly from early embryos.” (ref)
Sir Harold Kroto quips about the name of buckminsterfullerene, or ‘bucky balls’, which he and his team have synthesized:
“We are disturbed at the number of letters and syllables in the rather fanciful but highly appropriate name we have chosen in the title to refer to this C60 species” (ref)
Harald zur Hausen isolates human papillomavirus DNA from cervical cancer samples:
“The data thus indicate that HPV 16 DNA prevails in malignant [cervical] tumors, rendering an accidental contamination with papillomavirus [..] unlikely” (ref)
This Year's Winners of Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Segueing to a different kind of prize-winning first sentence. . .Just for fun and under the category of Things We Don't Wish to Read This Year comes the announcement that teacher, Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is this year's winner, and with the shortest first sentence ever, 26 words.
“Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”
Contest judges liked that Fondrie’s entry reminded them of the 1960s hit song “The Windmills of Your Mind,” which Rice described as an image that “made no more sense then than it does now.”
Congratulations(?) Ms Fondrie.
Follow the link to read the winning entries in all the categories. Then, like Cheryl and her "forgotten memories," (love that oxymoron!) try to forget them as soon as you can!
Preview of Books to Come
Literary heavyweights and tyros are publishing eagerly anticipated titles the second half of 2011. The Millions published their list from which I'm highlighting a few.
Because there are so many (follow the link for the complete and very lengthy list) I will include the Christmas presents shopping list for a later diary.
July or Already Out:
A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five by George R. R. Martin -- While the HBO fans may have a ways to go before they’re ready for book five, true fantasy connoisseurs, for whom Martin’s series is the current ne plus ultra of the form, have been eagerly, even impatiently, awaiting this new installm
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell -- The Cinderella finalist for last year’s National Book and National Book Critics Circle Awards follows up her story collection American Salvage with this novel. . .Booklist gives it a starred review and calls it a “dramatic and rhapsodic American odyssey.
August:
House of Holes: A Book of Raunch by Nicholson Baker -- From the publisher: “Brimful of good-nature, wit, and surreal sexual vocabulary, House of Holes is a modern-day Hieronymous Boschian bacchanal that is sure to surprise, amuse, and arouse.”
The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer -- Dyer’s meditation on the psychic after effects of World War I has been kicking around UK bookstores for nearly two decades, but this August it appears in the US for the first time.
Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar -- In 1990, Hisham Matar’s father, Jaballa Matar, was kidnapped in Cairo and extradited to Tripoli as a political dissident. Since then, Matar’s family has endured a special hell of loss and uncertainty–scant news punctuating long periods of silence
September:
Reamde by Neal Stephenson -- Is there anything Neal Stephenson can’t do? [T]he story of a draft dodger named Richard Forthrast who makes a bundle selling marijuana and becomes addicted to an online fantasy game that puts him in touch with Chinese gold farmers. Only trouble is, Richard gets caught in the deadly crossfire of his own fantasy war game.
Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens -- He covers topics ranging from Vietnam to Charles Dickens, from civil rights to radical Islam; exploring, according to his publisher, “how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former.”
Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Bank -- [Explores] our country’s mercilessness towards sex offenders.
Last Man in Tower by Arvind Adiga -- With his second novel, Adiga continues to mine the implications of India’s rapid modernization. The novel depicts the struggle between Donald Trumpian real estate developer Dharmen Shah, who wants to clear out a crumbling apartment building to make way for a luxury high-rise, and the one insignificant man standing in his way.
Chango’s Beads and Two-tone Shoes by William Kennedy -- Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the magisterial Albany cycle of novels (including Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Legs and Ironweed), now takes us to the Florida bar in pre-revolutionary Cuba, where the journalist Daniel Quinn meets a fellow lover of simple declarative sentences, Ernest Hemingway.
October:
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami -- After years of anticipation the US release of Murakami’s first novel in four years is just months away.
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides -- . . .will deal, in Eugenides’ own words with “religion, depression, the Victorian novel, and Roland Barthes” (also Mother Teresa).
Cain by Jose Saramago -- Translated by Margaret Jull Costa, the novel created a furor in the author’s native Portugal when he suggested that society would have better off if the Bible had never been written.
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt -- A manuscript’s difficulty finding its way into print is often attributed to its insufficiency and, less frequently but with greater cachet, its genius. Helen Dewitt’s work falls into the latter category–it’s as if her luck with publishing has been diminished in proportion to the magnitude of her literary feat. Her first novel, The Last Samurai, was hailed as one of the best debut novels of the aughts, and yet she briefly resorted to self-publishing her next book.
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje -- Michael Ondaatje’s publisher, Ellen Seligman, has called his sixth novel “perhaps Ondaatje’s most thrilling and moving novel to date.” The Cat’s Table is set sixty years ago; a young boy, for reasons that are initially mysterious, is leaving the country that was then called Ceylon—the only home he’s ever known—and being sent to England.
Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin -- For his sixth novel, Ha Jin, author of Waiting and War Trash, recreates one of the most horrific incidents of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare -- While Kadare is one of the better-known Eastern European novelists in the West, his work is still relatively obscure and this re-publication is overdue. Critics often invoke Orwell or Kafka or Escher to describe the quality of the book, which offers an imagined version of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire in which the dreams of the populace are gathered, transcribed, and interpreted by the Sultan and used to formulate policy and control the populace.
Are you excited to get started on these titles?
Weekly Magazine Schedule
plf515 has withdrawn "Science, Math, and Statistics Books"; aravir has withdrawn "Calvacade of Words"; mdmslle has discontinued "A Book, It's Movie, and a Glass of Wine"; Floja Roja will begin "Songs of Ice and Fire" starting August 1st.
If you would like to suggest a new series, or wish to reserve a slot for intermittent publishing of diaries that fit the mission of R&BLers Group, please contact me through DK4 messaging. Thanks!
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule
DAY |
TIME (EST/EDT) |
Series Name |
Editor(s) |
SUN |
6:00 PM |
Young Reader's Pavilion |
The Book Bear |
SUN |
9:30 PM |
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club |
quarkstomper |
MON |
8:00 PM |
My Favorite Books & Authors |
billssha |
MON |
11:00 AM |
Songs of Ice and Fire |
Floja Roja |
TUE |
8:00 PM |
Readers & Book Lovers Newsletter |
Limelite |
WED |
7:30 AM |
WAYR? |
plf515 |
WED |
8:00 PM |
Bookflurries: Bookchat |
cfk |
THU |
2:00 PM (bi-weekly) |
eReaders & Book Lovers Club |
Limelite |
THU |
8:00PM |
Write On! |
SensibleShoes |
THU |
10:00 PM |
The Illustrated Imagination:Graphic Novels |
Cabbage Rabbit |
FRI |
9:00 AM |
Books That Changed My Life |
etbnc, aravir |
SAT |
9:00 PM |
Books So Bad They're Good |
Ellid |
NOTE: Though not part of R&BLers Weekly Magazine Series, please look for "Indigo Kalliope: Poems From the Left" by various authors republished here every WED NOON by
aravir. Also look for "The Mad Logophile" by
Purple Priestess that appears intermittently, when the spirit moves her.
2011 Man Booker Prize Long List
Announced today, the list of books in contention for Britain's most prestigious literary prize. For the first time, indy publishers' productions dominate the list, and surprisingly the houses of Penguin and Harper Collins failed to gain entry. Already there's a favorite, former winner Alan Hollinghurst for The Stranger’s Child (Picador).
Click the link to see all the titles, and go here to admire the cover art as well as read reviews of each nominated book.
Other than that, nothing's happening.