Orange sponsorship leaves books for films

LOOSE LEAVESSo no more Orange Prize for Women's Fiction – and not because of the annual bout of gender angst that accompanies the awarding of the gong (or Bessie, as it's nicknamed) for the women-only literary competition. The much more prosaic reason is that the sponsors are pulling out.

Orange, a mobile-phone company, has sponsored the awards for the past 17 years – a serious commitment to the arts by any company – but it announced this week that 2012 will be its last. Instead the company is moving its arts sponsorship to film.

The awards will continue with a new sponsor – and the author Kate Mosse, cofounder and honorary director of the prize, says she hopes to announce who it will be by the end of the summer.

Aside from the serious business of reeling in the finance, it will be difficult for the organisers to get such a perfect-sounding sponsor – and that matters. Are any of us used to the mouthful that is the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre yet?

The final Orange Prize will be awarded on Wednesday in London to a woman from this year’s shortlist: Ann Patchett (State of Wonder), Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles) Georgina Harding (Painter of Silence), Esi Edugyan (Half Blood Blues), Cynthia Ozick (Foreign Bodies) and Anne Enright (The Forgotten Waltz).

Waterstones and Amazon agree on Kindle co-op

All those predictions years ago about the paperless office came to nothing – but could this be the beginning of the paperless bookshop? In what sounds like a curious marriage of sworn enemies, Waterstones and Amazon announced this week that the UK book chain is to sell the online Goliath’s Kindle ereader in its shops, as well as Kindle ebooks.

It ends speculation that Waterstones was developing its own ereader – in the US, Barnes Noble’s Nook is hugely popular – and is a statement that the chain rates Kindle above all the other ereaders in the market.

Under the terms of the deal, the chain gets a cut when a customer buys an ebook off a Kindle when using Waterstones’ Wi-Fi. If the plan works, book buyers will spend more time in the bookshops’ cafes, buying online, than browsing the stacks and heading for the till.

Anne Fine tops the bill at Bantry literary festival

The Bantry-based West Cork Literary Festival (July 8th-14th), has a strong line-up for children, with the award-winning author Anne Fine topping the bill. She will be reading on July 9th and explaining where the ideas for her many and varied books come from. It would be worth popping along just to hear her explain how her brilliant creation Mrs Doubtfire came about. Contact 1850-788789 or info@westcorkliteraryfestival.ie, or see westcorkliteraryfestival.ie.

You’ve watched the series, now read the book

Novelisations of TV series haven’t the best reputations – the Buffy vampire series springs to mind – so it was brave of the established crime writer David Hewson (The Fallen Angel and Carnival for the Dead) to take on writing The Killing, the cult Danish TV series that has already spawned a US version and a new-found enthusiasm for scratchy Danish jumpers.

Hewson’s The Killing, published this week by Macmillan, is a doorstop that he calls a “reimagining of the story”, so he gives all the characters of the TV series, including the famously mysterious Sarah Lund, a backstory and is brave (or foolhardy, given how obsessive the TV fans are) enough to supply a new twist to the ending. And it’s in English – far more relaxing than subtitles.