IMPAC Dublin Award Just Around the Corner

The International IMPAC Dublic Literary Award longlist was released last week, giving award buffs a mere seven months to read every title on the 154-book list. The Millions does a great job outlining the favourites and darkhorses, as well as breaking it down by region. Over at Like Fire, Lisa delves a little deeper, moving toward a redefinition of the phrase "longlist".

The IMPAC Dublic list is an interesting one, as it is chosen by international library associations rather than critics or judges. As well, it awards books from the previous full calendar year; in 2013, books published in 2011 will be considered. It is often surprising, and rarely echoes other award winners from that year. The shortlist will be announced on April 9th, and the winner is announced on June 6th, 2013.

A New Nigerian History Book

Will Ferguson's 419 is grabbing attention these days after its Scotiabank Giller Prize win earlier this week. 419 focuses on the anti-fraud laws in Nigeria, specifically the internet scams that are infamous around the world. Ferguson's protagonist tracks down the scammer that devastated her family. But Ferguson also provides several subplots, specifically about the citizens of contemporary Nigeria, and about the trials that face them each day. Modern Nigeria is a complex place, surrounded on all sides by corruption, warlords, economic exploitation, and poverty.

A new book by Chinua Achebe expands this new history by documenting lost history: There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra is a memoir of a people, the losers in a civil war that lasted 3 years between 1967 and 1970. Achebe's new book is history written not by the victors, but by the losers. The Millions posted an article last week by Daniel Tseghay, reviewing the book. Tseghay writes, "[Achebe]’s written a segment of history still avoided by many official Nigerian texts. It’s a personal history which seems to recognize that the stories we often hear of the past are shaped by those in power. It recognizes that we will need to hear the stories of the powerless – of the defeated – if we would like a fuller picture of reality." As well, this week The New York Times Sunday Book Review has posted a review. Adam Nossiter writes that Achebe's "memoir of the moment describes when the country, yoked together artificially by British colonizers, split apart at a cost of more than a million lives."

Both articles are informative and inspire further research. Achebe's early novels Things Fall Apart and A Man of the People confront these issues head on, and The Millions article also provides several other literary examples of Nigerian history. Even though independence and war took place over 40 years ago, the people of Nigeria are still wrestling with the issues that divided the nation.

The Man Booker Prize Shortlist Announced

photo from cbc.ca

The second shortlist to be announced within a week is for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. The list is as follows:

Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies
Alison Moore, The Lighthouse
Will Self, Umbrella
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

No Canadians on this list, unfortunately. As with the longlist announcement, Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies is the prohibitive favourite. Last year’s winner, Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, came with a bit of controversy, as the “jury was accused of dumbing down after the chair of the panel said finalists had been chosen for ‘readability’’’ (CBC Books). This year’s list is “more adventurous” with a debut novel from Thayil, a stream of consciousness novel from Self, and two novels, from Levy and Eng, that were previously rejected from British publishers.

It is an interesting list and I will do my best to get through it before the October 16th announcement. However, having not yet read Wolf Hall (gasp), I won’t be able to read Bring Up the Bodies - it is a proper sequel.

Below is a list of other sites reporting on the announcement:

The Man Booker Prize
CBC Books
The Guardian
Page Views
The Millions
The Mookse and the Gripes

An Excellent Half-Read Book

I came across a link today to an article by New Yorker columnist Mark O'Connell about his habit of reading books part way through before abandoning them for others. He writes that it isn't that he dislikes reading, it's that he likes "reading too much:"

I’ll be reading a novel and thoroughly enjoying it. Then I’ll be in a bookshop and I’ll see something I’ve been anticipating, and I’ll buy it. I’ll start reading the new book on the bus home that evening, and that will be the end of the original affair. I’m certainly invested in the relationship with the book that I’m currently reading, but I can’t help myself from pursuing whatever new interest happens to turn my head. Perhaps that’s just a tortuous way of admitting to being a pathetic serial book-adulterer who’ll chase after anything in a dust jacket.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/promiscuous-reading.html#ixzz25GxPwPcl

This is a trend that I have discovered about myself. At one point I felt that I could schedule my reading list. I would be reading one book, and think about reading another, and then plan to read that book next. But once I was finished, I would come across a different book altogether and start reading that instead. So that was a failed hope of mine. I still make plans, however, though I am aware of my own tendencies. I will certainly have several books on the go at once, either actively or passively. 

Recently, while packing up my books in order to move, I recouped several long-lost bookmarks found in books placed back on the shelves. I remember why I abandoned those particular books at that time, too: reasons from "it wasn't the right time" to "I should really read more non-fiction." Certain authors will cause me to change courses, as well. After reading The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth, I was very eager to continue reading about Nathan Zuckerman, but I found the energy required to read Roth meant that a hiatus was required before venturing to the next one. I would abandon Zuckerman Unbound for something more, well, pleasant. 

I always have a non-fiction title in progress, as well as 2 or 3 novels - with e-reading it's even simpler to skip from book to book. I always promise to be faithful, however; I will return to those books whose hopes were dashed when I closed their covers for a time. But not Martin Amis. He had his chance and he blew it.