Faber & Faber

This just in on the wires: Paul McCartney has been overtaken in the rich league by Bono, who in 2009 invested $90 million in Facebook. He’s not prettier, though.

It’s called Brendel’s Fantasy, and it’s out next month from Haus Publishing. Here’s the summary: RRP: Price: £8.99 Haus Price: £7.19   Publication Date: 2012-03-01 ISBN: 978-1-907822-53-7 Format: Paperback Territory: UK & Commonwealth Category: Coming Soon, Fiction Pages: 163 By Günther Freitag Höller knows that he will soon die. Instead of withdrawing into the arms [...]

…after four days of bed rest, liquids etc. Infirmities permitting, tomorrow we’ll be in Kilmainham filming a short piece on L. Cohen’s Old Ideas for RTE’s The Works. Meanwhile, here’s our review of William Gibson’s Distrust That Particular Flavor, which ran in Saturday’s Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0204/1224311231471.html William Gibson reads from Distrust That Particular Flavor

The Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani has been told she cannot return home after taking off her top in protest against enforced Islamism. She has appeared topless in Madame Le Figaro and in a video commissioned for the Césars, the French Oscars. Farahani has worked with leading Hoolywood figures, among them Ridley Scott and Leonardo di Caprio. [...]

1 mix-up, 2 misfits, 3 horror stories, 4 fables, 5 speculations make up this collection of short stories by Roger Morris. The stories range in tone from the playful to the sinister. At times surreal, even bizarre, always entertaining, they all demonstrate what the Daily Express once described as Morris’s “storytelling panache”. Buy The Bridge [...]

And if not, why not? First pictures of Munich’s blue Ring elicit a number of questions, which I am sure director Kriegenburg will hasten to answer: 1 Why does he need singers to strip off in the middle of the harshest winter Europe has suffered in years? 2 When did the eyepatch become an essential [...]

I’ve been canvassing the views of authors and publishers involved in e-publishing. But I thought it was about time I heard from the people who really matter, the readers. So I’ve put together a short(ish) questionnaire. It’s really designed for people who have an e-reader of some kind, but I would also be interested in [...]

Her redoubtable manager, Charley Marouani, told me a few months back that she was preparing a new tour. ‘A farewell?’ I checked. ‘Pah!’ said Charley. Bonne anniversaire to the performer who was Madonna, before anyone imagined Madonna. Ah, those hands, those expressive hands! (yes, that is her with Miles Davis. It’s from milesdavis.com)

Thanks, everyone, for your feedback about Billy Mayerl. Thank you also to those who opened my eyes to ‘wave forms’ and YouTube channels and iTunes issues, and to options for self-publishing one’s recordings that I hadn’t known about. Food for thought! I’ll definitely get going with my recording project next month when I have a bit more [...]More on Mayerl is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog