Lady Links: this week in women writers

• Esther Freud lists her top ten love stories in The Guardian
• The Millions asks: Is Lionel Shriver America’s best writer?
• A.L. Kennedy blogs about the perils of meeting your favourite writer
• A song inspired by Claudia Dey’s debut novel Stunt
• The Washington Post reviews Nox by Anne Carson
• Bloggingpoet.com announces a tie for its poet laureate of the blogosphere competition – Montreal’s Sina Queyras and Robert Lee Brewer

Daily book biz round-up, March 15

What you missed over the weekend:

• Yet more op-ed pieces about Amazon setting up shop in Canada. Michael Geist argues for. Morley Walker argues against. (Oh, and some writer from the Calgary Herald rips the Canadian Booksellers Association a new one)
• Still no decision on Amazon from Ottawa
• E-reader that nobody cared about to be delayed
• Doug Wright Awards finalists named
• Spanish author Miguel Delibes dies
• Norman Mailer’s son posts e-book “that explores post-Katrina New
  Orleans from the perspective of strippers”
• The evolution of Joan Thomas
• Scottish author A.L. Kennedy doesn’t want to be part of club that would have her as member
• Does iPad text-to-voice function violate an author’s audiobook rights?
• The Millions on how to get started in publishing
• St. Martin’s to publish sordid, tawdry details of Dame Judi Dench‘s life

The book world in quotes

Quillblog was on the fritz on Friday, so here is what you missed:

“At the end of the day, people need to have the courage to speak out. The predatory pricing practice by Amazon has pulled the industry along, and the Federal Trade Commission should have paid attention. Ultimately the authors will pay out of their income. This is an attack on literature so Amazon can capture control of the industry. They think they will be the iTunes of literature. It’s a monopolistic play that has nothing to do with value for the consumer. It’s an interesting scam by a very large corporation and I think we should wake up. It hasn’t helped grow the market – it has concentrated the market in Amazon. It’s been 70 years since people got away with [such actions] because the anti-trust laws used to be enforced, but we didn’t have enforcement for eight years.” -   Bob Livolsi, founder of the ebookstore Books on Board, at a panel discussion at Mediabistro’s eBook Summit (via Mobylives)

“And don’t remind me of the conversation I once had with a prominent academic, who intended the phrase ‘But it’s so effortless …’ as an adverse comment on a novel. I simply couldn’t rant convincingly enough to ensure that particular book could win a small but useful prize. The narrative’s illusion of ease – and just you try creating an illusion of ease, matey – was too convincing. A parallel idiocy might involve refusing to applaud Derek Jacobi at the end of a performance, because he looked as if he wasn’t acting.” – A.L. Kennedy, on the Guardian’s blog

“My waitress tonight was a Trillium nominated novelist — what’s wrong with this picture?” – the OAC’s literature officer John Degen on Twitter

“As the debate progressed, it became clear that, although both poets know something of the current Canadian poetry landscape, both are conservative in conception and approach. Bok, who did not challenge the moderator’s depiction of him as an ‘experimental poet’ (in fact, he embraced it), is interested in equivalencies between poetic and scientific methodological composition, while the diffident Starnino prefers a poetry where emotion is to the garment what syntax is to the clothesline. Neither question the ideological construction of the structures they inhabit, and only barely did Starnino refer to Eunoia‘s ‘success’ as defined not by critique but by the market.” – Michael Turner on the Christian Bök/Carmine Starnino Cage Match of Canadian poetry

“I don’t for a second buy Bök/Starnino as the major critical dialectic in Canadian poetry. While one, generally, comes from a traditionalist mindset and the other is avant-garde, what matters is that both men are formalists at their core. The fact that Bök wants to write in genomic code and Starnino is into sonnets is secondary to the fact that the great professional theme for both is the use of constraint as a path to artistic freedom. A more representative conversation would be between the constrainers and the free-versers. But maybe the free-versers don’t have a spokesperson who’s talented or persuasive enough to hang with these two at an intellectual level.” – Jacob McArthur Mooney on his blog Vox Populism

Bookmarks – Khaled Hosseini says stay the course, A.L. Kennedy pleads for school and library funding, and more

Some book-related links:

• Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, urges U.S. and allies to stay in Afghanistan (AFP)
• A.L. Kennedy wins Scottish book award, makes plea for school and library funding (The Scotsman)
• Author Taslima Nasreen under fire in India (Toronto Star)
• Mohammed the Mole now named “Morgan” (The Times of India)
• Are textbooks getting dumbed down? (Guardian Unlimited)
• Books have lessons for greedheads (TheStreet.com)
• The New York Public Library displays mug shots of George W. Bush et al. (CBC.ca)
• Bookstore flasher arrested (Dailypress.com)