BookieMonster

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Writing your fourth book of fiction?

Jan 20

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Trade News, Fun Stuff | 1 Comment

I just have to draw your attention to this brilliant and funny post by Garth Risk Hallberg on The Millions about literary prizes, and their proliferation. His solution is a work of genius.

Plus this:

From across the bookstore, it flashes at me like the plumage of a wild bird seeking a mate: one of those small gold circles indicative of acclaim. And, frankly, I’m a little turned on. I already know I like shiny gold things; could this be a PEN finalist? A Pulitzer Prize winner?

made me LOL so hard.

The Millions is fast becoming a must visit every day for me!

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Katherine Mansfield blogs!

Jan 12

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Trade News, Fun Stuff | No Comments

Now this is a damn great idea – the Katherine Mansfield Society has started a blog called KM Today which, as they say, “posts daily extracts of her letters and notebooks written almost 90 years ago…” – it’s a sort of historical blog from Katherine Mansfield.

It’s also annotated with little popup explanations of names, idioms, etc, which is helpful and quite awesome.

I likes a lot and it’s gone onto my list of feeds.

(Thanks to Beattie’s Book Blog for the original link)

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My day was awesome, how was yours?

Dec 22

Posted by BookieMonster in BookieMonster News | 4 Comments

I was extremely delighted and flattered today to get a mention in Jolisa Gracewood’s latest Busytown blog post : Holiday reading lust.

Interior hand flapping and ZOMGPONIES may have ensued. I can’t confirm.

Thank you, Jolisa, and thanks to all readers who’ve stumbled here – it’s been a fun 7 month learning curve and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

Dangnabbit, I’ve broken my “use awesome less often” resolution already.

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These are a few more of my favourite things…

Dec 15

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Trade News, BookieMonster News, Fun Stuff | 8 Comments

Book blogs rule. No, they really do.

Okay, book-related blogs. Anyway, here’s some of my favourites for this year (alphabetical order):

A Cat of Impossible Colour - lovely blog from Zimbabwean/New Zealand author, who also has amazing fashion-sense!

Awful Library Books - and yes, they are quite, quite awful. But most of them are also quite, quite hysterical!

Beattie’s Book Blog - a round up of book blogs (especially in New Zealand) just isn’t complete without this. A great accumulation of book-related news.

Books I Done Read - Canadian. Funny as all get-out (Get out!).

Caustic Cover Critic - Funny, and yes, caustic blog dedicated to book cover art (good as well as the screamingly bad).

Christchurch City Library Blog - One of the BEST in NZ, Christchurch Libraries have done an amazing job of having a great web presence. Recommended highly!

Editorial Anonymous - a fun and interesting insight into the publishing and editing process.

How Books Got Their Titles - exactly what it says. Fascinating little anecdotes.

Just Add Books… - fellow NZ book blogger and Twitter friend. Funny. Very funny. Claims I am too picky. Shocked!

Overkill - blog from Vanda Symon, NZ crime author.

Peter Wells Blog - from author and film-maker Peter Wells, always a very thought-provoking read. Often blogs on non-book things, but I wanted to include him here. :)

Pop Sensation - vintage paperback covers – lots of them! Very fun.

The Sound of Butterflies - blog of author Rachael King.

The Well Read Kitty - great blog with reviews from Well Read Kitty – reviewer for The Nile.com and another twitter friend.

So, these have been my favourites this year! I love to hear about new blogs to read – if you have favourites (or you have a blog you just want to tell people about!) let me know in the comments.

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Ihimaera saga continues to continue

Nov 19

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Trade News | No Comments

I’ve been interested to see what other authors and academics have to say (if anything) regarding the Witi Ihimaera story – C.K Stead has been interviewed by Radio NZ this morning and here’s a link to a small story from NZ Herald about that – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10610275

Also there was a story on Stuff yesterday afternoon with a short interview with Witi Ihimaera – http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/3075602/Ihimaera-to-buy-back-all-copies-of-controversial-book

Unfortunately reading this clarified nothing and, in some parts, made me feel worse about this whole story. This is not an explanation of the sequence of events that led to this unwanted outcome, which surely would be not only easy to make, but pretty edifying for other authors and publishers looking to avoid these mistakes. Why the puffery?

The other comments on Jolisa Gracewood’s Public Address blog about this same intervew are good reading. http://publicaddress.net/system/topic,2220,busytown-a-turn-up-for-the-books.sm

 

Update:

Further comments from writers:

From Peter Wells on his own blog peterwellsblog: http://www.peterwellsblog.com/2009/11/all-at-sea-and-feeling-nauseous.html  (I particularly like “for once books and book people can be as shocking, tacky, mendacious and self serving as everyone else in the contemporary media.”  :D )

And from Peter Wells and Keri Hulme (who also commented on my post below) on Beatties Book Blog: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=36622997&postID=3628966814265367186

 

Despite the feeling that this should never have happened, I am really enjoying reading the many opinions on this.

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