Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 26, Issue 9, 1 September 2024

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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 Getting to Know Death: A Meditation by Gail Godwin

She jumps back and forth, including a scholarly essay, poems and sayings by literary figures, and tributes to significant people in her life, both past and present. Indirectly, she offers suggestions as to how to handle our loved-ones’ deaths, and ultimately, our own. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/28/a-review-of-getting-to-know-death-a-meditation-by-gail-godwin/

A review of Tight Bindings by Sarah Temporal

The poems pivot around the birth of a daughter, expanding outward from child to woman to humanity to universe and back again to the daughter. A cycle that repeats itself, Fibonacci-like throughout the book, utilising fairy tales, legend, place, and experience to create an overarching story of female transformation that feels simultaneously intimate and mythic. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/24/a-review-of-tight-bindings-by-sarah-temporal/

A review of Voyage to the Sun by Ruth Ann Oskolkoff

There are some cultural barriers to be overcome to understand Taoism, the moral way. It is difficult to grasp, the essense is too good to be true, and coming to practicing Tao it is difficult. With such hurdles, thinking about bringing these philosophical values to the level where a child could understand and accept it, is indeed a daunting task. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/22/26063/

Six questions to Ruth Oskolkoff, Author of Voyage to the Sun

The author of Voyage to the Sun: The Tao te Ching For Children talks about her own childhood, her minimalist style of writing, the Tao and how it fits our present world, on preparing children for the real world, her family support, and more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/22/six-questions-to-ruth-oskolkoff-author-of-voyage-to-the-sun/

The Shifting of the Possibilities of the World: a review of Xiao Yue Shan’s then telling be the antidote

Shan’s “city” is also the family, nature, love, time, dreams, reality. Place (the literal, physical city) is important, and travel among these physical realities is part of the dynamic Shan writes about in these poems—otherness, newness, migration—but these are not poems of leisure and repose, and place is just one of the elements. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/21/the-shifting-of-the-possibilities-of-the-world-a-review-of-xiao-yue-shans-then-telling-be-the-antidote/

A review of Take Me With You Next Time by Janis Hubchman

Hubschman has a close style with a mixture of tenses, one that always stays close to the mind of the woman whose story this is. She tends to chew to the pith with brief character descriptions: “…Nina was at least a half-foot taller than Joy with dark cropped hair and fashionable chunky-framed glasses”. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/19/a-review-of-take-me-with-you-next-time-by-janis-hubchman/

A review of Manuali’i by Rex Letoa Paget

What I appreciated most about this book was the richness of the poetry with its combination of striking imagery, profound thoughts, subtle spirituality and cultural complexity. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/16/a-review-of-manualii-by-rex-letoa-paget/

A review of But There’s So Much DIY in IVF That We Can’t Be Sure by Toby Goostree

Without being didactic, Toby Goostree presents all of the implications of the very real trials of hopeful parents trying to conceive a child, their attitudes, their hope and their despair, their grief (“Oh, foolish plans! / Oh, smug house in a good school district!” he writes in “The Scratch”). Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/15/a-review-of-but-theres-so-much-diy-in-ivf-that-we-cant-be-sure-by-toby-goostree/

A review of Fog & Car by Eugene Lim

Eugene Lim has buried a layer of magic deep below the surface of the early chapters and it rises slowly as the narrative progresses. When it finally surfaces on the page, it shimmers along the edges of Sarah and Jim’s lives, turning the banal into the weird and supernatural. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/12/a-review-of-fog-car-by-eugene-lim/

A review of Girl at the End of the World by Erin Carlyle

Each poem serves as a poignant vignette, exploring themes of opioid addiction, childhood, familial relationships, broader environmental grief, and the struggle for survival. Carlyle skillfully captures the disorienting experience of losing a complicated father to addiction while the world itself seems to be unraveling. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/11/a-review-of-girl-at-the-end-of-the-world-by-erin-carlyle/

Shifting Perceptions: A Review of Apparitions by Sybil Baker

What is true? What is not? The protagonist, Simone, arrives in Istanbul with her friend, Agnes. The city, partly European and partly Asian, hints at the dichotomies in Simone’s life and the fusion and confusion she encounters. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/08/shifting-perceptions-a-review-of-apparitions-by-sybil-baker/

A review of Write Like a Man by Ronnie A. Grinberg

Still, despite occasional over-interpretation, this is a valuable, well-researched and highly readable account of an important chapter of American intellectual life. These individuals lived fascinating lives and had far-reaching impact on American culture. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/06/a-review-of-write-like-a-man-by-ronnie-a-grinberg/

A review of The Universe of Lost Messages by Janet Stilton

The plot follows a conspiracy by an organisation called the Fist seeking to harness their charm for nefarious ends. The mad storyline twists and turns so much that Stilson feels the need to explicate every detail. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/04/a-review-of-the-universe-of-lost-messages-by-janet-stilton/

A review of The Inventive Life of George H. McFadden by Richard Carreño

The story bounces along, as McFadden does, through Europe on his archeological quests, with the odd Italian, French or latin phrase thrown in here and there. He writes with a sense of humour as well. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/02/a-review-of-the-inventive-life-of-george-h-mcfadden-by-richard-carreno/

An interview with Anne Elezabeth Pluto

I recently had a zoom interview with poet Anne Elezabeth Pluto to discuss her most recent book, How Many Miles to Babylon. The author sipped tea while holding her adorable adopted French Bulldog named Celine on her lap. Pluto is the editor of Nixes Mate Review and teaches at Lesley University. This is her second book. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/08/01/an-interview-with-anne-elezabeth-pluto/

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 categorised archives (currently at 3,389) 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, Information Desk: An Epic by Robyn Schiff (Penguin Poets) has won the $20,000 2024 Four Quartets Prize, which honours “a unified and complete sequence of poems published in America in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book” and is sponsored by the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America. Finalists, who each receive $1,000, were The Orange Tree by Dong Li (University of Chicago Press) and West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal (Copper Canyon Press).

Alexis Wright has won the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel Praiseworthy. The win marks another achievement in Australian literature for Wright, with Praiseworthy the only book to have won both the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin. Wright was previously awarded the Miles Franklin in 2007 for her novel Carpentaria. She joins an esteemed group of authors who have won the award twice, including Michelle de Kretser, Kim Scott, Thomas Keneally and Patrick White. Wright receives $60,000 in prize money.

Sisters in Crime Australia has released a shortlist for the 24th Davitt Awards, recognizing the best crime and mystery books by Australian women. The shortlists are presented in four categories: adult novels, nonfiction books, YA novels, and children’s novels. Four of the adult novels are debut works. All 37 debut books are also under consideration for the Debut Award. Check out the complete shortlist here: https://sistersincrime.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024-Davitt-shortlist-24072024.pdf

The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time by Catherine Taylor won the £4,000 TLS Ackerley Prize, honouring “a literary autobiography of outstanding merit, written by an author of British nationality, and published in the U.K. in the previous year.” The award is given in partnership with the Times Literary Supplement.

Finalists have been announced for the Caine Prize for African Writing, which “celebrates the richness and diversity of African literature and recognises outstanding achievements in African storytelling.” The five shortlisted stories were selected from 320 entries originating from 28 African countries. The winner will be named September 17. All of the shortlisted stories will be published in The Caine Prize Anthology alongside stories written at the Caine Prize Workshop, held this year in Malawi. The shortlisted writers are: Tryphena Yeboah (Ghana) for “The Dishwashing Women” (Narrative Magazine), Nadia Davids (South Africa) for “Bridling” (The Georgia Review), Samuel Kolawole (Nigeria) for “Adjustment of Status” (New England Review, Vol. 44, #3), Uche Okonkwo (Nigeria) for “Animals” (ZYZZYVA), and Pemi Aguda (Nigeria) for “Breastmilk” (One Story, Issue #227).

The winners of the 2024 Hugo Awards, sponsored by the World Science Fiction Society and announced during a ceremony at Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures, are: Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom), Best Novella: “Thornhedge” by T. Kingfisher (Tor), Best Novelette: “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny magazine, November-December 2023), Best Short Story: “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, May 2023). For the full extensive list of winners, visit: https://www.thehugoawards.org/

The six titles shortlisted for the 2024 £25,000 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize are: Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution (Cat Bohannon, Penguin), Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ remarkable theorem explains the world (Tom Chivers, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), Your Face Belongs to Us: The secretive AI startup dismantling your privacy (Kashmir Hill, S&S), The Last of Its Kind: The search for the great auk and the discovery of extinction (Gísli Pálsson, Princeton University Press), Why We Die: And how we live: The new science of ageing and the quest for immortality (Venki Ramakrishnan, Hodder & Stoughton), and A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? (Kelly & Zach Weinersmith, Particular Books). The 2024 prize is judged by professor John Hutchinson; author Eleanor Catton; New Scientist comment and culture editor Alison Flood; teacher, broadcaster and writer Bobby Seagull; and lecturer and Royal Society University research fellow Jess Wade. The winner will be announced on 24 October. Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive £2500.

Shortlists in the four categories of the 2024 Ned Kelly Awards have been announced here: https://www.austcrimewriters.com/2024-shortlists. Sponsored by the Australian Crime Writers Association, the awards honor works in the categories of best crime fiction, debut crime fiction, true crime, and international crime fiction. Winners will be named September 25.

Shortlists in three categories (nature writing; writing on conservation; children’s nature & conservation writing) have been released for the 2024 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, which “celebrates the finest nature, travel and environmental writing; in particular, works that encourage exploration of the great outdoors and nurture respect for the natural world.” The winners, who will be named September 11 in London, share a £7,500 prize fund. Check out shortlists here: https://wainwrightprize.com/news/the-2024-wainwright-prize-shortlists-announcement/

The 20-title longlist for the 2024 German Book Prize has been announced. The shortlist will be revealed September 17 and the winner on October 14, to coincide with the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The winner receives €25,000, the five finalists €2,500. See the longlist (in German—Google will translate if you ‘ask’) here: https://www.boersenblatt.net/news/preise-und-auszeichnungen/das-ist-die-longlist-zum-deutschen-buchpreis-2024-341439

Stacy Gregg’s Nine Girls won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award at the 2024 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults ceremony in Wellington. She also took the Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. The category winners each receive NZ$7,500, excepting the NZ$2,500 first book award. The other category winners were: Picture Book: Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai by Michaela Keeble and Kerehi Grace, illustrated by Tokerau Brown, YA Fiction: Catch a Falling Star by Eileen Merriman, Elsie Locke Award for Nonfiction: Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth by Steve Mushin, Russell Clark Award for Illustration: Gavin Bishop for Patu: The New Zealand Wars, Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award: Nani Jo me ngā Mokopuna Porohīanga by Moira Wairama, illustrated by Margaret Tolland, and for NZSA Best First Book Award: Tsunami by Ned Wenlock.

Lex Croucher won the £2,000 YA Book Prize for Gwen & Art Are Not in Love. The award was launched by the Bookseller in 2014 to celebrate fiction for teenagers and young adults in the U.K. and Ireland.

The shortlist for the 2024 Readings New Australian Fiction Prize has been announced. The winner in this category–as well as in YA and children’s book categories–will be named October 22. The three category winners each receive A$5,000, with A$1,000 going to the winner of the Gab Williams Prize, recognising the contribution of Australian YA authors and honoring former prize manager and YA author Gabrielle Williams, who died in 2023. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh, Ghost Cities by Siang Lu, No Church in the Wild by Murray Middleton, Salt River Road by Molly Schmidt, The Opposite of Success by Eleanor Elliott Thomas, and But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu.

Finally, New Zealand author Tracey Slaughter’s “reasons to end us (an aerial view)” won the €3,000 Moth Short Story Prize. Irish writer June Caldwell took second place for “Catastrophic,” while third prize went to “Gertrude’s Favourite Pfeffernüsse” by U.S. author Melanie McGee Bianchi. The runners-up receive a week-long stay at Circle of Misse writers retreat in France, with an open travel stipend; and €1,000 respectively.

Have a great month.

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Julie-Anne Hamling who won a copy of Farhang Book One by Patrick Woodcock.

We also had a surprise giveaway for a copy of A Golden Life by Ginny Kubitz Moyerto and the winner was Susan Durling.

Our new site giveaway this month is for a copy of Will End in Fire by Nicole Bokat. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Will End in Fire” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

We also have a copy of Daughter of Fire by Sofia Robleda. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Daughter of Fire” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

Good luck!

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