Suite Francaise

The next staff reading group will be on Friday February 23rd. We will be discussing Irène Némirovsky's posthumous novel Suite Française, about life in occupied France, and the literary hit of 2006. Some links to explore:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2004539,00.html - her life and work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Nemirovsky - Wikipedia biography
http://perso.orange.fr/guillaumedelaby/en_index.htm - the definitive website
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/books/review/09gray.html?ex=1302235200&en=efa79839c42f4089&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss - NY Times Book Review
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1400119.ece - Sunday Times article by her daughter, Denise Epstein

Stranger than...

A day of events to celebrate non-fiction writing, with Jung Chang, Hilary Mantel, Bella Bathurst, Alexander Masters and many others. 10:30 am - 6 pm. Foyles Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, Saturday February 17th. Tickets £15/10. For full details visit www.foyles.co.uk

The Borrowers

In 2005-2006 the most borrowed books were Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and, of course, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The top 100 is dominated by saga, romance, thrillers and a handful of children's authors - Jacqueline Wilson appears 11 times!
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2009715,00.html

Jewish Book Week, 24 Feb-4 March

Royal National Hotel, Bedford Way, London EC1 is the venue for London's biggest single literary event. It has been running for over 50 years, and this year has a wonderful lineup of authors including David Grossman, Ann Jungman, Michael Morpurgo, Howard Jacobson and Saul Bellow.
http://www.jewishbookweek.com/2007/

Imagine: 18-21 February

The South Bank Centre's annual literary festival for families features appearances by Michael Morpurgo, Darren Shan, Michelle Paver and others. http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/festivals-series/imagine

W H Auden event at the British Library

Wednesday 21 February marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Wystan Hugh Auden, one of the most significant and prolific poets and writers of the twentieth century. The British Library and the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust celebrate Auden's centenary with an evening of poetry readings that reflect the enormous breadth and wonderful technical variety of Auden's published output, including both the poems of the 1930's that chart ‘a low dishonest decade', and his later work published while resident in the United States.
Sponsored by the Eccles Centre for American Studies.
Event time: 19.00-20.15
Location: Shaw Theatre, 100 Euston Road, London NW1 2AJ. Next door to the British Library
Price: £10.00 (concessions £7.50)
Book online at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/events/february.html

Why do we read on trains?

The Guardian conducted a survey to find out why, and what, people read on trains.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2005302,00.html

A million Penguins

"Can creative writers put their egos to one side and work successfully as a team? That's the question Penguin and De Montfort University are exploring with a new literary experiment - a collaborative wiki-novel.
Based on the principles of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, the novel, called A Million Penguins, is open to anyone to join in, write and edit. None of the words, characters or plot twists will be attributed to any individual and - and this is the element of the project most likely to bruise delicate egos - participants are free to edit, chop and change other writers' work. "
from http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2003520,00.html
http://www.amillionpenguins.com