Stacks of Tracks (in the Stacks)

By: Nicole Villeneuve

"I probably don't even need this microphone, to be honest!" Frontman Odario Williams and the rest of his genre-bending hip-hop group Grand Analog launched the Toronto Public Library's current Make Some Noise series straight from the kids' section of the College/Shaw branch last night, and the alternative venue proved a somehow very fitting setting for an affair that's typically relegated to dark clubs at late hours that no adorable two-year-old would ever be able to attend.

Ranked somewhere after malls, the internet, multi-theatre complexes in the suburbs on weekends, and basically anywhere else, libraries haven't exactly made a name for themselves as a top choice for teenagers to hang out and be really cool together. Make Some Noise launched four years ago as both an effort to document and preserve the country's recent historical musical output by stacking the TPL's music library with the cream of the indie crop, and to engage teens in library and music culture by providing them with more all-ages show options, and broadening their musical scope. The TPL's youth collections librarian Lisa Heggum masterminded the project, and so far, the response from borrowers and artists has been encouraging. "[It's been received] very well. People are placing holds and borrowing the CDs, and the city's music community really seems to love the project. Artists we approach are almost always enthusiastic, and we're often approached by members of the industry who'd like to participate."

One of those eager participants is Soundscapes, the community-friendly record store turned coolness consultants. "Soundscapes has been involved since the very beginning," Heggum says. "Working with them helps make this project the success that it is. Not only do they offer their expertise, professionalism, and organizational skills in helping us build our music collection, but they also offer advice and assistance with the events side of things." Heggum strongly believes in this mutual support, both in the community, and in the stacks. "I don't see why we should favour one format over the other. Our music collection demonstrates the library’s commitment to the local music scene in much the same way our collection of local and Canadian fiction demonstrates our commitment to the local literary scene."

Make Some Noise has branched further into the music scene this year; along with the usual library shows with high-profile artists, there will be information sessions with, among others, Steve Jordan, the founder and executive director of the Canadian indie music mecca, Polaris Prize. "Giving young people a chance to interact with local musicians and industry professionals and explore various topics [gives them] an overall excitement about the possibilities. Another area I'd like to see us become more involved in is local filmmaking. We attempt to keep in touch with those in the know and respond accordingly, and we plan to continue to listen to the community and try new things."

For Heggum, daily validation for her efforts so far can be found right at home. "My two-year-old son is wild about the Sadies' record with John Doe. He requests it repeatedly. It's amazing that I'm not sick of it yet."

Make Some Noise runs until December 1. The next show features the totally library-appropriate Bruce Peninsula and Timber Timbre on Saturday November 7 (that's tomorrow!) at 8 p.m. at the North York Central Library branch (5120 Yonge Street; it's not that scary, it's right at the North York Centre subway!). The full schedule of shows and workshops can be found on the Make Some Noise site. All shows are free and open to all ages. Two-year-olds are encouraged to attend.

From: Torontoist

Brokeback author donates papers

Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx is donating her papers - including an early draft of the short story - to New York's public library.

The 74-year-old, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Shipping News, will give a wealth of material including diaries and manuscripts to the institution.

Proulx said there was "an odd sense of balance" bringing her rural US material to the big city.

The 2005 big screen version of Brokeback Mountain won three Oscars.

One of the statuettes was for the adaptation of Proulx's original story.

Early versions of the cowboy romance which will be housed in the library had working titles including Bulldust Mountain and Swill-Swallow Mountain.

Proulx added that it would be an "honour" to be in the company of authors including Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, whose papers are already housed in the library.

from: BBC

5 reasons why the novel is not a dying medium

by: JK Evanczuk

Since starting Lit Drift, I’ve gotten used to reading a lot of doom-and-gloom opinion pieces about the death of the publishing industry. I’ve read predictions that the paperbound book will be totally replaced by digital books within the decade, or that we’ll all stop buying books and forget how to read, and so on. Most of it I’ve taken with a grain brick of salt, because I think at this point in our current techno-literary revolution it is far too early to tell where we’ll be in five–let alone ten–years.

Still, I can’t shake my anxiety after reading this recent article from The Guardian, in which Philip Roth–one of my favorite writers–says that the novel will be a “cult minority” in 25 years. He attributes the decline of the novel to the popularity of film, TV, and computers. It’s not the first time I’ve heard claims like this. But it’s unnerving to hear it from Philip Roth.

Roth continues:
“The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen,” Roth said. “Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up.”

Maybe I’ve been living in a shiny happy non-reality for the last two decades, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. So as much as I love Philip Roth, I have to respectfully disagree.

I have a feeling literature is going to be just fine in the digital age. Here is my reasoning:

#1The media predicted the death of the book upon the advent of radio, and then again with film, and then again with television. It’s happening once more with the rise of the computer and the Internet. It’s possible that this time things are different. Anything’s possible. But based solely on literature’s perseverance throughout the last century, I’m optimistic about literature’s survival.

#2The media has predicted that the Internet would turn us into a bunch of drooling, snarky drones who couldn’t care less about grammar or spelling. But as we’ve said before, people are–on the contrary–becoming increasingly literate thanks to the Internet.

#3Roth says that people can’t concentrate long enough to finish an entire novel, but I don’t think that’s an issue. If you can spend ten hours on Facebook, you can spend two hours reading a book. If you can spend ten hours reading your favorite blogs, you most definitely have the attention span required to spend two hours reading a book.

#4What with innovative techno-literary projects like Neil Gaiman’s crowdsourced Twitter story or Colson Whitehead’s multi-part Internet novel, I think the Internet is proving to be an asset to fiction rather than a hindrance. It’s bringing literature back to the masses. I can’t think of any other time in history when fiction has been so dynamic and interesting than right now.

#5Although Roth says that the Kindle doesn’t make a difference in people’s reading habits, I think it does. Despite my own qualms about losing the experience of reading a paperbound book, the Kindle and other digital readers do satisfy our need for instant gratification. We are a lazy species, and maybe without digital readers many people couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to get a book from the bookstore or the library. But thanks to digital readers we can browse, buy, and read new books all in the span of just a few clicks.

So is the novel really a dying medium? Good God, I hope not. I have yet to publish my first novel, and when it finally comes out I want people to, you know, read it. Things are just changing so fast right now that I think it’s difficult to make any well-informed predictions about where we’ll be in the near future. I think the best thing we can do right now is to sit back, watch what happens, and keep reading.

from: LitDrift

More about Stieg Larsson

Wondering how it's possible that Stieg Larsson is still publishing new works of fiction even though he died five years ago? Check out the official website www.stieglarsson.com.

Family of Steig Larsson at war over book proceeds

The family of Steig Larsson, the Swedish crime writer who died five years ago, are engaged in a bitter fight over the proceeds from the sale of his books.

Larsson, who was largely unknown before his sudden death at age 50, has become one of the most successful writers in the world, selling 20 million of his books to date in Europe alone. Last year he was the world's second best selling author after Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, and his estate is thought to be worth more than £20m.

But because he and Eva Gabrielsson, his partner of 32 years, never married and he died without making a will, the proceeds have defaulted to his blood relations, provoking controversy in Sweden and displeasure from Gabrielsson, the Guardian reports.

Erland and Joakim Larsson, the author's father and brother, this week made Ms Gabrielsson a public offer of £1.75m to settle the dispute, telling the Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet, "We have to move on." Ms Gabrielsson's response was curt: "You don't solve these things via media. It is so low. My lawyer will have to answer any further questions."

She has previously accused the Larsson family of seeking to "make money from someone who can't defend himself", saying it would make her partner "absolutely furious", and accusing Erland and Joakim of not being part of Stieg's life while he was alive.

But Erland Larsson said it was he who had insisted that his son write "something commercial", and that the Millennium trilogy, the third title of which was published in Britain last month as The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, was the result. Gabrielsson, he said, had resisted moves to come to a settlement.

From: the Telegraph

Stephen King writes debut comic book

Novelist sinks teeth into graphic storytelling with American Vampire series.
by: Alison Flood

Stephen King is the latest mainstream author to turn to comics with a new series about a distinctly American vampire, powered by the sun, set to launch next spring.

Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin and twist-in-the-tale novelist Jodi Picoult have both recently dabbled with comics, but although his bestselling books The Stand, The Talisman and the Dark Tower series have been adapted into graphic novels, the American Vampire series will be the first original comic-book writing King has done.

The five-book arc will tell the story of the first American vampire, the murderous, bank-robbing 1880s cowboy Skinner Sweet. His Wild West origins mean he has rattlesnake fangs, and unlike European vampires he is powered by the sun. The series was dreamed up by short story writer Scott Snyder, who approached King for a blurb only to find the bestselling author was keen to get involved himself.

"I love vampire stories, and the idea of following the dark exploits of a uniquely American vampire really lit up my imagination. The chance to do the origin story – to be 'present at the creation' – was a thrill," said King. "I owe big thanks to Scott Snyder for letting me share his vision, and sip from his bucket of blood."

Snyder's storyline will follow the adventures of Skinner's Jazz Age descendent Pearl, a frequenter of Hollywood's speakeasies and dance halls who dreams of becoming a star. Each of the first five issues will feature both Snyder and King's stories, with the ongoing series by Snyder and artist Rafael Albuquerque to trace the histories of Skinner's descendants in different periods of American history. The American Vampire series will be published monthly by Vertigo from March 2010.

From: the Guardian

Bidding war begins for Nelson Mandela's astonishing archive

by: Sam Jones and Alison Flood


Although the three calculations jotted on the back of a piece of paper do not look like much, the neat rows of black figures offer an elegantly brutal precis of one of the most remarkable lives of the 20th century.

The first reveals the number of years the writer spent in prison (28); the second, how old he was when the law caught up with him (44), and the third, the age at which he was released (72).


The sums would be of scant interest were it not for the fact that the man measuring out his life in ink that day was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.


That page – and thousands more belonging to the former South African president – are now at the centre of a bidding war as international publishers scrabble to acquire the rights to a book based on Mandela's private archive.


While the private collection of journals, diaries, letters, speeches, notebooks and personal reflections has yet to be distilled into a book, the raw archive materials seem likely to take this week's Frankfurt book fair by storm.


Mandela himself, who bestowed these "traces of my life and those who have lived it with me" on his eponymous foundation, hopes the collection will afford the world a glimpse into his mind and his past.


"Anyone who has explored the world of archives will know that it is a treasure house, one that is full of surprises, crossing paths, dead ends, painful reminders and unanswered questions," he said.


Jonny Geller, an agent at the Curtis Brown literary agency and the man entrusted with handling the book's worldwide rights, described the collection on offer as an "utterly remarkable" resource.


"I've never heard of a living political leader giving up their entire archive," he said as he waited for his plane to Frankfurt. "I can't think of any other political leader who has opened up their archive without any censorship.


"There's everything from political scribblings to letters to his wife. It's an incredible archive, which will not only have political and historical insights, but which will also provide an emotional insight into the man too. It will give a portrait of the man and his life."


Verne Harris, acting head of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said the documents afforded "unique access to Madiba in his private moments, his personal reflections in response to circumstance that helped him to the daily disciplines, the life lessons and to the moral and political vision which inspired, and continues to inspire so many".


According to Geller, the Mandela who emerges from the archive is a flesh-and-blood man and a prolific letter-writer.


"He has notebooks from Robben Island [where Mandela was imprisoned] which are absolutely packed with his handwriting. And he kept drafts of letters he sent, most of which never got through. There's scraps of paper with his notes on leadership."


There is also, in one of the less predictable epistolary partnerships, a letter discussing the role of police in society set down on notepaper emblazoned with both the legend From the Desk of Nelson Mandela and the image of the rotund and lasagne-loving cartoon cat Garfield.


Geller describes the book as "a look behind Long Walk to Freedom", the autobiography that Mandela published in 1995, and which has sold more than 6m copies around the world.


The agent would not discuss how much Macmillan UK had paid for the British and Commonwealth rights, nor speculate on how much the US rights could go for. But he did confirm there had already been offers from eight territories.


Asked how he expected the week's bidding to go in Germany, Geller said: "It's going to be a book that will take over the Frankfurt book fair and become the book of the fair."


According to the Bookseller, which broke the news of the archive's publication, the British book will be called Conversations with Myself and will be published next year to mark the 20th anniversary of Mandela's release from prison.


A new biography, Young Mandela, charting Mandela's life in the early 1960s before his imprisonment, will also be published next year to coincide with the anniversary and the start of the World Cup in South Africa.


Although it remains to be seen what revelations the archive will yield, its 91-year-old creator should not have too much trouble finding favourable blurbs for the book jackets.


Archbishop Desmond Tutu has already described Mandela as "a gift to the world", while Hillary Clinton, who has seen the archive, might also be worth tapping for a quote.


"[It] will be a treasure trove of information, of memories, of lessons and guidance for generations to come," said the US secretary of state on a recent trip to Africa.


"You can see in the recording of his days, what he was doing, what he was thinking – in the discipline that he brought to a life filled with so many great achievements, not only for him personally but for South Africa and the world."



From: the Guardian