Wildlife

Lyn Gardner guardian.co.uk , Sunday 21 August 2011 21.59 BST Article history 'The star rating system that is now ubiquitous across all cultural criticism began on the Edinburgh fringe. With the Scotsman running hundreds of reviews throughout August, it had to find a way to make certain shows stand out amid the newsprint. Star ratings did the job very nicely. But  are all stars equal , and do they mean anything at all outside the three weeks of the fringe?' http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/aug/21/critics-notebook-lyn-gardner?CMP=twt_gu

The economics of the book business are changing so rapidly the industry barely looks like it did just six months ago. The era of the book superstores, with their big windows and welcoming tables stacked high with books, has gone into decline. Many of the country's most enthusiastic readers have already switched to less-costly digital books. Amazon customers now buy more Kindle titles than hardcovers and paperbacks. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875404576532351102200460.html

'There has always been a lot of discussion about the effect that reading books has on us. Far less attention has been paid to the effect that we (the readers) have on them (the books). I don’t mean on the reputations or royalties of the authors who wrote the books but on the actual physical objects themselves.' - Geoff Dyer http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/reading-life-what-we-do-to-books.html?_r=1&ref=books

Richard Nash / Internet Archive Richard Nash, former head of Soft Skull Press, insists that book publishing needs to return to the simple task of connecting readers and writers. He has created a social-networking platform called Cursor, which allows writers to form literary communities and post their manuscripts for members to read and react to. Nash also helms Red Lemonade, Cursor’s first imprint, which publishes work selected from its site. Matt Runkle spoke to Nash recently about publishing as manufacturing, the closing of Borders, and the tribalism of literary communities. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/richard_nash_cursor_red_lemonade_book_publishing_business.php

"I t is impractical to attempt to offer a comprehensive literary tour of New York City. I can, however, provide a comprehensive tour of my  own  literary New York—which means it is completely self-absorbed and subjective. See? I  am  a writer." More:  http://www.pw.org/content/new_york_city My darling poetic friend has fallen in love with a singer who lives in New York, she is visiting him AGAIN right now, so I sent her this link. I am also putting it here for when I visit her there... marriage currently extremely likely.

" Meanwhile, we may want to discuss the fact that book launches are always fairly horrible, even setting illness aside. And this isn't just my opinion – I have checked with other writers and creative sorts, including actors – whom you would think were simply gagging for engagement with the wider public – and the feedback has been comfortingly similar. It seems that for many of us, representing our work in the wider world always feels both disappointingly anti-climactic and weird. At a certain level you're aware that, even if you could call yourself an artist at other times, you are currently much more of a pimp. And, given that you're halfway pimping yourself… well, your job description gets rapidly less appetising." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/23/book-launch-letdown-al-kennedy?CMP=twt_fd

" At the risk of stating the obvious: isn’t it strange, I mean, this thing about being a human being breathing and thinking and sensing and dwelling always, always, in a place?" http://www.themillions.com/2011/08/no-place-like-home.html

YES. http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/books/chapter_and_verse_on_why_readers_get_a_benefit_from_their_novel_experiences_1_3701441

"Five years ago, when Twitter was just another start-up and the iPad was a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye, the state of print book reviews in this country was undergoing a spectacular and noisy collapse. Newspapers that were failing financially killed off their stand-alone print book sections, or folded them into the entertainment, ideas, or culture sections. They fired staff book editors and critics and cut freelance budgets. Hundreds of newspapers shut down altogether. Many magazines stopped covering books, and the literary quarterlies, for decades the champions of poetry and literary fiction published by independent presses, faced funding challenges as well." Read More:   http://www.pw.org/content/back_from_the_dead_the_state_of_book_reviewing_0

I had a fabulous time at Green Man. You can read my blogs about the literature stage programme here: Friday:  http://www.theraconteur.info/2011/08/20/live-review-green-man-2011-friday/ Saturday & Sunday:  http://www.theraconteur.info/2011/08/22/live-review-green-man-2011-sat-sun/

Thanks for voting! The shortlist is as follows: Jude In London  by Julian Gough - 46 votes The Dead Beat  by Cody James  - 35 votes King Crow  by Michael Stewart  - 35 votes Fireball  by Tyler Keevil  - 35 votes Spurious  by Lars Iyer  - 19 votes English Slacker  by Chris Morton  - 17 votes http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/18/not-the-booker-prize-2011-shortlist

According to Amazon, Customers buy this book with  True Things About Me   by Deborah Kay Davies + DKD is great, so you should. Right, I'm off to Green Man Festival for the weekend. See you in the Literature Tent :)

“ If I were a man, and cared to know the world I lived in, I almost think it would make me a shade uneasy — the weight of that long silence of one half of the world. ” — Elizabeth Robins, 1907 Recently  Good Magazine   published an article  with a simple solution to inequity on conference panels. What if white men refused invitations to panels that don’t properly represent the diversity of their industries? The idea was so basic, yet I had never even considered it. Usually when I see five men on a magazine, marketing, tech or publishing panel, I criticize the organizers: “You couldn’t find a single woman?” I ask. It never occurred to me to question the participants. http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2011/06/16/the-unbalancing-act/

" New magazine Studio is the first film publication aimed specifically at women. It's high time, says Pamela Hutchinson - but shame about the focus on beauty and chick flicks..." http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/aug/10/womens-cinema-magazines-studio Britain's First Women's Film Magazine Scheduled to Launch 12 August 2011 http://www.responsesource.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=66356

" Tom Lutz, who recently launched  Los Angeles Review of Books  (ambitiously described as “the first major, full-service book review to launch in the 21 st  century”) has written a small manifesto on the occasion of adopting Susan Salter Reynolds and Richard Rayner, two orphan book reviewers from the  Los Angeles Times . " ... " Anyway, leaving Mr. Lutz to his manifesting, the LARB will not be the only “full-service” book review to launch in the 21st century. The BookBeast Section of The Daily Beast, The Daily’s book section and HuffPo Books might not be exactly the same as the old model, but they still cover books. Web sites like The Millions and BookSlut augment traditional books coverage with interviews and essays. More readers than ever can access books coverage from the  London Review of Books , the  New York Review of Books  and  Bookforum  (as well as  The New Republic  and  The Nation ), and make friends on GoodReads ...

" Interesting piece on Salon (from last month - I've only just noticed on account of being on holiday. So this is really for those of you who missed it because you were on holiday, too)  on whether novelists ought to double as literary critics or not . It's a well-worn argument, frustratingly circular argument, which goes something like this: 1) Novelists are well-qualified for the job of reviewing, just as scientists are well-qualified to peer review the work of their colleagues. 2) But can we expect an unbiased reaction from people fighting for space in the same (rapidly narrowing) field? You don't, after all, get directors reviewing other directors' plays. 3) Would it not be better to employ dedicated book critics, at one remove from the publishing world? 4) Yes, probably. But the difference is that, in literature, the skills involved in creating and critiquing are the same. Furthermore, with book sections closing on both sides of the Atlantic, who can afford...

" We’re  losing the expertise of seasoned book reviewers  and squeezing out a generation of new ones, writes the  Los Angeles Review of Books ." http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/8551066881/future-tense

Here's another one to add to the Guardian Shorts mix, as predicted, more and more publishers are embracing the 10,000 word ebook for longform journalism:  http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/lp/summer-of-unrest

Look. The all new website for The Raconteur is here:  http://www.theraconteur.info/

Two blogs of interest from NWR... one relating to the Writers Chain India, where WAI are hopefully funding me to go this November, ... the other relates to the short story and my Kindle novella 'Arrivals' Reading India, Translating Wales Since spring, under WLE-LAF auspices, I’ve met writers at Ultracomida from Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and, most recently, from India. Those of us lucky enough to be there last month, where  Reading India - Translating Wales  took place, are still talking about it. The seven-strong team of Welsh-language and Indian poets had clearly bonded during their mid June translation residency at Ty Newydd. Multi-award winning writer and translator K Satchidanandan joked that the trip from Kerala was ‘worth it’ just to see Eurig Salisbury’s buoyant hair! The production values, as well as the poetic ones, were high. Part of the British Council-supported India Wales Writers Chain, which launched last year at Hay Festival Kerala (where poets Gillian Clarke,...

Here begins the  # journalism  revolution. Guardian Shorts  # ebooks 'curated and packaged for a quick portable read' What are Guardian Shorts? Guardian Shorts  is a new series of ebooks from the Guardian, providing detailed guides to topical news stories, public policy, sports and cultural events. The ebooks will demonstrate the best of Guardian journalism, with timelines, data and comment, curated and packaged for a quick, portable read. http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/guardian-shorts-faq

As I am doing the WAI Critics Development Scheme for the next 6 months, there will probably be some posts full of links relating to that on this blog for a little while. Here is the first: "a reviewer is entitled to be spiteful as long as she is honest". How rude should theatre critics be?  Michael Billington's response to that Lynn Barber case. More on this here:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8670745/Literary-Life-July-31.html In Wales I think a lot of what Patrick McGuinness says in this Wales Home Article from January 2010 is still very relevant:  http://waleshome.org/2010/01/culture-in-a-vacuum-welsh-arts-coverage-in-the-english-language-media/ Especially: ' the ordinary reader who relies on mainstream Welsh media is being short-changed. It’s not a question of just sticking a few arts events in a ‘listings’ section, it’s about developing a reviewing culture that doesn’t assume – patronisingly – that ‘ordinary people’ can’t or don’t want to discuss ...

Today and tonight, we're having a mini-festival to celebrate the artistic achievements of women*. We're starting at 4pm with an open mic sesh for any women or women-identifying people to come and play. Dain't matter if you're playing a cello or a kazoo, if you're performing poetry or reading a short story because WE WANT YOU! We'll be exhibiting women's art throughout Gwdihw, some of which has been commissioned especially for th is event. It's going to be splendid :) There'll be lots of music and some superb performance poetry by some award-winning published authors. So far we've got: Miss Maud's Folly - gypsy folktale jazz Esther - folk-soul Little Eris - electro/lo-fi Cosmo - Anarchist cheeky-boy-punk Miacca - folk-reggae Performing poets: Mab Jones Susie Wild Rhian Edwards Exhibiting artists: Rachel Coral Lucy Baker Elen Mai-Wyn Jones Naomi Calvert Please come along... it's free entry but we're going to pa...

What are you reading this summer? Here are my Summer Read recommendations from the WM article today (page 3)... Ah summer, long hots days on the beach or by the pool, little to occupy your thoughts but daydreams and good books. Heaven. Unfortunately I seem to spend more of my time in far-less-glamorous wellies standing in muddy fields performing on the festival circuit for my summer holidays these days. As such my first summer read comes from a place very close to home and is packed full of rock'n'roll. Tiffany Murray's  Diamond Star Halo  came out last year, but has just been released in perfectly portable paperback (and Kindle) form. It is a magical book charting the lives and loves of Halo and her eccentric family as they grow up on Rock Farm, a residential recording studio in the borderland of Wales that attracts star visitors from across the globe. The inspiration for the setting is not difficult to ascertain, Murray grew up in the infamous Rockfield Studios, establ...