Newsletter: June 2006

Is it me or are literary prizes increasing and multiplying at an astonishing rate these days? A month doesn't seem to go by when there aren't several shortlists or longlists or winners announced. Last month, of course, was no different. On the shortlist front alone we've had - now take a deep breath -  the Carnegie Medal for children's writing (David Almond for Clay, Frank Cottrell Boyce for Framed, Jan Mark for Turbulence, Geraldine McCaughrean for The White Darkness, and Mal Peet for Tamar); the Caine Prize for African writing (Laila Lalami, Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Mary Watson, Sefi Atta and Muthoni Garland); and the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction (Untold Stories by Alan Bennett, The Sale of the Late King's Goods by Jerry Brotton, Bad Faith by Carmen Callil, Postwar by Tony Judt, The Orientalist by Tom Reiss, 1599: a year in the life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro). And as if that weren't enough, Armistead Maupin won the Big Gay Read with Tales of the City, and David Bodanis took the Aventis Prize for science writing with Electric Universe - How Electricity Switched on the Modern World. Phew.

EnCompass itself continues to add new material all the time. You'll find lots of new books listed on our database, searchable by a variety of clever means. There's a brand new readers' quiz to test your knowledge of the opening lines of novels. And if you didn't catch the interview with Val McDermid, it's well worth a read. The next author under the spotlight, by the way, will be Andrea Levy, author of the multi award-winning Small Island. You can submit a question for Andrea by going to our discussion boards. But do it by 16th June!

One entirely new feature you'll find is our EnCompass weblog. Now you can follow the reading lives of some of the EnCompass editors (myself included), with new entries posted on a regular basis. Find out what we're reading, what we think of it, and how our lives came to get so tangled up with books. If you'd like to respond to any of the postings, just reply to the blog thread on our discussion board.

Susan Tranter

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