BOOK NEWS
The Vancouver Writers Fest and the entire arts community in Vancouver lost a dear friend this week with the passing of Diane Loomer, the Director of the men's choir Chor Leoni. Over the past five years Chor Leoni performed in events at the Festival with Alistair MacLeod, Jack Hodgins and Jane Urquhart. Diane's consummate skill in choosing the right songs and the choir's flawless execution under her direction helped make those events some of the most popular presentations in Festival history.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/12/11/diane-loomer-obit.html
Holiday Giving
The season is officially upon us! But don't panic-there's still time to order great gifts for the readers on your holiday list. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
AWARDS & LISTS
The finalists for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction were announced today in Vancouver, while a long list of titles for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction was announced in Toronto.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Finalists+named_National+award+Canadian+Fiction/7650237/story.html
The late Angela Carter has been named the best ever winner of James Tait Black award. The James Tait Black award has chosen the 1984 novel Nights at the Circus from nearly a century's worth of great names.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/06/angela-carter-uk-oldest-literary-prize
The Costa short story prize is to be decided by an online vote. Judges sifted through more than 1,800 anonymous entries to decide their final six short stories by six anonymous writers. The public will decide by online vote which of the six stories will take the £3,500 prize on 29 January.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/28/costa-short-story-prize-public-vote
The stories can be read online and listened to here:
www.costabookawards.com/short-stories/shortlist
The long list of titles for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction include works by George Bowering, Tim Cook, Modris Eksteins, Robert R. Fowler, Ross King, Noah Richler and Candace Savage. The short list will be announced January 9, 2013.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Finalists+named+National+award+Canadian+Fiction/7650237/story.html
Nine poets are on the short list for the Second Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest. The winning entries will be announced in Geist 87, in mailboxes and on
newsstands January 2013.
http://www.geist.com/articles/announcing-the-short-list-for-the-2nd-annual-geist-erasure-poetry-contest!/
YOUNG READERS
Mr. Zinger's Hat is a wonderful story about the shared process of creating...a story! Leo is bored with playing catch with the brick wall in his courtyard–until one day his ball knocks the hat off the head of Mr. Zinger, who "made up stories...published in magazines and in books, too." Mr. Zinger invites Leo to sit with him and look into his hat to see what story is inside trying to get out, writes Saeyong Kim. For ages 6 to 9.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol19/no5/mrzingershat.html
Faulkner's little-known, odd children's book, the genesis for The Sound and the Fury, is my kids' bedtime story, writes Nichole Bernier. In academic journals, The Wishing Tree is described as Alice in Wonderland. It was originally written in 1927 but not published until 1964, when one of the children for whom it had been handmade offered it for publication. For ages 8 to 11.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/03/i_got_my_children_hooked_on_faulkner/
Fifteen year-old Parvana, the heroine of Deborah Ellis's most famous books, The Breadwinner Trilogy, is forced to do whatever it takes, including dressing up as a boy, to help her family survive the Taliban's brutal rule. The book is based on a true story that Ellis was told. Remaining hopeful in the face of what appears hopeless is a way of honoring the people she meets, says Ellis, who donates much of her royalty income to worthy causes. For young adults.
http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/05/canadian-ya-author-deborah-ellis-on-telling-stories-and-giving-back/
NEWS & FEATURES
One of the greatest books written about science in the past century, hailed as a work that combines the plot line of a racy novel with deep insights about the nature of modern research, came close to being suppressed. James Watson, author of The Double Helix, has revealed that the intervention of Lady Alice Bragg saved The Double Helix.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/09/dna-james-watson-helix-nobel-50
As part of a campaign with the Folio Society to celebrate beautiful books, writers and artists describe the illustration that means the most to them. From Will Self's childhood fascination with John Tenniel's depiction of Alice in Wonderland to the terror and enchantment Ros Asquith found in Arthur Rackham's depiction of Grimm's Fairy Tales, take a tour through some of literature's most potent visions, here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/dec/07/writers-favourite-classic-book-illustrations
Censorship is a must, says China's Nobel winner. Mo Yan, who has won this year's Nobel Prize in literature, says censorship is as necessary as checks at airport security.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/07/mo-yan-censorship-nobell
Salman Rushdie offers a withering rebuke.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/07/rushdie_mo_yan_is_a_patsy_of_the_regime/
A new school curriculum that will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9729383/Catcher-in-the-Rye-dropped-from-US-school-curriculum.html
Reading in general seems to be on the rise as a result of ebooks and ereaders. And statistics show that 88% of people who read ebooks also read printed books. The rise of the ebook has also seen a rise in self-published material. What we can take away from this is that the traditional book industry is not dying–it is simply evolving.
http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2012/11/27/the-rise-of-the-e-book/
Lydia Syson has identified the top 10 historical novels that inspired her to set A World Between Us, her first teen novel, in the past. Her recommended titles of particular interest to teens include: E Nesbit's The House of Arden; Alison Uttley's A Traveller in Time; Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love; Barbara Leonie Picard's The Young Pretenders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/nov/29/teen-book-club-lydia-sysons-top-10-historical-novels?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
In an interview with Vanessa Thorpe, Rick Riordan, the bestselling Texan author of children's fantasy adventures talks about the magic of myths and legends and their relevance to children and the modern world. "Myths are universal and are totally ingrained in our culture," says Riordan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/09/rick-riordan-interview-heroes-olympus
W.T. Stead is considered to be the founding father of investigative journalism and the inventor of the sensationalism that gave rise to tabloid newspapers. His famous investigation into the trafficking of young girls in 1885 landed him in jail, but it helped to ensure a law was passed that raised the age of consent. To mark the centenary of Stead's death aboard the Titanic, the British Library has published W.T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/dec/05/investigative-journalism-irish-independent
A rare copy of the Bay Psalm, the first book ever printed in what is now the United States, is set to be sold by a Boston church, amidst controversy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/05/america-first-book-sold-row
A bookshop has collected some of the odd, intriguing personal treasures left within the pages of 'pre-loved' volumes. These include pressed flowers, bookmarks, dog photos, tickets, postcards, tickets and photos.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/05/secret-contents-secondhand-books?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
"Bravely and willingly we bear our share of the world's burdens. Why then deny us the right to vote which would dignify our labour and increase our power of service?" writes suffragette and feminist icon Sylvia Pankhurst. A rare autograph album collecting the thoughts of dozens of her fellow suffragettes is set to go up for auction next week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/dec/06/suffragette-autograph-album-pictures
Acacia O'Connor, project coordinator for the Kids' Right to Read Project, said of the removal of Alan Moore's horror comic Neonomicon from a South Carolina library "they may be calling it 'deselection' but we have another name for it: censorship". The row began when a 14-year-old borrowed the novel and her mother objected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/alan-moore
The Sydney Writers Festival featured Ian Rankin who spoke about his latest work, Edinburgh and the return of his protagonist, Rebus. The audio of the event is available here:
http://www.swf.org.au/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Ian+Rankin+talks+to+SWF+Christmas+Gift+Certificates+WIN+Sydney+Festival+tickets+and+more&utm_content=Ian+Rankin+talks+to+SWF+Christmas+Gift+Certificates+WIN+Sydney+Festival+tickets+and+more+CID_22f8e812a4c369461063cfac6f0a715e&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Click%20here
While the average Canadian worker retires at around 62, many professional writers continue to produce award-winning work well into their 80s. These include Elmore Leonard, 87, who received the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution this month. Poet David Ferry also won a National Book Award this year, at 88. Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison's, 81, is working on a new book.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2012/11/writers-aging-like-fine-wines.html
Michael Posner interviews Gordon Pinsent, now 82, on his charmed life—a play on words since Pinsent always referred to his wife Charmion King as Charm—and his new autobiography, Next, deftly ghosted by CBC programmer George Anthony, writes Posner.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/celebrity-news/gordon-pinsent-reflects-on-a-charm-ed-life/article6030196/
Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels grounded my economics, writes Paul Krugman. My Book–the one that has stayed with me for four-and-a-half decades–is Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, written when Asimov was barely out of his teens himself. The fantastical tale offers a still-inspiring dream of a social science that could save civilization.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/paul-krugman-asimov-economics
Hilary Mantel describes how she came to write Wolf Hall, declaring that "It wasn't that I wanted to rehabilitate him (Thomas Cromwell). I do not run a Priory clinic for the dead."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/07/bookclub-hilary-mantel-wolf-hall
The New York Times Book Review has made its selection of the ten best books of 2012: five fiction, five non-fiction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/10-best-books-of-2012.html
BOOKS & WRITERS
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, considered by many the most important environmental book of the 20th century, has been reissued after 50 years. In Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel, The Year of the Flood–set in the Near Future–Rachel Carson is a saint. Of course, many people think she's a saint anyway, but in this book, it's official, says Atwood.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/27/rachel-carson-silent-spring-anniversary
Esther Freud is enchanted by Tove Jansson's The Moomins and the Great Flood, Jansson's very first picture book. Jansson's own drawings, printed in their original hues, with all their humour and mystery shining through, took six years, until the end of the war, for The Moomins and the Great Flood to be published. When it was, Jansson described it as her "very first happy ending".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/07/moomins-great-flood-tove-jansson-review
A Week in Winter is Irish writer Maeve Binchy's final book, completed a few weeks prior to her death in July, writes Deborah Dundas. Binchy is known for her hopeful, if not always entirely happy, endings. Still, we all make the choice, ultimately, as to who we want to be. It's a philosophy of common sense and wisdom, both of which we've come to expect from Binchy.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1295107--a-week-in-winter-by-maeve-binchy-review
An elegant crime boss, a mild-mannered detective and the world's most valuable necklace make for a ripping yarn, writes Laura Miller. Why is The Great Pearl Heist: True Crime in Edwardian London the first book to appear on the crime in over 80 years? asks Miller.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/the_great_pearl_heist_true_crime_in_edwardian_london/
Susan Swan's The Western Light includes a soupçon of an adolescent Huck Finn and his friendship with the escaped slave Jim. Swan's portrayal of the spunky, fearless, young Mouse Bradford is a character as captivating as Huck, writes Jennifer Hunter. The character in Swan's book is a gallivanting read bound to become a classic, at least on Canadian shelves and in computers, says Hunter.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1298085--the-western-light-by-susan-swan-review
Ian McGillis didn't read fairy tales as a child. Now reading Phllip Pullman's Grimm collection, he writes of his discovery that the stories tap into something deep in the collective DNA, dramatizing primal fears, hopes and impulses of which we're not always necessarily aware. Who are these stories for? The question hangs over the collection, says McGillis.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Once+upon+time+Grimms+right/7667117/story.html
A new translation of The Outsider, Albert Camus's 1942 masterpiece, deserves to become the standard English text, writes Lucian Robinson.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/09/outsider-albert-camus-smith-review
A Poet and Bin-Laden, Hamid Ismailov's picaresque novel mixes genres and viewpoints to provide a fascinating commentary on Islam and central Asia, writes Kate Kellaway. An extraordinary book and a difficult read, worth persevering because it takes one deep into Islamic fundamentalism in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Hamid Ismailov, Uzbek writer in residence of the BBC World Service, calls it a "reality novel".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/09/poet-bin-laden-ismailov-review
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
BOOK LAUNCH
Launch of Jan Zwicky's The Book of Frog. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm. Our Town, 245 East Broadway.
POETRY OF SCIENCE
What happens when you have 5 scientists, and 5 poets, and ask them to write poems together? Featured readers include Olive Dempsey, Adrienne Drobnies, Leanne Dunic, Jonina Kirton, Pamela Lincez, Kelty McKinnon, Ben Paylor, Lynne Quarmby, Carol Shillibeer and Meg Torwl. Friday, December 14 at 7:00pm. 1695 Gallery, 1695 Main Street.
THE ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Talk by Vancouver city councillor Geoff Meggs and journalist Rod Mickleburgh, authors of The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power 1972-1975. Friday, December 14 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $25. Marpole Place Neighbourhood house, 1305 70th Ave. W.
SURVIVING SAMSARA
A spoken word performance recounting the author Kagan Goh's struggles with manic depression as he tries to survive the highs of mania and the lows of depression. Friday, December 14 at 8:00pm. The Prophouse Cafe, 1636 Venables Ave.
TALK AND BOOK LAUNCH
Inspector Ken Burton will discuss his recreation of the historic voyages of the St. Roch and will discuss the challenges facing Canada and the "ice free" northern passage. Also features a launch of Kenneth John Haycock's new book The History of the RCMP Marine Services. Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
LISTEN! LAUGH! ENJOY! STORIES!
Seasonal stories by Vancouver storytellers Abegael Fisher-Lang, Jennifer Martin, Kira Van Deusen, and Mariella Bertelli. Sunday, December 16 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $6. St. Mark's Anglican Church, 1805 Larch St.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door: $5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
YOUTH POETRY SLAM
Youth slam featuring roving poets known as 2 Dope Boys and a Cadillac. Monday, December 17 at 8:00pm. Tickets: $4/$6. Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
LIQUOR, LUST AND THE LAW
Book-signing and meet-and-greet session with author Aaron Chapman and nightclub owner Danny Filippone. Thursday, December 20 at 6:00pm. Edgewater Casino, 311-750 Pacific Blvd. S.
MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Talk/reading, Q&A, and book signing by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Saturday, December 22 at 7:00pm, free. Our Town Cafe, 245 E. Broadway.
Upcoming
UNIQUE LIVES & EXPERIENCES
A lecture series featuring four outstanding women. First lecture will feature Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA spy and author of a bestselling autobiography, My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House, on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7:30pm. Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street. For complete season details and ticket information, visit www.uniquelives.com.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Book News Vol. 7 No. 45
BOOK NEWS
Holiday Giving
The season is officially upon us! But don't panic-there's still time to order great gifts for the readers on your holiday list. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
AWARDS & LISTS
The Guardian first book award 2012 went to Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds, a novel based on the author's time as a gunner in Iraq, with the book's title based on a US army marching song. The judging panel commended the book for 'extraordinary promise'. The Guardian first book award is for new writing in any genre.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/29/guardian-first-book-award-2012-kevin-powers
Poet and playwright George Elliot Clarke has been named Toronto's Poet Laureate.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/29/toronto-poet-laureate.html
The 86-year-old Spanish poet, novelist and essayist Jose Manuel Caballero Bonald has won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, for helping to "enrich the Hispanic literary legacy."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/spanish-writer-wins-cervantes-prize/?pagewanted=all
The novelist Andrew Krivak, who wrote The Sojourn and Adam Hochschild, the author of To End All Wars, have won the 2012 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and nonfiction. The awards were created in 2006 to honour writers whose work advances peace and promotes understanding.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/winners-named-for-dayton-literary-peace-prize/
Nancy Huston's Infrared has won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/bad-sex-award-nancy-huston
An extract from the novel is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/bad-sex-award-2012-extract
Sarah Hall has won the Portico Prize for the second time running, this time with The Beautiful Indifference, short stories described in the Guardian as dark, fierce, and sensual.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/24/beautiful-indifference-sarah-hall-review
Two memoirs and two historical investigations will vie for one of Canada's top non-fiction literary honours. George Bowering and Robert Fowler are two of the authors on the short list of four titles vying for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/12/04/bc-non-fiction-prize-short-list.html
Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper, which recently won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, is one of 15 titles that made the long list for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non Fiction.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1297217--charles-taylor-prize-long-list-for-literary-non-fiction-announced
The regional battle of the books continues as CBC's Canada Reads: Turf Wars releases the names of its panellists and book choices for 2013. Each panelist chose a book from among the top five selected by Canada Reads fans in their region. Q host Jian Ghomeshi will once again host the book debate. The Canada Reads debates will take place before a live audience in Toronto and on CBC Radio One, February 11 to 14, 2013.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/
YOUNG READERS
Barbara Smucker's Underground to Canada has all the qualities that you could want: adventure, tragedy, excitement and suspense, writes Petrova Fossil. This heart-warming tale of a slave's journey to freedom includes the Underground Railway, slave catchers, dogs, excitement and suspense. This heart-warming tale of a slave's journey to freedom describes how hard life was then. For ages 7 to 14.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/nov/28/review-underground-to-canada-barbara-smucker
R.L. Stine's Goosebumps celebrated its 20th anniversary in July. Stine writes six Goosebumps books a year. When Stine first began the Goosebumps series, the books were for girls. Now there is a boy and a girl in every book. The most recent book is Goosebumps: Hall of Horrors. Don't Scream! For ages 7 to 12.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/goosebumps-writer-rl-stine-looks-to-his-childhood-for-book-ideas/2012/09/04/1e5db00c-dcb2-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_story.html
Bear Despair, by Gaëtan Dorémus, a wordless book first published in France and one of this year's New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books, opens with an endpaper map that showcases all the story's characters. I've gone through this wordless tale dozens of times and still can't frame an exact story line, writes Anita Silvey. I just run my hands over each page and say, "This is so beautiful."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/books/review/bear-despair-by-gaetan-doremus-and-more.html
NEWS & FEATURES
Robert Mankoff writes about Abraham Lincoln's sense of humor, suggesting "As far as I can tell, he's the first American President to have one". The term "sense of humor" wasn't in common usage until the eighteen-sixties and seventies. Earlier, it was "the sense of the ridiculous." And what was ridiculous was what invited ridicule. Funniness and cruelty went hand in hand.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2012/11/lincolns-smile.html#ixzz2Dk3vrLq2
Carol Anne Duffy has written a new poem to mark the close of this year's World Shakespeare Festival. The poem is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/30/shakespeare-carol-ann-duffy-poem
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, John Coleman argues that poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity and develop a more acute sense of empathy. To those open to it, reading and writing poetry can be a valuable component of leadership development, writes Coleman.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/the_benefits_of_poetry_for_pro.html
My Last Empress, the new novel by Nobel laureate Da Chen, is a Nabokovian romp that extends from the Connecticut coast to the lantern-lit passageways of the Forbidden City during the waning days of the Qing Dynasty. The story is recounted by Pickens, a New England aristocrat whose destiny is derailed when, at the age of 18, he falls for Annabelle, the 19-year-old, China-born daughter of a missionary.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1296108--my-last-empress-by-da-chen-review
Lorna Crozier, Susan McCaslin, Don Domanski, and David Zieroth, among others, have tied a poem to a tree with a piece of string or ribbon, in the hope of raising public awareness about what's known locally as the McLellan Park Forest. Last weekend, 140 poems were strung up; more are to be added this weekend. The hope is to pressure the local council to make the area a park, instead of selling it to developers.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/writers-hang-poems-in-trees-in-bid-to-save-langley-land-parcel/article5983994/
BOOKS & WRITERS
Many of the world's best novels have bad endings, writes Joan Acocella. It's not that they end sadly, but that the ending is actually inartistic—a betrayal of what came before. This is true not just of good novels but also of books on which the reputation of Western fiction rests. The first half of "David Copperfield" leaves you gasping. But in the last chapters of the novel, you die of boredom. Willa Cather's "Song of the Lark" is a similar case.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/on-great-novels-with-bad-endings.html
The story of Canada is the story of her relationship with native people, writes Richard Wagamese. Since 1492, the history of the continent has been interpreted through settler eyes, with the relationship between indigenous people and settlers focused on the struggle for land. Thomas King's Inconvenient Indian is a powerful, important book, writes Wagamese.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/the-true-story-of-native-north-americans-whites-want-land/article5841075/
George Bowering has received nearly every accolade possible in a distinguished career: Canada's first poet laureate, Order of Canada, Order of British Columbia, fiction, poetry, plays, history, criticism. Now he's written a memoir of an early 1950s Okanagan Valley youth. Steven Brown writes that there's a great deal of gentle humour in the book, and no overt sentimentality.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Pinboy+George+Bowering+Nostalgia+runs+wild+minus/7634212/story.html
Michael Connelly's Bosch is back with The Black Box harking to the '92 L.A. riots. Together with his partner Jerry Edgar, Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch becomes part of a roving homicide team following the beating of Rodney King and the murder of a freelance Danish journalist. As usual, Michael Connelly gives us a genuine feeling of the politics of policing in Los Angeles.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/michael-connellys-latest-keeps-crime-writers-streak-alive/article5839925/
Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote begins with thousands of people trying to think positive thoughts together at a "Get Motivated!" session in a Texas baseball stadium, where they hear President George W. Bush talk on the power of optimism. The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking takes every self-help book you've ever read and turns it inside out, writes Hector Tobar.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-oliver-burkeman-20121202,0,6389186.story
Hallucinations, writes Oliver Sacks, fall into a unique and special category of consciousness in which they see and hear things that are not there. Although hallucinations are, according to Sacks, "an essential part of the human condition," Western society links them to madness.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Review+Oliver+Sacks+Hallucinations+evil+hear+evil/7600303/story.html
Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary isn't your mother's Mother Mary, writes Ron Charles. Forget the Annunciation. The only Assumption here is that Mary is a troubled woman, haunted by Golgotha, hunted by assassins, waiting for death. It's not so much a testament of faith as a confession of guilt. Her insistence on the truth becomes the book's central concern, says Charles.
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/more_medea_than_madonna_20121127/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TALK AND BOOK LAUNCH
Inspector Ken Burton will discuss his recreation of the historic voyages of the St. Roch and will discuss the challenges facing Canada and the "ice free" northern passage. Also features a launch of Kenneth John Haycock's new book The History of the RCMP Marine Services. Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
Upcoming
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Talk/reading, Q&A, and book signing by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Saturday, December 22 at 7:00pm, free. Our Town Cafe, 245 E. Broadway.
UNIQUE LIVES & EXPERIENCES
A lecture series featuring four outstanding women. First lecture will feature Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA spy and author of a bestselling autobiography, My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House, on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7:30pm. Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street. For complete season details and ticket information, visit www.uniquelives.com.
Holiday Giving
The season is officially upon us! But don't panic-there's still time to order great gifts for the readers on your holiday list. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
AWARDS & LISTS
The Guardian first book award 2012 went to Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds, a novel based on the author's time as a gunner in Iraq, with the book's title based on a US army marching song. The judging panel commended the book for 'extraordinary promise'. The Guardian first book award is for new writing in any genre.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/29/guardian-first-book-award-2012-kevin-powers
Poet and playwright George Elliot Clarke has been named Toronto's Poet Laureate.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/29/toronto-poet-laureate.html
The 86-year-old Spanish poet, novelist and essayist Jose Manuel Caballero Bonald has won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, for helping to "enrich the Hispanic literary legacy."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/spanish-writer-wins-cervantes-prize/?pagewanted=all
The novelist Andrew Krivak, who wrote The Sojourn and Adam Hochschild, the author of To End All Wars, have won the 2012 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and nonfiction. The awards were created in 2006 to honour writers whose work advances peace and promotes understanding.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/winners-named-for-dayton-literary-peace-prize/
Nancy Huston's Infrared has won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/bad-sex-award-nancy-huston
An extract from the novel is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/bad-sex-award-2012-extract
Sarah Hall has won the Portico Prize for the second time running, this time with The Beautiful Indifference, short stories described in the Guardian as dark, fierce, and sensual.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/24/beautiful-indifference-sarah-hall-review
Two memoirs and two historical investigations will vie for one of Canada's top non-fiction literary honours. George Bowering and Robert Fowler are two of the authors on the short list of four titles vying for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/12/04/bc-non-fiction-prize-short-list.html
Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper, which recently won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, is one of 15 titles that made the long list for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non Fiction.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1297217--charles-taylor-prize-long-list-for-literary-non-fiction-announced
The regional battle of the books continues as CBC's Canada Reads: Turf Wars releases the names of its panellists and book choices for 2013. Each panelist chose a book from among the top five selected by Canada Reads fans in their region. Q host Jian Ghomeshi will once again host the book debate. The Canada Reads debates will take place before a live audience in Toronto and on CBC Radio One, February 11 to 14, 2013.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/
YOUNG READERS
Barbara Smucker's Underground to Canada has all the qualities that you could want: adventure, tragedy, excitement and suspense, writes Petrova Fossil. This heart-warming tale of a slave's journey to freedom includes the Underground Railway, slave catchers, dogs, excitement and suspense. This heart-warming tale of a slave's journey to freedom describes how hard life was then. For ages 7 to 14.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/nov/28/review-underground-to-canada-barbara-smucker
R.L. Stine's Goosebumps celebrated its 20th anniversary in July. Stine writes six Goosebumps books a year. When Stine first began the Goosebumps series, the books were for girls. Now there is a boy and a girl in every book. The most recent book is Goosebumps: Hall of Horrors. Don't Scream! For ages 7 to 12.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/goosebumps-writer-rl-stine-looks-to-his-childhood-for-book-ideas/2012/09/04/1e5db00c-dcb2-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_story.html
Bear Despair, by Gaëtan Dorémus, a wordless book first published in France and one of this year's New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books, opens with an endpaper map that showcases all the story's characters. I've gone through this wordless tale dozens of times and still can't frame an exact story line, writes Anita Silvey. I just run my hands over each page and say, "This is so beautiful."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/books/review/bear-despair-by-gaetan-doremus-and-more.html
NEWS & FEATURES
Robert Mankoff writes about Abraham Lincoln's sense of humor, suggesting "As far as I can tell, he's the first American President to have one". The term "sense of humor" wasn't in common usage until the eighteen-sixties and seventies. Earlier, it was "the sense of the ridiculous." And what was ridiculous was what invited ridicule. Funniness and cruelty went hand in hand.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2012/11/lincolns-smile.html#ixzz2Dk3vrLq2
Carol Anne Duffy has written a new poem to mark the close of this year's World Shakespeare Festival. The poem is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/30/shakespeare-carol-ann-duffy-poem
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, John Coleman argues that poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity and develop a more acute sense of empathy. To those open to it, reading and writing poetry can be a valuable component of leadership development, writes Coleman.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/the_benefits_of_poetry_for_pro.html
My Last Empress, the new novel by Nobel laureate Da Chen, is a Nabokovian romp that extends from the Connecticut coast to the lantern-lit passageways of the Forbidden City during the waning days of the Qing Dynasty. The story is recounted by Pickens, a New England aristocrat whose destiny is derailed when, at the age of 18, he falls for Annabelle, the 19-year-old, China-born daughter of a missionary.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1296108--my-last-empress-by-da-chen-review
Lorna Crozier, Susan McCaslin, Don Domanski, and David Zieroth, among others, have tied a poem to a tree with a piece of string or ribbon, in the hope of raising public awareness about what's known locally as the McLellan Park Forest. Last weekend, 140 poems were strung up; more are to be added this weekend. The hope is to pressure the local council to make the area a park, instead of selling it to developers.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/writers-hang-poems-in-trees-in-bid-to-save-langley-land-parcel/article5983994/
BOOKS & WRITERS
Many of the world's best novels have bad endings, writes Joan Acocella. It's not that they end sadly, but that the ending is actually inartistic—a betrayal of what came before. This is true not just of good novels but also of books on which the reputation of Western fiction rests. The first half of "David Copperfield" leaves you gasping. But in the last chapters of the novel, you die of boredom. Willa Cather's "Song of the Lark" is a similar case.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/on-great-novels-with-bad-endings.html
The story of Canada is the story of her relationship with native people, writes Richard Wagamese. Since 1492, the history of the continent has been interpreted through settler eyes, with the relationship between indigenous people and settlers focused on the struggle for land. Thomas King's Inconvenient Indian is a powerful, important book, writes Wagamese.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/the-true-story-of-native-north-americans-whites-want-land/article5841075/
George Bowering has received nearly every accolade possible in a distinguished career: Canada's first poet laureate, Order of Canada, Order of British Columbia, fiction, poetry, plays, history, criticism. Now he's written a memoir of an early 1950s Okanagan Valley youth. Steven Brown writes that there's a great deal of gentle humour in the book, and no overt sentimentality.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Pinboy+George+Bowering+Nostalgia+runs+wild+minus/7634212/story.html
Michael Connelly's Bosch is back with The Black Box harking to the '92 L.A. riots. Together with his partner Jerry Edgar, Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch becomes part of a roving homicide team following the beating of Rodney King and the murder of a freelance Danish journalist. As usual, Michael Connelly gives us a genuine feeling of the politics of policing in Los Angeles.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/michael-connellys-latest-keeps-crime-writers-streak-alive/article5839925/
Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote begins with thousands of people trying to think positive thoughts together at a "Get Motivated!" session in a Texas baseball stadium, where they hear President George W. Bush talk on the power of optimism. The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking takes every self-help book you've ever read and turns it inside out, writes Hector Tobar.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-oliver-burkeman-20121202,0,6389186.story
Hallucinations, writes Oliver Sacks, fall into a unique and special category of consciousness in which they see and hear things that are not there. Although hallucinations are, according to Sacks, "an essential part of the human condition," Western society links them to madness.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Review+Oliver+Sacks+Hallucinations+evil+hear+evil/7600303/story.html
Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary isn't your mother's Mother Mary, writes Ron Charles. Forget the Annunciation. The only Assumption here is that Mary is a troubled woman, haunted by Golgotha, hunted by assassins, waiting for death. It's not so much a testament of faith as a confession of guilt. Her insistence on the truth becomes the book's central concern, says Charles.
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/more_medea_than_madonna_20121127/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TALK AND BOOK LAUNCH
Inspector Ken Burton will discuss his recreation of the historic voyages of the St. Roch and will discuss the challenges facing Canada and the "ice free" northern passage. Also features a launch of Kenneth John Haycock's new book The History of the RCMP Marine Services. Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
Upcoming
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Talk/reading, Q&A, and book signing by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Saturday, December 22 at 7:00pm, free. Our Town Cafe, 245 E. Broadway.
UNIQUE LIVES & EXPERIENCES
A lecture series featuring four outstanding women. First lecture will feature Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA spy and author of a bestselling autobiography, My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House, on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7:30pm. Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street. For complete season details and ticket information, visit www.uniquelives.com.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Book News Vol. 7 No. 44
BOOK NEWS
Holiday Giving
Looking for a special gift for the book-lovers on your list? Look no further! The VWF has gift ideas to bring joy to readers of all persuasions, from gift certificates to a limited edition chapbook. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
AWARDS & LISTS
Trilby Kent's Stones for My Father, a young adult book set during the Anglo-Boer war, has won the $30,000 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/22/childrens-literature-winners.html
Julie Bruck is the winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry for her book Monkey Ranch. Bruck who now lives in San Francisco, calls Montreal "my favourite place on Earth". Maude Smith Gagnon won for French-language poetry with Un drap. Une place.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Susan+Schwartz+Julie+Bruck+watchful+caring+heart/7609616/story.html#ixzz2DPIp6VZs
Candace Plattor, a Vancouver-based counsellor and blogger for The Vancouver Observer's Psyched blog, has been honoured with two International Book Awards this year. Her book, Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself Workbook, has won in the "Self-Help: Relationships" category, as well as "Health: Psychology/Mental Health."
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/bedsidetable/candace-plattor-writer-vancouver-observers-psyched-blog-wins-international-book
Teacher/author P.J. Sarah Collins wrote the first draft fourteen years ago. Now the Vancouver children novelist's What Happened to Serenity? has been recognized with the inaugural Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy.
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/bedsidetable/hot-press-what-happened-serenity-wins-inaugural-monica-hughes-award
Rawi Hage has won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction from the Quebec Writers' Federation for his book, Carnival. For a full list of winners, click here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/20/quebec-writers-federation-awards.html
Nancy Huston has been nominated for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for a passage from Infrared, her latest novel. The annual contest by Britain's Literary Review draws "attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/21/bad-sex-fiction.html
YOUNG READERS
More, by I.C. Springman is definitely less when it comes to text, which totals merely 45 words. But, oh, what words, writes Bernie Goedhart! And what illustrations by Brian Lies, who uses acrylic paint, coloured pencils and handmade paper to give us a dramatic concept book centred on an acquisitive magpie who never seems to know when enough is enough, and a small, helpful mouse determined to teach him just that. Ages 2 to 5.http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Cover+illustration+Brian+Lies+book+More+Springman+Lies+uses+acrylic+paint+coloured/7405343/story.html#ixzz2D1nncXFL
Bernie Goedhart suggests four animal tales for children not yet ready to care for pets: Emily Gravett's Matilda's Cat (for ages 1 to 5); Amy Hest's Charley's (lonely) First Night (ages 2 to 7); Oliver Jeffers' This Moose Belongs to Me; and Matthea Harvey's Cecil, the Pet Glacier. Ages 4 to 8.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Kids+Animal+tales+good+substitute+real+thing/7600325/story.html#ixzz2DC2s2OcI
NEWS & FEATURES
Simply Read Books is experimenting with their first book app, Saffy Looks for Rain, free to download on the App Store for one day only–Friday, November 30. This will offer readers the opportunity to explore using apps to access books; Simply Read Books will, in turn, learn whether parents, teachers and librarians will find the apps helpful.
http://www.simplyreadbooks.com/book.php?book_id=128
Mo Yan's Nobel nod is a 'catastrophe', says fellow laureate Herta Müller, accusing the Chinese writer of praising the Asian country's tough censorship laws. Mo, the first Chinese writer to win the literature award, has been criticized for compromising his artistic and intellectual independence by being a Communist Party member and vice president of the official writers association.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/nobel-literature-winner-herta-mueller-calls-2012-choice-of-chinas-mo-yan-a-catastrophe/2012/11/24/c6e8b4f0-364f-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story.html
Probably the most-quoted author after Shakespeare, and certainly the wittiest, Oscar Wilde's elegantly barbed observations are as popular as ever more than a century after his death in November 1900. Some of his most lasting lines can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/graphic/2012/nov/27/oscar-wilde-epigrams-quotes-infographic
As creator of The Hobbit, Middle-earth and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most successful authors in history. And yet, says Simon Tolkien, the grandfather he remembers seemed to think he had failed. The problem, says Simon, was that the bigger picture Tolkien had wanted the world to know – the complex hinterland of which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were but a small part–had not been deemed publishable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/24/simon-tolkien-jrr-tolkien-hobbit
The Tolkien estate is asking courts to define the contractual limits on Warner Brothers marketing rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, stating that the original marketing rights only included "tangible property". The estate has charged that Warner Brothers has gone well beyond those rights. HarperCollins, the holder of the English language rights to both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is also suing Warner Brothers.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/11/tolkien-lawsuit/all/1?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29
Independent publishing house D&M Publishers Inc. has received a 45-day court-ordered extension for its filing of a proposal to creditors. The company will remain under creditor protection until Jan. 4, 2013, and will be accepting investment or purchase offers until Nov. 26. D&M, which includes Douglas & McIntyre and Greystone Books, will continue operations while it restructures.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/21/dm-publishing.html
Wade Davis describes his hero Charles Howard Bury, a man of discretion and decorum, a brilliant writer and an accomplished naturalist, fluent in 27 Asian and European languages.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/23/charles-howard-bury-my-hero-wade-davis
What made film-maker Judd Apatow want to be funny? Or inspired novelist Stephenie Meyer to create a world of vampires? In My Ideal Bookshelf, more than 100 writers and other cultural figures were asked to share the literary journeys that helped them realize their ambitions and find success. What would be your ideal bookshelf, and why?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/25/stephenie-meyer-judd-apatow-ideal-bookshelf?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
"Beheading, believe it or not, was a privilege reserved usually for the aristocracy, for gentlemen and gentlewomen" says Hilary Mantel in an interview on Bring Up the Bodies, historical fiction, Tudor England, and winning the Man Book Prize for Bring Up the Bodies, the first woman to receive the award twice.
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/26/165913371/mantel-takes-up-betrayal-beheadings-in-bodies
BOOKS & WRITERS
Alice Munro gives tantalizing glimpses of her own life in Dear Life, writes Louise Doughty. When Munro won the Man Booker International prize in 2009, many considered it a beatification that was long overdue. This is simply a good writer doing what she loves, says Doughty. Each of the 14 stories in this collection is like a novel-in-miniature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/25/dear-life-alice-munro-review
Kitty Empire writes that Sylvie Simmons's I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen is a masterful biography of Leonard Cohen, revealing a selfish man with irresistible charm: the definitive volume on the guy right at the top of the tower of song, says Empire.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/25/your-man-leonard-cohen-review
Although he's published nearly 20 books, Sherman Alexie isn't as well known as he should be, writes Dimitri Nasrallah. A strict regionalist when it comes to his imaginary terrain, Alexie writes almost exclusively of Pacific Northwest Native Americans, publishing a dozen collections of poetry and three adult novels. Blasphemy, his fifth collection, offers readers a definitive entry point into the author's imagination, writes Nasrallah.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1287332--blasphemy-by-sherman-alexie-review
While Kurt Vonnegut routinely unmasked himself in his fiction, he ultimately wrote at arm's length. In Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, Vonnegut hides behind nothing. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Vonnegut was exactly what he pretended to be, says Jason Beerman.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1287393--kurt-vonnegut-letters-review
It's been a long poetic road; Bernice Lever has now published her 10th book of poetry, Imagining Lives. A natural lyricist and imaginary spinner, Lever's poetry comprises crystalline illustrations of the feelings between humans, writes Dennis Bolen.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Bernice+Lever+poetry+Affordable+accessible/7601194/story.html
Shawn Conner writes that Chris Ware's Building Stories has reignited the book-as-object versus ebook debate. Ware responds with "so-called ebooks are helping to redefine what a real book can be."
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Building+Stories+Chris+Ware+this+innovative+format/7601226/story.html
Robert Wiersema writes that he didn't just like Justin Cronin's The Passage; he fell head-over-heels for it, delivering in The Passage an apocalyptic vision to rival Stephen King's The Stand.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Justin+Cronin+dystopian+saga+continues+with+Twelve/7601187/story.html
You'd think a book devoted solely to a decade in the life of Wells, population 245, would have a severely limited market, writes Alexander Varty, but you'd be wrong. Susan Safyan's All Roads Lead to Wells: Stories of the Hippie Days expresses their universality. Some feel very familiar, even if I knew none of those involved, says Varty. It's nicely done, and not just for aging freaks.
http://www.straight.com/article-837691/vancouver/historic-hippie-refuge-reached-all-roads
COMMUNITY EVENTS
R. BRUCE MACDONALD
Talk and book launch of the author of North Star of Herschel Island: Last of the Canadian Arctic Fur-Trading Ships. Thursday, November 29 at 6:30pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
GEORGE BOWERING
Author celebrates his birthday and launches two new books: Words, Words, Words and Pinboy. Saturday, December 1 at 8:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver. More information at http://shar.es/6gihZ.
DEREK HAYES
Award-winning map historian presents his new volume, British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, the story of British Columbia in maps from the 1500s to the Vancouver Olympics. Monday, December 3 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Bestselling author has just ended her Otherworld series and is ready to wrap up her Vancouver Island-based Darkness Rising Young Adult trilogy. Wednesday, December 5 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia St.
GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.
Upcoming
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TALK AND BOOK LAUNCH
Inspector Ken Burton will discuss his recreation of the historic voyages of the St. Roch and will discuss the challenges facing Canada and the "ice free" northern passage. Also features a launch of Kenneth John Haycock's new book The History of the RCMP Marine Services. Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Talk/reading, Q&A, and book signing by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Saturday, December 22 at 7:00pm, free. Our Town Cafe, 245 E. Broadway.
UNIQUE LIVES & EXPERIENCES
A lecture series featuring four outstanding women. First lecture will feature Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA spy and author of a bestselling autobiography, My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House, on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7:30pm. Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street. For complete season details and ticket information, visit www.uniquelives.com.
Holiday Giving
Looking for a special gift for the book-lovers on your list? Look no further! The VWF has gift ideas to bring joy to readers of all persuasions, from gift certificates to a limited edition chapbook. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
AWARDS & LISTS
Trilby Kent's Stones for My Father, a young adult book set during the Anglo-Boer war, has won the $30,000 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/22/childrens-literature-winners.html
Julie Bruck is the winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry for her book Monkey Ranch. Bruck who now lives in San Francisco, calls Montreal "my favourite place on Earth". Maude Smith Gagnon won for French-language poetry with Un drap. Une place.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Susan+Schwartz+Julie+Bruck+watchful+caring+heart/7609616/story.html#ixzz2DPIp6VZs
Candace Plattor, a Vancouver-based counsellor and blogger for The Vancouver Observer's Psyched blog, has been honoured with two International Book Awards this year. Her book, Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself Workbook, has won in the "Self-Help: Relationships" category, as well as "Health: Psychology/Mental Health."
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/bedsidetable/candace-plattor-writer-vancouver-observers-psyched-blog-wins-international-book
Teacher/author P.J. Sarah Collins wrote the first draft fourteen years ago. Now the Vancouver children novelist's What Happened to Serenity? has been recognized with the inaugural Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy.
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/bedsidetable/hot-press-what-happened-serenity-wins-inaugural-monica-hughes-award
Rawi Hage has won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction from the Quebec Writers' Federation for his book, Carnival. For a full list of winners, click here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/20/quebec-writers-federation-awards.html
Nancy Huston has been nominated for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for a passage from Infrared, her latest novel. The annual contest by Britain's Literary Review draws "attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/21/bad-sex-fiction.html
YOUNG READERS
More, by I.C. Springman is definitely less when it comes to text, which totals merely 45 words. But, oh, what words, writes Bernie Goedhart! And what illustrations by Brian Lies, who uses acrylic paint, coloured pencils and handmade paper to give us a dramatic concept book centred on an acquisitive magpie who never seems to know when enough is enough, and a small, helpful mouse determined to teach him just that. Ages 2 to 5.http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Cover+illustration+Brian+Lies+book+More+Springman+Lies+uses+acrylic+paint+coloured/7405343/story.html#ixzz2D1nncXFL
Bernie Goedhart suggests four animal tales for children not yet ready to care for pets: Emily Gravett's Matilda's Cat (for ages 1 to 5); Amy Hest's Charley's (lonely) First Night (ages 2 to 7); Oliver Jeffers' This Moose Belongs to Me; and Matthea Harvey's Cecil, the Pet Glacier. Ages 4 to 8.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Kids+Animal+tales+good+substitute+real+thing/7600325/story.html#ixzz2DC2s2OcI
NEWS & FEATURES
Simply Read Books is experimenting with their first book app, Saffy Looks for Rain, free to download on the App Store for one day only–Friday, November 30. This will offer readers the opportunity to explore using apps to access books; Simply Read Books will, in turn, learn whether parents, teachers and librarians will find the apps helpful.
http://www.simplyreadbooks.com/book.php?book_id=128
Mo Yan's Nobel nod is a 'catastrophe', says fellow laureate Herta Müller, accusing the Chinese writer of praising the Asian country's tough censorship laws. Mo, the first Chinese writer to win the literature award, has been criticized for compromising his artistic and intellectual independence by being a Communist Party member and vice president of the official writers association.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/nobel-literature-winner-herta-mueller-calls-2012-choice-of-chinas-mo-yan-a-catastrophe/2012/11/24/c6e8b4f0-364f-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story.html
Probably the most-quoted author after Shakespeare, and certainly the wittiest, Oscar Wilde's elegantly barbed observations are as popular as ever more than a century after his death in November 1900. Some of his most lasting lines can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/graphic/2012/nov/27/oscar-wilde-epigrams-quotes-infographic
As creator of The Hobbit, Middle-earth and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most successful authors in history. And yet, says Simon Tolkien, the grandfather he remembers seemed to think he had failed. The problem, says Simon, was that the bigger picture Tolkien had wanted the world to know – the complex hinterland of which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were but a small part–had not been deemed publishable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/24/simon-tolkien-jrr-tolkien-hobbit
The Tolkien estate is asking courts to define the contractual limits on Warner Brothers marketing rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, stating that the original marketing rights only included "tangible property". The estate has charged that Warner Brothers has gone well beyond those rights. HarperCollins, the holder of the English language rights to both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is also suing Warner Brothers.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/11/tolkien-lawsuit/all/1?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29
Independent publishing house D&M Publishers Inc. has received a 45-day court-ordered extension for its filing of a proposal to creditors. The company will remain under creditor protection until Jan. 4, 2013, and will be accepting investment or purchase offers until Nov. 26. D&M, which includes Douglas & McIntyre and Greystone Books, will continue operations while it restructures.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/21/dm-publishing.html
Wade Davis describes his hero Charles Howard Bury, a man of discretion and decorum, a brilliant writer and an accomplished naturalist, fluent in 27 Asian and European languages.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/23/charles-howard-bury-my-hero-wade-davis
What made film-maker Judd Apatow want to be funny? Or inspired novelist Stephenie Meyer to create a world of vampires? In My Ideal Bookshelf, more than 100 writers and other cultural figures were asked to share the literary journeys that helped them realize their ambitions and find success. What would be your ideal bookshelf, and why?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/25/stephenie-meyer-judd-apatow-ideal-bookshelf?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
"Beheading, believe it or not, was a privilege reserved usually for the aristocracy, for gentlemen and gentlewomen" says Hilary Mantel in an interview on Bring Up the Bodies, historical fiction, Tudor England, and winning the Man Book Prize for Bring Up the Bodies, the first woman to receive the award twice.
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/26/165913371/mantel-takes-up-betrayal-beheadings-in-bodies
BOOKS & WRITERS
Alice Munro gives tantalizing glimpses of her own life in Dear Life, writes Louise Doughty. When Munro won the Man Booker International prize in 2009, many considered it a beatification that was long overdue. This is simply a good writer doing what she loves, says Doughty. Each of the 14 stories in this collection is like a novel-in-miniature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/25/dear-life-alice-munro-review
Kitty Empire writes that Sylvie Simmons's I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen is a masterful biography of Leonard Cohen, revealing a selfish man with irresistible charm: the definitive volume on the guy right at the top of the tower of song, says Empire.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/25/your-man-leonard-cohen-review
Although he's published nearly 20 books, Sherman Alexie isn't as well known as he should be, writes Dimitri Nasrallah. A strict regionalist when it comes to his imaginary terrain, Alexie writes almost exclusively of Pacific Northwest Native Americans, publishing a dozen collections of poetry and three adult novels. Blasphemy, his fifth collection, offers readers a definitive entry point into the author's imagination, writes Nasrallah.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1287332--blasphemy-by-sherman-alexie-review
While Kurt Vonnegut routinely unmasked himself in his fiction, he ultimately wrote at arm's length. In Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, Vonnegut hides behind nothing. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Vonnegut was exactly what he pretended to be, says Jason Beerman.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1287393--kurt-vonnegut-letters-review
It's been a long poetic road; Bernice Lever has now published her 10th book of poetry, Imagining Lives. A natural lyricist and imaginary spinner, Lever's poetry comprises crystalline illustrations of the feelings between humans, writes Dennis Bolen.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Bernice+Lever+poetry+Affordable+accessible/7601194/story.html
Shawn Conner writes that Chris Ware's Building Stories has reignited the book-as-object versus ebook debate. Ware responds with "so-called ebooks are helping to redefine what a real book can be."
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Building+Stories+Chris+Ware+this+innovative+format/7601226/story.html
Robert Wiersema writes that he didn't just like Justin Cronin's The Passage; he fell head-over-heels for it, delivering in The Passage an apocalyptic vision to rival Stephen King's The Stand.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Justin+Cronin+dystopian+saga+continues+with+Twelve/7601187/story.html
You'd think a book devoted solely to a decade in the life of Wells, population 245, would have a severely limited market, writes Alexander Varty, but you'd be wrong. Susan Safyan's All Roads Lead to Wells: Stories of the Hippie Days expresses their universality. Some feel very familiar, even if I knew none of those involved, says Varty. It's nicely done, and not just for aging freaks.
http://www.straight.com/article-837691/vancouver/historic-hippie-refuge-reached-all-roads
COMMUNITY EVENTS
R. BRUCE MACDONALD
Talk and book launch of the author of North Star of Herschel Island: Last of the Canadian Arctic Fur-Trading Ships. Thursday, November 29 at 6:30pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
GEORGE BOWERING
Author celebrates his birthday and launches two new books: Words, Words, Words and Pinboy. Saturday, December 1 at 8:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver. More information at http://shar.es/6gihZ.
DEREK HAYES
Award-winning map historian presents his new volume, British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, the story of British Columbia in maps from the 1500s to the Vancouver Olympics. Monday, December 3 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Bestselling author has just ended her Otherworld series and is ready to wrap up her Vancouver Island-based Darkness Rising Young Adult trilogy. Wednesday, December 5 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia St.
GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.
Upcoming
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TALK AND BOOK LAUNCH
Inspector Ken Burton will discuss his recreation of the historic voyages of the St. Roch and will discuss the challenges facing Canada and the "ice free" northern passage. Also features a launch of Kenneth John Haycock's new book The History of the RCMP Marine Services. Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Talk/reading, Q&A, and book signing by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Saturday, December 22 at 7:00pm, free. Our Town Cafe, 245 E. Broadway.
UNIQUE LIVES & EXPERIENCES
A lecture series featuring four outstanding women. First lecture will feature Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA spy and author of a bestselling autobiography, My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House, on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7:30pm. Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street. For complete season details and ticket information, visit www.uniquelives.com.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Book News Vol. 7 No. 43
BOOK NEWS
Holiday Giving
Looking for a special gift for the book-lovers on your list? Look no further! The VWF has gift ideas to bring joy to readers of all persuasions, from gift certificates to a limited edition chapbook. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
Jewish Book Festival - November 24 to 29
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many others, including VWF Artistic Director Hal Wake interviewing Shalom Auslander in the opening event Saturday November 24th. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
Shalom Auslander's writing is shocking, fearless, outrageous, funny and very, very dark. He's been described as "an unapologetically paranoid, guilt-ridden, self-loathing Diaspora kvetch, enraged by a God he can't live with or without", and The Guardian calls his latest novel "a raging, hilarious polemic on the inescapability of history and the ambiguous nature of hope". In a recent interview Auslander credits Curious George for pulling him back from the abyss."
http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/Nov12/archives12Nov16-02.html
While Canadians know that we are a country of immigrants, it is less well known that in the 18th Century, Quebec was a province where non-Catholic immigrants were forbidden entry. Susan Glickman's The Tale Teller features a young woman who arrives from France disguised as a boy, concealing her Jewish faith. Glickman will appear at the JCC Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 26.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Tale+Teller+Imagined+Jewish+past+illuminated+Life/7560146/story.html
AWARDS & LISTS
The American novelist Maggie Shipstead–once a student of Zadie Smith–has won the Dylan Thomas prize for her debut Seating Arrangements, a £30,000 award for writers under 30.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/13/maggie-shipstead-dylan-thomas-prize
The U.S. National Book Awards has honoured Louise Erdrich for The Round House and Katherine Boo for her debut work, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/15/us-national-book-awards.html
Bonnie Nadzam's Lamb is a lyrical, if disturbing, debut that has won the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize in the US. Nadzam says that the novel was shaped by a news report she saw on CNN.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/bonnie-nadzam-debut-author-lamb
The Guardian First Book award 2012 shortlist Include: Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, and Kerry Hudson's Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. The two non-fiction titles for the shortlist are Lindsey Hilsum's Sandstorm, and journalist Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/guardian-first-book-award-2012-shortlist
Two graphic works are the first ever shortlisted for the Costa novel of the year. Days of the Bagnold Summer by Joff Winterhart competes with works by Hilary Mantel, James Meek and Stephen May. A biography/memoir by Mary Talbot is one of four books in the best biography shortlist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/20/costa-book-awards-2012-graphic-works
My Big Shouting Day, by Rebecca Patterson, is the winner of the 2012 Roald Dahl Funny prize in the category aged 6 and under. Jamie Thomson's Dark Lord: The Teenage Years, a tale about a powerful netherworld lord who finds himself inhabiting the body of a chubby teenager, scooped the seven to 14 year category prize.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Roald+Dahl+prizes+awarded+dark+lord+shouting/7504899/story.html#ixzz2BleTNZYl
The list of Winners of the 2012 Canadian Children's Literature Awards can be found here:
http://www.bookcentre.ca/news/ccbc_award_winners_2012
YOUNG READERS
Geneviève Côté's Mr. King's Things features a silly cat named Mr. King who likes "LOTS of new things." If something becomes a bit old, he "tosses it into the nearby pond and replaces it with a new one." One day, Mr. King goes fishing in the pond, and something really BIG tugs the line. Alarmed, Mr. King pulls hard and hauls in the "scariest-looking thing" he's ever seen. Ages 3 to 7.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/genevieve-cote/mr-kings-things/
A teen detective with Asperger's, Colin Fischer is obsessed with truth and lies, as well as math and other subjects. That makes him a good guy to have around. Not naturally adept at social life, Colin works hard to make up for what doesn't come easily.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-colin-fischer-20121118,0,5785554.story
NEWS & FEATURES
"Do you have a copy of Tequila Mockingbird?" "Did Charles Dickens ever write anything fun?" "This Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has to be the most historically accurate fiction book I've read." Those are just a few of the remarks featured in the amusing hardback Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores (Overlook Press), by English bookseller Jen Campbell.
http://www.nsnews.com/news/have+count+Monte+Crisco/7566592/story.html#ixzz2CpIH6qBT
In an edited version of a keynote speech given by Miriam Toews in Toronto as part of the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference, she tells of discovering that for the Italians, her Mennonite identity was of far greater interest than her Canadian identity. She comes away asking: "Is there such a thing as a national literature?" An edited version of her keynote speech is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/16/miriam-toews-mennonite-canadian-subversive
The full version is here:
http://www.edinburghworldwritersconference.org/all-keynotes/toews-in-toronto-keynote-on-a-national-literature/
Jeanette Winterson, one of many authors to have spoken in defence of the UK's libraries, is calling for the millions of pounds of profit which Amazon, Starbucks and Google were last week accused of diverting from the UK to be used to save Britain's beleaguered public libraries. She also suggested that libraries be removed from local councils' leisure budgets and put into the national education budget.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/19/amazon-starbucks-google-libraries-jeanette-winterson
Reading isn't only a matter of our brains; it's something that we do with our bodies, writes Andrew Piper. It's an integral part of our lived experience, our sense of being in the world, beginning with how we hold our reading materials.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/11/reading_on_a_kindle_is_not_the_same_as_reading_a_book.single.html
The New Republic writes that Canada is hipper than America, says Thomas Rogers. How did this happen?
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/109927/face-it-americans-canada-north-americas-coolest-country
In The Hunger Angel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller captures the misery of life in the 1940s gulag for Romanian Germans. Müller takes an important look at one of the 20th century's lesser known persecutions and paints a bleak portrait of life inside Stalin's labour camps.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/hunger-angel-herta-muller-review
Novelist Richard Russo pays homage to the shop where he fell in love with reading—and to the crucial role bookstores can still play in our lives. We may be all the same in how we view bookstores–as places to learn, relax, find something new, escape the day, engage the mind. Maybe something more.
http://www.parade.com/news/views/guest/121118-richard-russo-wonder-of-bookstores-reading.html
A lawsuit filed in Utah is claiming that the removal of a children's book from library shelves is a violation of the first amendment. In Our Mothers' House, described as a "gem" by the School Library Journal, is the story of a family of adopted children with two mothers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/15/utah-district-book-lesbian-mums
Is crime fiction ready for black villains? There's a long-running literary joke that the black guy never makes it past chapter 10, writes Fiona Snyckers. It is heartening, therefore, to know that South African crime writers are leading the pack when it comes to creating believable black villains.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/15/black-villans-crime-fiction
Shortly before Philip Roth announced his retirement from writing, Julian Tepper served Roth's café breakfast, and showed Roth his book Balls. "Great title", said Roth. "I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself." "Quit while you're ahead," advised Roth. "What will he do when boredom sets in?" asks Tepper.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/11/13/in-which-philip-roth-gave-me-life-advice/
Following the death of T.S. Eliot's wife Valerie Eliot, her friends and former colleagues say access to all the poet's personal papers may now be granted. If so, the great poet's alleged antisemitism is also likely to come under fresh scrutiny. Love poems presented to his second wife every Sunday of their married life can also be published, according to her wishes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/eliot-tragic-first-marriage
Did anyone really believe Ian Rankin was going to stop writing about John Rebus, the cantankerous, alcoholic detective who was retired by his creator, in 2006? We should all have known better, says Alison Flood. Rebus is back and working for the serious crime review unit, albeit in a civilian capacity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/rankin-standing-mans-grave-review
In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Kellogg, Margaret Atwood is full of cheer, seeing the humor in the darkest situations. Atwood tells us, in this video interview, that she's not alone; even Kafka laughed while writing his tales of desperation.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-margaret-atwood-byliner-serial-fun-dystopia-video-20121023,0,3745538.story
The Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries, is back! The 9th annual contest is now underway. More details here:
http://www.geist.com/articles/postcard-contest
BOOKS & WRITERS
Adam Gopnik's love letter to the snowy season makes a perfect fireside companion, writes Tim Adams. Since Gopnik grew up in Montreal, his ideas of winter have a dramatic cast. Winter: Five Windows on the Season began as a lecture series; there is an anecdotal, homecoming quality to it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/winter-adam-gopnik-review
Benoît Peeters has ransacked the voluminous Derrida archives and interviewed scores of Derrida's friends and colleagues. The result is Derrida: A Biography, a marvellously compelling account, lucidly translated by Andrew Brown, writes Terry Eagleton. The man who emerges from this portrait is an agonised soul and an astonishingly original thinker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/14/derrida-biography-benoit-peeters-review
While few will have expected the war in Iraq to bring forth a novel that can stand beside All Quiet on the Western Front, Kevin Powers' debut novel The Yellow Birds does just that, writes John Burnside. Powers' book is short listed for The Guardian First Book Award 2012.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/the-yellow-birds-kevin-powers-review
Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, aims to build bridges to Kabul with his new book And The Mountains Echoed, now in draft form, publication planned for May. 2013. There are too many myths about Afghanistan, warns Hosseini.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2012/nov/18/khaled-hosseini-kite-runner-new-book
Ali Smith's Artful consists of four essays woven together into one deeply original story of love and loss that illustrates the power of inspiration, says Julie Myerson.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/artful-ali-smith-review
One of "20 writers for the 21st century" identified by the New Yorker in 1999, Sherman Alexie hasn't always angled his work toward the most marketable of reputations: he writes of Pacific Northwest Native Americans. His fifth collection, Blasphemy, seems intent on rectifying his place in contemporary letters once and for all, writes Dmitri Nasrallah.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1287332--blasphemy-by-sherman-alexie-review
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
LIQUOR, LUST, AND THE LAW
Author Aaron Chapman, nightclub owner Danny Filippone, and Arsenal Pulp Press celebrate the release of Liquor, Lust, and the Law: The Story of Vancouver's Legendary Penthouse Nightclub. Includes cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, live swing music by Goby Catt, and master of ceremonies Will Woods. Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm. Penthouse Night Club, 1019 Seymour Street. More information at marketing@arsenalpulp.com.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
BRUNO AND THE BEACH
Meet actor-turned-author Jackson Davies at the launch for Bruno and the Beach: The Beachcombers at 40, a new book that celebrates the 40th anniversary of the CBC's longest-running drama. Friday, November 23 at 5:30pm. CBC Studio 700, 700 Hamilton Street. More information at www.harbourpublishing.com.
MRS. CEPERLY'S GARDEN AND OTHER PLOTS
Musician, playwright, and storyteller Kempton Dexter launches his first collection of short stories. Friday, November 23 at 7:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive. More information at srduncan@shaw.ca.
WE ARE CANADA BOOK SIGNING
Vancouver author Rikia Saddy signs copies of her new book. Saturday, November 24 at 1:00pm. Hager Books, 2176 41st Ave. W. More information at www.wearecanada.org.
TO THE STONING: A BUTOH READING
Book launch for Patrik Sampler's To the Stoning: Leftist Erotica, with butoh choreography by Carolyn Chan of Kokoro Dance. Saturday, November 24 at 7:00pm, free. Visual Space, 2075 Alberta. More information at landfillpublishing.wordpress.com.
IT WASN'T CRAZY UNTIL YOU GOT HERE
A fundraiser featuring theatrical reading with musical accompaniment about finding humour, home and meaning in the Alzheimer's experience. Performed by Cathie Borrie, Patti Allan, and Ariel Barnes with a special appearance by The Marcus Mosley Chorale. Sunday, November 25 at 1:30pm. Tickets: $15. St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church (Nelson and Burrard), Vancouver. More information at cathieborrie.com.
POETIC JUSTICE
Readings featuring Kathleen Katon Tonnesen, Robert Martens, and Janet Kvammen. Sunday, November 25 at 3:00pm. Heritage Grill Backroom, 447 Columbia Street, New Westminster. More information at poeticjustice.ca.
BARRY GOUGH
The author and historian presents Juan de Fuca's Straight: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams, a history of intrigue and exploration on the high seas. Monday, November 26 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, VPL, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
POETRY SLAM
Youth poetry slam featuring Susan Cormier. Monday, November 26 at 8:00pm. Cost: $4/$6. Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive. More information at vancouverpoetryhouse.com.
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
CHRIS CZAJKOWSKI
Author reads from her new book Ginty's Ghost. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free but pre-register by calling 604-299-8955. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert Street, Burnaby. More information at 604-299-8955.
Upcoming
DEREK HAYES
Award-winning map historian presents his new volume, British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, the story of British Columbia in maps from the 1500s to the Vancouver Olympics. Monday, December 3 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Bestselling author has just ended her Otherworld series and is ready to wrap up her Vancouver Island-based Darkness Rising Young Adult trilogy. Wednesday, December 5 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia St.
GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
Holiday Giving
Looking for a special gift for the book-lovers on your list? Look no further! The VWF has gift ideas to bring joy to readers of all persuasions, from gift certificates to a limited edition chapbook. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers
Jewish Book Festival - November 24 to 29
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many others, including VWF Artistic Director Hal Wake interviewing Shalom Auslander in the opening event Saturday November 24th. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
Shalom Auslander's writing is shocking, fearless, outrageous, funny and very, very dark. He's been described as "an unapologetically paranoid, guilt-ridden, self-loathing Diaspora kvetch, enraged by a God he can't live with or without", and The Guardian calls his latest novel "a raging, hilarious polemic on the inescapability of history and the ambiguous nature of hope". In a recent interview Auslander credits Curious George for pulling him back from the abyss."
http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/Nov12/archives12Nov16-02.html
While Canadians know that we are a country of immigrants, it is less well known that in the 18th Century, Quebec was a province where non-Catholic immigrants were forbidden entry. Susan Glickman's The Tale Teller features a young woman who arrives from France disguised as a boy, concealing her Jewish faith. Glickman will appear at the JCC Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 26.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Tale+Teller+Imagined+Jewish+past+illuminated+Life/7560146/story.html
AWARDS & LISTS
The American novelist Maggie Shipstead–once a student of Zadie Smith–has won the Dylan Thomas prize for her debut Seating Arrangements, a £30,000 award for writers under 30.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/13/maggie-shipstead-dylan-thomas-prize
The U.S. National Book Awards has honoured Louise Erdrich for The Round House and Katherine Boo for her debut work, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/15/us-national-book-awards.html
Bonnie Nadzam's Lamb is a lyrical, if disturbing, debut that has won the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize in the US. Nadzam says that the novel was shaped by a news report she saw on CNN.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/bonnie-nadzam-debut-author-lamb
The Guardian First Book award 2012 shortlist Include: Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, and Kerry Hudson's Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. The two non-fiction titles for the shortlist are Lindsey Hilsum's Sandstorm, and journalist Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/guardian-first-book-award-2012-shortlist
Two graphic works are the first ever shortlisted for the Costa novel of the year. Days of the Bagnold Summer by Joff Winterhart competes with works by Hilary Mantel, James Meek and Stephen May. A biography/memoir by Mary Talbot is one of four books in the best biography shortlist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/20/costa-book-awards-2012-graphic-works
My Big Shouting Day, by Rebecca Patterson, is the winner of the 2012 Roald Dahl Funny prize in the category aged 6 and under. Jamie Thomson's Dark Lord: The Teenage Years, a tale about a powerful netherworld lord who finds himself inhabiting the body of a chubby teenager, scooped the seven to 14 year category prize.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Roald+Dahl+prizes+awarded+dark+lord+shouting/7504899/story.html#ixzz2BleTNZYl
The list of Winners of the 2012 Canadian Children's Literature Awards can be found here:
http://www.bookcentre.ca/news/ccbc_award_winners_2012
YOUNG READERS
Geneviève Côté's Mr. King's Things features a silly cat named Mr. King who likes "LOTS of new things." If something becomes a bit old, he "tosses it into the nearby pond and replaces it with a new one." One day, Mr. King goes fishing in the pond, and something really BIG tugs the line. Alarmed, Mr. King pulls hard and hauls in the "scariest-looking thing" he's ever seen. Ages 3 to 7.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/genevieve-cote/mr-kings-things/
A teen detective with Asperger's, Colin Fischer is obsessed with truth and lies, as well as math and other subjects. That makes him a good guy to have around. Not naturally adept at social life, Colin works hard to make up for what doesn't come easily.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-colin-fischer-20121118,0,5785554.story
NEWS & FEATURES
"Do you have a copy of Tequila Mockingbird?" "Did Charles Dickens ever write anything fun?" "This Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has to be the most historically accurate fiction book I've read." Those are just a few of the remarks featured in the amusing hardback Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores (Overlook Press), by English bookseller Jen Campbell.
http://www.nsnews.com/news/have+count+Monte+Crisco/7566592/story.html#ixzz2CpIH6qBT
In an edited version of a keynote speech given by Miriam Toews in Toronto as part of the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference, she tells of discovering that for the Italians, her Mennonite identity was of far greater interest than her Canadian identity. She comes away asking: "Is there such a thing as a national literature?" An edited version of her keynote speech is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/16/miriam-toews-mennonite-canadian-subversive
The full version is here:
http://www.edinburghworldwritersconference.org/all-keynotes/toews-in-toronto-keynote-on-a-national-literature/
Jeanette Winterson, one of many authors to have spoken in defence of the UK's libraries, is calling for the millions of pounds of profit which Amazon, Starbucks and Google were last week accused of diverting from the UK to be used to save Britain's beleaguered public libraries. She also suggested that libraries be removed from local councils' leisure budgets and put into the national education budget.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/19/amazon-starbucks-google-libraries-jeanette-winterson
Reading isn't only a matter of our brains; it's something that we do with our bodies, writes Andrew Piper. It's an integral part of our lived experience, our sense of being in the world, beginning with how we hold our reading materials.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/11/reading_on_a_kindle_is_not_the_same_as_reading_a_book.single.html
The New Republic writes that Canada is hipper than America, says Thomas Rogers. How did this happen?
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/109927/face-it-americans-canada-north-americas-coolest-country
In The Hunger Angel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller captures the misery of life in the 1940s gulag for Romanian Germans. Müller takes an important look at one of the 20th century's lesser known persecutions and paints a bleak portrait of life inside Stalin's labour camps.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/hunger-angel-herta-muller-review
Novelist Richard Russo pays homage to the shop where he fell in love with reading—and to the crucial role bookstores can still play in our lives. We may be all the same in how we view bookstores–as places to learn, relax, find something new, escape the day, engage the mind. Maybe something more.
http://www.parade.com/news/views/guest/121118-richard-russo-wonder-of-bookstores-reading.html
A lawsuit filed in Utah is claiming that the removal of a children's book from library shelves is a violation of the first amendment. In Our Mothers' House, described as a "gem" by the School Library Journal, is the story of a family of adopted children with two mothers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/15/utah-district-book-lesbian-mums
Is crime fiction ready for black villains? There's a long-running literary joke that the black guy never makes it past chapter 10, writes Fiona Snyckers. It is heartening, therefore, to know that South African crime writers are leading the pack when it comes to creating believable black villains.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/15/black-villans-crime-fiction
Shortly before Philip Roth announced his retirement from writing, Julian Tepper served Roth's café breakfast, and showed Roth his book Balls. "Great title", said Roth. "I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself." "Quit while you're ahead," advised Roth. "What will he do when boredom sets in?" asks Tepper.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/11/13/in-which-philip-roth-gave-me-life-advice/
Following the death of T.S. Eliot's wife Valerie Eliot, her friends and former colleagues say access to all the poet's personal papers may now be granted. If so, the great poet's alleged antisemitism is also likely to come under fresh scrutiny. Love poems presented to his second wife every Sunday of their married life can also be published, according to her wishes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/eliot-tragic-first-marriage
Did anyone really believe Ian Rankin was going to stop writing about John Rebus, the cantankerous, alcoholic detective who was retired by his creator, in 2006? We should all have known better, says Alison Flood. Rebus is back and working for the serious crime review unit, albeit in a civilian capacity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/rankin-standing-mans-grave-review
In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Kellogg, Margaret Atwood is full of cheer, seeing the humor in the darkest situations. Atwood tells us, in this video interview, that she's not alone; even Kafka laughed while writing his tales of desperation.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-margaret-atwood-byliner-serial-fun-dystopia-video-20121023,0,3745538.story
The Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries, is back! The 9th annual contest is now underway. More details here:
http://www.geist.com/articles/postcard-contest
BOOKS & WRITERS
Adam Gopnik's love letter to the snowy season makes a perfect fireside companion, writes Tim Adams. Since Gopnik grew up in Montreal, his ideas of winter have a dramatic cast. Winter: Five Windows on the Season began as a lecture series; there is an anecdotal, homecoming quality to it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/winter-adam-gopnik-review
Benoît Peeters has ransacked the voluminous Derrida archives and interviewed scores of Derrida's friends and colleagues. The result is Derrida: A Biography, a marvellously compelling account, lucidly translated by Andrew Brown, writes Terry Eagleton. The man who emerges from this portrait is an agonised soul and an astonishingly original thinker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/14/derrida-biography-benoit-peeters-review
While few will have expected the war in Iraq to bring forth a novel that can stand beside All Quiet on the Western Front, Kevin Powers' debut novel The Yellow Birds does just that, writes John Burnside. Powers' book is short listed for The Guardian First Book Award 2012.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/the-yellow-birds-kevin-powers-review
Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, aims to build bridges to Kabul with his new book And The Mountains Echoed, now in draft form, publication planned for May. 2013. There are too many myths about Afghanistan, warns Hosseini.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2012/nov/18/khaled-hosseini-kite-runner-new-book
Ali Smith's Artful consists of four essays woven together into one deeply original story of love and loss that illustrates the power of inspiration, says Julie Myerson.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/artful-ali-smith-review
One of "20 writers for the 21st century" identified by the New Yorker in 1999, Sherman Alexie hasn't always angled his work toward the most marketable of reputations: he writes of Pacific Northwest Native Americans. His fifth collection, Blasphemy, seems intent on rectifying his place in contemporary letters once and for all, writes Dmitri Nasrallah.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1287332--blasphemy-by-sherman-alexie-review
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
LIQUOR, LUST, AND THE LAW
Author Aaron Chapman, nightclub owner Danny Filippone, and Arsenal Pulp Press celebrate the release of Liquor, Lust, and the Law: The Story of Vancouver's Legendary Penthouse Nightclub. Includes cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, live swing music by Goby Catt, and master of ceremonies Will Woods. Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm. Penthouse Night Club, 1019 Seymour Street. More information at marketing@arsenalpulp.com.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
BRUNO AND THE BEACH
Meet actor-turned-author Jackson Davies at the launch for Bruno and the Beach: The Beachcombers at 40, a new book that celebrates the 40th anniversary of the CBC's longest-running drama. Friday, November 23 at 5:30pm. CBC Studio 700, 700 Hamilton Street. More information at www.harbourpublishing.com.
MRS. CEPERLY'S GARDEN AND OTHER PLOTS
Musician, playwright, and storyteller Kempton Dexter launches his first collection of short stories. Friday, November 23 at 7:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive. More information at srduncan@shaw.ca.
WE ARE CANADA BOOK SIGNING
Vancouver author Rikia Saddy signs copies of her new book. Saturday, November 24 at 1:00pm. Hager Books, 2176 41st Ave. W. More information at www.wearecanada.org.
TO THE STONING: A BUTOH READING
Book launch for Patrik Sampler's To the Stoning: Leftist Erotica, with butoh choreography by Carolyn Chan of Kokoro Dance. Saturday, November 24 at 7:00pm, free. Visual Space, 2075 Alberta. More information at landfillpublishing.wordpress.com.
IT WASN'T CRAZY UNTIL YOU GOT HERE
A fundraiser featuring theatrical reading with musical accompaniment about finding humour, home and meaning in the Alzheimer's experience. Performed by Cathie Borrie, Patti Allan, and Ariel Barnes with a special appearance by The Marcus Mosley Chorale. Sunday, November 25 at 1:30pm. Tickets: $15. St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church (Nelson and Burrard), Vancouver. More information at cathieborrie.com.
POETIC JUSTICE
Readings featuring Kathleen Katon Tonnesen, Robert Martens, and Janet Kvammen. Sunday, November 25 at 3:00pm. Heritage Grill Backroom, 447 Columbia Street, New Westminster. More information at poeticjustice.ca.
BARRY GOUGH
The author and historian presents Juan de Fuca's Straight: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams, a history of intrigue and exploration on the high seas. Monday, November 26 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, VPL, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
POETRY SLAM
Youth poetry slam featuring Susan Cormier. Monday, November 26 at 8:00pm. Cost: $4/$6. Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive. More information at vancouverpoetryhouse.com.
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
CHRIS CZAJKOWSKI
Author reads from her new book Ginty's Ghost. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free but pre-register by calling 604-299-8955. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert Street, Burnaby. More information at 604-299-8955.
Upcoming
DEREK HAYES
Award-winning map historian presents his new volume, British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, the story of British Columbia in maps from the 1500s to the Vancouver Olympics. Monday, December 3 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Bestselling author has just ended her Otherworld series and is ready to wrap up her Vancouver Island-based Darkness Rising Young Adult trilogy. Wednesday, December 5 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia St.
GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Book News Vol. 7 No. 42
BOOK NEWS
Holiday Giving
Looking for a special gift for the book-lovers on your list? Look no further! The VWF has gift ideas to bring joy to readers of all persuasions:
Alistair MacLeod's Remembrance - the beautiful limited edition chapbook of Alistair's newly commissioned short story, $25 each. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2012festival/remembrance
Festival Memberships - ticket discounts, early-bird access and more for a $35 annual fee (or $60 for two years). Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/get-involved/membership
Gift Certificates - to be used for the 2013 Festival, available in $25 increments.
Call us on 604-681-6330 x0 to order. Please note that all orders must be placed before Dec 18.
Jewish Book Festival
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many others, including VWF Artistic Director Hal Wake interviewing Shalom Auslander in the opening event Saturday November 24th. November 24-29, 2012. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
AWARDS & LISTS
France's most prestigious prize for literature, the Goncourt prize, went to Jerome Ferrari for The Sermon on the Fall of Rome.
http://www.france24.com/en/20121107-corsican-saga-wins-france-top-literary-goncourt-prize-ferrari-sermon-on-fall-rome
Candace Savage has won the $60,000 Hilary Weston prize for A Geography of Blood.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/candace-savages-a-geography-of-blood-wins-60000-hilary-weston-prize/article5215416/
Wade Davis's Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest has been awarded the $32,000 Samuel Johnson Prize.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/12/into-silence-wade-davis-award
Women won five of the seven English-language categories of the 2012 Governor General's Literary Awards. These include Linda Spalding's The Purchase, and playwright Catherine Banks's It is Solved by Walking. Poet Julie Bruck's Monkey Ranch won the award for poetry; Susin Nielsen's The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen won the Governor General's Literary Award in children's writing; Isabelle Arsenault won the Children's Illustration Award for her illustration of Kyo Maclear's Virginia Wolf; Nigel Spencer won the translation award for translating Marie-Claire Blais' Mai at the Predators Ball. Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper won the non-fiction prize.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/13/gg-lit-awards-winners.html
The Guardian First Book award 2012 shortlist Include: Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, and Kerry Hudson's Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. The two non-fiction titles for the shortlist are Lindsey Hilsum's Sandstorm, and journalist Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/guardian-first-book-award-2012-shortlist
My Big Shouting Day, by Rebecca Patterson, is the winner of the 2012 Roald Dahl Funny prize in the category aged 6 and under. Jamie Thomson's Dark Lord: The Teenage Years, a tale about a powerful netherworld lord who finds himself inhabiting the body of a chubby teenager, scooped the seven to 14 year category prize.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Roald+Dahl+prizes+awarded+dark+lord+shouting/7504899/story.html#ixzz2BleTNZYl
Robert Fowler's hostage tale is one of the 10 semi-finalists for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Other authors longlisted are: Nahlah Ayed, Samantha Bernstein, George Bowering, Stephen R. Bown, Marcello Di Cintio, Modris Eksteins, Taras Grescoe, Andrew Preston and Candace Savage.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Robert+Fowler+hostage+tale+among+semi+finalists/7506101/story.html#ixzz2BteSXjMk
Anita Rau Badami, Patrick de Witt, Esi Edugyan and Michael Ondaatje are among the 19 Canadian authors up for the prestigious 100,000-euro ($127,000 Cdn) IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Montrealer+among+Canadians+Dublin+award+long+list/7534982/story.html
YOUNG READERS
There's fantasy and adventure but what makes Dark Lord: The Teenage Years tick is the humour. Space creature or not, young adult readers will identify with a hero who hates being told what to do, "especially in a patronising manner", writes Martin Chilton. Ages 7 to 14.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/children_sbookreviews/9658122/Dark-Lord-The-Teenage-Years-by-Jamie-Thomson-review.html
Irav writes of Chomp by Carl Hiaasen: This book is hilarious with a lot of laugh out loud moments. The story concerns an animal handler, Mickey Cray and his son Wahoo, who are low on money because of an unfortunate incident with a frozen iguana.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/nov/09/review-chomp-carl-hiaasen
NEWS & FEATURES
Penguin chairman John Makinson says the planned merger with Random House is about widening range, not downsizing. "We are completely committed to this industry," Makinson said while visiting Penguin Canada in Toronto last week.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/what-does-penguins-chairman-see-in-the-random-house-merger-more-firepower/article5214995/
The "marvellous geology" of the white cliffs of Dover has been celebrated by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy in a poem published by the Guardian. The poem was commissioned by the National Trust to mark the success of a public appeal to buy one of the last stretches of the famous landmark still in private ownership.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/07/carol-ann-duffy-white-cliffs-dover
The American novelist Philip Roth announced his retirement in October in a little-noticed interview with French magazine Les inRocks. "To tell you the truth, I'm done", said Roth.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/09/philip-roth-retires
Like affairs, biographies hold seduction and betrayal between the pages. Is there a code of ethics for biographers? If there is, it would have to acknowledge the difficulties writers face in serving two masters: their subjects and the truth, writes Emma G. Keller.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/10/affairs-biographies-seduction-betrayal
Salman Rushdie and John le Carré have ended their fatwa face-off, expressing regret over their 15-year-long war of words, which began when Le Carré criticised The Satanic Verses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/12/salman-rushdie-john-le-carre
The blow-by-blow exchange in November, 1979, available from The Guardian's archives, can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog
"Over a lifetime in writing, I've had numerous opportunities to perfect the art of not winning literary prizes," says Rose Tremain. "My facial muscles are well practised in the "non-winners smile. The art of surviving this is simply the art of carrying on," says Tremain, whose most recent novel is Merivel: A Man of His Time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/art-of-not-winning-literary-prizes
In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Kellogg, Margaret Atwood is full of cheer, seeing the humor in the darkest situations. She tells us, in this video interview, that she's not alone; even Kafka laughed while writing his tales of desperation.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-margaret-atwood-byliner-serial-fun-dystopia-video-20121023,0,3745538.story
It's the 200th anniversary of the books that brought us Hansel and Gretel, and 200 other stories, first published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812. In Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, he retells his 50 favourites, offering a brief analysis at the end of each of the sources of the stories and the various forms they've taken over the centuries.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1284797--grimms-fairy-tales-20-things-you-didn-t-know
Valerie Eliot, the widow and literary executor of Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot, has died, at 86.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/11/valerie-eliot-ts-eliot-dies
Environmentalists campaigning to prevent the wholesale destruction of the Indonesian rainforest have succeeding in persuading the Walt Disney company, one of the world's largest publishers of children's books, to revamp its paper purchasing policies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/11/disney-paper-indonesian-rainforest
The Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries, is back! The 9th annual contest is now underway. More details here:
http://www.geist.com/articles/postcard-contest
BOOKS & WRITERS
A dolls' hospital near Chartres Cathedral: a strange conjunction of a beautiful religious building and broken toys, writes Ruth Scurr. Salley Vickers' The Cleaner of Chartres centres on Agnès Morel, a foundling raised by nuns, now the cleaner. Vickers' novel touches lightly but knowingly on the seedy side of human nature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/11/cleaner-of-chartres-salley-vickers-review
Writer-neurologist Oliver Sacks never meant to be part of the story in Hallucinations, writes David L. Ulin. Much of Hallucinations had already been written when, in March 2011, the 79-year-old author and neurologist tripped over a box of books in his lower Manhattan apartment and broke his hip.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-oliver-sacks-20121111,0,3601111.story
Nate Silver's correct predictions in the 2008 and 2012 US presidential races brought to our attention his work as a statistician and election analyst. Silver's The Signal and the Noise is a general tome about predictions: which are valuable, which are not.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-signal-and-the-noise-why-so-many-predictions-fail--but-some-dont-by-nate-silver/2012/11/09/620bf2d0-0671-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_story.html
The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where China's new leadership will soon be announced, stands opposite Mao's mausoleum. Facing them both is the Forbidden City, where emperors plotted and killed for their own succession. The reader of Mao, the Real Story, will receive a clear, rounded account of a tireless revolutionary fighter, and bloody social reformer, writes Shuyun Sun.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/new-bio-reveals-mao-the-builder-and-the-monster/article5153889/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
JACQUELINE PEARCE
Meet the author of The Truth About Rats (and Dogs), Dog House Blues, The Reunion and The Trickster. Monday, November 19 at 1:30pm. Newton Library, SPL, 13795 70 Ave., Surrey. More information at 604-598-7408.
PEN-IN-HAND READING SERIES
Readings by Stella Leventoyannis Harvey, Andrea Raine, and Jessica Michaelofsky. Tuesday, November 19 at 7:00pm. Cost: $3. Serious Coffee, Cook St. Village, 2300 Cook Street, Victoria.
ANNABEL LYON AND SARA GRAFFE
Authors and UBC Creative Writing instructors will present their work. Tuesday, November 20 at 12:00pm. Green College Coach House, UBC. For more information, email grad.research.assistant@gmail.com.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Jamie Reid and Aislinn Hunter featured at November 21 lunch poems @SFU. Presented by SFU Public Square, 12-1pm in SFU Harbour Centre's Teck Gallery (515 W Hastings St.). Free admission, no registration required. lunch poems @ SFU hosts well-known and up-and-coming poets on the third Wednesday of every month. For more information visit www.facebook.com/LunchPoemsAtSFU.
SPOKEN INK
Reading by author Linda Svendsen, author of Sussex Drive. Tuesday, November 20 at 7:30pm. La Fontana Caffe, 101-3701 East Hastings, Burnaby. For more information, email bwscafe@gmail.com.
PLAY CHTHONICS
Readings by Garry Thomas Morse and Brad Cran. Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm. Piano lounge, Green College, UBC.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
Upcoming
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
Holiday Giving
Looking for a special gift for the book-lovers on your list? Look no further! The VWF has gift ideas to bring joy to readers of all persuasions:
Alistair MacLeod's Remembrance - the beautiful limited edition chapbook of Alistair's newly commissioned short story, $25 each. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2012festival/remembrance
Festival Memberships - ticket discounts, early-bird access and more for a $35 annual fee (or $60 for two years). Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/get-involved/membership
Gift Certificates - to be used for the 2013 Festival, available in $25 increments.
Call us on 604-681-6330 x0 to order. Please note that all orders must be placed before Dec 18.
Jewish Book Festival
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many others, including VWF Artistic Director Hal Wake interviewing Shalom Auslander in the opening event Saturday November 24th. November 24-29, 2012. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
AWARDS & LISTS
France's most prestigious prize for literature, the Goncourt prize, went to Jerome Ferrari for The Sermon on the Fall of Rome.
http://www.france24.com/en/20121107-corsican-saga-wins-france-top-literary-goncourt-prize-ferrari-sermon-on-fall-rome
Candace Savage has won the $60,000 Hilary Weston prize for A Geography of Blood.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/candace-savages-a-geography-of-blood-wins-60000-hilary-weston-prize/article5215416/
Wade Davis's Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest has been awarded the $32,000 Samuel Johnson Prize.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/12/into-silence-wade-davis-award
Women won five of the seven English-language categories of the 2012 Governor General's Literary Awards. These include Linda Spalding's The Purchase, and playwright Catherine Banks's It is Solved by Walking. Poet Julie Bruck's Monkey Ranch won the award for poetry; Susin Nielsen's The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen won the Governor General's Literary Award in children's writing; Isabelle Arsenault won the Children's Illustration Award for her illustration of Kyo Maclear's Virginia Wolf; Nigel Spencer won the translation award for translating Marie-Claire Blais' Mai at the Predators Ball. Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper won the non-fiction prize.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/13/gg-lit-awards-winners.html
The Guardian First Book award 2012 shortlist Include: Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, and Kerry Hudson's Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. The two non-fiction titles for the shortlist are Lindsey Hilsum's Sandstorm, and journalist Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/guardian-first-book-award-2012-shortlist
My Big Shouting Day, by Rebecca Patterson, is the winner of the 2012 Roald Dahl Funny prize in the category aged 6 and under. Jamie Thomson's Dark Lord: The Teenage Years, a tale about a powerful netherworld lord who finds himself inhabiting the body of a chubby teenager, scooped the seven to 14 year category prize.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Roald+Dahl+prizes+awarded+dark+lord+shouting/7504899/story.html#ixzz2BleTNZYl
Robert Fowler's hostage tale is one of the 10 semi-finalists for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Other authors longlisted are: Nahlah Ayed, Samantha Bernstein, George Bowering, Stephen R. Bown, Marcello Di Cintio, Modris Eksteins, Taras Grescoe, Andrew Preston and Candace Savage.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Robert+Fowler+hostage+tale+among+semi+finalists/7506101/story.html#ixzz2BteSXjMk
Anita Rau Badami, Patrick de Witt, Esi Edugyan and Michael Ondaatje are among the 19 Canadian authors up for the prestigious 100,000-euro ($127,000 Cdn) IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Montrealer+among+Canadians+Dublin+award+long+list/7534982/story.html
YOUNG READERS
There's fantasy and adventure but what makes Dark Lord: The Teenage Years tick is the humour. Space creature or not, young adult readers will identify with a hero who hates being told what to do, "especially in a patronising manner", writes Martin Chilton. Ages 7 to 14.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/children_sbookreviews/9658122/Dark-Lord-The-Teenage-Years-by-Jamie-Thomson-review.html
Irav writes of Chomp by Carl Hiaasen: This book is hilarious with a lot of laugh out loud moments. The story concerns an animal handler, Mickey Cray and his son Wahoo, who are low on money because of an unfortunate incident with a frozen iguana.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/nov/09/review-chomp-carl-hiaasen
NEWS & FEATURES
Penguin chairman John Makinson says the planned merger with Random House is about widening range, not downsizing. "We are completely committed to this industry," Makinson said while visiting Penguin Canada in Toronto last week.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/what-does-penguins-chairman-see-in-the-random-house-merger-more-firepower/article5214995/
The "marvellous geology" of the white cliffs of Dover has been celebrated by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy in a poem published by the Guardian. The poem was commissioned by the National Trust to mark the success of a public appeal to buy one of the last stretches of the famous landmark still in private ownership.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/07/carol-ann-duffy-white-cliffs-dover
The American novelist Philip Roth announced his retirement in October in a little-noticed interview with French magazine Les inRocks. "To tell you the truth, I'm done", said Roth.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/09/philip-roth-retires
Like affairs, biographies hold seduction and betrayal between the pages. Is there a code of ethics for biographers? If there is, it would have to acknowledge the difficulties writers face in serving two masters: their subjects and the truth, writes Emma G. Keller.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/10/affairs-biographies-seduction-betrayal
Salman Rushdie and John le Carré have ended their fatwa face-off, expressing regret over their 15-year-long war of words, which began when Le Carré criticised The Satanic Verses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/12/salman-rushdie-john-le-carre
The blow-by-blow exchange in November, 1979, available from The Guardian's archives, can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog
"Over a lifetime in writing, I've had numerous opportunities to perfect the art of not winning literary prizes," says Rose Tremain. "My facial muscles are well practised in the "non-winners smile. The art of surviving this is simply the art of carrying on," says Tremain, whose most recent novel is Merivel: A Man of His Time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/art-of-not-winning-literary-prizes
In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Kellogg, Margaret Atwood is full of cheer, seeing the humor in the darkest situations. She tells us, in this video interview, that she's not alone; even Kafka laughed while writing his tales of desperation.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-margaret-atwood-byliner-serial-fun-dystopia-video-20121023,0,3745538.story
It's the 200th anniversary of the books that brought us Hansel and Gretel, and 200 other stories, first published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812. In Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, he retells his 50 favourites, offering a brief analysis at the end of each of the sources of the stories and the various forms they've taken over the centuries.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1284797--grimms-fairy-tales-20-things-you-didn-t-know
Valerie Eliot, the widow and literary executor of Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot, has died, at 86.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/11/valerie-eliot-ts-eliot-dies
Environmentalists campaigning to prevent the wholesale destruction of the Indonesian rainforest have succeeding in persuading the Walt Disney company, one of the world's largest publishers of children's books, to revamp its paper purchasing policies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/11/disney-paper-indonesian-rainforest
The Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries, is back! The 9th annual contest is now underway. More details here:
http://www.geist.com/articles/postcard-contest
BOOKS & WRITERS
A dolls' hospital near Chartres Cathedral: a strange conjunction of a beautiful religious building and broken toys, writes Ruth Scurr. Salley Vickers' The Cleaner of Chartres centres on Agnès Morel, a foundling raised by nuns, now the cleaner. Vickers' novel touches lightly but knowingly on the seedy side of human nature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/11/cleaner-of-chartres-salley-vickers-review
Writer-neurologist Oliver Sacks never meant to be part of the story in Hallucinations, writes David L. Ulin. Much of Hallucinations had already been written when, in March 2011, the 79-year-old author and neurologist tripped over a box of books in his lower Manhattan apartment and broke his hip.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-oliver-sacks-20121111,0,3601111.story
Nate Silver's correct predictions in the 2008 and 2012 US presidential races brought to our attention his work as a statistician and election analyst. Silver's The Signal and the Noise is a general tome about predictions: which are valuable, which are not.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-signal-and-the-noise-why-so-many-predictions-fail--but-some-dont-by-nate-silver/2012/11/09/620bf2d0-0671-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_story.html
The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where China's new leadership will soon be announced, stands opposite Mao's mausoleum. Facing them both is the Forbidden City, where emperors plotted and killed for their own succession. The reader of Mao, the Real Story, will receive a clear, rounded account of a tireless revolutionary fighter, and bloody social reformer, writes Shuyun Sun.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/new-bio-reveals-mao-the-builder-and-the-monster/article5153889/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
JACQUELINE PEARCE
Meet the author of The Truth About Rats (and Dogs), Dog House Blues, The Reunion and The Trickster. Monday, November 19 at 1:30pm. Newton Library, SPL, 13795 70 Ave., Surrey. More information at 604-598-7408.
PEN-IN-HAND READING SERIES
Readings by Stella Leventoyannis Harvey, Andrea Raine, and Jessica Michaelofsky. Tuesday, November 19 at 7:00pm. Cost: $3. Serious Coffee, Cook St. Village, 2300 Cook Street, Victoria.
ANNABEL LYON AND SARA GRAFFE
Authors and UBC Creative Writing instructors will present their work. Tuesday, November 20 at 12:00pm. Green College Coach House, UBC. For more information, email grad.research.assistant@gmail.com.
LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Jamie Reid and Aislinn Hunter featured at November 21 lunch poems @SFU. Presented by SFU Public Square, 12-1pm in SFU Harbour Centre's Teck Gallery (515 W Hastings St.). Free admission, no registration required. lunch poems @ SFU hosts well-known and up-and-coming poets on the third Wednesday of every month. For more information visit www.facebook.com/LunchPoemsAtSFU.
SPOKEN INK
Reading by author Linda Svendsen, author of Sussex Drive. Tuesday, November 20 at 7:30pm. La Fontana Caffe, 101-3701 East Hastings, Burnaby. For more information, email bwscafe@gmail.com.
PLAY CHTHONICS
Readings by Garry Thomas Morse and Brad Cran. Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm. Piano lounge, Green College, UBC.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
Upcoming
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Book News Vol. 7 No. 41
BOOK NEWS
Remembrance
A specially commissioned short story by Alistair MacLeod was published by the Vancouver Writers Fest in honour of its 25th anniversary.
This beautifully designed, limited edition chapbook is available for purchase at $25 each (incl. tax), plus postage and packing. Click here (http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2012festival/remembrance) to order online or call 604-681-6330 x109.
AWARDS & LISTS
Andreas Schroeder's Duped! True Stories of the World's Best Swindlers, and Janet Wilson's Shannen and the Dream for a School are two nonfiction books for young readers that have been nominated for the Ontario Library Association's 2013 Silver Birch Award. Awards will be presented in early 2013.
http://www.accessola.org/OLAWEB/Forest_of_Reading/Awards_Nominees/Silver_Birch_Non_Fiction_Nominees.aspx
Nahlah Ayed, Robert Fowler, Taras Grescoe, and Candace Savage are among the ten authors on the longlist for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. The finalists for the award will be announced Dec. 4 and the winner will be revealed in Vancouver in early 2013.
http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/entertainment/books/National+Award+Canadian+Fiction+long+list+announced/7506101/story.html
Tamas Dobozy’s Siege 13, a collection of linked short stories about the Second World War siege of Budapest, has won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The $20,000 Matt Cohen Award was awarded to Jean Little in celebration of a writing life; the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf Award for Children’s Literature went to Paul Yee; Nino Ricci was awarded the $25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award for a writer in mid-career. The $10,000 Journey Prize for a short story was awarded to Alex Pugsley for Crisis on Earth X.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/07/writers-trust-fiction.html
YOUNG READERS
Young readers are invited to sample a special extra chapter from The Wolf Princess, Cathryn Constable's modern fairytale adventure about a girl who, getting lost on a trip to Russia, discovers she's not who she thought she was.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/interactive/2012/oct/29/wolf-cub-cathryn-constable-extract
Horselover3000 says of Jacqueline Wilson's Emerald Star, the third in the Hetty Feather trilogy: "It made me laugh, it made me think. A sad story with a very happy ending. Just read the book!"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/30/review-emerald-star-jacqueline-wilson
There are always people willing to believe the unbelievable. Andreas Schroeder's Duped! includes eight true stories of forgery, identity fraud, how American citizens became convinced that Martians were invading the country; and an elaborate scam that fooled the world's media and top scientists for nearly a decade. Ages 9 to 11.
http://www.parentscanada.com/family-life/book-review-duped-true-stories-of-the-worlds-best-swindlers
NEWS & FEATURES
A first edition of Anne of Green Gables sold at auction in New York Monday for $10,000 US. The auction house says the winning bid for the 1908 edition of the L.M. Montgomery classic was placed by "a purchaser on the US West Coast." http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/06/pei-anne-first-edition-auction-584.html
Alexander Nazaryan insists that writers should learn math. "Writers that have ventured into math—Lewis Carroll, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace—have all been among our most inventive in both the sentences they construct and the stories they create, writes Nazaryan.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/writers-should-learn-math.html#ixzz2BIt01gZt
Grant Snyder's sketchbook offers such Literary Consolation prizes as The Thick Book Award, First Novel Encouragement Stickers, The Self-proclaimed Genius Grant, The Lovecraft Prize for Zombie Fiction, and more.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/books/review/04snider.html?nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20121102
Yachts and Things, a small piece of Truman Capote's unfinished novel Answered Prayers was found among Capote's papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, and is published in the December issue of Vanity Fair; available online in mid-November.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/new-piece-added-to-puzzle-of-truman-capotes-answered-prayers/
Ian Rankin's wife has confirmed that at times, novelists are more interested in their creations than the people living with them, writes Philip Hensher. For almost every novelist, the relationship between them and their creation is, temporarily, more important than the relationship with real people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9648526/Writers-who-leave-their-wives-lost-for-words.html
The secret of Penguin's enduring paperback covers is all in the rigorous geometry, a wise choice of illustrators–and that wonky hand-drawn bird, writes Oliver Wainwright. Browse a gallery of classic Penguin covers here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/oct/30/penguin-book-covers-in-pictures
Pundits predict the axe will fall on Penguin Classics and Modern Classics lists, since they are available as free ebooks, writes Arminta Wallace. There's little romance in a free ebook, the digital equivalent of dusty and unloved. The originals, on the other hand, are dusty, tatty – and much loved, says Wallace.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/1102/1224326028433.html
Colonial Hong Kong, a doomed love affair and the echoes of revolution in China were the explosive mixture that made the reputation of the author Han Suyin, who has died aged 95. Her 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing shocked Hong Kong. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/04/han-suyin
Fresh from launching legal action against Sony, the estate of William Faulkner is now suing over the use of the author's quote "we must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it" in a full-page ad from defence contractor Northrop Grumman Corporation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/william-faulkner-estate-sues-defence-contractor
Canada and Australia have both launched women-only literary prizes. Australia's Stella prize is named after Stella Miles Franklin, whose bequest founded the country's Miles Franklin award. The Rosalind prize follows the discontinuation, in 2008, of Canada's Marian Engel award for female writers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/nov/02/canada-australia-women-literary-prizes
The Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries, is back! The 9th annual contest is now underway. More details here:
http://www.geist.com/articles/postcard-contest
BOOKS & WRITERS
Alice Munro is acclaimed as one of the finest short-story writers in the world. The Eye is an exclusive short story from Dear Life, her new collection. It's available here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/the-eye-alice-munro-short-story
Peter Mountford discovered that his book, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism had a Russian pirate translator. Then he realized that no Russian publisher had acquired the rights. Mountford's debut novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, won the 2012 Washington State Book Award.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/steal-my-book/309105/
Ian Rankin's favourite cop, DI John Rebus, is back. In line with actual police procedure, retired in 2006 after 18 cases, Rebus has returned to work as a civilian consultant on cold case inquiries, in Standing in Another Man's Grave.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/01/standing-mans-grave-ian-rankin-review
Carol Ann Duffy was given a copy of Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems for her 25th birthday. Editing a new selection, she has experienced afresh the electrifying excitement she felt on that first encounter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/sylvia-plath-poems-chosen-carol-ann-duffy
Thomas Keneally and Sarah Wise tell hospital stories in the Guardian Books podcast: Thomas Keneally, on how he found a novel in a stash of nurses' journals, Sarah Wise on the ghosts of Victorian mental health and Brooke Magnanti on the Wellcome prize for medicine in literature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2012/nov/02/hospital-keneally-wise-magnanti-podcast
In Flight Behaviour, Barbara Kingsolver sets her story on a sheep farm in the depressed Bible Belt, recruiting traditional images of Heaven, Hell and sacrificial lambs to convey the impact of climate change on a community. The tale is urgent and masterly, writes Liz Jensen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/flight-behaviour-barbara-kingsolver-review
A 1984 plane crash connected four very different lives: Larry Shaben, an Alberta cabinet minister, an RCMP officer, an unshackled prisoner (who saved men's lives), and the pilot. Carol Shaben, daughter of Larry, has written a gripping account in Into the Abyss, writes Tracy Sherlock.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Vancouver+author+Carol+Shaben+tackles+father+tale/7491042/story.html
Literary satire is something of an outlier in CanLit, which makes Sussex Drive, the most recent book by award-winner Linda Svendsen—a witty send-up of Stephen Harper's ruthless rise to power. A welcome pleasure, writes Deborah Campbell. An excerpt—chapter 6—is here:
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2012/10/03/Sussex-Drive-Coup/
Carol Rumens's Poem of the Week is The Year of the Tree by Katherine Gallagher. Nature and mythology combine in this playful account of lugging an oak tree through the London Underground. The poem can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/05/poem-of-the-week-katherine-gallagher
P.K. Page pushed boundaries, influencing young writers, pianists and filmmakers like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Eve and Atom Egoyan, Marilyn Bowering and Patricia Young. Sandra Djwa's Journey With No Maps is the story of P.K. Page and her impact on the people around her.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Canadian+poet+Page+pioneer+generation/7490096/story.html
COMMUNITY EVENTS
VANCOUVER BOOK CLUB
Discussion with Billie Livingston about her recent novel One Good Hustle, one of the 10 finalists for the B.C./Yukon Canada Reads 2013 selection. Thursday, November 8 at 7:00pm, free. the Prophouse Cafe, 1636 Venables. More information at 604-733-5665.
KATE BRAID
BC poet and author launches her new memoir Journeywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man's World. Friday, November 9 at 7:00pm. Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace, 1825 16th Ave. W., Vancouver. More information at 604-885-9194.
2012 ALCUIN BOOK AUCTION
The Alcuin Society will hold an auction of new books submitted to the Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada in March, 2012, as well as books which won awards in 2011. Saturday, November 10 at 11:00am. Cost: $18 and includes a light lunch. University Golf Club, 5185 University Blvd., Vancouver. For reservations, email awards@alcuinsociety.com.
DEAD POETS READING SERIES
Readings of works by Robin Blaser, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Hayden, Glyn Hughes and Roy Kiyooka. Sunday, November 11 at 3:00pm. Admission by donation. Project Space, 222 East Georgia Street. More information at deadpoetslive.com.
JEEGAREH MA
Author Rahela Nayebzadah reads from her new book. Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30pm, free. Tommy Douglas branch, Burnaby Public Library, 7311 Kingsway, Burnaby. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.
GARRY THOMAS MORSE
Writer Garry Thomas Morse reads from his new book of fiction Minor Episodes/Major Ruckus, concerning surrealist and speculative genres. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARRIE MAC
Reading by the award-winning author of teen novels ‘The Opposite of Tidy', 'The Beckoners', 'The Gryphon Project', the Triskelia trilogy, and others. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert St. More information at 604-297-4803.
Upcoming
JACQUELINE PEARCE
Meet the author of The Truth About Rats (and Dogs), Dog House Blues, The Reunion and The Trickster. Monday, November 19 at 1:30pm. Newton Library, SPL, 13795 70 Ave., Surrey. More information at 604-598-7408.
PLAY CHTHONICS
Readings by Garry Thomas Morse and Brad Cran. Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm. Piano lounge, Green College, UBC.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many other. November 24-29, 2012. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
Remembrance
A specially commissioned short story by Alistair MacLeod was published by the Vancouver Writers Fest in honour of its 25th anniversary.
This beautifully designed, limited edition chapbook is available for purchase at $25 each (incl. tax), plus postage and packing. Click here (http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2012festival/remembrance) to order online or call 604-681-6330 x109.
AWARDS & LISTS
Andreas Schroeder's Duped! True Stories of the World's Best Swindlers, and Janet Wilson's Shannen and the Dream for a School are two nonfiction books for young readers that have been nominated for the Ontario Library Association's 2013 Silver Birch Award. Awards will be presented in early 2013.
http://www.accessola.org/OLAWEB/Forest_of_Reading/Awards_Nominees/Silver_Birch_Non_Fiction_Nominees.aspx
Nahlah Ayed, Robert Fowler, Taras Grescoe, and Candace Savage are among the ten authors on the longlist for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. The finalists for the award will be announced Dec. 4 and the winner will be revealed in Vancouver in early 2013.
http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/entertainment/books/National+Award+Canadian+Fiction+long+list+announced/7506101/story.html
Tamas Dobozy’s Siege 13, a collection of linked short stories about the Second World War siege of Budapest, has won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The $20,000 Matt Cohen Award was awarded to Jean Little in celebration of a writing life; the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf Award for Children’s Literature went to Paul Yee; Nino Ricci was awarded the $25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award for a writer in mid-career. The $10,000 Journey Prize for a short story was awarded to Alex Pugsley for Crisis on Earth X.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/07/writers-trust-fiction.html
YOUNG READERS
Young readers are invited to sample a special extra chapter from The Wolf Princess, Cathryn Constable's modern fairytale adventure about a girl who, getting lost on a trip to Russia, discovers she's not who she thought she was.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/interactive/2012/oct/29/wolf-cub-cathryn-constable-extract
Horselover3000 says of Jacqueline Wilson's Emerald Star, the third in the Hetty Feather trilogy: "It made me laugh, it made me think. A sad story with a very happy ending. Just read the book!"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/30/review-emerald-star-jacqueline-wilson
There are always people willing to believe the unbelievable. Andreas Schroeder's Duped! includes eight true stories of forgery, identity fraud, how American citizens became convinced that Martians were invading the country; and an elaborate scam that fooled the world's media and top scientists for nearly a decade. Ages 9 to 11.
http://www.parentscanada.com/family-life/book-review-duped-true-stories-of-the-worlds-best-swindlers
NEWS & FEATURES
A first edition of Anne of Green Gables sold at auction in New York Monday for $10,000 US. The auction house says the winning bid for the 1908 edition of the L.M. Montgomery classic was placed by "a purchaser on the US West Coast." http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/06/pei-anne-first-edition-auction-584.html
Alexander Nazaryan insists that writers should learn math. "Writers that have ventured into math—Lewis Carroll, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace—have all been among our most inventive in both the sentences they construct and the stories they create, writes Nazaryan.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/writers-should-learn-math.html#ixzz2BIt01gZt
Grant Snyder's sketchbook offers such Literary Consolation prizes as The Thick Book Award, First Novel Encouragement Stickers, The Self-proclaimed Genius Grant, The Lovecraft Prize for Zombie Fiction, and more.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/books/review/04snider.html?nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20121102
Yachts and Things, a small piece of Truman Capote's unfinished novel Answered Prayers was found among Capote's papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, and is published in the December issue of Vanity Fair; available online in mid-November.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/new-piece-added-to-puzzle-of-truman-capotes-answered-prayers/
Ian Rankin's wife has confirmed that at times, novelists are more interested in their creations than the people living with them, writes Philip Hensher. For almost every novelist, the relationship between them and their creation is, temporarily, more important than the relationship with real people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9648526/Writers-who-leave-their-wives-lost-for-words.html
The secret of Penguin's enduring paperback covers is all in the rigorous geometry, a wise choice of illustrators–and that wonky hand-drawn bird, writes Oliver Wainwright. Browse a gallery of classic Penguin covers here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/oct/30/penguin-book-covers-in-pictures
Pundits predict the axe will fall on Penguin Classics and Modern Classics lists, since they are available as free ebooks, writes Arminta Wallace. There's little romance in a free ebook, the digital equivalent of dusty and unloved. The originals, on the other hand, are dusty, tatty – and much loved, says Wallace.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/1102/1224326028433.html
Colonial Hong Kong, a doomed love affair and the echoes of revolution in China were the explosive mixture that made the reputation of the author Han Suyin, who has died aged 95. Her 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing shocked Hong Kong. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/04/han-suyin
Fresh from launching legal action against Sony, the estate of William Faulkner is now suing over the use of the author's quote "we must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it" in a full-page ad from defence contractor Northrop Grumman Corporation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/william-faulkner-estate-sues-defence-contractor
Canada and Australia have both launched women-only literary prizes. Australia's Stella prize is named after Stella Miles Franklin, whose bequest founded the country's Miles Franklin award. The Rosalind prize follows the discontinuation, in 2008, of Canada's Marian Engel award for female writers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/nov/02/canada-australia-women-literary-prizes
The Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries, is back! The 9th annual contest is now underway. More details here:
http://www.geist.com/articles/postcard-contest
BOOKS & WRITERS
Alice Munro is acclaimed as one of the finest short-story writers in the world. The Eye is an exclusive short story from Dear Life, her new collection. It's available here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/the-eye-alice-munro-short-story
Peter Mountford discovered that his book, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism had a Russian pirate translator. Then he realized that no Russian publisher had acquired the rights. Mountford's debut novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, won the 2012 Washington State Book Award.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/steal-my-book/309105/
Ian Rankin's favourite cop, DI John Rebus, is back. In line with actual police procedure, retired in 2006 after 18 cases, Rebus has returned to work as a civilian consultant on cold case inquiries, in Standing in Another Man's Grave.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/01/standing-mans-grave-ian-rankin-review
Carol Ann Duffy was given a copy of Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems for her 25th birthday. Editing a new selection, she has experienced afresh the electrifying excitement she felt on that first encounter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/sylvia-plath-poems-chosen-carol-ann-duffy
Thomas Keneally and Sarah Wise tell hospital stories in the Guardian Books podcast: Thomas Keneally, on how he found a novel in a stash of nurses' journals, Sarah Wise on the ghosts of Victorian mental health and Brooke Magnanti on the Wellcome prize for medicine in literature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2012/nov/02/hospital-keneally-wise-magnanti-podcast
In Flight Behaviour, Barbara Kingsolver sets her story on a sheep farm in the depressed Bible Belt, recruiting traditional images of Heaven, Hell and sacrificial lambs to convey the impact of climate change on a community. The tale is urgent and masterly, writes Liz Jensen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/02/flight-behaviour-barbara-kingsolver-review
A 1984 plane crash connected four very different lives: Larry Shaben, an Alberta cabinet minister, an RCMP officer, an unshackled prisoner (who saved men's lives), and the pilot. Carol Shaben, daughter of Larry, has written a gripping account in Into the Abyss, writes Tracy Sherlock.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Vancouver+author+Carol+Shaben+tackles+father+tale/7491042/story.html
Literary satire is something of an outlier in CanLit, which makes Sussex Drive, the most recent book by award-winner Linda Svendsen—a witty send-up of Stephen Harper's ruthless rise to power. A welcome pleasure, writes Deborah Campbell. An excerpt—chapter 6—is here:
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2012/10/03/Sussex-Drive-Coup/
Carol Rumens's Poem of the Week is The Year of the Tree by Katherine Gallagher. Nature and mythology combine in this playful account of lugging an oak tree through the London Underground. The poem can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/05/poem-of-the-week-katherine-gallagher
P.K. Page pushed boundaries, influencing young writers, pianists and filmmakers like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Eve and Atom Egoyan, Marilyn Bowering and Patricia Young. Sandra Djwa's Journey With No Maps is the story of P.K. Page and her impact on the people around her.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Canadian+poet+Page+pioneer+generation/7490096/story.html
COMMUNITY EVENTS
VANCOUVER BOOK CLUB
Discussion with Billie Livingston about her recent novel One Good Hustle, one of the 10 finalists for the B.C./Yukon Canada Reads 2013 selection. Thursday, November 8 at 7:00pm, free. the Prophouse Cafe, 1636 Venables. More information at 604-733-5665.
KATE BRAID
BC poet and author launches her new memoir Journeywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man's World. Friday, November 9 at 7:00pm. Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace, 1825 16th Ave. W., Vancouver. More information at 604-885-9194.
2012 ALCUIN BOOK AUCTION
The Alcuin Society will hold an auction of new books submitted to the Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada in March, 2012, as well as books which won awards in 2011. Saturday, November 10 at 11:00am. Cost: $18 and includes a light lunch. University Golf Club, 5185 University Blvd., Vancouver. For reservations, email awards@alcuinsociety.com.
DEAD POETS READING SERIES
Readings of works by Robin Blaser, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Hayden, Glyn Hughes and Roy Kiyooka. Sunday, November 11 at 3:00pm. Admission by donation. Project Space, 222 East Georgia Street. More information at deadpoetslive.com.
JEEGAREH MA
Author Rahela Nayebzadah reads from her new book. Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30pm, free. Tommy Douglas branch, Burnaby Public Library, 7311 Kingsway, Burnaby. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.
GARRY THOMAS MORSE
Writer Garry Thomas Morse reads from his new book of fiction Minor Episodes/Major Ruckus, concerning surrealist and speculative genres. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARRIE MAC
Reading by the award-winning author of teen novels ‘The Opposite of Tidy', 'The Beckoners', 'The Gryphon Project', the Triskelia trilogy, and others. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert St. More information at 604-297-4803.
Upcoming
JACQUELINE PEARCE
Meet the author of The Truth About Rats (and Dogs), Dog House Blues, The Reunion and The Trickster. Monday, November 19 at 1:30pm. Newton Library, SPL, 13795 70 Ave., Surrey. More information at 604-598-7408.
PLAY CHTHONICS
Readings by Garry Thomas Morse and Brad Cran. Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm. Piano lounge, Green College, UBC.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many other. November 24-29, 2012. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Book News Vol. 7 No. 40
BOOK NEWS
AWARDS & LISTS
Incite author Will Ferguson has won the $50,000 2012 Giller Prize for 419, for the best Canadian fiction of the year.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/will-fergusons-lucky-number-author-takes-giller-prize-for-419/article4786765/.
Festival author Rawi Hage, along with Tim Bowling, Tamas Dobozy, Alix Ohlin, and Linda Spalding, is on the short list for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The winner of the prize will be announced November 7.
http://www.writerstrust.com/awards/rogers-writers--trust-fiction-prize.aspx
Festival authors Vincent Lam and Carrie Snyder, along with Tamas Dobozy, Robert Hough and Linda Spalding are on the short list for the Governor General's Literary Awards (English). The winner will be announced November 13.
http://ggbooks.canadacouncil.ca/en.aspx
Louise Erdrich is one of five finalists for the National Book Award. The winner will be announced November 14.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/in-louise-erdichs-latest-a-tangle-of-laws-and-people/article4680831/
Frank Cottrell Boyce has won the Guardian children's fiction prize for his book The Unforgotten Coat, based on the true story of a girl deported to Mongolia, an unusual winner in that it was not written for commercial publication.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/24/guardian-childrens-fiction-prize-winner
Montreal-born Steven Pinker is one of three authors in the running for the $75,000 US Cundill Prize in History at McGill, an annual award open to history books from all over the globe. The winner will be announced November 29.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/cundill-prize.html
YOUNG READERS
Twelve year-old Rishi and Lottie Longshanks have reviewed The Unforgotten Coat. "This book has a slight pinch of comedy, a teaspoon of mystery and a whole flagon of brilliance," says Rishi.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/24/the-unforgotten-coat-frank-cottrell-boyce-guardian-young-critics-awards-reviews
Sample the first chapter of The Unforgotten Coat here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/interactive/2011/dec/09/extract-unforgotten-coat-cottrell-boyce
The Guardian's review of Russell Hoban's Soonchild carries the warning that it is "mind blowingly spooky with an exciting journey ahead".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/24/soonchild-russell-hoban-guardian-young-critics-awards-review
In Beta, the kickoff to a new series from bestselling young-adult author Rachel Cohn, the local cloning lab has just finished an experiment. Now they're beginning to make teenagers. Elysia is one of two so-called betas, or prototype teen clones. For readers 14 and up.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-rachel-cohn-20121014,0,7351542.story
NEWS & FEATURES
Spanish novelist Javier Marías, author of The Infatuations, turned down a €20,000 government prize, stating he had rejected the national narrative prize because of a lifelong aversion to receiving public money.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/26/spanish-novelist-turns-down-prize
The A-frame home built by the late Canadian poet Al Purdy has been bought by a non-profit group–the Al Purdy A-Frame Association–and will be turned into a writers' retreat.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/ottawa-al-purdy-aframe-home-to-become-writer-residence.html
Anna Porter comments on the Douglas & McIntyre bankruptcy in The Star.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1278205--douglas-mcintyre-collapse-new-sign-of-publishing-industry-struggles
Speaking about The Unforgotten Coat, Frank Cottrell Boyce says: "If I've got a political axe to grind, it's around literacy. We've tragically conflated literacy and reading. Tests make pupils feel like failures before they have barely begun. We risk putting children off reading forever."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/oct/26/frank-cottrell-boyce-life-in-writing
Last week's Book News included the information that Amazon profits from a tax loophole in Britain. Now Amazon is to be stripped of its huge tax advantage on the sales of electronic books after the European commission ordered Luxembourg to close a VAT loophole.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/24/amazon-tax-loophole-ebooks?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
What do writers do all day? Emma Donoghue lets us in on her writing life with this article in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/29/emma-donoghue-how-to-write-book?newsfeed=true
David Mitchell describes the process of ‘translating' a book–Cloud Atlas–into a film, which was launched October 26.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443675404578060870111158076.html
British publishing and education company Pearson PLC will merge its Penguin Books division with Random House, which is owned by German media company Bertelsmann, creating the world's largest publisher of consumer books, with around a quarter of the market. The joint venture will be known as Penguin Random House.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/penguin-random-house.html
Quebec crime writer Louise Penny's debut novel Still Life is being made into a two-hour TV movie—the first of a proposed series—with British actor Nathaniel Parker portraying Inspector Armand Gamache. Shooting is now underway outside Montreal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/still-life-film.html
If you could create a bookstore, what would you put in it? What would you exclude? Nearly all bibliophiles—that peculiar breed of people who feel more at home in bookstores than in their actual homes—have at some point posed such questions.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/the-bookstore-brain-how-bookstores-choose-their-books.html#ixzz2AYFFirb0
Ian McEwen describes the novella as the perfect form of prose fiction, in the latest issue of The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/some-notes-on-the-novella.html
There's a Deeper Meaning to the zombie craze, writes Margaret Atwood. A lot of angst from publishers and writers about the young "not reading" may mean they aren't reading what older people want them to read. Let the young begin with whatever interests them, says Atwood, quoting Northrop Frye.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/booksblog/2012/oct/25/margaret-atwood-naomi-alderman-zombie-novel
BOOKS & WRITERS
Twelve years after his death, four Edward Gorey titles have just landed on bookstore shelves–Thoughtful Alphabets: The Just Dessert & the Deadly Blotter, The Osbick Bird, and Saint Melissa the Mottled, an unpublished story supplemented with images from the Gorey archive, some never before published.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-edward-gorey-20121028,0,530119.story
There are two parallel Haruki Murakamis, writes Roland Kelts: Murakami is not American, doesn't write in English, and not a single vampire or wizard appears in his oeuvre. This year, he topped everyone's list of favorites for the Nobel Prize for Literature, only to be disappointed.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/the-harukists-disappointed.html#ixzz2AKbvpWIt
There is growing evidence that the ancient Mayans didn't actually think the world was going to end in 2012. American writer Craig Childs travelled around the planet seeking up-close evidence of how the Earth is always moving toward an end, documenting what he found in his engaging, if sometimes frightening, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth, writes Monique Beaudin.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Apocalyptic+Planet+Field+Guide+Everending+Earth+Craig+Childs/7404973/story.html#ixzz2AQTPC72l
Shortly after Sudanese novelist Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin's books arrived at Khartoum's book fair, security officers confiscated all copies, saying they had to read them before they could go into circulation. Minutes later, social media broke the news of the confiscations and youngsters started asking where they could get their hands on the confiscated books.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/26/secret-reading-sudan-banning-books
Those who tell their stories in Hidden Lives: Coming Out on Mental Illness have either experienced mental illness first-hand or through their relationship with a close family member and virtually every Canadian is touched by the issue. The collection of 26 true stories is riveting, writes Tracy Sherlock.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Hidden+Lives+Stories+mental+illness+forge/7452931/story.html
Sherman Alexie has been celebrated for his acerbic, funny, politically charged stories and poems over 20 years. Tenderness and passion are pervasive in Blasphemy, his most recent work, writes Christie Sneed, as are his grief and outrage over the exploitation and neglect of indigenous populations in the United States.
http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Blasphemy-by-Sherman-Alexie-3965352.php#ixzz2AYOrtOQU
Candace Fertile writes that Alice Munro's Dear Life shows convincingly how human beings are unique and that everyone is at least one story and not the least bit ordinary. People are capable of much in Munroland, all of it human, says Fertile.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Alice+Munro+Dear+Life+There+ordinary+people/7452941/story.html
Susie Boyt's novel The Small Hours is a psychological drama about Harriet, a brash but troubled woman who opens the nursery school of her dreams. In an interview with Lucy Scholes, Boyt, who is the daughter of Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund, says 'I'm very Freudian in the way I look at things'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/28/susie-boyt-interview-small-hours
CS Forester's long-lost 1935 revenge story, The Pursued, was lost for six decades, writes Anthony Cummins. An endnote by Lawrence Brewer, a Forester enthusiast who purchased it when it turned up at auction in 1999, calls it a "little masterpiece"; he's not wrong, says Cummins.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/28/cs-forester-the-pursued-review
The tale of Hillary and Tenzing's ascent of Everest in Mick Conefrey's Everest 1953: The Epic Story of the First Ascent includes a connection to Britain, notes Justin Cartwright. Conefrey's book confirms Cartwright's childhood understanding that the coronation and the conquest of Everest were yoked together.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/25/everest-1953-mick-conefrey-review
Louise Erdrich's The Round House continues the complex, sensitive saga of native Americans that Erdrich began in 1984. The novel works wonderfully both as social commentary and as a mystery, but over all, it is literary fiction at its best, writes Candace Fertile.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/in-louise-erdichs-latest-a-tangle-of-laws-and-people/article4680831/
Damien Walters writes that the power of Ursula K. Le Guin's work will guarantee it an audience for centuries to come. With the publication of The Real and the Unreal: The Selected Stories of Ursula K Le Guin, you can expect to hear a great deal about the legendary author.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/30/ursula-k-le-guin-stories
Shortly after Stephen King excited a New Brunswick high school with his surprise appearance in the school library, a library in Los Angeles considered banning one of King's books because it depicts a rape scene. The committee that voted to ban the book never read the book (the lone dissenting vote, a 17-year-old student, did read the book).
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/28/opinion/la-ed-banned-book-20121028
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Michael Kenyon (A Year at River Mountain) and Grant Lawrence (Adventures in Solitude). Thursday, November 1 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARINA ENDICOTT
Marina Endicott discusses her novel The Little Shadows. Thursday, November 1 at 7:00 PM. Christianne's Lyceum. 3696 W. 8th Ave. $20 (includes refreshments). To reserve your space call 604.733.1356 or email lyceum@christiannehayward.com. More information at www.christiannehayward.com.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Diana E. Hayes + Taryn Hubbard + Open Mic. Thursday, Nov. 1 at 7:00pm. (Sign up for open mic at 7, readings begin at 7:30). Hosts: Daniela Elza & Timothy Shay. Suggested donation at the door: $5. Our new location is @Cafe Montmartre, 4362 Main Street, Vancouver. All are welcome. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
CHRIS KRAUS
American writer reads from her new novel Summer of Hate with Marina Roy as respondent. Friday, November 2 at 8:00pm. Western Front, 303 8th Ave. E. More information at www.front.bc.ca.
ETERNAL HYDRA
Anton Piatigorsky's fascinating, award-winning play Eternal Hydra will open Touchstone's 2012/13 season. Sex, identity politics and the myth of genius are some of the themes tackled, as the play looks for the truth about the origins of a long lost literary masterpiece. http://www.touchstonetheatre.com/productions/eternal-hydra
CELEBRATE SCIENCE
The third annual Celebrate Science, a Festival of Science Writers for Children and Youth-and Canada's only science writer's festival-will be held November 3rd at UBC's Beaty Biodiversity Museum, in conjunction with Family Science Day. Events include a panel discussion with top science writers for children, a keynote speech and introduction by the Dean of Education, and storytelling for younger children as well as hands on science activities. The event is free and open to the public and includes admission to the Beaty Museum. http://blogs.ubc.ca/celebratescience.
TEEN AUTHORS TELL ALL
Young-adult authors Eileen Cook, Denis Jaden, Catherine Knutsson, Joëlle Anthony, and Mindi Scott read excerpts from their books and talk about the behind-the-scenes truth of publishing. Saturday, November 3 at 1:00pm, free. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th St. W. More information at www.nvcl.ca.
LLOYD ROBERTSON
legendary broadcaster and the longest-serving TV news anchor in Canadian history, talks about his extraordinary career and the fascinating anecdotes shared in his memoir, The Kind of Life It's Been. Saturday, November 3 at 2:00pm. Chapters Granville, 2505 Granville St., Vancouver. More information at 604-731-7822.
LEMONY SNICKET
"Who Could That Be at This Hour?" is Lemony Snicket's autobiographical account of his childhood and is the first book in the new series called All the Wrong Questions. Don't miss hearing all the truth (and more) from Lemony himself. Tuesday, November 6 at 6:30pm. Cost: $5. West Point Grey United Church sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. More information at www.kidsbooks.
JOURNEY WITH NO MAPS
Author Sandra Djwa presents her biography of poet and artist P.K. Page. Wednesday, November 7 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye rooms, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
111 WEST COAST LITERARY PORTRAITS
Photographer Barry Peterson discusses his new book that featuring rare portraits of writers who have lived in B.C., accompanied by excerpts of their writing. Guest writers will also speak at the event. Wednesday, November 7 at 7:00pm, free. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert St. For more information and to register, phone 604-299-8955.
VANCOUVER BOOK CLUB
Discussion with Billie Livingston about her recent novel One Good Hustle, one of the 10 finalists for the B.C./Yukon Canada Reads 2013 selection. Thursday, November 8 at 7:00pm, free. the Prophouse Cafe, 1636 Venables. More information at 604-733-5665.
KATE BRAID
BC poet and author launches her new memoir Joureywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man's World. Friday, November 9 at 7:00pm. Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace, 1825 16th Ave. W., Vancouver. More information at 604-885-9194.
2012 ALCUIN BOOK AUCTION
The Alcuin Society will hold an auction of new books submitted to the Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada in March, 2012, as well as books which won awards in 2011. Saturday, November 10 at 11:00am. Cost: $18 and includes a light lunch. University Golf Club, 5185 University Blvd., Vancouver. For reservations, email awards@alcuinsociety.com.
DEAD POETS READING SERIES
Readings of works by Robin Blaser, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Hayden, Glyn Hughes and Roy Kiyooka. Sunday, November 11 at 3:00pm. Admission by donation. Project Space, 222 East Georgia Street. More information at deadpoetslive.com.
Upcoming
JEEGAREH MA
Author Rahela Nayebzadah reads from her new book. Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30pm, free. Tommy Douglas branch, Burnaby Public Library, 7311 Kingsway, Burnaby. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.
GARRY THOMAS MORSE
Writer Garry Thomas Morse reads from his new book of fiction Minor Episodes/Major Ruckus, concerning surrealist and speculative genres. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARRIE MAC
Reading by the award-winning author of teen novels ‘The Opposite of Tidy', 'The Beckoners', 'The Gryphon Project', the Triskelia trilogy, and others. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert St. More information at 604-297-4803.
JACQUELINE PEARCE
Meet the author of The Truth About Rats (and Dogs), Dog House Blues, The Reunion and The Trickster. Monday, November 19 at 1:30pm. Newton Library, SPL, 13795 70 Ave., Surrey. More information at 604-598-7408.
PLAY CHTHONICS
Readings by Garry Thomas Morse and Brad Cran. Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm. Piano lounge, Green College, UBC.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many other. November 24-29, 2012. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
AWARDS & LISTS
Incite author Will Ferguson has won the $50,000 2012 Giller Prize for 419, for the best Canadian fiction of the year.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/will-fergusons-lucky-number-author-takes-giller-prize-for-419/article4786765/.
Festival author Rawi Hage, along with Tim Bowling, Tamas Dobozy, Alix Ohlin, and Linda Spalding, is on the short list for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The winner of the prize will be announced November 7.
http://www.writerstrust.com/awards/rogers-writers--trust-fiction-prize.aspx
Festival authors Vincent Lam and Carrie Snyder, along with Tamas Dobozy, Robert Hough and Linda Spalding are on the short list for the Governor General's Literary Awards (English). The winner will be announced November 13.
http://ggbooks.canadacouncil.ca/en.aspx
Louise Erdrich is one of five finalists for the National Book Award. The winner will be announced November 14.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/in-louise-erdichs-latest-a-tangle-of-laws-and-people/article4680831/
Frank Cottrell Boyce has won the Guardian children's fiction prize for his book The Unforgotten Coat, based on the true story of a girl deported to Mongolia, an unusual winner in that it was not written for commercial publication.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/24/guardian-childrens-fiction-prize-winner
Montreal-born Steven Pinker is one of three authors in the running for the $75,000 US Cundill Prize in History at McGill, an annual award open to history books from all over the globe. The winner will be announced November 29.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/cundill-prize.html
YOUNG READERS
Twelve year-old Rishi and Lottie Longshanks have reviewed The Unforgotten Coat. "This book has a slight pinch of comedy, a teaspoon of mystery and a whole flagon of brilliance," says Rishi.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/24/the-unforgotten-coat-frank-cottrell-boyce-guardian-young-critics-awards-reviews
Sample the first chapter of The Unforgotten Coat here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/interactive/2011/dec/09/extract-unforgotten-coat-cottrell-boyce
The Guardian's review of Russell Hoban's Soonchild carries the warning that it is "mind blowingly spooky with an exciting journey ahead".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/oct/24/soonchild-russell-hoban-guardian-young-critics-awards-review
In Beta, the kickoff to a new series from bestselling young-adult author Rachel Cohn, the local cloning lab has just finished an experiment. Now they're beginning to make teenagers. Elysia is one of two so-called betas, or prototype teen clones. For readers 14 and up.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-rachel-cohn-20121014,0,7351542.story
NEWS & FEATURES
Spanish novelist Javier Marías, author of The Infatuations, turned down a €20,000 government prize, stating he had rejected the national narrative prize because of a lifelong aversion to receiving public money.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/26/spanish-novelist-turns-down-prize
The A-frame home built by the late Canadian poet Al Purdy has been bought by a non-profit group–the Al Purdy A-Frame Association–and will be turned into a writers' retreat.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/ottawa-al-purdy-aframe-home-to-become-writer-residence.html
Anna Porter comments on the Douglas & McIntyre bankruptcy in The Star.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1278205--douglas-mcintyre-collapse-new-sign-of-publishing-industry-struggles
Speaking about The Unforgotten Coat, Frank Cottrell Boyce says: "If I've got a political axe to grind, it's around literacy. We've tragically conflated literacy and reading. Tests make pupils feel like failures before they have barely begun. We risk putting children off reading forever."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/oct/26/frank-cottrell-boyce-life-in-writing
Last week's Book News included the information that Amazon profits from a tax loophole in Britain. Now Amazon is to be stripped of its huge tax advantage on the sales of electronic books after the European commission ordered Luxembourg to close a VAT loophole.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/24/amazon-tax-loophole-ebooks?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
What do writers do all day? Emma Donoghue lets us in on her writing life with this article in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/29/emma-donoghue-how-to-write-book?newsfeed=true
David Mitchell describes the process of ‘translating' a book–Cloud Atlas–into a film, which was launched October 26.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443675404578060870111158076.html
British publishing and education company Pearson PLC will merge its Penguin Books division with Random House, which is owned by German media company Bertelsmann, creating the world's largest publisher of consumer books, with around a quarter of the market. The joint venture will be known as Penguin Random House.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/penguin-random-house.html
Quebec crime writer Louise Penny's debut novel Still Life is being made into a two-hour TV movie—the first of a proposed series—with British actor Nathaniel Parker portraying Inspector Armand Gamache. Shooting is now underway outside Montreal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/10/29/still-life-film.html
If you could create a bookstore, what would you put in it? What would you exclude? Nearly all bibliophiles—that peculiar breed of people who feel more at home in bookstores than in their actual homes—have at some point posed such questions.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/the-bookstore-brain-how-bookstores-choose-their-books.html#ixzz2AYFFirb0
Ian McEwen describes the novella as the perfect form of prose fiction, in the latest issue of The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/some-notes-on-the-novella.html
There's a Deeper Meaning to the zombie craze, writes Margaret Atwood. A lot of angst from publishers and writers about the young "not reading" may mean they aren't reading what older people want them to read. Let the young begin with whatever interests them, says Atwood, quoting Northrop Frye.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/booksblog/2012/oct/25/margaret-atwood-naomi-alderman-zombie-novel
BOOKS & WRITERS
Twelve years after his death, four Edward Gorey titles have just landed on bookstore shelves–Thoughtful Alphabets: The Just Dessert & the Deadly Blotter, The Osbick Bird, and Saint Melissa the Mottled, an unpublished story supplemented with images from the Gorey archive, some never before published.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-edward-gorey-20121028,0,530119.story
There are two parallel Haruki Murakamis, writes Roland Kelts: Murakami is not American, doesn't write in English, and not a single vampire or wizard appears in his oeuvre. This year, he topped everyone's list of favorites for the Nobel Prize for Literature, only to be disappointed.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/the-harukists-disappointed.html#ixzz2AKbvpWIt
There is growing evidence that the ancient Mayans didn't actually think the world was going to end in 2012. American writer Craig Childs travelled around the planet seeking up-close evidence of how the Earth is always moving toward an end, documenting what he found in his engaging, if sometimes frightening, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth, writes Monique Beaudin.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Apocalyptic+Planet+Field+Guide+Everending+Earth+Craig+Childs/7404973/story.html#ixzz2AQTPC72l
Shortly after Sudanese novelist Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin's books arrived at Khartoum's book fair, security officers confiscated all copies, saying they had to read them before they could go into circulation. Minutes later, social media broke the news of the confiscations and youngsters started asking where they could get their hands on the confiscated books.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/26/secret-reading-sudan-banning-books
Those who tell their stories in Hidden Lives: Coming Out on Mental Illness have either experienced mental illness first-hand or through their relationship with a close family member and virtually every Canadian is touched by the issue. The collection of 26 true stories is riveting, writes Tracy Sherlock.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Hidden+Lives+Stories+mental+illness+forge/7452931/story.html
Sherman Alexie has been celebrated for his acerbic, funny, politically charged stories and poems over 20 years. Tenderness and passion are pervasive in Blasphemy, his most recent work, writes Christie Sneed, as are his grief and outrage over the exploitation and neglect of indigenous populations in the United States.
http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Blasphemy-by-Sherman-Alexie-3965352.php#ixzz2AYOrtOQU
Candace Fertile writes that Alice Munro's Dear Life shows convincingly how human beings are unique and that everyone is at least one story and not the least bit ordinary. People are capable of much in Munroland, all of it human, says Fertile.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Alice+Munro+Dear+Life+There+ordinary+people/7452941/story.html
Susie Boyt's novel The Small Hours is a psychological drama about Harriet, a brash but troubled woman who opens the nursery school of her dreams. In an interview with Lucy Scholes, Boyt, who is the daughter of Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund, says 'I'm very Freudian in the way I look at things'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/28/susie-boyt-interview-small-hours
CS Forester's long-lost 1935 revenge story, The Pursued, was lost for six decades, writes Anthony Cummins. An endnote by Lawrence Brewer, a Forester enthusiast who purchased it when it turned up at auction in 1999, calls it a "little masterpiece"; he's not wrong, says Cummins.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/28/cs-forester-the-pursued-review
The tale of Hillary and Tenzing's ascent of Everest in Mick Conefrey's Everest 1953: The Epic Story of the First Ascent includes a connection to Britain, notes Justin Cartwright. Conefrey's book confirms Cartwright's childhood understanding that the coronation and the conquest of Everest were yoked together.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/25/everest-1953-mick-conefrey-review
Louise Erdrich's The Round House continues the complex, sensitive saga of native Americans that Erdrich began in 1984. The novel works wonderfully both as social commentary and as a mystery, but over all, it is literary fiction at its best, writes Candace Fertile.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/in-louise-erdichs-latest-a-tangle-of-laws-and-people/article4680831/
Damien Walters writes that the power of Ursula K. Le Guin's work will guarantee it an audience for centuries to come. With the publication of The Real and the Unreal: The Selected Stories of Ursula K Le Guin, you can expect to hear a great deal about the legendary author.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/30/ursula-k-le-guin-stories
Shortly after Stephen King excited a New Brunswick high school with his surprise appearance in the school library, a library in Los Angeles considered banning one of King's books because it depicts a rape scene. The committee that voted to ban the book never read the book (the lone dissenting vote, a 17-year-old student, did read the book).
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/28/opinion/la-ed-banned-book-20121028
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Michael Kenyon (A Year at River Mountain) and Grant Lawrence (Adventures in Solitude). Thursday, November 1 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARINA ENDICOTT
Marina Endicott discusses her novel The Little Shadows. Thursday, November 1 at 7:00 PM. Christianne's Lyceum. 3696 W. 8th Ave. $20 (includes refreshments). To reserve your space call 604.733.1356 or email lyceum@christiannehayward.com. More information at www.christiannehayward.com.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Diana E. Hayes + Taryn Hubbard + Open Mic. Thursday, Nov. 1 at 7:00pm. (Sign up for open mic at 7, readings begin at 7:30). Hosts: Daniela Elza & Timothy Shay. Suggested donation at the door: $5. Our new location is @Cafe Montmartre, 4362 Main Street, Vancouver. All are welcome. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.
CHRIS KRAUS
American writer reads from her new novel Summer of Hate with Marina Roy as respondent. Friday, November 2 at 8:00pm. Western Front, 303 8th Ave. E. More information at www.front.bc.ca.
ETERNAL HYDRA
Anton Piatigorsky's fascinating, award-winning play Eternal Hydra will open Touchstone's 2012/13 season. Sex, identity politics and the myth of genius are some of the themes tackled, as the play looks for the truth about the origins of a long lost literary masterpiece. http://www.touchstonetheatre.com/productions/eternal-hydra
CELEBRATE SCIENCE
The third annual Celebrate Science, a Festival of Science Writers for Children and Youth-and Canada's only science writer's festival-will be held November 3rd at UBC's Beaty Biodiversity Museum, in conjunction with Family Science Day. Events include a panel discussion with top science writers for children, a keynote speech and introduction by the Dean of Education, and storytelling for younger children as well as hands on science activities. The event is free and open to the public and includes admission to the Beaty Museum. http://blogs.ubc.ca/celebratescience.
TEEN AUTHORS TELL ALL
Young-adult authors Eileen Cook, Denis Jaden, Catherine Knutsson, Joëlle Anthony, and Mindi Scott read excerpts from their books and talk about the behind-the-scenes truth of publishing. Saturday, November 3 at 1:00pm, free. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th St. W. More information at www.nvcl.ca.
LLOYD ROBERTSON
legendary broadcaster and the longest-serving TV news anchor in Canadian history, talks about his extraordinary career and the fascinating anecdotes shared in his memoir, The Kind of Life It's Been. Saturday, November 3 at 2:00pm. Chapters Granville, 2505 Granville St., Vancouver. More information at 604-731-7822.
LEMONY SNICKET
"Who Could That Be at This Hour?" is Lemony Snicket's autobiographical account of his childhood and is the first book in the new series called All the Wrong Questions. Don't miss hearing all the truth (and more) from Lemony himself. Tuesday, November 6 at 6:30pm. Cost: $5. West Point Grey United Church sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. More information at www.kidsbooks.
JOURNEY WITH NO MAPS
Author Sandra Djwa presents her biography of poet and artist P.K. Page. Wednesday, November 7 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye rooms, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
111 WEST COAST LITERARY PORTRAITS
Photographer Barry Peterson discusses his new book that featuring rare portraits of writers who have lived in B.C., accompanied by excerpts of their writing. Guest writers will also speak at the event. Wednesday, November 7 at 7:00pm, free. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert St. For more information and to register, phone 604-299-8955.
VANCOUVER BOOK CLUB
Discussion with Billie Livingston about her recent novel One Good Hustle, one of the 10 finalists for the B.C./Yukon Canada Reads 2013 selection. Thursday, November 8 at 7:00pm, free. the Prophouse Cafe, 1636 Venables. More information at 604-733-5665.
KATE BRAID
BC poet and author launches her new memoir Joureywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man's World. Friday, November 9 at 7:00pm. Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace, 1825 16th Ave. W., Vancouver. More information at 604-885-9194.
2012 ALCUIN BOOK AUCTION
The Alcuin Society will hold an auction of new books submitted to the Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada in March, 2012, as well as books which won awards in 2011. Saturday, November 10 at 11:00am. Cost: $18 and includes a light lunch. University Golf Club, 5185 University Blvd., Vancouver. For reservations, email awards@alcuinsociety.com.
DEAD POETS READING SERIES
Readings of works by Robin Blaser, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Hayden, Glyn Hughes and Roy Kiyooka. Sunday, November 11 at 3:00pm. Admission by donation. Project Space, 222 East Georgia Street. More information at deadpoetslive.com.
Upcoming
JEEGAREH MA
Author Rahela Nayebzadah reads from her new book. Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30pm, free. Tommy Douglas branch, Burnaby Public Library, 7311 Kingsway, Burnaby. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.
GARRY THOMAS MORSE
Writer Garry Thomas Morse reads from his new book of fiction Minor Episodes/Major Ruckus, concerning surrealist and speculative genres. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARRIE MAC
Reading by the award-winning author of teen novels ‘The Opposite of Tidy', 'The Beckoners', 'The Gryphon Project', the Triskelia trilogy, and others. Wednesday, November 14 at 7:00pm, free. McGill branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert St. More information at 604-297-4803.
JACQUELINE PEARCE
Meet the author of The Truth About Rats (and Dogs), Dog House Blues, The Reunion and The Trickster. Monday, November 19 at 1:30pm. Newton Library, SPL, 13795 70 Ave., Surrey. More information at 604-598-7408.
PLAY CHTHONICS
Readings by Garry Thomas Morse and Brad Cran. Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm. Piano lounge, Green College, UBC.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
MARGARET ATWOOD: WRITING THE FUTURE
The Canadian author explores whether or not one can write about the future, why prophecy is dodgy, and the meaning of the zombie apocalypse. Thursday, November 22 at 8:00pm. Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road. More information at www.terry.ubc.ca.
JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
28th annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. Featuring Maya Arad, Stan Coren, Deborah Hodge, Sayed Kashua and many other. November 24-29, 2012. For complete details, visit jccgv.ca.
A READING
Authors John Francis Hughes and George Bowering read from their recent non-fiction collections Nobody Rides for Free: a Drifter in the Americas and The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.
CARMEN AGUIRRE
Reading by the author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00pm. North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th Street W., North Vancouver.
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