Find out what's new on our websites, where we've been, what's on our minds and the things we're doing.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 > Last ›
-
Waterstone's Children's Book Prize 2010
Posted Friday February 12th 2010
by Rebecca WilkieTo Waterstone’s Piccadilly for the presentation of the 2010 Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize. The nine shortlisted titles, which were voted for by booksellers across the country, ranged from a medieval fantasy mystery called The Crowfield Curse, to Desperate Measures, the story of teenage runaway siblings.
However, the award went to Katie Davies for her book for younger readers, The Great Hamster Massacre. Katie received the prize from Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne, as previous winners Sally Nicholls and Michelle Harrison (as well as Katie’s comedian husband, Alan Davies) watched on.
The Great Hamster Massacre is a touching, very funny and occasionally rather bloody tale of a brother and sister whose pet hamsters are mysteriously slaughtered one day, prompting the pair to stage an investigation amongst their friends and neighbours. There are enough humorous asides in the text to amuse grown-up readers and the quirky black and white line illustrations from Hannah Shaw really add to its appeal for readers aged from six-to-nine-years-old.
It’s great to see a book for this sometimes overlooked age- group win a national prize. It can be tricky finding suitable titles in the six- to- nine-years-old category and the great success in recent years…
-
Tube Tales
Posted Thursday February 11th 2010
by Nikesh ShuklaCommuting in London is fraught and over-crowded and boring at the best of times. It’s also the place where I get 90% of my reading done. It heartens me to see people reading a variety of materials from books to magazines to miscellaneous things on e-readers. Occasionally I see someone watching a film or TV episode on their iPod and feel a bit sad, thinking ‘Read! Now’s the perfect time!’
Recently, I’ve had two very separate reading-related encounters on trains that I thought were worth writing about for their bizarreness.
One
I was standing on the train, reading Gemma Weekes’ debut novel Love Me, when at Euston, suddenly masses of people piled on. They pushed and shoved, trying desperately to move millimetres further into the carriage. There was nowhere to go. Pressing into me was an annoyed woman in her thirties, grimacing at being squashed in the busiest hour of the busiest day on the busiest network of trains in the country. I was in the middle of a tense section of the book and wanted to keep reading. I lifted the book close to my face, so close that my glasses were redundant and I carried on reading. This…
-
Kate Tempest's Broken Herd- is this the future of the printed book?
Posted Tuesday February 2nd 2010
by Nikesh ShuklaThis isn't a book review of the supremely talented poet Kate Tempest's new CD/book Broken Herd. It's a celebration. A celebration with a suggestion that what Kate Tempest and independent record shop, Pure Groove have done is perhaps the future for books. They've brought back the desirable collectable limited edition book.
Firstly, who is Kate Tempest? She's the name to drop when it comes to spoken word at the moment. Her band, The Sound of Rum, has recently signed to Sunday Best, she has graced stages from Glastonbury to Latitude to Battersea Arts Centre and the Big Chill. For someone so young, she comes highly respected and highly recommended. She is loud, quiet, jagged and emotional. She will break your heart, with stories of lost living and yearning love, with tirades against everything from fakery to flippancy. She is the poet's poet, a wordsmith steeped in Wordsworth and Shakespeare as much as she is in MF DOOM and Gza and other rappers. We hope to interview her in coming weeks so we'll get her to tell you more about what she does.
In the meantime, she has, along with Pure Groove, created 300 limited boxsets containing recordings…
-
For JD Salinger- with love and squalor
Posted Friday January 29th 2010
by Nikesh ShuklaJD Salinger died this week of natural causes at 91. He became a recluse in New Hampshire after his last book was published in 1965. He wrote one of the definitive teenagers ever committed to the page. This much we all know about the mysterious man.
I’ll share my more personal experience of Salinger.
When I was 15 and preparing for GCSE English Literature, I had a cool teacher, Mr Roseblade. He tried to make English exciting for us and ensured our coursework deviated from the usual musings on Macbeth and Emma. Instead, we studied Annie Hall and Catcher in the Rye- both works about outsiders abstaining from fitting in. For our coursework, we were to write a deleted scene in Annie Hall and a dream that Holden Caulfield might have. He effectively made studying words fun. So, thank you Mr Roseblade, for whom Holden Caulfield meant so much that he had to share him with classes for the rest of his teaching career. And thank you for Holden Caulfield, JD Salinger.
Holden Caulfield was the tipping point in our class where reading went from seriously uncool to slightly rebellious. Suddenly, watching a pirated 18-certificate copy of Pulp Fiction wasn’t…
-
Holocaust Memorial Day 2010
Posted Wednesday January 27th 2010
by Rebecca WilkieToday is Holocaust Memorial Day, which is marked throughout the world every year on 27 January - the date in 1945 that the notorious Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Russian troops; this year’s theme is the legacy of hope.
The day is held to honour and remember those who died during the holocaust and also to ensure that future generations are educated about what happened and reflect upon its consequences and those of subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Literature is a powerful way of communicating the horrors of the holocaust to young people – reading about the experiences of individuals can be a more accessible way of understanding the atrocities of the Nazi regime and turns the mind -shattering statistics into a human reality.
The first introduction to holocaust literature for many young people of ten years and older is Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. I can vividly recall reading it aged 11 and felt as if Anne was speaking directly to me – it took me a while to finish it and process the tragic ending but I was glad I had read it and it has stayed with…
