Book after Book

One more title from my ever-expanding reading wish list. ** The cover image is for illustrative purposes only. If you are a publisher and would kindly like to offer me a copy of this book for review, I will change the cover so as to reflect the edition received. ** Seven Days in the Art World By Sarah Thornton Amazon's product description: The art market is booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description and a kind of alternative religion for atheists. Art receives the sort of breathless media attention that was once reserved for celebrities and royals. But the art world is still opaque to outsiders. In Seven Days in the Art World , Sarah Thornton takes us on an unusual journey, exploring the most puzzling aspects of buying, selling, creating and exhibiting contemporary art. In a series of beautifully paced, fly-on-the-wall narratives, we witness the drama of a ...

By Pamela Ribon Reviewed by Natazzz A few years ago I discovered the blog Pamie.com by writer Pamela Ribon, which I have been reading ever since. Here she shares personal accounts of her life as a writer, as well as what she gets up to in her spare time. The blog is quite popular and was already around ten years ago, when having a personal blog was still something unique. During those early years Ribon decided that her blog and the traffic it created might be an interesting topic for a novel and that's when Why Girls Are Weird was born. Why Girls Are Weird (2003) tells the story of Anna Koval, who decides to start a personal blog. To make it more interesting, and mainly to entertain herself, she starts making things up. For example, that she is still together with her ex-boyfriend, whom she broke up with ages ago. Little does she realize that thousands and thousands of people are reading her blog every day, and believing her every word. She soon starts to receive tons of e-mails ...

By Tim Parks Published by Vintage Books As an Italian who has been living in the UK for several years I have developed an ambiguous relationship with my home country: I have little praise for Italy but will defend it with fervent national pride if foreigners say anything negative about it. Unless the negativity is aimed at the current leadership of the country… but that’s another story. So, when I decided to read Tim Parks’s Italian Neighbours – An Englishmen in Verona as part of the Italy in Books reading challenge 2011 , I thought that I’d have to sigh and tut frequently at all the clichés I was sure to find. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I grinned, I chuckled, I laughed out loud and not one single frown crossed my face. In Italian Neighbours we follow the writer and his wife during the difficult months of being the new people in town, which in this case is an Italian village nestled among the hills of the beautiful Veneto region. A witty and inquisitive observer, Parks’s descri...

One more title from my ever-expanding reading wish list. ** The cover image is for illustrative purposes only. If you are a publisher and would kindly like to offer me a copy of this book for review, I will change the cover so as to reflect the edition received. ** We Are a Muslim, Please By Zaiba Malik Amazon's product description: For Zaiba Malik, growing up in Bradford in the ‘70s and ‘80s certainly has its moments – staying up all night during Ramadan with her father; watching mad Mr Aziz searching for his goat during Eid; dancing along to Top of the Pops (so long as no-one’s watching). And, of course, there’s her mother – whether she’s writing another ingratiating letter to the Queen or referring to Tom Jones as ‘Thumb Jone’. But Zaiba’s story is also one of anxiety and seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Growing up she is constantly torn between two identities: ‘British’ and ‘Muslim’. Alienated at school and confused at home, the racism she encounters as a child mirrors the ...

The only time my life in Italy seems to come close to the usual images most people have of it is in the summer. Though I spend most summers away – my teaching work ends for the season and I usually go to the US to visit my family – I still carry the memories of the summers I've spent in Italy. One memory in particular stands out: One a.m. on a mid-summer night. I lay sprawled atop the bed, alone. My husband was asleep in our other bedroom because his proximity in our bed seemed to increase the temperature of the room. The heat was too intense, the fan blowing on me providing precious little relief from the all-enveloping warmth. The zanzare – the mosquitoes – tormented me, buzzing past my ears whenever sleep beckoned, alighting on my too-sensitive, exposed skin until I was forced to take shelter beneath a bed sheet in spite of the heat. Facing toward the wide-open window, desperate for some sort of breeze, I found myself distracted anew. A bright light shone in my direction in spit...

By Tim Parks Published by Harvill Secker In Teach Us to Sit Still - A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing , British novelist, essayist and translator Tim Parks describes his difficult path to wellbeing – both physical and mental. Page by page, Parks details a long series of hospital tests and discussions with doctors and specialists both in Italy and in the UK, he takes us to India for a consultation with an Ayurvedic doctor and, after sleepless nights of Internet research, he shares his enthusiasm for finding a book that seems to promise an end to his pain. The authors of this book, two Californian doctors, suggest that the discomfort in the pelvic area might be caused by muscle tension. Having found nothing wrong with his bladder or prostate – but still in excruciating pain - Parks is willing to believe this new possibility and the more he thinks about it, the more he realises that he’s been thinking too much his whole life. He’s hardly ever felt thoroughly relaxed. He thus e...

Jan van Mersbergen and Laura Watkinson, respectively author and translator of Tomorrow Pamplona , are on a blog tour organised by Peirene Press . Here is what I asked them... To what extent was Jan involved in the translation process and what do you both feel has been gained and/or lost during the transition from Dutch to English - both linguistically and culturally? Perhaps you could give us an example of a particularly successful solution or of a compromise that had to be reluctantly made. Jan: In the first place I think a translation is wonderful, because readers now can read the novel in English. My English isn't good enough to write a novel, that would be a disaster, so I only can write in Dutch and our language is really small. I guess about 25 million people read Dutch (Holland, Belgium, Surinam, Antillen). English is big! It's hard for me to judge if the translation is ok. When I read my novel now it's like reading an English novel. It feels English. That's a g...