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Bookmark This! #10

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Summer’s nearly here, and we’ve got some must-reads to add to your book list.  From history and literature comics to an English romance to the-new-kid-in-school experience to Los Angeles noir to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, here are some sizzling hot reading recommendations!

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Mary McCoy is the Senior Librarian of Teen’Scape at the Central Library and has a side hustle as a young adult author.  Her debut novel, Dead to Me, a young adult mystery set in 1940s Hollywood, will be published by Disney-Hyperion in 2014.  She loves “Mad Men”, old cookbooks, and new dresses.

Mary recommends Hark! A Vagrant.

“This seriously nerdy comics compendium, drawn from the popular web comic of the same name, is a must-read for all humanities majors, library nerds, and eggheads.  Kate Beaton writes about everything from the French Revolution and Robert Peary to The Great Gatsby and Kierkegaard with a flair for the absurd. Whether she’s imagining a sibling rivalry between the Bronte sisters or riffing on the book cover designs of Edward Gorey, Beaton’s skewed, brainy humor never fails to delight.  Don’t miss this one – you might learn something new, and besides, when was the last time you read a comic book that came with its own index?”

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Ela Jhaveri is a long-standing supporter of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Member of The Council.

Ela recommends Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.

“I just read this book. The author is from England, and the book shows how England is so much a class-defined society, still today.  It depicts the lives of two families – one working-class family struggling in the terrible economy of the last few years and one upper-class family.  The two main characters come from each of the two different classes, and it was beautiful to read how their relationship developed as they got to know each other.  The two families love their children so much, and each has such a different way of showing it.”

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Joanna Fabicon is a Children’s Librarian in the Children’s Literature Department.

Joanna recommends Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

“Wonder is a satisfying read for everyone (seriously, everyone should read this), particularly those looking for stories about family relationships, overcoming obstacles, middle school social dynamics, looking past differences, or dealing with bullies. Be moved by August Pullman’s story and become part of the movement to ‘Choose Kind’ (http://choosekind.tumblr.com/book).”

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Katie Dunham is Communications Director for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.  Originally from Tennessee, she loves dachshunds, loud music, and USC.

Katie recommends Los Angeles Noir published by Akashic Books.

“Celebrating my twelfth year in L.A. this coming August, I’ve been on a tear lately trying to catch up on all the L.A. books I haven’t yet read. Living Downtown, I’m practically neighbors with the ghosts of Chandler, Fante, and Bukowski, so it makes sense that my favorite genre of anything at the moment is Noir.  It was kismet then when I heard Akashic Books Publisher Johnny Temple speak at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last month and discovered the company’s fantastic Noir series.  Each book in the series features all-new short stories, each set within a distinct neighborhood of the featured city, creating a sort of macabre multicultural travelogue.  As the birthplace of Noir, the stories in Los Angeles Noir are real hum-dingers from a host of beloved Angelenos. From Susan Straight’s award-winning tale of Downtown barflies to Hector Tobar’s sad account of handguns and teenagers in East Hollywood and Naomi Hirahara’s story of obsession in a Koreatown spa, these stories precisely describe the Los Angeles I love: a gritty and glamorous city of secrets, revealing a different face to each of its inhabitants. I can’t wait to dive in to volume 2: the classics.”

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Abbie Mendoza is a fourth year English major and a History of Science minor at UCLA, as well as a former intern for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to Taylor Davis’s violin rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” watching slightly off-kilter television shows such as “The X-Files,” “Warehouse 13,” and too many others to write here, and, oh, yes: writing.

Abbie recommends Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Weschler.

“Picture in your mind a museum that displays the following: a bat known as the Myotis lucifugus, which releases ultraviolet rays instead of sound waves to navigate in the dark; a human horn removed from a seventy-year-old woman’s skull; and the microminiature sculptures of Little Red Riding Hood and Donald Duck, among others, which are as small as the eye of a needle – so small, in fact, that the sculptor timed the movements of his hands between heartbeats so as not to interrupt his steady and precise carvings. Yes, such a place actually exists. Located in Culver City, the Museum of Jurassic Technology was founded by MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient David Wilson and serves as the subject of Lawrence Weschler’s book, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Human Horns, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. Given the peculiarity of his exhibits, Wilson has been dismissed as merely parodying modern-day museums and being preoccupied only with the strange, if not the unreal. At the same time, however, he seriously hopes to show that the bizarre, or what he more euphemistically suggests as wonders, are in fact the very essence of nature.  After all, “Nature,” he told the author, “is more incredible than anything one can imagine.”

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We’d love to know what you’re reading!  Contact Membership Director Erin Sapinoso at erinsapinoso@lfla.org to recommend a book for an upcoming issue.

Happy reading, and stay tuned for the next issue of Bookmark This!

-          Posted by Erin Sapinoso

Illustrating the World’s Great Literature

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All of us here at The Library Foundation have been obsessing over The Graphic Canon- a ambitious three volume illustrated series featuring great works of world literature reimagined by artists, cartoonists and graphic novelists.  In advance of the May 21st ALOUD panel moderated by Graphic Canon editor Russ Kick, who will be accompanied by several contributing artists, we gathered some of our staff’s favorite pieces to give you a glimpse of the stunning illustrations that bring these classic literary works to life.

Volume 3: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Art/ Adaptation by R. Sikoryak

A long time ago someone gave me a book on Ma’at.  One particular line from that book struck me – pain is the resistance to change.  I think of that line when I think of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis – even the little bit I know of it as a result of looking and reading R. Sikoryak’s interpretation of this novella as found in the third volume of The Graphic Canon.  This story reminds me that the more stubborn we are, the less likely others will be willing to consider our view of the world.  When that happens we feel lonely – forgotten – bygone – underappreciated.

-Imani Harris, Assistant Director, Foundation and Corporate Relations

Volume 3: Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Art/ Adaptation by Erin Cantrell

Through entrancing black and white images, Cantrell instantly transports you into a sinister and magical world filled with “jabberwocks” and “tulgey woods” that you can’t pry your eyes from. She brings a novel perspective to the classic by presenting a complex relationship between a father and headstrong son in a darkly imaginative setting. Cantrell exposes the heart of the poem, leaving you nostalgic for those simplistic days of adolescence, because no matter what you went through, you never had to defeat a jabberwocky.

-Kyndal McLyn, ALOUD Intern

Volume 2: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Art by Andrzej Klimowski
Adaptation by Danusia Schejbal

I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time last summer and was struck by just how twisted and horrific it was, not because of blood or gore but for the frightening things Stevenson suggests are possible within the human brain.  That said, it’s incredible how precisely the same macabre and creepy feelings I experienced in the reading came back when I encountered the adaptation in Volume 2 of The Graphic Canon. Danusia Schejbal has perfectly encapsulated the whole story and its moral struggles in just 24 frames and Andrzej Klimowski has beautifully illustrated my nightmares. It makes me want to run down to the stacks and hunker down for another reading.

 -Katie Dunham, Communications Director

Volume 1: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Art/ Adaptation by Robert Berry with Josh Levitas

I was really drawn to Sonnet 18 in Volume 1 of The Graphic Canon because the art was so vastly different from anything I would expect to see while reading Shakespeare. While the drawings and illustrations appear very modern, they contain little graphic novel style bubbles with Elizabethan text. The juxtaposition of the two were very compelling to me.

-Sarah Charleton, Cultural Programs Coordinator

Volume 1: The Reed Song by Rumi
Art/Adaptation by Michael Green
Translation by Coleman Barks

I was browsing through Volume One of The Graphic Canon and was drawn in by the illustrations found in the Rumi poems section.  Specifically, the painting-like image presented with “The Reed Song” caught my eye because it didn’t look like anything else in the Canon, and it seemed to elicit a sense of tranquility in me.  I love tales about “coming home” and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the image of lily pads, reeds and water reflect the music of the reed flute in the poem as well as its yearning to return to its home on the riverbank.  If I may be brazenly sentimental, this entry speaks to the peace I experience whenever I return home (especially after a long and trying journey) – to that place where I belong.

 -Erin Sapinoso, Membership Director

 

Building Bridges through the Literature of Roberto Bolaño

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LFLA teams up with LéaLA

When a colleague at the LA Public Library snuck LéaLA director Marisol Schultz into the green room after last year’s ALOUD program with Javier Sicilia, little did we realize it was the start of a budding relationship.

Months later in Guadalajara, Mexico, we would meet again, this time during the 26th annual Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara: the largest book fair in the Spanish speaking world, and second only to Frankfurt in international scale. The team behind L.A.’s Spanish language book fair, LéaLA, was also there, and we began planting the seeds for growing our partnership, the fruits of which will be explored next week as writers, a translator and poet, and Bolaño’s first U.S. publisher convene for a discussion about their relationship to the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, whose young life was taken by liver cancer ten years ago in July of this year.  His legacy in both poetry and prose remains vibrant in the international literary community, and new work, previously unpublished, continues to be made available.

The ALOUD panel takes place on the eve of the L.A.-based Spanish-language fair housed at the convention center from May 17-19th, during which an ambitious schedule of  book presentations, author talks, publisher exhibitions and musical and theatrical events will engage a crowd of over 60,000 visitors. It is the only fair of its kind in the nation. Angelenos will have a unique opportunity to celebrate literature in an environment where, as Schultz stressed, “There will be no signs of stereotype: no mole, no tamales, no papel picado. They can’t reduce our culture to that. LéaLA is different. We have books. In the books, you have our history. You have what we are. Our culture is diversity.”

ALOUD partners with LéaLA on Thursday, May 16th at the Central Library for “The Making of the Great Bolaño: The Man and the Myth,” a bilingual panel discussion with simultaneous translation.  Read more about the participants and join in this celebration of language and literature.

LéaLA director Marisol Schultz stands next to City Librarian John Szabo during a press conference at the Los Angeles Public Library

Spend Your Summer With ALOUD!

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ALOUD knows what you’ll be doing this summer: joining us at the Central Library! With ten free programs in June and July featuring musicians, poets, historians, filmmakers, and authors, this season promises something for everyone. Read on for more information and visit www.lfla.org/aloud to reserve your tickets.

Literature: Adichie, Beckett, Kirsch:

To kick off the season, ALOUD welcomes acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to discuss Americanah: A Novel.

Samuel Beckett publisher Jeannette Seaver and actor Alan Mandell team up to read the playwright’s work and discuss what it was like to publish, collaborate with, and know the genius himself.

Lawyer, historian and bestselling author Jonathan Kirsch to discuss his latest book, The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris.

Spotlight on Los Angeles:

Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision) and L.A.’s own Father Gregory “G-Dog” Boyle join the audience for a Q & A following the ALOUD screening of Mock’s new documentary, G-DOG: The Movie. The film, which makes its U.S. debut in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, tells the story of the charismatic visionary who launched Homeboy Industries, the largest, most successful gang intervention and rehab program in the country.

In this centennial year of the California aqueduct, ALOUD is proud to host a discussion of the 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse and its enduring catastrophic and cultural significance, with Bay area author Rebecca Solnit, dam historian Donald C. Jackson, and scholar of the American West, Bill Deverell.

An elite architectural panel, including Alan Hess, Jocelyn Gibbs, Christopher Hawthorne, and Mia Lehrer attempt to answer the question, “What might our city look like if the master plans of prominent architects had been brought to fruition?” Co-presented with the A+D Architecture and Design Museum > Los Angeles.

Iconic Poetry:

Teacher, activist, and California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera visits ALOUD for a reading of his newest book, Senegal Taxi, and invites two young poetic voices to share the stage with him in discussion

A partnership with the Poetry Society of America’s 2013 national series “Yet Do I Marvel: Black Iconic Poets of the 20th Century” invites distinguished poets Wanda Coleman, Major Jackson, and Brighde Mullins to each celebrate the life and work of a major 20th century figure—James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks— followed by a conversation with Alice Quinn, Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America.

Our City, Our Music:

ALOUD is proud to host the first hometown tribute to the late great trumpeter Don Cherry this summer. Featuring musicians (and Cherry’s children) David Ornette Cherry and Jan Cherry alongside David’s group, Organic Roots, the evening of performance and conversation will pay homage to the beloved jazz and world music pioneer, whose very life was its own free-flowing improvisation.

To celebrate the recently published Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, fruit of the Library Foundation’s collaboration with USC Professor Josh Kun to mine the Los Angeles Public Library’s rich sheet music collection, Kun joins GRAMMY-winning Los Angeles band Quetzal for a rare evening of L.A. music history.

Look for the full season online or pick up a copy of our bright summer postcard at a library near you.

Vote for us!

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Good news! The Los Angeles Downtown News has nominated the Library Foundation for three Best of Downtown awards: The Library Store in the “Best Bookstore” and “Best Gift/Stationery Shop” categories and ALOUD in the “Best Free Event Series” field! Click on the image above, or go to VoteBestOf.com to cast your vote! Voting starts today and runs through May 25, 2013. And please, spread the word!

Moms Love The Library Store!

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Get your mom a gift from The Library Store this year — we have lots of fun new jewelry, good smelling candles, inspirational books, chic housewares, and more! And moms love that your purchase supports the Los Angeles Public Library!

Pictured above:

Mom Candy: 1,000 Quotes of Inspiration For Mothers $16.99

Illume Candles $22.50 – $26.00

Elk Australia Necklaces $52.00 – $57.00

Wolfum Wooden Coasters $32.00

Ramble & Rove Journal $19.95

Towne & Reese Earrings $30.00

Mother’s Day Cards $3.50 – $6.00

 

Bookmark This! #9

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Hooray, April 15 has passed!  If you managed to file your income taxes on time, I invite you to relax and crack open a good book.

This issue takes us through one woman’s experience of inheriting her uncle’s mansion, mystery and adventure in Victorian England, the effects of global change on our future, life in North Korea, and the journey to becoming an artist.

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Rebecca Shehee is the Vice President for Advancement and External Affairs for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.  A voracious reader and stalwart supporter of libraries, she is also an accomplished quilter.

Rebecca recommends Magnificence: A Novel by Lydia Millet.

“I placed a hold on this book at the Los Angeles Public Library and was delighted when I received the text stating it was ready for pick-up.  I had been hearing so much praise for Lydia Millet’s final work in her trilogy that I wanted to start Magnificence: A Novel as soon as possible.

Yes, I had read that this author was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and that she is considered to be one of the top writers of her generation, but I’d heard high praise like this before and was a little skeptical.

Ultimately, the payoff was all there.  I loved reading about the protagonist Susan and her ruminations on marriage, her husband and daughter.  I so enjoyed getting swept up in the adventure when she inherited her distant uncle’s Pasadena mansion.  Millet’s characters are finely-drawn, semi-sweet and unexpected.  Susan thinks deeply about the topic of death (is there any other), and while she draws no conclusions, there are many insights along the way.  I highly recommend this book!”

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Paul Montgomerie has worked for the Los Angeles Public Library for 25 years. He has held positions from Messenger Clerk to Branch Manager in various libraries throughout the system and is currently the Area Manager for the Hollywood Region.

Paul recommends The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (also available as an e-audiobook).

“As a voracious mystery reader, I want to recommend a series from the past worth a second glance: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  While the traditions are from the last century, the details remain vibrant and energetic as if written recently.  I can live vicariously in Victorian England as Holmes travels through clearly described menacing towns and foreboding villages.  Although familiar present themes such as paranoid wealthy patrons or serial killers, the detail of each story is so engrossing it is almost impossible to read one adventure without finishing it.  If you’ve read the series already I recommend trying it for a second time as you will find much you missed the first time and if you’ve never tried it, and you’re a fan of mystery, I promise that it will capture you in a way many recently published stories of suspense never have.”

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Joyce Cooper is a Senior Librarian and manages the International Languages Department of Central Library. She is also a Fellow in the Innovation Leadership Program, a joint program between the Los Angeles Public Library and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Joyce loves being able to serve her community as a librarian. When not at work, Joyce enjoys traveling and spending time with friends and family.

Joyce recommends The Future by Al Gore. 

“The Future is a fascinating and thought-provoking read that provides a wealth of well-researched information. Focused mainly on the United States, Mr. Gore asserts there are six drivers of global change affecting our future: the changing global economy; the new way we share information; the balance of power between nations; our depletion of natural resources; advances in medical science; and, climate change. While I was reading this book, I found myself pondering the big problems we face and trying to figure out what I could do as an individual to make things better. Ultimately though, the book’s biggest and scariest question is, what will happen to the Earth and us if we don’t change?  Mr. Gore doesn’t answer the question, but rather provides some intriguing outcomes depending on which path we choose.”

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Karen Pickard-Four is the Senior Librarian at the Studio City Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library and is a Fellow in the Innovation Leadership Program.  Karen loves reading on all platforms and is currently obsessed with e-books from the Library!  When not reading, she enjoys swimming and avoiding household chores.

Karen recommends Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick.

“Barbara Demick’s fifteen-year account of the ‘ordinary’ lives of six North Korean citizens, in a time period that includes the death of Kil Il-sung and the continued tyranny when his son, Kim Jong-il, takes over, is riveting and reads like a thriller!  Through a series of interviews conducted by Demick, the reader experiences the heartbreak and resilience of a people completely subject to a totalitarian world.  A world in which neighbor is pitted against neighbor, the government controls everything, there is no Internet access, and punishment is wielded for the simplest of life’s pleasures.  Demick’s excellent reporting allows us to bear witness to the atrocious behavior of the North Korean regime.  With today’s global focus on an increasingly volatile North Korea, this book continues to be enormously relevant.  To me, there is nothing better than non-fiction that reads like a novel and Nothing to Envy falls squarely into this category.”

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As the Library Foundation’s Director of New Initiatives, Justin Veach directs the Young Literati and is the host of “This is Your Library”.  He’s a third generation Angeleno, a veteran of the Coast Guard, a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and holds an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts.  He’s also very skinny, recently had a moustache, and wears glasses.

Justin recommends A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom. – James Joyce (á lá Stephen Dedalus)

“I go about spouting quotes from this book as if I was some kind of human lawn sprinkler, but I haven’t read it cover to cover in too many years.  So I hope you’ll join me as I return again to Joyce’s rather straight forward semi-autobiographical narrative of a young man grappling with the ‘beautiful’ and fashioning for himself an aesthetic theory after Aquinas. To me, the death of modernism is foreshadowed a la Joyce’s young hero/self, Stephen Dedalus.  Like Icarus son of Daedalus, modernist aesthetics, born of Joyce, simply flew too close to the sun in search of the ‘beautiful’, leaving behind the incomprehensibly sublime mess we call ‘the post-modern’. Also, the picture on the cover kinda reminds me of a portrait of myself as a young man.”

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Have you read something you’d like to share?  Contact Membership Director Erin Sapinoso at erinsapinoso@lfla.org to make a reading recommendation for an upcoming issue.

Happy reading, and stay tuned for the next issue of Bookmark This!

-          Posted by Erin Sapinoso

It’s M.A.D. time again!

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Hey Library Foundation Members: we appreciate you, and Member Appreciation Days are just around the corner!

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, May 3 – 5, 2013, show your Library Foundation Membership card to receive 20% discounts at participating stores and free admission at the following Southern California museums and institutions:

  • Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
  • Craft and Folk Art Museum (Friday only)
  • Heritage Square Museum
  • Japanese American National Museum
  • The Library Store at Central Library (Friday and Saturday only)
  • The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)
  • MOCA Grand Avenue
  • The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
  • MOCA Pacific Design Center
  • Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
  • Museum of Latin American Art
  • Orange County Museum of Art
  • Pacific Asia Museum
  • Pasadena Museum of California Art
  • Pasadena Museum of History
  • The San Diego Museum of Art
  • Skirball Cultural Center

Reading into Granta’s “Best Young British Novelists”

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Earlier this week, the literary magazine Granta announced the 20 writers for their once-a-decade influential list of the “Best Young British Novelists.” Granta began the list in 1983 to shed international light on emerging writers, including the likes of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and many others who have gone on to great literary success. This year’s crop includes a highly diverse group of writers hailing from far-off countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, and Jamaica, and for the first-time ever, women comprise the majority of the list. On Tuesday, April 23 at ALOUD, John Freeman, the editor of Granta, will introduce American audiences to two of the newest-appointed bests: Nadifa Mohamed and Ross Raisin. Just in time for the ALOUD program, we caught up with Freeman to take us behind-the-list-making and what it means for the literary community, and to give us a peek at the rising stars we should keep an eye out for.
Newest group of Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” outside the British Council. Photo by Mark Hakansson.

How did Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” first come to be and how has its impact grown over the years?

Freeman: It’s basically the most accurate literary crystal ball ever created. It began in 1983 as a marketing ploy, drummed up by a clever guy named Desmond Clarke. He and a few other judges drew up a list of 20 novelists under 40 who they thought were the best in Britain. They wanted to sell books, and they had a great generation: Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift, Rose Tremain… At the time, Granta was a small literary magazine in Cambridge that had been recently relaunched by an American, Bill Buford. He was a great editor, but perhaps an even better publisher. At the time Clarke’s list was announced, Buford had submissions from around a dozen of the 20 writers. So he decided why not publish an issue celebrating them and showcasing new work. Thus the series was born.

Since ‘83, Granta has repeated the list every ten years, added an American one in 1996 – which picked out Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugendies, and Edwidge Danticat at the beginning of their careers – and recently started lists in Spanish (The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists) and Portuguese (The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists). The lists have been startlingly accurate predictors of who will go on to publish great works, and it remakes the literary landscape, especially here in Britain, which is a small country and the writers who are picked wind up with a huge amount of publicity, a nudge in the back (perhaps when they need it), and yes, a little pressure. Over the years the writers we have picked out include Jeanette Winterson, Alan Hollinghurst, Will Self, A.L. Kennedy, Ben Okri, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, David Mitchell, David Peace, and Alan Warner, often at the beginning of their
careers.

Now in its fourth iteration, what you are seeing as some of the differences between the young authors today vs. those on the first list? How are their styles, voices, or concerns different?

Freeman: It’s hard to pin down stylistic differences, because style often goes
anti-chronologically, as in some of the writers on our list harken back more to the enthralling feel of 19th century fiction than the writers on say, the 1993 list. What’s different, I suppose, is the context in which they live. The novel is an art form, but it’s also a social document, and the best of them, I believe, can raise its social component to a moral one, without hectoring. What is the society we’re in look like? Who does it serve? Who falls through the cracks? What are the stories we tell ourselves? This is not to say novels have to crusade, but they do have to engage, to some degree. It’s partly why we read them. To escape into deeper questions. This generation might be post-Thatcher, living in a world of late capital, and dwindling political engagement, but their books combine, I think, the moral questions of their day with the power of the novel as an art form in a way that’s thrilling.

John Freeman at recent Granta announcement party. Photo by Mark Hakansson.

As you set out to edit this issue, what were you looking for? What makes
a young author remarkable enough to make the list?

Freeman: We wanted good writing. Which is to say, writing that felt new, in form
or style of expression, that expanded the realm of experience that felt like ours as readers. We wanted to be moved, entertained, impressed, and feel, in the end, that the writers we picked were writers we couldn’t live without. The judging was a long process, but it was a clean one. We had no agendas aside from this above, which is a long-winded form of saying quality.

Are there any similarities within this new crop of voices, or any traits that might be a defining quality to their generation of writers?

Freeman: I see two writers on this list – Sunjeev Sahota and Kamila Shamsie –
for whom Midnight’s Children was clearly an important book. Both have spoken about it. But other than that it’s hard to trace lineage between lists, and each other. We’ve had a week of events here in London and it’s been fun to watch writers – Ross Raisin and Ned Beauman, Naomi Alderman and Helen Oyeyemi – meet for the first time and hit it off. I think the fun thing about a generation is that it’s really just an age bracket, and within that age bracket you can see all the muchness and difference and vitality of a culture. The best of them, cultures, are varied, and have a lot of different sounds and concerns. I think that describes the best of Britain today.

Can you introduce us to who will be joining you for the ALOUD program?

Freeman: We’ve got two writers coming, Ross Raisin and Nadifa Mohamed. Ross is a northerner, and in his novels and stories, you feel the sprung meter bounce of Yorkshire language. And this enormous empathic mind. He’ll read from a story that closes our issue, a kind of apocalyptic tale, which is haunting and absolutely beautifully written. Nadifa is a big old-fashioned story-teller who is channeling the currents of Somalia into fiction which has the linguistic intensity and polish of the best English writing. She’s fierce but kind, and has a storyteller’s mysterious mind, in that she knows our lives (and inner lives) have shadows and secrets and shades. She’s about to publish her next novel, and she’ll be reading the excerpt of it which is quite sexy and intense and very well described.


Learn more about the upcoming ALOUD program at the Los Angeles Public Library with Nadifa Mohamed and Ross Raisin (pictured above) joining John Freeman.

@TheLibraryStore #OnWheels Hits @latimesfob

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The Library Store On Wheels will be trucking over to USC this weekend for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Come out and find us at space #630 in McCarthy Quad. Our mobile shop will be offering the usual favorites, plus some autographed books from ALOUD and Council guests, hand-crafted jewelry (get a head start on Mother’s Day!), and unique L.A.-themed gifts. As always, proceeds help support the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Store on Wheels makes it easy to shop by coming to you, now make it even easier on yourself for getting to the book festival and take public transportation. Here’s a guide on getting there. Then walk on over to see us!