Canada’s Giller Prize picks this year’s shortlist. “The jury read 97 submissions before making their selection. They picked Atwood for her futuristic Oryx And Crake (also on the Man Booker list) and Vassanji for The In-Between World Of Vikram Lall set in Kenya after it won independence. Also shortlisted is Ann-Marie MacDonald’s second novel The Way The Crow Flies, about murder and Cold War politics; The Island Walkers, a first novel by John Bemrose about workers organizing a union in an Ontario mill town; and Kilter: 55 Fictions by John Gould, a writer of extremely short stories who is director of the Victoria School Of Writing in Victoria, B.C.”
Tag: 10.03.03
John Who?
Most of the Giller shortlist was predictable, stuffed with the usual Canadian literary heavyweights. But the inclusion of virtually unknown author John Gould caught many people by surprise, including John Gould. “Gould’s second collection of short stories, was published by Turnstone Press of Manitoba in June, and the only major Canadian paper to review it so far was The Winnipeg Free Press, which said it offered a ‘multitude of pleasures.'”
B&N To Expand Spanish Section
“The market for books in Spanish, already among of the most promising in the publishing industry, is about to get a lot bigger. Barnes & Noble Inc., is adding thousands of new books to its Spanish-language sections… Books in all categories will be added, from self-help to literary fiction. And Barnesandnoble.com has started Libros en Espanol, an online service that includes author interviews, a best-seller list — topped by the Spanish edition of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoirs — and a guide to Barnes & Noble stores that sell works in Spanish.”
Making The Music The Star
For small, regional orchestras, the challenge of drawing a significant audience to concerts is considerable, and many resort to booking “superstar” performers like Itzhak Perlman or Yo-Yo Ma in order to sell tickets. The trouble with that strategy, of course, is that such soloists command exorbitant fees, which tend to wipe out most of the profit gained from the full hall. But not every orchestra is trapped in the star cycle. “The simple idea of giving the music itself top billing has kept the Las Vegas Philharmonic in the black for its first four seasons, without having to prop up its main-stage offerings with pops concerts or big-name guest artists.”
DVDs Are So 2002, Anyway
“Now that DVDs have become fully accepted by the masses, and even progressive-scan players can be found for under $70, what’s a videophile got to do to stay ahead of the pack? Or perhaps the better question is: Now that DVDs are almost 7 years old, which is an eternity in the consumer electronics world, what comes next?” The answer seems to be better DVDs, which would have enough storage space to take full advantage of the high quality and multiple features available to owners of high-definition TVs. But with the biggest DVD manufacturers squabbling over the format standard, it may be a while before the next generation of DVDs gets off the ground.
Schools Putting The Kibosh On File-Swapping
College students may be the largest single demographic of concern in the recording industry’s fight to stem the tide of illegal file-swapping of copyrighted music and movies. But “the University of Florida has developed a tool to help extricate the school from the morass of peer-to-peer file trading, and early results show that it’s succeeding.” Still, there are concerns that Icarus, the program that stifles the swapping, is restricting student use of other, more legitimate internet functions.
A New Engaging History Of Art
Noted historian Paul Johnson undertakes a history of art. “The book is really an extended and engaging work of art criticism rather than a strict history, with many fresh points of view and many eccentric ones. In places, it is deeply flawed. But it always has the virtue of a strong and opinionated intelligence guiding its arguments and prose.”
Seeing Beneath The Surface
“Knowing what lies beneath the surface before the trowel hits the soil has long been the dream of many an archaeologist. As well as saving time in determining where to dig, it would enable archaeologists to answer questions with a minimum of destruction—and potentially none at all. This dream is slowly becoming a reality, as a result of improvements in non-destructive surveying techniques. Archaeology has never been a wealthy discipline, but by borrowing tools developed for more well-endowed professions, archaeologists are developing X-ray vision—or, to be precise, infra-red, microwave and magnetic vision, which are even better. Such tools enable archaeologists to identify and target small areas of interest, and to move away from the complete excavation of sites towards a more selective approach.”