15 Jun
Whoa!!! Am glad I’m in the correct job!
U.S. News & World Report has named the job of ‘Librarian’ has been named as one of the best careers in 2007 in the US. The librarian has been chosen alongside the ‘normal’ best careers of arhitect, engineer, physician, and professor amongst others.
10 Jun
The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction was awarded at the Royal Festival Hall in London to Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun (Call No.: English ADI).
The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is a £30,000 women-only award and Adichie is the youngest winner so far at 29 years old. Half of a Yellow Sun is her second novel. Her first novel Purple Hibiscus (Call No.: English ADI) was also shortlisted for the 2004 award - though it was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction then.
Other shortlisted novels were
- Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park (Call No.: English CUS);
- Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (Call No.: English DES);
- Guo Xiaolu’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Call No.: English GUO);
- Jane Harris’ The Observations (Call No.: English HAR); and
- Anne Tyler’s Digging to America (Call No: English TYL).
Karen Connelly was awarded the Orange Broadband Award for New Authors for her novel The Lizard Cage (Call No.: English CON). Connelly won £10,000. Other nominees were Clare Allan’s Poppy Shakespeare and Roopa Farooki’s Bitter Sweets.
(via BBC News)
Technorati Tags: awards, books, chimamanda ngozi adichie, fiction, orange broadband prize for fiction, half of a yellow sun
18 May
Saw this on Geekdad a couple of days back but didn’t have time to blog about it. It has been blogged about on other sites as well.
Anyway, am really looking forward to the movie versions of Tintin stories as done by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. Apparently, the 2 major directors are planning a trilogy of films. However, we’ll have to patient as it is expected that it’ll be 3-4 years before we see the first film in the theaters.
If you can’t wait for the movies, then you can come by the library to borrow Tintin books (Call No.: J English 793.73 HER) or animated movies. You need to check the NLB catalogue to find out availability of the titles.
Technorati Tags: movies, peter jackson, tintin
4 May
The nearly 600 years old Vatican library will be closed for the next three years for rebuilding. The shutdown was made without warning and scholars will be greatly impacted.
The library will close for its summer break in mid-July and only re-open in September 2010. The library will be renovated to install air conditioning and dust protection as well as improve its fire exits.
During the closure, scholars would still be able to obtain access to the Vatican library via the digital copies of the ancient manuscripts. However, the reading room in the Vatican library would be occupied by the Vatican’s book restorers as they will have look after more than a million printed volumes and 75,000 priceless manuscripts.
The Vatican library was founded by Pope Nicholas V nearly 600 years ago.
(via BBC News)
Technorati Tags: libraries, vatican library
4 May
The 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner was announced on Tuesday. Angolan journalist and author Jose Eduardo Agualusa won for his novel, The Book of Chameleons (Call No.: English AGU). The Portuguese novel is translated into English by Daniel Hahn. Jose and Daniel will be sharing the prize of £10,000.
The prize celebrates a novel that has been translated into English and published in the UK last year.
Other 2007 shortlisted nominees were:
Past winners include Milan Kundera’s Immortality (Call No.: English KUN or here), WG Sebald’s Austerlitz (Call No.: English SEB or here), Javier Cercas’ Soldiers of Salamis (Call No.: English CER), and last year’s winner Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses (Call No.: English PET).
(via BBC|Entertainment)
Technorati Tags: 2007, book awards, books, independent foreign fiction prize
2 May
The longlist of nominations have been announced yesterday for the Frank O’Connor award. The Frank O’Connor award is known for being the world’s richest prize for a collection of short stories.
There are 34 names that are in the running for the €35,000 prize. The award is open to any collection of short stories published in English anywhere in the world for the first time between September 2006 and August 2007. This is the third year the award is given out with Asians winning the first two awards though there are no Asians nominated for this year’s award. The past winners were Li Yiyun’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2005) and Haruki Murakami’s Blind Woman, Sleeping Willow (2006).
The entire list can be viewed at the official website of the award. A shortlist will be announced in July 2007. And the award will be given out in September 2007.
For more information about the award, you can go to the official website.
(via Guardian Unlimited)
Technorati Tags: awards, books, frank o’connor award, longlist
16 Apr
- Laura Molly vs. Harry Potter 3
An Atlanta mother has appealed to the Gwinnett Superior Court against the Georgia Board of Education’s decision that Harry Potter is safe for juvenile consumption. She is aiming to ban Harry Potter books from all school libraries. Do look out for more news when it goes to court on 29th May.
(via LISNews)
- Former Spice Girl Launches A Series of Children’s Books
Following in the footsteps of Madonna and Kylie Minogue, Geri Halliwell has gone into writing a series of six children’s books featuring a feisty nine-year-old. The six books will published from May next year at one book a month. And there’s even more celebrity stardust in the book as one of the characters, a princess no less, featured in the book is based on fellow former Spice Girl, Victoria, who is married to soccer star David Beckham.
(vis LISNews)
- Wot!? Noise!? In libraries!?
Organized by the Lancanster Music Library, “Get It Loud in Libraries” initiative is to bring music gigs to libraries all over in the UK. This is to promote musical activities for teens. It’s also a way for the libraries to re-invent themselves. Well, in Singapore, we have had bands playing in libraries when library@orchard opened in 1999. Currently, there are regular performances at library@esplanade and V.A.T. at Jurong Regional Library. I might add that they are rather well-received by the public.
(via LISNews)
- Free audio of the story “Inclination”
The Hugo/Nebula-nominated story “Inclination” has been made available by its author, Bill Shunn, as a free, Creative Commons licensed audiobook, which you can download to your favorite MP3 player. The book is read by the author himself. By the way, MPOW has recently introduced audiobooks at selected libraries. Do look out for them when you visit Central Lending Library, Woodlands Regional Library, Tampines Regional Library and Jurong Regional Library.
(via BoingBoing.net)
Technorati Tags: audiobooks, books, harry potter, libraries, public libraries
11 Apr
13500 pirated books of bestsellers were confiscated in India after a raid by the local police on five locations in Delhi and six people were arrested. You can read more here.
I believe books are pirated countries such as India and China because of the high prices of the originals, just like computer games and software. But then again, it’s no excuse for anyone to buy and use pirated goods.
Additional reads:
China
- U.S. Plans WTO Case Against China on Movies, Books
- China wages war against piracy
- Piracy: A page hard to turn for regulators
India
- Piracy Faced by Publishers - India
- Spotlight on piracy of books
- Piracy eats into publishers’ profits
(via LISNews)
