So, the 2010 Man Booker Prize longlist of 13 titles has been announced and the … nominees… are (dundahdahDAH!):

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet  (Hodder & Stoughton – Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic – Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House – Jonathan Cape)

Oh my! I haven’t read any of these! And I call myself a book reviewer … PAH! Though, in my saving grace, I do have a copy of the book that should win and yes I’m saying that even though I haven’t read it yet, but come on y’all it’s David Mitchell and that man is a fricken genius writer and one of the best of our time, and I have no problems stating that categorically, at all.

Inhale.

I have been holding off on reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet because I know it’s going to be brilliant and once you’ve read it… you’ve read it. You can’t ever read it for the first time again. Ever! And I’m waiting for just the right moment when I can sink into it and splash around like a duckling in a rain puddle on a summer’s day.

Plus the cover of the edition I have – she is gorgeous. I have reproduced it below in all it’s colour glory, but, oh! I cannot reproduce the way it feels, the slight gloss on the blue, the smell, the anticipation! I love this book like it’s an actual living, breathing thing… and that’s before I’ve read it. (Get that, e-book pushers? Yeah, you heard me.)

Something about these really appeals to me. I think this is an amazing project – I love that technology can be used to reach people and that we can change our way of thinking about “obsolescence”.

He added, with a laugh: “Or maybe it was no good, there was always that possibility.”

Yes, Mr McEwan there is always that possibility.

Okay, so maybe I should have called this Today’s narrow world of Snark…

The shortlist for the 2010 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing has been announced! And it includes two New Zealand authors – Jane Higgins and Philippa Werry. Congratulations and best luck to them!

And a recommendation – Stella Matutina - an awesome book blog by Memory, who has recently moved to Auckland to live for a year. Not only do you get great book reviews but her pleasure at living in Auckland and her enthusiastic descriptions of the joys of our fair city are enough to bring a tear to the eye of the most hardened Auckland heart.

The finalists in the 2010 NZ Post Book Awards have been announced.

The Kindle is now a measly US$189! And still not available to ship to NZ!  It’s not like we have electricity or the interwebs down here, anyway, right?

And last, but most certainly not least, Victoria University Press is starting to release titles as e-books – which is quite frankly one of the most interesting pieces of e-book news for a long time!

Victoria University Press is delighted to congratulate Anna Taylor winner of the (NZSA) Best First Book Award for her book of short stories Relief.

To celebrate, we are excited to announce the release of Relief as our first e-book, along with praised new author Pip Adam’s short stories, Everything We Hoped For.
 
We are also thrilled to congratulate Bernadette Hall and Brian Turner, poetry finalists, who will have e-versions of their books released with further VUP titles in the near future. All our e-books are available via our on-line catalogue at http://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/ in conjunction with me-books.

Taylor has produced a superb debut collection, is unafraid to turn calamities into blessings, and writes with the elegance and composure of a silversmith. I can’t wait to read what she does next.       - Paula Green, NZ HERALD

In other publishing news, if you’re an aspiring debut novelist here’s your chance to be rated by one of the best writers of our time – The Terry Pratchett Anywhere but Here, Anywhen but Now Prize! This has to be bigger than the Booker, quite frankly. Full details here.

A short but good opinion piece in the New York Times on reading on e-readers – and the communal value of reading (something I’ve been thinking about and will be writing a post about shortly).

And, courtesy of Caustic Cover Critic, these awesome revamped promo book covers for Penguin’s 75th Anniversary from Amy Fleisher. I’m particularly fond of Frankenpenguin. I need that book buddy.

P.S. I mean “interestingly” because it’s interesting, not “interestingly” because I influence the interwebs!

The NZ Post Children’s Book Awards winners were announced last night – full list here. Have to admit to being slightly surprised The Wonky Donkey missed out on the judged awards – but no surprise it took out the Children’s Choice!

And the Lost Man Booker for 1970 goes to Troubles by J.G. Farrell – anyone read it?