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Top Reads of 2011 – Short Story Collections

 five Elephants in our Bedroom – Michael Czyzniejewski A heady collection. Czyzniejewski’s world is much like the one we live in, just a little skewed from reality. He nails how it feels to be a man in the 21st Century, then promptly shows he can produce female characters of equal depth, all while crafting stories that are laugh out loud funny one minute and deeply moving the next. The opener Wind is as perfect a slice of short fiction as I have ever read and the stories that follow don’t disappoint. Read Wind in the excerpt on the author’s website. * four Break It Down – Lydia Davis A collection of…

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Top reads of 2011 – Novels

 This the first of three posts listing my tops reads of 2011. Basically anything read between Jan 1st and Dec 31st 2011 is eligible regardless of publication date. Here are the five best novels I read this year: five The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells Thought it was about time I read this and very glad I did. Part humourous romp, part social satire, Wells’ control of plot and pacing, along with a great eye for eccentric characters makes this a new favourite book of mine, not just of this year. * four Last Night In Twisted River – John Irving John Irving’s latest is a return to form…

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The Last Year of Father Christmas

 My Write Anything post is a Christmas story, The Last Year of Father Christmas, a story published last year in the This Is Christmas Metazen charity collection. Head over to WA to read my festive flash fiction. I’m signing off now until after Boxing Day so there’s just time to wish you a very Merry Christmas Here’s hoping Santa brings everything you’ve wished for.

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Top 5 Writing Music Albums of 2011

 Regular readers will already known that music plays an important part in my writing process. This year has seen a bumper crop of new albums finding their way onto my Writing playlist to loop while I scribble, scrabble and tap my first drafts into notebooks both analogue and digital, both actual and virtual. As there were so many, I’ve given them their own wee chart, separate from my other album choices. These are my favourite pieces of music to write to released this year: five Industries of the Blind – Chapter 1: Had We Known Better Industries of the Blind is a nine piece instrumental post-rock ensemble with a rousing…

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National Short Story Day

 It’s National Short Story Day. There’s lots going on over on the official site. As part of the celebration I’d like to point you in the direction of some of the short fiction I’ve enjoyed this year. First there’s my recent review of a rather wonderful collection reissued in an expanded edition this year. Also, this year I started quizzing short fiction authors on their lives in short fiction. I’m planning to post more of these in 2012, but in the meantime, check these great posts by some fantastic authors of short fiction. Meanwhile, over on my tumblr The Short and Long Of It it’s short story day (nearly) every…

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Top Ten Albums 2011 – one

 one The Decemberists – The King Is Dead The Decemberists’ fourth album was released on January 14th and made my top ten list of the year even in those early days with the whole year of releases waiting to knock it out of the ring. Over the course of eleven and a bit months it managed to see of all challengers and retain its crown as my favourite album of 2011. The King may be dead but he still rules. 2011 was the year of the last REM album release and their break-up. One possible contributing factor to their retirement might well be that REM didn’t release the best REM…

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Top Ten Albums 2011 – four to two

 four Okkervil River – I Am Very Far Okkervil River’s new album proved to be a grower rather than an instant hit with me. Perhaps it suffered from a release date crowded by the likes of The Felice Brothers (whose 2011 recording Celebration, Florida proved a major disappointment after three solid gold previous efforts)  and Fleet Foxes. I Am Very Far plays out like an Alt Country-Dexys-Motown hybrid, and, despite loving all three of those influences, it took me a while to get where this was coming from, but when it clicked it clicked good and proper, reminding me exactly why I love Okkervil River. If you want such a…

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Top Ten Albums 2011 – seven to five

 seven Wilco – The Whole Love Wilco’s follow-up to the mildly disappointing Wilco (the album), is a return to form, an album of standout tracks that testify to a band finally comfortable with their sound. Tracks move between the spiky experimentalism of their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot/A Ghost Is Born days to the upbeat alt country rock of Being There-era Wilco, taking in everything in between, adding new tweaks and turns. This just might be the ultimate Wilco album, a greatest hits made up of new songs. It’s for albums like this that I have loved Wilco since way back. A great American band who keep churning out great music as…

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Top Ten Albums 2011 – ten to eight.

 ten Richmond Fontaine – The High Country 2011 was the year I belatedly discovered Richmond Fontaine and the novels of singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin. The High Country is the ultimate merging of Vlautin’s twin talents, less a concept album and more a song novel. It’s a story of the secret love between a mechanic and an auto parts store counter girl set against the bleak backdrop of a logging community. The interminable logging roads and the deep forests border a world of drugs, depression, desperation and, ultimately, violence, that Vlautin’s star-crossed lovers seek to escape. The story moves between the starkly beautiful and the deeply harrowing, working much like Vlautin’s prose fiction,…

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2011

 Over the next ten to fourteen days I’ll be posting a good handful of Best of Year posts, including my top ten albums of the year, my top five writing music albums, my top five novels, my top five short fiction collections and a possible post on the poetry and non-fiction I’ve enjoyed this year. A review of my writing year is a strong possibility also. Apologies to those who dislike lists, or have no interest in what I think was great about 2011. For the miserablists out there, I might even do a top five disappointments of 2011. In the meantime, here’s a video from the rather excellent Jonathan…

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Books on the Rebound

 At the local Christmas Fayre amongst the usual mix of jewellry, sweet and tombola stalls, I was excited to find some rather fetching notebooks for sale. Rebound Books create journals, notebooks, sketchbooks and diaries from books destined for landfill and in doing so produce unique products for the notebook connoiseur while recycling long abandoned volumes of all kinds. From their website: Rebound books are individually and uniquely created from original publications. We remove the spines from the original book and using a quality reclaimed paper, intersperse (or interleaf as we like to say) blank pages with selected pages from the original book. These books are then wire bound (using the best wire…

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Review – My Animal Life

 Maggie Gee’s memoir is part family history, part celebration of the wonder and marvels that having a human body allow and part cautionary tale about the perils of the publishing world, with Gee presenting each part of her life story candidly. The warmth of her prose and genuine affection she feels for those who have had greatest impact on her life create a sense of intimacy between her and the reader, an intimacy within which she is happen to unflinchingly reveal the darker corners of her life. Which is not to say this is a dark book. Like any life, Gee’s is dotted with dark moments, but it is the…

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A haunting of Nightjars

 A few days ago my order of four Nightjar Press titles arrived, to my great pleasure. Having just finished the mandatory reading for the first unit of my MA (twelve novels in as many weeks) I was ready for some quality short fiction when I saw the Nightjar press post about their two most recent releases. I promptly banged off an order for the pair, along with two other titles that caught my eye while browsing the blog. For those not in the know, Nightjar Press is an independent publisher specialising in limited edition single short-story chapbooks by individual authors. The four Nightjar stories I have so far enjoyed have…

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To MA or not to MA?

 As someone who embarked on the first year of an MA in Creative Writing with Manchester Metropolitan University in September of this year, I have been reading a recent flurry of posts about the worth of Creative Writing courses with great interest. Tom Vowler, author of a prize-winning debut collection of short fiction (The Method and other stories) is not only the product of just such courses but has recently begun teaching on one himself. In his post ‘Learning ‘Em To Write‘ he focuses on what many see as the key issue surrounding such courses, ‘whether the production of fiction can be taught,’ an issue he first dealt with back…

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Is this bibliophile heaven?

 The new Stuttgart City Library opened to the public recently. Designed by Eun Young Yi, it looks like Platonic ideal of a library if I ever saw one. Love the MC Escher inspired stairs. And the way the books add colour to the otherwise white surroundings is stunning. Seeing these pictures instantly made me want to head down the autobahn and visit. How about you? Images via The Coolist and Empty Kingdom.

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CW Paperback launch

 Today sees the paperback launch of both Chinese Whispering Anthologies, The Red Book and The Yin and Yang book, the later of which contains my story, This Be The Verse. The twenty or so authors come from Australia, the UK, Europe, and the US so the launch event will be running for as many hours as it is December 1st somewhere. So too the facebook virtual party, to which you are all invited. There will be live tweets from the many of the authors of The Yin and Yang Book about Pangaean (the fictional airline at the centre of the stories in the collection) and its collapse, under the hashtag #pangaean.…

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Rising and editing.

 Finished the edits of two stories today, one a revamp from a while back for re-subbing to some lit journals, the other something new for the Fish Short Story Prize which closes tomorrow and will be judged by the real David Mitchell (the author that is, not the star of Peep Show). I’ve been listening to a lot of writing music while prepping these, most notably A Winged Victory for the Sullen and Bill Ryder-Jones’ If. My Fish Prize story was heavily edited while listening to Lhasa de Sela’s excellent eponymous album from 2009, particularly this track: Here’s hoping my story has a sliver of the emotion of this rather…

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Evolution of the perfect book cover

 This video provides a great insight into the development of a book cover from initial ideas drawn from the text to the final, imho, brilliant design. Barnes’ Booker Winner is top of the towering pile of books by my bedside and packed digital shelf on my Kindle that have built up while I’ve been busy reading ten novels for a unit of my MA. From what I know of the book from its reviews, the final beautiful cover for The Sense of an Ending is wholly fitting for its subject matter. Which got me thinking about other covers that reflect their contents perfectly. One cover that immediately springs to mind…

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A pep talk for all those not doing Nano this year.

 It will come as no surprise that the theme for this month’s Write Anything columns is NaNoWriMo. My post, NoNoWriMo, is live on the site now and is inteneded for all those who, like me, have found themselves unable to commit to the novel writing extravaganza. Click thorough to find 5 things to do during NaNoWriMo for those without the time to actually commit to writing a novel.

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