He was sick of the excuses and the lies. He was tired of the evasions and the untruths, of people refusing to stand up and speak the truth and take responsibility for their own actions. It seemed to him like yet another symptom of the decline of Western civilization; of chaos; and climate change; and environmental disaster; and war; disease; famine; oppression; the eternal slow slide down and down and down. It was entropy, nemesis, apotheosis, imminent apocalypse and sheer bad manners rolled all into one.

People were not returning their library books on time.

–the opening paragraphs of Mr. Dixon Disappears, by Ian Sansom (Harper), book two in the Mobile Library Mystery series

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize has announced the 2007 winners for Africa:

Best Book Award

The Native Commissioner, by Shaun Johnson (Penguin)

Best First Book

All We Have Left Unsaid, by Maxine Case (Kwela)

Both winners are from South Africa, leaving a host of other nations to shake their fists and lament, “We wuz robbed!”

Overall winners will be announced May 20-27 at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica. Man, I wish I had a press pass for that. Oh, and a plane ticket. And accomodations.

Sigh.

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize has announced the 2007 winners for the “South East Asia and South Pacific” region. Again, a pretty broad swath, so I think these gents can feel quite proud of themselves:

Best Book Award

Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones (Penguin)

Best First Book

Tuvalu, by Andrew O’Connor (Allen and Unwin)

I had this announcement down for today, so maybe it slipped out early. Still to come — today, I think — Africa.

For “Europe and South Asia” and “Canada and Carribean” regional winners, click here.

So, apparently, women do have vaginas. From the Chicago Tribune (”School lifts suspensions for ‘Monologues’ reading“):

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — The one-day suspensions imposed on three high school students for including the word “vagina” in a reading from “The Vagina Monologues” have been rescinded, one girl’s mother said Tuesday. 

Actually, the school officials’ silence leaves us to wonder whether they saw the error of their ways or whether they were just sick of hearing about it.

From the New York Times Sunday Book Review (”Annals of Poetry,” by David Orr):

But the Poetry Foundation, however misguided or impolitic, hasn’t given up on poetry. The question is: Has The New Yorker?

(I was going to title this post “Booya!” But then I realized that I wasn’t really sure how to spell this exclamation. Booya? Booyah? Boo-ya?)

There have been some surprising developments in the saga of O. J. Simpson’s alleged confession, If I Did It, lately. I know I said that I wouldn’t write about this tiresome brouhaha any more, but….

You know what? I’m still not going to write about it. My own interest in the story shames me. And there are more than enough places to read about it already.

The shortlist of the Lulu Blooker Prize has been announced. The prize honors “blooks.” If you don’t know what a blook is, well:

Blooks are the world’s fastest-growing new kind of book and an exciting new stage in the life-cycle of content, if not a whole new category of content.

Wait, that doesn’t help. Try this:

The Lulu Blooker Prize is the world’s first literary prize devoted to “blooks”–books based on blogs or other websites, including webcomics.

Last year’s winner was Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell, which was a bona fide publishing phenomenon. I have not idea how well it sold, but people were certainly talking about it. This year’s shortlist includes Crashing the Gate, by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas and My War by Colby Buzzell, but I’m not sure it has anything quite as buzzworthy as the Julias.

But see for yourself. (I’m sure it’s a happy accident that the award’s sponsor has three titles on the list!)

Nonfiction

Crashing The Gate, by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas (Chelsea Green)
www.MyDD.com
www.dailykos.com

My Secret: A PostSecret Book, by Frank Warren (Regan/HarperCollins)
www.postsecret.com

My War: Killing Time In Iraq, by Colby Buzzell (Berkeley/Penguin)
www.cbftw.blogspot.com

Small Is the New Big: and 183 other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas, by Seth Godin (Portfolio/Penguin)
sethgodin.typepad.com

So Close: Infertile and Addicted To Hope, by Tertia Albertyn (Oshun)
www.tertia.org

Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language From the South of France, by Kristin Espinasse (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)
french-word-a-day.typepad.com

Fiction

Albert The Third, by Slim Palmer (Exposure)
www.althought.com

BreakupBabe: A Novel, by Rebecca Agiewich (Ballantine)
breakupbabe.blogspot.com

The Doorbells of Florence, by Andrew Losowsky (Prandial Publishing/Lulu)
www.flickr.com/photos/andrewlos

Messages from the Lost Continent, edited by Horst Prillinger (Books on Demand GmbH)
www.aardvark.at/messages

Methuselah’s Daughter, by J. A. Eddy and Dean Esmay (Lulu)
www.3500years.com

Monster Island: A Zombie Novel, by David Wellington (Thunder’s Mouth/Avalon)
www.thirteenbullets.com

Comics

Born of Nifty: Sluggy Freelance Megatome 01, by Pete Abrams (Sluggy Freelance)
sluggy.com

The Definition of Awesome: Another Joe and Monkey Collection, by Zach Miller (Boxcar Comics/Lulu)
www.joeandmonkey.com

Mom’s Cancer, by Brian Fies (Abrams)
www.momscancer.com

Reading Read Roger this morning, I found a link to a helpful list of controversial children’s books in The New Yorker (”Inappropriate,” by Paul Rudnick). For example:

"The Pretty Little Bunny"

Melissa, the pretty little bunny, woke up one morning in May and said, "I think I’ll hop-hop-hop over to the carrot patch. I’m so pretty that all of the carrots will jump right out of the ground to see me."

"You are very pretty," said Melissa’s Bunny Mommy. "But your sister is pretty, too, and she doesn’t spend all of her time looking at herself in the mirror."

"But is she as pretty as me?" asked Melissa. "Just look at my vagina."

Certainly not all of these titles will be appropriate for every collection, but they’re sure to spark lively debate!

After careful consideration of copyright issues, Jonathan Lethem puts his money — er, make that “intellectual property” — where his mouth is. Says he:

On May 15th I’ll give away a free option on the film rights to my novel You Don’t Love Me Yet to a selected filmmaker.

I don’t have any snarky remarks about this. It’s insanely difficult for writers to make a living doing what they do, and when success comes to the select few, it’s hard to blame them for trying to cash in or at least protect their revenue streams (not so fast, James Patterson, I do blame you). But to see an artistically and financially successful writer experiment this way is refreshing. Not that he’s changing his whole business model, and not that he doesn’t still stand to make some cash, but still.

Here’s his answer to “Why?”:

Lately I’ve become fitful about some of the typical ways art is commodified. Despite making my living (mostly) by licensing my own copyrights, I found myself questioning some of the particular ways such rights are transacted, and even some of the premises underlying what’s called intellectual property. I read a lot of Lawrence Lessig and Siva Vaidhyanathan, who convinced me that technological progress - and globalization - made this a particularly contemporary issue. I also read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, which persuaded me, paradoxically, that these issues are eternal ones, deeply embedded in the impulse to make any kind of art in the first place. I came away with the sense that artists ought to engage these questions directly, rather than leaving it entirely for corporations (on one side) and public advocates (on the other) to hash out. I also realized that sometimes giving things away - things that are usually seen to have an important and intrinsic ‘value’, like a film option - already felt like a meaningful part of what I do. I wanted to do more of it.

It’s a stand that not everyone can take and have it mean something, either. If I give away a film option to my Podiobook, it’s a very nice gesture that’s likely to go unnoticed.

I just posted Donna Seaman’s first-person report on the NBCC Awards on Booklist Online (”Both a Literary Marathon and a Talent Show: A Report from the National Book Critics Circle Awards“). You can tell she’s a book critic because, after dropping this tantalizing tidbit, she neglects to tell us what Dave Eggers was actually wearing:

In another arresting appearance, a noticeably nervous Dave Eggers took the stage with a poised and delighted Valentino Achak Deng, the subject (and, some might argue, coauthor) of Eggers’ novel What is the What. Eggers seemed particularly chagrined by the fact that he and Deng had inadvertently dressed exactly alike.

As a former member of the NBCC board of directors, Donna has a unique perspective on the goings-on. Check it out!