Litblog Co-Op

Litblog Co-Op is a literary blog which features articles, reviews, news, and information designed to get attention for contemporary fiction titles normally ignored by the mainstream press. They are also starting a book club called Read This! to promote awareness of lesser known titles. Members will nominate titles and on May 15th a book title will be announced, with reviews to follow. Readers of Litblog will have a chance to submit comments...
{Note: I found this bit over on Steven Cohen's Library Stuff }

book I forgot

My friend Darlene and I were having dinner and I was trying to think of this book: Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson...a genuinely great novel . I originally listened to this on tape and the narrator was outstanding. Effie and her mother, Nora, tell each stories -- many involving ghosts and the pull of Scottish history on today's Scots. Effie tries to find out who her father is and who she herself is, while navigating her way into adulthood. Clever, engrossing and humorous in all the right places. Her new one is Case Histories, also involving families, which I was able to pick up at ALA, but never managed to read! I think I will shift it to the top of the reading pile...

literary moms

Found this in my LII email newsletter today -- called Literary Mama: A Literary Magazine for the Maternally Inclined, an "...online literary magazine features writing by mother writers about the complexities and many faces of motherhood..."

women in the suburbs

The Guardian interviews Hilary Mantel and her new book featuring psychics and their infiltrataion infiltration into middle-class suburban England...

favorite author news

Andrea Levy is interviewed over at Salon.com...

Orange Prize for Fiction...

The Orange Prize has three American contenders! Read the shortlist of finalists for 2005...

back to basics

Apparently religious persecution was a good thing...In his recent book, George Weigel tells us why America and Europe should get back to their Christian roots and forget about secularism.(Arts & Letter Daily)

radio censorship

I had often thought of volunteering to read for the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service for the Blind when I went to graduate school in Buffalo. Now they have come under the censor's careful watch after an incident earlier this year. Channel 7 in Buffalo carried the reading service over a secondary audio feed for its blind and visually impaired customers, but earlier this year after a listener complained about a "naughty" word being read during a reading of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, Channel 7 pulled the service during certain hours. Guess that means they aren't going to be reading Catcher in the Rye anytime soon...

yummy...

There have been many times I "inhaled" a book, but I've never eaten one! Apparently Books2Eat is an International Edible Book Festival where edible book art is made and enjoyed. Bon Appetit!

improved NY Times?

Ever want to know what bloggers are saying about articles in the NY Times? Now you can! The Annotated New York Times will let you track blog citations to feature articles in the NY Times...cool!

makin' me hungry!

I just discovered the Association of Food Journalists' website through a recommendation of LII. I have always wanted to read more food criticism, so maybe I will check out their 2004 award winners in "excellence in reporting, writing, and photography in all media, and newspaper food section design and content". Mmmm good!

trouble with the church...

Jon Krakauer is a pretty harmless outdoor adventure writer, but apparently he has problems with the Mormon Church...

new review site...

Well, its not technically a new book review site, but its new to me! Reviews of Books is comprehensive, has lots of reviews to recent contemporary literary fiction, and is comprised of links to sources of published reviews, not reader reviews. Kudos!

Pulitzer Prizes announced...

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other prizes went to winners in drama, poetry, nonfiction, history and biography...

feminist

Andrea Dworkin, radical feminist and writer, has died at the age of 58 from unknown causes...

Kiriyama book prize

The 2005 winners of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize have been announced...

poetry alert

April is National Poetry Month! Start writing those sonnets...

crime fiction

Crime fans need to check this out! University at Buffalo has a database called Gumshoes, Sleuths & Snoopers: a crime fiction content database based on the George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection which provides detailed content information for the detective and mystery novels in UB's pulp fiction collection.

Saul Bellow obituary

Saul Bellow, Nobel Laureate and prolific novelist of contemporary society, has died at age 89....

Jane, Jane, Jane...

I really want to admire this woman, but it is so hard! Jane Fonda tells all in her self-absorbed memoir...

Rwanda

Ever since viewing "Hotel Rwanda" back in February, I can't get this film out of my mind. I picked up Philip Gourevitch's 1998 nonfiction work, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: stories from Rwanda, and have not been able to put it down. It is incomprehensible to me that the world turned such a blind eye to the carnage and massacre that went on in that small African country in 1994. It amazes me that there are people like Paul Rusesabagina existing in such utter chaos and triumphing over such lack of humanity. He is featured in Gourevitch's work, which outlines the history of the conflict between the two ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, and tells the story of those who fought and those who survived. Powerful...

down and dirty

Turns out Charlotte Bronte was a sex-obsessed genius...

Commonwealth Prize...

Whoo hoo! Andrea Levy won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Small Island...