Inspirational Indian writer and the death of the book?

Just read this short article on Main street.

Here's a bit of the second paragraph:

Consumers will purchase 381 million e-books by 2013 – quadruple the total purchases made in 2010 – and bring total revenue to $2.7 billion that year, according to the report. Calling this “the next big gold rush,” researchers project that e-book sales will grow at an even faster rate than mobile apps over the same period.

And in another story an Indian doctor and writer has donated his award money to encouraging other writers.

Dhruba Jyoti Borah, who lives in the North Eastern state of Assam in India, has donated his entire Sahitya Akademi Award money and the royalties received from his award-winning book Katha Rantnakar for instituting awards to encourage young Assamese writers. 

Fair play to him!

Apple making more money from Books...

The opening paragraph of an article in the LA Times about Apple's Apps:

The New York Times set off a flurry of stories over the past couple of days when it reported that Apple had stopped Sony from selling e-books in the Sony Reader iPhone app. Apple instructed Sony and other app developers to stop steering users to their websites to buy products. Instead, they were told to make sales directly through the apps -- where Apple would be entitled to a 30% cut. 

So, there's an uproar about this? I understand but don't we have to first ask the questions like one of the commentators left at the end of the article:

Can you buy from anyone but Amazon on a Kindle? No. Can you buy from anyone other than Sony on a Reader? No. From anyone but B&N with a Nook? Negative. And the FTC is going to come down on Apple? I don't think so... 

August Book Swap

After the crepes came... the books:

The Belgian writer and doctor Alain Brichau brought Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell. Alain attended a workshop by Smartt Bell 11 years ago and says the book has "great ideas on the process of writing" and channeling what Smartt Bell calls "the creative black box."

Alain's second choice Le Chant de L'etre et du paraitre, by the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, is a novel about a "writer trying to write a new novel" and the "dialogue this writer has with another more cynical, successful writer" who tries to dissuade him from doing so.

Johanna Gohmann was up next. Jo, who is here on a barter fellowship, donated the memoir Are You Somebody? by Nuala O'Faolain because it gives a "sense of where I am now" (Jo is an American living in Ireland) and the fact that she is working on a collection of essays.

Jo also donated a collection of essays in which one of her essays, "The Vagina Dialogues," is included: Best Sex Writing, 2010.

Charles (left) and Lupin Pooter at from Chapter VI of The Diary of a Nobody.

The English writer and actor John Finnemore talked to us about Michael Frayn's "amazing play" Copenhagen and the book he donated Frayn's writings on theatre from 1970 to 2008: Stage Directions.

John's other book was The Diary of A Nobody, a novel set very near the part of London John lives in, about a character who is a "misrepresentation" of who he really is. It is a classic English comic novel written by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon. It first appeared in the magazine Punch in 1888 to 89, and was first printed in book form in 1892.


Our University of Wisconsin Fellow, Sarah Johnson then told us about Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Sarah said the novel she's writing is along the same lines as Hollinghurst's book and Brideshead Revisited in the sense that it is the story "of an outsider who gets involved with a family."

Sarah also donated A Gate at the Stairs by Lorie Moore who taught her at Madison, the story of "a mid-western girl who becomes a nanny" in what Sarah called an Edith Whartonesque way "because of the way it draws a socio-political picture with such a gentle hand."

Thanks again for all the books!

July Bookswap

A new retreat started a few days ago, which means a new slew of books from new residents were donated today.

After we had crepes and homemade dandelion, apricot and fig jams (as well as Kerry's homemade cherry compote!) the writer Sheryl St. Germain donated some of her own books first, talking about the artists who designed the cool covers: Let It Be a Dark Roux (by artist Francis Pavy), The Journals of Scheherazade, and Swamp Songs (by Jacqueline Bishop).

Because she hails from New Orleans Sheryl also brought along Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza, a book "about the world, not just New Orleans," as well as a recent collection of 108 sacred poems, Mala of the Heart, and Sherman Alexi's Face, a writer Sheryl said "writes with a lot of anger and interesting gusto." Sheryl also generously gave the library two books by Paul Guest, One More Theory About Happiness and Notes for My Body Double.

The artist Daphne Leighton talked next, about Israel, a book of photos by Annie Sacerdoti, Meir Shalev's novel The Blue Mountain, and a Sotheby catalogue featuring Israeli art going back to the beginning of the last century.

Daphne also donated two catalogues of her most recent art Images of Thought and unknown familiar land (that's one of her paintings to the left).

Camille Goodison then donated her grandmother's memoir From Harvey River, a book about where she's from, as well as a collection of stories, Creole Folktales, by a writer that inspires her a lot, Patrick Chamoiseau.

Deborah Clarke, an artist from South Africa, who lives in Grenoble and who was here last year too, donated Africa House by Christina Lamb about the Englishman Stewart Gore-Browne because it is "about a house as well as a man" who built it from scratch and helped people in the process even if "the dream turned sour."

On a different note Deborah donated Francis Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun a book she loves because it emphasizes "a new life in a different country" but also because she "includes recipes" that give you a real feel for the place and the people.

Next up was the Australian Mary Delahunty who is here working on her memoir Public Life, Private Grief. Mary donated Colm Tóibín's Bad Blood because it is "another way of looking at the Troubles" starting in reportage that bleeds into "a beautiful story of a walk along the border." Mary's other book was Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man about her homeland as "an unreconciled country, but also a book about why justice can never be served."

Kathleen Smith, a filmmaker and producer, is also "drawn to the Troubles" as Mary put it, and so gave the library her friend Darren O'Donnell's Social Acupuncture, a book about confronting change, no matter where we are.

Then Kathleen donated "a book about where I grew up, but more because of the universal truths in it," Alice Munro's Dance of The Happy Shades. 

The jewelry designer Toni Freitas came next donating The Vintner's Luck, (she compared it to Marquez's magic realism) a novel by Elizabeth Knox about a guy who meets an angel.

Toni also brought along 1000 Years of Annoying the French, a funny repackaging of history from the same man who wrote A Year in the Merde.

And finally came the writer and designer David Trujillo-Farley's cool children's book This Is Edinburgh by M. Sasek, about the city he and Toni live in.

David's second donation was Ilustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury, which "talks about structure, characterization and many other things" that David says are "a lot more useful than many of the pretty books on the subject."

Again, THANK YOU to everyone for the books!

[Recommended] Love in the Making

Valentine's Day may be over, but love is still in the air!  Roisin Meany, two-time La Muse attendee, has a new novel out, and it's already a bestseller in Ireland. We can't wait to get our hands on Love in the Making, and urge you to pick up a copy as well.  

November Book Swap

As this session comes to a close, we thought it was high time we shared the November book swap contributions! Roisin Meaney, a novelist and children's book author from Ireland, and Peter, the Pitch Doctor, Rush discuss their picks in their own words below. On an only semi-related note, we'd like to say in advance how much we'll miss Roisin's amazing baked goods and Peter's top-notch dinners. As sorry as we'll be to return to our own devices in the kitchen, at least now we have a chance at once again buttoning our pants.

Roisin on her donations:

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín evokes rural Ireland of the 1950s, and introduces the reader to Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates reluctantly to New York, more out of a sense of familial duty than a real desire to spread her wings. This simple-sounding story, written from Eilis's viewpoint in Tóibín's usual sparse style nevertheless manages to convey pathos, sharp observation, and humour, while avoiding sentimentality as the heroine moves from Ireland to America, adapting as best she can to her changing circumstances. It's an easy and, in my opinion, rewarding read.   

William Trevor's fourteenth novel Love and Summer is also set in rural Ireland of the mid twentieth century, but there the similarity ends. The 82-year old 'master of quiet, Irish brooding' (the Guardian) has produced a doomed love story of sweetness and poignancy, steeped in end-of-summer sunshine and peopled with subtly drawn and very recognisable characters (recognisable to this Irish reader, at any rate!) Love and Summer will linger in the memory long after the last page has been turned. 

Peter discusses his picks (The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, A Pathway to Peace by Gerry Adams, and The Big Book) in the video below.

              Follow Peter on Twitter.

The library grows lovelier with each and every book swap, and the bedside to-read stack grows taller, too.  

Are you reading...

the Wall Street Journal's book section? If not, we recommend you start! The WSJ has been cranking out the delights in recent weeks. Take a peek:

• "How to Write a Great Novel"~ The work habits & quirks of a bang-up collection of novelists. The lone artist-in-residence at La Muse has politely requested that his writerly housemates not set up shop in the bathroom.  

• "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy"~A fascinating, funny, & lovely conversation with Cormac McCarthy on the eve of the release of the film version of The Road.  

• "The Dark Side of Alice Munro"~ Her latest story collection, Too Much Happiness, was just released and we're chomping at the bit to read it.

What other books coverage should we be reading?

October Book Swap

We had crepes again for this book swap along with great creme de marron that Lowell made from the chestnuts he and the other attendees found around the village. It was delicious! We're having another book swap in no time, but first, a quick recap of October's:

Lowell Brower, a writer from Seattle, started us off with Peter Orner's The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. The novel is set in Namibia and features some of the finest prose Lowell has ever encountered. For his Pacific Northwest-related donation, Lowell offered Gary Snyder's Earth House Hold, a collection of journals, essays, and poems written in the Northwestern wildnerness.

Elizabeth Ames Staudt donated a copy of Eric Puchner's  Music Through the Floor as it's one of her favorite story collections, and she hopes future guests at La Muse will love it as well. She wonders when Mr. Puchner's next book is coming out--Eric Puchner, if you're reading this, your public awaits! Elizabeth also donated Not Normal, Illinois (ed. Michael Martone). She has yet to explore the anthology, but her novel-in-progress is set in the Midwest, and she hopes the collection will remind her of home, and help affirm that the Midwest is just as lovely and complex and wondrously weird as any other region in the States.

Dwight Cassin, an artist from Chicago, pointed out that non - Midwesterners might not get the clever title. Dwight donated the Journal of Eugene Delacroix first, a book that documents Delacroix's life from 1822 to 1863. Dwight also gave the library Working by Studs Terkel because, he says, Terkel's book tells the stories of real working Chicagoans, interviewed

over forty years for NPR by Terkel. 

Sherry Christie, a writer from Maine, donated a copy of Making Your Company Human: Inspiring Others to Reach Their Potential, a book she co-authored with former CEO Le Harron. She also donated a copy One Man's Meat,  E.B. White's memoir of his time in Maine. Sherry reflected on the wild solitude of Maine and La Muse both. On this, her second visit, Sherry nearly completed a revision of her historical novel Roma Amor: A novel of Caligula's Rome while here. Read more about her book here.

Everyone read passages from their books aloud and we all left breakfast feeling filled with inspiration (and also really, really filled with John's amazing crepes).

Montolieu and Booktowns

So, last Wednesday, the day before everyone left May's retreat, John drove everyone to the Booktown in Montolieu. They have over 15 bookstores, a museum of the book, a huge gallery space cooperative called the Centre D'Art et de Litterature, where the artists and text artists of our group had fun, as well as various other places such as the typography space, an illustration gallery. The list goes on and on. The place is a trip. We'll upload photos of the picnic amongst the cactus garden as well as other stuff taken by the attendees when everyone has sent us their photos!

Anyway, we just wanted to post some links to the rest of the Booktowns in Europe, as we intend to visit them all at some stage in the coming years, and there doesn't seem to be a consistent site listing of them all. So, here they are:

France has the most Booktown's in Europe, six, with places like Spain having just one, directed by Fundacion Siglo para las Artes in Valladolid, in the North. Here's the French ones, other than Monotolieu. They're all further north:

Becherel, Fontenoy-La-Joute, (this place has 280 inhabitants and can still fit 18 bookstores, one art store, one paper maker, and a calligraphy store in it. ) La Charite-Sur-Loire, (a UNESCO protected village) Montmorillon, Cuisery (they have a book market the first Sunday of every month).

England:
Hay-On-Wye - Wales (They were the first Booktown, founded by Richard Booth in 1962. They have 35 bookshops and 60 other independent stores. They also have one of the world's biggest book festivals every year. This year it's from the 21st of May until the 31st. Hay-on-Wye is a small (pop. 1300) town with an estimated 2 million books!)
Wigtown - Scotland (over quarter of a million books to choose from...)

Belgium:
Redu (They get over 200,000 people every year)
Damme

Holland:
Bredevoort

Switzerland:
Saint-Pierre-De-Clages (in the heart of the Swiss Alps, they have some cool churches too)

Luxembourg:
Vianden

Germany:
Wunsdorf
Muhlbeck

Italy:
Montereggio

Norway:
Fjaerland (that's it in the photo below!)

Sweden:
Mellosa (Right beside the Prime minister's place, this one's also a Peace Booktown)

Finland:
Sysma

Estonia:
Votikvere (can't find a link?)

Went on line to find one in the US. Are there more?:


Minnesota:
Stillwater (here's their amusing story: " Stillwater, as a small town with 35 booksellers, had developed sufficiently by 1994 to encourage us to petition Richard Booth, King of Hay-on-Wye, Lord Protector of All Booktowns, for official Booktownstatus. In a flurry of faxes, letters, applications, testimonials and gifts to King Richard, we attempted to get him to visit Stillwater, a requirement under the Booktown bylaws. It was not until Tom Loome made a personal pilgrimage to Hay-on-Wye in March of 1994 that the King agreed to consider the matter and follow up with a personal visit. The rest is history. In a ceremony attended by the mayor and other city notables, Stillwater was declared the First Booktown in North America by King Richard Booth on August 26, 1994."

If any of you out there know of other Booktowns, tell us, and we'll upload links to them too!