Newsletter: October 2006

Here in the UK the leaves are starting to change colour, and the weather's getting a little colder. And at this time of year, literary Britain is in the throes of Booker Prize fever. Bookshops are busily promoting the six shortlisted titles, there are plenty of articles and interviews with shortlisted authors appearing in the press, while literary bloggers are ardently debating the pros and cons of each of the titles. Just in case you missed it, the final six are: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, The Secret River by Kate Grenville, Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland, In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar, Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn, and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. Carry Me Down is this month's Book of the Month choice on EnCompass. The winner of the prize will be announced at a televised ceremony on 10th October.

Also on the prize front, Philip Reeve has just been awarded the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for A Darkling Plain, the fourth story of his Hungry Cities series. The £1,500 award is Reeve's first literary prize. And Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award - at £23,000, the world's richest short story prize - for Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, his third collection of short stories to be published in English. Murakami shares the prize with his two translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel.

As reported on the EnCompass blog, two major new retail websites have been launched in the UK over the last few weeks. High street giant Waterstone's has revamped its site and severed its ties with on-line seller Amazon. Meanwhile Britain's independent bookshops are joining www.localbookshops.co.uk in droves for a chance to claw back some of the 'clicks and mortar' market for themselves.

Finally, in case you've missed it, there's a new readers' quiz on EnCompass which we've themed around gardens and gardening as they appear in fiction, non-fiction and poetry - worth checking out if you know your characters from your carnations. And the next Author Interview - which should be up on site by Friday 6th October, will be with novelist Helen Cross, of My Summer of Love fame. 

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