Could You Be Anymore Annoying...

As you probably know by now I love and adore a lot of things.  I'm obsessive and addictive that way.  So it may come as something as a surprise to find out that there are some things that do kind of annoy me -  just a little - okay maybe a lot.

Not liking something is really okay because it would be a pretty boring world if we all liked or disliked the same things, so taking my inspiration from Scriven and Laura here is my list of things that bug the hell out of me.

Reality Shows

All of them.  Really.  They should all just die a fiery death

Action movies with romantic interludes

Please just because I'm a chick I don't need to have romance thrown just for the sake of it.  I'd see a romance movie if I did. I want shoot them up, blow them up and hold the smooching for another movie.

I hate you, you hate me but hey lets fall in love

I love a good love story but what really irritates me are shows like Bones and Castle and others where they hate each at first sight but you just know that the shows creators are planning on for them to fall in love - they just stretch it out for a REALLY long time. Come on people just jump each other and have sex in the 1st episode and then we can all be happy.

Literary novels (or Worthy Reads)

I know what you're thinking.  I'm a librarian so I should like books that win literary prizes like the Man Booker or classics like Wuthering Heights but the truth is I don't. 

I'm a trash reader. I've learned to accept it, embrace even. Trash is good people.

Hunger Games and Jennifer Lawrence

Sorry I just don't get the fuss.  Jennifer, I'm sure, is a lovely young woman but as far as wanting to see in her something whether it's Hunger Games or not I'm leaving the cinema and looking for something else.

Oh woe is me females

I lay the blame for this entirely on Twilight's shoulders.

And yes Bella I'm pointing the finger at you.  Get a back bone girl and tell both Edward and Jacob to take a hike.

Where have all the real men gone?

Twilight. Again. Really it has a lot to answer for.  How anyone could think that Edward Cullen was a romantic hero I'll never understand. Seriously the guy was basically a stalker. 

And the trend seems to have continued with a number of guys in YA fiction (Hunger Games - again) being all kinds of creepy or just plain wussy.  

Give me a man with a gun, a sexy smile and a bad attitude any day.

Picking the Man Booker Prize 2012

I'm not normally one to pick an award-winning book (invariably I always like the ones that don't make the short-list), but I'm going to wade into the Man Booker Prize debate this year, for no other reason that I am ever hopeful that one year I might actually be able to agree with the judges of book awards.

There were two books that I was surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that didn't make the final short list of six titles this year, The Unlikely Pilgramage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce and The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (both of these are on my recommended reads for 2012).

There's already been some controversy surrounding this year's awards as chair Peter Stothard weighed in with his opinion piece about book bloggers. I'll leave you to judge this comments for yourself. 

So, onto the short-list of six titles (from an original of twelve) :

• Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
• Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil
• Umbrella by Will Self
• Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Ewing
• The Lighthouse by Alison Moore

One of the apparent surprises this year was the four debut novels made the final short list alongside more established authors, Hilary Mantel & Will Self. I'm really pleased that these four new writers have been recognised, and that their books will now get greater exposure. It's hard enough for a debut author to be noticed, so to be part of the Man Booker short-list gives their books an extra boost.

The official Man Booker Prize announcement takes place on October 16th (which will be October 17th NZ time), so let's see if I can pick a winner ... 

My pick for the 2012 Man Booker Prize is ... The Lighthouse by Alison Moore.

It's creepy. It's short (less than 200 pages). It's published by an indie publisher. It's not quite what I expected when I started it. It's not as simple as it seems.

If you still need convincing, here is a review in The Guardian, and it is also this month's Listener Book Club book, and you can read an interview the author Alison Moore here.

So we'll find out soon enough if I (finally) managed to pick a winner. 

*** Update 17/10/2012 - So I couldn't pick a winner this year. It turns out that Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel is this year's pick - and she joins a select list of people to have won the award twice. Oh well, I will try again next year. ***

Pulitzer Suprises

The 96th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, were announced today by Columbia University. And the biggest surprise was that for the first time since 1977 no award was made in the Fiction category (it was, however, not the only category in 2012 in which no award was made). It certainly maintains the integrity and prestige of the Awards, but must have been disappointing to those that were nominated as finalists. Have a look at them and see what you think:

Train Dreams - Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century-an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West-its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders-the new novella by the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life."--Publisher description.

Swamplandia! - Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf).
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.-- Publisher description.

The Pale King - David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown and Company).
The character David Foster Wallace is introduced to the banal world of the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, and the host of strange people who work there, in a novel that was unfinished at the time of the author's death.

Awards were made in several other categories though which you can check out at the libraries.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by the late Manning Marable (Viking) won the American History category, after being moved from the Biography nominations.

George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (The Penguin Press), won the Biography category.

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press), won the Poetry category

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton and Company) won the General Non-fiction category.

For more information and details of finalists in all the categories go to the Pulitzer Prizes website

Three White Ravens!!

Woohoo - Another triumph in the world of children's and young adults books.

White Ravens are awarded every year when the language specialists (Lektoren) at the International Youth Library (IYL), in Munich, Germany, select newly published books from around the world that they consider to be especially noteworthy (think innovative, inspirational, trendsetting, extraordinary - which are just some of the words included in their brief). This list of books is compiled into the annual White Ravens Catalogue, which is introduced each year at the Bologna (Italy) Children's Book Fair.

This year three New Zealand titles have made it onto the list, with a couple of them being amongst my personal recent favourites. As only 250 titles from around the world are selected, that's pretty good (understatement!!)

Two Little Bugs by Mark and Rowan Sommerset (Dreamboat Books) - a charming picture book from this local (Waiheke) couple. Fun for adult and child - the best kind of picture book.

The Travelling Restaurant by Barbara Else (Gecko) - an energetic children's fiction title, which has already been recognised in New Zealand as a finalist in the NZ Post Children's Book Awards 2012.

The Scent of Apples by Jacquie McRae (Huia) - I have already raved about this young adult book to soooo many people. It's nice that this time others agree with me (reading being such a subjective thing this doesn't always happen).

For the full list of 2012 White Ravens check this link

Does fiction have the power to change attitudes?

I have recently been recommended to read Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron. A simple plot sysnopsis might be : a coming-of-age story of a young boy hoping to become the first medal winner for his country in a track event.

However, the story takes on a different hue when you find out that Jean is a young Tutsi boy, living & training amidst mounting tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, trying to make sense of the world around him.

My friend knew that I had read We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed without families : stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch, and we'd talked at length about the genocide in Rwanda, so she thought that I might interested in this fictional story set in Rwanda as well.

As I placed my hold for Running the Rift, I noticed the words "Winner, Bellwether Prize for Fiction, 2010". I was intrigued, what is the Bellwether Prize for Fiction?

Turns out this prize was set up by author Barbara Kingsolver, in support of Literature for Social Change. I'm looking forward to this book arriving on my holds shelf, to see what it means to be the winner of an award for "social change".

Celebrating 50 years in print

To celebrate 50 years in print, an anniversary edition of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle has been published. If you've enjoyed tales by J.K. Rowling, Margaret Mahy, Tamora Pierce, Alan Garner or Susan Price, but you *still* haven't read Madeline L'Engle, then now is definitely the time to check it out.

The book begins with the classic line, "It was a dark and stormy night", and is the tale of a young girl, Meg Murry, whose scientist father disappears after working on a project called tesseract. After a night time visit from Mrs Whatsit (later joined by Mrs Who and Mrs Which), Meg, her brother Charles and a school friend Calvin O'Keefe, set off across time & space to find her father.

It has won all sorts of awards over the years, including the Newbury Medal, and is the first in a series of stories about the Murry and O'Keefe families.

There's a Facebook page, as well as a 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs tour which kicks off this week where bloggers are riffing about A wrinkle in time and its impact over the past 50 years.

Climbing high across the world

At the top of my summer reading is Wind from a distant summit by Pat Deavoll, who is "New Zealand's leading woman mountaineer". I'm hoping it'll land on my desk just before the Christmas break.

This biography was released by Craig Potton Publishing in October, and it documents Deavoll's adventures as a world-class mountaineer. She has climbed mountains throughout New Zealand and across the world, including the Canadian Rockies, the Himalayas and the Karakorum.

As well as being inspired by her adventurous life, I'm also intrigued to read how she has achieved all this alongside a lifetime of clinical depression.

I'm tentatively picking this book as a winner, or at the very least a finalist, in next year's NZ book awards. And that's without even having read it yet!

Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards 2011 Winners

2011 is the third year of the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards, which were established by Massey University in 2009 to mark Māori Language Week, and to celebrate and encourage excellence in Māori publishing. This year's awards celebrates several "firsts".

It is the first time that the fiction prize has been awarded, for Once upon a time in Aotearoa by Tina Makereti.

It is also the first time that the Te Reo Māori award has been presented, to Chris Winitana who has written about the revitalisation of the Māori language in Tōku reo, Tōku Ohooho: ka whawhai tonu mātou, which has also been published into English as My Language, My Inspiration: the struggle continues.

The awards for this year’s winners will be presented on November 29, 2011 at a ceremony at Te Pūtahi-a-toi, Massey University’s School of Māori Studies in Palmerston North. There will also be a special award for Mana Magazine, which published its 100th issue in May 2011.











You can read the full press release here.

Being funny can win you a prize!

The 2011 winners of the The Roald Dahl Funny Prize have been announced.

Cats Ahoy! by Peter Bentley and Jim Field won the The Funniest Book for Children Aged Six and Under category.

The brilliant world of Tom Gates by Liz Pichon won the The Funniest Book for Children Aged Seven to Fourteen category.

I love the fact that there is a prize for books that tickle your funny bone. What a great celebration of laughing out loud with a good book!

Award winners - a useful tool for choosing what to read?

There's plenty awards around, at both national and international level, whether it's for movies, music or books. Does it influence what you watch, read, listen to?

For me, the longlist and the shortlist of various book awards means a lot. Someone else has gone to the trouble of pre-reading a book for me, and making a judgement call. It saves me the time of reading *everything* published in a given year, or genre, and let's me start with some of the best books.

So, a shortlist for an award either gives me a ready-made list of titles, authors and/or illustrators that I might be interested in (if I have enjoyed books that have won the award previously), or it gives me a list of books to avoid (if I haven't enjoyed previous award winning titles).

I've learnt that I generally don't enjoy books that have won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, but I often enjoy books that have won the Commonwealth Book Prize. I have a friend who is the complete opposite to me - she actively seeks out anything on the Man Booker Prize shortlist.

Some 2011 book award winners include

Blue Smoke by Chris Bourke - New Zealand Post Book of the Year

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - The Man Booker Prize for Fiction

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis - The Hugo Award

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna - Commonwealth Writers' Prize

So, does it make a difference for you when you see "award winner" on the front of a book cover?

Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) longlist announced

While you might not remember the name of Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, you should recognise her well-known character, Pippi Longstocking, the feisty red-head with freckles, from your childhood.

Astrid Lindgren passed away in 2002, and since 2003, the world’s largest prize for children’s and young adult literature, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) has been awarded in her memory.

This annual award is presented to authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and those active in reading promotion work, and may be presented to a single recipient or to several, regardless of language or nationality, and recognises their lifelong body of work. Previous authors to win include Maurice Sendak, Katherine Paterson, Sonya Hartnett and Phillip Pullman. Previous organisations that have won include Venezuela's Banco del Libro and the Tamer Institute based in Ramallah.

The 2012 longlist of nominees was announced earlier this month, 184 names from 66 countries, and there are two New Zealanders on the list – Joy Cowley and Margaret Mahy. It’s fantastic to see these two New Zealanders recognised amongst the world’s best.




The 2011 recipient was Shaun Tan, an outstanding Australian author and illustrator, whose work includes The Arrival, The Lost Thing, The Red Tree, and Memorial.

I’ve used Shaun Tan’s work for group discussions with people from a range of ages, from primary school children to adults. There’s always plenty of intriguing and interesting discussion, because his images always draw you in, and often take you to places you might not have expected to go. If you haven't yet discovered the joy of Shaun Tan's work, then head down to your local library quicksmart!

I’m looking forward to seeing who the jury picks for the 2012 ALMA winner. Wouldn't it be great to see a New Zealander win this one?

LIANZA Children's Book Awards Winners Announced

The Library & Information Association (LIANZA) has paid tribute to some of New Zealand’s most famous writers and artists in their annual LIANZA Children's Book Award Winners. (drum roll please)

Hill and Hole by Kyle Mewburn and Vasanti Unka, (Puffin Books) has won the 2011 Russell Clark medal. The judges said that Hill & Hole is an inspiring treasure that conveys envy, affection and contentment of a hole and a hill. The content and calibre of illustrations are stunning with multi layered original paintings and collage. Pene Walsh said “this book has all the makings of a classic, one that will be treasured by today’s children in 50 years time”.

Northland based Diana Menefy received the LIANZA Esther Glen medal, New Zealand’s oldest book prize for The Shadow of the Boyd, (HarperCollins Publishers (NZ) Ltd). Based on a true story The Shadow of the Boyd tells a powerful tale from our colonial past, the bitter clash of two cultures from the point of view of Thomas Davidson, an apprentice sailor who survived the infamous massacre of the Boyd.

Fierce September by Wellingtonian Fleur Beale,(Random House New Zealand) received the LIANZA Young Adult medal and poignantly deals with a community’s transition into life in New Zealand where they don’t know everyone, where life has changed fundamentally and they are living isolated like refugees. Fierce September can be read as a standalone novel but Belynda Smith, judge and panel convenor, is holding her breath for a third book in the Juno series.

The Te Kura Pounamu was awarded for the first time to a graphic novel, Ngarimu: te tohu toa researched and retold by Kawata Teepa and illustrated by Andrew Burdan, (Huia Publishers).

More information about the awards and the winners can be found on the LIANZA website

Congratulations NZ Post Winners

Last night New Zealand publishers, authors and the book public in general celebrated with the announcement of the 2011 NZ Post Book award winners. Here's a quick summary.

New Zealand Post Book of the Year and General Non-fiction Award winner
Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964 by Chris Bourke(Auckland University Press)

Fiction Award winner:
The Hut Builder by Laurence Fearnley(Penguin Group (NZ))

Poetry Award winner
The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls by Kate Camp(Victoria University Press)

Illustrated Non-fiction Award winner
The Passing World: The Passage of Life: John Hovell and the Art of Kowhaiwhai by Damian Skinner(Rim Books)

People's Choice Award
Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964by Chris Bourke(Auckland University Press)

NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction
Pip Adam with her short story collection, Everything We Hoped for (Victoria University Press)

NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry
Lynn Jenner for her collection, Dear Sweet Harry (Auckland University Press)

NZSA E.H. McCormick Best First Book Award for Non-Fiction
Dr. Poia Rewi for Whaikōrero: The World of Māori Oratory (Auckland University Press).

For the full press release and details, head to the booksellers.co.nz website

Kiwi Author receives Australian Award

Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards in 2010 have awarded a Kiwi author one of their top awards.

Best Book for Language Development:Young Children 2-5 years went to Our Daft Dog Danny by Pamela Allen (Penguin Group Australia)
Our Daft Dog Danny is the story of a brother and sister who visit their Uncle Peter and his dog Millie at the beach. But one day they took their dog Danny with them and everything went wrong. The judges said the book "has a wonderful pace and natural flow. There are lots of opportunities for children to pause, think, reflect and predict – to really engage with the story. The language is strong and introduces children to a range of important literacy skills like questions, commands, different verb forms and tenses.
Pamela Allen makes effective use of alliteration and descriptive language, presenting characters and a story everyone can relate, all enhanced by the delightfully captivating and colourful illustrations."

The Awards were started in 2003 to enhance people’s awareness of the role speech pathologists play in literacy development, gradually develop a nationally recognised pool of books that speech pathologists can recommend for the development of oral language and speech and/or sound awareness and to promote the Association. For more information on the Association go to their website.

Prime Minister's Literary Awards

Three of New Zealand's leading writers - Joy Cowley, James McNeish and Cilla McQueen were honoured at tonight's 2010 Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement at Premier House in Wellington.

Administered by Creative New Zealand, each writer receives $60,000 in recognition of their significant contribution to New Zealand literature. They were recognised in the categories of non-fiction [James McNeish], poetry [Cilla McQueen] and fiction [Joy Cowley].

Minister for Arts and Culture Christopher Finlayson, presenting the awards on behalf of the Prime Minister said, "I am delighted to see the life work of three more outstanding writers recognised through these awards tonight. The Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement are some of the most coveted in New Zealand, and government is pleased to support these awards through the Arts Council. It is money well spent in rewarding excellence, raising the profile of our writers, and of course inspiring new works."

Well-known children's writer Kate De Goldi was also present at the ceremony where her achievements were acknowledged as the 2010/11 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship recipient.

For a full report check out this newslink

Man Booker 2010 winners

Congratulations to Howard Jacobson, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2010 for The Finkler Question published by Bloomsbury).

"Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central, London apartment. It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you have less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses. And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30 pm, as Treslove, walking home, hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country, that he is attacked. And after this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change."


Any full-length novel, written by a citizen of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe is eligible for the prize. Such a book must be a unified and substantial work. Authors must be living at the time of the award. No English translation of a book written originally in any other language is eligible.

Man Booker short list announced

The 2010 Man Booker Short List was announced earlier this week. The 13 books on the long list have been narrowed down to these six:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)
Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

Full details are available on the Man Booker Prize website.

Photo credit Man Booker Prize website

New Zealand Post Book Award winners

Judith Binney has won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book of the Year award for her work Encircled Lands, a book about Tūhoe’s quest for self-government of their lands. Tūhoe, represented by kaumatua Wharehuia Milroy and Pou Temara, responded in numbers to the presentation at the gala awards ceremony held in Auckland last Friday night. Last year, Tūhoe bestowed Binney with the name Tomoirangi o Te Aroha (a little cloud of rain from heaven) in recognition of her work.
New Zealand Post Book Awards judge, Paul Diamond, described the winning work as one that will profoundly change our understanding of our shared history. ‘Encircled Lands is an exhaustive, comprehensive history of Te Rohe Pōtae o Te Urewera, the only autonomous tribal district that was recognised in law. Not only does it fulfill the author’s hopes of revealing an almost unknown history to a new audience, it also deftly illustrates why the history of the Urewera and its people continues to resonate.’

Debut novelist, Alison Wong won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction for her book, As The Earth Turns Silver, ahead of established writers, Fiona Farrell and Owen Marshall.
Charmaine Pountney said Wong brings a powerful new voice and new themes to New Zealand fiction. ‘Based on meticulous research, this novel opens new windows on the development of our nation; it also opens our hearts to the anguish caused by racism, ignorance, failures in family relationship and communication, and war. The book is a delight to look at and hold, as well as deeply moving to read.'

Brian Turner, a leading biographer, essayist, poet and conservationist, was presented with the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry for his collection, Just This, described by judge Elizabeth Smither as a life’s work in its reach, its depth and its deceptive plainness of surface.
'Just This dares to ask the profoundest questions about place and human existence, how we live now and how we hand the world on. It is dangerous poetry because it addresses ethics but at the same time it is leavened with a sweet and sly self-awareness as it searches for “something you can have faith in, swear by”. The journey from the first poem to the last is a revelation,’ says Smither.

In a tightly fought contest that had judges reaching for superlatives, co-owner of Wellington’s famed Logan Brown restaurant, celebrity chef and passionate fisherman, Al Brown won the Illustrated Non-fiction category for his book Go Fish: Recipes and stories from the New Zealand Coast. Awards’ judge Neville Peat described Go Fish as a seafood recipe book with edge and attitude. ‘Colourful images pour from the pages and spicing up the illustrative side are busy montages demonstrating how to prepare crayfish, crab and paua, and how to fillet a flounder – no mean feat, any of this. The recipes themselves, easy to follow, employ an engaging mix of type sizes and layout techniques. For a cookbook, it’s a remarkable page-turner,’ says Peat. Go Fish also won this year’s coveted People’s Choice Award as voted by thousands of readers nationwide.

In a substantially increased prize-pool from previous years, the New Zealand Post Book of the Year Award winner received $15,000. Winners of the four Category Awards each received $10,000 and the People’s Choice Award winner $5,000.

2010 Man Booker Longlist

It is a baker's dozen that was announced by the Man Booker Judges last week as their longlist for the 2010 award.

A total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen' longlist of 13 books.

Peter Carey - Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue - Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Helen Dunmore - The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut - In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy - The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy - C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
Lisa Moore - February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray - Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain - Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

This list will be narrowed down on 7 September and the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on 12 October.

For more information visit the Man Booker website

Top NZ Book Designs

New Zealand’s best book designers were celebrated at this year’s PANZ Book Design Awards last night.

The supreme winner was The Life and Love of Trees by Lewis Blackwell. The Designer was Cameron Gibb and the Publicsher PQ Blackwell/Hachette (NZ).

For details of all winners and judges commentary check out the Publisher's Association of New Zealand Website