Reading matters

'The Book of Rapture' by Nikki Gemmell

Fiction - paperback; Fourth Estate; 269 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Nikki Gemmell is an Australian author based in London who achieved international acclaim with her 2003 novel The Bride Stripped Bare, which was originally published anonymously on the basis that the subject matter was too provocative.

Prior to this she wrote four other novels -- Shiver; Cleave; Alice Springs; and Love Song -- none of which I've read. However, I've long been familiar with Gemmell's work, mainly as a broadcast journalist, first, on Triple J, the ABC's youth network, back in the early 1990s (she filed memorable reports on a scientific expedition from Antarctica; her girlie voice used to grate), and second, more recently as a commentator on the BBC's Newsnight Review.

This latest novel, The Book of Rapture, is a strangely haunting story set in an unnamed country at an unspecified time. It feels dystopian but lacks the true grit and misery of that genre, and yet there's something slightly creepy and oppressive about it.

'Snuff' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 208 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I'll be perfectly frank: I did not expect to like Chuck Palahniuk's latest paperback release because of the sordid subject matter. I wasn't sure I would be entirely comfortable reading about an aging porn star attempting to break the world record for serial fornication with 600 men on camera.

But Palahniuk delivers such an extraordinarily funny story that you can't help but laugh your way through it. And before long you realise that this isn't a novel glorifying pornography. If anything it sends it up, pokes fun at the ridiculous nature of it and highlights how warped you would have to be to participate in a gang-bang that is being filmed for public consumption.

The story is told from the perspectives of three men - Mr 72, Mr 137 and Mr 600 - as they wait in the queue for their turn in front of the camera. Sheila, the wrangler who runs the green room, also narrates her side of the story.

The Book Group: our first meeting

You may recall that early last month I wrote a post entitled Calling all London book bloggers. Want to join our book group?  I was essentially responding to Simon's plea to start a relaxed, friendly group in central London.

Well, I received a few emails from interested parties, as did Simon, who also managed to rope in some of his friends, and together we hosted our first book group meeting on Thursday evening. There were 11 brave souls in attendance, and over several convivial drinks, we took it in turns to share our favourite books with one another as a kind of getting-to-know-you session.

Ever the dutiful reporter, I took along a notebook and jotted down the titles that were named (long-time readers of this blog will automatically know which one of these I chose):

• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• My Brother Jack by George Johnston
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• The Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Diaspora by Greg Egan / Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
• A Place to Live: And Other Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg by Natalia Ginzburg
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I am hoping this incredibly varied selection, which spans everything from science fiction to non-fiction, classics to best-sellers, will be indicative of the kinds of books we will read over the months to come, a real mish-mash of styles and genres to broaden everyone's reading palette.

We plan on meeting once a month and we'll take it in turns to choose a book for everyone to read and discuss.

The first selection, made by Simon, is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, so even if you don't live in London and can't make the group, you're more than welcome to read it as I'll be reviewing it here at a later date, so you can drop by and leave a comment.

If you're interested in attending the group, or want to find out more, Simon's published a very comprehensive page on his blog which should answer your questions. Alternatively, you can email me.

'Journey into the Past' by Stefan Zweig

Fiction - paperback; Pushkin Press; 124 pages; 2009. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

A few days ago Gav from Next Read asked a pertinent question: What have you read that you wouldn’t if it wasn’t for a blog? I'll admit I was stumped, because even though I know I have picked up loads of recommendations from fellow book bloggers over the years, nothing jumped immediately to mind. But since then I can quite happily say, Stefan Zweig.

Austrian-born Mr Zweig, who committed suicide in 1942, is one of those authors that crops up on book blogs all the time. I've seen countless reviews of his posthumously published novel The Post Office Girl and several references to his novella Chess, also published after his death. And only last week John Self reviewed Zweig's Amok & other stories which prompted me to confess that I was a Zweig virgin. When I asked which book I should try first, John suggested Chess because "it shows him in full maturity as a writer", but as it turned out it was Journey into the Past that caught my eye for no other reason than it was the only Zweig book on Foyles' shelves when I visited on Friday afternoon. (Interestingly enough, Amazon claim that this book isn't published until Tuesday, although it seems readily available from the Pushkin Press website.)

Journey into the Past is a quick read coming in at just over 100 pages but it's the kind of story that lingers and I can see how it would be possible to catch the Zweig bug and want to read more of his work. This one has only just been translated into English, although it was published in German as Widerstand der Wirklichkeit (Resistance to Reality) in 1976 from a manuscript discovered 30 years after his death. But, as the translator Anthea Bell tells us in her Afterword, parts of it had been reproduced as early as 1929 in Vienna under the title Fragment of a Novella in an anthology of works by the Austrian National Association of Creative Artists. Even so, this makes it his final novella (unless other discoveries lie in wait) and for that reason you would expect it to be an accomplished piece of writing.

Indeed it is. It's also very moving and is brim full of lovelorn angst, a perfectly delicious read that, in less masterful hands, may have come across as sentimental old claptrap. What we have is a love story between two opposites -- an impoverished but incredibly intelligent young doctor, and a slightly older woman already married to a rich man -- whose affair is never fully consummated before Ludwig is sent away and the First World War ruins his plans to return.

But the book starts where it ends: with Ludwig returning to Germany after an absence of nine years to see whether the woman he so passionately loved has waited for him as she once promised.

I'm not going to spoil the ending and tell you what happens, but it's a near-perfect examination of how we glorify the past and cling onto the flimsiest of memories to move into the future. Or, as the blurb on the back of my book so aptly puts it, Journey into the Past "is a poignant examination of the angst of nostalgia and the fragility of love". It's also superbly written and filled with the kind of gentle nuances other novelists would struggle to emulate.

I do, however, have one minor quibble, but it is not to do with the author or his writing. It's to do with cost. This is a very slim volume but it retails for full whack, which is currently £7.99. Even though there's some added value in the form of a very interesting foreword by Paul Bailey (whoever he might be; we're not told) and an equally interesting afterword by Anthea Bell it still feels like a lot of money for not much paper. I could see how some readers might be put off when they could buy a 500-pager for the same price...

'The Chrysalids' by John Wyndham

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 187 pages; 2000.

The late John Wyndham is probably best known for his science fiction classic The Day of the Triffids, a post apocalyptic novel in which the world gets overtaken by carnivorous three-legged plants. But it's The Chrysalids, published four years later, in 1955, which most Wyndham fans say is his best.

I read all his major novels (there are seven) when I was in my teens and loved them with a kind of evangelical devotion, but how would this one stack up more than 20 years later?

Strangely enough I had forgotten so much of the detail of The Chrysalids I began to wonder whether I'd actually read it before. It felt very fresh, very new and, surprisingly, very modern.

'Guardian Work' by Ian Carpenter

Humour - paperback; Beautiful Books; 222 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It's always nice to try something a little left-of-field when you're between novels and not sure what to read next, a "palette cleanser" if you will.

Guardian Work by Ian Carpenter popped through the post yesterday courtesy of the publisher and while it's not something I would normally rush out and buy, I was intrigued by the premise -- an Essex-based property manager decides to apply for every job listed in one issue of the Guardian newspaper to see what might arise. Earlier today I thought I'd read a chapter or two before getting on with other bits and pieces, and before I knew it a couple of hours had flown by and I'd finished the entire book! Yes, it's a quick and easy read, but it's also a very funny one.

Apparently Ian's "project"  was recounted via his blog over the six-month period that it took him to apply for all the jobs listed in the September 29, 2007 issue of the Guardian. Along the way he visited a Swiss banker who wanted to employ his parent's cat; got mired in an endless cycle of "telephone tennis" with a firm looking to recruit an operations manager; was invited to take part in a money laundering scheme fronted by a chap supposedly running an art gallery; and had a run in with a firm operating a covert operation which warned him not to pass on any information to anyone outside the enforcement community. (His reply, to the latter, was hilarious: "I withdraw my application for your job. It all sounds a bit cloak and dagger to me.")

He also applied for various high-profile positions that were not advertised in the newspaper, such as the manager of the English football team and head of the Liberal Democrats.

To be perfectly frank, the book doesn't break any new ground, because we've seen this "trick" done before. In fact, I think it's probably Robin Cooper's fault, because it was his The Time Waster Letters, published in 2004, which ushered in a whole new genre of books based on the kooky correspondence between bored men and officialdom.

But Guardian Work is still a rather enjoyable romp that had me tittering in quite a few places, especially as I have been on the receiving end of some questionable job applications in the past. I'm now beginning to wonder if the would-be reporter whose cover letter informed me she had the "ability to wake up beautiful every morning" wasn't winding me up for the purposes of writing a book like this one!

'Hot House Flower' by Margot Berwin

Fiction - paperback; Hutchinson; 288 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Having read Susan Orlean's classic non-fiction title, The Orchid Thief, and Eric Hansen's similarly acclaimed Orchid Fever, I had high hopes that this fictionalised account of a woman hunting for rare plants in the tropics of Mexico would be something I'd really enjoy. And while it ticked all the botanical boxes, I'm afraid Hot House Flower was slightly too girlie for me. In fact, the cover image and the cursive font should probably have served as a big warning: this is chick lit and I should read at my peril!

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no objection to chick lit. If it gets people reading and makes people excited about books, then it can only be a good thing. But it's not a genre I enjoy, for a whole host of reasons. And while Hot House Flower may dish up something slightly more exotic than a girl meets boy romance, when you get right down to it, it is essentially a cosy story about a 32-year-old divorcee looking to find a new man.

Bearing that in mind, it is imminently readable, and I consumed it in two sittings, so eager was I to follow Lila Nova's journey from high-flying advertising executive in Manhattan to her reinvention as a flower hunter in the luscious rainforest of the Yucatan peninsula.

The first-person narrative is easy to follow and there's plenty of adventure and thrills and spills to keep you entertained, along with a dash of romance and a bit of magic and witchcraft thrown in for good measure. It's a fun, light-hearted read and definitely won't sap the brain power.

However, the magic realism, highly reminiscent of Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells, means you need to suspend belief for much of the story, but especially the latter-third which involves Huichol shamans and herbalists working their supernatural powers. It's fascinating, if slightly too far-fetched for my liking, but if you're looking for some sheer escapism this summer, Hot House Flower will fit the bill perfectly.

'All Names Have Been Changed' by Claire Kilroy

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 288 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Claire Kilroy is a young Irish writer whose debut novel, All Summer, published in 2003, garnered much critical acclaim and earned her the 2004 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. It was also shortlisted for the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.

Her second novel Tenderwire (2006), a literary thriller set in New York, was shortlisted for the 2007 Hughes and Hughes Irish Novel of the Year but lost out to Patrick McCabe's Winterwood.  I read it last August and thought it was such an intelligent page-turner I was eager to read more of her work. So when I found out there was a new one on the way I asked Faber and Faber if they'd be kind enough to send me a proof copy, and they obliged.

The 'joy' of comments

Does anyone else get crappy comments on old posts?

Back in 2006 I reviewed Bryce Courtenay's Jessica. I thought the book was poorly written and said as much in my review.

For some reason that particular review is one of the most visited posts on this blog. Not all visitors to the post leave a comment, but those that do seem to think the book is the best thing they have ever read. I can't quibble with that, because we all have different tastes and the world would be a very dull place if we all agreed with one another.

But sometimes the comments grate and I wonder if I should delete them. Here's a prime example, unedited, by someone calling herself "Nicole":

Quite frankly i disagree with your "smack" talk about this book. If your looking for "explanations" and "historical footnotes" how about you look them up yourself. This book is clearly not written for just these things it is to inspire and it has a purpose to reach into the hearts and minds of people. personally i think you need to get a grip because I read this book when i was 15years old and I know that even now at 18 years old i would read it all over again. if(how bout you edit that for me..) you wish to talk so badly of it then why did you keep reading it until you finished the book if you disliked it that much. Have respect for the author and if your so "perfect" then why don't you write a story yourself! I bet it'd be hard to be so accomplished such as Bryce Courtenay. Save your negativity for yourself noone wants to hear it. If your lifes so bad that you got to be a downer about a marvellous book then I think you have some serious issues and need to consider therapy. although your so negative and judgemental you'd probably think the therapist needs the therapy. you'd probably even analyse how they do the job. I pity you negative attitude. How about you take you sadistic reviews someplace else!!!!!

In the end I decided to leave the comment for comic value alone. And I just love how she tells me to take my "sadistic reviews someplace else!!!!!" Apparently she hasn't cottoned on to the fact that this is MY blog and I can write whatever I want to on it.

In the end I confess that this bad-mannered comment irritated me so much I sent a personal reply to "Nicole" suggesting she might want to learn some manners; strangely enough she never answered back.

'Once Upon A Time in England' by Helen Walsh

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 360 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It's difficult to review Once Upon a Time in England -- Helen Walsh's second novel -- without giving away any of the plot. The beauty of reading it is letting the tale wash over you; I came to it "blind" and did not know what to expect, and I rather suspect this lack of knowledge about the storyline helped me to enjoy it hugely. For that reason, please excuse the scant detail I will provide here.

Essentially, the story is a family drama. It spans two decades and is set in England's industrial North -- Warrington, Cheshire, to be precise.

Robbie Fitzgerald is a young red-headed factory worker who has his sights set on a career as a cabaret-singer-come-pop star. But just when his first lucky break arrives -- a music producer discovers him and promises all kinds of work, including a possible tour with Shirley Bassey -- things go pear-shaped. There's been a break-in at his house, and his wife, a pretty immigrant nurse from Kuala Lumpur, home alone with their young son, Vincent, has been man-handled by the balaclava-wearing intruder. The shock precipitates her into an early labour with their second child, a girl, Ellie. 

My lovely haul

This haul, acquired in the past month, is made up of books given to me as gifts, books bought with my own hard-earned cash and books sent to me gratis for reviewing purposes. Thirteen of them arrived in the post yesterday morning alone!

Here's what's in the pile:

'Selling Light' by Effie Gray

Fiction - paperback; Roast Books; 112 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Effie Gray's Selling Light is part of a new series of novellas published by London-based indie publishing house Roast Books. The books are billed as "great little reads" that can be easily consumed within "a long lunch hour or a single train journey".

This is an attractive concept, especially for those bibliophiles who don't want to lug around heavy paperbacks but need to be accompanied by a book at all times. Although not quite compact enough to fit in your back pocket, they're light enough to carry in a bag -- that's if you're brave enough to risk having them battered and scuffed, because these are handsome-looking volumes that look almost too good to read.

In much the same way as Persephone Books publishes all its books in attractive dovegrey covers with pretty endpapers, Roast Books has opted for highly textured cream covers with illustrations by Kenneth Andersson. They look very tasty indeed.

 

And the content is equally attractive if Selling Light is anything to go by. This is a gorgeous little tale about two loners who find themselves forging a fragile, hesitant friendship by the coast: Briege, is a young university student studying crabs, and George is an older man still grieving over the death of his wife eight years earlier. Both are living in caravans when Briege invites George on a crab-hunting expedition -- and it is here that you get the sense that a little romance could develop if only the both of them were trusting enough to take it a step further.

But before they can get their acts together, their peace is shattered by the arrival of Peter Cooper, a young upstart, who throws a party in the nearby lighthouse and begins making plans to turn it into a "small deluxe guesthouse which he can manage from the city". Meanwhile his "girlfriend" Amanda, who has a "parasitic attachment to others" realises that she "needs a new host" and begins casting around for one...

It's a fascinating and beautifully told tale, one that lives up to Roast Books' promise of delivering quality short works of fiction that are "easily digestible, instantly gratifying and, of course, extremely tasty little reads". I'm very much looking forward to reading the others in the series.

The winner of 'In the Wake of the Boatman' is...

Thanks to everyone who threw their names in the hat for my competition to win a (used) copy of Jonathon Scott Fuqua's novel In the Wake of the Boatman.

There were some interesting nominations for books that deserve a wider audience, and at some point I'll amalgamate them into a list for everyone to see.

In the meantime, it's on with choosing a winner. As per usual I used an online random number generator, plugged in the numbers and this is what it came up with:

The 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner announced

The winner of the €100,000 prize is Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas.

The official press release is here.

Who will win the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award?

Tomorrow the winner of the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award will be announced.

The extensive long list has been whittled down to just 8 titles.

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
2. Ravel by Jean Echenoz
3. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
4. The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland
5. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen
6. The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
7. Animal's People by Indra Sinha
8. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas

Having only read one of these titles (I've got two others in the reading queue), I don't think I'm in much of a position to judge who's likely to walk off with the €100,000 prize. @Sinead Gleeson, who has read them all, seems to think Junot Díaz will win it and if I was to put my money on any book it would probably be this one too.

Who do you think will win the prize?

Addicted to books

Did you see this post on the Guardian books blog?

Yes, my secret's out: my name is Kim and I am a bookaholic!

Book giveaway: Win a copy of 'In the Wake of the Boatman'

Like most of you, I read an awful lot of books over the course of a year. My reading habits tend towards the literary, but I also enjoy general fiction, crime novels and the odd non-fiction title. I'm obsessed with Irish novels and I love to read books that tell stories completely different to my own life. Jonathon Scott Fuqua's novel In the Wake of the Boatman fits into the latter category.

When the publisher offered me a review copy way back in February, my initial reaction was to turn it down. But I changed my mind on the basis it was a small press, and small presses need all the publicity they can get -- and who knows, maybe the book would be a good read?

Well, that was the understatement of the year. In the Wake of the Boatman (which I reviewed here) is a brilliant read and I honestly think it deserves a much wider audience. Which is why I've decided to pass my copy onto one lucky reader.

Note that the book has few dog-eared pages where I shamelessly turned down the corners to mark passages I wanted to recall in my review. So if you're expecting a pristine copy, perhaps you might want to go out and buy your own (it's available via Amazon or you can order direct from the publisher), but if you don't mind reading a slightly used edition then please enter your name below, telling me the name of a book YOU think deserves a wider audience.

I will close the comments at 10am GMT on Saturday, June 13. I'll then choose the winner using an online random number generator (or some such).

The competition is open to anyone, regardless of where you live, but you can only enter once. Good luck.

'The Journalist and the Murderer' by Janet Malcolm

Non-fiction - paperback; Granta Books; 163 pages; 2004.

Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer famously caused an outcry within the media when it was first published as a two-part article in The New Yorker in 1989. Its oft-quoted opening sentence -- "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible" -- seemed to lay down the gauntlet, calling the ethics of journalism into question.

But Malcolm is a journalist herself and so the book must not be condemned on the basis of this first line, nor should it be viewed as summing up the author's views. Indeed, it becomes clear upon reading The Journalist and the Murderer that Malcolm has mixed views about her profession, which I'm sure is true of most journalists today, myself included.

What this book really examines is the relationship between journalists and sources in the context of non-fiction books and the difficulties which face both parties. While the journalist must remain impartial in order to render the truth, he must do whatever he can to convince his subject to be frank and open with him. Meanwhile, the source must come to trust the journalist enough to share his or her most intimate secrets. Such unspoken rules are fraught with difficulty, because what happens if the journalist writes something that upsets the source but which he knows is correct and truthful? Most journalists would say that they are only doing their job - and that's the view I take, too.

But what if the situation was slightly more complicated, and the journalist agreed to write a book about the source and was given unparalleled access to him and his closest family, friends and colleagues? The dynamic might change, a close friendship might result, but surely the journalist still has a job to do and is honour-bound to remain objective and to write events as he sees them? After all he's not in the business of writing flattering, gratifying portraits (unless, of course, that's the "truth"), because he's not a publicist but a journalist.

'In the Wake of the Boatman' by Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Fiction - hardcover; Bancroft Press; 308 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The tension between fathers and sons is a much-explored theme in literary fiction, but few present such a tangled, complicated, emotionally crippled relationship as the one depicted in Jonathon Scott Fuqua's In The Wake of the Boatman.

From the very first page it's clear that the relationship between Carl Hatcher Steward and his son, Puttnam Douglas, is going to be a lifelong problematic one. It's 1942, the USA is in the throes of a world war, and Puttnam has just been born.

Days later Helen and the newborn finally arrived home, yet Carl's anxieties did not abate. Alone in the gray living room of their clapboard rental, their four-year-old daughter asleep in bed, Carl's thoughts crudely took him off guard. On this oppressive Norfolk evening, the notion came to him so calmly it almost made sense. He should crack his little boy's neck as gently as possible. It would be like saving two lives.

This is an important glimpse inside Carl's dark heart. He's a damaged man who seems unable to love his son. Why? Because he's ashamed that he has brought a child into the world at a time when "another mouth to feed would not help the war effort" and humiliated because his dodgy knee means he cannot join the Army.

Calling all London bloggers. Want to join our book group?

A few weeks back Simon of Savidge Reads wrote a post about book groups and floated the idea of starting one for London-based bloggers.

I'm not much of a joiner and usually like to keep myself to myself, but something about Simon's post resonated, because how cool would it be to meet up with a group of like-minded individuals on a monthly basis to discuss a book we'd just read? I'd run my own online book group for a couple of years, but it felt a bit too much like homework and wound it up at the end of 2007.

But life's a bit more normal these days and I think I could handle a monthly "assignment" as long as the discussion was relaxed, friendly and could be done over a cuppa (or something stronger).

So, to cut a long story short, I emailed Simon and over the course of the past three weeks or so we've exchanged numerous emails about how we could get a group up and running in central London.
At this stage, we figure that we will meet monthly, probably on a Thursday evening, and that each member of the group will get a turn at choosing what we read. It's not going to be a bossy or pretentious group; indeed, I'm kind of hoping it might have the flavour of both of our blogs, a kind of friendly, chatty place where everyone will be made very welcome.

So, if you live in London and fancy coming along to our first soirée or even if you don't live in London but think this might give you an incentive to visit, then get in touch with either Simon or myself and we can give you a few more details. Note, you don't have to have a blog to join and the first "session" will simply be a getting-to-know-you meeting. I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone interested in coming along...

Books shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1969-2008

Now that the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction is over all attention will turn to the 40th Man Booker Prize, although the longlist won't be announced until early August and the shortlist in September. Time, then, to have a look at all the books that have made the shortlist since the prize's inception in 1969.

I have bolded up those I have read; hyperlinks take you to my reviews published on this site.

Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 winner announced

The £30,000 prize goes to Marilynne Robinson for Home.

Guess I better extract my copy from the pile and read it, eh?

Admittedly, I am disappointed that Samantha Harvey didn't win it for The Wilderness, but you can't have everything.

More bookish bits

• The Art of Manliness, a website that "features articles on helping men be better husbands, better fathers, and better men", has published a list of 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library. [Thanks to @HenryHolt for the tip-off.]

• The New Yorker has a cool online bookclub. The current book under discussion: Wendell Steavenson's The Weight of a Mustard Seed. Other book selections have included Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Venice, Death in Varansi (which I have in my reading queue), George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road.

• Congratulations to Canongate, which has been named publisher of the year. Well deserved, I say, not the least because this independent publisher was one of the first to recognise the role us book bloggers in the UK play in alerting readers to great books.

• If you're obsessed by London literature, keep your eye out for a new anthology featuring more than 60 writers, including Will Self, Monica Ali, Alan Bennett and Beryl Bainbridge, called city-lit London. The book, which is published by Oxygen Books, will be launched later this month. [Thanks to @thecitylitcafe for the tip-off.]

• George Orwell fans who love the theatre, you're in for a treat. Trafalgar Studios, here in London, is staging Orwell: A Celebration between 8 June - 4 July. It sounds like a weird and wonderful tribute to an amazing writer: I've already booked my tickets. For more information, check out the official site.

• Collect book lists and like book challenges? Then here's the mother of all book lists: Arukiyomi's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The best thing is that it comes in the form of an Excel spreadsheet that you can download free of charge. It includes Wikipedia/Google Books hyperlinks and a totals sheet so you can tally up all the ones you have read! Brilliant.

'The Wilderness' by Samantha Harvey

Fiction - paperback; Jonathan Cape; 336 pages; 2009.

Samantha Harvey is an exquisite writer and a skilled novelist. The Wilderness is so accomplished on so many different levels -- stylistically, creatively, intellectually -- that it seems astonishing that this is her first novel. What is not astonishing is that it has been shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize for Fiction. And if I might be so bold as to make an outlandish claim based on nothing more than instinct, I rather suspect it might win. Or at least I hope it does.

While not much seems to happen in the book, it is an utterly engrossing story, one that is shocking and melancholic and life-affirming by turn. It has the atmosphere of a spellbinding family drama, with chinks of humour shining through, that someone like Anne Tyler might write. Indeed, it feels like an American book to me, rather than one set in England, although it features some wonderful references to London and the desolate moors of Lincolnshire.

I found it so affecting that I have spent the best part of four days wrestling with this review, and I don't think I will come anywhere close to explaining what it is about this novel that is so brilliant. Bearing that in mind, let me tell you a little of its content.

Bookish bits

• Penguin has published a special edition of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the book. Can't say the design turns me on. I'd much prefer the look of Burmese Days and Shooting an Elephant which have been republished in the livery of those Penguin Modern Classics I admire so much. Meanwhile, the New Statesman has published an interesting piece about Orwell's essays.

• The Guardian has published an interview with Pultizer prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson. I still haven't read Gilead nor Home, her Orange prize shortlisted novel which I purchased two weeks ago. I'll get around to it eventually...

• The Book People are selling a 10-set collection of Anita Shreve books for the knock-down price of £9.99. If I hadn't read most of them already I'd be buying this set in a blink of an eye. (You can see all the reviews of the Anita Shreve books I have read here.)

• I know I am very late with this, but the shortlist for Australia's Miles Franklin award has been announced. By all accounts it's caused a bit of a surprise, namely because there's not one woman on it. The five books on the list are: Breath by Tim Winton; Ice by Louis Nowra; The Pages by Murray Bail; The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas; and Wanting by Richard Flanagan. The winner will be announced on June 18.

• I'm a bit of a John McGahern freak, so I was surprised to find I'm not the only one to obsess about his work: the National University of Ireland, Galway is hosting the John McGahern International Seminar & Summer School in late July. (You can see all my reviews of McGahern's books here.)

• This story by Peter Temple marks the return of Jack Irish, the Melbourne-based hero who solves crimes while moving in legal, racing and cabinet-making circles. He first appeared in Bad Debts in 1996 and was followed by Black Tide (1998), Dead Point (2000) and White Dog (2003). His next one, Truth, is due out in Australia in November.

• Here's a book for cyclists worth checking out, although it's obviously got an American bias.

Decisions, decisions: trying to find a book to suit my mood

I have mountains of books, so why is it I can never decide what to read next? I look at the piles and I think I will most likely die of old age before I ever get to the bottom of them. The amount of books sitting on my dresser would comfortably last me well into the next decade. The ones on the top shelf of the wardrobe (who needs clothes, when you can have books?) would easily provide me with two or three years' worth of reading. I won't mention the extra hundred or so that have been put in storage.

During the week I read -- and finished -- Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness. It's been shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize and with good reason. The prose is so beautiful and eloquent and the narrative so expertly structured I can't see why it shouldn't win. (I'll try and get my review up sometime over the weekend.) But having finished that yesterday I woke up this morning scrabbling around for a new book to suit my mood.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been trying to read Claire Kilroy's All Names Have Been Changed, but it just hasn't been doing it for me. I'm not sure why, because it's another book filled with beautiful, well-crafted prose, but the characters haven't really gelled in my brain and apart from the narrator and the star of the piece, a successful literary writer, they fall flat and so I don't really care about them. And, as shallow as this may sounds, this means I don't really care for the book. Perhaps I just need to be in the mood for it...

So, this morning after struggling with about 20 pages of Kilroy's book, I put it aside and thought I might try Paulo Giordano's The Solitude of Prime Numbers, a proof of which was sent to me by the publisher for review about six weeks ago. I thought this book would be a brilliant read, which was why I agreed to review it, but the proof is basically a computer print out, bound together with glue, that has revisions typed on the margins. That's fine; I can cope with proofing marks (it's what I do for a living, albeit for a specialist newspaper) and I can cope with flimsy paper. But the text size is minuscule -- my guess is 7pt. Now, I don't know about you, but text size is very important to me, and if I have to strain to read text I'd prefer not to read it. Sorry Doubleday, but I don't think I can read this one just yet...

Which leads me onto Helen Walsh's Once Upon a Time in England. The kind folks at Canongate posted this to me last week on-spec, and having read the blurb I wasn't sure it was really my cup of tea: did I really want to read about a family in northern England during the 1970s and 1980s?  I filed it away and thought I might read it when I was "in the mood", so when I opened it up this morning and started to read, I hadn't expected to get much beyond a couple of pages before abandoning it on the premise that my gut reaction to the blurb was correct. How wrong could I be! I'd raced through the first 45 pages without realising it. This is shaping up to be a great book...

So, what are you reading right now? And do you have as much trouble as me when it comes to selecting the next book to read?

A post about Australian novels

In yesterday's rant about Helen Garner's novels, a few of you asked me to write a post about Australian novels and to perhaps suggest some of my favourites.

I don't claim to be any kind of expert, especially given that when I lived in Australia (almost 11 years ago now!) I didn't much appreciate what was on my back doorstep, preferring instead to read British and American fiction.

In fact, if I'm honest, I'm a little out of the loop as far as the latest Australian fiction is concerned, so I'd advise you to visit Angela Meyer's Literary Minded blog and Perry Middlemiss' Matilda blog. In fact, Perry runs a magnificent website about Australian literature, which provides information about Australian authors and their works, that you simply won't find anywhere else in the one place.

A few years back I wrote a post about my top 10 favourite Australian novels, which might provide some pointers. Finally, since 2004, I've reviewed around 23 Australian novels, which I've listed here:

James Bradley's The Resurrectionist
Peter Carey's Theft: A Love Story
Bryce Courtenay's Jessica
Richard Flanagan's Wanting, The Unknown Terrorist, The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Gould's Book of Fish
Robert Dessaix's Night Letters
Helen Garner's The Spare Room
Kate Grenville's The Secret River
Wendy James' Out of the Silence
Gail Jones' Sorry and Sixty Lights
Susan Johnson's Life in Seven Mistakes
Steven Lang's An Accidental Terrorist
Elliot Perlman's Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity
Heather Rose's The Butterfly Man
Peter Temple's Bad Debts and The Broken Shore
Carrie Tiffany's Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
Patrick White's The Solid Mandala and The Vivisector

Recommendations for other Australian novels and novelists are welcome, particularly if you live in Oz and keep up with "the scene" as it were!

The post in which I ask why Helen Garner's work is restricted to Australian-based readers only?

I'm thinking of starting a new series of blog posts entitled "Why aren't these books available outside of Australia?"  I've become quite partial to the lovely-looking livery of Penguin Modern Classics, and have even started to collect them, but why is it that Helen Garner's books haven't made it to the Northern Hemisphere yet?

I looked at ordering these from various Australian online booksellers, but the cost of postage is prohibitive. Given Garner's remarkable success (despite last year's Booker snub) with The Spare Room, surely there's an international audience for her work? Isn't it about time Penguin snaffled up her UK publishing rights? Penguin UK, if you are listening, please please please can you make these brilliant books available to British readers?

Far too many Australian authors deserving of international recognition never receive it, because their books are never published outside of Australia and New Zealand. I suspect there's a whole host of economic reasons for this, but I wish that would change. I find it particularly irritating, if you haven't already guessed, that I can view these books on the Penguin Classics Australia website but they're nowhere to be seen on the Penguin Classics UK equivalent. Grrr.

Now don't get me started on Elizabeth Jolley's novels...

'In the Woods' by Tana French

  Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 464 pages; 2008.

When I first picked up Tana French's In The Woods at JFK airport on my last trip to New York last October I envisaged it would tread similar territory to Edna O'Brien's dark, claustrophobic In the Forest. After all, they're both Irish crime books by Irish writers (who, in my opinion, even look alike, almost as if they are mother and daughter) with much the same titles, but that's where the similarities end. 

In the Woods lacks the literary flourishes that made O'Brien's book somewhat difficult to read; instead you get a completely absorbing, rocket-fuelled narrative that zips along at Formula One pace. I read this in about two days while on a recent trip to Ireland and found myself thinking about the storyline long after I'd finished the book and repacked it in my suitcase.

The story, a police procedural, is told from the perspective of Rob Ryan, a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad (which, by the way, does not exist in real life), who has a secret past that only his immediate family knows about. When he was a young boy he was playing with two friends in the local woods, but when dusk arrived none of them returned for their evening meal and a search party was organised. Rob was found clinging to a tree with blood-filled shoes, so traumatised by whatever had happened to him and his friends that he was unable to recall a single detail. His friends were never found, and 20 years on, Rob is still unable to remember what happened.

Books long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 1996-2009

As we all know, the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 is announced next week.

I thought it might be an interesting exercise to see how many of the long-listed books I'd read for this prize since its inception in 1996, not the least because I don't read a lot of women writers.

Here's the list for all books long-listed between 1996 and 2009. I have bolded up those I have read; hyperlinks take you to my reviews published on this site.

UPDATE: Apologies, but I failed to include the books long-listed in 2008, I only included the short-listed titles. You would think I would have twigged there were some notable absences -- Anne Enright's The Gathering and Gail Jones' Sorry, for instance -- given I'd read them. But not to worry; that's why I have eagle-eyed readers of this blog to alert me! The missing titles have now been included on the list below.