What is a mini saga?

A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words (plus a title of up to 15 words), which appeals readers through the use of irony, word puns and unexpected turns. They are alternately known as microstories and ultra-shorts.

The idea was originally made up by writer Brian Aldiss (Norfolk, UK 1925)

Below you have the finalists in the 1st MINI SAGA CONTEST in 2009. Enjoy!

Utter Loneliness by Marta Rodríguez

It was the 31^st of December and there were no colleagues to eat out with. No friends to go clubbing with. No family to celebrate the New Year with. In her mobile phone only one contact. Soledad dialled but the network was engaged: she was even too busy for herself.

Noise at Midnight by Ana Sende

He arrived home from work. His wife was already in bed. He fell asleep but woke up after a while: “I’ve told you many times I don’t want the dog to sleep with us” he said. “The dog is outside” she replied sleepily. “Then who is snoring under the bed?”.

The Danger of Humans by Ana Bautís

The little dinasour put herself into bed. She was aching all over. Against her parents’ advice she had gone to the nearest human city. Many times had she been told how dangerous humans were, and how true it was! Humans were a danger to her belly, they were so indigestive!

The Day Had Come by Senda Reguera

He had been waiting for so long for summer to come! After cold months at the boarding school, there he was, facing the sea in all its magnificent splendor. He was about to plunge into the water when he heard a voice: “David, wake up! It’s your first day of school!

To Live or Not To Live by Cristina Fraga

Simon used to have a healthy lifestyle. There were only two habits he was worried about: Smoking and drinking on Saturday.Yesterday, he read a sentence which radically changed his mind: One cigarette makes life two minutes shorter. One whisky… four minutes. One working day makes life eight hours shorter.

Coffee Break by Victor Álvarez

Mr. Smith was furious: His first computer had broken the very first time he used it! He stormed into the shop and complained about it. “Where is exactly the problem?” the assistant politely replied. I tried to place my coffee on the cup holder but it spilled it all over!

Deadly Mushrooms by Cristina Fraga

Uncle John was an expert naturalist. On his way home, after a long day picking mushrooms he met Peter the Brave: "Can I try them?" Peter asked him. "Sure you can, but ONLY ONCE!". Peter tried one indeed but its poison killed it before he could try the second one.

Breathless by Yago González

When his hand surrounded her neck she was trembling. He was so calm
moments ago that she didn’t see where it came from. She just felt how
the air that was in her lungs was leaving her, she couldn’t do anything
about it. He was indeed such a good kisser.

Participate in the EOI Santiago 2nd mini saga contest:
http://novelteaclub.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/2nd-mini-saga-contest.html

2nd MINI SAGA CONTEST

Participate in the second

MINI-SAGA CONTEST

BASES:

- All EOI students of intermediate and advanced levels can participate.

- The RULES are simple: your mini-saga must be 50 words exactly plus a title of up to 15 words and it must tell a story.

- Hand in your mini-saga in Conserxería (SECCIÓNS DE SAR and RIBEIRA) Include a closed envelope with your personal information (alias, full name, group and telephone number). You may also send it via e-mail to this address: alosada@eoisantiago.org

- Deadline: Friday, April 13^th.

- There will be a maximum of 10 finalists. You will be able to vote for the winners online here: http://novelteaclub.blogspot.com/

- Winners will be announced on Wednesday, 25^th April

ITALIAN WRITER ANTONIO TABUCCHI DIES

What a sad piece of news, right?


Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi dead at 68 por euronews-en

WHAT DO YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTERS LOOK LIKE? THE COMPOSITES SHOWS YOU...

Can you guess who this is? Check it out here. It's a website that creates sketch portraits of literary characters.

"Images created using law enforcement composite sketch software and descriptions of literary characters. All interesting suggestions considered. Include descriptive passages if you can. Read more on the project at The Atlantic.

Created by Brian Joseph Davis. A co-founder of the website Joyland , his work has been collected recently in Against Expression: An anthology of conceptual writing (Northwestern University Press). His music and art productions have been acclaimed by Wired, Pitchfork, Salon, and LA Weekly, which wrote, “Davis has an amazing head for aural experiments that are smart on paper and fascinating in execution.” He’s written for Utne, The Globe and Mail and The Believer."

Personally, I think I'll stick to my own mental portrait of characters... what about you?

Reading inspires children

Check this out:
An Indigo commercial to promote child literacy


These are the (poetic) lines:
How tired I am of this unbearable distance between us. How I long for the toll of the recess bell. Have you forgotten me? Grown mindless of me? Tell me I am not writing into an abyss. Or that is what will become of my heart.

BLUEEYEDBOY (2010)

If you are reading Joanne Harris's Blueeyedboy, you must visit this website:

http://joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/books/blueeyedboy/index.html



You will find an interview to the author about the book as well as links to the audio book and to audio interviews.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys

You may know him as the writer of The Scarlet Letter, but he wrote other interesting books, among them, this one for children... and lovers of children's books.


Six legends of Greek mythology, retold for children by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Included are The Gorgon’s Head, The Golden Touch, The Paradise of Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher, and The Chimaera.

In 1838, Hawthorne suggested to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that they collaborate on a story for children based on the legend of the Pandora’s Box, but this never materialized.

He wrote A Wonder Book between April and July 1851, adapting six legends most freely from Charles Anton’s A Classical Dictionary (1842).

He set out deliberately to “modernize” the stories, freeing them from what he called “cold moonshine” and using a romantic, readable style that was criticized by adults but proved universally popular with children.

Don't you just love children's books? As for me, I must get my hands on this one.

VALENTINE'S DAY BOOKS

At this point in time, lots of bookshops, libraries and dealers are writing their lists suggesting books to buy for VALENTINE'S DAY.

Here are several websites for you to check, in case you're interested in surprising your loved one with something other than/together with chocolates or red roses:

- 5 Best Relationship Books for Valentine's Day (here).

- 10 Perfect Books for Valentine's Day gifts (here).

- Top 10 hottest Valentine's day books for kids (here). (Come on! I can't believe they're involving kids in this too...).

CHARLES DICKENS'S DOODLE

Google is using its Google Doodle Tuesday to commemorate the 200th birthday of novelist Charles Dickens. While the Doodles in the past have traditionally linked to search results based on the illustration’s subject, this one does it a bit differently: top billing is given to free e-book results from the Google Books service.

Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 and over his 58 years penned some of the most well known literary works of the 19th Century. Google’s doodle is a collage of some notable characters within his books, including Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.

“Our Google Books editorial team curated a collection of free and featured Dickens classics available in the Google eBookstore in Dickens’ native land (United Kingdom) and some Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia) as well as the US”, Google eBooks Associate Ariel Levine writes in a blog post describing the doodle, and its move to promote Google Books.

It’s probably not too far fetched to assume that most Google users — save for tech enthusiasts — are likely unaware that the Mountain View, Calif. company even has a e-book service. That said, you cannot blame Google for wanting to use the Google doodle as an engine to heighten the service’s profile and generate traffic.

Google Doodle stories do extremely well for bloggers and tech news sites alike. This has a lot to do with Google user’s curiosity and clicking on the illustrations to see what it’s about. Oftentimes the news stories covering the doodles themselves make it to the first results page people see, and users do click.

That won’t be happening today: the first page is entirely results from Google Books.

From: http://www.pcworld.com/article/249466/googles_dickens_doodle_gives_google_books_top_billing.html

Don't you just love it?

Reviews of THE UNCOMMON READER

For all those who have read Alan Bennet's novella, here you have a link with a good deal of reviews from various British and American newspapers.

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/bennetta/unreader.htm

Take a look at the extracts below, do you agree with them?

The staggeringly prodigious Bennett (...) has fun with the writers and books the queen relishes (and doesn't). Avid readers will enjoy his playful erudition in this entertaining reminder as to why we read and write." - Terry Hong, Christian Science Monitor

"The Uncommon Reader is a delight. Reading it over a morning and evening’s tube-struck commute, I never stopped smiling -- only a right royal churl could declare himself not amused by Bennett’s comic wizardry (.....) His storytelling, though, is rather less magical. (...) But the real problem is that The Uncommon Reader disobeys its own diktats, failing utterly to dramatise the Queen’s sentimental education." - Christopher Bray, Financial Times

"In its witty, economical satire, The Uncommon Reader recalls the late work of Muriel Spark, whose The Finishing School sent up the business of publishing. Like Spark, Bennett relies on plot twists that strain credulity at every turn, but the book is such a romp, it doesn't matter." - Maud Newton, The Los Angeles Times

"(T)he scenario begins to lose steam well before the novella's 120 pages are through. The book is neither outrageous nor subversive enough to succeed fully as satire, and at the same time lacks the shading of The History Boys, whose central principle -- knowledge for knowledge's sake -- was rendered with a trace of melancholy and moral ambivalence. At times, it falls back on trite endorsements of the written word (.....) Though The Uncommon Reader is dotted with a few sharp-edged moments such as this, it functions mostly as a lighthearted thought experiment." - Michael Schulman, The New York Sun

"Mr. Bennett’s musings on these matters have produced a delightful little book that unfolds into a witty meditation on the subversive pleasures of reading. (...) In recounting this story of a ruler who becomes a reader, a monarch who’d rather write than reign, Mr. Bennett has written a captivating fairy tale. It’s a tale that’s as charming as the old Gregory Peck-Audrey Hepburn movie Roman Holiday, and as keenly observed as Stephen Frears’s award-winning movie The Queen -- a tale that showcases its author’s customary élan and keen but humane wit." - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"The story of her budding love affair with literature blends the comic and the poignant so smoothly it can only be by Bennett. It’s not his very best work, but it distills his virtues well enough to suggest how such a distinctive style might have arisen. (...) Like most of Bennett’s fiction, this is a slender work -- an afternoon’s read. Yet even at this length, it feels a trifle thin." - Jeremy McCarter, The New York Times Book Review

"This is not a book that is particularly interested in telling us what the Queen is like. Fair enough; it’s fiction. It is not a book, either, that is particularly interested in imagining plausibly what the Queen might be like. Rather, it vamps round the stock ideas, available to any television sketch show or student revue, of what she is like. (...) What’s different, then, between The Uncommon Reader and any television sketch show or student revue ? The difference is in the sentences. What distinguishes this, and most of Bennett’s work, is not its perceptiveness about the world, or its imaginative achievement, but its droll and exact stylistic commmand. The effect, in this and in much of his work, is to make him the literary equivalent of a brilliant cartoonist." - Sam Leith, The Spectator

"The author’s taste for the camp cliché, his surreal exchanges (...) and the easy satire on management jargon (...) are not intended solely to amuse, but nor do they simply bolster a cosy argument about the civilising benefits of libraries, or a jibe at bestsellers. (...) For all its hilarity The Uncommon Reader has a heartfelt tone. It offers a lament on old age, some thoughts on reticence and a backward glance at a life wasted. At times, it even seems to side with Sir Kevin’s view that reading is a selfish practice." - Lindsay Duguid, Sunday Times

"(A)n exquisitely produced jewel of a book (.....) (I)t would be easy to mistake it for a gentle jeu d’esprit; one of those wry, melancholy slivers of observation at which Bennett excels. It isn’t though. Beneath the tasteful gilt-and-beige cover seethes a savagely Swiftian indignation against stupidity, Philistinism and arrogance in public places, and a passionate argument for the civilising power of art." - Jane Shilling, The Times

"The Uncommon Reader improves delightfully on an otherwise depressing reality, while slily arraigning the ambiguous British romance with the monarchy and its current avatar." - Jonathan Keates, Times Literary Supplement

"The Uncommon Reader is a political and literary satire. But it's also a lovely lesson in the redemptive and subversive power of reading and how one book can lead to another and another and another. (...) The Uncommon Reader is an appreciation of reading not out of obligation, but purely for pleasure, without being preachy and pretentious." - Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

"What might in less capable hands result in a labored exercise or an embarrassing instance of literary lêse-majesté here becomes a delicious light comedy, as well as a meditation on the power of print. (...) You can finish The Uncommon Reader in an hour or two, but it is charming enough and wise enough that you will almost certainly want to keep it around for rereading -- unless you decide to share it with friends. Either way, this little book offers what English readers would call very good value for money." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post