As a bit of change of pace I’ve browsed the web and found some interesting articles for you.
Bookseller YA book prize goes to feminist dystopia I was interested by this headline and even more intrigued by the article. The book is about girls in boarding school vying for the chance to be chosen by a boy for his bride to look after him and have his babies until such time as she’s not capable any more. I wondered what this has to do with feminism until I came to this sentence
But, in the final year, it all starts to unravel.
and I started to be interested. All very well, but the article gives no more details so I hope it really is feminist literature.
Harper Lee’s Abandoned True-Crime Novel
Anything Harper Lee is bound to catch my eye at the moment and I found this one rivetting, totally rivetting. Lee is approached to write a novel about a man who insures family members then kills them and gets away with it. Apparently she joins the family for some time, does lots of research, takes the files away with her, starts writing it and then strings the family along finally completely forgetting about them. It’s a wonderful story waiting for an author to write it.
Memphis Publisher Sues Salinger Estate
Another author who caught my eye. Having recently read Salinger’s most interesting novel The Catcher in the Rye it became a must read and I found it less salacious and a case of DRM.
One writer’s view of how writing is challenging.
Matt Sumell’s novel-in-stories Making Nice is one of the funniest (and best) books of the year, featuring the self-destructive but well-meaning Alby–a “loser,” according to his sister. Here, Sumell talks about the agonizing process of writing, pushing through the pain, and why it still remains necessary.
Sumell talks, in part, about how autobiographical a book can be.
Asking whether Amazon is friend or foe is a simple question that is complicated to answer
Another fascinating article about Amazon. I thought I’d written enough about them but this one looks to be reasonably balanced. It talks about how Amazon made the ebook market. Certainly, it’s always taken a big company to start something new as you have to have the deep pockets necessary to take the plunge and start a brand new project no-one’s thought of before, or in this case, make it big.
The comments make interesting reading and kudos to you if you make it all the way through to the end of them.