Booker shortlist announced

The Booker shortlist was announced last night! See the lucky titles listed below.
Notably overlooked: Christos Tsiolkas's divisive The Slap as well as David Mitchell's much-tipped fifth novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

We will begin tomorrow with South African writer Damon Galgut's tale of a young man travelling through Greece, India and Africa, In a Strange Room.

The Prize will be announced on the 12th of October, so until then!

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America

Emma Donoghue Room

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question 

Andrea Levy The Long Song 

Tom McCarthy C 

 

Pulp loves Trees

Happy Spring day!

September is Tree month: if you look out the window you’ll see how happy they are, showing off their new leaves and blossoms. We love trees for so many reasons, but mostly because they make good books.

You are already on the Green Team by supporting Pulp Books (and therefore Food & Trees for Africa),
but this month we’d like to repeat what we did last year and match any tree sponsored by a customer.

IOW, you buy a tree, we’ll buy another tree, and then the world has two extra trees instead of none.


FTFA National Tree Distribution Programme
R90 per tree
(Available to order through the Pulp Books website - FTFA will send a personalised certificate by mail.)
This Arbor Month, September 2010, Food & Trees for Africa celebrates 20 years of greening South Africa, with over 3.4 million trees distributed to disadvantaged communities across the country.  Through the simple message of planting and conserving trees to care for the planet and the people and address climate change, the social enterprise has contributed to the growth in green interest from government, companies, schools and communities.


Buy directly from Food and Trees or buy through our website.
 
(use voucher code 1D1DAC26 at checkout to negate the delivery charge)

Go Green Team! ( :

Once upon a life

Entertaining essay written by Justin Cartwright about how he 'became' a writer. Involves drugging cats, soft porn and losing first chapters. In the end he describes the transformation "as if a cloud that I hadn't really been aware of had lifted".

Once upon a life: Justin Cartwright

He started out as a copywriter, became the crown prince of pet-food commercials then directed a soft-porn film no one wants to remember. But finally he put pen to paper and wrote his first novel. It was a moment that changed his life forever

When I came back to London I found work as a copywriter in a big ad agency. It was an exciting time. Within a few weeks I had written my first television campaign for Pal dog food. It took me about 20 minutes. The basic premise was that the stuff was almost too good for dogs and in each commercial humans looked on jealously before eating their baked beans. The campaign won awards, including a Lion d'Or at Cannes. Somewhere I have the statuette, a winged lion with bronze effect. This seemed to me to be almost ludicrously easy and pretty glamorous besides. I was offered a job in a production company as a director of commercials, although to tell the truth I knew very little about the mechanics of film. But the pay was good and I accepted.

Somehow my pet food reputation followed me and the only jobs I was given were filming dogs and cats eating the stuff. To this day I can't bear the smell of pet food. And worse, I was violently allergic to cats. But there was one cat I absolutely loved. No matter what the task, Bonzo would come confidently and curiously out of the box in which he had been transported to the set, look around knowingly and – once he had got to know me – wait near me for his orders. He was about 99% motivated by greed, but we both understood the deal: he did what he was told, and then he was given some food. I felt such a strong affection for Bonzo that I wanted to acquire him; I felt we were colleagues, troupers. Sadly the owner refused: she saw that she was on to a good little earner with Bonzo.

- Justin Cartwright, for the Observer. Posted on Guardian.co.uk

Read the rest of the essay here.

Drink Till He's Witty: The Reader's Drinking Game

A recent essay in the Times points out that "rules for drinking are not so different from rules for writing." If that's true, then clearly famous literary stars need their own drinking games. 

 Geoff Nicholson extrapolates from writing-workshop maxims to create these drinking rules: "Drink what you know, drink regularly rather than in binges, avoid needlessly exotic booze, and leave the table while you can still stand." But why stick with what you know when you can challenge yourself — and your liver — with a game of William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway? You can play these games in groups — by, say, having one person read aloud (this will probably get even more fun as the reader's voice slurs and his/her eyes lose focus). However, they are perhaps best attempted — like great writing — alone with your secret fantasies, your thwarted desires, and your gnawing fear that you will never really amount to anything in this bleak, meaningless life.

Thomas Pynchon: Drink every time someone has a stupid name, like "Eigenvalue."

David Foster Wallace: Drink every time a sentence has three or more conjunctions.

William Faulkner: Every time a sentence goes on for more than a page, drink the entire bottle. Then make out with your sister.

Joyce Carol Oates: Drink every time there is a home invasion.

Jane Austen: Drink every time someone plays whist, goes riding, or gets married.

J.D. Salinger: Every time there is a symbol of lost innocence, drink a highball. Then spit it all over someone you love.

Emily Bronte: Drink every time you see the word "heath" (Heathcliff counts).

Gabriel García Márquez: Drink every time someone's name is "Aureliano." (Note: this only works for A Hundred Years of Solitude)

Virginia Woolf: First, go buy some flowers. Then, if you have time left over, drink.

Sappho: Drink every time you can't tell if something is hot or disgusting.

Ernest Hemingway: Drink every time Ernest Hemingway is boring and overrated. Man, I am so wasted right now.

Raymond Chandler: Drink every time someone drinks.

Dashiell Hammett: Drink every time someone drinks.

Homer: Drink every time someone drinks gross diluted wine.

Stephenie Meyer: Drink every time someone drinks blood.

Dylan Thomas: Drink until you are in a coma.

- Anna North, Jezebel.com

Booker prize longlist promises to 'entertain and provoke'

There were no real wild cards in this longlist – unlike last year, when Me Cheeta, a spoof biography of Tarzan's chimpanzee, was listed. Perhaps the most controversial novel is Emma Donoghue's Room, inspired by the case of Josef Fritzl who kept his daughter prisoner for 24 years. The novel, which was one of 14 called in by judges – rather than being submitted by the publisher – was installed as second favourite for the prize by Ladbrokes.

Three other previously shortlisted novelists made it on to the longlist. Rose Tremain for Trespass; Damon Galgut for In a Strange Room and a novel that will be many people's favourite for the prize: David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Mitchell's fifth novel is set in 1799 on the peculiar artificial island of Dejima created for Dutch traders making contact with a closed Japan.

The list was completed by Helen Dunmore for Betrayal; Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question; Andrea Levy for The Long Song; Tom McCarthy for C; Lisa Moore for February; Paul Murray for Skippy Dies (the main character looks like the TV kangaroo); Alan Warner for The Star in the Bright Sky; and a book which has featured on many summer reading lists – The Slap by Greek-Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas which tells of the consequences of a child being hit at a suburban barbecue.

- Mark Brown, Guardian.co.uk

Read the rest of the article here.

Judging a book by its cover

The Book Cover Archive presents an archive of book cover design and designers 'for the purpose of appreciation and categorization of excellence in book cover design'.

This site is edited and maintained by Ben Pieratt of General Projects and Eric Jacobsen of Whisky Van Gogh Go.

Visit by clicking here.

Other great sites for book cover design:

• The Casual Optimist
• The Book Design Review
• Book Covers Anonymous
• Covers
• Faceout Books
• Judge a Book...
• Tal Designz
• The Penguin Blog
• Peter Mendelsund's Jacket Mechanical
• Readerville Most Coveted Covers
• Old-Timey Paperbacks
• War of the Worlds cover archive
• The Pelican Project
• Joe Kral's Penguin Collection

Makeover for Wonder Woman at 69

The costume ties into an alternative history for the character devised by J. Michael Straczynski, the new writer of the series, and into a quest by DC to shine a critical and creative spotlight on the heroine, who stands with Superman and Batman in its primary triumvirate of superstars, despite her series’s modest sales.

In the reimagining of her story, Wonder Woman, instead of growing up on Paradise Island with her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and her Amazon sisters, is smuggled out as a baby when unknown forces destroy her home and slaughter its inhabitants.

Mr. Straczynski, who created the television show “Babylon 5” and wrote the screenplay for “Changeling” in 2008, starring Angelina Jolie, said in an e-mail message that he wanted to address “the wardrobe issue” as soon as he took the job.
“She’s been locked into pretty much the exact same outfit since her debut in 1941,” Mr. Straczynski wrote. “If you’re going to make a statement about bringing Wonder Woman into the 21st century, you need to be bold and you need to make it visual. I wanted to toughen her up, and give her a modern sensibility.”

- George Gene Gustines, The New York Times

Read the rest of the article here.