The end of the year is traditionally loaded with book recommendations and, this time round, HarperPress was celebrating. In The Week’s digest of the Books of the Year four of Press books from 2008 appeared in the top five: Netherland by Joseph O’Neill was first (with 13 votes), Miracles of Life, by J.G. Ballard was second with 11 votes, The Rest is Noise was joint third (along with Zoe Heller’s The Believers) with 10 votes each and The Age of Wonder was fifth with nine votes. We also had two selections in the nine best cookery books of the year, The New English Table and The Clatter of Forks and Spoons. Continue reading »
That was my contribution to the One Life, Six Words competition currently running at Foyles. Continue reading »
Just a quick reminder that you have until the 2nd of January to vote at Spread the Word to find THE book to talk about in 2009. Continue reading »
After months of hard (and somewhat secretive) work, it’s rather exciting that we can finally talk about the imminent release of 100 Classic Book Collection for the DS games console, which we’ve produced in partnership with Nintendo.
From Boxing Day, the millions of Brits lucky enough to own one of Nintendo’s handheld DS machines can now load it up with the complete texts of some 100 classic novels and plays, all carefully plucked from the HarperCollins lists and archives and lovingly crafted into digital facsimile editions… Continue reading »
A converted church in NW1 was an appropriately acoustic venue for the Guardian First Book Award ceremony this week.
Fourth Estate has a particularly good history with this prize so we were absolutely delighted when Alex Ross was able to add his name to the honours board.
His book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century has had countless rave reviews since its publication so it was a real pleasure to see it receive this accolade.
The judges described it as ‘a triumph with a magisterial quality and marvelous scope’ and we couldn’t agree more.
Alex has also created one of the best blogs in the business to accompany the book, his audio guide takes you through the decades and will have you clicking onto iTunes to download in no time.
A fantastic book and an extremely worthy winner.
Congratulations Alex!
2009 sees the 25th anniversary of 4th Estate’s publishing.
In the summer of 2008, 4th Estate asked my company, Apt Studio, to create ’something stunning’ that would help them celebrate this anniversary, as well as celebrating books and their own ground-breaking, international, literary agenda.
Apt has worked with 4th Estate, and parent company HarperCollins, since 2002. Over the years, we’ve made a few films for them and also built the Fifth Estate blog that you’re reading this article on, as well as some other webby and creative projects - such as the recent Golden Notebook project for Doris Lessing. Continue reading »
Fantastic news for Fourth Estate’s Dylan Jones - author of Cameron on Cameron - his book has been shortlisted for Channel Four’s Political Book of the Year Award. In August the book made headlines everywhere from the Guardian to the Daily Mail - and proved to be the most talked-about book of the summer. It’s great to see Dylan’s hard work rewarded.
In late May he was on the ground covering the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich for the book, and still managed to have his manuscript ready for publication in August.
Other authors on the Channel Four shortlist include John Prescott and Cherie Blair for their autobiographies, and the late political journalist Hugo Young, whose posthumous papers have been published.
Next year we see 25 years of 4th Estate publishing and we’re going to be celebrating… Continue reading »
At times like these, even though I’m surrounded by books all day and should be paying attention to how much I’m spending, I still find myself sloping into bookshops (and, no, not for Katie…). Last night on my way home I got off the Tube early to go to my current favourite. I told myself that I was looking for next year’s diary but, since they didn’t have the required format (these things are important…!), I had to have a little wander around. Twenty minutes later I was off to the bus, with a small paperback stuffed in my bag. As I sat on the 134, considering the fact that I now had three books in my bag Continue reading »
The first three bits of news on today’s booktrade news round-up made depressing reading this morning. Random House US freezing pensions, Woolworth’s shaky status and Barnes and Noble’s sales dropping. Thank God Katie Price is still selling strong…; there’s hope for us all.
Halfway through ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ at my daughter’s nursery I heard the news. ‘You’ve won!’ whispered a little voice down the phone. Good job that I had decided to take the call in the toilets – I screamed so loudly the teachers assumed I’d seen a mouse. Continue reading »
Hemingway was once bet that he couldn’t produce a story in just six words. He wrote ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ He won the bet.
But if an entire story can be told in just six words, what about an entire life? Continue reading »
Michael Crichton died on Tuesday, and though he’s not a 5th Estate author, his legacy, at least for me, bears remembering. Continue reading »
The South Bank has been running a series of talks with American writers for the last few months, making explicit the importance of the current moment in American history for all of us. I saw Paul Auster, as I mentioned here, and then last week I saw Toni Morrison. As far as I’m concerned Morrison is a genius. She was the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, one of only 11 women out of the 105 awards since 1901 (our own Doris Lessing was the 11th woman to win it last year) and her work, though challenging, seems to reach beyond the media literati and academics.
The event was a stark contrast to most author readings. Continue reading »
Apache author Ed Macy – who won the Military Cross in Afghanistan – explains why the Army Air Corps is right for Prince Harry and what he can expect to experience on the tough selection procedure.
He’s a Target!
For Lt Wales to continue his operational role as a Blues and Royals Officer in Afghanistan’s current climate is deemed too risky – to him and his comrades. He is too much of an important target. Continue reading »
Marcus du Sautoy, author of The Music of the Primes and Finding Moonshine, has just been appointed as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, replacing Richard Dawkins. The Professorship aims to ‘communicate science to the public, with elements of scholarship that bring true understanding’ and having heard him put John Humphries in his place on the Today programme this morning, it sounds like he’ll be perfect.
Apache author Ed Macy – who won the Military Cross in Afghanistan – explains what attracts Prince Harry to the Army Air Corps and what it’ll take for him to make it as an Apache Pilot. Continue reading »
World Book Day isn’t till March but the build-up is already starting. Last week the organisers launched a list of fifty titles, described as the books ‘most worth talking about’. To make their initial selection they asked publishers:
to submit books they thought deserved to reach a wider readership – most specifically those that would make good subjects for discussion, those that don’t merely entertain, but give greater food for thought.
From the list of 50, a shortlist of ten will be selected in January, before ‘The Book to Talk About in 2009’ is chosen in March. What is great about this prize is that, although the initial choice was made by the publishers (as is often the case with book prizes), via their submissions, and the fifty-strong longlist was chosen by the WBD organisers, the shortlist of ten and the final winner will be selected by readers’ votes. Readers go to the website (the address is www.spread-the-word.org.uk/ but watch out for those hyphens: Google throws up another, similarly-named website which promotes London writing), login and comment on/review the books that they love. Each week one voter/reviewer will win £100 worth of Book Tokens. Continue reading »
…over in Australia, 4th Estate has been winning plenty of other prizes. The People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks’ bestselling novel published in January, won the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Book of the Year Award and Literary Fiction Book of the Year. Then a week later Steven Carroll won the 2008 Miles Franklin Award, the most prestigious Australian literary award, for his novel The Time We Have Taken, the final part of a trilogy now known as ‘the Glenroy novels’. It was third time lucky for Carroll, who was nominated for the other two novels in the trilogy. Finally, Steven Conte recently won the 2008 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for his first novel The Zookeeper’s War . This is a brand new prize, worth A$100,000 (£44,000) to two winners (one fiction, one non-fiction) which the PM announced in his election manifesto.
I’m not sure I can imagine either Brown or Cameron launching a literary prize in their next campaigns but in the current climate I wouldn’t rule anything out…thanks to Lizzy Kingston of HC Australia for the report.
Do you remember your first time? I do. The corridors of Hall 8 at the Frankfurt Book Fair were rammed with air-kissing publishers, shrieks of recognition and whispers of gossip I didn’t remotely understand. I thought they were all terrible show-offs and swore I’d never be one of them. But now that I’ve happily given myself up to the dark side, I’m pouring myself a glass of champagne, greeting you with a ‘mwah’ and offering the eight tips I think you need for your first Frankfurt. I’m going to assume you know the basics usually covered by this sort of guide – drink plenty of water, wear comfortable shoes – and focus on the things I wish I’d known back in the day. Continue reading »
Congratulations to Aravind Adiga on winning the Booker Prize for his first novel last night. Continue reading »
It’s that time of year again, when the literati turns its eyes to the world of the Man Booker Prize and the bookmakers… Continue reading »
Waiting in the queue to see Paul Auster last week at the South Bank, I met a man from Bilbao. He had not travelled from Spain, as I first thought, but from Scotland to come and hear the author speak. Continue reading »
It costs $60000 per minute for a supplier to stop a General Motors production line, a figure that makes the costs of book production seem laughable. Car manufacturers work to much tighter ‘just in time’ deadlines, and every minute wasted is a dollar lost. But soon one in Michigan will be stopped for two weeks, because there are no sales, and therefore no work. Who’d have thought that Americans would stop buying cars not because of Kyoto but because of lack of credit? Then yesterday I, along with several thousand other savers, watched as various Icelandic banks into which I, sensibly I thought, stuffed my savings, teetered, and eventually fell, into bankruptcy. Today, who knows; if we could predict what was next then we would be making money rather than losing it… Continue reading »
In the last week there have been at least three: Hay Segovia, Berlin and Warwick. Next week sees the start of Cheltenham, the continuation of Beverly and Manchester’s. I’m talking, of course, about literary festivals. New ones seem to appear in the most unlikely of places and yet there seem to be no end of consumers ready to hand over a few pounds to see both the famous and the less so talking and reading about their work. Whether in a tiny Scottish town or a big international city, the events proliferate, the banners are hung and the audience comes. Plant a literary tree it seems, and it will grow. Continue reading »
