From new voices like NoViolet Bulawayo to rediscovered old voices like James Salter, from Dave Eggers's satire to David Thomson's history of film, writers, Observer critics and others pick their favourite reads of 2013. And they tell us what they hope to find under the tree …
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
- 11/24/2013
- by Ali Smith, Robert McCrum, Tim Adams, Kate Kellaway, Rachel Cooke, Sebastian Faulks, Jackie Kay
- The Guardian - Film News
From Meryl Streep's Iron Lady to Spitting Image and the Spice Girls, Observer writers and critics pick the films, books, art, music and TV that show Thatcher's lasting influence
Art, chosen by Laura Cumming
Treatment Room (1983)
In Richard Hamilton's installation, Thatcher administered her own harsh medicine from a video above the operating table with the viewer as helpless patient: a case of kill or cure.
Taking Stock (1984)
Hans Haacke portrayed Thatcher enthroned, nose in the air like a gun-dog, surrounded by images of Queen Victoria, the Saatchi brothers and, ominously, Pandora. Caused national furore.
In the Sleep of Reason (1982)
Mark Wallinger edited Thatcher's 1982 Falklands speech from blink to blink, fading to black in between, emphasising her solipsistic tendency to close her eyes when speaking as if nobody else existed.
The Battle of Orgreave (2001)
Jeremy Deller's restaged the worst conflict of the miners' strike from multiple viewpoints, uniting...
Art, chosen by Laura Cumming
Treatment Room (1983)
In Richard Hamilton's installation, Thatcher administered her own harsh medicine from a video above the operating table with the viewer as helpless patient: a case of kill or cure.
Taking Stock (1984)
Hans Haacke portrayed Thatcher enthroned, nose in the air like a gun-dog, surrounded by images of Queen Victoria, the Saatchi brothers and, ominously, Pandora. Caused national furore.
In the Sleep of Reason (1982)
Mark Wallinger edited Thatcher's 1982 Falklands speech from blink to blink, fading to black in between, emphasising her solipsistic tendency to close her eyes when speaking as if nobody else existed.
The Battle of Orgreave (2001)
Jeremy Deller's restaged the worst conflict of the miners' strike from multiple viewpoints, uniting...
- 4/13/2013
- by Robert McCrum, Kitty Empire, Philip French, Andrew Rawnsley, Euan Ferguson
- The Guardian - Film News
Eva Braun was the most intimate chronicler of the Nazi regime, capturing Hitler's private life with her cine-camera. But it was only the obsession of artist Lutz Becker that brought her films to light. Robert McCrum and Taylor Downing uncover the story of the footage that shocked the world
Lutz Becker was born in Berlin, he says, "during the anno diabolo, 1941. Mine was the generation that was sent into a dark pit." Meeting this survivor of the Third Reich, now in his 70s and living in Bayswater, London, it's hard to suppress the thought that Becker, a distinguished artist and film historian, has conducted most of his life in a circle of hell.
Becker's childhood passed in the fetid, terrifying atmosphere of Berlin's air-raid shelters as the Allied raids intensified and the city was reduced to burning rubble. He recalls the radio announcements – "Achtung, achtung, ende ende, über Deutschland sinfe bender.
Lutz Becker was born in Berlin, he says, "during the anno diabolo, 1941. Mine was the generation that was sent into a dark pit." Meeting this survivor of the Third Reich, now in his 70s and living in Bayswater, London, it's hard to suppress the thought that Becker, a distinguished artist and film historian, has conducted most of his life in a circle of hell.
Becker's childhood passed in the fetid, terrifying atmosphere of Berlin's air-raid shelters as the Allied raids intensified and the city was reduced to burning rubble. He recalls the radio announcements – "Achtung, achtung, ende ende, über Deutschland sinfe bender.
- 1/27/2013
- by Robert McCrum
- The Guardian - Film News
'Catch 22 of the Iraq war' is being adapted for Film4 by Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy
The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Slumdog Millionaire, Simon Beaufoy, is adapting a critically acclaimed Iraq war novel by Us writer Ben Fountain for a new Film4 project.
The book, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, centres on a group of Us servicemen who emerge unscathed from a firefight in Iraq in 2005 and are brought home by the Bush administration for a victory lap, culminating with a turn at the Dallas Cowboys stadium as part of the team's Thanksgiving halftime show. It has been described by the Observer's Robert McCrum as "a clever and imaginative take on the classic American combat novel" with shades of "New Journalism" guru Tom Wolfe.
Fountain's book, which has also been dubbed the Catch 22 of the Iraq war, was nominated for the Us National Book award this year. The story is told from the viewpoint of Billy Lynn,...
The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Slumdog Millionaire, Simon Beaufoy, is adapting a critically acclaimed Iraq war novel by Us writer Ben Fountain for a new Film4 project.
The book, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, centres on a group of Us servicemen who emerge unscathed from a firefight in Iraq in 2005 and are brought home by the Bush administration for a victory lap, culminating with a turn at the Dallas Cowboys stadium as part of the team's Thanksgiving halftime show. It has been described by the Observer's Robert McCrum as "a clever and imaginative take on the classic American combat novel" with shades of "New Journalism" guru Tom Wolfe.
Fountain's book, which has also been dubbed the Catch 22 of the Iraq war, was nominated for the Us National Book award this year. The story is told from the viewpoint of Billy Lynn,...
- 11/14/2012
- by Ben Child
- The Guardian - Film News
"Roland Emmerich's Anonymous is a well-polished cowpat that will confuse and bore those who know nothing about Shakespeare and incense those who know almost anything," declares David Edelstein in New York. The film begins with Derek Jacobi announcing on a contemporary Broadway stage that the plays we attribute to Shakespeare are, in fact, the work of "Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, who could not, by virtue of his rank, have anything to do with the theater and so handed over his masterworks — many of which were not performed until well after his death — to a boobish actor named Will Shakespeare, who incidentally was the one who stabbed Christopher Marlowe in the eye. Less improbably, De Vere screwed Queen Elizabeth, as well as (accidentally) his own mum…. Apart from its ineptitude, Anonymous is peculiarly beside the point. Shakespeare's succession of masterpieces, near masterpieces, and thrilling misses is a...
- 10/27/2011
- MUBI
Are our most popular films, books and TV shows too entrenched in nostalgia? Robert McCrum and Boyd Hilton debate the state of British culture
Robert McCrum, Observer assistant editor
A Martian, scanning any current listings magazine, might be forgiven for thinking that we Brits really haven't shaken off the post-imperial nostalgia that's been such a feature of postwar culture. Tinker Tailor… (cold war nostalgia); the latest episodes of Downton Abbey (Great War nostalgia); the BBC's forthcoming adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece, Parade's End (ditto); and the "Great" (Britain) campaign just launched by the prime minister in New York suggest a society apparently fixated on the stories and images of past glory.
And if you go just below the cultural waterline it's not hard to bump into the outline of a trend: pop "eating itself" in the endless recycling of its material. I do think we are in thrall to the past,...
Robert McCrum, Observer assistant editor
A Martian, scanning any current listings magazine, might be forgiven for thinking that we Brits really haven't shaken off the post-imperial nostalgia that's been such a feature of postwar culture. Tinker Tailor… (cold war nostalgia); the latest episodes of Downton Abbey (Great War nostalgia); the BBC's forthcoming adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece, Parade's End (ditto); and the "Great" (Britain) campaign just launched by the prime minister in New York suggest a society apparently fixated on the stories and images of past glory.
And if you go just below the cultural waterline it's not hard to bump into the outline of a trend: pop "eating itself" in the endless recycling of its material. I do think we are in thrall to the past,...
- 9/24/2011
- by Robert McCrum
- The Guardian - Film News
From stage-door duties for the RSC, to the village famous for Straw Dogs, Observer writers reveal their idea of a perfect summer, past and present
● What are your tips for summer culture? Join the discussion
Kitty Empire
Pop critic
Let's be honest – the notion of summer as an extended golden period of rest and re-stimulation really now only applies to the young, the retired, or those in the teaching professions. The rest of us slog on, hoping to catch the odd festival (or maybe just gig in a park), marking time until camping in Cornwall or fly-drive to France, where finally luxuriating in the latest Alan Hollinghurst will come a distant second to stopping the youngest weeing in the hotel pool.
Once, though, I was artfully feckless too, making the rent by working as an usher for the Royal Shakespeare Company. "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the...
● What are your tips for summer culture? Join the discussion
Kitty Empire
Pop critic
Let's be honest – the notion of summer as an extended golden period of rest and re-stimulation really now only applies to the young, the retired, or those in the teaching professions. The rest of us slog on, hoping to catch the odd festival (or maybe just gig in a park), marking time until camping in Cornwall or fly-drive to France, where finally luxuriating in the latest Alan Hollinghurst will come a distant second to stopping the youngest weeing in the hotel pool.
Once, though, I was artfully feckless too, making the rent by working as an usher for the Royal Shakespeare Company. "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the...
- 8/1/2011
- by Kitty Empire, Mark Kermode, Rowan Moore, Philip French, Susannah Clapp, Laura Cumming, Luke Jennings, Fiona Maddocks, Rachel Cooke, Robert McCrum
- The Guardian - Film News
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