Hush, hush, whisper who dares - next week is Noise Action Week, and in celebration (if that's the word), we've put together a list of related books and dvds we've got in stock that may be of interest to discerning readers.
Cyhoeddodd Llenyddiaeth Cymru Restr Hir Llyfr y Flwyddyn 2011 ar Ddydd Mercher 13 o Ebrill 2011. Gwobrwyir £10,000 yr un i awduron y gyfrol orau yn Gymraeg a’r gyfrol orau yn Saesneg.
Datgelir y Rhestr Fer o dair cyfrol Cymraeg a thair cyfrol Saesneg ddydd Iau 19 Mai 2011 mewn dau ddigwyddiad arbennig a gynhelir ar yr un pryd yn Galeri Caernarfon, a Bar Espresso John Lewis, Caerdydd.
Cyhoeddir yr enillwyr mewn seremoni wobrwyo a gynhelir nos Iau 7 Gorffennaf 2011 yn Cineworld, Caerdydd.
Cliciwch ar y teitlau i weld os oes copiau ar gael i’w benthyca ar hyn o bryd yn Llyfrgelloedd Caerdydd.
Literature Wales announced the Long List of Wales Book of the Year 2011 on Wednesday 13 April 2011. The awards, worth £10,000 to the winners, are presented to the authors of the best books of the year in English and Welsh.
The Short List of three English language books and three Welsh language books will be revealed simultaneously at two special events held at Galeri Caernarfon and John Lewis' Espresso Bar, Cardiff on Thursday 19 May 2011.
The winners of the 2011 Wales Book of the Year will be announced at a prize-giving ceremony on Thursday 7 July 2011, Cineworld, Cardiff.
As usual, just click on the titles to check on availibility in Cardiff Libraries, and gaps will be filled as soon as possible.
The Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, today announced the 2011 shortlist. Celebrating its sixteenth anniversary this year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.
To celebrate the 2011 shortlist, the Orange Book Store - www.orange.co.uk/bookclub - is giving away 250 free eBooks of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, winner of the 2010 Orange Prize, exclusively to Facebook fans. After the first 250 copies have been won, the Orange Book Store will offer all Facebook fans the chance to purchase The Lacuna at a special 50% discount for one week only, until 18 April. Visit www.facebook.com/orangeprize to enter.
The award ceremony will take place in The Clore Ballroom, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, on 8 June 2011.
Just click on the titles to check availibility in Cardiff Libraries. Remember, if there are copies available, but not in your local library, we can get them there within about 48 hours.
If you know your user number and PIN, you can reserve them on-line yourself and choose where you want to collect them.
The Carnegie Medal is a British literary award given by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). It is awarded to an outstanding book for children and young adult readers. Nominated books must be written in English and should first have been published in the UK during the previous year.
The Kate Greenaway medal is also awarded by CILIP and given annually to an outstanding work of illustration in children's literature.
The short-listed Greenaway titles are -
And the Carnegie titles (in no particular order) are -
Click on the covers to check availability in Cardiff Libraries - don't forget that if they're on-loan you can reserve them using your library card number and PIN.
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."
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
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.
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.
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.
