Kingston Readers' Festival, 26 April to 26 May

The festival features more than 90 authors and speakers in a wide variety of seminars, discussion groups and workshops over a five week period. This year's programme encompasses politics, poetry, philosophy, theatre and the world of publishing, as well as interior design, music and cookery. There are several events for children and special events for schools.
You can read the programme online, where there is also information about tickets and booking.

Carnegie Medal for Children's Books

These were announced on March 3rd, and the shortlist will be published on May 5th. The winner will be announced on July 7th.
Carnegie Medal Website - Lower School Library Shadowing Site
Read the full list and search the catalogue to see which titles are in the libraries

LibraryThing

Part of the new 'social' web, www.librarything.com is a great place to catalogue your personal library, and to use tags as a much more intuitive way of classifying your collection than Dewey and traditional library subject headings. You can view your books graphically on a virtual shelf and compare with other collectors who own some of the same books. Sounds a bit silly, I know, but have a look... like me you might be persuaded to give it a go!

Other sites which use personal tags for organising and sharing are http://del.icio.us, an online place to store your internet favourites so that you can access them from anywhere, and www.flickr.com, a new approach to storing and sharing your photos.

Oneword

This is what they have to say about themselves:

"Welcome to Oneword - the world's first radio station to feature the best in books, drama, comedy & discussion. You can hear us from 6am to midnight everyday on DAB digital radio, and 24 hours a day on Sky, Freeview, ntl cable and here on the Internet. Our programmes include: serializations of bestselling books read by the greatest actors, as well as drama, comedy, interviews with authors and reviews of the latest film releases."

Of particular interest are Between the Lines, a daily half hour author interview, and Children's Good Book Guide, where "top children's authors talk about and read from their latest publications. Guests so far have included Paul Jennings, Philip Ridley, Geraldine McCaughrean, Charmian Hussey, Ian Ogilvy and Alan Snow. "

Their free to join audio club lets you download past programmes as mp3 files for 30p each. For £3 a month you can subscribe to all their books programmes.

Radio 4 Podcast Trial

Radio 4 is now offering a range of radio programmes as podcasts which you can listen to at leisure on your mp3 player. To download the Friday edition of the arts programme Front Row to iTunes, for example, go to the Advanced menu, select 'subscribe to podcast' and paste http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/frontrowinterview/rss.xml
into the box. This will automatically download the programme for you every week, and upload it to your iPod when you next connect it to your computer.

Another interesting podcast subscription is available from Penguin Books (http://thepenguinpodcast.blogs.com/) , "a fortnightly episode of book extracts, author interviews and features from Penguin Books UK."

Do you know of other good arts/books podcasts? Please let us know via the 'Comments' box on this blog.

John Betjeman Centenary Reading

The Betjeman Society hosts an evening of poetry readings, with personal reminiscences of the poet from friends and colleagues. 7:30 pm, St Giles in the Fields, 60 St Giles High Street, London WC2. Admission Free. Tel 020 7736 0350.

1,001 books you must read before you die

Peter Ackroyd will be talking to Peter Boxall, author of this forthcoming survey. 6:30 pm, Foyles Bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road. Tickets £5, including refreshments. Tel 0870 420 2777.

Parallel Lines: William and Dorothy Wordsworth

Stephen Hebron of the Wordsworth Trust will give a talk abou the influence of each on the other's writing at 7pm on Tuesday April 4th, Keats House, Keats Grove, London NW3. Tickets £8 rom 020 7435 2062. www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/keats.