It seems that the whole online world has gone short story crazy in the past wee while. The Great Books Foundation launched its Short Story Omnibus. StorySouth released the longlists for their Million Writers Award. John Madera launched his awesome novella blog. C.B. James is gathering speed with his Short Story Sundays. And I, aside from buying up another batch of short story titles (and coveting others such as Jay McInerny’s How It Ended), recently launched a Guy de Maupassant reading challenge to go with my 100 Shots of Short, iPoe and Checkin’ Off the Checkhov Shorts reading challenges.

I thought short story goodness around the Web couldn’t get much better right now, but it just has. I’ve discovered that Dan Wickett over at his Emerging Writers Network blog, is staking a claim to the month of May as the month for celebrating the short story form. Here’s what Dan has to say:

I’m hoping to treat May as Short Story Month, as in National Short Story Month, or even International Short Story Month, and hope others will join in the enjoyment of the shorter form of fiction with me.

My goal each day will be to find three stories to read and blog about – one from a collection that maybe I’ve held onto a little too long, should have finished and reviewed by now, etc; one from a print journal; and one from an online journal.

By month’s end, if all goals are met, just under 100 short stories will have been read and commented upon. I hope to meet these goals, if only because it means I’ll have scared up the time to read nearly 100 short stories!

Dan may well talk a good talk, but he definitely also walk’s the walk too. We’re only on the 6th May right now and already Dan has put up over 30 posts on the subject, which aside from his own 3 per day short story reviews, also includes guest reviews. Support for his project is also gaining ground with more and more lit bloggers and readers taking up the challenge.

I’m impressed with Dan. He may have put forward a lofty proposal at the launch of this event but he’s following through with loads of energy and enthusiasm. I’d argue that digesting three a day is not the best way to read short stories, but looking at his posts and mini-reviews, he’s consuming them just fine. I’m also enjoying the reviews from his guest posters too, and discovering a whole host of new shorts to add to my own reading list.

I also think that a reading challenge or event is only as good as its logo (I know super shallow and all that )) and the one for Dan’s Short Story Month is a cracker (as pictured above). Simple in design yet profound in presentation, this logo comes courtesy of Steven Seighman, designer at Dzanc Books. Good job Steven!

So if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration to get you reading short stories this month then it looks like Dan’s place may be the place for you, and if his initial enthusiasm is anything to go by, then it’s going to be the place we need to visit every May.

I wish Dan every success!

Presumably to generate a bit of extra promotion for one of the books designed by him (Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner), Portobello Books has posted a nice article by CS Richardson on the glorious subject of book design.

This is a man who by his own admission has designed around 1500 books, so he knows a thing or two on book design, and it shows in this thoughful and entertaining article which contains many nuggets of wisdom, despite is relatively short length. My favourite has to be this one:

Because a book is “emotional” doesn’t mean it should look like a sympathy card you’d receive from dear Aunt Agatha.

Hehehe..too funny but oh so true. That said Mr. Richardson does point out that designers should stop showing off and simply serve the work and its author, so bearing that in mind maybe a cover that looks like a sympathy card would be appropriate in some cases, especially if the author is Aunt Agatha? )

Anyway get yourself along to the Portobello Book website and check out the article for yourself.

I’m not actually done with Mr. Richardson yet though, because methinks he must be on a ‘book design evangalising kick’ right now. I also stumbled across a trio of videos which were freshly posted on YouTube last week. Exclusively created for BookLounge.ca, and under his esteemed title of VP, Creative Director, Random House of Canada, Mr. Richardson runs through the history of book design from the twelfth-century to present day. It’s well worth watching, and at less than 20 minutes running length for the whole lot, it isn’t going to cut into your schedule too much – and look I’m even posting them below so you don’t even have to go and look for them. Is there no end to my generosity? )

Anyway thanks to both CS Richardson and BookLounge.ca for putting this together. Here’s the vid clips:

There I am going through my usual morning routine of ‘feed reading’ on Bloglines, when I stumbled across the mention in one of my favourite bookish blogs – dovegreyreader scribbles (I just adore the way she writes), of a literary magazine I’ve never heard of before called Five Dials. It’s an electronic magazine produced by refined London publisher Hamish Hamilton (they have the likes of Kiran Desai, Zadie Smith and Steve Tolz on their books don’t you know?) and, as I stated in the title in a rather more unrefined manner – it ain’t half bad.

Not only is the production value of the Five Dials magazine really high (would anyone expect anything less from a publisher?), the content is superb. With essays from the likes of Iain Sinclair on Reading Turgenev to transcript interviews with the likes of Noam Chomsky, this is a magazine that’s seems to be an essential for any true literary fan (and if it’s good enough for dovegreyreader then that’s good enough for me )). Four issues to date (all of which are shown above and linked directly to the PDF file), and all can be easily downloaded directly from the Hamish Hamilton website. While you’re there you may also want to subscribe to the mailing list so you can be informed when new issues become available.

One thing I’m not sure about though. In the premiere issue Editor Craig Taylor states that Five Dials will be published monthly, but the latest issue dates back to November 2008 so I only hope that Five Dials is on a winter break rather than a suspension. I’ll try and find out!

EDIT: Good News! Anna Kelly of Hamish Hamilton finally got back to me and Five Dials magazine is still well and truly alive and kicking, with a new edition coming real soon. In her owns words Anna explained that “the Hamish Hamilton concept of a month is a fluid, flexible thing, and sometimes a month may be more like a month and a half . . . or two months, depending on . . . various things.” Hehehe..gotta love publisher humour eh? ). Thanks Anna!

Ali, in a review over at her blog worducopia, pointed me to a ‘must have’ book today, that’s gone instantly on my wishlist for near-future purchase – A Journey into Steinbeck’s California by Susan Shillinglaw.

Anyone who knows me, or reads this blog is fully aware of my Steinbeck obsession (I’ve now even got a lil doggie called Steinbeck) and even without seeing it, the book gives me goose pimples! Written by a real authority on John Steinbeck (Ali tells you why in her review), this seems to be the book for exploring the California that Steinbeck lived in and wrote about. I’ve skimmed through the sample pages at Amazon.com and they look tasty enough but it’s the product description that’s really got me salivating the most:

This part art book, part biography, and part travel guide offers insight into how landscapes and townscapes influenced John Steinbeck’s creative process and how, in turn, his legacy has influenced modern California. Various types of readers will appreciate the information in this guide—literary pilgrims will learn more about the state featured so prominently in Steinbeck’s work, tourists can visit the same buildings that he lived in and wrote about, and historians will appreciate the engrossing perspective on daily life in early 20th-century California. Offering an entirely new perspective on Steinbeck and the people and places that he brought to life in his writing, readers will find delight in this depiction of the symbiotic relationship between an author and his favorite places.

Drool….drool….the best news for me though, given my overseas location, is the book is available freely on Amazon UK (note: none of my links are affiliate). Now that was a nice surprise! )

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ Ali, and for the great review, and I’ll be sure send my wife in your direction when she spots the new ‘unknown’ charge on my credit card bill )

As anyone who reads my evangalising of Coralie Bickford-Smith (and here) would know, I’ve got a bit of a passion for book covers (hasn’t all bibliophiles?), and although I never fall foul of that old adage of judging a book by its cover, I’ve got a bad habit of replacing ‘same title’ books in my collection for ones with better cover designs (it’s a habit that seriously drives my wife nuts!! )).

So loving book cover design so much, I was delighted to find that Joseph Sullivan over at the Book Design Review has posted an excellent rundown of his favourite book covers of 2008. Joseph may not have any from my favourite cover design ‘deity’ in his list, but his choices are ensured to take you on a phantasmagorical cover-lust journey )

Take Jonathan Gray’s (Gray 318) typography rich cover design for Nathaniel Rich’s novel The Mother’ Tongue, Jennifer Carrow’s minimal yet easily interpreted design for Eric G. Wilson’s Against Happiness or Jonathan Gray again, with his ingeniously designed and sumptuous (I’ve seen this in the flesh and it’s nicely embossed with gold) cover design for Karen Maitland’s Company of Liars; all beautiful covers and all excellent choices by Joseph.

So get yourself along to Joseph’s place and check out the choices for his Favorite Book Covers of 2008, and while you’re there you can also vote on which one of the batch is your own favourite. Oh and the fun doesn’t end there – Joseph also links to his book cover choices for the past three years as well.

Despite having never visited the place (yet!), I make no apologies for my incurable obsession with anything New York. I’ve spoken about this obsession on the blogosphere often (and featured my favourite New York ‘blogger’ Teri Tynes as Reader of the Week )), and not surprisingly this obsession crosses over into my literary interests as well (Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy are on my 50 Novel reading list for this exact reason).

Imagine my delight then, when Joshua Stein of the Guardian posted a first-rate article earlier today, chronologically listing his selection of the finest literary works centered on New York, published from the 1930s to the present-day; tasty New Yorkian morsels of which my bookish palette has yet to savour.

Take for instance Henry Roth’s Call it Sleep, about a Jewish boy growing up in the slums of the Lower East Side during the opening decades of the 20th century, or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the story of an African-American living ‘invisibly’ in 1940′s New York. Both novels sound hugely captivating, and hugely important for giving a unique perspective on the evolving history, particularly the social one, of 20th century New York. Both of these titles have been added to my ‘to buy’ list but there are of course more titles in Joshua’s article that you may find of particular interest, including a music album from Tony Schwartz (?). I suggest you go along and check out Joshua’s article.

So, novels on New York. What are your particular favourites?

The Independent has posted an interesting rundown of what they consider to be their top 50 winter reads. The selection is both intriguing and eclectic, covering most literary tastes, and pretty much all age-groups.

Titles range from classics such as The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath to current best-sellers such as Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Ian Rankin’s Door Open, to wholly politically flavoured titles such as Adam Boulton’s Tony’s Ten Years: Memories of the Blair Administration and Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, to the more ‘out there’ choices such as Vanity Fair: a Century of Iconic Images and Julian Norridge’s Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?

Anyway go and check out the list yourself, but be prepared to have to click through each entry in the list one at a time in order to see them all (which isn’t all bad because each entry has a cover shot and a brief synopsis).

John Mullan over at Guardian Books has an interesting article on what he considers to be the top 10 ‘circadian novels’. Are you familiar with the term? I wasn’t until it was explained that novels coming under the tag of circadian, are ones where the story takes place entirely in the course of a single 24-hour period. Interesting!

John provides a brief synopsis of each circadian title in the article together with an explanation for its selection, so I recommend you pop along to there, but for those just wishing the briefest of summaries, the ten selected titles are:

• Saturday by Ian McEwan
• Twice Round the Clock by George Augustus Sala
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Mr Phillips by John Lanchester
• The Light of Day by Graham Swift
• Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi
• Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk

Most interesting to me in the list (although I’m not sure if it could be classed a novel), is the title which according to Mullan, started the circadian genre – George Augustus Sala’s Twice Round the Clock. Published in 1859, Twice Round the Clock gives a journalistic 24-hour snapshot into daily Victorian life in Central London. Because it sounded so intriguing, I went a-hunting and I was delighted to find Mr. Sala’s seminal work reproduced electronically, over at VictorianLondon.org.

I was racking my brains to come up with some circadian novels myself but the only one I could think of was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but as that’s already in the list I guess it doesn’t count. I’m interested to know of more novels that comes under the label of circadian so I thought I’d turn it over to you guys – What ‘circadian novels’ do you know?

]]> http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/10/guardian-books-top-10-circadian-novels/feed/ 0 http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/10/knockout-bookstores-around-the-globe/ http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/10/knockout-bookstores-around-the-globe/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:00:44 +0000 Rob http://robaroundbooks.com/?p=1767 Coming courtesy of her friend Josh, Ann Kingman over at Books on the Nightstand links to a very nice article entitled Most Interesting Bookstores of the World, which shows a few select images of some of the world’s more unusual and/or interesting bookstores.

It’s nice to see Hemingway’s Parisian favourite Shakespeare and Co. among the selection (which was recently featured as a Bookshelf of the Week), together with a few architecturally stunning examples. The most stunning for me though? The one shown left. It’s culturally and visually outstanding!!

]]> http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/10/knockout-bookstores-around-the-globe/feed/ 0 http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/10/memorys-31-tales-of-terror-reading-challenge/ http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/10/memorys-31-tales-of-terror-reading-challenge/#comments Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:17:35 +0000 Rob http://robaroundbooks.com/?p=1638

I’ve just come away from reading Memory’s Sunday Salon post over at her reading blog Stella Matutina and I’ve discovered a really nice reading challenge she’s currently engaged in. Entitled 31 Tales of Terror, the challenge is to read and comment on 31 vintage horror tales that Memory will be posting every day throughout October. Here’s what she says:

Every day for the next thirty-one days, I’ll be featuring a vintage horror story on my blog. Most of these will be of the ghostly variety, but I’ve got a few favourites that don’t quite fall into that category. I’ve done my best to choose shorter pieces; the majority of the stories shouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes to read, at the absolute most. I’ll do my best to confine the longer ones to the weekends, when everyone’s got a bit more time.

Additionally, for those motivated by more than the opportunity for some good reading, Memory is also offering a prize of 6 BookMooch points, and an anthology of classic horror to the overall winner of the challenge i.e. the one who accrues the most points for reading and commenting on Memory’s 31 featured stories.

With it now being the 12th of October, Memory is already 12 stories into the challenge (she’s listed links to these in her Sunday Salon post), but with the stories being so short it’s not too late to jump onto the 31 Tales of Terror challenge and, if you’re inclined to, play ‘catch up’.

With a newly discovered love for both short stories and the classic macabre (a ‘flavour’ that’s closely linked to the pending challenge I alluded to in my own Sunday Salon post this week), I’m definitely jumping on to this challenge. I have zero interest in any prize incentive. I’m just jumping on the opportunity for another excuse to read some great hand-picked stories. Thanks for creating it Memory!

Edit: I have now created my own ‘hub page’ for this challenge so my progress, and links to my own reviews, can be followed

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