The Reading Book Post, April 20th

The Comicdom Con is only a few days away and I really can't wait. Apart from the conference it will also be a great opportunity to catch up with some friends that I haven't seen for a while. Anyway, it's been a relatively quiet week in the literary world and here are the most interesting ones:

• The past few months more and more organisations announced their longlists. Now, it's the time for them to make their shortlists public. PEN American Center announced their 2015 Literary Awards shortlists for categories such as debut fiction, the art of the essay, nonfiction and literary science. Also, the 2015 shortlist for the Dublin Literary Award was released to the press. On this list, there is only one book by an Irish author, Colum McCann, and three novels in translation. Finally, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction publicised its shortlist as well. We had seen earlier in March the longlist, and the final winner will be announced on June 3rd.

• Gunter Grass, the Nobel Prize recipient, died at the age of 87 on April 13ht. His novel The Tin Drum caused an uproar in his country because it dealt with subjects that were taboo in post-war Germany and it became an immediate bestseller when it first came out in 1959. 

• Time magazine published its list for the year 2015 with the 100 most influential people on the planet. Among those, there are two names of the literary world. It's none other than the Japanese author Haruki Murakami and the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

• DC Comics has announced that a digital tie-in comic series will be published during the summer with the animated film Justice League: Gods & Monsters, which will serve as a prequel. The series will be launched digitally in July, the interior art is by Thony Silas, but the comic writer is still unknown. 

• The art collective Le Gun has filled the well-known bookshop Shakespeare & Co. in Paris with Tales for the Void, an installation that consists of hand-drawn  sculptural books. Those "books" are scattered on the shelves of the bookstore and they are beautiful. What do you think of this installation? 

• This week's quiz reveals which literary character you are. I got Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings. Which one did you get?