The Slap leads best-selling Booker longlist

 

Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap has been on Australian bestseller lists since its publication in 2008

The 13 novels being considered for this year's Man Booker prize are selling better than any other longlist since 2001.

Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap is most popular longlisted book, selling more than 5,000 in the first week of August, according to Nielsen BookScan figures.

It sold more than three times as well as Emma Donoghue's Room (1,422 copies).

The Booker shortlist will be announced on 7 September, with the winner crowned on 12 October.

"The selection committee of the Booker Prize has deliberately tried to select more commercially feasible titles in the list, and it's reflected in the sales," said Andre Breedt, research and development analyst at Nielsen BookScan.

In The Slap, the pivotal moment takes place at a Melbourne barbecue, where one of the guests hits a three-year-old child who is not his own.

The story is narrated by eight characters, all of whom were guests at the barbecue.

The book's recurring themes of sex, infidelity, racism, domestic violence and alcoholism have split critics.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of The Bookseller, told The Guardian that there "hasn't been a divisive book on taste grounds" in the Booker line-up for years.

One early blog review described it as "a satanic version of Neighbours".

The Slap won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009 and was the fourth biggest-selling title by an Australian author that year.

Other books on the Booker longlist include David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Paul Murray's Skippy Dies, Rose Tremain's Trespass, Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America and Tom McCarthy's C.

The longlisted books sold 10,597 copies last week - up 47% on the same period in 2009 and an increase of 246% on the 2008 longlist.

The Bookseller points out that this year's sales are at their strongest point since 2001's 24-book longlist, which included Ian McEwan's Atonement and Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass.

The winner of the 2010 Booker Prize will receive £50,000, while the five runners-up will each receive £2,500 each.

Hilary Mantel won last year's Man Booker for her historical novel Wolf Hall.

@'BBC'

???

deviatar Reading the Washington Post, NY Times and The Economist were grounds govt lawyer cites for excluding juror in Khadr case #Gitmo less than a minute ago via web

The Point of No Return

How propagandists function: Exhibit A

Girlz With Gunz # 122

Sweet Pea

Woman sentenced to stoning 'confesses' on Iranian TV

Iranian TV has aired what it says is a confession by a woman under threat of being stoned to death.

In the broadcast, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani admits to murder and denounces her lawyer, who fled the country after authorities tried to arrest him.

Ms Ashtiani's case prompted international outrage when she was initially sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.

Her death sentence was then temporarily halted by the authorities.

With the broadcast, the Iranian authorities have confronted head-on the enormous embarrassment they clearly feel over this case.

The confession was aired on one of the main channels of state TV.

There was no mention of the stoning sentence and the focus was moved away from the allegation of adultery, to a claim that she was complicit in a plot to murder her husband.

In the televised confession she admitted her part in the murder, despite earlier telling western media that she had been acquitted of the charge.

Ms Ashtiani also criticised her lawyer, Mohammed Mostafaie, for interfering in her case.

Mr Mostafaie has now sought asylum in Norway.

Another of Ms Ashtiani's lawyers has said that she was tortured for two days in prison to force her to make her confession.

Human rights activists fear that she is now in danger of imminent execution. 

Jon Leyne @'BBC'

♪♫ Fine Young Cannibals - Johnny Come Home

Spaceboy - THIS is for you!

 Trompe-l'oeil doors

HERE

HA!

HERE

류명환의 《유명한》 미친소리

Could our resident German-Korean translate please?

Who's still listening to vinyl?

되돌아올수 없는 강을 건너간 리명박패당

Nice Nick Drake cover...

Lords distance themselves from climate sceptic Christopher Monckton

Ill Blu & the DMCA

exilestreet @Hyperdub received a DMCA notice at my blog for linking to this mix http://bit.ly/cIjgLU that you tweeted. Do the IFPI really act on yr say?
  Hyperdub @exilestreet owt to do with us.

The usual bullshit from the IFPI...
three out of my four DMCA notices have been for legal links, two at archive.org and now this!

The Ploy to Promote Genetically Engineered Seeds and Pesticides to Poor Mexican Farmers Is Impoverishing Their Communities

The Obama administration's Feed the Future initiative promises a second Green Revolution that will feed a planet of nine billion people by doubling crop yields by 2050. But considering that we produce enough food to feed the planet today and a billion people still go hungry, are yields really the problem? And if they are, are providing Green Revolution technologies like hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, chemical fertilizer and pesticides to subsistence farmers the best way to achieve them? I visited subsistence farmers in Mexico to find out.The homes of campesinos, peasant farmers, in the rural areas surrounding Cuquio, Mexico (about an hour from Guadalajara) no longer have dirt floors. The Mexican government initiated a program to replace them with cement floors in 2008 and now most homes sport a plaque celebrating their new piso firmes. Electricity came about 20 years ago. For many, running water and bathroom facilities are modern conveniences they do not yet have. The government has recently distributed composting toilets to many, but not all, families.
One of the tiny adobe homes is decorated by flowers growing in upside-down Coca-Cola bottles turned into flower pots. Another is located next to a fencepost sporting an empty bag of Monsanto corn seeds -- seeds presumably planted in the adjoining cornfield, or milpa. This little corner of the world and the people who live here seem to be forgotten by everyone except for Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and multinational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and DuPont.
The campesinos here are easy prey for savvy, first-world corporate marketers. Many have only a sixth-grade education, and they know how to grow their traditional milpas of intercropped corn, beans and squash because they learned the techniques practiced by generations before them, often first handling a horse and plow at the tender age of 6. They know their lives are hard and that some years they don't produce enough food to eat. Moreover, they are desperate to give their children better lives through education, but subsistence farming does not come with a salary and many cannot afford the fees, supplies or uniforms required by schools. Several express regret (or even despair) that their children had to drop out of school to work at the local shoe factory for 500 pesos per week -- about $1.05 per hour with current exchange rates. A new technology that could provide enough food and perhaps some income would be welcome.

Continue reading 

Jill Richardson @'AlterNet'

Jill Richardson's Blog

Further depressing news from the "World of Managers" with deliberate sales of highly toxic chemicals to countries that require food sustainability, and not the ongoing problems associated with poisonous chemical usage. That these "intelligent managers" and shareholders condone and profit from the misery they produce is a blight on Western society. Once again the prevailing cheers of profits before people, deafen the less fortunate in cycles of starvation, pollution and toxic lifestyles, for a few dollars more. With these chemical substances banned by Western society for agricultural use, the continued production and sale to other countries, despite all available knowledge of their toxicity, surely ranks as a crime against humanity. How can this "World of Managers" and shareholders blithely add to the misery of so many people/, when the effects of their products are so widely, scientifically known?