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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Booked Up 2009 launches
Posted Friday June 19th 2009
by Melanie FlynnLast week saw the launch of Booked Up 2009, which gives a free book to Year 7 pupils in England when they first start secondary school. It’s all about reading for pleasure and independent choice as pupils get to choose their own free book from a list of specially selected titles.
Here in the Booked Up office we’ve been busy getting ready for the launch. We’re asking all secondary schools and libraries in England to register now through our website. All registered schools will get an information pack in September including a magazine for every Year 7 pupil and a DVD to help them decide which book to choose. We’ve just filmed the DVD which features the authors from the list talking about their books. We also gave the books to some lucky 11-year-olds who bravely reviewed them in front of a camera for us! It was a lot of fun to film and we’re looking forward to seeing the final edited version. It will be available on the Booked Up website from the end of August, so visit us then to check it out www.bookedup.org.uk
After weeks of keeping it top secret, we’re really excited that the list…
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Interview with Sathnam Sanghera
Posted Friday June 19th 2009
by Nikesh ShuklaSathnam Sanghera, the author of acclaimed memoir The Boy with the Topknot / If You Don’t Know Me By Know (depending on which edition you own), is also a journalist for The Times, working on a business and a lifestyle column. Born to Punjabi parents and growing up in Wolverhampton, he led an eccentric lifestyle. The book, The Boy with the Topknot, follows Sathnam as he returns home to unravel his family’s problems and reconcile his traditional Asian roots with his flashy London lifestyle. In the process he discovers the truth about his father’s schizophrenia and why his mother won’t accept any English girlfriend of his. It’s a funny and touching piece of work that draws on feelings of belonging and unbelonging, and cultural nuance. Sathnam is an interesting writer, his memoir draws on a lot of music as a backdrop to the words, creating a chronological soundbed of song influences over the years, his writing is journalistic but funny but tender and pained all at the same time. We wondered how he managed to cram all those conflicting styles and emotions into the same bits of prose, so met up with him on a muggy day on Hampstead Heath…
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Abracadeathra - the last word...
Posted Thursday June 18th 2009
by Nikesh ShuklaA few weeks ago, we launched a competition on Twitter, Facebook and this here blog
We asked people to either Tweet or blog or comment on our Facebook page with the last line to the fictional fiction book Abracadeathra. We had some hilarious responses, which we have collated here for you. Bear in mind that some of the responses from Facebook and the blog were a little naughty and didn't stick to just one sentence, but then, we weren't hugely prescriptive- it's still been loads of fun sifting through them!
Twitter entries:
@EllieLevenson: #booktrust He'd learnt his lesson; never trust a fellow magician.
@rebeccawoodhead 'Magda did horror flicks. Them two tricked him good' said Inspector Dex. 'Ma's face? Rubber. Fortune? Vanished. Worked like magic'#booktrust
@josie_henley He thought she’d be dead. As she burned the money, Radford saw he’d cut Magda’s windscreenwiper leads by mistake, not the brake #booktrust
@chaletfan #booktrust "My real name?" said Magda. "My real interest in you? I will never reveal it in less than 140 characters - so you'll never know!"
@Renmeleon #booktrust "Magda herself wasn't even sure." I posted the entire ending on both your blog on and Facebook. I couldn't leave…
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The poetry I'm reading
Posted Monday June 15th 2009
by Anna McKerrowIt is with great pleasure that I am currently reading two of Salt Publishing’s poetry titles – Folklore by Tim Atkins and The Grimoire of Grimalkin by Sascha Aurora Akhtar. I saw both of these authors reading from their work at Openned, a London-based poetry reading event that features excellent and thought-provoking experimental and avant-garde poets. I was mightily impressed by each.
The brain is a delicate wind that surrounds hinge – 'Folklore', Tim Atkins
Folklore is a stunningly beautiful, in-the-moment treatment and enactment of countryside and the rural, an oft-explored theme in traditional and modern poetry. However, unlike many contemporary poets, Atkins’ style refuses to reflect on nature as a scene to be comfortably described in hindsight; he prefers to be inside the reality of the rural experience (rureality?).
This may have some relationship to Atkins’ own Buddhist philosophy; I wonder whether, like Leslie Scalapino, Atkins is trying to capture that Zen sense of being perfectly in the moment with his language. There are many things that just are in Folklore: Beauty is. But the owl is. – as seen in the extract below.
'Where we were climbed there and her skin was all off & the…
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What are your Desert Island Books?
Posted Friday June 12th 2009
by Nikesh ShuklaWhat books would you choose to take with you to a desert island idyll? Books for eternity, books for prosperity, books for frivolity? Would you risk taking something new to get your teeth into? What if you didn't like it after twenty pages? Would you take an old favourite- a comfortable old favourite that you felt you could return to over the years? So many choices... Would you want to challenge yourself with a genre you’d never tried before? Maybe it is time to try that country and western fantasy romance novel languishing at the bottom of the book pile, bought from a charity shop because you quite liked the cover. Or maybe some self-help books to help you get through the difficult time of... being... stuck... on a desert island?
In any case, here are my choices and reasons why:
The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
This Pulitzer-winning collection of short stories is among my favourite books of all time. It’s delicate and fresh and textured with so much detail that I know dipping into it again and again will reveal more hidden beauties and nuances. Dealing with love and loss and the American Asian (being South Asian-…
