TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Taiwan Firm Positioned for E-Reader Takeoff Prime View International already produces displays for the most popular e-readers. By the end of the year, it will own the company that produces the “ink” for them. feeds.nytimes.com |
Should serial novels be continued? Out of sync with print-based reading habits, this form is nonetheless perfectly in tune with the webEver since a suburban adolescence that was organised around a daily race home from school to devour a self-rationed chapter or two of Armistead Maupin's Tales Of The City, I have been intrigued by the serial novel. So in September this year, I started to write one. Called Happiness Is An Option, after a 1999 Pet Shop Boys album track, it was inspired by George Bernard Shaw's line, "A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it; it would be hell on earth". So far, the writing process has brimmed with discoveries: the format's restrictions (character and plot can't be reworked) are balanced by its fluidity: storylines can ebb and flow, feedback from readers can be incorporated (in my case, this led to protagonist Archie's estranged girlfriend Rose arriving two chapters early). And there's the responsibility to the growing readership (the first six episodes were published on Time Out) which is now in its hundreds.The potted history of the serial novel is well-documented, dating back to The Thousand and One Nights, with its frame of vizier's daughter Scheherazade narrating hook-laden stories to avoid execution by King Shahryar. Its heyday was the 19th century, with the Charles Dickens-founded periodical, All the Year Round, publishing novels of his, including Great Expectations, and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, at the same time as Sherlock Holmes was taking his first cases in The Strand magazine (which had a circulation of 500,000). Nowadays newspapers and journals rarely serialise novels, but the format lives on in Japanese manga, as well as the dank online caves of the horror, SF and occult genres, pioneered by Stephen King's "e-novel", The Plant, published in 2000 (which remains unfinished). So does the serial novel in 2009 feel anachronistic, or thoroughly modern – a way of reading literature facilitated by technology? Jenny Parrott, editorial director of Little, Brown and Abacus thinks it's problematic. "I wonder whether the biggest challenge facing us all lies in trying to capture and keep people's attention. Investing time in reading (and remembering) fiction metered out to us in regular doses might now seem a bigger ask than many of us are prepared to give. And while I'm sure many writers would love to have a go at writing in a serial form, I'm just not convinced that they would be matched by as many readers."Chinese-Australian author Lynda Ng, who wrote the successful 12-part serial Sydney Shards, took these parameters as a challenge. "While the online medium is full of potential for fiction writers and readers, I wasn't sure if it was the place people go to read fiction. So from the start I wanted to experiment with its potential to engage the reader with greater visual and interactive techniques than traditional print. We designed a website with a distinctive style, and links to show readers the relationship between the fictional story and real-life events."There are signs, too, that in mainstream media the tide is turning. Last year Alexander McCall Smith – apparently "put up to it" at a party by Armistead Maupin – invited Telegraph readers to sign up for a free, 100-day online serialisation of his Corduroy Mansions novel (published by Little, Brown) which has now spawned a daily sequel, The Dog Who Came In From The Cold. Wannabe authors can, at least, be encouraged by the fact that literary agents aren't against the format. Patrick Walsh of Conville And Walsh believes that serial fiction has a unique place today: "The episodic novel is the perfect form for pleasurably delayed gratification. With the internet replacing so many newspapers and magazines, serial fiction should find a natural home on the web." So people: let's bring back the quality serial novel. What are your favourites, both on and offline?FictionStephen Emmsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
1984 | Theatre review BAC, LondonEveryone's a puppet in Blind Summit's fiendishly clever version of Orwell's nightmarish novel, dancing to the tune of Big Brother in the totalitarian state of Oceania where the past is constantly rewritten to suit the ruling party. But not state workers Winston and Julia, who, in embarking on a secret love affair, attempt to defy the all-seeing state that demands total loyalty and seeks to control people's actions, thoughts and even feelings.Blind Summit's object manipulation embraces not just puppetry in a traditional sense – playing wonderfully with perspective as a tiny teddy bear-clutching child is killed by a bomb – but also in the way it uses the human body itself.1984 is often described as a satire, but it's not a very funny one; here Blind Summit bring a savage comic edge to the proceedings. In the world of double-think and doublespeak, this is double theatre, a show within a show, told by an unreliable chorus of Brechtian-style narrators who are acting out the story of the "thought criminal and his whore".It's beautifully done, from the tiny moments when they play the flames under a pan of coffee, to a wittily inspired acting out of the contents of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism using a sheet and signs. Every member of the chorus is sharply defined, and Simon Scardifield as Winston and Julia Innocenti as Julia bring warmth and a real sense of two people clinging desperately to what it means to be human.This is a wonderful piece of work, albeit too long and in need of some editing, and on occasion a wee bit too pleased with its own virtuosity, but nonetheless brilliantly inventive and true to Orwell's vision.Rating: 4/5TheatreGeorge OrwellLyn Gardnerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The year ahead: books McEwan, Carey and Amis look set to make it a bumper year for the menIf 2009 was the year of female big hitters – with Hilary Mantel, Alice Munro and Herta Müller all prize winners – 2010 looks set to bring the men back to centre court. Ian McEwan and Peter Carey both publish new novels – a replay of the 2001 Booker, perhaps, when Carey pipped McEwan to the laurels.In a strong February line-up, Martin Amis makes a return to fiction with the already much discussed The Pregnant Widow. Spring also brings new novels from Roddy Doyle, David Mitchell, Alan Warner, Jonathan Coe, Richard Powers and Don DeLillo. But the men won't be stealing all the limelight: there will be new fiction from Helen Dunmore, Andrea Levy and Rose Tremain too.At last year's Frankfurt book fair the biggest excitement was over Nelson Mandela's papers, which will be published this autumn. In the meantime there is Let Freedom Reign, an analysis of the great man's oratory by Henry Russell, who did the same for Barack Obama last year. And in June, David James Smith looks at the realities of life as an outlawed activist in The Young Mandela.Publishers appear to be playing their cards close to their chests in the run-up to the general election, with only a thin scattering of political titles announced. The credit crunch still produces the goods, though, with John Lanchester making an early strike in January with Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, as well as another intervention by Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank.Finally, the human side of environmental catastrophe is detailed by Dave Eggers in Zeitoun, an intimate account of a Syrian-born painter and decorator in New Orleans who took to a canoe to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, only to be arrested and imprisoned without charge: documentary journalism at its most persuasive.Books talkBooker prizeMartin AmisRoddy DoyleDavid MitchellJonathan CoeDon DeLilloNelson MandelaClaire Armitsteadguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Where Baby Orwell Lived The literary pilgrimage is a timeworn pursuit. But for the effort, a place of work or even a place of death generally beat a place of birth. feeds.nytimes.com |