Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 26, Issue 10, 1 October 2024

==============================================

IN THIS ISSUE

New Reviews at Compulsive Reader
Literary News
Competition News
Sponsored By
Coming soon

==============================================

Hello readers. Here is the latest batch of reviews and interviews:

A review of The Loneliest Whale in The World by Tom Hunley

Throughout the book, the poet offers a view of life that is full-throated and built around generosity, tenacity, openness to joy and to wanderlust. He asks us to shake up our complacency, to be fierce and open to seeing things through a different lens. It is an urging to live life fully even in the midst of circumstances that are harrowing. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/18/a-review-of-the-loneliest-whale-in-the-world-by-tom-hunley/

A review of Outcaste by Sheila James

Most scenes in the novel achieve several things at once, developing the characters key to the complex family story while also showing the caste system and the political realities of the day. When Gandhi comes to Korampally to speak about the dangers of Hyderabad joining Pakistan, he addresses the peasant untouchables, with whom he’d lived for a while in 1934. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/15/a-review-of-outcaste-by-sheila-james/

Murder, Mountain Magic, and Embracing the Weird, A Review of Alisa Alering’s Smothermoss

Alisa Alering’s debut novel Smothermoss absorbed me like a fog. Alering grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania where this book is set. From the opening pages, I felt completely immersed in the world of the mountain—its rhythms, sounds, and inexplicable mysteries. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/14/murder-mountain-magic-and-embracing-the-weird-a-review-of-alisa-alerings-smothermoss/

An Interview with Dr. Dipak Giri on Poetics of Creation

In this wide ranging interview, Dr. Jernail Singh Anand talks at length about poetry, the role of poets, aspirations, inspirations, speaking truth, and lots more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/13/an-interview-with-dr-dipak-giri-on-poetics-of-creation/

A review of Wild Pack of the Living by Eileen Cleary

The words are sharp; they make the matter of fact description of the act of abduction feel like tearing off one’s fingernails. It would be hard to read this without holding one’s breath in fear. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/11/a-review-of-wild-pack-of-the-living-by-eileen-cleary-2/

Double Vision: A review of Sun Eye Moon Eye by Vincent Czyz

While there is wonderful word work throughout, Czyz’s prose really sparkles here. Like the “returnal” James Joyce, Czyz leads his readers on a merry chase through myth, literature, and art history. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/10/double-vision-a-review-of-sun-eye-moon-eye-by-vincent-czyz/

A review of Beam of Light by John Kinsella

In many ways the characters of Beam of Light are cut off from themselves, but looking up at the stars (multiple light beams) or walking in the woods, they have moments, often fleeting, of self-awareness, where the individual becomes part of a collective and the pain resolves. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/08/a-review-of-beam-of-light-by-john-kinsella/

A review of Maze by Jennifer Juneau

Jennifer Juneau deftly plays the reader with astounding grief one minute and manic hilarity the next, sometimes both at once. It’s a cinematic maze of emotions, as in a film noir where you wonder if that lady at the playground is the kindly caregiver she appears to be or a monstrous child molester. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/07/a-review-of-maze-by-jennifer-juneau/

A review of The Book of Happiness by Joseph Mark Glazner

At its core this is a book about the entirely human path to responsibility and personal accountability. From a very early age the author parents emphasized self-sufficiency, doing him an immense favor that parents rarely bestow upon their children today. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/06/a-review-of-the-book-of-happiness-by-joseph-mark-glazner/

Ghost Tones: A Review of Diane Mehta’s Tiny Extravaganzas

I found myself first reading Mehta’s poems on a sunny, hot, false summer October day and listening to my neighbor’s music that swirled up and over my fence and into my yard. It was strange music–ghostly. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/03/ghost-tones-a-review-of-diane-mehtas-tiny-extravaganzas/

A review of Wild Pack of the Living by Eileen Cleary

In this tale of humans gone wrong, and the powerful presence of the natural world as witness, the flowers do not cloy; they arrive, watch, and listen—plants accompany, then entrap. “Dog lilies and the larkspurs may have heard.” “Day lilies escort us.” “downed pines trap me.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/09/02/a-review-of-wild-pack-of-the-living-by-eileen-cleary/

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 3,401) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

==============================================

LITERARY NEWS

In the literary news this month, Sisters in Crime announced the winners of the 2024 Davitt Awards, recognising the best crime and mystery books by Australian women: For Adult novel: When One of Us Hurts by Monica Vuu, YA novel: Eleanor Jones Is Not a Murderer by Amy Doak, Children’s novel: The Wolves of Greycoat Hall by Lucinda Gifford, Nonfiction: The Schoolgirl, Her Teacher, and His Wife by Rebecca Hazel, Debut crime: The Half Brother by Christine Keighery, and Readers’ Choice: The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman.

The American University in Cairo Press has released a shortlist for the $5,000 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, which supports contemporary Arabic literature in translation. In addition to a cash prize, the winning work earns translation and publication throughout the English-speaking world. The winner will be named December 11, the birthday of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. This year’s shortlisted titles are: The Sky Is Smoking Cigarettes (al-Sama’ tudakhin al-saga’ir) by Wajdi al-Ahdal (Yemen), The Glass Woman (al-Sayyida al-zujajiya) by Amr El-Adly (Egypt), The Scribe: Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (al-Warraq Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi) by Hisham Eid (Egypt), My Name Is Zayzafun (Ismi Zayzafun) by Sausan Jamil Hasan (Syria), House of the Judge: The Journey of Qassim bin Yunis (Bayt al-qadi: masirat Qasim bin Yunis) by Mahmoud Adel Taha (Egypt), Muted Microphone (Micrufun katim sawt) by Mohammed Tarazi (Lebanon).

The 12-title longlist has been released for the C$100,000 Giller Prize, which honours “the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English.” The finalists, who will be unveiled October 9, receive C$10,000 each. The winner will be named November 18. The Giller Prize is sponsored by Scotiabank, CBC Books, Mantella Corporation, Indigo, and the Azrieli Foundation. This year’s longlisted titles are: A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson, Death by a Thousand Cuts by Shashi Bhat, What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss, Bad Land by Corinna Chong, Curiosities by Anne Fleming, Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr, This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, Held by Anne Michaels, The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor, Peacocks of Instagram by Deepa Rajagopalan, In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart, and real ones by katherena vermette.

The shortlist has been selected for the $75,000 2024 Cundill History Prize, which is administered by McGill University and honours “the book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and diverse appeal.” Three finalists will be announced October 3 and the winner October 30. The shortlist: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J. Bass (Knopf), They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence by Lauren Benton (Princeton University Press), Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji (Yale University Press), Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (Random House), Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America by Andrew C. McKevitt (University of North Carolina Press), Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (Liveright Publishing), The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination by Stuart A. Reid (Knopf), and Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David Van Reybrouck, translated by David Colmer and David McKay (W.W. Norton).

The 12 titles longlisted for the 2024 Baille Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, worth £50,000 are” Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Gary J Bass, Picador), Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis (Jonathan Blitzer, Picador), The Story of a Heart (Rachel Clarke, Abacus)Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land (Rachel Cockerell, Headline), Question 7 (Richard Flanagan, Knopf), Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobsen, Torva), A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Corsair), Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin (Sue Prideaux, Faber), Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World (David Van Reybrouck, trans by David Colmer & David McKay, Bodley Head), Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Cape), What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean (Helen Scales, Grove Press), and The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (Adam Shatz, Apollo). All works of nonfiction by authors of any nationality are eligible for the award, which is the richest prize for nonfiction in the UK. The shortlist will be announced on 10 October, with the winner then announced 19 November.

This week the National Book Foundation is releasing longlists for the 2024 National Book Awards. Finalists will be announced October 1, and winners named November 20 at the National Book Awards Ceremony. The full longlists can be found here: https://www.nationalbook.org/2024-national-book-awards-longlist-for-young-peoples-literature/

The winners of the 2024 New England Book Awards, presented during the New England Independent Booksellers Association Fall Conference awards banquet: Fiction: North Woods by Daniel Mason (Random House), Nonfiction: Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson (Penguin), Poetry: The Wonder of Small Things by James Crews (Storey Publishing), Picture Book: Small Things Mended by Casey W Robinson, illustrated by Nancy Whitesides (Rocky Pond Books), Middle Grade (tie): Chinese Menu by Grace Lin (Little, Brown)Timid by Jonathan Todd (Graphix), and Young Adult: Gather by Kenneth Cadow (Candlewick).

The 2024 shortlist for the Booker Prize – the world’s most influential prize for a single work of fiction – was announced on 16 September 2024. The shortlist includes the largest number of women in the Booker’s 55-year history, with five women and one man represented. Authors from five countries appear on the list, including the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted, the first Australian in 10 years, as well as British, Canadian and American authors. Two of the authors have been shortlisted previously. The Shortlist includes Held by Anne Michaels, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, James by Percival Everett, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. The Booker Prize 2024 ceremony will take place on the evening of Tuesday, November 12 2024 at Old Billingsgate in London and will be broadcast in a special edition of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. The ceremony will be livestreamed on the Booker Prizes’ YouTube and Instagram channels. The winner will receive £50,000, a trophy named Iris (after winner Iris Murdoch), and can expect their career to be transformed. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a bespoke bound edition of their book.

Finally, South African writer Nadia Davids won the £10,000 (about $13,395) Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, “Bridling,” which was first published in The Georgia Review in 2023. This year’s competition witnessed a record-breaking number of submissions, with 320 entries from 28 African countries. In addition to the cash prize, the winner’s work will be featured in the 2024 Caine Prize Anthology, Midnight in the Morgue and Other Stories (Cassava Republic Press). Runners-up Tryphena Yeboah, Samuel Kolawole, Uche Okonkwo, and Pemi Aguda receive £500 (about $670) and will be included in the anthology

Have a great month.

==============================================

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Mary Morris, who won a copy of Will End in Fire by Nicole Bokat.

Congratulations also to Zeeva Bukai who won a copy of Daughter of Fire by Sofia Robled and Helen Warrener, who won a .pdf version.

Our new site giveaway this month is for a copy of The Nutcracker Chronicles by Janine Kovac. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Nutcracker Chronicles” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

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

Good luck!

==================================================