Orange book prize group

Glad that 'Tiger's Wife' won - it was up there with 'Great House' for my winner!

Missing the Orange group - really enjoyed being able to allow myself time to read in the daytime 'legitimately'! Thanks to Jan, Kate and others for organising the group so well and making it such fun. (And many thanks for the book and the book tokens at the last meeting!) Please keep me informed of any future 'events' - would definitely be interested - especially the reviews of new books mentioned??

Thanks again to all organisers and participants!! It would be good to keep in touch.

Annabel on BBC Radio 4

Kathleen Winter advised via Twitter that Radio 4's 'Women's Hour' will be featuring Annabel next week starting on Monday 20th June. The broadcast goes out at 10:45am though will also be available in their BBC iPlayer for those unable to listen to the live broadcast.

The BBC Press Release

7th June Final debate!

Jan provided some snapshots, and here they are! Does anyone have any pics from the London trip? (Photos can easily be removed -- just let me know if you're shy. :) )

Everyone's so full of thought and contemplation!

Time out for a grin at the camera.

Tally it up right -- this is important!



Hey, here's our choice!



2011 Orange Prize Super Reading Goup

We missed you, Carla - hope you're fine now. Jan's the only one with pics, I think.
I was interested to hear part of Nicole Krauss interview replay on R, especially her saying she intentionally toned down the emotion this time: apparently History of Love, which I've not read, is very emotional. This may explain why I struggled so (and failed) to find either a narrative or emotional thread to help me through what seemed like a very long and difficult read. I was reminded of my experience with the only Paul Auster novel I've read - and which I also admired for technical skill but found completely cold.
Another nice piece on T. Obreht in Saturday's Guardian - about her relationship with her grandfather and complete with family photo.
And Andrea Levy on Desert Island Discs was interesting today - worth catching the repeat if you missed it.

Great House (Digested Read)

Great House was our winner though it still had some of us, including me, wondering what it was all about.

Thank goodness for John Crace's Digested Read series over at The Guardian as it made me realise that my confusion was shared.

Crace's tag line for Great House:

21 Feb 2011: The plot was now so confused I could barely work out who was who, let alone if I was pregnant or not

Great House as re-told by John Crace.

More 'The Tiger's Wife'

Nice article in The Guardian today interviewing Téa Obreht which can be found here:

Téa Obreht: 'I don't feel I've earned the Orange prize'

Emily - forgot to say thank you for looking after me, the odd one over in Kenilworth, with offers of lifts and my very own books supply. I felt most cared for!

Winner announced!

Just in case you haven't all picked it up-it's the Tiger's Wife! 4 of you had voted this first, so well done, whoever you are! Think we are all pleased it wasn't "Room"....
I was inspired to read Tiger after her reading at the Southbank on Monday evening-such a moving passage, so I look forward to starting it.

Happy Summer (non Orange) reading!

Jan

Suspense Over!

Wow! I have to say I'm very pleased - Love that Tiger! Sorry we didn't hit the non-existent jackpot though. Thanks for the experience, everyone - and especially Kate and Jan. Much enjoyed.

Thanks again Kate and Jan for organising everything behind the scenes at the library! It was a great success and you were most hospitable. No more excuses for not going to the allotment. Happy reading everyone and good to meet you all.

Lindsay

Last Night

Hi Everyone

Really good to see you all last night. We wait with baited breath to see the winner! Thanks to Claire for putting all the results up so timely. (and so late at night!)

Thank you all so much for taking part in this first Orange shadowing group. What a great, enthusiastic, articulate and creative bunch you all are!

For me personally it has been brilliant to see you all so motivated and enjoying yourselves.

Kate and I do hope that you will want to join in with any future events organised by Warwickshire Libraries.

Good wishes to you all

Jan

The Deathless Man

For those who might be interested I came across news of a recently published novel by American writer Catherynne M. Valente entitled simply 'Deathless' . Seeing that title piqued my interest given discussions last night.

Like The Tiger's Wife it is set within modern times and yet draws on myth and folklore of the region coupled with modern history though in this case the Soviet Union.

Using my Goggle skills I found a blog that reviewed these books side-by-side.

"The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht and Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente have more in common than their March release dates. Both feature tales of animal husbandry and a deathless man. Slavic folklore provides a common foundation for both books but one is written as a fable and the other as a fairy tale, a distinct difference."

I shall certainly be ordering a copy of 'Deathless' to discover more about this intriguing figure of folklore.

Orange Pize on Twitter

I have to admit I am very new to Twitter so still learning the ropes.

I feel it will be fun for anyone today to follow Orange Prize on Twitter and the #orangeprize hashtag, which is bound to contain very up-to-the-minute responses to the breaking news.

Who knows some people may do live tweets from the ceremony.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Edit (10:30): Right just received this tweet from @orangeprize:

"We'll be tweeting from the awards. Don't forget to include @orangeprize to feature on our twitter wall & wish the authors good luck!"

I'll certainly be tuning in and anyone new to the Twitterverse (or tempted to jump in) might find it a fun experience. Lots of authors do have Twitter accounts.

You can also follow on the Orange Prize Site as they have their Facebook and Twitter feeds listed on the home page.

Great House wins by a whisker!

The results from our meeting in Stratford library this evening brought forth a winner with just a handful of votes. We used a point-style marking system and the top three were incredibly close:

Great House was the chosen one (well, it does have a Jewish theme) with 77 points.

Close second was Grace Williams says it Loud on 74.

The Tiger's Wife came in at 70.

Then Annabel at 51 and joint with 39 was Room and The Memory of Love.

The group gave a lot of thought to all the shortlisted books and agreed that all were worthy to be there. It wasn't an easy task and some votes were polarised.

It was a really great experience to be able to shadow the Orange Prize this year and many thanks to Kate, Jan, Carla and Emily for organising such a fabulous event.

'Room' is bookies' choice for Orange Prize

Man Booker-nominated Room (Picador) is the hot favourite to win the Orange Prize for Fiction, according to odds just released by bookmakers William Hill.

Author Emma Donoghue is 2/1 to win the prize, with Aminatta Forna's second novel, The Memory of Love (Bloomsbury) sitting at 3/1.

Both Emma Henderson, author of Grace Williams Says it Loud (Sceptre) and Nicole Krauss, for Great House (Viking) are 5/1 to clinch the prize.

Téa Obrecht's The Tiger's Wife (Phoenix) and Kathleen Winter's Annabel (Jonathan Cape) are the outsiders at 6/1.

(Bookseller.com, 02/06/2011)

Just for fun -- Can you tell an author's sex?

Nobel laureate VS Naipaul recently made comments that female writers are so inferior that he can tell a woman writer after reading a paragraph or two. The Guardian has created a little quiz. Care to test yourself?

The Naipaul Test: Can you tell an author's sex?

I myself scored an abysmal 5 out of 10. The quiz advised I am a sloppy thinker and should clearly read more male writers. Ha!

Stratford Celebration

Hi All

Most of you have finished reading now--well done ! What a marathon, but hope you've all found it interesting and stimulating. For the few who haven't quite finished--there's still the weekend to bury yourself in the last book.

Don't forget the meeting at Stratford Library on Tuesday evening-- 7 pm, for our voting and celebration ! Do hope to see all of you there.

For those of us going to the Southbank on Monday-hope you're looking forward to it, and we'll try and stay awake on Tuesday night!

See you soon

Jan

Annabel

Having wondered how I would get on with Annabel, I have to say that although it took me a while to get into it, I found it easy to read and definitely improved as I progressed through it. It was cheering to find that in spite of everything, there could be a note of optimism at the end unlike Great House, which seemed so depressing.

Fatal Error

I'm afraid I have done it again - put down one of the books (Great House) and if I am brutally honest, I am unlikely to return to it. I really enjoyed Memory of Love (which surprised me given the subject - it's not an area of the world I am particularly interested in) and so far so good with The Tiger's Wife (this could be because of the zombie-ish theme of the Deathless Man - and I do enjoy my zombie novels!) but Great House - couldn't get on with it. It's not that I found it difficult to read as I got over 100 pages in, it's just that it hasn't gripped me yet and I am not attached to it.
As we near the point when we pick a winner, I really have tried to get them all finished and I did plan to give Grace Williams another shot but I am sorry that I just can't face it! I will still struggle to pick a winner as all the novels, even the ones I didn't finish had something about them. I will carry on with The Tiger's Wife and ruminate on what I want to win!
Look forward to seeing everyone next week and enjoy the South Bank!

Great House

I finished this in the car coming back from Wales today. It's not the sort of book I would pick up in the library/shop without recommendation, but I was captivated. Out of all the books on our list, this one stands out (but that may be because it's so fresh in my mind).
Perversely, I'm not sure that I know how all the loose ends tied up or even connected and I'm left with a nervous feeling that I have missed something - some small, insignificant thing - that would unravel it all for me. Film goers might say Inception gave them the same experience!
And yet the writing quality and scenarios kept me gripped. It's amazingly erudite but not pretentiously so. This is one of those books where I could really do with a group chat to dig a bit deeper into some of the story strands - to help me gain a better sense of who, what, why, where and when! The title is obscure until you get to the end, and for the life of me the picture on the front should really be a desk, not a piano - or am I being picky!
By the way, Chile didn't really get discussed at all! The theme of 'place' that I've alluded to in an earlier blog came from Israel instead. And it was just as interesting a culture for me and made a lot more sense than Mr Finkler.

Claire