Amazon recommends and offends

Margaret Atwood finds items that are “quite offensive” when she browses online, at least on Amazon.com.

According to an article from The Times, Atwood spoke out against online book browsing at the London Book Fair last week: “You are not going to get the same experience on the net. Amazon is trying, by saying, ‘If you like this book you might like this other book’, but it’s often something quite offensive that they suggest.”

Fellow author Kazuo Ishiguro also enjoys wandering the shelves but says he finds the Internet more useful for research purposes. However, the practice occasionally backfires.

“Amazon’s recommendations were often amusingly useless, he added. ‘One of the last books I bought was a study guide to one of my old books, The Remains of the Day. Now they keep recommending my own books to me’.”

Shakespeare’s trash a literary treasure

As reported by the CBC, William Shakespeare is making a posthumous contribution to his poetry collection. Thirty years after its discovery, To the Queen by the Players, an 18-line poem, will be published for the first time.

Scholars believe the Bard may have delivered the poem himself in a performance for Queen Elizabeth I in 1599.

“When plays were put on at court, it was a requirement that there should be a prologue and an epilogue tailor-made for the occasion,” Jonathan Bate, co-editor of the new edition [of the Complete Works of Shakespeare published by Macmillan], told the Daily Express newspaper.

“Shakespeare was probably in the habit of dashing some lines down on the back of an envelope and then chucking them away.”

The publication of the poem is a fitting present to all Shakespeare fans, fresh from their celebration of his birthday on April 23.

Better than Ondaatje?

The Independent posted an excerpt of an article originally published in the UK-based Mslexia magazine, in which Danuta Kean discusses the process of bringing great books to the big screen.

The article references recent films such as Notes on a Scandal, based on Zoë Heller’s 2003 novel of the same name, and the fifth Harry Potter film, which is due out this July, and explains the box office expectations of adapted works.

According to Nick Marston, the managing director of Curtis Brown’s media division, there are two types of film: bullseye films, which rely on word-of-mouth and have to hit their upmarket audiences spot on if they are to be hits, and shotgun films: mass appeal movies which can hit far more targets.

“Blockbuster films thrive off mass appeal,” he says. “If you have a literary novel, translating it into an adult movie is harder because it appeals to a smaller audience.” Films like Notes on a Scandal break out of the art house circuit because they have hit the bullseye, getting everything right from fine acting to a great script, critical approval and audience-enticing awards.

Kean also discusses the author’s lowly position in the filming process. One writer, Celia Brayfield, who sold film rights to her novel Heartswap, was told she could attend the movie’s premiere but only at her own expense. And that’s only if the film actually gets made at all. “Less than two per cent of optioned films make it to the screen, and those that do usually have long gestation processes….” (Brayfield’s Heartswap got dropped after the buyers, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, divorced.)

Kean includes a list of the best and worst adaptations. The English Patient is number five on the best list with high praise for its screenwriter. “Anthony Minghella turned Michael Ondaatje’s Booker winner upside down to form a romantic epic that improved on the original.”

Laying out the welcome mat for author Stephen Harper

In an article posted on workopolis.com, author Susan Swan welcomes Stephen Harper to the world of publishing by offering him a few tips for his upcoming book on the history of hockey.

Swan uses Harper’s “day job” as prime minister to segue into criticisms of the government’s slashing of funding for cultural programs abroad and comments about the difficulties and limitations of obtaining grants and literary prizes.

You mentioned that the research for your book has slowed down since you became our 22nd prime minister. Naturally, I wasn’t surprised, and I thought of suggesting that you try for Ontario’s $1,500 emerging writers’ grant and hire your own researcher. Like all emerging writers in Ontario, you are entitled to apply, although this modest start-up will barely cover a researcher’s fee for any more than a month. Nor will it help much to offset some of your moving costs, Mr. Prime Minister, if, God forbid, you lose your day job in another election.

…

Alas, the funding that once helped Canadian writers reach their world audiences has vanished. Thanks to you slashing $11.8-million from our cultural programs abroad, 30 years of support has gone overnight. Alas again, our cultural diplomats who were once employed to promote our culture abroad now have no way to publicize anything, let alone our writing. And knowing the stock you place in short-term results, these hard-working folks may soon be out of a job altogether.

As covered in Q&Q Omni today, The Writer’s Union of Canada, of which Swan is vice-chair, held a demonstration on Parliament Hill yesterday to draw attention to the financial and cultural contributions the arts make to Canada.

Hey, hey, you, you, I could be your manga star

As the L.A. Times reports, today marks Avril Lavigne’s foray into the publishing world as the imaginary friend and conscience of an unhappy teenaged girl in a two-volume manga comic.

Published by Del Ray, Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes is written by Joshua Dysart – the punk princess served as creative consultant on the project. She is, of course, doing it for the fans.

Lavigne’s official website includes a link to “Avril Manga episodes,” which stream images from the comic accompanied by instrumental versions of songs from her new album. Fans can also post their own five wishes.

The first volume hit stores today, but Lavigne’s fans will have to wait until July for, like, the best damn conclusion.

Playing dressup for The Iliad

On boingboing.net, designer Larry Knox breaks down the process of creating a cover for The Iliad, which he did right in his own living room. Knox fashioned a spear out of clay and a wooden dowel rod and took pictures of himself in warrior poses.

A link at the bottom of the article lets you see the photo shoot and separates the other pictures he used to compile the final cover.

(To read more about book design, be sure to check out Q&Q‘s special report in our April issue, on stands now.)

New look for library logo

Design Edge Canada reports that with the opening of a new main branch building, the North Vancouver District Public Library has revealed a new logo. The blue logo is meant to represent the library’s various collections. “Matt Warburton of Emdoubleyu Design in Vancouver created the new circular logo with its three book-shaped panels. In addition to books, the panels can also represent a line of monitors, CDs or video tapes, which are also available at the library.”

The logo is currently being used on new library cards.

Literary role models

A new literary award for Australian authors has been announced. The Australian Society of Authors established the Barbara Jefferis Award to honour “the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society.”

With a potential $35,000 prize attached to the award, it is sure to attract many submissions, but concerns have been raised about how to define a “positive” depiction, and some see the award as essentially paying for that message reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Herald’s chief book critic, Andrew Riemer, praised the award’s generosity but said: “I don’t like literary prizes being used for anything that can be seen as propaganda or a social agenda … I would have been happier if it had set out to reward novelists’ skill and imagination without attaching strings.”

The novelist Emily McGuire agreed: “I don’t like the idea of judging fiction based on its message.”

The author and critic Debra Adelaide worried the award might encourage the tendency of Australian writing to be “safe and constrained”.

Barbara Jefferis, who wrote nine novels and was the Australian Society of Authors’ first woman president in the 1970s, died in 2004. Her husband, John Hinde, died last year and set up the award in his wife’s honour as part of his will.

Bringing sexy back

As frequent readers of Quillblog can attest, reading is sexy. Now we can share the message through clothing and accessories.

The website buyolympia is selling T-shirts, buttons, bags, and bumper stickers with the slogan “reading is sexy,” accompanied by a picture of a girl peering over the edge of her oval glasses. Available in styles for him or her, the shirts come in various colours.

A feast of literature

In an article in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik reflects on his cooking experiences with recipes taken from the pages of novels. “Cooking is to our literature what sex was to the writing of the sixties and seventies, the thing worth stopping the story for to share, so to speak, with the reader,” he writes.

Gopnik connects the manner of cooking to the style and meaning of the writing. Quillblog especially enjoyed his thoughts on shell beans as cooked by Robert B. Parker’s main character, Spenser, in School Days:

The beans alone establish Spenser’s credibility as a cook. “I shelled the beans from their long, red-and-cream pods and dropped them in boiling water and turned down the heat and let them simmer,” he tells us. A devotion to shell beans, I have noticed, divides even amateur cooks from non-cooks more absolutely than any other food, and they are, into the bargain, a perfect model of writing. Like sentences, shell beans are a great deal more trouble to produce than anyone who isn’t producing them knows. You have to shell the beans, slipping open the pods with your thumbnail and then tugging the beautiful little prismatic buttons from their moorings—a process that, like writing, always takes much longer than you think it will. And then even the best shell beans, cleaned and simmered, are like sentences in that nobody actually appreciates them as much as they deserve to be appreciated.

Gopnik goes on to discuss cooking scenes as opportunities for reflection for the characters, and expresses his doubt that deep thought is possible, either for the characters or ourselves, while making some of the more complicated dishes such as bouillabaisse in Ian McEwan’s Saturday.