Lost for words
Michael Quinion's Posh? Port Out, Starboard Home. Online hustings. Reaping What One Sows. The IMPAC List
Book Notes had always thought his vocabulary would grow and prosper from a life immersed in books and a career charting the ebb and flow of the literary tides, but as William Goldman said, "No one knows nothing". It turns out my sentences are undeveloped, coarse and reliant on a lifetime of bad US television and movies. Or so it feels after a brief look through Leslie Savan's Slam Dunks and No Brainers, cutely paraphrased as "language in your life, the media, business, politics and like, whatever". Read this, listen to any radio station for a week and one realises that it isn't just our teenagers who talk like the cast of Friends. How common it is to recognise phrases like "I don't do books", "What part of not interested don't you understand?" And "No way!" etc. A far more reassuring read is Michael Quinion's Posh? Port Out, Starboard Home which, in small easily digested chunks, debunks etymological myths like the cat's pyjamas, the whole nine yards and the bees knees. A charming book, it is also reassuring to know that Thomas Krapper neither invented the toilet nor gave us the word crap. Village thinks readers maybe tiring of literary ponies like Ben Schott and Lynne Truss striving to repeat their tricks of previous years with a new Miscellany and Talk to the Hand. If so, words rather than trivia and manners could be this year's winner in the novelty Christmas market.
Online hustings
Politicians have been forever telling us what to do, to the point that "nanny-state" has crossed over into 2005's everyday language. Still, they have had little control over our lives behind closed doors until now. John Edwards, legal warrior, John Kerry running mate and aspiring opponent for Jeb Bush in the 2012 US Presidential race has started a book club with his wife Elizabeth. The poster boy for young Democrats has attracted thousands to the Edwards Book Forum, with a home on the internet. There you can vote on which book you think should be up for discussion in the following month – the first chosen work was The Working Poor by David Shipley. Next to be discussed is the humorist Jim Wallis' God's Politics: Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left doesn't get It. Nailing his colours so publicly has proved an effective way for Edwards to communicate his views and accessibility. His novel way to recruit and include voters might be a feature of our own nanny wars as we build up to the general election of 2007.
.Reaping What One Sows
A man unlikely to feature on any future Presidential ticket is the deposed, disgraced yet fabulously named I Scooter Lewis Libby. Forced out from the patronage of Donald Cheney after the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, Scooter may have to avoid a life of penury by returning to his previous career as a novelist. No glee has been spared by the US press as they dredge up Libby's 1996 novel The Apprentice. Hopes that the world would follow his lead and try to forget a book that featured rape and sex with animals and children have proved fruitless. His annus horriblus continues with St Martin's Press' decision to rush 25,000 copies of the book into reprint. Meanwhile, his confidant Judith Miller, Pulitzer prize winning New York Times journalist who fuelled the story by refusing to name Libby as her source has just resigned from the paper. She felt she had become the story rather than someone who reports it. Like most people who become the story, what odds would you give Village on her announcing a book deal within weeks?
The IMPAC List
The longest lead-in in the literary prize calendar belongs to our own IMPAC Prize which published their 132 strong longlist last week. Let's see you read your way through that! Sponsored by the medical IT company IMPAC they were set up in Dublin under the guidance of Gay Mitchell in the '90s. A list selected by readers in libraries from over 50 countries, it will be whittled down to a shortlist of eight in April the winner getting their cheque in Dublin in June 2006. The IMPAC is truly international compared to other prizes with the nomination list reflecting a diversity that only a huge sample poll can create. It also takes ages to compile and will make you feel like you are reading the list from '03 or '04, so familiar are the books by the time they reach the list. All the usual suspects from last year are included: Small Island, The Line of Beauty, The Shadow of the Wind. Other Book Notes favourites like Anne Tyler's An Amateur Marriage, Kate Atkinson's Case Histories and previous winner, Orhan Pamuk's Snow. Seeing who nominated which book is a great reason to rummage through the shortlist to find Cloud Atlas (Cork, Waterford) Ronan Bennett's Havoc (Dublin, Waterford) and even Cecilia Ahern's PS I Love You (Liverpool). The other Irish nominee, Colm Toibin's The Master (Cork, Dublin Limerick) has probably the greater chances of supremacy. The award, previously won by John McGahern and Michel Houllebecq offers the biggest monetary prize in the world of €100,000.