A Napster for book lovers?

An online cooperative library, mybookyourbook.co.uk, has been launched to much interest and press coverage. The idea is that you share your books around - thereby saving, we're told, £60 a year! There is an annual membership fee of £8.95.

Video clips of authors

A new website, www.meettheauthor.com, has (so far) 500 video clips of authors discussing their books, ranging from children's favourites (Anne Fine, Jacqueline Wilson) to playwrights (Alan Ayckbourn).

Guardian First Book Award

Ten writers, from places as far apart as Iran, Thailand, India, Malaysia, the US, Kent, Oxford, Neasden, Doncaster and Co Tyrone, have been nominated for this award. The list of 10 novels is online in the Guardian Unlimited Books section.

Nine Contemporary Poets

The Poetry Society is presenting 9 contemporary poets reading from their own work and that of 9 earlier poets on National Poetry Day, 4 October, at St-Giles-in-the-Fields, Covent Garden. I can't find the full programme online, but details of the event, which is chaired by poet Ruth Padel, are in the London Review of Books of 1 September (page 15), which is in the Wodehouse Library.

Hanif Kureishi talk

Hanif Kureishi will be speaking at the London Review of Books bookshop on 22 September at 7 pm. Tickets are £4 and can be obtained on 020 72699030, or by emailing books@lrbshop.co.uk. This is what the LRB has to say: "In My Ear at His Heart, Hanif Kureishi, following the discovery of an abandoned manuscript written by his father, considers his own genesis as a writer... In the process, he develops a new understanding of his family history and of his own upbringing in Bombay and Bromley".

Big Gay Read

The Big Gay Read, a follow-up to the BBC's Big Read and initiated by librarians in Manchester, has been launched as a national competition. An initial discussion list of 20 includes titles by Alan Hollinghurst, Annie Proulx, Colm Toibin, Jeannette Winterson and Patricia Highsmith. The winner, to be chosen by public vote, will be announced in February. [Report in the Guardian]

Anthony Powell exhibition

An exhibition celebrating the life of Anthony Powell, author of A Dance to the Music of Time, opens at the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square on November 3rd. It includes letters, manuscripts, photographs and editions of his novels. Admission is free.

Man Booker longlist announced

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize for fiction was announced today. You can read a synopsis of the 17 novels on the BBC website - the list includes former winners such as J M Coetzee, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro. According to a BBC report, William Hill have made Ian McEwan favourite at 3/1, with JM Coetzee at 5/1, Kazuo Ishiguro at 6/1 and Julian Barnes 7/1. [More predictions from the Guardian]. The two I've read recently and enjoyed hugely are Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (hilarious) and Ali Smith's The Accidental (very distinctive and compelling). We have 8 of the longlisted titles in the Wodehouse Library and are happy to order others if there is interest. The shortlist will be announced on September 8th.
Other reports & reviews: The Guardian, The Times.

Winner of science fiction award

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, has won the prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction after being nominated for last year's Booker and Whitbread prizes. Read about it in the Guardian.

Literature Events at the South Bank

Some dates to put in your diaries:
Saturday September 10, 7:45 pm Purcell Room: Philip Pullman with Tom Paulin on Paradise Lost - Pullman's personal tribute to the work which influenced his own Dark Materials trilogy.
Thursday September 15, 7:45 pm Purcell Room: Carol Anne Duffy, in combination with Eliana Tomkins and her jazz band, present the world premiere of her new work, Rapture.
Tuesday September 27, 7:45 Purcell Room: Antony Beevor's new work, A Writer at War, draws heavily on the notebooks of Vasily Grossman, author of perhaps one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century. He reads from these and from his own work.
More information and to book: tel 0870 382 8000 or online at www.rfh.org.uk