The shortlists for James Tait Black Memorial prizes for non-fiction and biography have been announced yesterday.
The James Tait Black Memorial prizes were founded in 1919 by the widow of Edinburgh publisher James Tait Black. The book award is also quite unique as it is the only one that is judged by scholars and graduate students of literature. The literature graduate students assist in compiling the shortlists by writing reports on the books submitted. The prize advisory committees will then decide on the awards. The awards are hosted by the literature department of the Edinburgh University.
The shortlists are as follows:
Fiction shortlist Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben The Devil’s Footprints by John Burnside The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid A Far Country by Daniel Mason Salvage by Gee Williams
Biography shortlist Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves
The prizes will be awarded in August at a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Last year’s winners were Cormac McCarthy for The Road and Byron Rogers for The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of RS Thomas. Some other past winners include DH Lawrence, LM Forster, Graham Greene, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Zadie Smith.
From this Times Online article, a “Living Library” is one that loans out a real person rather than a book for 30 minutes.
Depending on availability, the line-up of the human “books” are different. This seems like quite an interesting way to acquire knowledge. But I guess this might be a more effective method for some people rather than just reading a book.
“Living Library” first started as an experiment by Ronni Abergel at the Danish Music Festival in 2000 and it has toured most parts of Scandinavia.
It seems like Australia caught on to the concept of the “Living Library” quite a bit and about 4 libraries have set up such a service. The most active is the Richmond-Tweed Regional Library’s Lismore’s Living Library, which holds one session per month and they have about 15-20 “books” per session. They even have more than a copy of the more popular topics. Other libraries include the Gosford City Council’s Living Library and Swinburne’s Prahran Library. There is also a Living Library in Sydney that runs only once a year in October as part of the Mental Health Week there.
In other parts of the world, Canada’s Douglas College has also started a Living Library where students can “borrow”. And now there’s one in London.
- Carnegie’s shortlist takes children back in time UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s book award has just announced it’s shortlist. Interestingly, all the nominees have a common theme of world history and its conflicts. The shortlist is as follows: Elizabeth Laird’s Crusade, Tanya Landeman’s Apache, Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur, Linzi Glass’ Ruby Red, Kevin-Crossley Holland’s Gatty’s Tale, Meg Rosoff’s What I Was, Jenny Valentine’s Finding Violet Park
- Darwin’s first draft goes online The draft notes of Charles Darwin which eventually led to the writing of his theory of evolution has been made available online. These draft notes are part of the 20,000 archive items that have been made available as part of the Charles Darwin online archive.
Australian author, Sonya Hartnett, was announced as this year’s awardee for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award for literature. The award comes with a 5m Swedish kronor prize (S$1.41m) and this is the sixth installment of the award. She would be presented with the award on 28 May by Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria at Stockholm’s open-air Skansen museum.
Hartnett, 39, has written about 18 novels for children, young people and adults. She wrote her first novel, Trouble All The Way, when she was only 15. Other books include Surrender, Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf, Forest, What the Birds See, Thursday’s Child, and Princes.
The award is given out by Swedish government to commemorate the creator of the popular Pippi Longstocking books. The purpose of the prize is to promote interest in children’s and youth literature around the world as well as to strengthen children’s rights on a global scale. Previous winners of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award include Philip Pullman and Maurice Sendak.
- 100 books every child should read A pretty long article that has been broken up into 4 parts. This first part is just an introduction into the joys of reading, particularly when you start at an early age. The other three list the books according to the age of the child: early years, middle years and early teens.
- Kerpoof What’s this you ask? Well, this is the children’s version of Facebook without the deluge of ignoring application invites. The site is for children to communicate and collaborate with each other online. And the site only allows kids that know each other to interact online. Interestingly, the company that runs Kerpoof says that more and more schools are using it in the US. I guess teachers are also making of online tools as much as librarians in engaging kids. (via Techcrunch)
- Bookchase® Ever wanted to run your own little bookshop, but without laying out the actual capital? Well, now you can! A company in the UK has developed the world’s first board game about books. And it does look really interesting. The price is a little steep for a board game at S$90 before shipping, but I know who would be interested in playing it. (via LibrarianInBlack)
- MCL Learning 2.0 Chance upon this site when I was doing some search on Web 2.0 usage in libraries. Very interesting and I’m sure we can use some of this to encourage more staff to dip their toes into the giant pool of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. I think I’ll also be using this to prepare for my talks to teachers on the use of Web 2.0 tools for schools.
- Librarians at the gates Although this news article is about the striking library staff in Victoria, Canada, I particularly like the quote from one of the reference librarians, Peter Thompson, who says, “If you don’t like working with people, you won’t like librarianship.” How true!!! Read the article for more inspiring quotes from this same librarian. (via LISNews)
- Public Transportation Meets Public Library Very interesting concept to put book vending machines at BART stations (that’s like our MRT stations). However, the concept might not work in Singapore given that most libraries are at close proximity to the MRT stations. But maybe we can put it at, say, Changi Airport for travelers to pick up a book on their way out of the country. (via Library Stuff)
With the final book of the JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, to be announced in a few hours’ time, the Guardian Unlimited has reported that ChildLine, a counseling service for children and young people in the UK, will be adding additional staff over the next few days to cope with the anticipated surge in calls from grief-stricken fans.
In a poll carried out by the cinema advertising company, Pearl & Dean, found that Harry Potter came in third with only 9% of votes out of 3,000 movie fans. The overwhelming winner was the white-haired wizard from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gandalf, with 44% of the votes. And coming in second was Harry Potter’s wizard teacher, Prof Albus Dumbledore.
So, being a boy wizard doesn’t instantly make you popular. Think Harry Potter needs to grow some facial hair before he can usurp the top two in the poll.
- China establishes more than 30,000 rural libraries When I first saw the headlines, I was flabbergasted. 30,000 libraries?!?! And this figure is just what has been established since 2006. I guess the size of China makes is a reason why they need to build so many libraries. But you might need to note that given the huge number of libraries (66,000 in total), the collection size for all the libraries is just 2.2 million. So, it means that, on average, one library has only 33 books. (via LISNews.org)
