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Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://compulsivereader.com
Volume 23, Issue 9, 1 Sept 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 the light we cannot see by Anne Casey
As with all of Anne Casey’s work, the poems in the light we cannot see contain a deep underlying humanism that comes through every poem. Perhaps this is the light we cannot see – a rich illumination more felt than seen, providing hope through the many threads of grief that connect the poems in this collection. Many of the poems are inspired by Casey’s Irish heritage, shot through with Gaelic motifs that link the poems, from a brilliant coupling of “The Second Coming” by WB Yeats and the Coronavirus, to a plait or DNA-shaped prayer to Celtic goddess Brigid. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/28/a-review-of-the-light-we-cannot-see-by-anne-casey/
An interview with Marcus Tallberg
10 Questions with Tallbergs Forlag founder, publisher, and entrepreneur Marcus Tallberg. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/27/an-interview-with-marcus-tallberg/
A review of Blue Madagascar by Andrew Kaplan
Blue Madagascar is a joyride with enough twists to keep you guessing till the very last chapter. Kaplan’s mystery is crafted with a sizeable amount of complexity, proving his talent, and enough authorial guidance to make the text easily accessible to any reader. It is a novel that never slows, yet never sacrifices detail. From front to back, this novel succeeded in stealing my focus. I simply had to know where Kaplan would take me. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/26/a-review-of-blue-madagascar-by-andrew-kaplan/
A review of Mostly True Tales From Birchmont Village by Peter J. Stavros
Mostly True Tales from Birchmont Village is a gentle comedy reminiscent of Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Garrison Keillor’s novels. The humour derives from idiosyncratic characters who appear in the seven, chronological stories that make up the book. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/23/a-review-of-mostly-true-tales-from-birchmont-village-by-peter-j-stavros/
A review of Homing Pigeons and Sundry Stuff by Dr Naina Dey
Dey looks “before and after and pines for what is not”, yet she is firmly rooted in the present times and dares question all iniquities and oddities. In the poem, “Subaltern” in the same section, the backlash of clichéd queries directed to either the spinster, a divorced woman, or a single parent seems timely and justified. She is not a ‘subaltern’ of the new millennium, hence the pat reply in the form of a string of queries, to the utter bafflement of Goddess Kali, before whom the questioner and the questioned stood. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/21/a-review-of-homing-pigeons-and-sundry-stuff-by-dr-naina-dey/
A review of Wayward Girls by Claire Matturro and Penny Koepsel
Matturro and Koespel artfully develop all the key elements of a horrifying thriller in Wayward Girls. The eerie atmosphere lingers like an unforgettable nightmare, an especially haunting one, considering the dedication indicates the story, while fictional, is based on real schools in Texas and Florida, with some of the most appalling events taken directly from official transcripts. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/15/a-review-of-wayward-girls-by-claire-matturro-and-penny-koepsel/
A review of Selected Poems 2002-2021 by J R Solonche
The poetry in this book is varied in style, form, and theme. The reader will find prose poems, free verse, haikus, lists, ghazals, sonnets, and many anaphora poems. The poet’s poems on his relationship with life go from the most profound to the most trivial. Many poems are philosophical, while others are about nature, human feelings, and small events of daily life like driving on a highway, observing his daughter while she swims, or saying goodnight. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/12/a-review-of-selected-poems-2002-2021-by-j-r-solanche/
A review of While Listening to the Enigma Variations by Diane Frank
As the title of Diane Frank’s stunning collection of new and selected poems suggests, with its reference to Edward Elgar’s exquisite orchestral suite, music is an important theme throughout her work. Dance, spirituality, dreams, and love are as well. They all add up to profound wisdom and convey a sense of joyfulness. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/10/a-review-of-while-listening-to-the-enigma-variations-by-diane-frank/
A review of Know Your Country by Kerri Shying
Shying never puts on airs, using words with absolute precision. The work has many themes and encompasses several, often competing realities. The most prevalent one pivots around the notion of identity. One’s country is not just the place you live or come from, but also its history, and what it has come to represent. It is not just nationhood, but the earth beneath your feet, the flora, and fauna, the space of the heart. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/08/a-review-of-know-your-country-by-kerri-shying/
A Conversation with Carly Inghram about her newest poetry collection, The Animal Indoors
Carly Inghram is a poet from Atlanta. Her first collection, Sometimes the Blue Trees, was released from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in 2019. Her newest poetry collection, The Animal Indoors, is the winner of the 2020 CAAPP Book Prize. She currently lives in Manhattan and teaches kindergarten in the Bronx. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/08/03/a-conversation-with-carly-inghram-about-her-newest-poetry-collection-the-animal-indoors/
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 2,820), 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 longlist for the Booker Prize has been announced, including Anuk Arudpragasam, A Passage North (Hogarth), Rachel Cusk, Second Place (FSG), Damon Galgut, The Promise (Europa), Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water (Little, Brown), Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (Knopf), Karen Jennings, An Island (Holland House Books), Mary Lawson, A Town Called Solace (Knopf Canada), Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This (Riverhead), Nadifa Mohamed, The Fortune Men (Knopf), Richard Powers, Bewilderment (Norton), Sunjeev Sahota, China Room (Viking), Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle (Knopf), and Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual (Scribner)Have a good month. The prize is worth £50,000. A shortlist of six will be announced on September 14, and the winner will be announced on November 2.
A shortlist has been released for the A$10,000 (about US$7,345) Age Book of the Year, as the Australian prize makes its return after a nine-year hiatus. For 2021, there is only a fiction prize but the intention is to add a nonfiction prize for 2022. The winner will be named September 3 as part of the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The shortlisted titles are The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott, The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan, A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville, The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey, Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson, and Born into This by Adam Thompson.
Shortlists have been released for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for U.K. Nature Writing, which recognizes works that best reflect Alfred Wainwright’s values and include a celebration of nature and the natural environment or a warning of the dangers to it across the globe. The two winners, who each receive £5,000 (about $6,955), will be named September 7. This year’s shortlisted titles are for U.K. Nature Writing English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks, Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour, I Belong Here by Anita Sethi, Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer, The Screaming Sky by Charles Foster, The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn, Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh. For Writing on Global Conservation, A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough, Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs, Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn, Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change by Dieter Helm, and Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert.
The State Library of New South Wales has released a shortlist for the A$25,000 (about US$18,365) National Biography Award, which celebrates excellence in biography, autobiography, and memoir writing to promote public interest in the genre. The winner will be named August 26. In addition, the A$5,000 (about US$3,670) Michael Crouch Award will be presented for a first published biography by an Australian writer. This year’s shortlisted authors, each of whom receives A$2,000 (about US$1,470), are The Lotus Eaters by Emily Clements, One Bright Moon by Andrew Kwong, Max by Alex Miller, Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse by Cassandra Pybus, Tell Me Why by Archie Roach, and Penny Wong: Passion and Principle by Margaret Simons.
A shortlist has been released for the £10,000 (about $13,905) Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, which is “designed to showcase, reward and encourage original, insightful and well-written books and to encourage public understanding and intelligent debate around the country and its culture.” The winner will be announced in late October. This year’s shortlisted titles are Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Turned on the West by Catherine Belton, The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War by Archie Brown, Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, The Lockhart Plot: Love, Betrayal, Assassination and Counter-Revolution in Lenin’s Russia by Jonathan Schneer, Leo Tolstoy by Andrei Zorin, and Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin’s Russia by Katherine Zubovich.
The City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library have released a shortlist for the Toronto Book Awards. The winner will be named in a ceremony this fall. Each shortlisted finalist receives C$1,000 (about US$800), with C$10,000 (about US$8,025) given to the winner. This year’s finalists are: Missing from the Village by Justin Ling, Crosshairs by Catherine Hernandez, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric by Catherine Graham, Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guenther, On Property by Rinaldo Walcott, and Speak, Silence by Kim Echlin.
Finalists for the fourth annual Institute for Immigration Research New American Voices Award, honoring the work of immigrant authors, are Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country, Daisy Hernández, author of The Kissing Bug, and Anthony Veasna So, author of Afterparties. A virtual award ceremony will held on October 15 during Fall for the Book, which is held October 14-31. Director Jim Witte said that the finalists’ “work provides examples of how immigrants contribute to the nation’s culture, while they provide new perspectives on what it means to be American.”
Finalists have been announced for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which “celebrates the power of literature to promote peace, social justice, and global understanding.” A winner and runner-up in both the fiction and nonfiction categories will be named September 22. Winners receive a $10,000 honorarium and runners-up $2,500. Margaret Atwood will also be honored with the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. The 2021 finalists are: Deacon King Kong by James McBride (Riverhead), Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Grove), The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (Algonquin), The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins), Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore (HarperCollins), and We Germans by Alexander Starritt (Little, Brown). For the full set of lists visit: https://www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/award-winners/#2021_award_winners
Winners of the £10,000 James Tait Black book prizes were announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The biography winner was Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, which judge Simon Cooke called “a work of great and searching depth and generosity, as involving as it is luminous, that weaves poetry, memoir, biography and translation into a powerful celebration of female texts and a profound exploration of the way the voice and life of one poet echoes in the life and voice of another.” The fiction winner was Lote by Shola von Reinhold, which judge Benjamin Bateman described as “an imaginative tour de force that combines a gripping detective plot with a thoughtful meditation on the historical neglect of Black queer and women artists.”
The winners of the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards, sponsored by the Australian Crime Writers Association, are Crime fiction: Consolation by Garry Disher, True crime: Stalking Claremont by Bret Christian, Debut crime fiction: The Second Son by Loraine Peck, and International crime fiction (published in Australia): We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker.
Have a great month!
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COMPETITION NEWS
Congratulations to Leah Schweitzer, who won a copy of All’s Fair And Other California Stories by Linda Feyder.
Congratulations also to Andrew Ingold and Helen Lane who each won a copy of Arcadia’s Children 4: Exodus by Andrew R Williams.
Congratulations also to Laurie Blum who won a copy of The Accidental Suffragist by Galia Gichon.
Our new site giveaway is for a copy of Meeting Each Other Alive: New Translations from the Letters between Manuela Sáenz and Simón Bolívar, and from their Letters about each other translated by Katharine Margot Toohey. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Meeting Each Other Alive” and your postal address in the body of the email.
We also have a copy of Here We Go Loop de Loop by William Jack Sibley to give away. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Loop de Loop” and your postal address in the body of the email.
We also have a copy of Love, Only Better by Paulette Stout to give away. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Love, Only Better” 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 A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi, More Lies by Richard James Allen, Failure Lyrics by Kristina Marie Darling, Christopher Clarey’s biography of Roger Federer, The Master, 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 Beth Spencer in conversation with Kit Kelen. 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. 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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