Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.
There is no greater joy than reading a good book. Well, maybe there is, but reading has always been one of my favourite passtimes - or maybe even a little more than just a passtime. I am a reading addict, ladies and gents.
This is the first blog entry in what may grow into a series, authors I like reading. I hope to find the time to do some more, and would love to hear from you if you have read a book by the author I am introducing. What did you like about it? Would you recommend it to others?
~Nina
Biography
This is the first blog entry in what may grow into a series, authors I like reading. I hope to find the time to do some more, and would love to hear from you if you have read a book by the author I am introducing. What did you like about it? Would you recommend it to others?
~Nina
Worthwhile reading – Mark Haddon
Biography
Mark Haddon was born in Northampton in 1962. He graduated from Oxford University in 1981, returning later to study for an M.Sc. in English Literature at Edinburgh University. He then undertook a variety of jobs, including work with children and adults with mental and physical disabilities. He also worked as an illustrator for magazines and a cartoonist for New Statesman, The Spectator, Private Eye, the Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian (for which he co-wrote a cartoon strip).
In 2003 his novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, was published and has been hugely successful. It is the first book to have been published simultaneously in two imprints - one for children and one for adults. It has won a string of prestigious awards, including the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year. His second novel, A Spot of Bother, was published in 2006 and shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Novel Award.
His first book of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, was published in 2005.
His latest books are a new novel, Boom! (2009) and a picture book, Walking on The Moon (2009).
Mark Haddon teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and Oxford University.
Homepage: www.markhaddon.com
Bibliography
Gilbert's Gobstopper Hamish Hamilton, 1987
Toni and the Tomato Soup Hamish Hamilton Children's, 1988
A Narrow Escape for Princess Sharon Hamish Hamilton Children's, 1989
Agent Z Meets the Masked Crusader Bodley Head, 1993
Titch Johnson, Almost World Champion (illustrated by Martin Brown) Walker, 1993
Agent Z Goes Wild Red Fox, 1994
At Home (Baby Dinosaurs series) Doubleday, 1994
At Playgroup (Baby Dinosaurs series) Doubleday, 1994
In the Garden (Baby Dinosaurs series) Doubleday, 1994
On Holiday (Baby Dinosaurs series) Doubleday, 1994
The Real Porky Phillips A & C Black, 1994
Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars Red Fox, 1995
The Sea of Tranquility (illustrated by Christian Birmingham) Collins Children's, 1996
Secret Agent Handbook (illustrated by Sue Heap) Walker, 1999
Agent Z and the Killer Bananas Red Fox, 2001
Ocean Star Express (illustrated by Peter Sutton) Collins, 2001
The Ice Bear's Cave Collins, 2002
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (edition for children) David Fickling, 2003
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (edition for adults) Cape, 2003
The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea Picador, 2005
A Spot of Bother Doubleday, 2006
Boom! David Fickling, 2009
Walking on The Moon* (illustrated by John Birmingham) Candlewick Press, 2009
and, with other authors: Ox-Tales:Fire (2009)
*also: Footsteps on the Moon
Teasers for a selection of his latest books:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (novel)
Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down. Christopher is a brilliant creation, and Mark Haddon's depiction of his world is deeply moving, very funny and utterly convincing. The novel is being published simultaneously for adults by Jonathan Cape and for children by David Fickling, publisher of Philip Pullman. We are convinced that both audiences will recognise it as one of those very rare books that change the way you see everything.
The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea (poetry)
All the gifts so admired in Haddon's prose are in strong evidence here - the humanity, the dark humour, and the uncanny ventriloquism - but Haddon is also a writer of considerable seriousness, lyric power, and surreal invention. This book will consolidate his reputation as one of the most imaginative writers in contemporary literature.
A Spot of Bother (novel)
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can't be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie's deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip.
The way these damaged people fall apart — and come together — as a family is the true subject of Haddon's hilarious and disturbing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.
Footprints on the Moon (picture book)
Years ago, a little boy gazed at the moon, dizzy with the thought that he was looking at a world 200,000 miles away. As he read atlases and library books and kept clippings on astronauts orbiting the moon, he hoped and hoped that they would fi nd a way to land there. And one extraordinary day they did, captured on his fl ickery TV, like giants bouncing in slow motion. When the boy fell asleep, he dreamed that he walked with them too. In this lyrical, transporting tale, Mark Haddon - the boy in the story - conveys the thrill of one moment in history through a child's eyes, aided by Christian Birmingham's evocative illustrations.
Ox-Tales:Fire (short stories)
about Ox-Tales:
Four brilliant collections, featuring short stories from a star-studded cast of writers including Kate Atkinson, Sebastian Faulks, Helen Fielding, William Boyd, John le Carré, Ian Rankin and Jeanettte Winterson.
The books contain original short stories around the themes of Earth, Fire, Air and Water.
Fire also features stories by Geoff Dyer, Victoria Hislop, Sebastian Faulks, John Le Carre, William Sutcliffe et alii.
Boom!
From the moment that Jim and his best friend Charlie bug the staffroom and overhear two of their teachers speaking to each other in a secret language, they know there's an adventure on its way. But what does 'spudvetch' mean, and why do Mr Kidd's eyes flicker with fluorescent blue light when Charlie says it to him? Perhaps Kidd and Pearce are bank robbers talking in code. Perhaps they're spies. Perhaps they're aliens. Whatever it is, Jimbo and Charlie are determined to find out. There really is an adventure on its way. This is a nuclear-powered, one hundred-ton adventure with reclining seats and a buffet car. And as it gathers speed and begins to spin out of control, it can only end in one way ...with a Boom!
Prizes and awards
1998 Royal Television Society Award (Best Children's Drama) Microsoap
1999 BAFTA (Best Children's Drama) Microsoap
2003 Booktrust Teenage Prize The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 British Book Awards Author of the Year (shortlist) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 British Book Awards Book of the Year (shortlist) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 Carnegie Medal (shortlist) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 Whitbread Book of the Year The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 Whitbread Novel Award The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2004 South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2004 WH Smith Award for Fiction (shortlist) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2005 BAFTA (Best Children's Drama) (nomination) Fungus the Bogeyman
2005 BAFTA (Best Children's Writer) (nomination) Fungus the Bogeyman
2005 British Book Awards Book of the Year (shortlist) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2006 Costa Novel Award (shortlist) A Spot of Bother
2007 BAFTA (Best Single Television Drama) (nomination) Coming Down the Mountain
Sources: www.fantasticfiction.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Haddon