Yesterday, Jobs handed down the Tablet from on high. That’s great. But I think that there is a certain piece of technology that already makes the iPad seem, well, a little lacklustre. Introducing BOOK!

• J.D. Salinger, Dead at 91.

• They say everyone has a book in them. Saying that, the simple truth is that most of us will never see their literary dreams come to fruition due to careers, family and the countless other distractions of everyday life. But with the GFC and all those lay-offs, thousands of corporate types have finally had the chance to put pen to paper – and at last their work is filtering through to bookstores. I present to you: ‘lay-off lit!’

• Lick the back of Tim Winton’s head for… oh, about 55c, I guess.

• Will the iPad change publishing as we know it? Short answer: no.

• I just like this poem.

• Never gets old.

• Psychic writes autobiography fifteen years after her death.

• You remember that long, rambling article about recent trends in sex and fiction? I posted it last week. No? You know, the one with those cool pink diagrams? Still nothing? Geez. Well anyway, here’s the rebuttal to that article.

• Fiction is dead. No really. Super dead.

• And to cap things off, how about a study of boredom? ‘“Bliss — a second-by-¬second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious — lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom,” Wallace wrote in a note left with the manuscript. “Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”’

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Introducing… THE BOOK!

• Mysterious Poe Toaster mysteriously absent from Poe Toast.

• And speaking of Poe, The Edgars might just be the world’s ugliest award. “Ugh… thanks, I guess…”

• Twilight – now with pretty pictures!

• Bloomsbury just can’t get their cover art right.

• No one knows who owns Holmes.

• Too many Winstons!

• “From across the bookstore, it flashes at me like the plumage of a wild bird seeking a mate: one of those small gold circles indicative of acclaim. And, frankly, I’m a little turned on.” But alas, prizes just ain’t what they seem.

• Science Fiction. You’re doing it wrong!

• Ever wondered what William S. Burrough’s stuff looked like? Me neither. Well now you can!

• Male authors. Sex. Some pink diagrams? And some… geez… I don’t know…

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Last month we gave one lucky reviewer a complimentary $50 gift voucher as thanks for posting their impressions up on our site. Well, now that January has rolled on by, it’s once again time to announce the winner of our latest monthly Review Competition. So let’s get into it!

This month’s competition was incredibly tough to judge. Despite this, I’m pleased to announce that our winner for January is…

*drumroll*

…A C Porteous!

But don’t take our word for it. See for yourself! The full review is reproduced below:

Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking

Allen Carr

Rating: 4/5

I smoked for 10 years and tried to quit several times in the past. It wasn’t until I came across this book, recommended by a friend, that I actually managed to successfully stop smoking.

The writing style of the author may not be the best in the world, and Allen Carr apologises for this, but despite limitations, the message does get through to the reader. If you are a smoker and desperately want to become a non-smoker or you know of a smoker who wants to stop then I thoroughly suggest you get this book - you have absolutely nothing to lose in doing so!

For their troubles, A C Porteous will receive a $50 book voucher. Congratulations!

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If you submitted a review this month, all of us here at TheNile.co.nz would like to thank you. You are helping to make our site a better place and getting a shot a collecting $25 worth of books in the process.

So next time you finish a book, post up your impressions. It’s simple, it’s easy and it doesn’t take long. And who knows? Maybe your review will be in the spotlight next month! So get posting!

Jordan - TheNile.co.nz

One Sentence - Animated

• Avatar’s narrative was by no measure groundbreaking. But despite this, it appears that there are some spooky parallels between James Cameron’s futuristic setting and that of the Strugatsky brothers in their seminal science fiction series Noon Universe…

• Tolstoy gets upgraded: ‘Small US publisher Quirk Books, which had an unexpected hit with the Bennet-sisters-plus-zombies mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, will publish Android Karenina in June in the US and the UK to mark the centenary of Tolstoy’s death. Like its predecessor, it will intersperse the original text of the novel with science fiction action to create “an enhanced edition of the classic love story set in a dystopian world of robots, cyborgs, and interstellar space travel”’.

• Stick within one genre and the fans love you. But you’ll be a sellout. Sprinkle your work across a wide range of different styles and you get to keep your artistic integrity - but you won’t have built yourself a fan base. It’s a lose-lose situation…

• Sookie Stackhouse author Charlaine Harris talks about blood, love and vampires in this revealing interview.

• RIP Miep Gies, last living link to Anne Frank…

• Seven lost books that could have changed the course of the world…

• “Woman Married To Fat, Emotionally Distant Vampire Escapes Into ‘Twilight’ Novels”

• Probably the strangest headline you’ll read all Friday: “French novelists at war over the ‘theft of a dead baby’.”

• Everyone has heard of the so-called “Death of the Author”. But what does it really mean?

• What happens when authors can’t tell the time?

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

The sad state of contemporary publishing.

• “The Google Nexus-One - More human than human”

• To those of you who’ve stolen a Bible, I’ve got a bit of a spoiler for you: stealing is bad!

• Sherlock Holmes - “amorphous sleuth”.

• I have no idea what this is – suffice to say that it pushes the boundaries of awesomitude.

• This year, read a book you hate. You never know… you might just find something good. And even if you don’t, at least you can take solace in the fact that you were right.

• It’s 2010. WHERE IS MY HOVERBOARD, DAMN IT!?

• Hilary Mantel doesn’t win 2009 Costa Award!

• A. L. Kennedy on why writers need friends.

• “The knave abideth.” The Big Lebowski gets rewritten… as a work of Shakespeare.

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Happy New Year from all of us here at TheNile! Here’s something very special.

• “The usual storyline runs something like this: someone comes to Baker Street with a problem. Holmes smiles knowingly, then assures the worried soul that all will be well. He excuses himself while refusing to tell Watson what he thinks or what he’s up to. That evening he returns, takes a quick snifter of cocaine, gravely informs Watson “it is as I feared”, arranges a rendezvous for midnight … and urges Watson to bring his revolver.” I hate to say it, but I too think that the Sherlock Holmes stories are a little bit… lame…

• Everyone knows that it’s an American’s constitutional right to freely engage in the ‘pursuit of happiness’. But doesn’t that imply that true happiness is an unattainable goal? Well, at least the NYT seems to agree with me…

• Newspapers are on the way out… but will anyone actually miss them?

• Senor Spielbergo to direct children’s book turned play turned movie. Nice!

• Ursula K. LeGuinn, the Authors Guild and Google are currently embroiled in a three way slinging match concerning the sanctity of copyright. You want tickets to this fight.

• In case you recently came of out a year-long coma, The Guardian has posted a nice little (?) summary of the many and varied happenings in the global literary fraternity in 2009. Enjoy.

• “Horner recently wrote a book entitled How to Build A Dinosaur in which he refers to the embryo experiment as part of a quest to create a ‘chickenosaurus.’” Yes, please.

• A stunning (and in many ways, very touching) reassessment of The Merchant of Venice.

• These holidays, pay a visit to Abe’s Weird Book Room. Including gems like: Blessed are the Cheesemakers, The Who’s Who of British Beheadings, Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoonboxes of Daghestan, The How and Why Wonder Book of Guns and Was Karl Marx a Satanist?

• The Dude abides.

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Merry Christmas from Japan’s favorite beatboxer! I DON’T NEED A REASON!

• Writing Wrongs: When Authors Attack!

• “That there is some algorithm which helps us determine who wrote what falls into the same kind of category of futility as those scientific studies that claim to have determined the formula for female beauty or what makes a really good sandwich.”

• The top ten covers of 2009, courtesy of the Book Design Review.

• Everyone loves A Christmas Carol. But did you know that the book (despite its immense popularity) only earned Charles Dickens scant financial rewards?

• Who killed John Keats?

• Armit Chaudhari talks about a bunch of stuff…

• “The many mysteries boil down to three. There is the kind that can be solved: who planted the bomb? Will the travellers reach their destination? What is Mother’s childhood secret? There is the supernatural: dark metaphysical forces, never to be fully exposed, yet hinting of themselves in a way that suggests the author could reveal more if he chose, and might do, in his next book. And there are the insoluble mysteries: what lies beyond life, what beauty is for, why the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper, what goes on in the heads of other people, why life keeps fucking us over just when we’re doing all right — these are the mysteries the books dealing with them can’t solve, and it is for this reason that the best of these books are the ones we keep rereading.” — James Meek

• “Imagine that you are the man with the world’s strongest thighs / It is Christmas and you have received an enormous pair of porcelain football boots”

• Which books do you regret reading?

• A fascinating glimpse at the man behind Tin Tin.

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Here’s a trailer for Peter Jackson’s soon-to-be-released adaptation of Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel - The Lovely Bones.  Enjoy!

• How about a list of the decade’s best unread books?

• How about a list of the decade’s best science fiction novels?

• How about a list of the decade’s best neologisms? This one’s a real ‘barbeque stopper’.

• HOTW: “Tiger Woods drives sales of physics book.” At least he can drive something.

• Jeremy Clarkson. You either love him, or you hate him. This guy hates him.

• Just about every Romance cliché you can possibly imagine. Bodices will be ripped.

• ORLY: “Outgunned in the specialist press, Carroll took his mathematics to his fiction. Using a technique familiar from Euclid’s proofs, reductio ad absurdum, he picked apart the “semi-logic” of the new abstract mathematics, mocking its weakness by taking these premises to their logical conclusions, with mad results. The outcome is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

• “Slowly a pink image materialized on the stick. Holy geez!”

• Second thoughts on rewriting.

• And now, the scariest thing you’ll see all Friday. Guaranteed.

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Her Fearful Symmetry

Audrey Niffenegger

Year: 2009

Pages:309

Having a mega-bestselling debut novel is a wonderful and dangerous thing; it scores you legions of fans, glowing reviews and no doubt, a nice sum in your bank account.  But then comes the heavy burden of repeating that success with the follow up novel.

Enter Audrey Niffenegger. Her first novel, The Time Travellers Wife, was adored by millions of fans worldwide - myself included - for its unique storyline and touching romance.  Her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, has been hotly anticipated, but does this ghoulish story live up to expectations?

Valentina and Julia are mirror image twins; identical but opposite in appearance and more importantly in personality; Julia is domineering and forthright especially over her meek and mousey younger sister Valentina.  When their mystifying (and previously unknown) Aunt Elspeth passes away, the two Chicago sisters inherit her flat next door to Highgate Cemetery in London.   Both see England as a chance for a new beginning but while Julia sees an opportunity for the twins to cocoon together even more and create a separate existence from the rest of the world, Valentina yearns for a fashion career, love, children and most importantly independence - a life separate from her twin.

Initially unknown to the girls, their Highgate apartment is haunted by the ghost of the aunt they never know.  But in Elspeth Valentina finds a kindred soul who understands the intricacies of twinship and the internal pressures it brings.  Together, the two concoct a cunning and dangerous plan to separate Julia and Valentina forever.

For all its interesting premise, it is a slow moving novel that took a good 70 pages to grip me.  But it was worth the perseverance.  The detail of history into Highgate cemetery is rich and delightful, showing Niffenegger’s obvious love for, and knowledge of the place.  As the story slowly wend it’s way I found myself constantly re-evaluating my feelings for the characters; the twins, Elspeth, her lover Robert who begins an improper affair with Valentina and the light relief character of Martin, the upstairs crossword creating neighbour with obsessive compulsive disorder.  But they were not always the most likeable of characters, revealing wickedness and weakness in equal measure and the treachery of the twists they created left me staggered; I am still thinking about them and what they revealed several days later.

So, did Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger live up to expectations?  Well yes and no.  It is without doubt a skilfully written novel; it’s interesting and at times captivating.  But sadly, it is no Time Traveller’s Wife.  While it certainly has drama and originality, it lacked the emotional pull, romance and intensity of its predecessor.  A good read, just don’t expect to fall in love with it.

- Kelly

Magpie Hall
Rachael King
Year: 2009
Pages: 280

“There were two rumours surrounding my great- great-grandfather Henry Summers: one, that his cabinet of curiosities drove him mad; and, two, that he murdered his first wife.”

And so begins Rachael King’s rich and fascinating new ghost story with a difference, Magpie Hall.

Rosemary Summers returns to the home of her childhood holidays, Magpie Hall, to lick her wounds over a love affair gone sour and to finish her stalled master’s thesis on gothic novels.  A collector of tattoos and taxidermy, Rosemary has always had a strong connection with the once great manor, now fallen into disrepair, which houses a past as sinister as the ever present, beady eyed magpies for which it is named.

With the passing of her beloved grandfather, the house’s eerie menagerie room is Rosemary’s inheritance.  Little does she know, she is connected to its founder, the mysterious Henry Summers by more than just a common surname; it is with him the passion for taxidermy and tattooing began and has passed on, through the family, to her.

And both hold secrets.

The novel deftly glides between the two worlds; the strong and resourceful Rosemary in present day Canterbury and her dark and moody ancestor Henry and his society-girl wife Dora in colonial New Zealand.

King has the great knack of building the story up, layer by rich layer, making you never want to put the novel down.  Her detail is sumptuous yet still written in a very easy to devour, accessible style; I particularly enjoyed the atmospheric descriptions of the brooding big house which dominates the story.   Given its sometimes dark subject matter, the story is also tastefully handled and never macabre; even the most squeamish of readers will find themselves enjoying learning more about the twin arts that fascinate both Rosemary and Henry.  And then there is the twist - when it comes it takes the story in a completely unexpected but most satisfying direction.

As if the writing wasn’t thrilling enough - the book itself is exquisitely presented as well, with eye catching cover art which keeps the theme of the book and a simple but elegant twin magpie motif adorning the beginning of each chapter.

Engrossing and beautiful, Magpie Hall by Rachael King is a worthy successor to her first Montana-winning novel The Sound of Butterflies. In fact I would not be at all surprised if Magpie Hall is an award winner itself – it certainly wins my award for best New Zealand novel in 2009.

- Kelly