Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category
by Lindsay on May 16th, 2012
Verdict: stick
If writer Lesego Rampolokeng was given to overt off-stage narcissism, he would probably compare himself to a Johnny Dyani bassline. In a country in which populist guitarist Jimmy Dludlu just took a South African Music Award for best jazz album, Rampolokeng’s increasing obscurity is nothing if not symbolic.
In 2007 the journal Chimurenga put out its 11th issue, Conversations with Poets Who Refuse to Speak. Had that volume been released this year, Rampolokeng would have featured in its pages, reiterating his “difficulty” with being thought of as a “performance poet” while throwing in some caustic humour about bards who sell petrol and body lotion.
Book Details
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by Sophy on May 15th, 2012
The Times:
What are you reading?
This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
In a nutshell?
A teenage girl sends a sexually explicit video to a boy she fancies. He forwards it and it goes viral. The ripple effects are devastatingly credible.
Why read it?
I’m interested in the invasive power of social media. Privacy seems an outdated concept.
Book details
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by Ben - Editor on May 14th, 2012
Not pictured: the inimitable Tymon Smith, who took the snap, and whose tweets were essential to the 2012 FLF Books LIVE project
The Books LIVE team had a great weekend, livetweeting the 6th annual Franschhoek Literary Festival. Thanks to all who tuned in – we’ll resume our regular coverage of all things SA Lit tomorrow morning.
Congratulations to Jenny Hobbs and her organising team – the festival was another smashing success!
For those who weren’t able to follow all the literary action in Franschhoek, don’t miss the FLF blog, chock full of the top tweets from dozens and dozens of sessions.
And here are two important announcements that you’ll not want to miss:
From me to my team: thanks for your professionalism and dedication – terrific work!
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by Luso on May 9th, 2012
Verdict: stick
Come Again? is, I take it, the follow-up to The Year in Quotes 2010, as it also quotes “from the famous, the infamous and the ordinary”, but on mostly 2011 topics.The Year in Quotes 2010 was very dynamic, its content shocking, relevant, controversial, insightful and a lot of the time humorous. It is because of these elements that I enjoyed reading it so much and was eager to read Come Again? What awaited me was subtle yet tangible vagary that was apparent from the disgruntled introduction.
Book Details
- Come Again? Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous and the Ordinary edited by Andrew Donaldson and Mandy Roussouw
EAN: 9780795703355
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
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by Carolyn on May 3rd, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel met ‘n mate van kritiek
Montaigne was die eerste wat sy skryfsels “essais” genoem het en daarmee het hy ’n genre getipeer wat die mensdom met die loop van eeue groot plesier verskaf het.
Wat hy in sy inleiding geskryf het, kan net so wel oor Philip de Vos se versameling blog-inskrywings, ’n nuwe lid van die ingeteelde familie, gesê word: “Ek wil myself aan u toon sonder opsmuk of aanstellerigheid, eenvoudig en natuurlik soos ek is. Want dit is eintlik maar myself wat ek hier uitbeeld.
Boekbesonderhede
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by Carolyn on Apr 25th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Menige leser is dalk op Facebook bevriend met prof. Jonathan Jansen of volg hom op Twitter waar sy “briewe aan my kinders” vir talle soos daaglikse brood geword het.
Nou is sy twiets en Facebook-statusse ook in boekvorm beskikbaar as Briewe aan my kinders: Twiets wat jou laat dink én Letters to My Children: Tweets to Make You Think.
Boekbesonderhede
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by Ben - Editor on Apr 23rd, 2012
Alert! It’s World Book and Copyright Day!
In most parts of said world, at least. The UK and Ireland had their World Book Day last month already. You’d think that, as the main-bits-of-the-world World Book Day is celebrated, in part, because of Shakespeare’s birthday (and deathday for that matter – though there was the matter of a switch of calendars between the first April 23rd and the second), the Brits would be out banging pots and blowing fifes for books today. But it’s not to be – and so we in the world of the printed word await the great reconciliation of April twenty-thirders and first-Thursday-in-Marchers for yet another long, cold year.
(There’s also a World Book Night now – but that’s another matter.)
But hark, it’s also Books LIVE’s birthday today. Bang some pots and blow some fifes, hooray!
As BOOK SA, we would be turning five years old today; as the rejuvenated Books LIVE, we’re celebrating our fifth and our first. Relive the key BOOK SA / Books LIVE natal milestones here:
Thanks to all who’ve made BOOK SA / Books LIVE what it is today – especially all the publishers and writers who’ve supported us through our growing pains for what is officially half a decade now. You’re the best!
Let’s celebrate with the Beatles:
More on this year’s World Book Day from the UN:
23 April is a symbolic date for world literature for on this date in 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, Haldor K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
And even more from UNESCO:
The year 2012 also marks the 80th anniversary of the Index Translationum. This international bibliography of translation provides a unique tool for the monitoring of translation flows in the world. UNESCO will celebrate this anniversary by organizing a debate on this instrument. This meeting, which will take place at UNESCO Headquarters on 23 April 2012, will bring together researchers and users of the Index Translationum as well as specialists in the field of translation and book markets.
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by Carolyn on Apr 20th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Hierdie skrywer sal ’n mens op jou oudag laat begin twiet, al is dit net om hom op Twitter te kan volg – al agter die suurstof aan.
Anne Frank het in haar dagboek geskryf: “Hoe wonderlik is dit dat niemand ’n enkele oomblik hoef te wag om van die wêreld ’n beter plek te maak nie.”
Boekbesonderhede
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by wombatsamwilson on Apr 11th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
A writer adept at playing with words can be very punny indeed, and Kobus Galloway is just such a person.
What sets him apart from his competition is that he is also an excellent cartoonist, and can support punchlines by creating the rest of the joke in an image.
Book Details
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by Sophy on Mar 19th, 2012
By Kate Sidley for the Sunday Times:
Alison Lowry is chief executive officer of Penguin Books South Africa.
At the moment I am captivated by Joan Didion’s exquisitely layered and melancholy Blue Nights, which is an account of her daughter Quintana Roo’s life and her death. I suppose it is a heartbreaking sequel, in a way, to her Year of Magical Thinking – probably the only book on grieving that has made any sense to me.
Alongside Joan, I’m loving Courtney Sullivan’s Maine, a big, sweeping, bittersweet family novel with intelligence and sharp claws, and I am reading, for the second time, Anna Funder’s All That I Am.
She won the Samuel Johnson Prize for the brilliant Stasiland, and this new book, a novel, is a reconstruction of the small but heroic resistance movement led by Ernst Toller against Hitler as he rose to power.
I discovered James Lee Burke quite late in life, so I am working my way through his backlist, without yet tiring of Dave Robicheaux and his disreputable sidekick.
Unpublished, but look out for it later this year, is Thinking Up A Hurricane, a memoir about a family from Benoni navigating the world in a 17-ton steel yacht.
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Apr
