Find out what's new on our websites, where we've been, what's on our minds and the things we're doing.
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An interview with poet and comedian Tim Key
Posted Tuesday January 19th 2010
by Nikesh ShuklaStand up comedian and poet Tim Key won the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2009 with a show full of idiosyncratic poetry about the heart-breaking and the pointless. His wonderfully uncynical view of the world is at times dark and at others poignant. It is always funny. Having recently put together a collection of his ramblings in book format and gearing up to bring his award-winning Edinburgh show to London, we thought it would be good to talk to him about comedy, poetry, words and the book: Instructions, Guidelines, Tutelage, Suggestions, Other Suggestions and Examples Etc. An Attempted Book by Tim Key. (And Descriptions/Conversations/A Piece About A Moth) which is reviewed here
You may have also seen him on television on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, Armando Iannucci's Time Trumpet or Mark Watson's recent We Want Answers.
> Is there a definitive acronym for your book?
Is the acronym the one where it's the first letter of each word? If so then there's nothing useful to be had I don't think. But if acronym means a short way of saying it then yes, my publishing house often call it simply Tutelage. In fairness I prefer the full title: Instructions, Guidelines, Tutelage, Suggestions,…
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Precocious Reading
Posted Tuesday January 12th 2010
by Nikesh ShuklaI recall being 11 and winning a school prize for being good at English. The prize was a ten pound book voucher. I remember trawling the local bookshop for something to read. My mum refused to let me spend the prize money on Spider-man comics as I was to be presented with the results of my voucher-spend at a school awards day. Mum insisted I get something 'intelligent' so she could be proud of me when I was presented with it.
I chose to get a copy of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I was ten years old. I had read about the book's existence in a teenage novel called The Amazing and Death-Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman.
>> Flash forward to the awards day. I was sat on the front row. Mum was in attendance, camera at the ready for my big moment. Junaid Bajwa's dad was video-taping the whole thing with a big camcorder reserved for the 80s, taking no heed of other parents' sightlines or the conventions of sitting silently during the ceremony. My name was called and I walked forward to accept the prize from the guest presenter, one of the old headmasters of the…
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Books 2.0
Posted Wednesday January 6th 2010
by Nikesh ShuklaSanta gave one of the Booktrusters an iPhone for Christmas and we've all been playing with it. Once we'd tired of the lightsabre noise and of playing old arcade games and Tap Tap Revenge and auto-tuning our voices to sound like Kanye West, we decided to play with some of the iPhone reading applications to see what they were like. There are some really innovative things happening now with books and the reinvention of our methods of telling stories. What amazed me about the whole session (I won't admit to it taking up an entire afternoon) was the imediacy of it. A recommendation would come through Twitter or Google or the Guardian gadget blog and we would have it downloaded in a minute, only to use it moments later.
The range of styles is great.
Our first stop was Stanza, a free application that offers access to 50,000 free titles as well as bestsellers you have to pay for. We downloaded Little Women and we read through the opening ten pages. The ease of use, the clarity of the text and the ability to change views, text size and font to adjust to your reading needs make it immensly…
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What I'm Reading - The TS Eliot Prize Shortlist
Posted Tuesday January 5th 2010
by Anna McKerrowPhilip Gross – The Water Table
Alice Oswald – Weeds and Wild Flowers
Sinead Morrissey – Through the Square Window
George Szirtes – The Burning of the Books and other poemsThe T S Eliot Prize announcement for 2010 isn’t far away now, on Monday 18th January and so in preparation I’ve been enjoying reading four of the ten shortlisted books over the Christmas break: a tart and tangy palate cleanser after an indulgent holiday.
Perhaps it’s because I am looking out at the greying twilight over my garden as I write this, but it seemed to me that all four of the books had a preoccupation with nature or natural processes in some way. Peter Gross’ The Water Table, in fact, also has a significant resonance with fellow shortlistee (and previous prize winner) Alice Oswald’s earlier single poem work Dart, which is a collaborative, multi-voiced meditation on Devon’s river of the same name. Both have a strong sense of capturing the multitudinous identity and changeable, sensual immediacy of waterways, and both works specifically focus on the south west of England, with Gross being inspired by the historic Severn and Bristol Channel. However, it is Oswald’s floral Weeds and…
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Do Nothing But Read Day
Posted Friday December 18th 2009
by Sarah BournEver wanted to spend a whole day holed up inside with a pile of books, snacks, blankets and an obliging, warm cat? Now's your chance to indulge that fantasy guilt-free (you can tell people you're part of a worldwide movement, instantly giving you credibility beyond just being someone who likes to wear pyjamas all day). Amanda Lanyon-LeSage, a graduate student and book-crazy blogger from Wisconsin, has declared Sunday 20 December Do Nothing But Read Day.
Amanda was prompted by little more than a whim to start the event. ‘A couple of weeks ago, I said to someone on Facebook that I wish I could have a day to do nothing but read... and someone asked me, "When?" That's what sparked the idea.’
The only rules of the day are:
> you must read more than one book (short stories and audiobooks count too)
> comfy clothing (preferably pyjamas)
> no shoes (slippers are ok)
> mugs of beverages and snacks are compulsory
Sleepy cats and cuddly blankets are optional extras.
'So what?' you might be saying. 'I do that every weekend!' Ah, but up until now you were just a lone sloth. Now you're part of a global event.…
