Next meeting - Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

Tomorrow we'll be meeting to discuss Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey, at the Eagle Bar & Diner in Rathbone Place. Map here.

Be there at 7.30pm for 8pm.

Here are some links to explore before the meeting:

The official page on James Frey's site

Including this extract, which (I think) is clearly Frey's response to the 'Oprah' furore

Irvine Welsh loves it

The LA Times hates it

As does The Onion

Read other reviews at James Frey's blog, Big Jim Industries

Plus here's Perez Hilton's site - he's one of the most easily identifiable real people in the book

See you tomorrow!

Read the first 25 pages of Neil Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants

This is his new book for kids.

Read inside the widget:



Or see it here

Lee Child's recommendations at Waterstones

More recommendations from Authors at Waterstones - look out for the well piled tables in your local branch.

Lee Child has a pretty good list - quite a few thrillers as you'd expect, but also some non fiction like The Road To Wigan Pier (which is great).

See the full list here

Get a free proof copy of the new John Irving novel

John 'Cider House Rules' / 'World According to Garp' Irving has a new book out soon.

Bloomsbury have 10 proof copies to give away - just send an email to sneakpeek@bloomsbury.com by the 30th September, and ten winners will be selected at random. Please include your name and address so they can send you a copy if you win.

Full Ts & Cs here

About the book:

"In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County - to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto - pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them."

According to this useful chart in Wikipedia (so it must be true), it's his 4th book to feature bears.

Sounds good!

Update - 18th November - Good things do happen - I was sent one of the proof copies of the book!

Read the first Chapter of William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms for free

The new William Boyd novel Ordinary Thunderstorms is out this week; read the first chapter on his site (Even though they've hidden it very well. & not given it a logical URL. Who's doing his website?)

It sounds great - a chase thriller set in modern day London.

Amazon link here

(William Boyd's Any Human Heart was voted our favourite book earlier this year)

2009 Booker Shortlist

Nothing that's really grabbing me this year, unfortunately.

The list:
AS Byatt - The Children's Book
JM Coetzee - Summertime
Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer - The Glass Room
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

The Guardian has a good summary of each.

On second thoughts the Adam Foulds sounds intriguing:

"Poet-novelist Adam Foulds is shortlisted for The Quickening Maze, a historical reconstruction of the meeting of the poets John Clare and Alfred Tennyson at a lunatic asylum in Epping Forest. "