Just out the Van:
Alan Lee, best known as co-lead artist on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, but also the conceptual designer on the films Legend, Erik the Viking and King Kong and the television miniseries Merlin will be signing The Children Of Húrin tonight. Get your geek on at 6pm, Forbidden Planet Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8JR.
In Next Week:
The Society of Young Publishers presents a reading by Guatam Malkani, author of Londonstani next Wednesday. Malkani's debut novel, set in Hounslow, charts the journey of Jas, who joins a gang of Sikh and Hindu youths, and reportedly earned the author £350,000. Not that we're easily impressed by money or anything. £5, 6.30 - 8pm, 2nd Floor Gallery at Foyles, Charing Cross Road.
Givin’ ‘em away:
A new Anything But Hackneyed next Thursday has special guest reader Ronan Bennet, award winning author of The Catastrophist and Havoc In it's Third Year. Drop by if you're in the hood. 6.30 - 8pm, The Broadway Bookshop, 6 Broadway Market, Hackney.
Try a Bit of This:
The mother-to-be stretched out both arms, letting her tape recorder bounce at the end of its strap. But the Asian woman stopped short in an authoritative manner that warded off any approach. She drew herself up and said, "Donaldson?"
"Donaldson. That's us," the father-to-be said. His voice was shaking. He had somehow got rid of the car seat, passed it blindly to someone or other, but he stayed slightly to the rear of his wife and kept one hand on her back as if in need of support.
"Congratulations," the Asian woman said. "This is Jin-Ho." She transferred the baby to the mother's waiting arms, and then she unhitched a pink diaper bag from her shoulder and handed it to the
father. The mother buried her face in the crook of the baby's neck.
The baby stayed upright, gazing calmly out at the crowd.
"Ah," people kept saying, and "Isn't she a cutie!" and "Did you ever
see such a doll?"
Extract from Anne Tyler's Digging to America, on the
2007 shortlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
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