Git Along Little Dogie – A Round-Up Of Interweb Stuff-‘N’-Such

Our good friend and colleague Mr Adrian McKinty was included in The Telegraph’s list of ‘50 Books Worth Talking About’, which appeared last weekend. The novel in question is THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD, and the object of the exercise is to get people talking about books in advance of World Book Day, which happens on March 5, 2009. As a point of fact, the list should really be renamed ‘51 Books Worth Talking About’, as it’s impossible to discuss THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD without referencing ULYSSES. Anyhoos, we’re done talking about THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD …
  Over at the Book Witch, the young but knowledgeable Charlie conducts an in-depth interview with Eoin Colfer, during the course of which the Artemis Fowl movie rears its head. Quoth Eoin:

“On the movie, at the moment I’m working with the director to write the script. I think it could be very good, because we’re going to put some new stuff in for the fans that they won’t expect, and because I’m writing it, I’m hoping they’ll allow that … I’ve just been up to Scotland last week, where we’re making HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS into a TV show, and that looks great so I’m very happy with that.”

  HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS as a TV show? I’ll buy that for a dollar. Meanwhile, Emerging Writer brings us the news that Aifric Campbell’s THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER has been short-listed for the Glen Dimplex Awards. The GD award is given to ‘best first book’ in a variety of categories, with €5,000 going to the winner of each of five categories, and €20,000 going to the overall winner. I’m not sure what the criteria for inclusion is, but it’s all done in conjunction with the Irish Writers’ Centre, so no doubt it’s all above-board, ship-shape and depressingly worthy. Aifric? You go, gal …
  Finally, I’m about two-thirds of the way through Kevin Power’s BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK, which took a bit of a hammering on RTE’s arts TV programme The View last Monday night, by all accounts. Quoth Colm Keegan: “The most telling comment I think came from Peter Murphy. He said it was the first real book of the Celtic Tiger age and that it was ugly.”
  On the other hand, John Boyne, writing in the Irish Times, liked it a lot:
“This is a book that breaks the rules of the conventional crime narrative … It’s an excellent novel, though, there’s no two ways about that. It comes from the gut, it’s raw, it’s passionate and it suggests, like Barry McCrea’s THE THIRD VERSE did a few months ago, that there are a group of young Irish novelists about to be set loose on the world like a pack of hungry wolves. Bring ’em on, I say. I’ll read them.”
  Erm, chaps? At the risk of banging a hole right through this here drum, has no one heard of Gene Kerrigan? Declan Hughes? Tana French? Ken Bruen? Brian McGilloway? Et al?
  Celtic Tiger novelists, one and all …