World book night- 5/3/2011

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World book night- 5/3/2011

Tämä viestiketju on "uinuva" —viimeisin viesti on vanhempi kuin 90 päivää. Ryhmä "virkoaa", kun lähetät vastauksen.

1wonderlake
joulukuu 3, 2010, 7:37 am

Saw something about this on the news last night. Publishers have decided to give away 1,000,000 books free next year- from a list of 25 titles. I believe readers choose a title from the list they are passionate about, receive a small number of the book and are then free to distribute how they choose ?

At any rate, it's another "list" for me to attempt to conquer

3andyl
joulukuu 3, 2010, 9:34 am

Hmm - "The final selection offers a wide array of outstanding books encompassing all types of fiction be it historical, literary, crime and commercial as well as poetry, memoir and young adult."

Well no horror at all. No plain in-genre adult SF/Fantasy either. Northern Lights is YA fantasy and Cloud Atlas has a SFnal section but is published at literary fiction.

Generally I think it is an alright list - thrillers and crime novels in there as well as the "usual suspects". However it is too safe - Northern Lights and The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time have surely already achieved market saturation.

4Pedrolina
joulukuu 3, 2010, 9:52 am

There was a section about this on the Culture show last night covering how they chose the books. They wanted most of the books to be from British authors who were still alive, and they wanted the books to have mass market appeal to encourage people who don't read to get started. I think that's where choices like the two mentioned above come in - easy to read, engaging stories that lots of people have already enjoyed and raved about.
A million books to give away is an amazing challenge - something I definitely want to get involved in!

5andyl
joulukuu 3, 2010, 10:06 am

A third of them are not from British or Irish Authors.

As for mass market appeal - romance, fantasy/SF and crime/thriller are the big three genres for mass market appeal. Crime/thrillers are well catered for in the list. The other two not so much - I don't read the romance genre so don't know how much some of the literary and mainstream novels will meet the needs of people who prefer that genre.

My point was more with their statement about "all types of fiction".

I do feel however they have been a little too safe in a couple of the picks.

6Grammath
joulukuu 4, 2010, 7:43 am

The idea is brave and slightly bonkers, a little like Byng's Canongate imprint who impressively only have one book on the list of potential giveaways (Life of Pi).

Will Gompertz BBC blog post does indicate some reservations, not least from booksellers, who are already struggling to sell these titles when being squeezed by supermarkets, online booksellers and, increasingly, ebook downloads.

In addtion, there's already a substantial source of free books which local councils are obliged to offer but are being forced to cut back on. They're called libraries, and they have more than 25 titles in them. At least, at the moment they do.

It is notable that the committee choosing the books was dominated by publishers and media commentators but contained only one librarian. An intiative to get people to support their public libraries might have been nobler, but then, as a library school student, perhaps I would say that.

I don't know if it is necessary to do the giveaways in person. I wonder if it would be possible to do it Bookcrossing style i.e. just leave them at bus stops or places like that.

I am thinking of applying but my problem is there's nothing on the list I feel sufficiently passionate about to want to thrust it into people's hands or even leave it anonymously on tube trains. The list lacks the American big hitters that I'm partial to when choosing my own reading. Byng indicated on the Culture Show piece one of the objectives when selecting the list was to prioritize living British writers (although no Ian McEwan, Martin Amis etc.), which I suppose it explains it and also the exclusion of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, one book I would unhestiatingly urge anyone to read.

What would have been really good, but I suppose rather impractical, would be for people to apply to give away a book of their choosing and explain why they wanted to do so rather than restrict it to a list of 25 books, the majority of which are already best sellers.

I know that the above perhaps sounds sceptical, but anything that fosters a love of reading is alright by me so ultimately I have to back the initiative.

The list of titles, for those considering it is:

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories (Black Swan)
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin (Virago)
Alan Bennett - A Life Like Other People’s (Faber/Profile)
John Le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (Penguin)
Lee Child - Killing Floor (Bantam)
Carol Ann Duffy - The World’s Wife (Picador)
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage)
Seamus Heaney - Selected Poems (Faber)
Marian Keyes - Rachel’s Holiday (Poolbeg/Penguin)
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Penguin)
Ben Macintyre - Agent Zigzag (Bloomsbury)
Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera (Penguin)
Yann Martel - Life of Pi (Canongate)
Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards (Fourth Estate)
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance (Faber)
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas (Sceptre)
Toni Morrison - Beloved (Vintage)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate)
David Nicholls - One Day (Hodder)
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights (Scholastic)
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage)
C J Sansom - Dissolution (Pan)
Nigel Slater - Toast (Fourth Estate)
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin)
Sarah Waters - Fingersmith (Virago)

7Grammath
tammikuu 5, 2011, 11:10 am

I did take the plunge and have applied to give away 48 copies of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.

Only 20,000 sets of books are being given away so applying doesn't guarantee you'll be able to get a free book off me on 5th March.

8ed.pendragon
Muokkaaja: tammikuu 21, 2011, 3:26 pm

OK, I seem to have killed off at least three threads in recent Brits posts, so another one can't hurt, can it?

The BBC has been pushing World Book Night in recent days. Presumably this is an attempt to encourage viewers to stop watching their programmes and read books instead?

I see that one of the featured books, Toast by Nigel Slater, was dramatised on the box the other night. Coinicidence? I think we should be told... Incidentally, this seems to be the only title (and the only author) without a Touchstone link in Grammath's useful list, and doesn't appear in the lists on the right.

9dtw42
tammikuu 21, 2011, 3:44 pm

... although you now seem to have managed to add "Making Toast" by Roger Rosenblatt, instead. Dontcha just love touchstones? Let's try again: Toast by Nigel Slater

10ed.pendragon
tammikuu 23, 2011, 9:12 am

#9: Thanks! How did you do that?

11xtofersdad
Muokkaaja: helmikuu 1, 2011, 9:31 am

Just been informed that I'm going to be giving away 48 copies of Agent Zig Zag by Ben Macintyre. Not the one I wanted (which was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time), but I'll be pleased to be doing my bit.

12dtw42
Muokkaaja: helmikuu 3, 2011, 10:39 am

#10: Manually force the touchstone to a particular book or author: imagine the parens here replaced by square brackets in what you'd actually type:

(123138:Toast) by ((slaternigel:Nigel Slater))

...where 123138 is the work number (accessible from the url on the work page for the right book), and slaternigel is the equivalent code accessible from the author page for the right author.

The bits after the colon are just what you want the text of the link to show.

Did that make sense?

13alaudacorax
huhtikuu 19, 2011, 9:33 am

Has anyone spotted this business about the letter of complaint about the BBC's actual coverage of World Book Night - http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/news/2011/One-Genre-to-bring-them-all-and-in... (scroll down to the 'Update: 28th March' entry).

This is the only mention of a BBC 'defence' that I've managed to find so far - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13128769

Basically, the BBC is being accused of snobbery towards any genres other than 'literary fiction'. I have to admit that I didn't actually watch the programme/programmes in question (I preferred to read something, probably), but I'm rather sorry I didn't now - sounds like the kind of controversy I might enjoy.

14ed.pendragon
huhtikuu 19, 2011, 4:17 pm

> 12
Sorry to be late acknowledging your helpful advice. So I'll try that now 123138 by slaternigel and hope that that works!

15ed.pendragon
Muokkaaja: huhtikuu 19, 2011, 4:21 pm

Nope. Perhaps this: 123138:Toast by slaternigel:Nigel Slater

Nope. Help...

16ed.pendragon
huhtikuu 19, 2011, 4:20 pm

Viestin kirjoittaja on poistanut viestin.

17abbottthomas
huhtikuu 19, 2011, 5:30 pm

Toast

You need two colons between code and title rather than one.

18dtw42
huhtikuu 19, 2011, 6:24 pm

Oops. What the abbott said :^)

I did mean that in my description, but was so caught up in parentheses that I didn't pay enough attention to my colons.

19ed.pendragon
huhtikuu 20, 2011, 7:46 am

> 17/18
Thank you both: Toast There, did it!

20oldstick
huhtikuu 21, 2011, 9:48 am

I was given a copy of Northern Lights by Philip Pullman on World Book day - not my usual fare at all, but I've read all the library books I had out so I tried it. So far I am still with it but I can see myself creeping off to a charity shop over Easter for something else. LT is teaching me to try books I wouldn't normally choose - great stuff! oldstick.

21AlanPoulter
Muokkaaja: huhtikuu 23, 2011, 9:03 am

I watched WBN on the assumption that it was about opening up reading. Apart from a few new authors getting the spotlight, what I saw was a sales pitch for two genres (crime and romance) and a handful of bestselling authors like Dick Francis. A couple of the 'person in the street' interviewees did mention that their lives were being changed by technology, but these possible hooks into science fiction were ignored. I am glad to see that a group of UK science fiction authors have responded to this deliberate shunning of the genre.

22ed.pendragon
huhtikuu 23, 2011, 5:17 pm

The Bookseller has published this response from the BBC: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/bbc-defends-genre-fiction-coverage.html-0

23alaudacorax
Muokkaaja: huhtikuu 24, 2011, 4:32 pm

#22 - BBC responses to such things are getting to sound more and more like the kind of woffle politicians put out.

I pretty much gave up on the telly side of BBC some years ago when someone attacked them for lack of quality drama and one of their bigwigs, in reply, pointed to Eastenders. It worried me that I couldn't figure out whether he regarded the viewers with contempt and thought they wouldn't be able to tell the difference or he simply didn't know the difference himself.

This next bit is a little tongue in cheek, but nobody seems to note that BBC is actually the opposition - the last thing they want is people switching off their tellies and settling down of an evening to a good book.

24ed.pendragon
huhtikuu 24, 2011, 3:23 pm

> 23
I accept the tongue-in-cheek bit, rankamateur; I see where you're coming from. However, while I'm not a BBC brown-noser (yes, I too get irritated with those bland BBC spokesperson statements, trying to defend the indefensible) I am a great fan of what it has accomplished and continues to do, especially in the field of culture and public education. (You know when it's doing good things when Murdoch Jr has a go at its "monopoly".)

25AlanPoulter
toukokuu 26, 2011, 2:50 pm

>22 ed.pendragon:

The BBC has just broadcast a short promo in The Culture Show on the SF exhibition at the BL. Talking heads were China Mieville and Kim Newman. Ok but nothing earth shaking. I would much rather this had been done on World Book Night, rather than on a nondescript Wednesday.

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