http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com Book Blog of Lists Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:23:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_252" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Apple eBooks will be made available from the iBookstore. It still looks like a bookshelf though."][/caption] Tech pundits are predicting the death of print within the next decade as a plethora of eBook readers – now including Apple – make print unnecessary. But does redundant mean it's ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2010/01/apple-joins-the-ebook-debate/ The adage of not judging a book by its cover may hold true for older books, especially those designed and printed before the art of book design became fine, but contemporary books ask to be judged. Present book design illustrates aspects of a book (or attempt to at least) appealing to ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/judging-a-book-by-its-cover-1984/ When Roland Barthes said ‘the author is dead’ it seems Douglas Adams, like Ian Fleming, took him literally, much to the disappointment of their publishers. Why let a good thing die with the author? Living writers take up the reigns of their late contemporaries to continue the ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/the-author-may-not-be-dead-proves-colfer/ With French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio in 2008, Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertész in 2002, recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature show a common trend towards the minority. Herta Müller, however, shows this favouratism to be more than the academy's ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/minority-muller-follows-suit-to-win-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-2009/ Title: There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales Author: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya Published by: Penguin Non-Classics Cover Design: Christopher Brand As Russian novelists, playwrights and writers go, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is as good as it gets for modern fiction. Using her postmodern vantage point, Petruchevskaya references the works ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/there-once-lived-a-woman-who-tried-to-kill-her-neighbors-baby-scary-fairy-tales/ Ever since Stephenie Meyer turned vampires into glittering vegans, they’ve become increasingly mainstream, followed no longer by post-punk goths or the lugubrious, but now by bloggers, teen mom’s and 25-34 year-olds. [caption id="attachment_164" align="aligncenter" width="592" caption="From the Gothic nosferatu to pop culture"][/caption] According to a study done by The Nielson Company, consumers ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/twilight-turns-vamp-fans-into-30-somethings/ Being full of nonsense may be why kids love Alice so much. Yet being nonsensical may in fact be the reason Alice is not for children. [caption id="attachment_181" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Carroll was a professional mathematician"][/caption] Sombre auteur, Tim Burton, takes on Lewis Carroll in what has been dubbed the new-age Gothic version ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/burton-vs-carroll/ Mantel wins both booker and the ire of Byatt. But are either deserved? [caption id="attachment_52" align="aligncenter" width="389" caption="Turn off the charm ... get rid of your piffling similes ... eat meat, drink blood  – Hilary Mantel's advice on writing"][/caption] When Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel was announced as the winner ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/the-judges-who-cried-wolf/ Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife Author: Audrey Niffenegger Publisher: MacAdam/ Cage This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/the-time-travelers-wife/ Title: The Lie that Tells a Truth Author: John Dufresne Published by: W.W. Norton & Co. Designed by: John Fulbrook III Author John Dufresne instructs us how to write in his book The Lie that Tells a Truth: A guide to writing fiction. A manual on book-writing, the non-fiction is divided into “The Process” ... http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/the-lie-that-tells-the-truth/