TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Colum McCann Wins National Book Award Colum McCann won for his novel “Let the Great World Spin,” while T.J. Stiles won in the nonfiction category. feeds.nytimes.com |
Holiday Books: Basketball There aren’t any major revelations in this account of the Bird-Magic era. Still, greatness commands our attention. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Children's Book, Death of a Salesman, Tales My Grandcat Told Me | Audiobook review Rachel Redford advises savouring AS Byatt's didactic set piecesThe Children's Book by AS Byatt Read by Nicolette McKenziewholestoryaudio.co.uk £39.13, 31hrs 30minsThe stories within stories of these two intertwined aesthete families between 1895 and 1919 are like an Edwardian Christmas pudding, fatly stuffed with fruits and flavours. Listening is best limited to 30 minutes a day so that the period detail and the didactic setpieces may be savoured.Death of a Salesman by Arthur MillerFull-cast dramatisationNaxos £10.99, 1hr 26minsAs Willy Loman, Thomas Mitchell heads the original 1950 Broadway cast in this universal "tragedy of a common man": facing the reality of his broken American dream, ruptured family relationships and his death. As pertinent now as 50 years ago.Tales My Grandcat Told Me: Folk Stories About Cats From Around the World by Nick McCartyRead by Sean Barrettcrimsoncats.co.uk £9.99, 1hr 20minsIf you have a cat lover on your gift list, look no further than these eight folk tales from around the world, including Tibet, Romania and Japan. They're intriguing stories that show claws as well as silky coats. Sean Barrett's voice is as soothing as a contented purr. Rachel Redfordguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
French authors locked in plagiarism row Two years after Camille Laurens first accused Marie Darrieusecq of 'psychological plagiarism' both authors publish new books drawing on the quarrelA blistering row has reignited between leading French novelists Marie Darrieussecq and Camille Laurens over a two-year-old accusation of literary plagiarism.The two writers both publish books this month drawing on the quarrel, which kicked off in 2007 after Laurens accused Darrieussecq of "psychological plagiarism" in her novel Tom est mort (Tom is Dead). Darrieussecq's novel was about the accidental death of a four-year-old, related by his mother 10 years later; Laurens said it contained echoes of her 1995 memoir Phillippe, about the death of her own son. "I had the feeling, in reading it, that Tom est Mort had been written in my room, with [her] arse on my chair or sprawling in my bed of grief," Laurens wrote at the time. She was subsequently dropped by the editor the two authors shared.Now Darrieussecq has opened the floodgates again, last week publishing a study of writers accused of plagiarism and telling French press in fiery terms about the rage she felt at Laurens's accusation – an attempt, she said to "symbolically assassinate" her. For her part, Laurens publishes a novel this week, Romance nerveuse (Nervous Romance), a story about an author who is dropped by her editor after accusing a rival of plagiarism, and then finds it difficult to continue writing."There is a moment when you have to get angry in order to survive. I wrote this book as a kind of therapy and to help future writers who are accused," Darrieussecq told L'Express. The book, Rapport de police: Accusations de plagiat et autres modes de surveillance de la fiction (Police Report: Accusations of Plagiarism and other modes of fiction surveillance), "talk[s]" about people who commit suicide because of this kind of accusation" she said to Le Nouvel Observateur. "Fortunately, I have strong nerves."Darrieusecq said she had found that writers throughout history, from Émile Zola to Daphne du Maurier, had suffered similar attacks. "I am in a huge rage, and I feel that my honour as a writer has been maligned," she told L'Express. "This is the first time in my life that I have written a book without any pleasure."Although Darrieussecq wasn't interested in plagiarism, she felt "obliged" to write the book as she had been accused twice of plagiarism – the first time was in 1998 by last year's Goncourt prize winner Marie NDiaye. "Slander tends to feed on itself," she told Le Nouvel Observateur. "I have discovered that literature is a very unwelcoming place."PublishingFranceAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Fifty books to change the world From Rachel Caron's Silent Spring, to provocative books on population, leaders in sustainability reveal their essential readingSee the full list and tell us what your favourite 'green book' isFrom an elegy to natural land to a tirade against fast food, a list of the "top" sustainability books is aiming to give a little romance and verve to a category sometimes seen as worthy but dull.The 50 titles range from warnings of destruction - Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and George Monbiot's Heat - to a wide variety of suggested solutions. Some look for understanding in history - Jared Diamond's Collapse – others in philosophy – EF Schumacher's Small is Beautiful. But many focus on the capitalist economy, from Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965 to Nicholas Stern's influential report, The Economics of Climate Change, in 2007.The improvements put forward range from modelling the economy on nature - Janine M Benyus's Biomimicry - to using the current economic system to protect the natural world: Jonathon Porritt's Capitalism As If the World Matters.On the way, The Top 50 Sustainability Books pamphlet, published by the University of Cambridge's Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL), tracks different numerous trends in thinking, from Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb to John Elkington's Cannibals With Forks, which argues for a triple bottom-line in business that puts environment and social equality on an equal footing with profit. The growth in concern about climate change is prominent, while Elizabeth C Economy's focuses on China in The River Runs Black.In her introduction, CPSL director Polly Courtice says the list - chosen by their predominantly corporate alumni - is intended be "a collection of some of the world's best analyses of the global social, environmental and ethical challenges we face and the creative solutions needed to tackle them."Inevitably, with any attempt to define a "best of" list, there will be criticisms. Most obviously the titles appear to reflect the alumni - dominated by men from rich northern hemisphere countries with just ten women appearing among 61 authors. Also the selected books mostly advocate reforming or changing the current system, to the exclusion of more imaginative offerings, Voltaire's Candide, for example.Others might argue the list is too modern, with nothing older than Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac in 1949, and no Thomas Malthus or Charles Darwin or that it is too dry, preferring commission reports to, say, the academic passion of EO Wilson or the Romantic poets.Tom Burke, the veteran environmentalist, argues there are a number of important books missing, such as the Only One Earth by Barbara Ward and Renee Dubos. "Others that really mattered are The Global 2000 report, commissioned by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, which makes chilling reading when you realise how much we already understood then," he said. "Ivan Illich is missing completely and was better than Schumacher, so is Barry Commoner who really put technology into the equations for the first time. I would also have included the Blueprint for Survival which really kicked off the whole process of thinking about sustainable development. Jonathan Schell's 'The Fate of the Earth', describing the consequences of nuclear war, should also be on the list, not the least because it was written by someone who could write."But the Skeptical Environmentalist, the critical book by Bjorn Lomborg should "definitely not" be on the list, said Burke. "It is a confidence trick in which none of what he says stands up to informed examination."The full list of Top 50 Sustainability Books.Ethical and green livingUniversity of CambridgeJuliette Jowitguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |