Book awards revelations

[selenak]

Sunday evening I was at the Corine, which is Germany's attempt to make handing out annual awards for books look glamorous. Was amused that while Kazuo Ishiguro was there (because he got an award for best book for Never Let Me Go), all the photographers predictably ignored this awesome writer in favour of, wait for it, not even Diana Gabaldon (who

Comments

[fay_morgenstern]

Oh! I suddenly feel this strange urge to check out the books by Diana Gabaldon *g*. *goes back to fangirling Two and Jamie more silently*

[selenak]

Have you seen the Two/Jamie vid by calapine?

Re: D. Gabaldon - like I said, the one book of hers I read left me cold, but some friends of mine are big fans, so who knows?

[mahala]

The first book -- okay, perhaps the first two books -- are great. After that, it sort of goes downhill. Pity.

[fay_morgenstern]

Can't say I've seen the vid but I will go looking for it now :). Or do you perhaps have a link handy?

I'd be just skimming the Gabaldon book anyway, as my fiction reading time is sadly limited but my to-read list is nearing infinity.

[selenak]

"Danke, Scarlett, danke, Alice" is a sentence you don't hear often! And yes, it was fascinating. Especially when one has a fourth row seat and can check out the literati at one's leisure.

Dr. Who: of course, when the presenter (the much-photographed actress) said "she saw an English time traveller named Dr. Who who met a Scot" I had to restrain my inner fangirl yelling "he's not English and he's THE DOCTOR, not "Dr. Who", for Gallifrey's sake!". *g*(To her credit, Ms. Gabaldon did not make the same mistake in her own speech.)

[likeadeuce]

I have to concur on the "Sound of Music" thing -- there was a radio show a few years back when they interviewed New Yorkers to see what they thought of when they thought of Austria, and "Fraulein Maria" was by far the top answer.

Of course, like most Americans of my generation, I saw TSOM when I was far too young to have any critical faculties. And fell in love with Captain Von Trapp at a very early age, so I can't really be rational about that movie--.

Glad you had fun at the awards!

[selenak]

Clearly, New Yorkers deserve every tourist who's looking for the West Side as presented in Westside Story. (That was the better Robert Wise movie anyway.)

[likeadeuce]

Next thing I suppose you are going to say is that Atlanta deserves all the tourists who show up demaning to know where Rhett and Scarlett are buried, and whether they are side by side.

PS to myself

[likeadeuce]

Tony Horwitz's great nonfiction book about the South, Confederates in the Attic, has a marvelous incident of his trying to track down the "real" Tara (which, it turns out, does not exist in the least, despite many claims to the contrary).

[shezan]

Austria's other big export article after Mozart

WTF? How about Haydn, Schubert, the Strausses, Mahler, Freud, Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele, Joseph Roth, Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Friedrich Hayek, Herbert von Karajan, even Sissi, for cripes sake?

[selenak]

LOL. Sissi, I must insist, was a Bavarian girl, but you're so right about the rest. And you didn't even mention the Sachertorte!

[shezan]

Well, I take your point, but still, she wouldn't have become "Sissi" out of Austria...

All the same, KMB RULZ. Re-watched Mephisto on cable the other week. The man is GOOD.

(And I've been trying very hard to forget Sachertorte. *gulps* Really, what I need is another Buchinger stay.)

[buffyannotater]

That Sound of Music link was *brilliant*!

[selenak]

*g* I love that particular sporking,