So very sad. RIP
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/1212212960/paul-auster-dead
So very sad. RIP
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/1212212960/paul-auster-dead
On the Booker long list!
Here‘s the link https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2024
Just re-read this after watching the Korean film adaptation ( The Handmaiden) of the book. Surprisingly faithful to the book and very lush, atmospheric, and erotic.
Scoop! Martin Scorsese and the author are executive producers for the American film version! Will star Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon.) should be awesome. Link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/lily-gladstone-to-star-in-me...
Happy New Year! It's the year of the dragon in the Asian calendar. Time to balance, and make good trouble.
Stupendously glorious both in style, story, and characters! I was feeling so stressed by doom scrolling but this gave hope that individuals and community can make good trouble! We‘re in this together.
This book is on fire. For everyone who watches movies and TV: Brings clear analysis and reporting on issues (inclusivity, diversity, economics, wage gaps, privilege, creativity, AI) impacting not just Hollywood but society overall. This is why the strikes by the writers, directors, and actors this year are so important. Disclaimer: I‘m a freelancer on movie/series. Photo: on location, Kyoto.
Booker prize winner! 🥇https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/26/booker-prize-2023-prophet-song-paul-lynch-novel-wins?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Ready to bet on the Booker prize winner? 🥇
https://lithub.com/here-are-the-bookies-odds-for-the-2023-booker-prize/
I love dipping into the dictionary 😎❣️🌟
10 episodes coming your way next February! Proud to have been a tiny cog in a huge production engine for the show, so hope you don‘t mind the shout out😎🌟❣️
For all the librarians under siege and all of us. Truffaut directing Fahrenheit 451.
Here‘s a list of French novels in translation for stacking!
https://francetoday.com/learn/books/read-like-the-french-11-french-best-sellers-...
Linguists! Translators, interpreters, transcribers have their detecting skills tested in this list. Used to work interpreting and translating so got the feels. Looking forward to reading😎. https://crimereads.com/crime-novels-brooke-robinson/
Hey now, opening on Broadway March 2024!
https://deadline.com/2023/09/water-for-elephants-broadway-opening-1235543557/
Every book in the long list added to my TBR!
Take a look: https://centerforfiction.org/book-recs/2023-first-novel-prize/
A bit apprehensive to start this YA; wouldn't have been able to bear a cliche ridden story, or cringe inducing over-explanation of Japanese words/customs as part of the narrative or, worse: footnotes. It took me over 24 hours to get home after the 3/11 earthquake/tsunami. This is an astounding, magical realist philosophical coming of age story set after the tragedy as Sora navigates friendship, love, grief, and time.
RIP. An appreciation of the author, killed in Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/03/novelist-andrey-kurkov-on-victoria...
Delicious anticipation after reading the first couple of pages so set myself up with drinks, snacks, and dove into old time Hollywood where a young queer Chinese woman falls accidentally into acting and a studio contract. Studios were fiefdoms back then, and this vision of supernatural Hollywood has demon studio heads, real consequences for failure; where stardom means immortality and power retreats when faced with acting artistry.
Anything Ann Leckie writes, I read! So much to pay attention to: intricate interstellar politics, internecine conflict, and shaking up of assumptions of identity. I confess sometimes I start with an idea of who/what a character presents as only to keep revising until it really doesn‘t matter in the end: Leckie is a master of making you care about the person-AI, human, alien, or bot-until the current IRL gender issues are seen as BS f—kery!
Been away from Litsy due to spurts of work and catching up on TBR and rainy season ennui. Still stacked is the tagged book. Here is link to a wonderful conversation (video) between R.F. Kuang and Roxanne Gay. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/IWUZtEAByaQ
Well deserved win for Edgar Awards Best First Novel!
Here is the full list of winners: https://crimereads.com/mwa-announces-the-2023-edgar-award-winners/
Our oceans are in dire peril. This is a timely mashup of real science, oceanic changes, AI, Tibetan monk clones, massive and evil mega corporations, exiled islanders, and a robot too human for their own good partnered with a marine biologist hoping to discover how to communicate with the alien, fierce intelligence of the octopus- brains in 8 legs and a briefest of lifespans dying after making sure their eggs hatch. What‘s consciousness?
Ng takes the zeitgeist now and gives it a little push to give us an authoritarian America that‘s a nightmare of fascist racism, control (through separating children from families, book banning) and fear. Bird‘s Chinese mother (a banned poet) went underground to protect the family. One day he finds a message and runs away to find her. Art and poetry as a means of political revolution; heartbreak and hope. Antifa librarians rule🌟❣️
Imagine Yul Brynner or Toshiro Mifune as a mouse! This over the top anthropomorphic running in joke/pastiche is a homage to The Magnificent Seven (itself a homage to Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai.) Don‘t think, just enjoy it. Woo hoo ❣️
Poetry collection illuminating the state of America. The poem (in comments below) is titled Searchers, about the dogs trained to find survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Handlers had to find volunteers to pretend to survivors as the dogs felt they had failed.
Netflix in November! Trailer in the link: https://lithub.com/watch-the-first-trailer-for-netflixs-adaptation-of-all-the-li...
Coming to you from director Olivia Wilde!
https://deadline.com/2023/04/olivia-wilde-a24-jennifer-egan-a-visit-from-the-goo...
International Booker Prize shortlist!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/18/international-booker-prize-shortli...
Update on the HBO production: teaser trailer and Robert Downey playing four roles.
https://deadline.com/2023/04/the-sympathizer-trailer-robert-downey-jr-four-chara...
Loved this book; now adapted for the screen! https://deadline.com/2023/04/michael-fassbender-domhnall-gleeson-ruth-negga-nigh...
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Amazing collection of genre mashup short stories: magic realism and horror focused on powerlessness of women in the patriarchy, male power and moral corruption. The title story is about a lamp shaped as a rabbit; it causes the downfall of a greedy and corrupt business and family. Slow motion disaster you can‘t look away from, and genuinely scary. Time for a bite of chocolate Easter bunny!
This is as fabulous as I remembered as when first read! Lost Fisher King, lots of T.S. Eliot, poker played with Tarot cards, ancient archetypes, and a battle for souls set in Las Vegas, a kingdom in the desert created by mobster Bugsy Siegel. In March of 1951, testifying before a Senate Crime Committee, Virginia Hill stated that Siegel had told her the Flamingo Hotel was upside down-though she was able to cast no light on what he might have meant.
Hamnet movie adaptation: https://lithub.com/chloe-zhao-will-direct-a-movie-adaptation-of-maggie-ofarrells...
Here‘s the short list for the Carole Shields Awards and glad to see one of my favorites -tagged- is on the list!
https://lithub.com/here-is-the-shortlist-for-the-2023-carol-shields-prize/
Unexpected joy today as half forgotten preorder arrives! Starting this tonight❣️🌟❣️
RIP. Rain and wind today. Sad news. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/03/0a7fc96bdd1a-urgent-nobel-winning-aut...
PEN Award winners and a link to view!
https://pen.org/literary-awards/2023-literary-awards-winners/
Such sad news. One of my favorite authors, RIP Christopher Fowler. Reading his latest London Bridge is Falling Down and Peculiar London. A copywriter when younger; he came up with the brilliant “ In space, no one can hear you scream” for Alien. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/03/bryant-may-novelist-christopher-fo...
Finalists for the PEN Literary Awards, so many choices to add to TBR list! Winners to be announced 3/2🌟 https://pen.org/literary-awards/announcing-the-2023-pen-america-literary-awards-...
Here‘s a link to read one of the stories in this boo, from the Guardian; enjoy!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/25/widows-by-margaret-atwood-read-the...
Announcing the PEN Awards nominees! https://pen.org/literary-awards/announcing-the-2023-pen-america-literary-awards-...