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  • Jude in London
    Jude in London
    by Julian Gough

    Shortlisted for both the Guardian's Not The Booker Prize, and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, Jude in London is an epic, comic exploration of the bizarre love triangle between language, consciousness, and reality. Which is all very well, if you're into that sort of thing.

  • Jude: Level 1
    Jude: Level 1
    by Julian Gough

    Shortlisted for the 2008 Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction.

    The novel's prologue won the biggest prize in the world for a single short story - the BBC National Short Story Prize.

    "Sheer comic brilliance" - The Times

    "The best comic novel I've ever read" - Tommy Tiernan

    "Could be the finest comic novel since Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman" - The Sunday Tribune

  • Juno and Juliet
    Juno and Juliet
    by Julian Gough

    My first novel, of which I am very fond. The adventures of teenage twin sisters Juno & Juliet, in their first year away from home. Life, love and literature, in Galway and Tipperary.

     

    "Like Roddy Doyle in an extremely good mood" - The Washington Post

    "A modern, at times brilliantly ironic reworking of the classical fairytale, with nods to Shakespeare, Austen and Beckett." - Literary Review

    "Hugely entertaining" - Vogue

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« Let us now praise J. G. Ballard | Main | Michael D. Higgins and I declare our love »
Friday
Mar072008

And the Ossian for Rudest Book goes to...

DateFriday, March 7, 2008 at 03:10PM

Brennan Seoige Gough.jpg 

Thank you Kevin, Siobhán and Ariel for the congratulations and comments on my last post...

I did indeed get given a nice piece of bog oak, Kevin. Apparently it's called an Ossian.

The award (and I will probably give myself RSI typing this out in full), is one of the annual NUIG (National University of Ireland Galway) Alumni Awards. Mine was the AIB Award for Literature, Communications and the Arts.

Met some very interesting people there. The other award winners included Gráinne Seoige of Irish-language TV fame, and Séamus Brennan, the current minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism (the ever-mutating government department which inspired the Ministry for Beef, Culture and the Islands in Jude: Level 1). As you can see above, I flirted outrageously with Séamus, while grilling Gráinne on the leading political questions of the day.

A fun night out, and Aengus has sent me many other nice pictures, which I do intend to put up on the site... But, right now, I'm more excited by the goings-on in the credit markets. You don't normally see the words "wild and inexplicable" popping up on the front page of the Financial Times...

AuthorJulian Gough | Comment2 Comments |
in , , , , ,

Reader Comments (2)

A sentence from that FT report:

"As credit spread have risen, highly-geared funds have come under increasing pressure from uneasy investors who want their money back, and brokers terrified on counterparty risk."

Are "spread have" and "terrified on" mistakes or just part of the jargon? It's hard to say, because the language has mutated so far from English. I'm told some of these stories are written by robots:

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/imomus/2006/08/71654
March 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterMomus
Mistakes, I think. To be fair to the Financial Times, their Proper Journalism is very well written and proofed, but that particular article I linked to was in their Alphaville section, a fast moving, breaking news blog.("Instant market insight" is Alphaville's slogan.) Stuff there is often typed pretty fast, and posted straight away.

This morning they're coming up with droll anagrams for the recently imploded investment bank, Bear Stearns. ("Barren Asset" is their current favourite.)

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/

God, I must blog about the markets again. They are SO EXCITING at the moment...
March 15, 2008 | Registered CommenterJulian Gough

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