‘Book Bites’ for Monday 17th May 2010

Penguin launch luscious 75th anniversary website – So you all know that this year marks the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, right? Well, regardless of whether you or you didn’t, then might want to get yourself over to Penguin’s shiny new 75th anniversary website, to feast your eyes on a website that looks almost as good as RobAroundBooks (I’m joking ). Oh, and while you’re over there, don’t forget to check out the amazing customised Mini which will be turning up on the kerb in front a number of bookstores around the US over the summer. I just LOVE the colour of that Mini, but a quick look around here would tell you that ORANGE is my favourite colour. What’s that, you need another incentive to make you head on over to this new website? Well, if you live in the US then you can also enter a very generous competition in which the winner walks away with the entire Penguin 75 collection. Book heaven? I should say!

It’s official: Stefan Zweig ‘hearts’ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Regular readers of RobAroundBooks may know that I have a newly-discovered love for Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. I’m discovering new things about the master wordsmith every day, and the latest came this morning courtesy of a fascinating article about the man posted on the Fine Books & Collections Magazine website. The article reveals that Zweig was a huge fan of a number of celebrated composers, and in his lifetime he amassed one of the world’s greatest collections of music manuscripts. Wagner, Beethoven and Chopin all feature in Zweig’s collection (among others), but the biggest focus seems to be on fellow Austrian, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Included in Zweig’s collection are a number of original Mozart’s compositions ranging from 1784 until his death in 1791, his marriage contract, five letters, and eleven musical autographs. Far be it from me to plagiarise the hard work and effort of the article’s author, so I’ll stop there and invite you to head on over to read Stephen Maughan’s feature for yourself.

Frank O’Connor Short Story Award Longlist revealed – It’s no doubt an oversight on my part but I’ve only just discovered that the longlist for this year’s Frank O’Connor Short Story Award was revealed a couple of weeks ago. For those who don’t know, the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award is the world’s richest prize for the short story form (€35,000), and it is awarded to the author of a short story collection which has been published in English for the first time anywhere in the world in the twelve months between September of one year and August of the next. This year’s longlist consists of 57 titles coming from writers of 13 different nationalities. I’ll leave you to peruse the longlist at your leisure, and I’ll hopefully see you back here on the 6th of July when the final shortlist of six will be revealed. Excited? Me too!

‘Book Bites’ – bringing you tasty bite-size morsels of bookish news and delight, from around the web.