Shaun Tan wins The Astrid Lindgren Prize

Australian illustrator Shaun Tan has won The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Children's Literature (basically the Nobel Prize in this field - it doesn't get better than this!)

Tan has illustrated more than 20 books including, The Red Tree, The Arrival, The Lost Thing and, most recently, Tales from Outer Suburbia, which was hailed in the Guardian as possibly "the most beautiful book you'll see all year". At this year's Academy Awards, he won the Oscar for best animated short film for The Lost Thing (voiced by Tim Minchin), based on his book of the same title.

Tan's response on winning the £490,000 prize (yes, that much - that's a LOT of sharp new pencils), was a restrained "OK, OK, thanks very much. That's amazing. I'm going to have to take a little time to get used to it."

Antipodean understatement - how refreshing.

Orange Prize Longlist 2011

The Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK's only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, announces the 2011 longlist. Celebrating its sixteenth anniversary this year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing throughout the world.

• Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela  - Sudanese; 3rd Novel
• Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch - British; 10th Novel
• Room by Emma Donoghue - Irish; 7th Novel
• The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi - Indian; 1st Novel
• Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty - British; 6th Novel
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan - American; 4th Novel
• The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna - British/Sierra Leonean; 2nd Novel
• The London Train by Tessa Hadley - British; 4th Novel
• Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson - British; 1st Novel
• The Seas by Samantha Hunt - American; 1st Novel
• The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna - British; 2nd Novel
• Great House by Nicole Krauss - American; 3rd Novel
• The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone - American; 3rd Novel
• The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht - Serbian/American; 1st Novel
• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer - American; 1st Novel
• Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile - British; 1st Novel
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell - American; 1st Novel
• The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin (Serpent's Tail) - British/Nigerian; 1st Novel
• The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (Harper Press) - British; 4th Novel
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Jonathan Cape) - Canadian; 1st Novel

Just click on the titles to check their availability in Cardiff Libraries - how easy is that?


Use your card number and PIN to reserve them on-line.


If you subscribe to our new premier Super Soporific Service, we'll even bring them round to your place, make you a milky drink, tuck you in, and read to you until you drop off.*


As ever, rest assured that the Library Elves will be working overtime to secure those titles not in stock.



* not really.

Two great films - two great books.

Film or tv versions of books you've enjoyed reading are always a bit daunting.  The possibility of a much loved book being butchered by some ham-fisted buffoon, who then puts images in your mind that will haunt you forever, is ... worrisome:  I still haven't watched Gormenghast despite having bought it on video and dvd.

Nevertheless, the film versions of both Submarine and Norwegian Wood have received plaudits by the shedload (this is definitely the correct collective noun for plaudits - go look it up if you don't believe me).


Submarine is a dark coming-of-age comedy about a lovelorn teenage boy in 1980s Swansea, written and directed by Richard Ayoade (the one with the fascinating haircut in Channel 4's The IT Crowd - and yes we do have the dvds in-stock - thank you for asking), adapted from a novel by Joe Dunthorne.

The film has many things to recommend it, not the least of which must be the best role for a duffle-coat since Jonathan Creek (and no we don't have the dvds in stock!) The Swansea of Dylan Thomas's "ugly, lovely town", or more prosaically of Twin Town's definition, provides a perfect backdrop to the tale.

Murakami, ah, what can you say about Murakami?  The man's a genius damn it!  If you haven't read anything then rush out now and buy one oops, borrow one from your local library.  We've got lots - check here.

Norwegian Wood is a story of love and loss set in Tokyo in 1969, told in retrospect by the protagonist and narrator Toru Watanabe.  The film is directed by Vietnamese director Trần Anh Hùng, who previous films include the critically acclaimed The scent of green papaya.

Hold your hand out for twelve of the best.

So many new writers, so little time.  So where do you start?  Well why not let those lovely peeps on the Culture Show give you a hand?

These are the twelve début novelists selected for the Culture Show special that was broadcast earlier this month (you can probably still get it on catch-up - unless you're reading this in the dim and distant future - where have you been?)
 

The list which comprises seven female authors and five male was picked by a panel comprising Alex Clark, critic and broadcaster, Janet Lee, editor of  "The Culture Show" and novelists Helen Oyeyemi and Sam Leith.

• David Abbott - The Upright Piano Player

• Jenn Ashworth - A Kind of Intimacy

• Ned Beauman - Boxer Beetle

• Deborah Kay Davies - True Things About Me

• Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness

• Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic 

• Rebecca Hunt - Mr Chartwell 

• Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English

• Jim Powell - The Breaking of Eggs

• Anna Richards - Little Gods

• Eleanor Thom - In The Tin-Kin 

• Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

And do we have them in stock?  We surely do (well most of them).  Just click on the title to check their availability.

And the two little tinkers we don't currently have, will be added to stock as soon as possible.

And now they have been, or at least they're on-order.  Don't they look smart in their new underlined blueness?  Bless.

Dewey Charades #2

I know, I know, I said a week (actually I said about a week), and it's been considerably longer, but I'm here now, so you can relax - especially you Jim!

Yes, it was Zulu!

Patently this was way too easy for this blog's inspired, intelligent and probably very attractive readership, so we'll go for something a little more demanding - but not too demanding as I don't want to alienate or embarrass you.

Are you ready?  Oh.

Are you ready now? Ok -

331.125945

It's a film - three words and the first one's The - no more clues!

Finns come up with a cunning plan involving moles and schoolchildren.

What do you do if you're the National Library of Finland and have millions of pages of newspapers, magazines and books that you want to digitise, but are set in a difficult typeface that OCR software has problems with?

Do you  a) employ someone for the next few thousand years to complete the job, or b) come up with a novel and fun solution that involves thousands of citizens and schoolchildren taking bitesize pieces out of the problem.

Yes, you've guessed it - it's b.

The project, Digitalkoot (Digital Volunteers), blends microtasks, crowdsourcing, and video games to break up and distribute some of the dull repetitive work of verifying digitized records.

"We have millions and millions of pages of historically and culturally valuable magazines, 

newspapers and journals online. The challenge is that the optical character recognition often contains errors and omissions, which hamper for example searches," says Kai Ekholm, Director of the National Library of Finland. "Manual correction is needed to weed out these mistakes so that the texts become machine readable, enabling scholars and archivists to search the material for the information they need."

Microtask has designed two games that will make this work entertaining. 

In 'Mole Hunt', the player is shown two different words, and they must determine as quickly as possible if they are the same. This uncovers erroneous words in archived material. In 'Mole Bridge', players have to spell correctly the words appearing on the screen. Correct answers help moles build a bridge across a river. Again, the game helps verify the OCR and make sure that digitized materials are accurate and searchable.

It's a brilliant and innovative idea that spreads the work and give the public a sense of ownership of the project and by extension the original material.

On a personal level I have to admit that the urge to drown the occasional mole is sometimes almost overwhelming.

Lovely, Lovely, Library - viva Mexico!

Ok, so it's not a patch on Fairwater, but it's still pretty delicious.

It's like Escher's been industrialised.  But in a good way.  And they seem to have cloned the staff.

More stunning pictures, plans and even words here.

Fairwater Library - refurbished, poutingly gorgeous and open tomorrow!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Hey, let's play Dewey Charades!

Right, we all know and love the Dewey Decimal Classification right?  You know, it's how most big public libraries arrange their non-fiction stock.  Yes, those strange numbers on the spines of the books.

If you want to know more about DDC click here.  If you want to know about Melvil (not a nice man, but by God he knew how to use a decimal point), click here.  If you're a Death Watch beetle, just click.

Ok, here we go.

It's like Charades, but sadder - if such a thing is possible.  I tell you if it's a film, book, play or well-known saying (slight incline of the head to Catchphrase), how many words, and give you the Dewey number and you comment what you think is the answer.

Ready?

It's a film, one word, 963.986.

Heavens this is exciting.  Answer in about a week.

Where's Libby - the Scarlet Pimpernel of Cardiff Council buildings?

You know how it is, no matter how wonderful your home, how grand the views and stimulating the company, we all feel the urge to get away once in a while.

And Cardiff Central Library is no exception.


Here she is on a day trip to London, not so cunningly disguised as the trendy W Hotel in Leicester Square.

Oh, and look - she's taken her little friend the sausage stall with her.  How sweet.

If you see Libby anywhere why not take a snap and send it in?

Thanks to Cassie for this one.