The shortlist for the 2009 Arthur C Clarke Award was also announced this week, consisting of six works, with the early frontrunner being the Neal Stephenson for Anathem.
Irish poet Seamus Heaney was awarded the £40,000 David Cohen prize in recognition of the "sheer scale" of his literary achievements.
His fellow poet and chair of the award's judges, poet laureate Andrew Motion, honoured Heaney for a body of poetry that over the past 40 years has "crystallised the story of our times, in language which has bravely and memorably continued to extend its imaginative reach", and for his critical writing, his translations and his lecturing, which "have invigorated the whole wider world of poetry".]]>
The storySouth 2007 Million Writers Award for Fiction for best online short story was judged as "Urchins, While Swimming" by Catherynne M. Valente. Paolo Coelho's most famous work "The Alchemist" is heading for the big screen, with Laurence Fishburne directing the effort. July issue of Words Without Borders is out. Gunter Grass meets the translators of the new translation of "Tin Drum".
From the world of book lists
Stephen Hawking is said to be writing a children's book, while Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles is reported to have cast a "international roster of stars" for the screen adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel Blindness.
Latest issue of Book Forums is out, featuring among other, a writers' list of their favorite book-to-film adaptations. Latest issue of Words Without Borders has also been released. J.K. Rowling will give a reading from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. at midnight on July 21 at National History Museum in London.
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" wins yet again, this time the 2006 Believer Book Awards. Speaking of awards, the 2007 Locus Awards winners have been announced, with Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" winning Best Science Fiction Novel.
]]>Antoine saw me driving around in that car, with my bad keyboard-player from the Cure hair and, 20 years later, give or take, rePsih8u_2membered it and put it in his book. Now that, my friends, is fucking weird.The weirdness continues.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez at last journeys home, while Iain Banks is interviewed on topics ranging from politics to SF (of course!).
"I wouldn't move to the United States now any more than I'd have moved to Germany in the mid-30s." Surely he can't be looking forward to explaining that quote to readers in Des Moines? "Let's just say that the character who says that, who is more articulate than I will ever be, doesn't have the same views as me. But no, I'm not."]]>
Wayne said he has seen fewer customers in recent years as people more often get their information from television or the Internet. He pointed to a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982.
Sorted Books project looks interesting, at least the pictures are sure to draw a chuckle.
The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom.
Want to know what some of the authors like Dave Eggers, Ursula K. Le Guin and Nicole Krauss have been reading? Now you can!
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