Olga Tokarczuk. Image from Wikipedia
Nobel Prize for Literature:
The Nobel Prize for Literature Committee awarded two prizes, one for 2018 and one for 2019. Olga Tokarszuk and Peter Handke are the awardees for 2018 and 2019 respectively. Here is more information from the BBC.
Olga Tokarczuk’s work sounds like something I would like to read; it has elements of magical realism and the fantastical. Her most recent novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, was published in 2009. She has won many honors throughout Europe including the Man Booker Prize.
Peter Handke is well-known as a playwright and screenwriter. He cowrote most of Wim Wender’s film Wings of Desire. He has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize and the International Ibsen Award, an award which was met with protests and controversy. Hanke supported Milosevic and denies many of the proven massacres in Yugoslavia took place, and he has said that the Nobel Prize for Literature should be abolished. I guess the selection committee showed him!
You’ve got to love this article just for the two authors, Lavie Tidar and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Fireside has notified some authors that they are cancelling contracts for upcoming novellas. This does not appear to have affected short fiction for the magazine. Paul Defendini, publisher of Fireside, provides more information. He positions this as a workload-driven decision. Thanks to File770 for both links.
McSweeney’s shares Professor McGonagal’s tenure application.
Peter Handke. Image from Wikipedia.
Movies and TV:
Variety reviewed the premiere episode of ABC’s speculative fiction thriller Emergence. (By the way, the show unveils one major plot secret as early as Episode Three.)
John Scalzi takes a nerdy look at The Gemini Man.
Over on Rotten Tomatoes, critics are split on Joker, with the audience liking it more.
Internet:
Also courtesy of John Scalzi is this: a checklist will let you create a(n) (in)famous Scalzi-like burrito and provides you with the nutritional information. I am shocked at how many calories “heart-shaped candies” add.
Speaking of calories, here are those Halloween-themed candies you didn’t know you were looking for.
Atlas Obscura highlights Jenny Wilde, an artist whose history and artistic work on the Mardi Gras parade floats in New Orleans cry out for an historical novel.
Did you know that Locus Magazine sells Locus T-shirts? I didn’t but it seems as if I should have.
This video is more than six minutes long, but stay with it because they really do play the James Bond theme. I didn’t know what boomwhackers were.
You’re right, Marion. I didn’t know I needed Dove’s White Chocolate Caramel Apple Crisps until I saw them, and now I’m ready to go on a shopping expedition just so I can score some of them. :)
I know. These kinds of posts are dangerous for me.
Dangerous for ALL of us! (she said as she scribbled “DOVE WHITE CHOC APPLE CRISPS” on her shopping list)
I am fortunate that I do not like white chocolate. Indeed, nothing in that list sounded edible, much less desirable. Eeew.