‘Book Bites’ for Monday 24th May 2010

Bakewell ‘bigs it up’ for Montaigne (in parts) – Although you’ve yet to see a review on RobAroundBooks of Sarah Bakewell’s awesomely stupendous (and lengthily titled) How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (Chatto and Windus), you’ll have seen me wagging my tail aplenty, [...]

‘Book Bites’ for Tuesday 18th May 2010

Melville House launch Moby Awards for Best and Worst Book Trailers – Love ‘em or hate ‘em book trailers are becoming more and more a common feature of our literary landscape these days. So much so that indy New York publisher Melville House have taken it upon themselves to host the world’s [...]

‘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 [...]

Shortlist revealed for this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize

The shortlist for this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize was announced earlier today, revealing a rather eclectic final five in the running for the UK’s only recognised literary award for published single author short story collections. With the shortlist containing two screenwriters, an Irish short story specialists a literary [...]

Book News: World lit fans gear up for PEN World Voices Festival

Tomorrow sees the launch of this year’s PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature as 150 top writers from 40 countries gather in New York City to participate in a week-long celebration of global writing. And this year’s Festival is set to be the biggest yet, as it also ‘takes to the [...]

Book News: UK cover revealed for Gaiman and Sarrantonio’s upcoming ‘Stories’

It’s not often that I would get so focused on news of a cover being revealed, but this one is a little closer to me than most.
You may remember last month that I featured Stories as a Daily Bookshot, that really exciting short story anthology from Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, which is being [...]

Shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010 revealed

It was an exciting start to a dreary morning, as the shortlist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced earlier today. Taken from the original longlist of 15, which included big ‘hitter’s such as Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus) and Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper [...]

Dasgupta and Guest triumph at this year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize

Well, it’s been a long haul since the sprawling regional shortlists for this year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize were announced back in February, but from the final eight regional winners (split across ‘Best Book’ and ‘Best First Book’ categories), English-Indian author Rana Dasgupta has emerged as the winner in the ‘Best Book’ category with [...]

Regional winners announced for Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010

I don’t know whether you caught my mammoth Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlist post last month, but the regional winners for the prize have now been announced, and the finalists, from which an overall winner will be chosen at the start of April, is as follows:
Regional Winners – Best Book

Africa: The Double Crown [...]

‘Book Bites’ for Tuesday 10th March 2010

American Book Review’s Top 40 Bad Books – There’s an interesting run down in the latest edition of American Book Review, on what is considered to be the 40 worst books in American literature. It’s hard enough to define what makes a bad book at the best of times – as the introduction [...]

Next Page »