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October 13, 2006
Nobel prize
I have never been able to predict the winner of the Booker prize nor even to anticipate who might be on the short list.
However I am very pleased to say that I have twice predicted Nobel Prize winners for literature: once a Czech poet called Jaroslav Seifert and now the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.
In one of the first entries on this blog, in April this year, I wrote about the pleasure of reading Pamuk
I enjoy this kind of writing much more than that one normally finds on the Booker list.
Posted by Tim Coates at October 13, 2006 8:04 PM
Comments
I have clicked on the original item, and find reference to the Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert, who is indeed wonderful.
I am dismayed to find that there is only one book by him in the Brighton and Hove system, and that is kept in the Store, so there is no possibility that anybody will light upon this Nobel winner by chance.
Is foreign writing, in translation and in the original, being sidelined in the public-library system?
So much for "education, education, education" and being linked with Europe!
Posted by: Christopher Hawtree at October 14, 2006 6:59 AM
Whether or not this blog ever saves any public libraries one small benefit for me is that I did take up Tim's recommendation of Snow by Orhan Pamuk. I would recommend it to others too - the portrayal of a strange remote place and an insight into the impact of Islam there. My detractors say I get too obsessed with the plot and I was a touch disappointed at the end as there were few loose ends left untied. But read it.
Tim may have put this in because I recommended I'm Not Scared by Niccollo Ammaniti in a recent comment - probably not?
Like Tim I read very few Booker winners and probably very few laureates either. Of recent Bookers I liked Yann Martell's Life Of Pi, chosen because it starts from one the pitifully few distant parts of the world I've been to - the former French outpost in India, Pondicherry. Of those shortlisted recently I enjoyed Julian Barnes recreation of a Conan Doyle cause eclebre - Arthur and George.
Many of us moan that Lammy, MLA and librarians never mention books. Perhaps occasionally we could so a by product of this blog might be that the scope of our reading would spread a little wider. And in the end that's what public libraries are all about. Or have I missed something?
Phil
Posted by: Philip Kerridge at October 14, 2006 8:49 AM
Books? On a library blog? I agree with Phil, the more I see here about books, the better. Both because I'll benefit--I'm always looking for recommendations from the kind of people writing here--and because it makes sense. That's really what brings us together. If there's interest in a separate Recommended Books page, we could set that up.
Posted by: Karen Christensen at October 20, 2006 9:42 PM