Tubridy's Book Club, Dreamworks studios and Sharon Osbourne
Book Notes is conflicted. Can Ryan Tubridy's ability to drive us to distraction within seconds of 9.04 each morning still allow us to voice grudging admiration for the man?
His Book Club, run monthly and discussed constantly, may be copied from Richard and Judy, not to mention his predecessor on Radio One, Marian Finucane, but it does seem to be slowly grabbing attention. The ongoing drama over the JNLRs may tell us that he is losing ground to Ray D'Arcy but book sales are telling us that the listeners he manages to keep are paying attention. His recent book choices have been safe and devoutly populist but they are also selling well, suggesting he is yet another growing influence on the Irish market. Both John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise are recent, well-publicised, international success stories but they also made brief appearances in the Irish Top 5. Is Ryan responsible for a new literary tipping point, if you will, or just working with a shrewd producer? This month's choice was Khaled Hosseini‘s The Kite Runner which proves little since everyone has already read it. Next month he is to tackle Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind. We'll be watching with interest. On a personal aside, Book Notes comes to you this week from hospital where his physio is reading Capote's In Cold Blood and his nurse the aforementioned The Kite Runner. Both are Tubridy picks and we close our case smugly.
Total recall
Last week we discussed originality and plagiarism in the book world, in particular focussing on Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan who admitted plagiarising children's author Megan McCafferty, albeit unconsciously. In the meantime the bottom has fallen from Kaavya's world. Dreamworks, Spielberg's film studio, have ‘reviewed their interest' in producing the film of the book and her publishers have issued a recall on all copies of How Opel Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. Cancelling a contract is one thing but recalling a book, actually spending their own money, shows the gravity of the situation. It seems she didn't just borrow from one source and any writer worth their salt has been scrutinising the book for similarities to their own work. Latest to join the list of accusers is Salman Rushdie, citing similarities between her book and his 1990 work Haroun and the Sea of Stories. At least she's now attracting a calibre of reader she could never have expected – and stealing from the less popular works
Not so goody-goody
We also moaned last week about the dreary inevitability of biographies after Jordan and Sharon Osbourne colonised the market for the shallow and undeserving. Maybe we spoke to soon and some of it is worthwhile, or at least unexpected. The Guardian had us spluttering into our coffee with this quote from Jade Goody's biography: “I've always loved my mom, even when people took the piss out of her for being a one-armed lesbian…” The semi-functioning star of weekly celebrity magazines, who once lost a series of Big Brother, confesses she'd never have attempted the London Marathon if she'd known how long it was. Her candour will sell millions.
Spread the word
Book Notes' favourite campaign to entice people to read has been The Big Read, where whole towns or cities announce a single selection, sell the book at a nominal price and then everyone is exhorted to read it that month. Seattle ploughed through Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Los Angelos spent a month with Ray Bradbury's incendiary Farenheit 451. Now the idea is back with $1m funding from the Institute of Museums, Libraries and Sciences in the US. Four initial books have been placed on a National Reading List which is to be updated monthly. Time for our local politicians to jump on the bandwagon?