Mark's Contemporary Literature Blog October 2005 Archive

The 1962 Ford Anglia flown by Ron Weasley and Harry Potter in the film version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was stolen last week from the studio ... Read More

Joan Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her ... Read More

Dwight Wilmerding, the narrator of Benjamin Kunkel's comic novel, Indecision, is encouraged by one of his roommates to try an experimental pharmaceutical meant to banish indecision. And when all at ... Read More

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style has for decades been an essential tool for English language writers and students. The 1959 handbook gets a 2005 facelift with the addition of ... Read More

John Formy-Duval actually visited Carnton Plantation in Franklin, Tennessee while writing this review of Robert Hicks' unforgettable portrait of Carrie McGavock, who upon this plantation steadfastly cared for the ... Read More

In the late 60's and early 1970's Harry Matthews was an expat writer living in Paris, where acquaintances and even friends suspected him of being a CIA agent, rumors he ... Read More

British playwright, Harold Pinter, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature today. Known for such plays as The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, Harold Pinter is often grouped among theater ... Read More

In the Bookmark Now contest, submit a favorite book while recommending it to a another person via email and you are entered to win a 15 book library of ... Read More

John Banville took home the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction with The Sea, the story of Max Morden, a middle-aged art historian, who attempts to face the trials of ... Read More

The Lulu Blooker Prize is the world's first literary prize devoted to blooks, books based on blogs or websites. The Lulu Blooker Prize is sponsored by Lulu, a provider of print-on-demand ... Read More

"According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jack's most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold ... Read More

In the tradition of great literary bloggers (read: MoorishGirl), I'd like to begin a tradition of book giveaways that will occur regularly and on Friday. Thus the name. ... Read More

This week, Andrea Levy's Small Island was chosen as the "best of the best" winners of the Orange Prize for fiction. Andrea Levy's novel of two couples, one Jamaican and one ... Read More

"T.S. Eliot wrote, 'About anyone as great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we ... Read More