As I’m only halfway through Peter Hessler’s River town: two years on the Yangtze, I thought I’d share the best literary links I’ve found this week in the hope you find them as interesting as I do:

•  Haaretz has a fascinating article about the lives and work of authors whose work was banned and burnt by the Nazis.
• Continuing with the theme of moral courage, Sheila O’Malley reviews Booker’s Place. I’ll be looking out for this documentary about African-American waiter Booker Wright, who simply told the truth about his life in the Jim Crow South and suffered for it.
• Xujun Eberlein’s joint review of Mao’s Great Famine : The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 and Tombstone in the Los Angeles Review of Books is a masterly look at two accounts of the Great Famine. Grim but essential reading.
• The New York Times explains the US Justice Department vs. Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster case and why it’s important.
• Sticking with e-books, the Review of Australian Fiction is a new online venture enabling you to read a story from one established and one up-and-coming Aussie author a fortnight for a bargain price. I find this is a good way to expand my reading horizons and a lifesaver when, book finished, I need something to read on the train home. Geordie Williamson shares his thoughts on it here.
• I’m also loving the Library of America’s free weekly short story. Some favourites: classic Dashiell Hammett; Bettye Rice Hughes’ tour of the South shortly after bus segregation is banned and Henry James’ account of visiting an English workhouse.
• Speaking of the Great Man- Selling Henry James by Joseph Epstein is pure pleasure.
  
• The Atlantic recommends Aussie crime fiction- here here!
• A new review by James Wood is a must read, doubly so when it’s of Hilary Mantel.
• Lastly, this bookworm’s paradise is now on my must visit list.

Happy browsing!

Whole pages are added, re-written, revised,
So deeply by night those authors employ
Themselves with those old books of theirs.

How otherwise
Explain the fact that maybe after years
have passed, the reader
Picks up the book – But was it like that?
I don’t remember this . . . Where
Did this ending come from?
I recall quite another.

Oh yes, it has been tampered with
No doubt about it -
The author’s very touch is here, there and there,
Where it wasn’t before, and
What’s more, something’s missing -
I could have sworn . . .

-  From All the Poems by Muriel Spark, 2004; inspired by the recent (wonderful!) Muriel Spark Week

A Contribution to Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better
— fifty-two

doubting every step
— nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn’t take too long
— as high as forty-nine,

always good
because they can’t be otherwise
— four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy
— eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
— sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
— forty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
— seventy-seven,

capable of happiness
— twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds
— half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
— better not to know
even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact
— just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
— thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
— eighty-three
sooner or later,

righteous
— thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous
and understanding
— three,

worthy of compassion
— ninety-nine,

mortal
— a hundred out of a hundred.
Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

I’m delighted to see two favourites, Sonya Hartnett and Peter Temple on the list (the former for her painfully accurate study of female adolescence Butterfly, the later for his bloody brilliant crime novel Truth) and  sorry to see Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Game and Cate Kennedy’s The World Beneath omitted. Must get cracking on the other titles so I have a more informed opinion, in the meantime has anyone read any of the others and what did you think?

Updated 23.6.10: I’m happy to find that Peter Temple was announced as the winner last night! From the official release: 

Temple’s winning novel is the much anticipated sequel to The Broken Shore and comprehends murder, corruption, family, friends, honour, honesty, deceit, love, betrayal – and truth. A stunning story about contemporary Australian life, Truth is written with great moral sophistication.

Vasilly gave me two books I’m looking forward to reading: Shiver which she wrote she really enjoyed, and The Wednesday Sisters which is literary fiction which has done well in the States.

It’s hard to do justice to it in words-  Remarque’s brevity, brutal honesty and black humour make the novel hard to read but even harder to put aside.  I’m quite simply overwhelmed all over again by how monstrous the first world war was.

Remarque’s own words say it best I think:

“This book is intended neither as an accusation nor as a confession, but simply as an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war- even those of it who survived the shelling.”

The holiday swap is a way for book bloggers to connect and celebrate the holiday spirit by sharing gifts. It’s done secret Santa style; all of the participants are randomly assigned a blogger to send a gift to, and these assignments are kept secret until the gift has been delivered. So no one knows who their gift is coming from!

I participated last year and enjoyed it-  anyone who wants to join in this year has until the 12th November 2009 to sign up at the website.

Munro has a remarkable  abilty to make the apparently mundane suprisingly dramatic and full of interest and insight, capturing what seems to be the essential truth about a life in rarely more than fifty pages.

It is difficult to avoid a bare bones synposis of each story sounding dull (although as one character observes to another in the story Powers “I am not sure I like the word ‘prosaic’. I don’t know if this is any more a prosaic place than anywhere else and what do you expect it to be- poetic?”) and I also hesitate to ruin the pleasure of  discovering the often unexpected destination of each. Suffice it to say then that I found  each story in this collection superb and will not leave it long before reading more Munro.

(as a postscript, my Vintage edition of this contains an introduction by Jonathan Franzen which may persuade anyone who hasn’t yet read Munro to change that. It begins “Alice Munro has a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America, but outside of Canada, where her books are No. 1 best sellers, she has never had a large readership. At the risk of sounding like a pleader on behalf of yet another underappreciated writer — and maybe you’ve learned to recognize and evade these pleas? The same way you’ve learned not to open bulk mail from certain charities? Please give generously to Dawn Powell? Your contribution of just 15 minutes a week can help assure Joseph Roth of his rightful place in the modern canon? — I want to circle around Munro’s latest marvel of a book, ”Runaway,” by taking some guesses at why her excellence so dismayingly exceeds her fame.” and can be read online here.)

In the meantime, as part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week I participated in an interview swap for which fellow book blogger Jenny‘s answers to my questions are below.

My answers to Jenny’s questions will be up on her blog today, and the BBAW site will link to everyone particpating. It’s a good opportunity to get to know people, so take a look!

1. Who are your favourite authors, and why?

Jane Austen: Her accurate descriptions of people, society, and behavior during her time, and her sense of humor. 

2. Any authors you really don’t like? If so, why?

3. What is your reading comfort zone i.e is there a particular genre, subject, style that you read a lot of and usually enjoy?

5. Where’s your favourite place to read?

6. What do you do when you’re not reading? Any hobbies?

7. Do your family and friends know about your blog? If yes, what do they think?

8. I notice you’ve read some ARCs. Do you generally enjoy them? If there were any exceptions, did you find it hard to review them?

9. How do you work out what rating you give to each book?