Haruki Murakami and James Frey lead all-male shortlist for bad sex award

Annual prize intended to show up the worst sexual description in fiction singles out some famous names for a second time – but no women

• Bad sex award 2018: the contenders in quotes

Female authors have managed to avoid including bad sex scenes in their novels this year – at least according to the Literary Review, which has announced an all-male shortlist for that least-coveted of literary prizes, the Bad sex in fiction award.

Haruki Murakami, often named as a contender for the Nobel prize, makes the cut for passages from his latest novel Killing Commendatore in which impossible amounts of semen are ejaculated by the protagonist. The controversial US novelist James Frey, who was exposed for inventing parts of his memoir A Million Little Pieces, was selected for a scene in his novel Katerina described by judges as “almost like wish fulfilment”.

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Unknown John Donne manuscript discovered in Suffolk

Found in a box, the 400-year-old volume is one of the largest handwritten collections of the poet’s verse and is expected to sell for more than £200,000

A previously unrecorded handwritten manuscript of John Donne’s poetry has been found in a box at an English country house in Suffolk.

Dating back 400 years, the bound collection was kept for at least the last two centuries at Melford Hall in Suffolk. Sotheby’s expert Dr Gabriel Heaton was on a “standard checking visit” to the property when he found it in a box with other papers.

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Linda Fairstein: literary group rescinds honor over role in Central Park Five case

Mystery Writers of America withdrew Grand Master award from ex-prosecutor after writers expressed outrage over the decision

The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) withdrew a major honor on Thursday from author Linda Fairstein after other writers condemned the ex-prosecutor’s role in New York’s notorious “Central Park Five” case.

Related: Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: the racially charged rise of a demagogue

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Ted Hughes and DH Lawrence 'owe unacknowledged debt' to 'uncelebrated' Amy Lowell

Paper claims Lowell’s earlier writings can be seen in Hughes’s poem Pike and Lawrence’s The Rainbow, but her gender and sexuality made her unpopular

Ted Hughes’s poem Pike is one of the late poet laureate’s best-known works, taught in schools across the UK and endlessly anthologised. But Hughes’s image of a fish with “green tigering the gold” has an unacknowledged debt to a forgotten poem by the American poet Amy Lowell, according to an English academic who claims that Hughes “confidently fished out the most appealing imagery from the earlier work” in a new paper.

According to Dr Hannah Roche, a lecturer in English at the University of York, it is “nothing short of incredible” that Hughes’s 1959 poem Pike “has not been considered in its close relation” to Lowell’s 1914 work The Pike. In her paper Myths, Legends, and Apparitional Lesbians, which has just been published in the academic journal Modernist Cultures, Roche pinpoints similarities between the poems.

Lowell was a rather large lady, a lesbian, a woman, so for all these reasons she’s unpopular, uncelebrated

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Rough Guides launches tailormade trips as part of major overhaul

Guidebook publisher moves away from book sales to become a tech platform providing bespoke holiday service that aims to ‘change the way people travel’

After almost 40 years of helping backpackers travel on a budget, Rough Guides has launched a bespoke holiday service aimed at “time-poor” adventurous older travellers who no longer want to rough it. The move is the start of a transformation of the publisher’s entire business model from guidebook seller to online travel company.

“In five to ten years we don’t want to be seen as a guidebook publisher: we want to be seen as a dynamic tech company that provides tailormade trips,” said CEO René Frey.

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Margaret Atwood announces The Handmaid's Tale sequel, The Testaments

Sequel to the Canadian’s bestselling feminist dystopia will be published around the world in September 2019

Margaret Atwood has announced a sequel to her bestselling feminist dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, titled The Testaments.

“Dear Readers,” wrote Atwood in a press release announcing the book on Wednesday. “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”

Related: Margaret Atwood: ‘I am not a prophet. Science fiction is really about now’

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Green Book in Oscars race after National Board of Review award

Best film prize goes to drama starring Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, in US awards with form in picking Oscar contenders

The National Board of Review, the New York-based film-industry association with a small but influential membership, has named the racial-discrimination comedy drama Green Book as its best film of the year. With a history of picking major Oscar contenders – such as The Post in 2017 and Manchester By the Sea in 2016 – the NBR’s awards are seen as an early Oscar bellwether as awards campaigns get under way.

Directed by Peter Farrelly, Green Book stars Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen as an African American pianist and his Italian American driver/bodyguard as they travel across the deep south on a concert tour. It is named after a well-known guidebook considered vital for African American travellers in the US southern states during the Jim Crow era.

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Early Anne Sexton works rediscovered after 60 years

Uncollected poems and an essay show the troubled confessional poet striking a much brighter tone than in her more famous work

A handful of forgotten early works by Anne Sexton, in which the American confessional poet explores a brighter array of subjects than her usual darker fare, has been uncovered by scholars and will see the light of day for the first time in more than half a century.

Sexton, known for her Pulitzer prize-winning poetry about mental illness and death, began writing after she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital following a breakdown. One of the US’s most acclaimed poets, she killed herself at the age of 45 in 1974, leaving behind her collections including her 1960 debut To Bedlam and Part Way Back and 1967’s Live or Die, which won the Pulitzer.

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Netflix announces plans to adapt Roald Dahl stories

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory among titles snapped up by streaming giant which also plans to go beyond the writer’s published work

Beloved Roald Dahl classics including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Esio Trot; the Twits and the BFG are set to get the Netflix treatment next year, with the streaming giant and the author’s estate announcing a slew of animated adaptations and plans for a “story universe” that would go beyond Dahl’s published work.

On Tuesday, Netflix confirmed it had secured the rights for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator’ The BFG – most recently adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2017 – The Twits; Matilda; George’s Marvellous Medicine; Boy: Tales of Childhood; Going Solo; The Enormous Crocodile; The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me; Henry Sugar; Billy and the Minpins; The Magic Finger; Esio Trot; Dirty Beasts; and Rhyme Stew.

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Have you ever read a pirated book or been affected by piracy? Share your stories

We’d like to hear from people who have downloaded books illegally and those affected by book piracy

According to the Intellectual Property Office’s latest study of online copyright infringement, 17% of ebooks read online are now pirated – around 4m books. While stereotypes persist that young people are the main perpetrators of piracy, Stephen Lotinga at the Publishers Association says their research shows that ebook pirates “tend to be from better-off socio-economic groups, and to be aged between 31 and 50-something. It’s not the people who can’t afford books. It’s not teenagers in their rooms.”

Related: 'We're told to be grateful we even have readers': pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series

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William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize shared for first time

• Paul D. Gibson and Tom Gregory win joint prize
• Award has never been shared before in 30-year history

For the first time in 30 years joint winners of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award have been announced, with Paul D. Gibson’s The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee sharing the prize with Tom Gregory’s A Boy In The Water.

Related: Eamonn Magee: ‘My father convinced the IRA to give me one bullet’

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Award for thriller without violence against women goes to Jock Serong

Inaugural Staunch prize won by the Australian novelist’s On the Java Ridge, in which a group of surfers tries to rescue a refugee boat from a storm

A thriller in which a group of Australian surfers and a boat carrying refugees are caught in a storm off Indonesia has won the inaugural Staunch prize, which goes to a thriller “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered”.

A reaction to the prevalence of violence against women in fiction, the £2,000 award went to Australian author Jock Serong for his third novel, On the Java Ridge. Taking on Australia’s refugee policy, the thriller sees a group Australians on holiday in Indonesia rescue shipwrecked refugees from stormy waters.

Related: A prize for thrillers with no violence against women? That’s not progressive

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Graphic novel 'steeped in Islamophobia' pulled after protests

A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library by Jack Gantos and Dave McKean withdrawn after more than 1,000 people object

A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, a controversial new comic that has been described as “wilfully fear-mongering and spreading harmful stereotypes”, has been pulled from publication following a barrage of criticism.

The graphic novel, written by the Newbery medal-winning author Jack Gantos and illustrated by Sandman artist Dave McKean, follows a young, brown-skinned would-be terrorist. It was due to be released in May 2019.

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'Mini-Disney': Judge Dredd publisher to open UK film and TV studios

Rebellion, which has previously announced a Dredd TV show and a Rogue Trooper film, will film both in former printworks in Didcot, Oxfordshire

The publishing company that owns a raft of British comic book characters, including Judge Dredd, Billy Bunter and Sexton Blake, has acquired a former Oxfordshire printworks to transform into a state-of-the-art film and TV studio to bring them to the screen.

Rebellion, which is one of the UK’s biggest producers of video games, comics and books, is the publisher of long-running sci-fi weekly 2000AD. It has previously announced plans for a TV show based on futuristic lawman Judge Dredd, as well as a Rogue Trooper film to be helmed by Moon and Warhammer director Duncan Jones.

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After The Fall, Jamie Dornan returns in Irish period drama

Director Allan Cubitt tells why he cast actor in revenge tragedy Death and Nightingales

The creator of TV crime series The Fall has admitted he turned down the chance to make a fourth season of the drama because he felt he had gone as far as he could with the “dark” material he was working with.

Allan Cubitt wrote three series of The Fall that saw actor Jamie Dornan play Paul Spector, a serial killer dodging Stella Gibson, a determined detective played by Gillian Anderson.

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The Joy of Waterboiling: kettle cookbook wins oddest book title award

The German-language recipe collection takes the Diagram prize in a public vote lauded as ‘a clear call for a second Brexit referendum’

The Joy of Waterboiling, a German-language guide to cooking meals in a kettle, has been named the oddest book title of the year by the Bookseller.

The magazine’s annual Diagram prize this year pitted titles against each other that included Are Gay Men More Accurate in Detecting Deceits?, Equine Dry Needling, Jesus on Gardening and The Secret History of Dung. A public vote saw The Joy of Waterboiling garner 56% of votes.

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Poet, hero, rapist – outrage over Chilean plan to rename airport after Neruda

Human rights activists argue that the honour is inappropriate for a man who described raping a maid in his memoir

Pablo Neruda was a Nobel laureate whose poetry chronicled the lives and struggles of ordinary Latin Americans, and whose life was upheld as a symbol of resistance to dictatorship.

But a decision to rename Chile’s busiest international airport after him has been met with outrage from human rights activists who argue that the honour is inappropriate for a man who admitted to rape in his own memoirs.

Related: Chile's #MeToo moment: students protest against sexual harassment

Related: Chile admits Pablo Neruda might have been murdered by Pinochet regime

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Costa book awards shortlist memoir of homeless couple's coast walk

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn is acclaimed by judges as ‘an absolutely brilliant story about the human capacity to endure’

A British woman’s account of how she and her terminally ill husband embarked on a 630-mile walk along the South West Coast Path after being made homeless has been shortlisted for the Costa book awards.

Bailiffs were banging on the windows of their Welsh farmhouse when Raynor Winn, then 50, came up with the idea to pack a few belongings into rucksacks and set out from Minehead along the coastal path. Her husband Moth was diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease but the couple had nowhere else to go.

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Authors boycott UAE book festival over Matthew Hedges jailing

Historian Antony Beevor and journalist Frank Gardner have announced they will not attend the Dubai Lit Fest in protest

Several UK authors are reconsidering invitations to attend a United Arab Emirates literary festival after a British academic was jailed for life this week for alleged spying, with historian Antony Beevor and BBC journalist Frank Gardner confirming their withdrawal.

Serious concerns about the safety of British academics and writers were raised after Durham University PhD student Matthew Hedges was charged with espionage and sentenced. He was in the UAE to conduct research for his thesis on civil-military relations in the region after the Arab spring, and has been held in solitary confinement for the last five months.

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Lewis Carroll's cat-astrophe, and other literary kittens

Alice in Wonderland author’s angry notes on a feline shown in British Library exhibition

It is an apparently sweet illustration of Alice holding her black kitten Kitty before going though the mirror but it absolutely infuriated the writer Lewis Carroll. “Much over-printed … very bad,” is his testy, underlined scribble.

Carroll’s Trump-like anger at the printing of his book Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There is revealed in a new exhibition opening at the British Library which explores and celebrates cats in literature.

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Lost portrait of Charles Dickens turns up at auction in South Africa

Margaret Gillies’ 1843 work, found among trinkets, depicts author as young literary star

A portrait of a young and handsome Charles Dickens that was lost for 174 years has been discovered in a tray of trinkets at an auction in South Africa.

The discovery is one of the most remarkable finds of recent memory. The art dealer Philip Mould, who was instrumental in its identification, said: “I’ve spent a career specialising in British art and this ranks among the most exciting things we have ever discovered. It is the lost portrait.”

Charles Dickens: The Lost Portrait is at Philip Mould & Company from 23 November to 25 January

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Readers rejoice as shop finally sells book that sat on shelf for 27 years

Announcement of unusually slow sale of Pitkin children’s biography of William the Conqueror retweeted 150,000 times

An independent bookshop in Merseyside has warmed the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers around the world after revealing the sale of a book that had sat forgotten on its shelves for 27 years.

Broadhursts of Southport’s part-time staff member Joanne Ball announced on Twitter that she had just sold a book in stock since May 1991. “We always knew its day would come,” she wrote of the Pitkin children’s biography of William the Conqueror – unaware that her announcement would be retweeted almost 150,000 times as book-lovers worldwide rejoiced in the book finally finding a home.

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Roald Dahl’s nature journal My Year republished after decades out of print

The author’s final book records his observations of the Buckinghamshire countryside alongside memories of childhood hijinks

From the badgers lining their “deep winter quarters” with dry leaves to the larch woods making “great splashes of golden flame”, Roald Dahl’s vision of November is laid out in his last book: a diary of the author’s year that has been republished for the first time in 20 years.

My Year, which Dahl wrote shortly before his death in 1990, has been out of print since 1998. Packed with illustrations by Quentin Blake, it deals with everything from the changing seasons to the pranks he pulled as a child on unsuspecting passers-by, moving through the months of the year as Dahl documents the flora and fauna around his house in Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre has collaborated with Penguin Random House and the Roald Dahl Story Company to bring the book back into print.

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Michelle Obama memoir tops US book charts – with nine copies sold per second

The former first lady’s autobiography has been warmly reviewed and is No 2 in the UK charts – outsold only by David Walliams

Michelle Obama’s Becoming sold almost nine copies per second on its first day on sale in North America to become the fastest-selling book of the year so far, while in the UK, the memoir is close to the top of the book charts.

Published last Tuesday, the former first lady’s autobiography has been warmly greeted by both the media and the public. The New York Times called it a “polished pearl of a memoir”, the Guardian said that it was “dignified” with a “refreshing level of honesty”. On Amazon.com, more than 200 user reviews gave it five stars.

Related: Five days, 110,000 books sold: how does David Walliams do it?

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Chinese writer Tianyi sentenced to decade in prison for gay erotic novel

Pseudonymous author was charged under law that makes it an ‘especially serious’ crime to sell more than 5,000 copies of a work classed as pornographic

Free-speech campaigners have slammed China’s “flagrant disregard for fundamental human rights” after the author of a gay erotic novel was sentenced to more than a decade in prison for producing and selling pornographic materials.

The author, who writes under the pseudonym Tianyi and is from eastern China’s Anhui province, was identified by the state-run Global Times only by her surname, Liu. The paper reported that police were alerted after the book Gongzhan, translated as Occupy, went viral last year. Police in the Anhui city of Wuhu, where Liu was sentenced, said the novel described obscene sexual behaviour between males, and was “full of perverted sexual acts such as violation and abuse”.

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Agatha Christie webchat with Sophie Hannah – post a question now

Eighteenth-century schoolboy's doodles uncovered as library is restored

William John Chute – ‘not known for his academic prowess’ – is believed to have scribbled in the margins of a Euripides book when he was 15

A centuries-old doodle of a cyclops has been discovered in a study-shy teenager’s book of ancient Greek plays by conservation staff restoring his family’s library in a Hampshire mansion.

William John Chute, who lived at The Vyne between 1757 and 1824, was the owner of the book and is believed to have drawn the sketch when he was 15. The National Trust has identified it as the cyclops Polephemus, from Homer’s Odyssey.

Related: Eighteenth-century doodles of a chicken in trousers go viral

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Canadian literary prize suspended after finalists object to Amazon sponsorship

The Prix littéraire des collégiens has been halted after shortlisted authors condemned the ‘promotion of a multinational that harms bookstores’

A much-loved Québécois literary prize has been suspended after the five finalists for this year’s award publicly protested at its sponsorship by Amazon.

The CA$5,000 (£3,000) Prix littéraire des collégiens, running since 2003, is intended to promote Québécois literature and is decided by a jury of hundreds of students who select their winner from a selection of five works of fiction written in French by Canadian authors. But after this year’s finalists, the writers Lula Carballo, Dominique Fortier, Karoline Georges, Kevin Lambert and Jean-Christophe Réhel, discovered that Amazon Canada would be the prize’s new principal sponsor, they wrote to Le Devoir urging organisers to reconsider.

Related: French bookshops revolt after prize selects novel self-published on Amazon

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Junot Díaz welcomed back by Pulitzer prize after review into sexual misconduct claims

After ‘exhaustive’ independent review, the prize has restored the author’s position as chairman of the board

A “exhaustive” independent review of the allegations of sexual misconduct made against the novelist Junot Díaz has found no evidence requiring his removal from the board of the Pulitzer prize.

The Dominican American novelist was accused in May of forcibly kissing the writer Zinzi Clemmons, as well as behaving inappropriately towards two other female writers. He subsequently voluntarily stepped down as chairman of the Pulitzer board, as the organisation launched a review of the allegations.

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‘Never fails to disappoint’: Roxy Jacenko book pulped after cover misprint

Allen & Unwin recalls PR expert’s guide to brand-building after Jackie O’s ‘nightmare’ endorsement

The Australian socialite and businesswoman Roxy Jacenko has had to pulp the first copies of her latest book after a quote on the cover mistakenly said she “never fails to disappoint”.

Jacenko, a PR specialist and former contestant on Australia’s Celebrity Apprentice, said the “nightmare” endorsement was an honest mistake and was meant to say she “never fails to deliver”.

Related: Rear view: the big business of bottoms

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Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown on Trump: 'Reality has surpassed fiction'

The writer, who has sold 250m books, joins a host of artists from Meryl Streep to Jay-Z who have denounced the president

Thriller writer Dan Brown, the master of far-fetched plots featuring larger-than-life-villains, has described the Donald Trump presidency as stranger than fiction.

The author of bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code admitted he was taking a professional risk by speaking out against Trump during an interview with the Guardian.

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Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson review – our lunar future

A near-future story about a tech geek and a member of the Chinese elite takes in everything from quantum theory and revolution to shyness

In the latest novel from the SF giant, it is 30 years in the future and Fred Fredericks, a shy young American employee of a Swiss tech company, travels to the moon to deliver a communications device to the large Chinese colony at the lunar south pole. He finds himself caught up in a vicious power struggle between rival factions within the Chinese security services and ends up on the run with the “princessling” Chan Qi, the pregnant daughter of a senior member of the communist elite, who is under threat because of her dissident political views and high standing among the country’s poorest “one billion”. As they flee for their lives, the two of them must travel to China and then back to the moon again, against the backdrop of a revolution in China, and a parallel uprising in the other economic superpower, the United States.

It’s a thriller-type plot but it doesn’t read like a thriller. The pace is slow and the narrative is regularly interspersed with reflections, the characters are thoughtful, shootouts are rare – there is no visceral sense of jeopardy. We learn about the political instability, for instance, mainly through newscasts received on the moon. This is revolution seen as an interesting collision of historical forces, rather than experienced through the rage and fear of people on the streets.

It’s a thriller-type plot but it doesn’t read like a thriller – the narrative is regularly interspersed with reflections

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The Crimes of Grindelwald: do JK Rowling fans really want to read a script?

With the Fantastic Beasts script having sold more than 420,000 copies, fans seem up for buying the Harry Potter author’s work in any format – but is it any good?

It’s 11pm on a Thursday night and a gaggle of twentysomethings are crowding around a tub of Lego in London’s Waterstones Piccadilly, making wands. It’s an hour before the latest JK Rowling adventure, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is released in UK cinema screens. At the same time, Rowling’s script is being released as a handsome hardback on its own. Perhaps no other author could publish their jaunts into screenwriting as bestselling books, but this is Rowling, after all: the one author who can inspire adults to don school uniforms at midnight and head back to class – albeit one where they can drink Voldermorjitos.

More than 20 years since the first book was published, there is still no equal to Harry Pottermania in literature or the flood of merchandise it has spawned: backpacks, chess sets, pyjamas, Lego, wands, soft toys. Even scripts published as books, a strange if lucrative endeavour (421,000 copies of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them have sold in the UK alone) continue to attract fan excitement and marketing pizzazz. With Crimes of Grindelwald, booksellers up and down the country are preparing for a huge weekend of sales, with Waterstones holding more than 240 events across three days – efforts that even some fans feel more befits a fully fledged novel.

Related: Thanks, JK Rowling, but I’ve had it with Harry Potter | Pauline Bock

Related: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald review – Jude Law's Dumbledore shines

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Third of Essex libraries could close under council plans

Twenty-five of county’s 74 libraries have been identified as ‘not required’, while a further 19 branches could be handed over to volunteers to run

More than a third of Essex’s 74 libraries have been earmarked for closure by the county council, which cited a “collapse” in library usage over the last decade as it launched a major consultation into its proposals.

The council has announced plans to close 25 libraries as it seeks to realise its vision of a service “available online 24-7 to fit with people’s lives in Essex”. In its proposals, which were revealed on Thursday, Essex county council says the closures are proposed “on the basis that because of relatively low demand, the availability of other services and considering the community served, a library service is not required in these locations”.

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‘Ignore this’: Jonathan Franzen’s top 10 writing tips get gleefully trolled on Twitter

Several authors hit back at the American novelist, questioning his logic and issuing their own mock advice

American novelist Jonathan Franzen has drawn the ire of fellow writers, who are mercilessly trolling him following an article in which he lists his 10 writing rules for aspiring novelists.

No stranger to controversy, Franzen often ends up in public spats after media tours for his new books. His most famous was in 2011, when he derided Oprah’s book club following her selection of his novel The Corrections – after which Oprah disinvited Franzen from appearing on her show.

Related: Jonathan Franzen: 'Climate change isn't only reason for bird decline'

6. characters poop plot
7. maybe try saying something more than just what's just on the page, like, a lot of story is unseen
8. writing advice is bullshit; bullshit can fertilize
9. eat bees?
10a. fuck, I dunno, nobody knows what the hell they're doing
10b. have you tried napping

hold on does jonathan franzen hate the library pic.twitter.com/vclzGsZnr6

brb texting my friends jonathan franzen's writing tips without context

say what you will about Jonathan Franzen but he's great at getting everyone on Twitter to talk about him without actually being on Twitter, meaning he is better at Twitter than any of us

I am delighted to tell you I have broken every single one of these rules. https://t.co/9eX6WJw4ZP

My 7 rules for book writing
1. Spelling
2. Have a Frankenstein in it
3. Do not talk about Book Writing
4. Do not talk about Book Writing
5. It should take place on a boat
6. A scene where a guy splits a bullet in half with a sword
7. Have a nice plant on your writing desk

ten writing rules
1. find exactly the right place to sit
2. better get coffee also
3. turn off the internet we're WRITING
4. but i have a question only the internet can answer
5. more coffee!
6. maybe i got an important email
7. how is the coffee shop closing
8. oh no

Jonathan Franzen’s rules for novelists are all really ordinary and what you’d expect. Except for this one. Kafka was not a beetle. Can confirm. pic.twitter.com/xcA9vgOgRV

My Franzen tweet actually reads insanely arrogant. Which is embarrassing, because who the fuck am I? Apologies.

Jonathan Franzen hates Twitter because they've trapped one of his precious birds in their logo

I like that Jonathan Franzen is such a reviled figure in letters that he can trend in the United States just for writing an article that's like "do not use adverbs" and "challenge yourself"

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'Toxic' beats 'gammon' and 'cakeism' to win Oxford Dictionaries' word of 2018

Toxic best captures ‘the ethos, mood and preoccupations’ of the year, according to the dictionary

Oxford Dictionaries has steered clear of “big dick energy” and the derogatory term “gammon” to name “toxic” as its word of the year, citing the adjective’s use to describe everything from the debate around Brexit to the environment and masculinity.

Defining the word as “poisonous”, Oxford said it had become a “descriptor for the year’s most talked about topics”. The dictionary pointed to a 45% rise in the number of times the word has been looked up on its website, and said it best captured “the ethos, mood, or preoccupations” of 2018, thanks to “the sheer scope” of its application.

Cakeism

Related: Word of the year? ‘Single-use’ glosses over the grim truth about plastics

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Lily James and Armie Hammer to star in Rebecca movie remake

A new adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novel will be directed by High Rise’s Ben Wheatley

A new film version of Rebecca, based on Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic novel, is in the works, with Lily James and Armie Hammer confirmed in the lead roles.

A 1940 adaptation of Rebecca, about a newly married woman oppressed by the memory of her husband’s first wife, was Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film, and won the best picture Oscar in 1940.

Related: My favourite Hitchcock: Rebecca

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National Book Awards: Sigrid Nunez wins major prize as Isabel Allende is honoured

Allende received a lifetime achievement award at a ceremony that celebrated diversity, truth and literature as healing forces in a dark time

Sigrid Nunez has won the top prize at the prestigious National Book Awards in New York on Wednesday night, winning the fiction category for her seventh novel, The Friend, about a woman grieving the loss of her beloved literary mentor as she inherits his mourning dog: a 180-pound Great Dane.

Nunez beat Jamel Brinkley’s short story collection A Lucky Man; Florida by Lauren Groff; Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson; and The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.

Related: The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada review – an eco-terror mini epic

I refuse to live in fear – let alone to vote in fear. This is a dark time, my friends

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'A horror story': history of Chernobyl nuclear disaster wins Baillie Gifford prize

Ukrainian author Serhii Plokhy, who grew up downstream from the damaged reactor, wins £30,000 prize for Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy

A Harvard history professor’s “haunting” account of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which delves into the “heartbreaking stories of heroism” from the people who helped to prevent the whole of Europe from becoming uninhabitable, has won the £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.

Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy opens as a radiation alarm goes off in a power plant in Sweden, and as staff begin to suspect a Soviet accident. It goes on to lay out what led to the worst nuclear disaster in history, telling the stories of the firefighters, scientists, soldiers, engineers and policemen who worked to extinguish the nuclear inferno in Chernobyl on 26 April 1986. One of more than 200 books submitted for the Baillie Gifford prize, it beat a shortlist that also featured Carl Zimmer’s look at the science of inheritance, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh; Stephen R Platt’s history of the first opium war, Imperial Twilight; and Hannah Fry’s exploration of what it means to be human in the age of the machine, Hello World.

Related: Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy review – Europe nearly became uninhabitable

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Robin Robertson wins Goldsmiths prize for innovative fiction with The Long Take

Scottish poet wins £10,000 prize for his ‘narrative poem’ about a D-Day veteran in search of a home in postwar America

The Scottish poet Robin Robertson has won the Goldsmiths prize for the year’s most innovative fiction for his debut novel The Long Take, the story of a D-Day veteran written in a mix of verse and prose.

Robertson, who has won many awards for his poetry, turned to fiction to tell the story of Walker, a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who can’t return home to Nova Scotia after the war and searches for a new way of life in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

By the time you have finished reading The Long Take, you won’t quite be the same

Related: Robin Robertson and Andrew McMillan on sex, war and truth in poetry – books podcast

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Dostoyevsky book among hundreds banned in Kuwait

Information ministry blacklists The Brothers Karamazov and other titles at book festival

Kuwaiti authorities have blacklisted nearly 1,000 books at a literature festival, including one by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Saad al-Anzi, who heads the Kuwait international literary festival, said the information ministry had banned 948 books including Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a novel set in 19th-century Russia that explores morality, free will and the existence of God.

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Stan Lee was working on a new superhero called Dirt Man, says daughter

JC Lee says the late co-creator of Marvel was helping her develop Dirt Man, after ‘trying to get him to do a character with me my entire life’

The late Stan Lee’s daughter has revealed that the comics legend was working on one final superhero before he died: Dirt Man.

JC Lee told TMZ that she had been “trying to get [Stan Lee] to do a character with me my entire life”. “We have been working on a character called Dirt Man. The last little angel we’ve got tucked away is called Dirt Man,” she said. “I said, ‘Daddy please, no clatter, no steel, no any of that. Let’s get down and dirty … Let’s do Dirt Man.”

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Milan Kundera may have Czech citizenship restored, says prime minister

Czech prime minister proposes renewing exiled writer’s citizenship decades after the communist regime removed it

The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has offered to restore the exiled writer Milan Kundera’s citizenship almost 40 years after the country’s communist regime stripped him of it.

Kundera, author of some of the 20th century’s most acclaimed works of fiction, was expelled from the communist party for “anti-communist activities” in 1950. He became a hate figure for the authorities and eventually fled Czechoslovakia for France in 1975. In 1979, his Czech citizenship was revoked by the government: he became a French citizen two years later. His works – from The Unbearable Lightness of Being to The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – were banned in his homeland until the late 80s.

Related: How important is Milan Kundera today?

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'The greatest superpower is luck': Stan Lee in quotes

As well as creating a universe of enduring characters, Stan Lee spent a lifetime championing equality, diversity, and the rich art of comic books

• News: Marvel co-creator dies aged 95
• Share your tributes and memories

Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil and the X-Men, who has died aged 95, was an outspoken advocate of equality and of the value of comics as an art form.

Here are some of his greatest quotes.

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Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea fishing trip letter sold for $28,000

Author’s account sent to Miami newspaper in 1935 describes capture of giant marlin believed to have partly inspired his Pulitzer prize-winning novel

A 1935 letter in which Ernest Hemingway details his capture of a 500lb blue marlin, an escapade that is believed to have partly inspired his novel The Old Man and the Sea, has been sold for $28,000 (£22,000).

The handwritten letter was sent by Hemingway on 8 May to the fishing editor of the Miami Herald, laying out in great detail how the author and his friend Henry Strater battled to keep sharks away from the marlin after catching it off the Bahamian island of Bimini.

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‘There will never be another Stan Lee’: fans and stars pay tribute to legend

Actor Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Winston Duke, and Seth Rogen were among those who hailed creator of Marvel comics

Tributes began pouring in from fans and celebrities hailing the comic creator Stan Lee on Monday, who died at the age of 95.

“There will never be another Stan Lee. For decades he provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort, confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy,” Captain America actor Chris Evans said on Twitter. “He exuded love and kindness and will leave an indelible mark on so, so, so many lives. Excelsior!!”

There will never be another Stan Lee. For decades he provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort, confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy. He exuded love and kindness and will leave an indelible mark on so, so, so many lives. Excelsior!!

THANK YOU, @TheRealStanLee. You gave us characters that continue to stand the test of time and evolve with our consciousness. You taught us that there are no limits to our future as long as we have access to our imagination. Rest in power! #EXCELSIOR #StanLee #rip pic.twitter.com/hnSmnHIDln

Thank you Stan Lee for making people who feel different realize they are special.

We’ve lost a creative genius. Stan Lee was a pioneering force in the superhero universe. I’m proud to have been a small part of his legacy and .... to have helped bring one of his characters to life. #StanLee #Wolverine pic.twitter.com/iOdefi7iYz

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Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, X-Men and Avengers, dies aged 95

Almost as famous as his Marvel superheroes, Lee was known for bringing complex emotional life to cartoon characters

The comic writer Stan Lee, co-creator of iconic characters including Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-Men, has died aged 95.

Teaming up with artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee revitalised the comics industry with his superheroes, giving them complex emotional lives to colour their all-action adventures.

Related: Stan Lee: the greatest storyteller in history?

Related: Marvel’s Stan Lee: ‘I’d never really thought of doing comics for a living’

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'Hugely disappointing' government response to libraries petition

Supporters including JK Rowling and Neil Gaiman add their names to a campaign calling for library funding to be ringfenced

The government’s response to a call from tens of thousands of library lovers, including JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, for libraries funding to be ringfenced is “hugely disappointing”, say campaigners.

Library supporter Frances Belbin started a petition on the government’s website in October, calling for funding to be ringfenced in order to keep branches open. Pointing out that “libraries across the country are being closed, cut back and/or outsourced to volunteers as a result of government cuts to local authority budgets”, Belbin’s petition has since been signed by almost 30,000 people, and backed by authors including Malorie Blackman, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Neil Gaiman and Joanne Harris. Rowling called on her millions of Twitter followers to join her in signing the petition, writing: “We need more signatures to protect government funding for libraries.”

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Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War take People's Choice honours

Shadowhunters, Korean boyband BTS and Khloe Kardashian were the other major winners in the awards determined by an online vote

The People’s Choice awards – the first major awards ceremony of the season – have seen Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther take the honours in the film section, giving them an early boost in the Oscars jostle.

The awards are voted for in a complex online poll and cover TV, music and pop culture as well as movies, and lean towards commercial and mainstream releases. Avengers: Infinity War was named best movie and action movie, with Scarlett Johansson named best female movie star, while Black Panther took two acting awards – best male movie star for Chadwick Boseman, and best action star for Danai Gurira. (Both actors also appeared as the same characters in Avengers: Infinity War.)

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Dear Pedro… how a letter from Truffaut sparked a lifelong passion

Pedro Corrêa do Lago has built up a collection of 100,000 letters written by famous people

When he was 12 years old, Pedro Corrêa do Lago wrote to JRR Tolkien, and François Truffaut – whose L’Enfant Sauvage he had just seen – and asked for their autographs. Corrêa do Lago’s father was a diplomat and, as a result, there was a chunky red copy of Who’s Who on the family bookshelves. This was 1970, and, along with a biographical note, Who’s Who printed each celebrity’s home address. Corrêa do Lago posted his letters and waited.

Tolkien’s secretary was quick to reply; the author was swamped by requests for an autograph and had decided to decline them all. From Truffaut, only silence.

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'I've been struggling with it': George RR Martin on The Winds of Winter

In an exclusive interview, the Game of Thrones author says the HBO show’s popularity has left him feeling ‘conscious I have to do something great’

• Interview: ‘When I began A Game of Thrones I thought it might be a short story’

George RR Martin has revealed that he has found it hard to finish the long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, as the rise in fame and popularity that came with the television adaptation Game of Thrones has become a “considerable weight to bear”.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian ahead of the publication of his next book, Fire and Blood, a history of the fantasy universe of his hugely popular series, Martin said he’d been wrestling with The Winds of Winter, which has been eagerly awaited by fans since the last book in the series, 2011’s A Dance With Dragons.

Related: Game of Thrones: how will Winds of Winter regain the suspense stolen by the show?

Once I get rolling, I don’t care what my email says or who’s mad at me this week because The Winds of Winter isn’t out

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The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan, Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri, Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils by James Lovegrove, The Subjugate by Amanda Bridgeman and The Dark Vault by VE Schwab

In a genre replete with stock Arthurian templates, it’s refreshing to see myths and legends taken from a different culture, in this instance Malay. In Natasha Ngan’s third YA novel, Girls of Paper and Fire (Hodder, £14.99), the citizens of the lavishly portrayed world of Ikhara are divided into three castes: Moon, the ruling demons; Steel, demon-human amalgams; and Paper, subjugated humans. Narrator Lei is a Paper girl, taken from her family to become a concubine, with eight other girls, of the Demon King. What follows her initial submission is the slow-burning story of the iniquity perpetrated by the ruling elite and Lei’s affecting love affair with her fellow Paper girl Wren, a liaison forbidden by the powers-that-be. The book works on several levels, as a satisfying glimpse into a different fantasy world, as a compelling narrative of personal rebellion, and as a timely reminder that, in the right hands, the fantasy genre has things to say about injustice and abuse of power in the real world.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2DdLb8u

Lost Naguib Mahfouz stories discovered in Nobel laureate's papers

Fifty handwritten stories – 18 of which have never been published – by the late Egyptian writer were found in his daughter’s home

A lost collection of short stories by the celebrated Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz has been discovered in a box of the late Nobel laureate’s papers.

The 50 handwritten stories were found by the Egyptian journalist Mohamed Shoair at the home of Mahfouz’s daughter Umm Kulthum. While some of the stories were published in magazines while Mahfouz was alive – the Arab world’s most beloved novelist died aged 94 in 2006 – 18 of them have never been published. Set in Cairo, they are filled with “fable-like scenarios and reappearing characters”, according to UK publisher Saqi Books, which will release the stories in English next autumn.

Related: Naguib Mahfouz: A centenary tribute

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'Terrible times are coming': the Holocaust diary that lay unread for 70 years

Jewish teenager Renia Spiegel was executed in Poland days after her 18th birthday. Decades after her diary resurfaced in America, it is finally set to read by the world

Seventy years after writing her final entry, the diary of Polish teenager Renia Spiegel, who has drawn comparisons to Anne Frank for her moving account of life as a Jew during the Nazi occupation of Poland and who was shot on the streets days after her 18th birthday, appeared in English this week for the first time.

Running to almost 700 pages, Spiegel’s diary begins in January 1939, when she was 15, and ends on the last day of her life, 30 July 1942, when she was executed by German soldiers. The last lines in the journal are written by her boyfriend, Zygmunt Schwarzer, who ended it with his account of her death and that of his parents: “Three shots! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots, shots.”

Why did I decide to start a diary today? Has something important happened? No! I just want a friend

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Amazon's AbeBooks backs down after booksellers stage global protest

After almost 600 booksellers withdrew 3.5m books from the secondhand marketplace in support of countries dropped by the website, it apologises for a ‘bad decision’

An “extraordinary and unprecedented” global protest from antiquarian booksellers has forced the Amazon-owned secondhand marketplace AbeBooks to backtrack on its decision to pull out of several countries.

Related: Booksellers unite in protest as Amazon's AbeBooks withdraws from several countries

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Benjamin Zephaniah rejects poet laureate overtures: 'They are not worthy'

Poet says he has ‘absolutely no interest’ in state appointment after being speculatively named as a contender to follow Carol Ann Duffy

Benjamin Zephaniah has ruled himself out of the running for the poet laureateship, saying he has “absolutely no interest in this job”.

Zephaniah, one of the UK’s most celebrated poets, had been mentioned in news reports as a possible candidate for the position once Carol Ann Duffy steps down from her 10-year term in 2019, alongside names including Lemn Sissay, Simon Armitage, Vahni Capildeo and Patience Agbabi. But the poet who describes himself as “profoundly anti-empire”, and who turned down an OBE in 2003, saying at the time, “Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought”, has made it clear that he is not an option for the laureateship.

Related: Carol Ann Duffy: ‘With the evil twins of Trump and Brexit … There was no way of not writing about that, it is just in the air’

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Hong Kong arts centre cancels Chinese dissident author event

Exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian was due to promote his satiric novel China Dream

A Hong Kong arts centre hosting the city’s high-profile literary festival has cancelled appearances by exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian, said the author, as Beijing tightens its grip on the semi-autonomous city.

It is the latest blow to freedom of speech in Hong Kong as concerns grow that liberties are under serious threat from an assertive China.

Related: 'China's Tolkien': millions mourn death of martial arts novelist Jin Yong

Related: Hong Kong: thousands protest at plan to build new artificial islands

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'Scary new world': political book sales explode as UK readers seek answers

Year-to-date sales are up 50% according to Waterstones, with Trump exposés and Brexit dissections leading the pack

Political book sales have exploded in politics publishing this year, according to Britain’s largest bookseller, Waterstones. The company attributed the growth to writers and readers “urgently seeking to understand this scary new world”.

The UK bookshop chain, which has more than 280 branches, has sold more politics books this year than in the whole of 2015 or 2016, with year-to-date politics sales up by more than 50%. Across the UK, sales of politics books have already surpassed 2017’s final figure of 1.35m, with 1.41m books sold this year so far, according to Nielsen BookScan.

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Richell prize: Ruth McIver wins literary award for 'unforgettable' crime novel

Judges for the $10,000 prize said I Shot the Devil was an ‘atmospheric and chillingly entertaining’ novel by an emerging writer of considerable talent

• Read an extract from Ruth McIver’s winning novel, I Shot the Devil

When Ruth McIver learned two weeks ago that her novel had won the $10,000 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, she had trouble keeping the news to herself. “It’s been a little weird knowing,” she told Guardian Australia. “I don’t have a good poker face.”

To add to the difficulty, McIver felt that her literary luck had changed very suddenly. Having been a writer for a decade with a couple of novel drafts under her belt, she entered a swathe of competitions – something she did every year. But this time, her work started to place.

Related: Helen Garner's Monkey Grip makes me examine who I am | Charlotte Wood

Related: I couldn't write about my mother's death, so I wrote a story for young people instead

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'Single-use' named 2018 word of the year

Collins Dictionary picks term referring to products made to be used once and thrown away as word of the year after rise in environmental awareness

Single-use, a term referring to products – often made of plastic –that are made to be used once and thrown away, has been named Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2018.

Backstop

Related: European parliament approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics

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Royal Mint rejected Roald Dahl coin over antisemitic views

Revealed: company dropped proposals to mark centenary of author’s birth, papers show

Plans to celebrate the life of Roald Dahl with a commemorative coin were rejected because of concerns about the author’s antisemitic views, it can be revealed.

Official papers obtained by the Guardian using freedom of information laws also disclose that the Royal Mint dropped proposals to issue a coin to mark the centenary of Dahl’s birth because he was “not regarded as an author of the highest reputation”.

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Booksellers unite in protest as Amazon's AbeBooks withdraws from several countries

Hundreds of booksellers have taken ‘vacation’ from the secondhand books marketplace due to it dropping sellers from countries such as Russia and South Korea

The motto of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, “Amor librorum nos unit” or “love of books unites us”, has been adopted as a battle cry this week by an army of hundreds of secondhand booksellers around the world. From Australia to Mexico, they have united in a flash strike against Amazon, after its secondhand books marketplace AbeBooks announced it will withdraw from markets including South Korea and Russia, which booksellers fear will devastate local businesses.

Booksellers in Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Russia were told by AbeBooks that from 30 November, it would “no longer support sellers located in certain countries”. “We apologise for this inconvenience,” added the marketplace, which was founded in 1995 and acquired by Amazon in 2008.

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Baudelaire suicide letter fetches three times estimated price at auction

French poet’s letter to his mistress, ahead of an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself, aged 24, has sold for €234,000 (£205,000)

An “extraordinary” letter in which the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire tells his lover of his plans to kill himself has sold at auction for three times more than was anticipated.

Baudelaire, author of the poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal, was 24 when he wrote the letter, on 30 June 1845. In debt, and unsure about his literary prowess, he told his mistress, Jeanne Duval, who inspired much of his poetry, that “by the time you receive this letter, I will be dead”.

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child album released

Imogen Heap has reworked tracks from her back catalogue along with her original compositions for the two-part stage play

Music from the triumphant West End play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been released as a new album by the Grammy award-winning British musician Imogen Heap.

Heap has created four “contemporary suites” from her background music for the play, which portrays a grown-up Harry working at the Ministry of Magic while his son starts school at Hogwarts. The suites reflect the play’s four acts, progressing from an upbeat opening, as the characters are introduced, to a darker second suite, an electronic third suite and an orchestral finale.

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As poet laureate prepares to step down, the succession race begins

Carol Ann Duffy will finish her decade in the role in May, but the long process of choosing the next appointee begins this weekend

• Simon Armitage: The highest office in poetry
  

Carol Ann Duffy ends Sincerity, her last collection as the UK’s poet laureate, with a peaceful image of retirement, the poet looking up “from the hill at Moniack, / to see my breath / seek its rightful place / with the stars, / with everyone else who breathes”. But the search for her replacement begins this Saturday, with the announcement of a panel of experts to guide the selection.

The steering group assembles the great and the good of the poetry world, from the director of the Poetry Society to the artistic director of the Ledbury poetry festival, with space alongside for the leading lights of the literary establishment.

Who knows which way the pitch will turn

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Meryl Streep and JK Rowling sign letter to UN over death of Jamal Khashoggi

More than 100 writers, actors and activists have signed an open letter urging the UN to launch an independent investigation

Meryl Streep, JK Rowling and Zadie Smith have all added their names to an open letter calling on the United Nations to investigate the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Over 100 artists, writers and activists have shown support on the international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists, a month after the Washington Post journalist was killed at the Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Related: Jamal Khashoggi's body was 'dissolved', says Erdoğan adviser

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How Aladdin's story was forged in Aleppo and Versailles

Evidence that its first teller was a Syrian dazzled by the court of Louis XIV inspires a new translation of this magical tale

Aladdin opens in the capital of “one of China’s vast and wealthy kingdoms”, but according to its latest translator, the story’s Syrian roots make it “an artefact from a destroyed world”.

The French-Syrian translator Yasmine Seale is the first woman to translate the whole of One Thousand and One Nights from its French and Arabic sources, and the first to produce an Aladdin since researchers have cleared up the mystery of the much-loved tale’s origins.

Aladdin: A New Translation by Yasmine Seale and edited by Paulo Lemos Horta is published by Liveright on 27 November.

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Lee Child joins authors auctioning character names for charity

In aid of Freedom from Torture, bids invited for a place in new work by the Jack Reacher author and others including Margaret Atwood and Julian Barnes

A good number of Jack Reacher fans will have dreamed of joining one of the crime-busting hero’s plots. Now it could become a reality, in print at least. Reacher’s creator Lee Child is among a number of well-known authors offering the chance to name a character in their latest books as part of a charity auction in aid of survivors of torture.

Man Booker prize winners Margaret Atwood and Julian Barnes are also offering naming rights in forthcoming novels alongside other leading writers including Marian Keyes, Joanna Trollope and Women’s prize 2018 winner Kamila Shamsie.

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