Here’s something you won’t often read on this blog: I agree with Time magazine. They’ve displayed good taste by selecting the Complete Review as one of the 50 coolest websites around. The Complete Review’s blog, the Literary Saloon, is one of my must-reads every day.
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk has won the German Book Trade Peace Award, given by the German booksellers’ association, for work in which “Europe and Islamic Turkey find a place for one another.” The prize will be given out at the next Frankfurt Book Fair in October.
Over at the NY Times, Alan Riding dissects the subject of literary awards reserved for women, such as the Orange Prize. The reasoning behind the prize has been discussed ad nauseam in the press, so no need to revisit it here. The article does have some baffling quotes, though, like this one:
“We found that books written by men were significantly less intimate than those written by women,” Debbie Taylor, editor of Mslexia (www.mslexia.co.uk), said of a study by the magazine. She added: “Men’s texts referred typically to sex, exteriors, violence, work and tools. Women’s texts referred typically to relationships, interiors, clothing, children. Women inside. Men outside.”
She sounds just like my grandmother.
I do wish there were some hard facts in the article, though. For instance, starting with the NY Times, how many titles reviewed so far this year are by men and how many by women? I’d love to see Sam Tanenhaus tackle that one.
Robert Gray reminds those of us who get panicky every time they look at their TBR pile to just read slowly. He also provides a couple of lovely quotes from books, including this one:
She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.
I never used to worry about how long it took me to read a book until they started showing up at my doorstep.
Patricia Storm’s latest cartoon on the publishing industry pokes fun at awards, judges, and…the LBC.
Link via Bookdwarf.
Moorishgirl reader David F. of London writes in to say that “after the Arab Woman Writer Who Writes About Sex, here comes the Arab Woman Writer Who Is Really A Man” and he sends us this link to the Guardian profile of Yasmina Khadra (a.k.a. Mohammed Moulessehoul).
“There were many misunderstandings because people found it hard to understand a writer who was a soldier,” says Moulessehoul (formerly Commandant Moulessehoul), who settled in France to pursue his writing career in 2001 after quitting the Algerian army. “I had to really fight against those who did not appreciate my work because they pigeonholed me as some sort of brute who was responsible for military massacres. In the eight years I led the fight against terrorism, there were no massacres. Let me tell you, it was a hard battle – there is no honesty or integrity among the pseudo-intellectuals I had to take on. There’s much more honesty and integrity among soldiers, trust me.”
Yeah, just ask the civilians. Later on, Moulessehoul explains that it was the Algerian army (of which he was a member for nearly 30 years) who sought to censor all his manuscripts. They feared for his integrity, I’m sure.