Mark says, “Perhaps it?s unfair to pit 19th-century magicians against Jewish exiles from Nazi Germany,” and selects Heir to the Glimmering World in the next installment of the TMN Tournament of Books. Mark’s being too kind when he calls Jonathan Strange a “Saturday matinee.” It is interminable cotton candy and deserves a through ass-kicking by the likes of Ozick before it’s too late.
Category / Awards
Betting on the Tournament of Books
The Morning News Tournament of Books is alive and kicking. The truly strangest choice, however, was Danny Gregory’s endorsement of I Am Charlotte Simmons over Wake Up, Sir! “Slither slither” over a playful Wodehouse homage?
Well, nobody said this was perfect.
But since people seem to be betting on the results and we’ve recently been applying “thin-slicing” to nearly every aspect of our lives (to say nothing of our ignoble yet inconclusive efforts to get the inside dirt from the honorably recalcitant Mark Sarvas), if we were betting men, we expect Susanna Clarke to get deservedly flogged. We also believe that Jessa Crispin will say no to Cloud Atlas. Because heaven forfend that a damn fine novel get widespread recognition. We also predict that Maud will side with The Plot Against America.
So if our educated guesses make you a small fortune, you know where to send the 10%. And that concludes our Meyer Lansky moment of the year.
The Romance of Reading Glasses
It’s not enough for Andrea Levy to win the Orange and the Whitbread. She’s just been nominated for a third award: the Romantic Novel of the Year Award.
Normally, we wouldn’t have any problems with this. We’ve long been awaiting Small Island‘s inevitable paperback version of a long-haired hunk mounting some bodice-ripped brunette against a conflagrating background — if only to have the hopeless Harlequin crowd accidentally reading a moving tale of two couples on an island.
The chief problem here is that the prize is sponsored by FosterGrant Reading Glasses. And while our librarian fetish is well documented, we have to point out that FosterGrant frames aren’t exactly daring or, for that matter, romantic.
And they damn well should be.
One would think that after centuries of eyewear technology, FosterGrant would have stumbled upon the ultimate solution — frames that provide practical vision for the far-sighted while considering the requirements of lascivious literary types.
Expansion of eyewear translates into expanding ideas of romance. And for far-sighted novelists, we’re talking a sharp dropoff in “slither slither” Wolfe-style bad sex and a veritable rise in “romantic novels.” So what of it, FosterGrant? Where are the reading glasses I can wear for the dominatrix? If we can’t be indecent on television, then we can surely be naughty in literature.
Whitbread Winners
The Whitbreads go to:
Novel Award: Andrea Levy, Small Island (She also won the Orange Prize.)
First Novel Award: Susan Fletcher, Eve Green
Biography: John Guy, My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of the Scots
Poetry: Michael Symmons Roberts, Corpus
Children’s Book: Geraldine McCaughrean, Not the End of the World
Happy New Year
Well, that’s it for us. Apologies for the political drivel, but we had to get in our yearly quota before midnight. Regularly literary coverage will continue when we pull ourselves off the floor, determine how we lost our boxers, come to terms with the arsenal of alcohol in the kitchen, check our credit card statements, cry, politely escort people out of our home, and try to begin living up to our barely realistic New Year’s resolutions.
If you plan to drink, please don’t drive. Be sure to drink lots of water. (And tomorrow morning will go down better with a bloody Mary.) If you’re not drunk, you probably are. If you don’t have a gym membership, you’ll probably have one next week.
Also, 2004 was better than you remember it. And 2005 is going to kick some serious ass for you, but only if you make it that way. Now get out there and kiss somebody.
Cheers,
Dr. Mabuse