The Olive Reader

Our friends at Shelf Awareness tipped us off to this video … Go Britney, go!

The Harbor Boys by Hugo Hamilton (who is a wonderfully talented writer—by the way) has gotten some of its due in the New York Times Book Review‘s “Paperback Row.” As follows:

Hamilton’s lyrical memoir, “The Speckled People” (2003), described growing up in the 1960s Dublin as the son of an anti-Nazi German immigrant mother and an Irish nationalist father who would not allow English to be spoken at home. “The Harbor Boys” finds young Hugo eager to escape the domestic turmoil, but his summer job involves him in conflict between his Catholic boss and a Protestant fisherman as the Troubles worsen in the North.

The cover is conveniently pictured on the right and below:

The Times announced their Top 10 List. Special plug for Man Gone Down – a paperback original (yes, a PAPERBACK ORIGINAL) from Grove made the list.

No, I wasn’t canoodling with U2’s lead guitarist, again, (yar yar yar and good morning) but, via a colleague’s recommendation, I came across the website and subsequent party photos of The Edge. And if you are unsure what this “edge” may be, it is this:

To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

I would ask: “Who chose this color for the drapes?” or “Why aren’t empanadas as popular with my friends as they are with me?” I wend to this point: John Brockman, founder of the Edge Foundation and editor of What Are You Optimistic About? and What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, knows how to throw a party—so much so that I am blogging about it eight months after the fact.

I love that this is news.

LONDON – Pigeon racers are petitioning Queen Elizabeth II to have their activity officially classified as a sport. The Belford Racing Pigeon Club hopes the British monarch, the patron of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, will intervene in a dispute that could see them pay millions of dollars in taxes, chairman Eric Sim said. Full story here.

The Royal Pigeon Racing Association sounds like a fine organization. Learn more about them here.

Just so you know – Pigeon racers are also known as “pigeon fanciers”

The New York Times Book Review has come out with their “Top 100 Notable Books of the Year”. Use it as a shopping list…

Quick shout-out to Harper Perennial author Rebecca Curtis – her debut short story collection, Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money, was named a Notable. Congrats Rebecca!

Cover of Newsweek this week – all about reading. I haven’t read the article yet myself, but here’s a link…

Hmm, I’m not sure how I feel about this… but I do like the use of the word “felled” in the first sentence.

AMSTERDAM – An Amsterdam resident has put for sale on eBay a chestnut that he says came from the tree that Anne Frank gazed upon while hiding from the Nazis, as activists fight to save the diseased tree from being felled. “I had this idea for a few years, then I saw that the tree was in the news and I decided to put the chestnut up for auction,” said 34-year-old Charles Kuijpers, who lives next door to the garden where the tree stands.

And, as always, the book is available for a browse:

Heeeeyyy, book lovers! The National Book Awards went down last night. Ya’ heard? Robert Hass won in poetry for his collection Time and Materials—we are excited and full of congratulations for Mr. Hass. The NY Times reports.

Click here for map.

Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities by Russell Ash & Brian Lake and (what’s that?) just out from Harper Perennial, gets a friendly shout-out over at Dwight Garner’s blog, Paper Cuts, at the NY Times.

The winner of the Prix Medicis for a foreign work is Daniel Mendelsohn for The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, now out in paperback, according to AFP.

Of all the tributes pouring in, on the life and times of Norman Mailer, I thought Charles McGrath’s article in the Times was a nice summary.

And here’s a collection of quotes from writers on Mailer – Doctorow, Hamill, Vidal, Breslin …

Canadian literature’s richest literary prize—the Giller Prize—has gone to Elizabeth Hay for her novel Late Nights on Air. The prize jury said Hay’s work was “flawlessly crafted, a timeless story masterfully told.” Read the CBC report.

Also, the looooong list has been announced for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which carries a prize of 100,000 euros. Read the Guardian report. See the list.