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Poet Jo Shapcott wins 2010 Costa Book of the Year
26th January 2011 | 1 comments | 1 person likes this
“We were captivated by the poetry in this special, original, compassionate, uplifting and accessible book that readers will go back to again and again.”
That’s how Andrew Neil summed up the 2010 Costa Book of the Year judges’ admiration for this year’s winning book - Jo Shapcott’s Of Mutability. His praise was richly deserved but even so, Shapcott’s triumph took the literary world by surprise. For a start, it’s the second... -
My favourite books of 2010
6th January 2011 | 1 comments | 2 people like this
January is always a dreary month – but it’s even worse than usual this year. VAT’s gone up, it’s freezing cold outside and most of my time is spent chivvying my teenage son to revise for his impending exams. If you’re fed up with January and dread the thought of yet more snow, then the most cheering answer to the winter blues is to draw the curtains, light the fire and...
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Tough choice for the Costa judges
27th January 2010 | 4 comments | 3 people like this
Goodness knows how the judges, an eclectic bunch who included the likes of model Marie Helvin and Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, decided between the five writers vying for the 2009 Costa Book of the Year Award. Somehow they had to weigh up the respective merits of a novel set in 1950s New York, the account of a young Bangladeshi fleeing an arranged marriage, the biography of a physics genius, an...
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My top ten books of the year
15th December 2009 | 2 comments | 2 people like this
Newspapers are busy filling their pages with their top tens of the year. 2009 has been a vintage year for fiction so here are a few of my Christmas must-reads. High-brow, low-brow, you name it, it’s an eclectic list. In no particular order (as they say on The X-Factor), my favourites include:
1: I've bought Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury, £7.99) for almost everyone I know. An ambitious, epic novel, it...
CONTRIBUTOR
Emma Lee-Potter
Emma Lee-Potter is a journalist and author of four novels. She has two teenage children and spends her spare time worrying about the ramshackle farmhouse she bought in the south of France. The wreck has half a roof, assorted wildlife and an alarming damp problem but her friends assure her it all be perfect by 2020. She writes a weekly blog for Easy Living magazine.
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