Blah Blah Flowers

Serious Fantastication: acclaimed novelist China Miéville in interview with Steve Haynes. An interesting interview about his work and the state of the fantastical nation.

Labels: authors, China Miéville

OK, you lot are fast proving yourselves unworthy of the gift of Free Will, when it leads to such ridiculous fuckbakes as this which then leads on to disgusting situations as described here. Please feel free to exit the human race and leave your hall passes and locker keys at the desk on your way out.

Labels: authors, hate speech, Islamophobia

Adaptations are funny old things except, sometimes, when they are supposed to be. There's a TV company who's name I can't be bothered to look for, who have adapted Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and The Colour of Magic/The Light Fantastic . The Hogfather adaptation was actually pretty good and it was presumably the success of that that got them the second gig. TCoM ? Not so much. It read as though it was adapted by accountants, who priced every scene and joke so excised stuff based on cost and not whether the pun was amusing any more. There were some incredibly belaboured scenes, and not in the 'David Jason visual humour' department alone. A short scene in the book which introduces ancient barbarian Cohen the Barbarian takes only a minute or so on screen but is done in such a way that it feels much longer. I wonder whether part of the technique for these is to write the screenplay based on the constraints of time, money, cast and then go back through and drop in the jokes from the books where possible, rather than the other way around. A good few years back Cosgrove-Hall did animated versions of Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music , the former was very faithful and dull as ditchwater, the latter fun and IIRC, took a few more liberties but still had the story to heart.

BBC7 have a few audio Pratchett treats to celebrate the fella's 60th birthday. From what I remember the adaptation of Mort falls into the 'leaden, dull' category but Small Gods is great fun, not least because of Patrick Barlow as the tetchy and currently-incarnated-as-a-pompous-tortoise god Om. It's brilliant acting from the man who gave us Desmond Olivier Dingle and is one of the many criminally under-appreciated comedians in this country. I haven't heard The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents yet and will be interested, especially as David Tennant is involved.

Labels: authors, books, comedy, David Tennant, Patrick Barlow, Terry Pratchett

Scissor Sisters to write songs for new musical based on Tales of the City . I think my gay-o-meter just broke. This could be awesome!

Labels: authors, gay, music, Scissor Sisters

Various Robert Anton Wilson-related videos, including Ken Campbell, Alan Moore and Bill Drummond at the memorial concert last year.

Labels: Alan Moore, authors, conspiracies, KLF/JAMMs

John Clute- Fantastika In The World Storm. Up until about 1700 we did not categorize works of art according to their use of (or failure to use) material that might be deemed unreal. After that point, in English literature a fault line was drawn between mimetic work, which accorded with the rational Enlightenment values then beginning to dominate, and the great cauldron of irrational myth and story, which we now claimed to have outgrown, and which was now primarily suitable for children.

Labels: authors, stories/storytelling

Why it's a tragedy that writers concentrate so much on misery at the expense of comedy. And not just prose either, how many long running TV shows have you seen where after a few seasons the program turns in on itself and becomes a never-ending gallery of horrors and pain, based on the mistaken idea that tragedy automatically elevates the tale?

Labels: authors, fiction, philosophy

Picador books plan to stop printing new titles in hardback. Well, they might do limited prestige runs for serious bibliophiles, but for you, me and the plebs in W.H. Smiths, it's paperback time. My feelings are numerous and mixed about this.

I do like hardbacks. Providing you're not in a situation where the size and/or weight is an issue then the hardback is your friend. It's sturdy and more difficult to damage which, speaking as someone who winces whenever anyone bends a book's spine or turns the corner over to mark their place, matters. The binding is often better on a book which also matters. When J.D. Robb suddenly rose to prominence a few years back we had a rise in demand at our libraries. The paperbacks of her work (which my Mum read and said were full of spelling mistakes) which were presumably rushed out to meet the sudden demand were incredibly poorly made, and a lot of our stock was unusable after three or four issues. Admittedly, the books were probably taken out by spine-benders and corner-turners but they were cheap and shoddy and, in a market which is apparently moribund (despite getting rid of the Net Book Agreement a decade ago), are publishers not looking for ways to cut costs? A paperback book is designed to last long enough to be read by one person and then put on their bookshop until Judgement Day, where presumably you get in to Heaven based on a Q&A on A Suitable Boy.

The size of the book is also a factor. Something chunky like the aforementioned Vikram Seth or Michael Palin's chunky Seventies Diaries work better with a sturdier cover, in paperback they look like someone trying to fit into clothes a size too small, leaving the reader at risk of a bibliographic wardrobe malfunction.

Paperbacks are nice and cheaper though. And the book market is an oddity, being the only market where something is released, then after a period released again in cheaper packaging, with no extras. At least when albums or DVDs are re-released they give you bonus tracks or deleted scenes goodies (perhaps that's an alternative the books market might like to investigate?) And there are a hell of a lot of authors out there who don't deserve the extra cash that people spend on the hardback. That this is considered standard rather than optional seems crazy. I'd quite like the option of reading a book from the library, perhaps in paperback, and if I like it, ordering a hardback from the publishers that has extra annotations and material, the In Rainbows Boxset approach to novel production you might say.

Still, a positive thing is that Picador isn't pulling a music industry and blaming the falling sales on piracy and are doing something that doesn't involve claiming it's the public's fault. That's a definite plus point.

Labels: authors, books, bookshops, libraries

OK, I'll admit it, I've not actually read any of her books but, based solely on this response, Doris Lessing rocks.

Labels: authors

Susanna Clarke in discussion with Neil Gaiman about her work, including her two novels Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Worth it for the brief discussion of who would win a fight between Neil and William Gibson.

Labels: authors, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke

People have been having fun reviewing Richard Littlejohn's latest book at Amazon.

Since my subscription to the Daily Mail lapsed, my hourly apoplectic rage had begun to fade, my life seemed to have no meaning. This book has brought the crimson back into my previously grey life. After reading that my shoes are probably made in China my anger new no bounds. Imagine that! Chinese! Thankfully now my blood pressure is ris and I stride proudly barefoot. Thank you my saviour.

[via Linkmachinego]

Labels: authors, books, Daily Mail, journalists, Richard Littlejohn

Turns out that Lloyd Alexander has died. I loved his Prydain books. I assumed he died donkeys years ago because we never heard of any other books he'd written over here.

Labels: authors, books