Montana Book Awards winners

Drum roll please....

and the winners are.....

Emily Perkins for Fiction or Poetry

and Jill Trevelyan for Non Fiction.

More details at the website including all the other winners

Nick

Maori Language Week

Kia ora,

This week is Maori language week. We have a display up

Here is the official website

Nick

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award, Canada and the Caribbean

Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

In a moment of self-absorption, Clara Purdy’s life takes a sharp left turn when she crashes into a beat-up car carrying an itinerant family of six. The Gage family had been travelling to a new life in Fort McMurray, but bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer rather than remnants of the accident. Recognizing their need as her responsibility, Clara tries to do the right thing and moves the children, husband and horrible grandmother into her own house—then has to cope with the consequences of practical goodness.

As Lorraine walks the borders of death, Clara expands into life, finding purpose, energy and unexpected love amidst the hard, unaccustomed work of sharing her days. But the burden is not Clara’s alone: Lorraine’s children must cope with divided loyalties and Lorraine must live with her growing, unpayable debt to Clara - and the feeling that Clara has taken her place.

What, exactly, does it mean to be good? When is sacrifice merely selfishness? What do we owe in this life and what do we deserve? Marina Endicott looks at life and death through the compassionate lens of a born novelist: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.

Fans of Ann Tyler will love this book. Like Tyler, Marina Endicott writes about ordinary people coping with life's problems and trying to do their best. Susan

Lance Armstrong is riding in the Tour de France.

Check out his book It's not about the bike

Nick

Jack Lasenby the respected children's author grew up in Waharoa, a township situated just outside of Matamata.

He has written many books including the The Seddon Street Gang trilogy and The Travellers series which is a sort of fantasy series with place names which play on New Zealand place names.

Nick

Pulitzer Prize winners

I have just read a Pulitzer Prize winner. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. How about the other fiction winners including this years winner Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

I am setting myself yet another challenge. Read them all! Whew. I haven't even started the last challenge.

Here is the link to the list

Nick

The Road

I haven't finished White Tiger yet. But I have finished reading the post apocalyptic novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

This is very very grim. We follow The Man and The Boy travelling The Road after an unknown disaster has destroyed pretty much all life and left only a few people to survive in a cold, bleak, ashen world. This is extreme and people use many means to stay alive. There are some gruesome scenes as the two make their journey and meet all sorts of people.

Cormac McCarthy style of writing is matter of fact. He uses short sentences and some pages are just dialogue. But it works.

This is a brilliant novel which is thought provoking and scary.

Watch out for the movie later this year. I have seen the trailer and it looks just as grey and grim. It stars Viggo Mortensen and will be well worth seeing

Nick

Talking of book awards check out the Montana NZ Book Awards 2009. There are some amazing titles listed as finalists this year. I haven't read the novels but I have browsed the non fiction books and they are worthy.
Nick

Man Booker prize

How's this for a challenge. Read every Man Booker Prize winner. I have looked at the list and realise I have attempted to read several of them without success namely Midnight's Children, The Bone People (two pages maybe), The Ghost Road, Life of Pi (I didn't even get to the scene on the cover), The Sea and now White Tiger. I am actually getting through this one and enjoying it if that is possible considering the subject matter. I will let you know as I read more. Here is the list. I know I know we don't hold all the titles especially after what I wrote in the previous blog.
Nick

Dark Echo

Dark Echo by F.G. Cottam

This a good old fashioned supernatural thriller. Similar to early James Herbert. It has its heroes and its evil bad guy who is still around because of black magic. A few things irked me though. Sir Peter Blake is a New Zealander not an Australian and Suzanne would never have been able to bribe the staff member to take the original archive material. Still I enjoyed it. The best part of these stories are always the beginning when you don't know whats going to happen. Martin and Suzanne were likable and Harry Spalding is a terrific nasty ghost.

Nick