Since no one has posted about it here yet, thought I would. Canadian author Alice Munro has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. She and Margaret Atwood have been bandied about as possible laureates for years so it's kind of nice to see one of them finally get the prize (and maybe Atwood's day will come, too). She is the 13th woman to win the literature prize and the first Canadian (Saul Bellow was born in Canada but moved to the US when he was 9 years old and always identified as American).

No, we're not going to nominate books, argue about them, and vote them off the shelf. This is just a thread to talk about what we're currently reading and maybe talk a bit about books. IOW, use it as you wish as long as books and reading are involved.

Ray Bradbury, one of the great writers of the past half century+ has passed away at 91. Best known as a writer of science fiction novels and short stories, he also wrote for TV and movies, including the classic 1956 film of "Moby Dick" directed by John Huston. His best known novel was probably the dystopian Fahrenheit 451 but many of his works were adapted for films and TV and there was even a Bradbury anthology series on TV for a while.

Some personal favorites of mine:

I am a fan of older literature, much of it from the Victorian period through to the "pulp" era of the 1920s and 1930s. One issue that reading a lot of this material presents is that the attitudes and mores are often at loggerheads with those of today. Ideas that would instantly raise concerns about racism or sexism if a writer used them today abound even in the more progressive writers of the time.

So, it's Charles Dickens' 200th birthday today. I got thoroughly put off him by Grade 11 English and have never really given him another try. Since his stuff is all Public Domain and readily available in ePub format from either Kobo's free ebooks section or Project Gutenberg, I suppose I really should give the old boy another try.

Are you a Dickens fan, foe, or just indifferent?

Anyhow, Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Mendalla

IT and geek news site The Register has been running a poll to determine which s-f novels that have never been the subject of a film should be filmed. It began with a simple request to suggest titles, progressed to a poll in which readers were asked to choose among the top 50 nominated stories, and ended by declaring that Use of Weapons by UK writer Iain Banks is the novel that their readers would most like to see as a movie.

Boxing Day found me reading "The Bishop's Man" by Lyndon MacIntyre, winner of the Giller Prize.

Unlike a mystery, that I didn't wish to put down...the Bishop's Man I found myself forcing myself to take breaks from in order to savour the prose.  Though I wished to read through, find out what had happened in Honduras, discover what would occur with the main characters, I also did not wish to read it too quickly.