#Literary prizes

[biblioklept]

Best Books of 1975?

Previously: Best Books of 1972? Best Books of 1973? Best Books of 1974? Not-really-the-rules recap: I will focus primarily on novels here, or books of a novelistic/artistic scope. I will include books published in English in 1975; I will not include books published in their original language in 1975 that did not appear in English translation until years later. So for example, Thomas Bernhard’s…

[grandhotelabyss]

What's the best novel to win the Booker?

According to my official calculations, I have read about a quarter of the Booker-winning novels (and more like a third of Booker-winning authors). The ones I read were almost all good-to-great novels—except for Amsterdam; what were they thinking there?—so it's hard to decide. Midnight's Children, The Remains of the Day, Possession, Disgrace, True History of the Kelly Gang, Milkman...an embarrassment of riches, early and late. I even retain my stubborn undergraduate affection for The English Patient. I must get off my arse (they never should have started giving it to Americans) and read Oscar and Lucinda, The Famished Road, The Line of Beauty, The White Tiger, and, yes, Prophet Song next. (I've never read anything by Paul Lynch, but I like what he had to say here—very "romantic realism," though he calls it "cosmic realism.") The best of those I read? I have no argument against the critics who twice awarded Midnight's Children the Booker of Bookers; it's an exhilarating and world-historical tragic mock-epic. The two Coetzees are also undeniable and unforgettable contemporary classics. But I think for myself these days I have to go with The Sea, the Sea.

[nicolagriffith]

Spear shortlisted for Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

SPEAR is one of nine books shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

I’m just back from the UK and still jet-lagged—expect a blog post on that soon—but today I’m delighted to reveal that Spear is one of nine books shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. It’s a fine and interesting list: Wolfish, Christiane M. Andrews Arboreality, Rebecca Campbell Spear, Nicola Griffith Ten Planets, Yuri Herrera (trans. Lisa Dilllman) The Spear Cuts Through…

[bookjotter6865]

Winding Up the Week #338

An end of week recap “Love is active, not passive. It is our love for one another, for Mother Earth, for our fellow creatures that compels us to act on their behalf.” – Laurence Overmire This is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I look ahead to forthcoming features, see what’s on the nightstand and keep…

[reverie-quotes]

A sensuous hunger swirled in my veins. I wanted to drink and eat and lie naked with someone, to burn or break something inside me.

— Hisham Matar, My Friends

[mostlyghostie]

Sometimes award panels get things very right, this is great.

[amicus-noctis]

“The master said You must write what you see. But what I see does not move me. The master answered Change what you see.” ― Louise Glück, Vita Nova

Photo: from Andrei Tarkovskys "The Mirror" 1975

[alwaysbewoke]

[eggyrocks]

wait guys i’m kind of obsessed with my own writing

[paperbaacks]

review:

i'm not entirely sure what i was expecting from the safekeep. this is one of the few books i found interesting in this year's booker prize line-up (along with james by percival everett) and wanted to give it a go. however i had my reservations about reading it because i'm just not that into historical fiction.

the one thing i am very much into, however... is sapphic romances. and oh my god did this deliver!!!

one of the most tender, sexy, and also somehow heartbreaking romances i've ever read. set a few years after the second world war, eva and isabel's story is very much still affected by the horrors they had to face during their teen year. both of these women very much have been shaped by their own experiences. and what follows, i think, is a very unique story.

i wanted to read more the more it unfolded. without giving much away (because trust me, you want this revelation to hit you right in the gut while it's happening on page), i will say that i didn't even think about this particular aspect of the war before it was pointed out to me. to think that the title means one thing, and then once you're done with the story, it suddenly has a whole different meaning...

aah, chills. one of the best books of 2024, i believe!

[wordshaveteeth]

History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those who did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have no way to go there, you cannot leave when your children cannot get a passport, cannot go when your feet are rooted in the earth and to leave means tearing off your feet.

- Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

[krytus]

"ian short for lesbian" is still one of the funniest name things ive considered. should my pen name be ian....

[ijustkindalikebooks]

New book in the collection.

[panimoonchild]

Every nation has its diseases, and Russia has an incurable one

Today Lina Kostenko, a symbol of Ukrainian literature, celebrates her 94th birthday. She is a sixties poet, writer, and dissident. Laureate of the Shevchenko Prize, the Antonovych Prize, and the Legion of Honor. In 1967, together with Pavlo Tychyna and Ivan Drach, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She never betrayed her beliefs.

The title of this post is her words.  I want to share with you some of her popular quotes:

[gracie-bird]

Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace receive the winner of Monaco's literary prize, Gilbert Cesbron, on May 5, 1962.

[reverie-quotes]

Tired days when the flesh continues.

— Hisham Matar, My Friends