This morning I hustled across town to Radio NZ House on The Terrace to review Duncan Sarkies‘ new novel “Two Little Boys” for Nine to Noon. You can click here (for a week at least) to listen to what Kathryn and I had to say. As is often the case when I’m doing something for the first time (or for the first time in a long time) it was not a 100% satisfactory performance but I’ll let you be the judge. It is a good book, though, and I recommend it to you.
And when you’ve listened to the review (only 6 minutes and 23 seconds, although it felt a lot less…) you can listen here to the song that inspired the title of the book. This version features not only the legendary Rolf Harris (who made it famous) but also Liam O’Maonlai from Hothouse Flowers. This version is from a 1993 ‘Stop the Killing in Northern Ireland’ charity/protest album called Peace Together:
Rolf Harris & Liam O’Maonlai - Two Little Boys (mp3)
Satirist George Saunders speaking at the Brooklyn Academy of Music back in January:
He aims to “take his reader by the shirt and fling him; you send him 15 feet and you’re done. And I don’t think it’s in your power to control what he’s feeling as he’s flying through the air.”
I first heard of George Saunders when he was interviewed by Jesse Thorn at The Sound of Young America. I am now on a mission to find and read as much as I can.
[via Gothamist]
A little late, but still recommended, Jane Campion remembers Janet Frame and making An Angel at My Table, in The Guardian:
Each room and even parts of rooms were dedicated to a different book in progress. Here and there she had hung curtains to divide up the rooms like they do in hospital wards to give the patients privacy. On the desk where she had last been working was a pair of earmuffs.
“I can’t bear any sound,” she explained. “The double bricks haven’t worked. I think I will have to move.”
This morning I hustled across town to Radio NZ House on The Terrace to review Duncan Sarkies‘ new novel “Two Little Boys” for Nine to Noon. You can click here (for a week at least) to listen to what Kathryn and I had to say. As is often the case when I’m doing something for the first time (or for the first time in a long time) it was not a 100% satisfactory performance but I’ll let you be the judge. It is a good book, though, and I recommend it to you.
