Owner: Is there a book in this blog? URL:http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/book_blog/ Join Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:25:01 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Is there a book in this blog? is a group blog posted to by writers of Three Monkeys Online magazine. It gives the writers a chance to throw about opinions on books they've read, are about to read, or have decided firmly to never read. Guest postings Site statistics:Click here
Tim Winton and the short-sighted booker longlist 2008-08-07 04:12:32 It’s the elephant in the corner really, isn’t it? Last week’s announcement of the Booker prize longlist has been one of the main talking points for literary minded souls, and not just in the Commonwealth and Ireland. Delays in the launch of this blog meant that it was hardly worthwhile posting on the longlist - [...]
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Frank O’Connor and torture in the novel 2008-08-05 12:01:18 Glamourising torture didn’t start with Fox TV’s 24. It’s an international, or at least anglo-saxon sport with a proud pedigree.
“What I cannot understand is why, in America, the last middle-class country, you still cannot beat this loss of faith in the individual.
I’ve had this argument out. I was reviewing for a London newspaper, and a British [...]
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A questionable voice - The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid 2008-08-02 12:05:13 Having just finished Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist
, it was a pleasure to stumble upon an interview with the author (on his site, via Powells.com) where he discussed the process that led him to choose the narrative voice of the novel.
I had tried variations of minimalism in the third person, with voices ranging fable to [...]
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Giles Coren’s Winkler 2008-08-02 01:46:41 I have only myself to blame. After I read the e-mail rant heard around the world, my curiosity got the better of me when I spotted a copy of Giles Coren’s first novel, Winkler, on the shelves of my local library. When I say “novel”, I should point out that Coren’s book is not really [...]
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The Minotaur - Benjamin Tammuz 2008-08-01 05:06:57 With a sparkling lack of imagination, perhaps, I find the best way to approach this intriguing novel by the late Benjamin
Tammuz - former literary editor of Israeli newspaper Haaretz - is through his co-national Amos Oz. But, read the following passage about opening gambits between author and reader, from Oz’s collection of essays on [...]
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Film that! Londonstani by Guatam Malkani 2008-08-08 10:54:36 Mr Monkey’s recent post on possible book-film tie-ins made me dig out Guatam Malkani’s novel Londonstani.
I approached the novel with a certain amount of scepticism, not particularly grabbed by the plot line of a young geek from Hounslow who seeks to develop his identity through designer clothes, body building, and hanging out with the wrong [...]
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Orhan Pamuk and the Museum of Innocence 2008-09-13 10:15:56 Orhan Pamuk is interviewed in the latest edition of Venerdi di Repubblica magazine, here in Italy, and discusses the lengthy writing process he undertook for his new novel The Museum
of Innocence
, which will be published later this year (the Turkish version coming first, will be unveiled at this year’s Frankfurt book fair, where Turkey [...]
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Attention to Detail 2008-09-09 19:38:56 This is something I’ve been going on about in Our Man in Gdansk for some time now. This time, the book in question, though Polish, is available in an English translation by the highly regarded translator Bill Johnston. I refer to Andrzej Stasiuk’s 9. Look at the mess on page 6:
To the right there’d once [...]
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Booker shortlist is announced 2008-09-09 09:16:45 Just for the record, this year’s Man Booker
Shortlist has been announced:
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs - Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
Perhaps the most notable absences from the longlist are John [...]
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George Saunders and Style 2008-09-09 08:15:00 I’ve yet to read any novels by George
Sanders, but after reading the following passage in an interview between Ben Marcus and Saunders, taken from meaty Believer Book of Writers Talking To Writers, I think it’s about time I did:
So, when I’m writing, I am trying to move myself, or impress myself, or prevent myself [...]
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What to review? 2008-09-07 06:44:42 “This book makes no secret of the fact that it is aimed at specialists, containing as it does only four pages that are not structured as a list.” This is the encouraging opening of a review
of Seamus Heaney: A Bibliography, by Rand Brandes and Michael A. Durkan which appeared in the ever-gripping Irish Times [...]
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George and Martha by Karen Finley 2008-09-05 01:05:43 I feel more than a little sullied, having finished George
and Martha
by KarenFinley
, and I’ve a feeling that this is one of the desired effects by the author as she pits George W. Bush and Martha Stewart as fictional acerbic lovers holed up in a motel attempting to pleasure themselves in oedipal hi-jinks.
It’s [...]
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Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem 2008-08-29 13:43:03 Never judge a book by its cover. Sage advice, but what about its title? I approached Jonathan
Lethem’s slim short-story collection Men and Cartoons
less than enthusiastically, resigned to reading it because it was a) a gift, and b) short.
The problem? The title, plus the promise that more than one story would concern itself with superherose, or [...]
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It’s Not Academic 2008-08-24 08:50:14 The Corporate Takeover of Ireland, by UCD’s Kieran Allen, was published in 2007 by the Irish Academic
Press, where he is joined by such as Bryan Fanning (also of UCD) and Diarmaid Ferriter. Heavyweights, in other words. A serious business. So why is the book so badly marred by typos and other errors?
“complimentary” where “complementary” [...]
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Netherland by Joseph O’Neill 2008-08-24 05:03:43 I can sympathise, to an extent, with DoveGreyReader who approached Joseph
O’Neill
’s Netherland with trepidation given the tag ‘post 9-11 masterpiece’ (the Observer) that has been widely used by enthusiastic reviewers.
It’s a problematic tag for any novel, but particularly so in this case given that the novel scarcely concerns itself with the attacks or their af
Jim Crace retiring - The Guardian catches up 2008-09-26 11:42:23 Over at the Guardian
book blog there’s a debate blowing after a post dealing with Jim Crace’s plans to retire. The post has provoked all sorts of reactions regarding the merits of a writer’s age/youth, many largely missing the point made by Crace.
Perhaps the most worrying thing, though, regarding the post is the implication that [...]
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Setting free the books 2008-09-23 12:25:28 Some posts ago we took up the ‘who’ll be literature’s radiohead’ argument up, suggesting that there are already a number of established authors who have been giving away their work a la In Rainbows - for example the Wu Ming foundation or Mega-bestseller Neil Gaiman.
Word comes through (via Lizzy’s Literary Life) of a new publishing [...]
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Old School - Tobias Wolff 2008-09-23 07:44:42 Back in the ‘90s, I read Tobias
Wolff’s memoirs of growing up in a struggling, single-parent family - This Boy’s Life (1989) - and of serving as a junior officer in the U.S. airborne division in Vietnam - In Pharoah’s Army: Memories of a Lost War (1994). I was impressed by both books, for the honesty [...]
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Paint it Red 2008-09-21 19:07:16 “‘Modern art is actually a means of espionage. … If you know how to read them, modern paintings will disclose the weak spots in US fortifications, and such crucial constructions as Boulder Dam.’” This is not the paranoid ravings of some modern-day war on terror nut. It is quoted in Who Paid the Piper? The [...]
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The Publishing Manifesto and Raymond Carver 2008-09-18 05:16:52 Sarah Loud,head of digital publishing at Pan Macmillan, has published a much talked about Publisher’s manifesto for the 21st Century over at The Digatilist.
It’s a long piece, and well worth reading. It starts with a fairly common position, that in this social-media/internet/mobile entertainment world the days of the book are numbered.
“More and more books [...]
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David Foster Wallace 2008-09-15 03:16:44 Sad news was reported on Friday, that American writer DavidFosterWallace
has apparently comitted suicide, at the age of 46.
TMO’s very own Shane Barry wrote two perceptive pieces on DFW back in January 2006 (link), approaching the American writer’s work with caution through his collection of stories Oblivion.
We reprint the second piece here:
Two stories [...]
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Roberto Saviano and the new Italian epic 2008-10-10 11:30:36 Regular readers of Three Monkeys will know that we have a soft-spot for the Italian
literary collective Wu Ming, the people behind novels like Q and 54 (which is very much on our ‘to-review’ list). Wu Ming I (there are five of them) has just published a thoughtful piece where he attempts to define what [...]
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Writers and the Credit Crunch - Margaret Atwood and Tim Parks 2008-10-05 11:07:51 I very rarely have the cause or inclination to browse to the Financial Times, but was glad to have done so today. The immediate reasoning was to check for news on the troubled bank of which I am, unfortunately, an account holder. No particular joy there, but instead I stumbled upon an extract from Margaret
[...]
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The Tailor and Ansty 2008-11-06 11:21:15 The Tailor and Ansty (sometimes known as The Tailor and Anstey) by Eric Cross was considered so fiendishly obscene or indecent in its general tendency that it was for many years banned in Ireland. When parts of it were quoted in a Seanad (senate) debate in the 1940s there were calls for the quoted bits [...]
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A couple of minutes with Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 2008-11-04 03:22:18 At the start of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
, the narrator is rung-up by a mysterious female voice who demands, like a survey-taker, ten minutes
of his time:
“Ten minutes, please,” said a woman on the other end.
I’m good at recognizing people’s voices, but this was not one I knew.
“Excuse me? To whom did [...]
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Self Censorship: The Jewel of Medina and The Portage of A.H to San Cristobal 2008-10-31 11:05:56 I have no idea whether Sherry Jone’s novel The Jewel
of Medina
originally deserved to be published, and I’m not quick off the bat to scold Random House, the publisher which decided at the last minute to not publish the novel after they were warned that it may cause offence to Muslims. Publishing is a subjective [...]
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Italians want Zorba the Greek 2008-10-27 10:06:59 A popular arts show in Italy, Che tempo che fa, has appealed to viewers to write in to the show requesting books that, currently out-of-print, they’d like to see re-published by authors.
Top of the list is Zorba the Greek
by Nikos Kazantzakis.
Another surprising entry is Alan Hollinghurst’s recent Booker winning novel The Line of Beauty [...]
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Chuck Palahniuk and The Great Gatsby 2008-10-21 10:59:36 Is Chuck
Palahniuk one of America’s most underrated or overrated novelists? The answer to the question probably revolves around your attitude towards the shocking, because he is without doubt a novelist with the power to churn the stomach (although the reported faintings at readings of his short story ‘Guts’ seems exaggerated to me).
Speaking to Three [...]
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