From the Guardian (”Forward prize shortlists look to youth and experience,” by John Ezard):

Britain’s richest poetry awards today choose by far the youngest poet in their history as a finalist for their most sought-after prize. He is Luke Kennard, 26, whose book of verse The Harbour Beyond the Movie is shortlisted for the £10,000 Forward prize for the year’s best collection.

That’s their richest poetry prize? Even considering the strength of the pound against the dollar, we Yanks have them beat by a mile. And they say we don’t appreciate culture.

From the Tintin desk: Borders stores in the U.S. will also move Tintin in the Congo to the graphic novels section. From Publishers Weekly (”Borders Shelves Kids’ Tintin Title in Adult Section, by Karen Holt”):

Borders in the U.S. released a statement about the book after PW raised the issue  last week. Spokesperson Ann Binkley said the retailer carries some titles from the Tintin series in its children’s sections. She added that the Borders is, “committed to acting responsibly as a retailer and with sensitivity to all of the communities we serve.  Therefore, with respect to the specific title Tintin in the Congo, which could be considered offensive by some of our customers, we have decided to place this title in a section of our store intended primarily for adults - the Graphic Novels section. We believe adults have the capacity to evaluate this work within historical context and make their own decision whether to read it or not.  Other "Tintin" titles will remain in the children’s section.” 

Meanwhile Washington DC’s Politics & Prose bookstore says they decided a couple of years ago not to carry it at all:

Meanwhile Dara La Porte, manager of the children’s department of Politics & Prose in Washington DC, decided after seeing a U.K.-published edition of the book  in 2005 not to sell it because of the racist content. “We got it in back a year and a half ago and returned it. We don’t carry it. If Little, Brown has changed it in some way we might consider carrying it,” she said. 

It’s hard to fault an individual bookseller for following her conscience. But the suggestion that the book should be rewritten for modern tastes raises a thorny point: does altering an offensive book to make it palatable to modern sensibilities represent progress? Or is it creepy and Orwellian? Even when the book itself is creepy, I’d have to vote for the latter. We should respond to the books as they were written, not make them respond to us.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (”Harry Potter a classic?”), Bob Hoover asks a bunch of nice people whether or not the Harry Potter books will be considered classics. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that some people say they are bona fide children’s classics while others say they’re wonderful because they get young people to read. Author Katherine Ayres, however, did say something that hadn’t occurred to me, despite how obvious it now sounds:

One of the reasons Mrs. Ayres believes that “Harry Potter” is so popular is that the books are “school stories.”

“Kids can really identify with Hogwarts [Potter’s school of wizardry]. There are the bad teachers and the good teachers, the bad students and the good ones and the relationships,” she said.

Overall, the discussion of the books’ literary merits is polite — perhaps too polite. In the Guardian (”Harry Potter’s big con is the prose“), Nicholas Lezard throws down the gauntlet:

Here, from page 324 of The Order of the Phoenix, to give you a typical example, are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak. “…said Snape maliciously,” “… said Harry furiously”, ” … he said glumly”, “… said Hermione severely”, “… said Ron indignantly”, ” … said Hermione loftily”. Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you’re one of the many adults who don’t have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn’t make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they’re producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

I was reading Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind when I discovered that I’d missed the announcement of the Shamus nominees. And here they are:

2007 SHAMUS AWARDS - NOMINEES

(For works published in 2006.)

Best P.I. Novel

The Dramatist, by Ken Bruen (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Darkest Place, by Daniel Judson (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Do-Re-Me, by Ken Kuhlken (Poisoned Pen)
Vanishing Point, by Marcia Muller (Mysterious)
Days of Rage, by Kris Nelscott (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original

Hallowed Ground, by Lori G. Armstrong (Julie Collins)
The Prop, by Pete Hautman (Simon & Schuster)
An Unquiet Grave, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)
The Uncomfortable Dead, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos (Akashic)
Crooked, by Brian M. Wiprud (Dell)

Best First Novel

Lost Angel, by Mike Doogan (Putnam)
A Safe Place for Dying, by Jack Fredrickson (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
Holmes on the Range, by Steve Hockensmith (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Wrong Kind of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow)
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman  (Simon & Schuster)

Best Short Story

"Sudden Stop," by Mitch Alderman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006)
“The Heart Has Reasons,” by O’Neil De Noux (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2006)
"Square One," by Loren D. Estleman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006)
"Devil’s Brew," by Bill Pronzini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2006)
“Smoke Got In My Eyes,” by Bruce Rubenstein (Twin Cities Noir, Akashic, 2006)

Interestingly, Booklist only starred one of the Best P.I. Novel nominees: Kris Nelscott’s Days of Rage. It’s always interesting when someone else’s list is so different from one you’d compile. It makes you wonder whether you’re missing something — or whether the other guy is just plain wrong. (We liked the First Novel nominees a lot more.)

The Shamus Awards are given by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) and will be presented this year on September 28, 2007, at the PWA banquet in Anchorage, Alaska, at Bouchercon.

On AL Focus, Beverly Goldberg talks to Susan Patron about the scrotum flap brouhaha:

Susan Patron’s book “The Higher Power of Lucky” became known for two things in the past year: winning the 2007 ALA Newberry Medal, and being at the center of an uproar when some school librarians removed the book because it contained the word “scrotum.” In this interview, conducted at the 2007 ALA Annual Conference, AL’s Beverly Goldberg speaks with Patron about that controversial word, connecting with young readers, and what she’s working on next.

Ever since I signed up for the artsJournal newsletter, I’ve been reading more books coverage from Canada. (Confusingly, they spell “out” the same way we do.) In the Globe and Mail (”Books still win“), Rick Groen declares:

I’ve done the math and here’s the bottom line. If you want consistent artistic bang for your buck, skip the movies, forget the theatre and turn off your TV set. Instead, read a book. More specifically, read a novel. More specifically still, read the kind of novel that publishers call "trade fiction."

It’s a good essay, but I was waiting until the very end for a cost-benefit analysis that would consider financial outlay on said artistic commodities against the time spent consuming them. But Groen’s a little more highfalutin than that. Still, I’ve always defended the rising purchase price of books by comparing them to movie ticket prices. Even the fastest readers are likely to get more value from books unless, say, they’re speed readers who bought the latest Ken Bruen in hardcover.

(I’m not saying anything about the quality of Bruen here: his books are short and there’s a generous amount of white space on the page.)

Galleycat (”Film Mogul Who Beat “JT” in Court Wants His Million“) offers a quick financial accounting of the Antidote Films v. Laura Albert case.

When I asked people familiar with the world of litigation for comment, they suggested that, assuming Levy-Hinte is telling the truth about how much money he spent, Albert might not be the one who defrauded him.

We can draw a number of lessons from this affair, but one of them is this: if you want to make big money, avoid the arts.

The second annual Thriller Awards have been announced. The winners?

Best Novel
Killer Instinct, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s)

Best First Novel
Mr. Clarinet, by Nick Stone (HarperCollins)

Best Paperback Original
An Unquiet Grave, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)

(I left out the screenplays — we’re a book site.)

The other nominees?

Best Novel
False Impression, by Jeffrey Archer (St. Martin’s)
Cold Kill, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Messenger, by Daniel Silva (Putnam)
Beautiful Lies, by Lisa Unger (Crown/Shaye Areheart)

Best First Novel
Shadow of Death, by Patricia Gussin (Oceanview)
Switchback, by Matthew Klein (Orion)
A Thousand Suns, by Alex Scarrow (Orion)
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman (Simon & Schuster)

Best Paperback Original
Skeleton Coast, by Clive Cussler with Jack DuBrul (Berkley)
The Deep Blue Alibi, by Paul Levine (Bantam) 
Headstone City, by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam/Spectra)
Mortal Faults, by Michael Prescott (Onyx)

Just FYI, Booklist doesn’t review too many paperback originals (that’s changing gradually, but because our core audience is librarians we focus on hardcovers) — hence the paucity of links. And first novelists have to fight it out with a bazillion books by people we’ve heard of already.

Patrick T. Reardon suspects that “many readers enjoy the olfactory experience of reading” (”What’s in a book? Take a whiff,” Chicago Tribune). He also asks:

Do e-books have a smell?

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage), landed on my desk last Friday. And when they say “big,” they’re not kidding. At over 1,000 pages, this sucker weighs in at 3 lbs., 15oz. There are dogs smaller than that. But now I’m set for summer reading, anyway. Wish I could find a link to the cover art — or wish I had my camera with me at work. It’s a good one.