#Canongate Books
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A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Today I am sharing a review of A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize
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Today I am sharing my thoughts on A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, which has been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2024. My thanks to Henrietta Richardson of Midas for inviting me to be a part of the longlist celebrations and to publisher Canongate for the copy of the book for review. The short list titles are being announced on 21st March – good luck Ayọ̀bámi.
Source: Review…
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The House of Doors
No tree is every ugly Willy, but I must say I prefer the name the Malays give it, did you know they call it the whispering tree?”“Really, why?”“They say that if you stand under a casuarina when the moon is at its fullest you can hear its leaves whispering to you.”“And what would they be whispering?”“Your future and all the things that you desire to know.”“Is it true?”A wan smile ghosted across…
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#Blogtour Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry
It’s a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry.
About the Author/s
Ambrose Parry is the penname for two authors – the internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning Chris Brookmyre and consultant anaesthetist of twenty years’ experience, Dr Marisa Haetzman. Inspired by the gory details Haetzman uncovered during her History of Medicine degree, the couple…
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#Ambrose Parry#Blogtour#Canongate Books#Fisher and Simpson#Historical Crime#Random Things Tours#Raven#Voices of the Dead
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The Midnight Library | Book Review
📚 The Midnight Library | Book Review 📚
The Midnight Library is a story about exploring your “what-ifs” and coming to terms with the beauty and value of your present.
#BookBlogger #BookReview #TheMidnightLibrary #BookTwitter #Booktwt
Title: The Midnight LibraryAuthor: Matt HaigGenre: Contemporary | FantasyPublisher: Canongate Books
Trigger Warnings: Suicide | Alcoholism | Mental illness
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you…
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The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford @canongatebooks #bookmail #tinyblogpost #booktwt #Authortwt #bookbloggers #supportingbooks
Huge thanks to Canongate books for my gifted copy of The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford. I am excited to take part in the read-along.
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The Night Ship by Jess Kidd
The Night Ship by Jess Kidd
Publisher : Canongate Books; Main edition (11 Aug. 2022)Language : EnglishHardcover : 384 pagesISBN-10 : 1838856501ISBN-13 : 978-1838856502
Synopsis
1628. Embarking on a journey in search of her father, a young girl called Mayken boards the Batavia, the most impressive sea vessel of the age. During the long voyage, this curious and resourceful child must find her place in the…
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#Adventure#Australia#Book Blogger#Book Recommendation#Book review#Bookliterati#Canongate Books#Folklore#Historical Fiction#History#Jess Kidd#Literary Fiction#Myth#Shipwreck#Suspense#The Bavia#The Night Ship
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Homelands: The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy
Homelands: The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy
This book is about two unlikely friends. One born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, the other arrived from Nazi Germany in 1939, fleeing persecution.
This book is about common ground. It is a story of migration, anti-Semitism, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience.
This book is about the past and the present. It is about the state we’re in now and the ways in which we…
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My latest readers copy
Very much looking forward to reading this soon! A behavioural scientist’s exploration into how emotions came to be seen as gendered, and what we can do to change these damaging stereotypes. ‘Hysterical’ comes out on 1 September - thanks to Canongate for sending me this readers copy and for always releasing such innovative and interesting titles!
#bookish#bookstagram#books#books and reading#bookshelves#my books#booksbooksbooks#readers copy#arc#canongate
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In search of a shadow: Indian Nocturne by Antonio Tabucchi
When the murky waters that obscure any tangible connection between an author and his or her “unnamed protagonist” are intentionally stirred in the opening lines of a text, it is a not-so-subtle cue that that things may not be what they seem. Add an ostensibly exotic foreign location into the mix and there is plenty of space for the edges to become blurrier. Indian Nocturne, by Italian writer…
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#Antonio Tabucchi#book review#books#Canongate#Indian Nocturne#Italian#literature#New Directions#Tim Parks#translation
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Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
Bottom line, I liked this. A hard one to categorise or sum up, at least for me, but it is basically the story of two generations of women from the Dominican Republic living in New York. We do see an earlier generation and some men, but we don’t hear their voices.
I found it a little difficult to get into, and sometimes couldn’t tell whose voice I was hearing, but once I persevered, I couldn’t put it down and didn’t want it to finish.
I understand this is Acevedo’s first book for adults and I hope she writes some more. She is a writer I will be interested to see her writing develop.
Recommended.
Courtesy of Canongate and Netgalley.
#books#netgalley#review#new york#canongate#dominican republic#family#women#elizabeth acevedo#family lore
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The Trenches by Parker Bilal
Today I'm sharing my thoughts on the final part of the Crane & Drake trilogy by Parker Bilal, The Trenches
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Today I am sharing my thoughts on the final book in the Crane and Drake trilogy by Parker Bilal, The Trenches. I’ve really enjoyed this series and catching up with two really fab characters. My thanks to the publishers for providing the copies for review. Here’s what the book is about:
Source: Review CopyRelease Date: 07 Jul 2022Publisher: Canongate
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There are sights too beautiful to swallow. They stay on the rim of the eye; it cannot contain them.
Olivia Laing, To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface (Canongate Books; May 1, 2011)
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My next book will be out in October from @drawnandquarterly & Canongate (and in other languages soon after). It's a collection of the weekly cartoons I draw for the @Guardian. Go to the D&Q instagram more pics and videos: https://instagram.com/p/Ce1WxKTOFU1/
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When I bought my first copy of the Bible, the King James version, it was to the Old Testament that I was drawn, with its maniacal, punitive God, that dealt out to His long-suffering humanity punishments that had me drop-jawed in disbelief at the very depth of their vengefulness. I had a burgeoning interest in violent literature coupled with an unnamed sense of the divinity in things and, in my early twenties, the Old Testament spoke to that part of me that railed and hissed and spat at the world. I believed in God, but I also believed that God was malign and if the Old Testament was testament to anything, it was testament to that. Evil seemed to live so close to the surface of existence within it, you could smell its mad breath, see the yellow smoke curl from its many pages, hear the blood-curdling moans of despair. It was a wonderful, terrible book and it was sacred scripture.
But you grow up. You do. You mellow out. Buds of compassion push through the cracks in the black and bitter soil. Your rage ceases to need a name. You no longer find comfort watching a whacked-out God tormenting a wretched humanity as you learn to forgive yourself and the world. That God of Old begins to transmute in your heart, base metals become silver and gold, and you warm to the world.
From the introduction of Nick Cave for The Gospel According to Mark, Canongate Books, 1998.
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On October 28th 1794 Robert Liston, the first surgeon to use general anaesthetic in Europe, was born in Ecclesmachan, West Lothian.
Liston may be remembered for the anaesthetic but he was also the best surgeon around in the 19th century and quite a remarkable man.
Using an anaesthetic wasn't new, Alcohol is said to have been used in ancient Mesopotamia going back thousands of years, the opium poppy is said to have been cultivated and harvested by the Sumerians in lower Mesopotamia as early as 3400 BC but they were not controlled like they are today. The inventor of the safety lamp Humphry Davy experimented with the gas nitrous oxide in 1799 and found it made him laugh, giving it the term used to this day "laughing gas" Davy wrote about the potential anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide in relieving pain during surgery, but nobody at that time did not pursue the matter any further.
American physician Crawford W. Long noticed that his friends felt no pain when they injured themselves while staggering around under the influence of diethyl ether., he didn't publish his findings until 1849 though, by then other doctors were using Ether.
Enter Robert Liston, the most skilled surgeon of his generation, so adept that he was described as "the fastest knife in the West End. He could amputate a leg in 21⁄2 minutes" this was at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient.
The eminent English surgeon Richard Gordon said about Liston that:
"He was six foot two, and operated in a bottle-green coat with wellington boots. He sprung across the blood-stained boards upon his swooning, sweating, strapped-down patient like a duelist, calling, 'Time me gentlemen, time me!' to students craning with pocket watches from the iron-railinged galleries. Everyone swore that the first flash of his knife was followed so swiftly by the rasp of saw on bone that sight and sound seemed simultaneous. To free both hands, he would clasp the bloody knife between his teeth."
His methods were the envy and despair of other surgeons, their dislike of him meant he left Scotland and Gordon goes on to describe this in this paragraph
"an abrupt, abrasive, argumentative man, unfailingly charitable to the poor and tender to the sick (who) was vilely unpopular to his fellow surgeons at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He relished operating successfully in the reeking tenements of the Grassmarket and Lawnmarket on patients they had discharged as hopelessly incurable. They conspired to bar him from the wards, banished him south, where he became professor of surgery at University College Hospital (London) and made a fortune"
Another wee bit of interest is his suspicions regarding Dr Knox on the body of a young woman that Knox had kept in whisky, on show in his dissecting rooms, her name was Mary Paterson and Liston suspected foul play in the manner of her death, he was right, her name was Mary Paterson and she had been "Burked" by the West Port murderers Burke and Hare in April 1828, they were paid £8 for the corpse, which was still warm when they delivered it, Fergusson—one of Knox's assistants—asked where they had obtained the body, as he thought he recognised her. Burke explained that the girl had drunk herself to death, and they had purchased it "from an old woman in the Canongate" The pair went on to sell a further 11 bodies to Knox before they were caught.
Liston on confronting Knox over the poor woman's demise is said to have "knocked Knox down after an altercation in front of his students – Liston assumed some students had slept with her when she was alive, and that they should dissect her body offended his sense of decency. He removed her body for burial." So I think we get a sense of the character of Robert Liston.
Some of Liston's most famous cases documented in a book by the aforementioned Richard Gordon were; removal in 4 minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow; Amputated the leg in 21⁄2 minutes, but in his enthusiasm the patient's testicles as well; Amputated the leg in under 21⁄2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright.
That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality!
But it is the first operation in Europe under modern anaesthesia using ether, that Liston is best remembered, on 21 December 1846 at the University College Hospital. His comment at the time: "This Yankee dodge beats mesmerism hollow", referring to the first use of ether by doctors in the US. The first operation using ether as an anaesthetic was by William T. G. Morton on 16 October 1846, in the Massachusetts General Hospital.
The first pic is Robert Liston performing an amputation in front of a crowd of spectators, the second are photoes by Hill & Adamson
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2023 POLARI PRIZE SHORTLISTS CELEBRATE QUEER STORIES THAT “ENTERTAIN, ENRICH AND INSPIRE”
Memoir, non-fiction, and critically acclaimed literary fiction from a mixture of independent presses and larger publishers dominate the dynamic shortlists for this year’s Polari Prize and Polari First Book Prize, the UK’s only dedicated awards for LGBTQ+ literature.
“The quality of long-listed titles this year was so exceptionally high, a number of much-loved titles didn’t make the shortlists” said Paul Burston, founder of the prizes. “Taken together, this year’s shortlists are a powerful testament to the quality and diversity of LGBTQ+ writing in the UK and Ireland today. From dazzling debuts to writers delivering on their earlier promise and really upping their game, these are books to entertain, enrich and inspire.”
Powerful stories of resilience and resistance are the focus of this year’s Polari First Book Prize. None
of the Above by Travis Alabanza (Canongate) is an electric memoir exploring life outside the gender boundaries imposed on us by society. Edward Enninful’s A Visible Man (Bloomsbury) also makes
the list, detailing how the man behind British Vogue has built an extraordinary life; more memoir makes an appearance with It’s A Sin’s Jill Nader and her heartbreaking and eye-opening memoir, Love from the Pink Palace (Wildfire). Fiction titles spotlighted in this category are Jon Ransom’s complex and transporting The Whale Tattoo (Muswell Press) and Tom Crewe’s historical debut novel, The New Life (Chatto & Windus). Rounding up the Polari First Book Prize is Livia Kojo Alour with Rising of the Black Sheep, the only poetry title in the shortlists.
Poet Sophia Blackwell, Polari First Book Prize judge, said:
“The shortlist is full of fearless, moving and original stories. Full of insights about how the authors came to occupy their particular places in the world, they also set out hopeful, ambitious visions for the future.”
Rachel Holmes, Polari First Book Prize judge, said: “Look no further for this year’s quintessential queer bookshelf to illuminate and inspire the approaching autumn evenings, winter weekends and festive season. There’s a beautiful, brilliant read here for all the queer family. Comfortably encompassing diverse genres and multiple points of view, fledgling emerging talent and celebrated household names, this year’s shortlist bravely re-empowers the past, interprets the present, and boldly imagines the future.”
Adam Zmith, Polari First Book Prize judge, said: “The titles on the shortlist for this year’s Polari First Book Prize wrestle with history and the present moment in engaging and empathetic ways. I loved reading these books, and feeling the queer power in them and their authors’ visions.”
Karen McLeod, Polari First Book Prize judge, said: “This shortlist is dynamic, expansive, moving and truly novel (is it too late to request a box of tissues as a rider?) I am proud we have such a diverse and emotionally intelligent set of queer voices being published today.”
Queer utopias, further memoir and exquisite prose feature in the Polari Book Prize shortlist with Jack Parlett’s Fire Island (Granta), a vivid hymn to an iconic destination, being selected and poet Seán Hewitt turns his hand to memoir in All Down Darkness Wide (Jonathan Cape). A varied spread of fiction completes the shortlist with Julia Armfield’s deep sea love story Our Wives Under the Sea, Okechukwu Nzelu’s tender study of family and grief Here Again Now (Dialogue Books), Sophie Ward’s gripping thriller The Schoolhouse (Corsair) and concluding the list is Douglas Stuart’s heartbreaking Young Mungo (Picador).
Joelle Taylor, Polari Book Prize judge, said: “This year’s Polari Prize shortlist reflects the complexities of contemporary LGBT+ lives in work that is nuanced, expansive, intimate and strange. History, futurism, crime, poetic memoir, and social commentary collide to create rich narratives that rewrite us even as we read.”
VG Lee, Polari Book Prize judge, said: “We have a strong and diverse shortlist for the Polari Prize. These are books that will appeal to many. They are that odd word, “keepers”- books to return to.”
Suzi Feay, Polari Book Prize judge, said: “This year’s shortlist highlights the sheer range and power of LGBTQ+ writing across all genres. Passionate, stylish and outspoken, these are voices to haunt and seduce. Our six choices deserve the widest readership.”
Chris Gribble, Polari Book Prize judge, said: “This year’s Polari Prize shortlist lays out the joys, challenges and complexities of contemporary and historical LGBTQ+ lives in a brilliant array of fiction and non-fiction that will leave no one in any doubt that our stories are worthy of their places on every book shelf and in every library. These writers are working at the peak of their powers and if you haven’t read their work yet, you have a real treat in store.”
2023 Polari Book Prize (non-debut)
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (Picador)
All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt (Jonathan Cape)
Here Again Now by Okechukwu Nzelu (Dialogue Books) Fire Island by Jack Parlett (Granta Books)
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Picador)
The Schoolhouse by Sophie Ward (Corsair)
2023 Polari First Book Prize
None of the Above by Travis Alabanza (Canongate Books)
Rising of the Black Sheep by Livia Kojo Alour (Polari Press)
The New Life by Tom Crewe (Chatto & Windus)
A Visible Man by Edward Enninful (Bloomsbury)
Love from the Pink Palace by Jill Nalder (Wildfire)
The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom (Muswell Press)
Established in 2011, The Polari First Book Prize is awarded annually to a debut book that explores the LGBTQ+ experience, and has previously been won by writers including Kirsty Logan, Amrou Al-Kadhi, Mohsin Zaidi and last year’s winner Adam Zmith, for his keenly-researched history of poppers, Deep Sniff.
Established in 2019, The Polari Book Prize awards an overall book of the year, excluding debuts, and previous winners include Andrew McMillan (Playtime), Kate Davies (In At the Deep End), Diana Souhami (No Modernism Without Lesbians) and last year’s winner Joelle Taylor for her remarkable collection C+nto & Othered Poems which explores butch lesbian counterculture in London.
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