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Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://compulsivereader.com
Volume 23, Issue 8, 1 Aug 2021
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IN THIS ISSUE
New Reviews at Compulsive Reader
Literary News
Competition News
Sponsored By
Coming soon
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Hello readers. Here is the latest batch of reviews and interviews:
A review of Life in a Field by Katie Peterson
When I look at a donkey’s face (there are two in a photograph on the book’s cover), I see a vulnerability in the expression, coming from the slant of the eyes and the slight silliness in the largeness of the ears, suggesting a melancholy that leads me to suspect the animal might do better with a bit of attention or comforting. In a horse’s face, by contrast, I see something sturdy and handsome. The central image that drives this book is a child speaking softly into a donkey’s ear. The poignancy of this scene is never emphasized or exploited, which allows the emotion to expand in its own way, having a gradual effect on the reader. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/30/a-review-of-life-in-a-field-by-katie-peterson/
A review of Mario Writes a Poem a Day for a Year, and So Can You by Mario Milosevic
Why write poetry? Milosevic says it sharpens your mind, encourages concise writing, helps you appreciate the world, and most of all is fun. He encourages aspiring poets to “take advantage of the long tradition of verse” by familiarizing themselves with the work of other poets. I was pleased with this, as aspiring poets who have asked my help too often displayed total ignorance of great works of the past. Milosevic also tells budding poets to trust their instincts, quoting Allen Ginsberg’s principle: “First thought, best thought.” Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/29/a-review-of-mario-writes-a-poem-a-day-for-a-year-and-you-can-too-by-mario-milosevic/
An Interview with Dennis “Mitch” Maley
Dennis “Mitch” Maley, a Bradenton, Florida journalist and author, delves into harsh historical events in his newest book, Burn Black Wall Street Burn (Punk Rock Publishing June 2021), and he does so with verve, talent, and force. Told through the eyes of several characters, the book is a riveting, up close and personal story of one of America’s ugliest moments. Written as historical fiction, or “dramatized history,” the book is accurate, but goes beyond the hard facts to vividly tell an intimate story of many lives at the center of a tragedy. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/23/an-interview-with-dennis-mitch-maley/
Lend Me Your Wings by Lillo Way
In this new collection by the accomplished Lillo Way, the reader is transported from earth to sky and beyond by lyrical and visionary poems. This work pulls against the gravity and mortality of life on planet earth. Within each unique tableau we learn secrets for transcendence: the importance of perspective, light and dark as an extended metaphor for wholeness, and the indomitable energy of music and dance Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/19/a-review-of-lend-me-your-wings-by-lillo-way/
A review of A Quilt for David by Steven Reigns
Like the AIDS Quilt itself to which the title alludes, A Quilt for David is a memorial to victims of the AIDS epidemic that swept up hundreds of thousands of lives in the last forty years, in the same scary way the COVID pandemic has killed so many people in 2020. Only, this memorial for David Acer memorializes more than the victims of the HIV virus. It also revisits the homophobic hysteria that drove so much of the narrative. “All of them emboldened by…a mute president,” as Reigns writes in one of the 79 untitled meditations (both poems and prose pieces) that make up this breathtaking collection. Read more: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41DZHVSQJ9S._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
A review of The Way of the Saints by Elizabeth Engelman
This is a stunning book, even if sometimes bleak, about a family struggling to transcend its own sometimes cryptic and often brutal history, as well as the history of their natural land. This is not a light and fluffy book, but its harshness and intensity are part of what makes it such a great read. And, as mentioned before, the writing itself is eloquent and gorgeous. The lyrical, precise prose in The Way of the Saints transforms the story into literature. http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/14/a-review-of-the-way-of-the-saints-by-lizabeth-engelman/
An interview with Emanuel Xavier
The author of Selected Poems of Emanuel Xavier talks about his book, dedications, selection criteria, the ballroom scene and Jesus, Spanglish, his favorite poems, poetry and the pandemic and more. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/12/an-interview-with-emanuel-xavier/
A review of The Firebird by Saikat Majumdar
And then I read the novel again and again, awestruck, shedding tears each time I read of Garima’s sad demise. The theatre-halls were either being sold out by the owners to predatory realtors or to rich business magnates who razed the hall to put up a zany shopping mall there. It was crucial times for theatre-halls then, no doubt. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/07/a-review-of-the-firebird-by-saikat-majumdar/
A review of The Owl Inside by Ivy Ireland
All of which is to say that this smallish, quiet book is magnificent. But you can’t get away with reading it once, or quickly. It calls you back, draws you in, tricks you into thinking it’s about flying owls, changing peed sheets, watching water wash over the rocks, and taking out the trash, and indeed it is about peed sheets, owls, and taking out the trash just as our lives are about those things, and yet, it is also about everything. Read moreL http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/04/a-review-of-the-owl-inside-by-ivy-ireland
A review of Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound by Yvonne Zipter
Personification and identification are routes to empathy, to feeling what is felt by another: another person, an animal, an inanimate object. Yvonne Zipter pursues this goal by swapping pieces of herself with pieces of the world. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/07/02/a-review-of-kissing-the-long-face-of-the-greyhound-by-yvonne-zipter/
Read more! All of the reviews and interviews listed above are available at The Compulsive Reader on the front page. Older reviews and interviews are kept indefinitely in our extensive (and growing) categorized archives (currently at 2,808), which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.
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LITERARY NEWS
In the literary news this month, the shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke Science Fiction Book of the Year have been announced. They include The Infinite by Patience Agbabi (Canongate), The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez (Titan), Vagabonds by Hao Jinfang (Head of Zeus), Edge of Heaven by R B Kelly (Newcon Press), The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay (Scribe) and Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes (Orbit).
Valzhyna Mort’s Music for the Dead and Resurrected, and Canisia Lubrin’s The Dyzgraphxst were the international and Canadian category winners respectively of the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. They each receive C$65,000 (about US$52,850), with the other finalists awarded C$10,000 (about US$8,130).
The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore has won the £10,000 (about $13,820) 2021 Desmond Elliott Prize, sponsored by the National Centre for Writing and honoring “the best first novel across the U.K. and Ireland.” Set in England in 1643, the historical novel will be published in the U.S. by Catapult August 10.
The Mediterranean Wall by Louis Philippe Dalembert, in a translation by Marjolijn de Jager, won the 2020 French Voices Grand Prize in Fiction. The novel has just been published in the United States by Schaffner Press. Affluence and Freedom: An Environmental History of Political Ideas by Pierre Charbonnier, translated by Andrew Brown, won the Grand Prize in Nonfiction. The book is forthcoming from Polity Press in September. Launched in 2006, the French Voices Awards aims to highlight books worthy of translation. A shortlist of fiction and nonfiction titles is issued each year, and each of these titles receive $6,000 in support toward translation: $4,000 to the publisher, $2,000 to the translator. Each Grand Prize–winning title receives $10,000 in support: $6,000 to the publisher, $4,000 to the translator.
Books from 11 countries and 11 languages are among the 12 winners of English PEN’s translation awards, including–for the first time–titles from Yemen, Ecuador and Ireland, as well as work translated from the Tibetan and Irish. Among winners are the first novels by Tibetan and Yemeni women ever to be published in the U.K. Books are selected for PEN Translates awards “on the basis of outstanding literary quality, the strength of the publishing project, and their contribution to U.K. bibliodiversity.” See the complete list of winners here: https://www.englishpen.org/posts/news/pen-translates-awards-announced-2/
Poet, essayist, novelist and playwright M. NourbeSe Philip was named winner of the humanities category in the 2021 Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize, which annually presents C$50,000 (about US$40,190) to distinguished Canadians–one in the social sciences or humanities and the other in the arts. Psychologist and mental health researcher Gordon J. G. Asmundson won the social sciences category. The prize “encourages recipients to continue contributing to the cultural and intellectual life of Canada.” NourbeSe Philip’s published works include Harriet’s Daughter, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and Zong!. She is a Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio), and in 2020 she was the recipient of PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey (Text Publishing) has won the A$60,000 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, honouring “a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.” Amanda Lohrey is the second Tasmanian writer to win the Miles Franklin in its 64-year history, has twice been shortlisted for the award, with her shortlisted novel Camille’s Bread (Fourth Estate) winning the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1996. Her fourth novel, The Philosopher’s Doll (Viking), was longlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2005, and in 2012 Lohrey received the Patrick White Literary Award. Chair of judges Richard Neville said, “The Labyrinth is an elegiac novel, soaked in sadness. It is a beautifully written reflection on the conflicts between parents and children, men and women, and the value and purpose of creative work.”
Australian Book Review has announced the shortlist for this year’s ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for new short fiction. This year’s prize, worth a total of $12,500, received 1,428 entries from thirty-six different countries. It was judged by Gregory Day, Melinda Harvey, and Elizabeth Tan. To read the judges’ report, as well as the full short and longlist, click here: https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes-programs/elizabeth-jolley-story-prize/current-jolley
The shortlist has been released for this year’s Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award (CLiPPA), which recognizes published poetry for children in the U.K. The winner will be named October 11 at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Slam! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This, edited by Nikita Gill, Bright Bursts of Colour by Matt Goodfellow, illustrated by Aleksei Bitskoff, Run, Rebel by Manjeet Mann, Big Green Crocodile Rhymes to Say and Play by Jane Newberry, illustrated by Carolina Rabei, and On the Move by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Quentin Blake.
The 13-title longlist for the £50,000 2021 Booker Prize has been announced and includes: A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam, Second Place by Rachel Cusk, The Promise by Damon Galgut, The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, An Island by Karen Jennings, A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed, Bewilderment by Richard Powers, China Room by Sunjeev Sahota, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, an dLight Perpetual by Francis Spufford. The shortlist will be announced September 14 and the winner on November 3.
Shortlists in the four categories of the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards have been announced and can be seen here: https://www.austcrimewriters.com/2021-shortlists. Sponsored by the Australian Crime Writers Association, the awards honor published works in the crime fiction and true crime writing in the categories of best crime fiction, debut crime fiction, true crime and international crime fiction.
Have a good month.
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COMPETITION NEWS
Congratulations to Catrina Pomerleau who won a copy of Blooming in Winter by Pamela Valois.
Congratulations to Constance Norwood, who won a copy of Cage Full of Monkeys by Richard Souza.
Congratulations to Zoltan R. Almasi who won a copy of Cheyenne Summer – The Battle of Beecher Island: A History by Terry Mort
Finally, congratulations to Jean Patton, who won a copy of Your Next Level Life by Karen Arrington.
Our new site giveaway is for a copy of All’s Fair And Other California Stories by Linda Feyder to give away. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Alls Fair” and your postal address in the body of the email.
We also have a copy of The Accidental Suffragist by Galia Gichon to give away. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Accidental Suffragist” and your postal address in the body of the email.
We also have two copies of Arcadia’s Children 4: Exodus by Andrew R Williams. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Arcadia’s Children” and your postal address in the body of the email.
Good luck, everyone!
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COMING SOON
We will shortly be featuring reviews of Know Your Country by Kerri Shying, While Listening to the Enigma Variations by Diane Frank, a conversation with Carly Inghram about her newest poetry collection, The Animal Indoors, and lots more reviews and interviews.
Drop by The Compulsive Reader talks (see the widget on right-hand side of the site) to listen to our latest episode which features Lillian Avedian reading from and talking about her new book Journey to Tatev. You can listen to the latest episode directly from the site widget or go to show directly here: https://anchor.fm/compulsivereader/episodes/Lillian-Avedian-on-Journey-to-Tatev-e13dlk2
You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes and get updates automatically, straight to your favourite listening device. Find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader Talks. Then just click subscribe. If you listen on iTunes and enjoy it, please leave a review – it will help others find us! Thank you!
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(c) 2021 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety.
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