Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist Announced!

Today the longlist for the 20th annual Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction was announced.  This award which was organized in reaction to the lack of women authors considered for the Booker Prize despite women authoring significantly more new titles than men awards 30,000 pounds to one woman annually who the committee has determined to have written the best full length fiction novel of the year published in the UK.  The panel of five female judges changes annually and is made up women who are leaders in their respective fields.  This years panel includes Shami Chakrabarti, Cathy Newman, Grace Dent, Helen Dunmore, and Laura Bates.  Look out for the announcement of the shortlist on April 13th!

For more information on the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction see their website at: http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/

The Longlist:

Rachel Cusk: Outline

Lissa Evans: Crooked Heart

Patricia Ferguson: Aren’t We Sisters?

Xiaolu Guo: I Am China

Samantha Harvey: Dear Thief

Emma Healey: Elizabeth is Missing

Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven

Grace McCleen: The Offering

Sandra Newman: The Country of Ice Cream Star

Heather O’Neil: The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Laline Paull: The Bees

Marie Phillips: The Table of Less Valued Knights

Rachel Seiffert: The Walk Home

Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone

Ali Smith: How to be Both

Sara Taylor: The Shore

Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread

Sarah Waters: The Paying Guests

Jemma Wayne: After Before

PP Wong: The Life of a Banana

National Book Foundation Presents the 2013 Innovation in Reading Prizes!

The National Book Foundation (the group that gives out the National Book Awards) announced the 2013 winners of its Innovations in Reading Prizes.  These awards give out up to $2,500 dollars to groups or individuals who have created an innovative means of generating and sustaining a love of reading.  What I thought stood out among the winners this year was the extent to which each of these groups worked to not just connect with and encourage individuals to read but entire communities.

Check out the winners:

City National Bank for Reading is the Way Up (Multiple locations)  www.readingisthewayup.org

Little Free Library (Hudson, WI)  www.thelittlefreelibrary.org

The Uni Project (New York, NY)  www.theuniproject.org

The Uprise Books Project (Vancouver, WA)   www.uprisebooks.org

World Reader (Seattle, WA)  www.worldreader.org

Congrats to the Winners on helping to bring the joy to reading to as many communities as possible!  For more information please check out http://www.nationalbook.org/innovations_in_reading.html

The Great Gatsby

Now this was not my first read of The Great Gatsby. It may not have even been my second read through. But to be perfectly honest, before I started reading it again a couple of days ago the thing that I remembered most about The Great Gatsby was the name of the main characters and the fact that it talks about a green light in the distance on the last page. The first thing that I noticed reading it this time around was its readability. For a classic novel it is remarkably approachable and overall quick to get through. I think my total reading time for the whole book was just under 3 hrs. So if you don't have a lot of patience it's probably a good book to pick up.

The second was the degree to which it really is a truly tragic love story. I mean, I knew that Gatsby was obsessed with Daisy but I forgot what degree she loved him back and really the complexity of the connections between the characters. Fitzgerald really created, in a short time frame, fairly round characters that intrigue you even as their actions or words that repel you. It seems like a believable story. It's as if they live in the magical world of glamour and money that we all dream of inhabiting. Maybe thats why it pulls people in so much.

As much as I enjoyed re-reading the book, I am concerned about the movie. While I hope it's going to be great, I'm not sure how a book told primarily through internal thought and observation is going to translate onto the big screen. Dropping a couple of key lines, does not mean the movie is going to be true to tone and meaning of the book. It's definitely going to be a glamorous movie, but accurate is going to be a whole other problem. I have a feeling purists might protest, but hopefully it will be a good story in its own right even if its not a perfect fit.

Has anyone else been re-reading The Great Gatsby or starting for the first time? Let us know what you think!

Happy Reading!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with my experience reading these tales. I knew absolutely nothing about Sherlock Holmes going into reading this collection. At first when I started reading, I was a little confused by the format, having at first expected a novel. It didn't help that I was reading on my Iphone and didn't have a sense at most points of how far into the book I was. But the stories I was reading were pretty interesting and what I loved most of all, surprising. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was clearly a clever writer who had a remarkable ability to guide his reader through his stories at his own pace. He never accidentally lets a clue slip so the reader can easily guess as to who committed what crime and why. And considering the sheer amount of these stories, it is remarkable that he was able to create such a variety of scenarios with which to entertain the public.

Upon finishing this set of tales, I wanted to find out which exactly of the Sherlock tales I had read so far and how many others were left. I knew there were others, I had heard of the Hound of Baskervilles but I wasn't sure of the amount of additional titles. Now let me just say, clear and organized information about Sherlock Holmes is not easy to come by. Which to be fair to those who attempt to explain Sherlock Holmes, the problem is most of the stories are short tales that were released over time in a variety of publications that were then later complied into the volumes with the titles most people are more familiar with. These short stories were broken up with intermittent longer novels about the great detective. From my own detective work this is the overall breakdown and chronology of the tales:

Complete Sherlock Holmes. (source http://www.sherlockian.net/canon/index.html)

A Study in Scarlet (novel, 1887)

The Sign of the Four (novel, 1890)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A Scandal in Bohemia, 1891

The Red-headed League, 1891

A Case of Identity, 1891

The Boscombe Valley Mystery, 1891

The Five Orange Pips, 1891

The Man with the Twisted Lip, 1891

The Blue Carbuncle, 1892

The Speckled Band, 1892

The Engineer's Thumb, 1892

The Noble Bachelor, 1892

The Beryl Coronet, 1892

The Copper Beeches, 1892

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Silver Blaze, 1892

The Yellow Face, 1893

The Stock-broker's Clerk, 1893

The 'Gloria Scott', 1893

The Musgrave Ritual, 1893

The Reigate Squires, 1893

The Crooked Man, 1893

The Resident Patient, 1893

The Greek Interpreter, 1893

The Naval Treaty, 1893

The Final Problem, 1893

The Hound of the Baskervilles (novel, 1901-02)

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The Empty House, 1903

The Norwood Builder, 1903

The Dancing Men, 1903

The Solitary Cyclist, 1903

The Priory School, 1904

Black Peter, 1904

Charles Augustus Milverton, 1904

The Six Napoleons, 1904

The Three Students, 1904

The Golden Pince-Nez, 1904

The Missing Three-Quarter, 1904

The Abbey Grange, 1904

The Second Stain, 1904

The Valley of Fear (novel, 1914-15)

His Last Bow

Wisteria Lodge, 1908

The Cardboard Box, 1893

The Red Circle, 1911

The Bruce-Partington Plans, 1908

The Dying Detective, 1913

Lady Frances Carfax, 1911

The Devil's Foot, 1910

His Last Bow, 1917

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The Illustrious Client, 1924

The Blanched Soldier, 1926

The Mazarin Stone, 1921

The Three Gables, 1926

The Sussex Vampire, 1924

The Three Garridebs, 1924

Thor Bridge, 1922

The Creeping Man, 1923

The Lion's Mane, 1926

The Veiled Lodger, 1927

Shoscombe Old Place, 1927

The Retired Colourman, 1926