Saturday, August 02, 2008

Summer Is

I'm not entirely sure why it is that everything goes so quiet in August, not just the students, but other people as well. Surely as many people are returning to Manchester, and/or visiting? The bars seem busy at least. I hesitate to invite people to the Old Abbey Inn on Wednesday for the next - the third - night of The Other Room, since the previous two have seen the bar nicely filled. However, it is summer, and we can always spill out onto the street between poets.

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The Forward Prizes for Poetry shortlists have also been announced. Forward's website seems to still think its 2006, so they don't get a link, we just have to rely on the Guardian's word for all of this!

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...and the Booker longlist slipped out without me noticing, on Thursday. A baker's dozen, yet again featuring a few of the unflashy mid-list authors that have dominated the last few years, and, of course, the return of Rushdie, and, in "Child 44", what is surely that least Booker of genres, a thriller.

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