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LitNotes: Just One of the Guys
May 26, 2008
One of These Ladies Might Be:
: Carol Ann Duffy, Wendy Cope, or Fleur Adcock could become the first-ever
female Poet Laureate of Britain.
The Queen appoints the Poet Laureate, and Chloe Garner, head of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, has written to QEII and her bureaucratic minions to respectfully ask that a woman be considered for the post: "There has been no female poet laureate since the Royal household created the formal position for John Dryden in 1668. Nothing in the rules actually debars women and there are many splendid female poets from all generations writing and performing in Britain today." I say: Perhaps, after 400 years, Your Majesty, it's about bloody time?
He's Definitely Not: Welcome to your new industry, Markus Dohle. It's a
warm fuzzy place! That's why
The New York Times decided to celebrate your appointment with
the headline "Publishing Outsider Picked to Head Random House:" "The appointment of Mr. Dohle, 39, an outsider to the publishing industry, is likely to rattle insiders at Random House and comes at a time when both Random House and the wider publishing industry are suffering from a slowdown." (Just think, that sentence could be a publishing Mad Lib.)
Most of the rest of the article isn't about you, anyway, Herr Dohle; it's about Peter Olson, because everyone in publishing already knows him, and one of the hallmarks of our warm fuzzy trade is that we much prefer the devils we already know. But don't worry. Pretty soon you'll be one of them.
Perhaps, by a Long Shot:
"More than any of the literary qualities of
Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, the press release announcing the shortlist trumpets the fact that William Hill has quoted the book at 1/2 odds." Guy Dammamm's entry in
The Guardian Books Blog has got to be the thing that cheered me up most today. "Drawing up odds for books, it turns out, is not dissimilar to horses... for books you can only really go on the general buzz in the industry."
Graham Sharpe, head of media relations for Britain's William Hill booking agents, says "It seems that people appreciate that we put odds to them because it makes the books easier to assess. And besides, book prizes are a valuable part of our business - not millions, but tens of thousands."
I never thought of heading to an OTB when it's National Book Award time...perhaps I'm missing out on a gold mine! Does anyone know if American bookies offer odds on our literary prizes? I clearly have some research to do.
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on May 26, 2008 | Comments (0)
