Reading matters

Dare I give up on this one?

I am beginning to realise there might have been a reason why The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer was half-price at WH Smith.

Everyone seems to be raving about it and the publisher, Bloomsbury, is giving it a right old marketing push.

But 110 pages in and I've decided it is too twee for my liking. Quite frankly, I think it is drivel. I'm in two minds about finishing it, which is saying a lot given I never give up on books. Can someone tell me it gets better? Please?

Calling all Aussie book bloggers

The Guardian World Literature Tour needs you!

This week the tour heads to Australia, but the suggestions, when I last looked, didn't seem to be that inspiring. Why do people trot out the same old names?

Where is Richard Flanagan, George Johnston, Peter Temple and Kate Grenville? And this is just for starters.

If you're interested in reading books by Australian authors, check out my Top 10 favourite novels about Australia or visit my books with an Australian setting category.

Or, better still, visit Perry Middlemiss's brilliant Australian literature website.

Charley Boorman's latest adventure

It looks like Charley Boorman has hit the road again. And this time he didn't take Ewan McGregor with him.

The veteran of Long Way Round, Long Way Down and Race to Dakar, has just completed a new expedition in which he travelled from his home in Wicklow, Ireland, to Sydney, Australia overland by any means possible. According to his official website, Charley used "more than 110 modes of transport to traverse  land and water, exploring 25 countries and three continents on the way".

A six-part television series of his trip screens on BBC2 next month. A book and DVD will follow -- just in time for the Christmas market.

You can find out more here.

Books in the Big Apple

I'm always interested in discovering new bookish blogs, so I was delighted to stumble upon Books in New York, written by Erik Heywood, this afternoon.

The blog is described as "an ongoing project, working to create a visual catalog of New York City's bookstores, libraries and book collections, both public and private".

It's jam-packed with information for visitors and residents alike, and the photographs are excellent. I was happy to scoot around and explore some of the places I visited last October, such as Barnes & Noble in Union Square, and to bookmark places I'd like to check out next time I'm in New York.

Dare I suggest there's room to write a similar blog about London bookshops and libraries?

One Irish author pays homage to another

There's a wonderful piece in today's Guardian about my favourite author, the late John McGahern, by another talented Irishman, Joseph O'Connor.

At University College Dublin in the 80s, I read The Barracks, The Dark and more of the stories. I found them strange, always enthralling, stylistically flawless, but more touching than almost anything I had read. His account, clearly autobiographical, of a young man's early days at university -- the first of his family ever to know such an experience -- moves me still.

I have to agree. And I think O'Connor really nails it when he claims that "few writers are as aware as McGahern was of that strange ache in the heart caused by ordinary precise words, placed carefully, in order, quietly".

If you're intrigued I highly recommend The Barracks, The Leavetaking, Amongst Women and That They May Face the Rising Sun.

Channel 4 News reports on how 'Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day' was rediscovered, republished and turned into a film

The film version of Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day has just opened here in London. As far as I can see it hasn't received much press (there won't even be a premiere), so I was delighted to watch a story about the book and subsequent film on Channel 4 news earlier this week. You can watch arts correspondent Nicholas Glass's report above. It was lovely to see Nicola Beauman from Persephone Books interviewed as part of the piece.

A post about the Booker

"Why haven't you mentioned the Booker longlist?"

This was from an email sent to me by a regular reader of this blog early last week.

In 2006 I went a bit crazy when the Booker longlist was announced, and some of you may remember that I wrote profiles of all the main contenders -- there were 19 of the buggers!

I never did get around to reading the winner of the prize that year, although I did read two from the shortlist -- Kate Grenville's The Secret River and MJ Hyland's Carry Me Down -- and have all the others in my ever-growing reading queue.

When last year's longlist was unveiled there was a lot of other stuff happening in my working life and so I made a conscious decision not to get too caught up in the hype of it all. I bought a couple of books from the longlist, two of which still remain unread, but devoured Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and Anne Enright's The Gathering, before the winner was announced.

Funnily enough, I was on a flight to New York on the night of the Booker ceremony and knowing I was going to be on the wrong side of the Atlantic at the time to get the news, my Other Half, who was still in the UK, was thoughtful enough to text me. I was collecting my baggage at JFK airport when my Blackberry vibrated. There was no "hope you had a safe flight" or "missing you already" but a simple "Anne Enright's The Gathering won the Booker -- thought you'd like to know that!" (He knows me too well.)

As to this year's Booker longlist, announced while I was on holiday in Madeira, I can only say thank goodness it's not as long as it has been in previous years.

My second thought: why is a block-buster thriller on it? (Tom Rob Smith's Child 44)

My third: where on Earth is Helen Garner's The Spare Room? It's a travesty to have left it off.

My fourth: At least there's another Australian author on there (Michelle de Kretser -- which means I ought to hurry up and read her earlier book, The Hamilton Case, which I bought two years ago!)

My fifth: I hope Sebastian Barry makes the shortlist!

My final thought: must the organisers be so crude as to even mention this? It's just one reason why I've kind of gone off the whole literary prize thing...

The Faber podcast and Flickr page

London-based publisher Faber and Faber has a new podcast page on its website. This is definitely worth keeping tabs on, as the first three podcasts include interviews with Peter Carey, Sebastian Barry and Junot Diaz, among others.

In fact, the entire website is worth a quick scoot around, not the least because it's clutter-free and easy to navigate (other publishers should take note) and jam-packed with author interviews.

Also, of note, is this Flickr page, which showcases an amazing array of Faber's book designs from the past.

Last week's favourite reading spot...

... was the middle cotton-covered wicker sunlounge in the bottom right of this photograph. It was comfortable and shaded and very quiet. Plus, it afforded wonderful views over Funchal, the capital of Madeira, and the Atlantic ocean beyond. If it got too hot, we could simply pop down to the pool on the next level for a swim. Perfect.

And we wondered why our suitcases weighed so much

This is what two readers take on their annual holiday in the sun ... half a library!

Can you guess which pile is mine, and which is my partner's?