Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Riding shotgun


Click for bigger.

Kitten does the crab walk


YouTube link.

Indian scooter-powered hoist


YouTube link.

Urn lets you become a tree after death

An eco-friendly urn offers people who decide to be cremated the opportunity to give back to Earth with their remains – literally.

Designed and created by Spanish designer Martín Ruiz de Azúa, who lives in Barcelona, the Bios Urn allows people to have their ashes eventually grow into a tree.



The Bios Urn is a mortuary urn made from biodegradable materials: coconut shell, compacted peat and cellulose.

Each urn contains the seed of a tree inside. Once the urn is planted the seed begins to develop and grow. You have the option of picking from a variety of trees and plants.

Available here.

Australian Rules footballer sent off for dangerous haircut

An umpire who ordered an Australian Rules football player from the field because his mohawk was considered dangerous had "misinterpreted the rules". Simpson Tigers midfielder Nathan Van Someren says he will appeal his send-off by umpire Don Wheadon during the third quarter of a weekend match against Otway Districts in the Colac and District Football League.



Van Someren was told to leave the field for 15 minutes "because his hair was too dangerous" and might have poked another player in the eye, Tigers co-coach Leigh Walsh told Fairfax.

The decision came as a shock to the 25-year-old who has played with the hair style for three years, and had played during the first and second quarters of the match. VCFL umpiring general manager Gerard Ryan said the Colac umpires' association had acknowledged that a mistake had been made and was working to resolve the matter.


YouTube link.

Mr Ryan said the rule used to get Van Someren off the field referred to items such as jewellery and protective equipment that could injure another player. "In this case it's probably been interpreted a little bit too broadly," he said.

Judge calls man ‘gayer than a sweet-smelling jock strap’

A Wisconsin judge on Monday sentenced a 71-year-old former bus driver to seven years in prison on charges of sexually assaulting boys, telling him, “I think you were born gayer than a sweet-smelling jock strap.”

Delton D. Gorges, a school bus driver for 33 years, was sentenced on counts of sexual assault of a child, repeated sexual assault of a child and two misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree sexual assault.


YouTube link.

“I think that if anyone believes that in the last 10 years or 15 years all of a sudden you developed an interest in homosexuality and young boys, then I must have looked ravishing in my prom dress this year,” said Judge Philip Kirk, dismissing Gorges’ claim that he is heterosexual.

Critics said they were concerned about the judge’s comments linking homosexuality with paedophilia. “Sometimes people don’t say the right thing, but they potentially mean well, “said Andrew DeBaker, co-chair of the gay advocacy group New Pride. “The thing that concerns me is the linking homosexuality, linking being gay with, in this case, child molestation.”

Hunters try to kill bears with mattress

Police in Norrbotten in northern Sweden are investigating an attempt to kill bears by fooling them into eating a blood-soaked mattress, causing a slow death by starvation due to constipation. The police were informed of the macabre plan after the blood-soaked bedding was found in the forests near Jarhois outside of Pajala, apparently intended as bait.

"According to what we know, if a bear eats this then it would not be able to eat anything else and die of starvation," said Erik Kummu at Norrbotten police. Kummu explained that the bear would suffer a long, painful death in the process. "One can question the faculties of someone who is so cruel as to cause an animal such suffering which could continue for several weeks," he said.



The gruesome find was made by the landowner and another man who held the lease for hunting rights in the area. The pair then reported the matter to the police. As police continue their hunt for the suspected perpetrators, it has been established that they used a four wheel quad bike to transport the bloodied bedding into the forest.

"Police from Övertorneå have been out at the location and found the tracks. Police have also used a helicopter to search the area," Erik Kumm said. Police have classified the case as attempted aggravated criminal hunting and aggravated animal cruelty.

Double-snouted piglet eats for two

A little piglet in northern China is making the most of eating double the amount of her brothers and sisters because she has two snouts.

Its owner, farmer Bai Xuejin said: 'We knew something was different because her head was so large we had to help when her mother gave birth.' The squealer could not suckle its mother because of its unique facial figure, so Mr Xuejin had to raise it by hand until it was old enough to eat solid food.



'Both mouths function normally and so she eats and drinks through both of them which means she gets through a lot more food than her brothers and sisters,' he added.

Mr Xuejin, from Zhangjia in the Jilin province, is planning on saving her from the chop and putting her on show at his farm because people are fascinated by her. He said: 'She is too special to end up on a plate.'

Drunk man ate and slept in wrong house

Pinellas deputies say Mark C. Sirben got drunk, went home, cooked up a snack and passed out on the couch early on Friday morning. The trouble was, it wasn't his house, his food or his couch. He wasn't even in the right county.

Sirben, 51, Spring Hill, was charged with trespassing in an occupied structure and criminal mischief. According to arrest reports a married couple were sleeping in their home in Palm Harbor when the wife awoke to the sound of coughing at around 2:30 a.m.



The woman went to investigate and found Sirben asleep on her couch. She woke up her husband, who went to the living room and confronted Sirben. Sirben argued with the husband, telling him that he lived there, before he passed out again. "They had no idea who this guy was," said Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda.

When a deputy arrived, Sirben was still asleep on the couch with a plate of food at his side. The couple said Sirben must have cooked something for himself before he fell asleep. "The kitchen cabinets were open and there was food in a frying pan that was not there when he and his wife had gone to bed," Barreda said.

Poisonous caterpillars infest London estate

A number of people in a south London neighbourhood have undergone medical treatment following an infestation of poisonous caterpillars.



The creatures, thought to be brown-tail moth caterpillars, have made their home an estate in New Addington in Croydon.

Residents have come out in rashes and suffered breathing difficulties because of the creepy-crawlies. They are also destroying trees.


YouTube link.

The local council say they have started to spray pest control in the affected areas, and claim that within the next week or so the brown tail moths should start to disappear.

Boy wears skirt to school in discrimination row

A 12-year-old schoolboy attended lessons dressed in a skirt to protest against ”discriminatory” rules which ban boys from wearing shorts. Chris Whitehead wore a girls’ knee-length skirt to classes at Impington Village College, near Cambridge, Cambs. He is protesting against a school uniform policy which bans boys from wearing shorts during the summer months.

He also addressed 1,368 pupils at morning assembly wearing the black skirt, which boys are permitted to wear due to a loophole in the policy. Chris believes that forcing boys to wear long trousers during the hot summer months affects concentration and their ability to learn. He said: ”In the summer girl students are allowed to wear skirts but boys are not allowed to wear shorts.



”We think that this discriminates against boys. I will march in a skirt with other boys waving banners and making a lot of noise. I will be wearing the skirt at school all day in protest at the uniform policy and addressing the assembly with the student council, wearing a skirt.” Chris’s mum Liz Whitehead, 50, has praised her son for standing up for ”what he believes in.”

She said: ”I am delighted that Chris is taking action on what he believes in, which the school actually encourages, so he is only doing what he is taught. I am really proud he is brave enough to wear a skirt to school for what he believes in and back him all the way.” Headteacher Robert Campbell said the ban on shorts was imposed following consultation with students, teachers and parents in 2009. Ultimately the boys can wear a skirt to school because it doesn’t say they can’t in the uniform policy and we would be discriminating against them if we did not allow it.”

Living statues came to blows over prime spot

Though not quite a sitting duck, the target of the sickening assault was a perfectly motionless wizard. His assailant was a headless king. Both were street performers who earn their living standing still. Instead, tourists on London's Southbank watched as one "living statue" launched a frenzied attack on the other, battering him to within an inch of his life.



Dechko Ivanov, 37, who regularly performed as the Invisible King in the same lucrative spot in the shadow of the London Eye, was furious that the Silver Wizard had stolen his patch. Dressed that day in a similar silver outfit with a crown and a staff, Ivanov accused Rumen Nedelchev, 45, of stealing his audience, then clubbed him with the concrete block he used to weigh down his plinth before kicking him and then "calmly" leaving the scene on his bicycle.

Mr Nedelchev, from Brest, Belarus, was so badly injured that he spent more than three months in hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to remove pieces of bone from his brain. His skull had to be partly rebuilt and he was left with a 14–inch scar. Ivanov, a father of one from Bulgaria, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm but was found guilty of the more serious charge of GBH with intent at Inner London Crown Court.



Sentencing Ivanov, the Recorder, Robin Allen QC, said he was guilty of a "grossly disproportionate" attack and described him as a danger to the public. He acknowledged that the two men lived a difficult life in "very strained economic circumstances" but said that it was a life and work they had both chosen.

Strawberry Field gates not forever

The ornate iron children's home gates which inspired John Lennon to write the psychedelic Beatles anthem Strawberry Fields Forever have been removed. The Salvation Army, which owns the former home, is putting the red Victorian gates into storage.

It means Beatles fans who pass the site on bus tours will now be met with 10ft (3m) high replicas. The charity said fans would still get an "authentic experience" with a view of the former home.



Replicas of the 100-year-old wrought iron gates have been made by metal work specialist Jim Bennett, from Aigburth, and gifted to The Salvation Army. The originals are being taken to a secret location for storage, but are expected to eventually be auctioned.

"Although care has been taken to ensure the original gates to the site have remained in good condition, inevitably time has taken its toll," said Maj Ray Irving, director of social services for The Salvation Army. "This means that the original gates can be kept safe from further deterioration and with the replica gates in place, allow for an authentic experience for the many thousands of people who come on a 'musical pilgrimage' to Strawberry Field."

AND MORE STILL ON ALLEN CURNOW

from Murray Gray:

In September we are having the Going West Books and Writers Festival again. This year's event is Landfall in Unknown Seas and will feature David Eggleton as The Curnow Reader with his new collection commemorating the birth of Allen Curnow.
The festival title is the name of a 1940 poem he wrote for the tercentenry of Tasman's rediscovering New Zealand.
We are also expecting visits from a couple of ex-pats, Martin Edmond and Spiro Zavos. We figure since we are up against a rugby match or two we should feature one of the great sports' writers around while Martin will suggest just where McCahon may have gone we he was 'lost' for a weekend while in Sydney for an exhibition of his work. More to be advised.

Murray Gray. gonewestbooks.com
Programme Director. Going West Books & Writers


Footnote:
The splendid photo of Allen Curnow is the work of Marti Friedlander.

Gordon's Great Escape - Southeast Asia

I might not like Gordon Ramsay much on a personal level but I do admire him as a chef and I love his books. His latest (Harper Collins $59.99) is the book spawned by the BBC TV series of the same name and has him in Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Below is one of the recipes from the book for you to try.
In introducing the recipe Gordon Ramsay says:
" What I particularly liked about this curry was that there were no chillies in it (because in Cambodia they don't like their food spicy); it is an example of where rustic charm shines through and the simple flavours of the spices speak for themselves. My version uses monkfish; I love it and the meaty flakes hold well against the spices in the curry. If you don't like monkfish, substitute with any other firm white fish."

KHMER MONKFISH AND VEGETABLE CURRY
SERVES 4

2 tsp curry powder
2 tsp paprika
2 star anise
salt and freshly ground black pepper
vegetable oil, for frying 500g monkfish, cubed
2 tbsp lemongrass paste
2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
4 kaffir lime leaves
500ml fish stock
200g green beans, cut into 3cm pieces
1 tsp palm sugar (or soft brown sugar)
2 tbsp fish sauce

GARNISH
handful of coriander leaves, roughly torn
4 lime wedges

 Mix together the curry powder, paprika, star anise and seasoning with 2 tablespoons of oil in a small bowl and set aside. Wash the monkfish in cold water and pat dry. Place in a bowl with the spice mixture, coat the monkfish all over and marinate for up to 30 minutes.

Place a medium-sized pan over a high heat, add some oil and carefully add the monkfish with the marinade and fry for a few minutes until cooked through. Carefully remove the monkfish and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in the pan, add the lemongrass paste and cook for 2–3 minutes until fragrant. Add the shallots, carrot, sweet potato and lime leaves. Cook for 3–4 minutes, coating them with the paste. Pour in the stock and simmer for 10 minutes until the carrot and potato are tender. Add all the remaining ingredients, including the monkfish, and simmer for 5 minutes, until all the ingredients are cooked through. Discard the star anise and lime leaves.

Divide the curry among four warmed bowls. Garnish with the coriander and lime wedges and serve with steamed jasmine rice.

Mary Sangster reports from Christchurch

The Children's Bookshop is up and running (more like limping really) again. We opened the doors of our new premises on Monday with no pomp and ceremony, but did a splash in The Press today. Our new details are:

 Shop:
Shop 5, Blenheim Square
227 Blenheim Rd
CHRISTCHURCH

Postal:
P O Box 11 369
Sockburn
CHRISTCHURCH 8443

 The phone, fax and email have gone back to the originals:

ph 3 366 5274
fax 3 366 4506
email - general sales@childrensbookshop.co.nz
me (Mary) mary@childrensbookshop.co.nz

More on Allen Curnow


Following my post on Monday regarding the celebration of the centennial of Allen Curnow's birth his son Tim Curnow has been in touch and advised as follows:

Allen's widow Jeny Curnow and I, as son and his literary agent, have organised a Tribute section in two literary journals:

1.  SPORT’s latest issue (#39) being launched at the Auckland Writers’ Festival has a chapter from Terry Sturm’s forthcoming critical biography of Dad plus a couple of poems.

2. LANDFALL’s issue later in the year – think it is their October issue - will have Tribute section as well and I’ve been organising international contributions from poets who knew Dad and admired his work:

England: Anthony Thwaite and Michael Hulse
Eire – Seamus Heaney and Matthew Sweeney
Australia – Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Peter Goldsworthy

New Zealand contributions are being organised by the Editor of Landfall but will include a reminiscence of childhood from Dad’s brother Tony who lives in Macon in France – Tony is about 88 now; Ian Wedde, Karl Stead, probably a tribute poem from Janet Frame which has not been published before.

Teens who read for pleasure—rather than just for school work—are more likely to have professional careers as adults than those who don't crack open books for leisure

By Lauren Barack May 10, 2011 , the School Library Journal

Teens who read for pleasure—rather than just for school work—are more likely to have professional careers as adults than those who don't crack open books for leisure, says a study conducted by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Researchers asked more than 17,000 people born in 1970 about how they spent their downtime when they were 16 years old and their careers when they turned 33. Girls who enjoyed reading had a 39 percent chance of finding a professional position, compared to 25 percent who didn't. Boys had a 58 percent chance if they were diving into books, compared to 48 percent who hadn't.

While bookworms, so to speak, have always been considered more studious and more likely to do well in school—and potentially in their careers—pinpointing how the ability to excel connects to reading hasn't always been exact.

"My only observation is that kids who read tend to be more intent on completing tasks because they can get back to their book," says Barbara Fecteau, a library media specialist with the Beverly High School in Beverly, MA. "This may or may not give them better focus. Also, being used to dropping into other lives and worlds in fiction definitely makes for a more creative thinker!"

Reading also showed up as a marker for increasing a student's likelihood of getting into college—raising a boy's chances to 35 percent from 24 percent and a girl's chances to 30 percent from 20 percent. For those who also took part in a cultural activity, such as playing the violin or visiting museums, their chances of getting into college jumped to 54 percent for boys and 48 percent for girls.

However, extracurricular activities didn't affect career success alone. Reading for fun, it seems, is the magic ingredient—something school librarians, teachers, and parents have long touted.

"According to our results, there is something special about reading for pleasure," says researcher Mark Taylor. "The positive associations of reading for pleasure aren't replicated in any other extracurricular activity, regardless of our expectations."

This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping.

http://www.slj.com/slj/articlereview/890530-451/teens_who_read_for_pleasure.html.csp

William and Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding’


The eagerly awaited book ‘William and Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding’ by Andrew Morton will amazingly be in stores across New Zealand by 12th May – only 12 days after the wedding.

This is a remarkable publishing achievement considering the book is 224 pages and contains more than 150 colour photos.

Author Andrew Morton completed the text for the book’s final chapter on the day of the wedding. UK based publishing house Michael O’Mara had a team working behind the scenes and they were selecting the photographs for the jacket plus inside pages just 100 minutes after the couple kissed.

 Susan Holmes, Managing Director of Bookreps NZ Ltd who are the importers of the book, said the printers, freight companies and the New Zealand based staff at distributor PDL all played a major part. Susan has been in the publishing game for many years and believes this could be close to a record to have a book on sale less than 2 weeks after an overseas event. ‘It was a total team effort and one I am very proud of.’

Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cornwall will hopefully be visiting New Zealand this year for their much publicised private visit to attend the Rugby World Cup.

Pun-ishment

Remembering Robert Nesta Marley 1945 - 1981

Who tragically passed away thirty years ago today.



I saw Bob Marley and The Wailers live on 7th June 1980. A few weeks earlier he'd been advised that he had terminal cancer, though at the time hardly anyone knew he was even ill.


YouTube link.

I've told this story before, and now seems as good a time as any to recall.

When I visited the Bob Marley Mausoleum in Jamaica some years back, an elderly grey-haired Rasta sitting outside regaled me with these words of wisdom. "It's the trees Mon," he said. I looked at him quizzically and he continued: "It's the trees. Every time the trees move, the wind blow."

One long, strange trip

from The Observer's Very Short List
MAY 10, 2011


thumbnail Deborah Baker is best known as the author of relatively straightforward books about Laura Riding and Allen Ginsberg. Her latest, The Convert: A Tale of Exile in Extremism, (Gray Wolf Press), is a near-total departure for the author: It tells a fascinating story, and pushes the envelope of the biographer’s art.

Baker was rummaging around in the New York Public Library when she ran across personal papers of Margaret Marcus–an American woman who left her life in the New York suburbs behind in 1962, and became a radical Islamist in Pakistan. (Marcus, who’d changed her name to Maryam Jameelah, had written a number of diatribes against Western materialism, but she’d also continued to correspond with her Jewish parents in Westchester County.) Baker follows the paper trail, which ultimately leads her to Pakistan, and to a bracing confrontation with Marcus/Jameelah herself.

Recipe of the Week Blog Hop - Pasta Salad

This week I am sharing an original Heather creation recipe! It's the easiest pasta salad in the world to make, extremely healthy for you and tastes great! 

Heather's Easy Pasta Salad 

1 yellow bell pepper
1 cucumber 
2 medium size carrots 
1 pkg. sun dried tomatoes
1 lb. rainbow color pasta 
1 container of Italian Dressing 

First bring a pot of salted water to boil and cook the noodles as directed on the box. While the noodles cook, cut up your vegetables. I used my handy dandy Pampered Chef julienne peeler for the carrots. 


Photo Credit: The Pampered Chef

Place all the vegetables in a bowl. 

Drain the noodles and let them cool slightly. Add the noodles and Italian Dressing to your vegetable mixture. Chill and serve!


Be sure to link back when you submit your recipe below! The link up will be open until Friday night at 11:59pm. Please spread the word so we can get more entries going! 






HOTELS NEED TO WISE UP ON WiFi

Pamela Wade writing in the New Zealand Herald Travel magazine, 10 May, 2011.
The very first thing I do when I enter a new hotel room isn’t to go straight to the window to check out the view, test-bounce the bed a couple of times or look into the bathroom to see whether the toiletries are Molton Brown or Gilchrist & Soames. It’s the boring old Hotel Services directory I snatch up the moment I drop my suitcase, to flick through to ‘Internet’ and find out whether my memories of this place are going to be fondly rose-tinted, or suffused with a red mist.

Mostly, it’s the rage. With some noble exceptions, exorbitant connection charges are still standard in most of the hotels I’ve stayed at in this part of the world, and it makes me go fuzzy at the edges with anger and frustration. Access to free, fast, reliable WiFi ought to be as standard in hotel rooms as the provision of toilet paper. It should be like electricity and water: factored into the room rate as a normal facility, and unthinkable not to provide it. Personally, I would give up the 1000-count sheets that, being asleep, I’m mostly unconscious of, the fluffy robe and silly scuffs that I never wear, and the huge noisy spa bath that takes forever to fill, if I could instead settle down to reading my emails, posting to my blog, checking up on the news at home and generally behaving as though I live in the 21st century and not some 1980s outpost where the closest thing to email is airmail.

I find it impossible to understand why budget hostels and five-star luxury lodges have seen the light, while mid-range hotels still seem to think that business travellers on expense accounts are the only ones who might need access to the internet. At these places it’s generally necessary to buy, at eye-watering expense, some kind of card or to sign up for a chunk of time that has to be used in one go; and even then as often as not you have to be anchored to a desk by a LAN cable instead of comfortably surfing in bed. And when WiFi is available, there’s a Basil Fawlty attitude to problems: patchy access? Fitful operation? You’re lucky we have it at all! And no, there’ll be no discount or repair if it stops working altogether. Come and camp in the lobby hotspot with your laptop and be grateful!

To say, as a Hilton representative once did when I got testy about his shoulder-shrugging attitude to free WiFi, “Oh, it’ll come one day” is incomprehensible to me in a business where competition is the air that they breathe. For goodness sake, why not be first?

Footnote.
Pamela Wade has been travel writing for the last eight years, during which time she's been lost in Lima, slept in a swag beside a crocodile-infested river in Australia and - just for balance - rattled round in a six-room suite in the Hong Kong Peninsula. Her stories regularly appear in a wide range of newspapers and magazines in NZ and occasionally in the UK and Australia. She was recently re-elected President of NZ Travel Communicators, won the Cathay Pacific Travel Writer of the Year award in 2009, and writes a travel-related blog.

Further Footnote:
The Bookman would like to strongly associate himself with Pamela Wade on this one. I totally endorse her sentiments.
I am fed up with paying NZ and Australian and other hotels outrageous sums of money to gain Internet access. Most recently I stayed at the Four Seasons in Sydney where the charge was $A20 a day. Outrageous.Then at the Crowne Plaza Changi Aiport a similar charge was in place. Talk avboutt ripping off their clients. I will not be staying in either estblishment again.
Hats off though to Twin Plams Resort in Phuket, Thailand where fast unlimited Wifi Broadband was supplied free of charge.


I plan to start a register of all hotels who do not make a surcharge for WiFi which I will post on my blog from time to time so if any of my readers have experienced free WiFi at hotels then let me know by way of comment and I'll add to the register.
Let's stamp out this unfair practice and reawrd those who are being fair.

And my warm thanks to Pamela Wade for her succinct and timely story and for her permission to reproduce it here on my blog.

Michael Connelly, author of ‘The Lincoln Lawyer,’ draws on fact for his crime fiction


MATT MCCLAIN/ THE WASHINGTON POST - Best-selling author Michael Connelly
By  Neely Tucker, Washington Post
Michael Connelly was a cops reporter for about a dozen years, most notably with the Los Angeles Times. He has sold 43 million of his 23 crime-based novels around the world since hanging up his press card nearly 20 years ago. Still, he has found some journalistic habits hard to break, such as researching the background of his thrillers.
“I hate revealing this stuff,” he says good-naturedly during a lunch conversation at the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown recently while in town to promote the film. “I want people to think I’m a creative genius.”
There’s plenty of creativity in the process, of course; it’s a trick of seeing things in the real world and “knowing what works, and where it works” in fiction.
He has figured out what works pretty well by now.

He’s 54, about 6 feet tall, with close-cropped hair, a full Vandyke beard and round, wire-frame glasses. He’s big-shouldered but soft-spoken. He lives with his wife, Linda, and a teenage daughter, McCaleb, near Tampa. He has basketball season tickets for his alma mater, the University of Florida. He also has a 23-foot Boston whaler, which he likes to take out in the bay, where he fishes and thinks out plot development.
Connelly’s also got the one talent any reporter and writer has to have: an ear for a great story.

Writing “The Lincoln Lawyer” began a decade ago, on opening day at Dodger Stadium in 2001. A mutual friend brought along David Ogden, a criminal defense attorney. Connelly politely asked Ogden in which courthouse he most often worked. Ogden said, “Well, I pretty much work out of my car.” Connelly, the storyteller, knew then to be really interested.
“I drove a Lincoln Town Car or a Crown Vic,” Ogden, now retired and living in Montana, said in a phone interview. “It was a great thing. Some of it was show. It allowed me to make three or four [court] appearances every morning. And it made an impression on clients walking out of the courthouse, when this car would pull up and I’d get in.”

Connelly loved this story, about how the Lincoln trunks were big and boxy enough to house filing cabinets. He loved that his driver was a former client, Lonnie Henderson, who’d spent a lot of time in prison before going straight.
Both men recall that Ogden, who felt slightly self-conscious about practicing law out of the back seat of a vehicle, volunteered to Connelly that day at the ballpark, as evidence of his success, that he lived a “couple of doors down from Matthew McConaughey.” (The lawyer and the actor had never met; that McConaughey wound up portraying Ogden on screen is happy coincidence.)

So Connelly had a premise — a defense lawyer working out of a Lincoln — but that wasn’t yet a story. He was concerned. He wrote about cops, most particularly Harry Bosch, an LAPD homicide detective, not lawyers. He thought John Grisham and Scott Turow, novelists who had been attorneys, knew their way around the courtroom drama a lot better than he did.

Rest at The Washington Post.

Quadrille scores four on Guild of Food Writers shortlists

Quadrille has scored four nominations for this year's Guild of Food Writers awards.
Titles from Stevie Parle, Josceline Dimbleby, Mark Hix and Mark Diacono were shortlisted, with the latter's A Taste of the Unexpected squaring up against two Jacqui Small titles, Cheese and Cured, for the Food Book of the Year Award.
Stefan Gates' Stefan Gates on E Numbers (Conran Octopus) has been shortlisted for the campaigning prize, against two BBC documentaries, with his tie-in BBC2 documentary also up for Food Broadcast of the Year.
The 2011 awards party will be held on 2nd June at Fishmongers' Hall in London.

The shortlists in full:

Cookery Book of the Year Award
Willie's Chocolate Bible Willie Harcourt-Cooze (Hodder & Stoughton)
Food From Plenty Diana Henry (Mitchell Beazley)
Plenty Yotam Ottolenghi, (Ebury Press)
Ice Creams, Sorbets and Gelati: The Definitive Guide Caroline and Robin Weir (Grub Street)

Derek Cooper Award for Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing or Broadcasting
Stefan Gates on E Numbers Stefan Gates (Conran Octopus)
BBC Radio 4 "The Food Programme: The Fruit Industry" presented by Sheila Dillon
BBC1's "The Great British Waste Menu" (produced by Optomen Television)

Evelyn Rose Award for Cookery Journalist of the Year
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with Debora Robertson, for work published in the Guardian Weekend magazine
Diana Henry, for work published in the Sunday Telegraph Stella magazine
Mark Hix, for work published in the Independent

Food Book of the Year Award
A Taste of the Unexpected Mark Diacono (Quadrille)
Cheese Patricia Michelson (Jacqui Small)
Cured Lindy Wildsmith (Jacqui Small)

Food Broadcast of the Year Award
BBC2's "E Numbers: An Edible Adventure" presented by Stefan Gates (produced by Plum Pictures)
BBC1's "The Great British Waste Menu" (produced by Optomen Television)
BBC Radio 4's "The Food Programme: Pop-up London" presented by Sheila Dillon and Tim Hayward

Food Journalist of the Year Award
Felicity Cloake, for work published in Fire & Knives and the Guardian
Tim Hayward, for work published in Fire & Knives and on the Observer's Word of Mouth blog
Christopher Hirst, for work published in the Independent

Jeremy Round Award for Best First Book
Jam, Jelly & Relish Ghillie James (Kyle Cathie)
My Kitchen: Real Food From Near and Far Stevie Parle (Quadrille)
The Flavour Thesaurus Niki Segnit (Bloomsbury)

Kate Whiteman Award for Work on Food and Travel
Orchards in the Oasis Josceline Dimbleby (Quadrille)
Sybil Kapoor, for work published in the Spectator: Scoff, Caterer and Hotelkeeper and House & Garden
Jamie Does … Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph)

Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food
Hix Oyster and Chop House Mark Hix (Quadrille)
Sybil Kapoor, for work published in Country Life
River Cottage Handbook: Hedgerow John Wright (Bloomsbury)

Miriam Polunin Award for Work on Healthy Eating
BBC Radio 4's "The Food Programme: Sugar and the Soda Tax" presented by Sheila Dillon
BBC2's "E Numbers: An Edible Adventure" presented by Stefan Gates (produced by Plum Pictures)
Truly Tasty Valerie Twomey (Atrium)

New Media of the Year Award
Felicity Cloake, for work published on the Observer's Word of Mouth blog
Katy Salter, for work published on www.pinchofsaltlondon.com
Oliver Thring, for work published on the Observer's Word of Mouth blog

Restaurant Reviewer of the Year Award
Richard McComb, for work published in the Birmingham Post
Matthew Norman, for work published in the Daily Telegraph
Marina O'Loughlin, for work published in Metro and Fire & Knives

The Credit Crunch Intensifies

A number of houses are tightening the squeeze on indies


On the surface, there may seem to be little new about booksellers facing a credit crunch. But what has changed over the past six months is a further clamping down by publishers. Credit reps have started calling to demand check information days before payments are due. Booksellers like Susan Weis-Bohlen, owner of breathe books in Baltimore, who hasn’t missed a payment in seven years, but accidentally skipped an invoice for $248, are put on credit hold or threatened with it.
And a New York bookseller who asked for another week to pay off an invoice for a couple hundred dollars was advised to pull returns. With publishers acting more aggressively plus a difficult first quarter along with a dip in frontlist hardcover sales attributable to e-books, credit has emerged as a serious concern for independent booksellers.

“It’s discouraging to meet with your sales rep and then get a call from the billing department. So it’s really affected our buying this year,” said Amy Thomas, owner of Pegasus Books with three stores in the Bay Area.
Even with buying new books nonreturnable for discount, the drop-off in hardcover sales is having an impact at Pegasus. And inventory isn’t the only expense that has Thomas juggling publisher payments. Her health insurance recently went up 15%, and has gone from $49,000 in 2006 to $86,000 today. “Right now,” said Thomas, “we’re feeling so fatalistic—okay, put us on hold.”

Jon Platt, owner of Nonesuch Books & Cards in South Portland and Bidde-ford, Maine, regards some credit departments as beyond aggressive, including two of the big six, which he seldom buys from direct for that reason. “There are some companies that are abrupt, rude, and treat us like criminals,” said Platt. “Everybody wants to get paid faster. We’ve always pushed sidelines to 45. Some of them are worried. If Borders goes down, how can Jon Platt pay me?”

He would like to see publisher terms that reflect the fact that backlist may only turn three times a year. “Give me net 90 or net 120 on big orders,” said Platt, who is concerned about e-books eroding backlist sales, too. “We’ve cut back quantities on bestsellers because of e-books. I’ve dropped those numbers by 30% to 40%. This is the problem. Let’s say the new Ann Patchett is coming out. If customers are loading it up on their e-reader, there are not tons of other books in front of them. It’s losing the incremental sales.”

New stores are feeling a different kind of pinch. “We started off knowing we’d have very tight credit,” said Daniel Goldin, who opened Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee in April 2009. “We have one publisher where it’s been a tricky thing. They had faith in us to give us events, but we kept hitting our [credit] ceiling. And they’re not very accommodating at increasing it.” The publisher cut back Goldin’s stock shipments to make up the difference. Like Platt, Goldin would like to see terms extended. “With the rise of other formats, you need longer terms,” he said, noting he has skipped some titles that he would have ordered in the past. Still there are some books he can’t do without. “Titles that are selling in the region I have to have,” Goldin said. “I can’t run out of Bossypants or David Foster Wallace or Tiger’s Wife.”
Full story at PW.

Book sales "well down" as general retail rises

 

Book sales for April were "well down" in a month where general UK retail sales rose by 5.2% on last year.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) today (10th May) reported like-for-like sales were up 5.2% in value from April 2010—when sales had fallen 2.3%.
However the BRC said book sales remained down on a year ago "despite a modest boost from Royal Wedding titles".

The Bookseller reported last week that the book trade suffered their poorest sales in almost eight years with spending on physical books slumping by 12% week-on-week. According to Nielsen BookScan data, spending at UK book retail outlets in the seven days to 30th April totalled £20.8m, down £2.8m on the previous week and down 20% (£5.1m) on the same week last year. Across the four weeks to 30th April, sales totalled £94.3m, down 9% month on month and 4% year on year.

However, only Easter Sunday and Monday fell into the April trading period in 2010, whereas this year all of Easter came in April's trading period.
Stephen Robertson, BRC director general, said: "Considered together, the results for March and April largely cancel each other out and the overall trend is flat.

"The underlying pressures on the retail sector of climbing costs and depressed consumer spending will be problems for many months to come. The Bank's decision to maintain the freeze on interest rates was the right one and it's important we see the economy performing much more strongly before there is any change in future."

Random UK Goes Agency; Ed Victor Launches Publisher

PublishersLunch

There is a lot of ebook news from the UK, today. Random House UK has adopted the agency model, following a similar move at the beginning of March in the US. As of today, the company's approximately 6,000 ebook titles are available for sale through Apple's iBookstore in the UK as a result.

Random UK spokesperson Maureen Corish says "We were the only major English language trade publisher not to have our ebooks on sale via the iBookstore, so today's announcement sees us forging a new commercial relationship as part of our commitment to increasing consumer choice and making our authors' books available to as many readers as possible in whatever format they prefer."

Asked whether the timing reflects any assessment of the current examination of the agency model by the Office of Fair Trading, she said "we have no comment to make on the ongoing OFT investigation."

Victor Launches Digital Publisher
London-based transatlantic agents Ed Victor Ltd. have announced the creation of Bedford Square Books, focused on reissuing out-of-print and reverted titles from the agency's authors in ebook and POD editions. We know of a number of other agencies currently working on similar plans, so expect more announcements like this to come.

The scale is modest to start, with six titles planned for this September and another six for next January. Bedford Square will start of a line of shorter works next year, offering reprints as well as, potentially, original material. Ed Victor tells the Bookseller he will still look for traditional publishing partners first: "If I had a choice to go with Bedford Square Books or with a publisher, I would always go with the publisher. If you don't do it, I will." Victor also notes, "I'm not doing this in any way to compete with or anger the publishing industry.... I'm doing this for the fun of it, and as a service to my clients."

Somewhat surprisingly, Bedford Square will be a full partner with its authors rather than charging something closer to a traditional commission, even though the agency is not adding staff for the venture. Victor tells the Bookseller Bedford Square will recoup expenses first and then share net receipts 50/50. The unit will publish in the UK for now, and Victor indicates he is talking to Open Road about US distribution.

Digital production company Acorn will produce and distribute the files, and the print-on-demand will be provided through Gardners.


Yellow Jersey hat trick at British Sports Book Awards

Random House imprint Yellow Jersey Press has scored a hat trick of wins at the British Sports Book Awards, with W H Smith also taking home the best sports book retailer prize.

Brian Moore clinched the best autobiography prize, for his memoir Beware of the Dog (Simon & Schuster). This marks a double victory for Moore, having already won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. Catrine Clay's Trautmann's Journey won best biography, while Promised Lane by Anthony Clavane was declared best football book, and Tom English's The Grudge best rugby book.

The prize ceremony took place last night (9th May) and kicks off a retail campaign including POS and displays in retailers including Waterstone's, Sainsbury's, W H Smith, Foyles, Eason and Amazon and in libraries via The Reading Agency.

The campaign will focus on the eight winning titles, with a public online vote via the BSBA website to find the best overall sports book of the year. The voting opens on 10th May and closes on 12th June, with the winner to be announced on 13th June.

The winners in full:
Best Autobiography: Beware of the Dog Brian Moore (Simon and Schuster)
Best Biography: Trautmann's Journey Catrine Clay (Yellow Jersey Press)
Best Sports Book Retailer: W H Smith
Best Football Book: Promised Land Anthony Clavane (Yellow Jersey Press)


Best Cricket Book: Slipless in Settle Harry Pearson (Little, Brown)


Best Rugby Book: The Grudge Tom English (Yellow Jersey Press)


Best Racing Book: The Story of Your Life James Lambie (Matador)
Best Illustrated Title: '61 The Spurs Double Doug Cheeseman, Martin Cloake and Adam Powley (Tottenham Hotspur FC /Vision Sports Publishing)


Best Publicity Campaign: It's All About the Bike Robert Penn (Particular Books). Campaign by Mari Yamazaki


Best New Writer: Bounce Matthew Syed (Fourth Estate

Alan Bennett Joins Campaign to Save Kensal Rise Library



·      Six Brent Libraries launch legal campaign against Brent Council

·      Alan Bennett to hold fundraising event on behalf of the campaign on May 24th

 The highest profile individual campaign against library closures in the country continues today with the announcement by Friends of Kensal Rise Library that they and five other Brent libraries will be taking legal action against Brent Council to challenge them on the legitimacy of their consultation process.

This process preceded the Council’s decision to close six local libraries – Kensal Rise, Barham Park, Cricklewood, Neasden, Preston, and Tokyngton - on April 11 this year, while at the same time building a new ‘megalibrary’ as part of the new Brent Civic Centre (cost: £100m), due to open in 2013.  The closure of the six local libraries is expected to save the council £1m.

At the end of March a fundraiser was held with the author Zadie Smith to save Kensal Rise library. Philip Pullman has spoken out against the Brent closures.  Now, on May 24th, one of Britain’s greatest writers, Alan Bennett, will come to Kensal Rise to help fundraise for the legal campaign against Brent.

Bennett will give a speech on the library closures as well as a reading from his works, signing his books and participating in a Q&A with the audience. He will be interviewed by local author Tim Lott, who has been part of the committee to Save Kensal Rise Library since its inception at the end of last year.


 Kensal Rise library was opened more than 100 years ago by the author Mark Twain, and has survived two world wars and any number of deep recessions and economic crises.

Tim Lott said, “We fully understand the need for cuts to be made. This is not a head in the sand campaign. However, local residents have campaigned to run Kensal Rise library on a partly voluntary and possibly self funded basis, but have met with only indifference and stonewalling from Brent who have offered no practical help, assistance or encouragement.”

The Brent libraries need to raise £30,000 between them to fund a legal challenge to Brent’s flawed local consultation procedure, which was heralded with a highly ‘loaded’ questionnaire for local residents and contained a number of procedural flaws.   In reality, 82 per cent* of local residents oppose Brent’s ‘rationalisation’ programme.

The campaign to save Kensal Rise Library has been at the spearhead of the campaign to save more than 600 libraries nationally that are under threat following the budget cuts announced by the coalition government.

The event will take place at 7.30pm on May 24th at St Martin’s Church, Mortimer Road, Kensal Green, NW10.

Tickets will be £10 and are available from Queens Park Books, 87 Salusbury Road, NW6, Lutyens and Rubenstein bookshop, 21 Kensington Park Road W11, the Lexi Cinema, 194 Chamberlayne Rd, NW10 as well as some local outlets.  A limited number of tickets will be held back for sale on the night on a first come first served basis.