Le Journal

The award, run by Hachette UK and Libraro, aims to ‘sidestep the traditional barricades of the book industry’ and give readers a role in discovering new talentA new £50,000 writing prize that allows readers to select the shortlist from submitted manuscripts – and rewards them with cash prizes for their involvement – has been launched by the publishing platform Libraro, in partnership with Hachette UK.The Libraro prize aims to “sidestep the traditional barricades of the book industry”, according to organisers. Writers upload full manuscripts to the Libraro platform, where readers champion their favourite entries to create a shortlist of six books. Continue reading...

The Swedish actor said that ‘he’s trying to take the world’ and called the recent actions of the US president ‘absurd’The actor Stellan Skarsgård has criticised the attempts of the US president to annex Greenland, calling him “a little man who got megalomania”.Speaking at the European Film awards over the weekend, the actor – now frontrunner to win the supporting actor Oscar for his role in Sentimental Value – called the actions of Donald Trump “absurd”. Continue reading...

The streaming giant has the data that proves we all just watch things with one hand gripping our phones, so need to have the plot explained to us over and over againMatt Damon has a new film out, a $100m cop thriller co-starring Ben Affleck called The Rip. It is currently the most watched film on Netflix, because it is a Netflix movie. So how is Damon choosing to promote his new Netflix movie? By kind of laying into Netflix.During an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, Damon went to great lengths to describe the differences between going to see a film theatrically and watching it on television. Explaining his experience of watching One Battle After Another in an Imax screening, Damon said: “I always say it’s more like going to church – you show up at an appointed time. It doesn’t wait for you.” Continue reading...

As the Booker prize-winning author prepares to publish his final novel at 80, we assess his finest workDuffy is the first in a series of crime novels about a bisexual private eye that Barnes published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. It came out the same year as Barnes’s debut novel proper, Metroland, but where that took seven years to write, this took 10 days. Not that it shows: this “refreshingly nasty” (as Barnes’s friend Martin Amis put it) crime caper is beguilingly well written, with passages that display all of Barnes’s perception and wit. The plot of reverse blackmail and the shocking climax only add to the fun.Sample line “Two in the morning is when sounds travel for ever, when a sticky window makes a soft squeak and three Panda cars hear it from miles away.” Continue reading...

Aliens drawn by a 2000AD artist, graphics echoing the Dark Side of the Moon cover, Dennis the Menace fronting bacon and baked bean flavour … we pop open a new 140-page celebration of the weirdest, wildest crisp bags everWould you eat a smoky spider flavour Monster Munch? What about a Bovril crisp, cooked up to celebrate the release of Back to the Future? Then there’s hedgehog flavour – and even a Wallace and Gromit corn snack designed to capture the unique taste of moon cheese, which the duo rocketed off to collect in A Grand Day Out.All these salty, crunchy and perhaps even tasty snacks are celebrated in UK Crisp Packets 1970-2000, a 140-page compendium that delves into the colourful, often strange and occasionally wild world of crisp packet design. The book will come as a heavy hit of nostalgia for many people, featuring various childhood favourites – Chipsticks, Frazzles, Snaps – along with the lesser known and the rare. Continue reading...