Red-carpet authors

NZ HERALD: Once, young ladies aspiring to be famous pitched themselves at careers such as actress, singer, dancer, model. But in these times of empowerment, women expect to achieve more. Now, celebrities like to write on their passports, "journalist,...

Michelangelo for Readers With Deep Pockets

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The gala presentation of “Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano,” a volume of photographs of the Renaissance master’s sculptures, may well have been the most lavish book debut in history.

My week: Derek Addyman

TELEGRAPH: Derek Addyman, owner of Addyman Books, Hay-on-Wye, describes his week to Jon Swaine.

There are no more great writers, says V S Naipaul

THE INDEPENDENT: The novelist V S Naipaul has damned the achievements of his literary contemporaries by declaring that there are "no more great writers".

Maybe it’s time to let men judge Orange Prize, chair of jury says

THE INDEPENDENT: The chair of the jury of Britain's leading women's literary prize has called for a debate on whether men should be included on the judging panel to ensure a broader mix of tastes.

Uganda: Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyuva

allAFRICA: Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyuva serves on the Executive board of Uganda Women Writers' Association (Femrite) and also works at EASSI, an Eastern African sub-regional organisation that advances the status of women.

Gary Shteyngart - Absurdistan

This edition starts with three pages of appraisals. Additionally, both the front and the back covers are filled with similar quotes from Time, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, you name it. I hope everybody can do like me and cunningly skip all these and dive into the book itself.

The synopsis is surely intriguing and whoever gets a glimpse of it would like to know more, ending up by picking the book off the shelf and throwing it in the basket case.

It’s all about the humor and, whether it is terribly dark, burlesque, satiric or ironic, Gary succeeds in putting together a storytelling that will keep your fingers turning the pages until you realize you reached the end. Obviously this won’t actually happen, but you get the idea. It’s catchy, funny, witty, and while I personally think it has its flaws, it all glues together quite nicely. The kind of a best selling book that is pretty good, despite its commercial success. Sometimes there are too many divagations, too many metaphors, too many descriptive scenes. The momentum is somehow pushed and pulled sideways, cause there’s drama and subtle existentialist issues inside as well, which are not always welcome. But if your critic eye is not in a bad mood that day, you’ll just enjoy the reading and fall in love – or at least sympathize, c’mon - with the central character. And that will do.

Troubled book world is going for novel ideas

LA TIMES: Clusters of TV and computer screens beam chatty videos about cooking, travel and wellness books. A music kiosk lets visitors download MP3s or burn CDs, while another offers tips on how to publish your own novel.

Writing the ‘Quintessential’ Book Review: ‘An Irresistible Story’ of Googling

THE MILLIONS: Book reviews are not the easiest things to write in the world. No, this is not an "oh, me, book blogging is so hard" piece. Though, judging from the New York Times Magazine's cover story of Emily Gould last week, that may be appropriate, too. I digress.

Legacy, by Philip Ziegler

THE INDEPENDENT: The Rhodes Scholarship is the most famous scholarship in the world, founded just over 100 years ago by an enormously rich and ruthless diamond magnate, the unmarried son of an English parson who annexed a nation and gave it his own name, Rhodesia. Cecil Rhodes was an imperialist who believed the English-speaking races were destined to rule the world.

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