Just a short post today to point you to something good I've spotted.

There's a great post on the Manchester Lit List blog. Since it's turning out to be a rainy summer, they've thoughtfully complied a list of great sites you can use to choose your next book to curl up with while hiding from the rain. Obviously, the other option is to go down to the library yourself and browse there, but why not choose one from the comfort of your own home.

Manchester Fiction Prize

MMU is launching a new short story prize, with a prize of £10,000 up for grabs as well as a bursary for study at MMU. I'm not normally organized enough to think about competitions, and I find it dissatisfying to have a story stuck out there in the ether for the long long time it takes for them to judge. However, I'm getting excited by this one because it's nice and local and it's purely short stories. It gives me a warm glow inside to have MMU putting so much faith in the short story when so much these days is focused on the novel form.
Thanks to the LitList for alerting me to this. More details on the competition are to be found here.

Lit List loves booklovers

The Manchester Lit List has created a rather handy list of ten great websites for book lovers. Check out the list and lose yourself for a lovely self-indulgent day in book loving thoughts about social cataloguing, book-dropping, reviewing and book clubs.