USA postal stamp issued for World Braille Day
Hello and welcome to our first post for 2012.
January 4th marks the anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille and has been declared World Braille Day. On Hear This, in honour of the occasion, we replayed an interview with Rebecca Maxwell the author and editor of ‘Blind and Busy: Life Stories of People who use Braille’
The book is available from Palmer Higgs Publishers to buy as an e-text for $34.95 or Paperback for $24.95; or you can borrow a copy from our Library in Braille
You can hear the interview with Rebecca Maxwell here
Also on Hear This, we cast our minds back to the cinema of 2011 and came up with 3 great books adapted for the Big Screen
The first one is …
We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. This is a compelling psychological drama about a woman coming to terms with the impact of her son’s murderous rampage at his high school. The novel won the Orange Prize for Literature in 2005. The film version stars Tilda Swinton and John C. Riley and you can find out what David Stretton and Margaret Pomeranz thought of it from the ABC programme At The Movies. You can listen to the author, Lionel Shriver speaking with Richard Fidler on ABC Radio here
The second book is …
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Set in the 1960′s in the rural southern states of the USA, the novel has 3 ‘voices’ Minny and Abilene both black housemaids for white families and Skeeter a white college student who has been away for a while and returns to her home town. Skeeter embarks on a novel and interviews Minny and Abilene about their experiences thus setting a cat amongst the pigeons in this racist pre civil rights town.
This is the authors first book and it took her 5 years to write. Rejected by 60 literary agents before it was finally accepted, it was published in 2009. Since then it has sold 5 million copies and continues to remain in the USA best seller lists this day.
You can read some reviews of the book from the author’s website Here and it seems ‘The Help’ is destined to become an enduring American classic
The third book has only only come to be regarded as a classic of American literature in recent times…
True Grit by Charles Portis
This is the most famous of Portis’s novels. Published in 1968 it was originally filmed with John Wayne, Kim Dalby and Glen Campbell in 1969. The latest film version has the Coen brothers directing with Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon.
The novel is told through the eyes of fourteen year old Mattie Ross, determined to bring her father’s killer to justice. When she meets Rooster Cogburn, an aging and irascible U.S Marshall, she decides she has found a man with the ‘true grit’ to do the job. From the opening lines of the book…
”People do not give it credence that a young girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood, but it did happen. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down, and robbed him of his life and his horse and two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band”
Reviewers have called it a ‘classic coming of age’ novel and the first ’Noir Western’ written years before it could be fully appreciated. It now sits alongside the darkly poetic works of Cormac McCarthy; though, as most critics point out, with a good dash of humour thrown in.
To find out more about the book there is a great interview with American crime writer George Pelecanos from the NPR Books website.
To find out more about this author (who famously declines interviews) we found a good article from the Wall Street Journal
Remember to keep your feedback and reviews about books and authors coming in by mail, email or in the box below. If you prefer to use the phone, call us on 1300 654 656 or you can Facebook us as well. Happy listening or reading for 2012!
