2012 Man Booker Prize Winner Announced

Last night in London the winner of 2012 Man Booker Prize was announced and it was Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.  Not exactly a surprise as she was the best known of the authors in the list and had won the Booker in 2009 for her book Wolf Hall.  Customers keep asking me if I have read Bring Up the Bodies but I have to confess that I haven’t read Wolf Hall yet, despite a love of historical fiction.  Now, I think I better move them both to the top of my reading pile.  For those who have already read them, do I need to read Wolf Hall before Bring Up the Bodies?

Peter Temple’s Black Irish novels now on the ABC

I read the first of Peter Temple’s Black Irish novels, “Bad Debts” a long time ago but I am looking forward to revisiting the story when it screens tonight on ABC1 at 8:30 p.m., especially since it has in the lead one of my favourite Australian actors, Guy Pearce.  If you’re interested in reading the books that the two telemovies have been based on Text Publishing has released the books with tie in covers to the movies which are in stock at the moment for $22.99

To wet your appetite, here’s the official trailer:

2012 Bayside Literary Festival: 21 June to 15 July

I’m very excited to be the bookseller for the Bayside Literary Festival this year as the programme looks great.  There are some many interesting authors to hear, but some of the sessions I’m most looking forward to are:

  • In Search of the Secret to Eternal Youth where Sandy Mackinnon talks about his travels as captured in his two books The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow and The Well at the World’s End.  For a sneak preview, you might want to check out the video below.

  • Through the Looking Glass Darkly.  Two of the authors presenting at this session, Y.A Erskine and Honey Brown, had reviews of their new books The Betrayal and After the Darkness in The Age last weekend (click here for these reviews).  Honey Brown’s previous novel,  The Good Daughter, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2011.
  • First Pages where debut Melbourne novelist Paul D. Carter will be one of the authors speaking on his new book Eleven Seasons which won the 2012 Vogel Prize for Fiction this year and whose book the store’s two bookclubs are reading for our June book.
  • Life Stories: Journeys and Realisations at which the lovely Alice Pung will be talking about her books Growing Up Asian in Australia, Unnpolished Gem, and Her Father’s Daughter.  I’ve had many customers tell me how wonderful her session was at the Adelaide Writers’ Festival this year.
  • The History of Australian Wine Long Lunch.  What more can I say – food, wine, and a knowledgable guide.  (Not sure if I’m going to be able to partake of the first two!)
  • My daughter is very excited as she is coming to help me during one the sessions during the school holidays where children’s book author Andy Griffiths will be talking about his books including his latest  Just Doomed.

For more details on these and other sessions, you can find the Festival programme here or by dropping into the store and picking up a copy.

Book Review: “The Lifeboat”, Charlotte Rogan

Its 1914 when we meet Grace, a survivor following the sinking of the ocean liner Empress Alexandra, and she is on trial for her life.  The novel is her diary of the events that happened during the three weeks that Lifeboat 14 was adrift somewhere in the Atlantic ocean with 39 people aboard – 30 women, 8 men, and one child.  It quickly becomes apparent to the survivors that the lifeboat was not built to carry so many people and the occupants realise that the difference between life and death could be as simple as how many are in the boat when the weather deteriorate.
The power of the novel is the questions it raises.  Should they all live and die together, or is it acceptable for some to be sacrificed for the survival of others?  If so, who or how is the decision of who lives and dies made and is there a point where and anything is acceptable in the name of survival?    To what extent is Grace’s version of the story to be trusted given what she has to lose and the glimpses we get of her character as she tells her story?  A gripping read that keeps you pondering these questions long after the last page.

Jeff Kinney, Author of “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, is in Melbourne next week.

Fans of “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” may know that Jeff Kinney will be in Melbourne next week, and his only public event is on 20th May.  Penguin Australia is running a competition to meet Jeff, so if you think that you have a budding writer in the household, get him or her to put pen to paper this weekend as the competition closes on Monday.  For more details, click here.  

Orange Prize Shortlist for 2012 Announced

I’m a bit of a fan of the Orange Prize for Women as I always seem to find something that I love from the shortlist each year – books such as Emma Donoghue’s Room, Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine, and, of course, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.  This year’s short list has just been announced, and I realised that other than Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder I didn’t know very much about the others.  I’m going to try Georgina Harding’s Painter of Silence next as it has got some good reviews online like this one from the Guardian Newspaper, but would love to hear reader’s feelings about the others.

Here’s the short list for 2012:

Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
The Forgotten Waltz, Anne Enright
Painter of Silence, Georgina Harding
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

Thriller of the Month – Into the Darkest Corner

Were you a fan of SJ Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep last year?  If you were then you might want to try Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner.

The reader’s first introduction to the main character Catherine comes via a court transcript where she is portrayed as neurotic, jealous, and violent towards her boyfriend.  We are then taken to a murder scene that happened four years before.  What is the connection is the question going through my head – a  question for which the answer will not appear until the end of the book.
The next time we meet Catherine its 2007, two years after the court case, and she appears to still be battling her problems – this time obsessive compulsive disorder.   We travel back to 2003, and it’s a very different Catherine that we meet this time, one that is fun loving, drinking and partying to excess.  How can these two pictures of the same person be so totally different.  The 2003 Catherine meets wildly attractive and charismatic man, Lee, and is the envy of all her friends.  It becomes apparent that by 2007, much has changed for Catherine – she is paranoid about security and suspicious of the man who moves into the flat upstairs who is trying to be friendly.  Lee is no longer on the scene.
What has happened in those four years?  The events that led up to Catherine’s current behaviour are told in flashback and as the book progresses my heart begins to pound and the suspense builds, making me turn the pages well into the night unable to put the book down.  It’s not only the past that is so gripping but the story of Catherine’s current existence.  Strange things start happening and Catherine’s sense of safety is threatened or is she just imagining it.    To find out more, you’ll have to read the book!

Bookshots with Caroline Baum

I recently stumbled on to this website called “Bookshots with Caroline Baum” where Australian journalist, broadcaster, and presenter Caroline Baum features her interviews with Australian authors.  The interview with Denise Leith on her new book, What Remains caught my attention as I had just finished the book and it was very interesting to hear the author’s thoughts. 

I found What Remains very confronting but just couldn’t put it down.  The story starts in 1991 when we meet new journalist, Kate Price who has been sent by her newspaper to cover human interest stories of the people of Ridjha during the Gulf War. In order to get out to see the real war she enlists the help of experienced freelance photographers Pete and John and ends up covering the bombing of the infamous Highway of Death.

As the years pass the three become friends, meeting up in the war zones, exchanging news and sharing experiences. The reader is taken to Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, and Baghdad, and immersed not only in the futility of war but the human side that tells the story of the people living through it including the effect that covering each war has on the three friends – normalising the violent world in which they live most of their lives and making the homes that they go back to hard to call home.  The attraction between Pete and Kate grows during the book but each time falters in the face of the misery around them.


Caroline Baum interviews Denise Leith for Bookshots-Extended version from Bookshots on Vimeo.

Denise mentions in the “Bookshots” interview, that in a fictionalised account, the author can make us feel the emotions of war as individual incidents are drawn out rather than concentrating on the political aspects which the broad coverage provided by newspapers focusses on.  I was certainly affected by the writing and was astonished to realise just how immune I had become to the reporting of conflicts when there seemed to be a different one in the paper every day.  This book raised questions in my mind about the way I emotionally dealt with war, and how complacent I feel living here in Australia.