Graham Beattie – Tim Jones

A week or so ago, writer Debbie Cowens very kindly nominated me for a Prolific Blogger Award, as part of which, all the nominees are invited to nominate seven prolific bloggers of their own.

Although I decided not to go down the Prolific Blogger route (because I’m, like, a rebel), it did remind me that I’d fallen out of the habit of posting here about other blogs I enjoy reading, even if I don’t catch up with them as often as I’d like. So I’ve decided to institute a semi-regular series called “Five Blogs I Like”.

Some of my favourite bloggers are far more prolific than I, while others maintain a posting average of about once a month. You’ll find all sorts in here, and they won’t all be writing blogs, or New Zealand blogs – but in this first instalment, I’m going to feature five New Zealand writing blogs I have liked ever since I first set on eyes on them.

Helen Rickerby: Winged Ink. Helen is a fine poet, a publisher, and a person who always has interesting things to say. Her blog was one of those I modelled “Books In The Trees” on when I began it, and the other such blog was …

Harvey Molloy: Notebook. This blog features news of Harvey’s life, thoughts on poetry & existence, and now and then some of his wonderful poems, like this one: After New Year.

Kay McKenzie Cooke: made for weather. Kay is one of my favourite poets. Her work has an added appeal for me because it’s often about Southland, the province I grew up in and often write about in my own poetry. Not only that, but she illustrates it with great photos as well.

Meliors Simms: Bibliophilia. Meliors is very talented as both a poet and an artist, with her work recently having been a finalist for a national arts prize. Plus, Antarctic art, and discussions of Kim Stanley Robinson!

Graham Beattie: Beatties Book Blog. This blog, which Graham Beattie updates several times a day – he truly deserves the title of Prolific Blogger – is a trade journal for the New Zealand publishing industry, from beneath the surface of which literary disputes occasionally burst into the open. It’s an essential resource for working writers in New Zealand.

A few bits and pieces that relate to earlier posts:

Frank O’Connor Award: In addition to the interviews with New Zealand award longlistees Elizabeth Smither and Tim Jones, an interview with Witi Ihimaera about his longlisted short story collection Ask The Posts of the House is now up at The Good Books Guide.

Transported: I’ve now seen reviews from Craccum (Auckland University student newspaper), the Chronicle (Wanganui and Horowhenua) and the Nelson Mail. All have been positive. Jessica Le Bas, in the Nelson Mail, had some very nice things to say:

I read Jones’s first story, Rat Up a Drainpipe, and couldn’t put it down. I laughed out loud, and felt unusually good. It was fast paced and full of quirky incidents. When it ended I wanted more.

Typical of Jones, Transported crosses genres. There’s science fiction, comedy and satire, and even a few tales involving global warming. The Wadestone [sic] Shore has Pete rowing around a drowned Wellington foreshore between high-rise buildings, trawling for treasures. The seat of government has moved to Taupo. You have to laugh, but should we?

Jones’s bag of literary tricks is witty and refreshingly humorous. He’s not new to the literary scene, but with Transported, his second short story collection, he will not linger in the background again. Bring it on, Tim Jones!

That’s both very flattering, and a better summary of the book than any I’ve been able to come up with. Thank you, Jessica!

Montana Book Awards: Something of a furore has erupted over the fact that four, rather than the specified five, fiction titles have been shortlisted for the Montana Book Awards. Graham Beattie had a real go at the topic in his blog, and much fulmination has ensued.

I’m not in the camp that is treating this as a major scandal. Of course, I might feel differently if Transported had been among the books in contention (as it will be, perhaps, in 2009); but I think that the judging of literary awards is a subjective thing, a matter at least as much of the judges’ preference as of objective literary merit – if one allows the existence of such a thing.

Therefore, once the judges have been selected, they need to be left to get on with it. As long as their decisions are honestly arrived at – as I’m sure they were in this case – then there isn’t much point in second-guessing them.

Tag: Graham Beattie

Five Blogs I Like. Chapter 1: The First Five

Frank O’Connor Transported to Montana