literature

If you’ve ever wanted to write for children, this might be a good read. One of the judges of the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition explains how the shortlist and the eventual winner were chosen out of the whopping 2000 entries received.

Sometimes literature is defined by its content and other times simply by its target readership. There is ‘black’ literature, ‘feminist’ literature, ‘Christian’ literature and ‘gay’ literature; and somewhere I’m sure there’ll be black, feminist, Christian gay lit too! It may be argued that these are simply marketing niches rather than literary categories ...

Turns out 'proper literature' is just jealous.

What’s happened to the free-thinking reader now that the book market is glutted with less-then-literary bestsellers, celebrity memoirs and cookbooks? According to Stephen Page, they are “gathering around common interests online, just as intellectuals gathered in cafes in 1900s Vienna.” And publishers must go there to find them, providing content and inviting them to be involved.

What could be wordsier than a secret language? A secret language that borrows or adapts its terms from literature. Ben Macintyre gives us a look inside the colorful lexicon of espionage—spook speak—and its literary origins. Very cool.

World's longest poem in English now belongs to writer and artist Nigel Tomm. Almost all of his new book "The Blah Story, Volume 8" consists of one poem which contains 98,728 words; 449,441 characters (with spaces); 23,161 lines; 728 pages. It is the longest published poem in English literature. The poem is called 'My Blah Story' and it is written by one novel's character.

Blog of UK based novelist, John Baker. With links to extracts from his work; reviews of books, film, music and theatre. Quotations on lies, serial killers, writing, art, humour, revolution, time and dance. Writing tips and political and cultural comment. A bookshop, interviews, links to all the best litblogs and a host of other goodies. Go see.

David Baddiel is suspicious about translations. While you can immediately tell that a work has been translated, he says, you have no idea how good the translation really is. And how do you know that, after slogging through 430 pages, the translator didn’t feel the inclination to improve on the original? Given Baddiel’s examples, such suspicions are not unfounded.

This is assuming, of course, that literature needs saving. But nonetheless, it’s a good plug for the novella, which is, in my opinion at least, an underrated form. However, I have to wonder how many of you would, like this blogger, a) be satisfied by reading 600 pages of an 800 page novel and b) recommend a book that you weren’t compelled to finish? Maybe that’s the problem.

Colonel Norman Murphy, an expert on the work of English author P.G. Wodehouse, claims evidence that the author’s legendary characters all originated as real people. Wodehouse, it seems, wasn’t being perfectly original; he was dramatizing locally known stories.