Do you plan on celebrating Valentine’s Day this weekend?
The New York Public Library team created a map of fictional romances set in New York City. According to the organization’s blog post, a group of book experts shared some of “their favorite romantic scenes that take place in the city.”
This interactive map features several well-known spots such as The Museum of Natural History, The Strand bookstore, and the 7 train. Some of the books that provided these locations include The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, and The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith. Follow this link to view the map.
I’m just back from a tour of (mostly indie) London bookshops. My visit to the Tower of London was enhanced after seeing Sonya Hartnett’s Children of the King, which alludes to the missing princes held captive by their uncle Richard III in the Tower, in a Notting Hill bookshop. Australian YA, as well as children’s and […]
In this follow-up to The Rosie Project, Don and Rosie are back for round two, this time in New York and with a new twist to challenge Don’s linear, logical, not-so-flexible way of interacting with the world: Rosie is pregnant. This sequel is just as funny as the first book. Books mentioned in this post [...]
Bill Gates has unveiled a list of his favorite books that he read in 2014.
Some of the titles were not published this year because “sometimes I fall behind and don’t get to a book until well after it’s been published.” Gates’ five picks include Business Adventures by John Brooks, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, How Asia Works by Joe Studwell, The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion, and Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil.
Here’s an excerpt from Gates’ blog post: “I didn’t really plan it this way. But as I look at the list of the best books I read this year, I see how a number of them touch on economics and business. That’s fitting, in a year when Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century put a big spotlight on inequality. In addition, with the Asian economies so much in the news, I wanted to read How Asia Works, which promised to explain why some of the continent’s countries grew so fast while others languished. And I got to brush up on an old favorite, the best business book I’ve ever read.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
I’ve just returned from visiting some major cities in the USA. It was illuminating to see which Australian literature is stocked in their (mostly) indie bookstores. This is anecdotal but shows which Australian books browsers are seeing, raising the profile of our literature.
Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief was the most prominent Australian book. I didn’t go to one shop where it wasn’t stocked.
The ABIA (Australian Book Industry) 2014 overall award winner, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion was also popular. And a close third was Shaun Tan’s inimical Rules of Summer, which has recently won a prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book picture book honour award. Some stores had copies in stacks.
http://www.hbook.com/2014/05/news/boston-globe-horn-book-awards/picture-book-reviews-2014-boston-globe-horn-book-award-winner-honor-books/#_
I noticed a few other Tans shelved in ‘graphic novels’, including his seminal work, The Arrival – which is newly available in paperback.
One large store had an Oceania section, where Eleanor Catton’s Man-Booker winner, The Luminaries rubbed shoulders with an up-to-date selection of Australian novels. These included hot-off-the-press Miles Franklin winner All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, plus expected big-names – Tim Winton with Eyrie, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and works by Thomas Keneally and David Malouf. Less expected but very welcome was Patrick Holland.I chaired a session with Patrick at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival a few years ago and particularly like his short stories Riding the Trains in Japan.
Australian literary fiction I found in other stores included Kirsten Tranter’s A Common Loss, Patrick White’s The Hanging Garden and some Peter Carey.
One NY children’s/YA specialist was particularly enthusiastic about Australian writers. Her store had hosted Gus Gordon to promote his picture book, Herman and Rosie, a CBCA honour book, which is set in New York City. They also stocked Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca, John Marsden, David McRobbie’s Wayne series (also a TV series), Catherine Jinks’ Genius Squad (How to Catch a Bogle was available elsewhere) and some of Jaclyn Moriarty’s YA. One of my three top YA books for 2013, The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee was available in HB with a stunning cover and Foxlee’s children’s novel Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy was promoted as part of the Summer Holidays Reading Guide.
Elsewhere I spied Margo Lanagan’s The Brides of Rollrock Island, published as Sea Hearts here (the Australian edition has the best cover); Lian Tanner’s Keepers trilogy; John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice and Sonya Hartnett’s The Children of the King. These are excellent books that we are proud to claim as Australian.
Tell us about your latest creation…
The Rosie Project: A socially-challenged genetics professor sets out to find a wife scientifically. A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that both men and women will enjoy. Winner of the Vic Premier’s Award for an unpublished manuscript and rights sold in 32 countries.
Where are you from / where do you call home?
Born in Auckland, NZ, live in Melbourne, Australia.
When you were a kid, what did you want to become? An author?
As a young kid, an astronaut. Later (from about 10) a theoretical physicist.
What do you consider to be your best work? Why?
The Rosie Project (novel - there’s a screenplay too). It took a lot of small steps to realise a lifetime ambition of writing a novel. Previously I’d written non-fiction and made several short films.
Describe your writing environment to us – your writing room, desk, etc.; is it ordered or chaotic?
It’s a notebook computer. That’s it. And I use it anywhere except in my office – which is for business.
When you’re not writing, who/what do you like to read?
I’m a guy. Non-fiction. I have to force myself to read fiction – but I’m fine once I get into it. I like Nick Hornby, John Irving, John Fowles, Joanne Harris and (sorry) Philip Roth.
What was the defining book(s) of your childhood/schooling?
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Solzenitsyn. It taught me something important about the nature of happiness – which may or may not have been the author’s intention. And I read ALL of Asimov, Hemingway and Henry Miller.
If you were a literary character, who would you be?
Daniel Martin – in Fowles’s Daniel Martin. A screenwriter trying to make sense of life - and eventually finding some. Which is what I turned out to be. (It’s 30 years since I’ve read it – I may be very wrong).
Apart from books, what do you do in your spare time (surprise us!)?
Walk. My partner and I walked 2000km from Cluny in France to Santiago in Spain (pilgrims’ route) in 2010. And make short films.
What is your favourite food and favourite drink?
Crab or tuna. Hard to beat fresh pepper crab eaten outside in Singapore. And I’m a wine nut so a great pinot noir from France or Oregon.
Who is your hero? Why?
Bob Dylan. For many reasons, including his determination to maintain his creative energy in later life.
Crystal ball time – what is the biggest challenge for the future of books and reading?
Short attention spans.
Follow Graeme:
Buy the physical book here…
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The feel-good novel of 2013, The Rosie Project is a classic screwball romance.
Rights sold into more than thirty countries.
Don Tillman is getting married. He just doesn’t know who to yet.
But he has designed the Wife Project, using a sixteen-page questionnaire to help him find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.
Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent and beautiful. And on a quest of her own to find her biological father—a search that Don, a professor of genetics, might just be able to help her with.
The Wife Project teaches Don some unexpected things. Why earlobe length is an inadequate predictor of sexual attraction. Why quick-dry clothes aren’t appropriate attire in New York. Why he’s never been on a second date. And why, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love: love finds you.
Follow @ProfDonTillman on Twitter
Like The Rosie Project on Facebook
Buy the book here…
Praise for The Rosie Project:
‘Funny and heartwarming, a gem of a book.’ — Marian Keyes
‘Although there are many laughs to be found in this marvellous novel, The Rosie Project is a serious reflection on our need for companionship and identity. Don Tillman is as awkward and confusing a narrator as he is lovable and charming.’ — John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
‘Graeme Simsion has created an unforgettable and charming character unique in fiction. Don Tillman is on a quirky, often hilarious, always sincere quest to logically discover what is ultimately illogical—love. Written in a superbly pitch-perfect voice, The Rosie Project had me cheering for Don on every page. I’m madly in love with this book! Trust me, you will be, too.’ – Lisa Genova, bestselling author of Still Alice and Left Neglected
About Graeme Simsion
Graeme Simsion worked as a computer operator, programmer and database specialist before founding a consulting business in 1982. By the time he sold Simsion Bowles & Associates in 1999, it had grown to some seventy staff in three cities. Graeme had built an international reputation in data management and written the standard text on data modelling. Until the success of The Rosie Project enabled him to concentrate on his writing, he continued to deliver seminars around the world.
Graeme is a founder of Pinot Now, a wine importer and distributor and Roy’s Antiques in Melbourne. He recently resigned from his position as a Senior Research Fellow at Melbourne University. He is married to Anne, a professor of psychiatry who writes erotic fiction. They have two children.
In 2007, Graeme completed his PhD in information systems and enrolled in the professional screenwriting course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He has made a number of short films and his screenplay, The Rosie Project, won the Australian Writers Guild / Inception Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script in 2010. While waiting for The Rosie Project to be produced, he turned it into a novel which in June 2012 won the Victorian Premier’s award for an unpublished fiction manuscript.
Readers of The Rosie Project will know that Graeme Simsion has a first-class sense of humour. At professional conferences he has given addresses from on top of a ladder, dressed as a duck, and he once engaged a group of spellbound chartered accountants in community singing.
