Press Release – 99 to 1
New Book Sheds Light on Rallying Cries of Occupy and 99 Percent Movements, and Suggests What We Can Do About Inequality Published today, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It, by Chuck Collins, is the first major … Read more »
Reviewed by Sarah Jane Parton
I have to confess something before I start: I haven’t read anything by Catton, Clayton, or Cliff. Not a thing. Of the three, Catton intrigues me the most. Because she’s young (26 or 27, I think), and pretty, and successful. Totally superficial, I know. As a writer and a reader (albeit not of these authors, yet), I wanted to go along to this talk for some perverse reason which I couldn’t even really form in my own mind, let alone say out loud, but here goes, I’ll put it in writing: I wanted to go because I wanted to see if one day I could be them, or if I’d missed the boat, or if I could never even get on it, even if it was docked right next to me with a friendly outstretched hand offering assistance to climb aboard. Hearing them talk didn’t answer this question for me (how could it) and being in their presence didn’t mean I was personally touched by their precocious brilliance (I did really test this out, by sitting right up the front), but it was definitely an insight into the way they think and work.
Read more »
Joe Sacco’s latest book, Footnotes in Gaza, is attracting some very positive reviews, none more so than this one by Patrick Cockburn in the New York Times.
Sacco pioneered comic art as journalism in his book Palestine and then continued to develop the genre in his books on Sarajevo.
It’s that time of year when newspapers and magazines the world over publish their best of lists. So the Scoop Review of Books has decided to end the year with a best of the best of books list for 2009.
The New York Times isn’t satisfied with just one best books list, it has: the 10 best books of 2009;100 notable books;, Best illustrated children’s books; Best graphic novels, and a host of other categories.
For those with plenty of time on their hands or planning out their retirement reading the Guardian helpfully compiled a list of the 1000 Best Novels. And equally ambitious is its Books that Defined the Noughties. And then there’s the best food books of the decade.
By Scott Hamilton
The English novelist Martin Amis once said that his career wouldn’t really start until he died. Like many others in his line of work, Amis believes that a writer’s real achievement is only tested posthumously, by critics and scholars immune to the temporary fashions and prejudices that can make and break an author in his or her lifetime. The recent death of John Updike has given Amis the chance to write an essay for the New York Review of Books assessing the massive body of work produced by one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful of all American authors.
:JR
Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men inspired both a stage play and a documentary but up until now his first, and in journalistic terms far more impressive work, Secret and Lies has failed to inspire a fictionalised account. The Echelon Conspiracy starring, among others Martin Sheen and Shane West, if not strictly based on Nicky’s book at least cites his work on the Echelon spy network on its official website.
If the trailer’s anything to go by The Echelon Conspiracy is run-of-the-mill Hollywood crap – but if it sparks interest in Secret and Lies and the Echelon spy network Nicky played a key role in exposing it can’t be all bad.
The filmmakers may link to this article by Nicky, but the first he heard of the film was when the Scoop Review of Books sent him a link to the trailer.
By Scott Hamilton
At this time of year, my social life is dictated by a desire to spend as much time as possible in air-conditioned rooms. It’s fair to say, then, that my plan to attend the poetry reading at Grey Lynn Library on Thursday February the 19th isn’t motivated by exclusively literary considerations. But with Jack Ross, Therese Lloyd, Michael Steven, and Lee Posna on the bill, I’ll be enjoying some excellent poetry that evening, as well as the cool hum of air conditioning. Read more »
Comedians John Bird and John Fortune background the financial crisis. Read more »
Based on the reading habits of Amazon shoppers, John McCain has the presidential election in the bag. The giant on-line retailer is tracking the book buying habits of Americans across the country and so far the only States where books it classifies as blue (as in sympathetic to the Democratic Party – not Tory blue) are ahead of those it classifies as red, are: New York (56%), Vermont (59%), Massachusetts (58%), Maine (53%), and, although not a State, the District of Columbia (65%). Read more »
There’s a growing clamour on the Internet for Sam Hunt to be named the next New Zealand Poet Laureate. Well, if not a clamour a chorus of two; former Listener staff writer Denis Welch took time out from writing his unauthorised biography of Helen Clark to float the idea, and Bookman Beattie suggested the same thing on his blog. The Scoop Review of Books is happy to add the full weight of its not inconsiderable prestige to the call;-). Read more »
Contact
Newsagent
Login