book poems

On my date with Satan,
we were talking dirty to the gods
and negotiating with the dead
in the skin of a lion.
How beautiful the beloved
stern men
circling the drain,
the women on the edge
of moral disorder.
Attention please now:
the girl in the flammable skirt
takes a streetcar named desire,
happily
minding her own business.
Her party of one
is a question of gravity and light,
her one hundred years of solitude
dressing up for the carnival
as beautiful and pointless
as imaginary words.
(Heather Kamins)

Very cool - yes.
Book poems. Janet Reid came across one, then ran a competition on her blog.
Each line must be the title of the book, as few extra words as possible. I've got some of the entries here. I was very tempted to make my own, unfortunately most of my books are in boxes at the moment.

(Steve)

 Finding What I Knew

In search of MIRACLES,
I left THE KNOWN WORLD
To go WALKING ON WATER
Toward a LOST HORIZON.

RIDING BETWEEN THE WORLDS,
I was a WANDERER OF THE WASTELAND.

THE STRANGER took me,
I was SOLD INTO EGYPT
Until THE GOOD SHEPHERD
Sent me THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
To THE THURBER CARNIVAL.

IT'S A MAGICAL WORLD, after all.(Gayle)


And a final one - short & sweet.

 round the bend, snow
on the road, slow is beautiful
almost there

(Victor)

Titlelicious

Ever wonder what romance novels romance writers are reading (wow, that's a bit of a tongue twister. Try saying that 3 times fast).  A group of romance writers let you in on the secret - although in this case the secret is not so much what they're reading, as what they're misreading :)

New book award

Conference was great fun. Wonderful speakers, and a chance to catch up with other authors, to share in their success and commiserate over struggles. One of my conference friends pitched a book to Alex Logan which sounded like it might be just what she's looking for - I'm looking forward to finding out how that goes. My fingers are crossed for her.

While I'm still tired from all the fun :) conference also revs the writing engine and I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Books to finish, new ones to start etc...

On a different note, the Guardian is suggesting launching a new book award:

"Many of us are familiar with the Diagram prize for the oddest non-fiction book title. But what about fiction? Surely it's time there was a gong for novels with titles that are not only strange and unusual, but downright funny in the most sniggersome, puerile manner? What, in other words, is worthy of what I propose can be nothing less than a Wankh award?

The Wankh awards shall be named in honour of that classic of science-fiction, Jack Vance's Servants of the Wankh. The 1969 novel, the second in Vance's Tschai quartet, has had to battle a barrage of titters over the past half-century, thanks to its title. In Vance's world, the Wankh are one of four warring races who inhabit a distant planet. In the Britain of saucy postcards, Carry On movies and Benny Hill, they are a cause for such hilarity that later editions were edited to change the titular alien race to "Wannek".

Much of the schoolyard humour that can be derived from novel titles comes via distance or time – the innocent language of gentler ages acquires more nudge-nudge, wink-wink overtones when the popular slang of intervening years casts a new light on common words, while the points of language that divide the US and Britain – as in the case of the Jack Vance novel – can make for many a belly laugh."

So aside from 'Servants of the Wankh' what other possible nominations are there:
- Talbot Baines Reed's 'The Cock-house at Fellsgarth'
- Beatrix M De Burgh's 'Drummer Dick's Discharge'
- Troy Hitch and Neal D Aulick's 'Night of the Willies'
- Geoffrey Prout's 'Scouts in Bondage'
- 3th book in the Fir Tree series 'The Day Amanda Came'
- K L Brady's The Bum Magnet'

What about you anything you'd like to add to the nominations?