The new year is the time for exciting new projects - this month we launch Incite, a new twice-monthly series of illuminating readings, interviews and discussions with novelists, poets, non-fiction writers and more. Join us at the launch on Wednesday, January 26, featuring Andrew Pyper, Amber Dawn and Michael Christie. Other confirmed Spring appearances include 2010 Giller Prize winner Johanna Skibsrud and 2010 Giller Prize nominee Alexander MacLeod, as well as local stars Zuszsi Gartner and Timothy Taylor. Info: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/readingseries.
Incite @ VPL
An Exploration of Books and Ideas
7:30 pm every second Wednesday, Free
Alice McKay Room, Central Library
AWARDS & LISTS
Award winners in each of the five categories of Costa Book Awards have been announced. The five winners are now shortlisted for the grand prize of 2010 Costa Book of the Year which will be announced at the end of this month.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/maggie-ofarrell-wins-costa-book-award-for-best-novel/article1857381/
Books by Doug Saunders, Lawrence Martin, Shelagh D. Grant, Anna Porter and Tim Cook are the five finalists for the 2010-2011 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for excellence in political writing. The prize will be awarded in Ottawa in February.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/two-globe-writers-up-for-shaughnessy-cohen-prize/article1858408/
The $50,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, the most prestigious literary prize in the Arab world unveiled its nominees in December, riling critics who say it is a politically charged shortlist crafted to appeal to Western audiences. The award will be announced in March.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=122614#axzz18f9Qix38
Authors, publishers, and broadcasters about literary matters are among the 54 Canadians recently appointed to the Order of Canada. These include Patricia Aldana for her contributions to children's publishing, novelist/poet/publisher Nicole Brossard, literary critic Linda Hutcheon, and Sheila Rogers, host of CBC Radio's The Last Chapter and a committed volunteer in the fields of mental health and literacy.
http://www.einnews.com/pr-news/273660-governor-general-announces-54-new-appointments-to-the-order-of-canada-
NEWS & FEATURES
After the death of Edwin Morgan, Scotland's greatest living poet and the country's first makar—its national poet laureate—the country is now struggling with determining how to go about appointing his successor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/02/scotland-poet-laureate?CMP=EMCGT_030111&
Indignez-vous!, a political essay written by Resistance hero 93-year-old Stéphane Hessel topped the Christmas bestseller list in France.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/26/stephane-hessel-93-french-bestseller
In an interview about his second novel Caribou Island, David Vann reveals how writing saved his life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/02/david-vann-caribou-island-interview
Research for his latest book The Forest Laird has convinced author Jack Whyte that the mythic figure of Robin Hood was inspired by the 13th C. Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Braveheart+inspiration+Robin+Hood+novelist+claims/4055542/story.html
The Oxford English Dictionary has launched a Save the Words campaign. Register on the site to adopt at-risk words—words at risk of being dropped from the dictionary as they fall out of usage. Adopters promise to use their word in conversation.
http://www.savethewords.org/
David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Emma Donoghue's Room, and David Grossman's To the End of the Land led in the number of recommendations made for the Guardian's list of the best books of 2010.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2010/dec/14/books-of-the-year-2010?CMP=EMCGT_211210&
Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean and two books in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy are among the ten books most lent by the Vancouver Public Library in 2010.
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/12/30/BorrowedBooks2010/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=030111
The January Magazine's list of best books of 2010 include some unusual titles as well as familiar ones.
http://januarymagazine.blogspot.com/2010/12/best-books-of-2010-fiction.html
What is the place of serious criticism in the age of instant, ubiquitous opinion? ask the editors of the NY TIMES.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/books/review/Tanenhaus-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema1
Six accomplished critics explain the importance of their work. A sidebar in each essay offers links to the other essays.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/books/review/Burn-t-web.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3
Author Cathal Morrow is to float himself on the Stock Exchange, with the hope that literary shareholders will buy 30,000 shares in him at £10 apiece. (He's retaining 30%, "the vital organs and so forth".) He's not legally allowed to sell shares in himself but investors can own part of the intellectual property of a project.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/19/author-floats-on-stock-exchange?CMP=EMCGT_201210&
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has sold his memoirs to publishers Canongate (UK) and Knopf (US). The book is to be published in March 2011. Wikileads: My Time at the World's Most Dangerous Website by former Wikileaks deputy Daniel Domscheit-Berg will be published on 27 January. And Texas-based Global Language Monitor has announced that Wikileaks has met the criteria to be considered a proper word.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/coming-soon-to-a-bookshop-near-you-assange-in-his-own-words-2166534.html
The plot formula—"the butler did it"—is the biggest cliché in mystery writing. An investigation of the evidence, writes Nate Pederson, reveals another story entirely. The butler was framed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/09/why-we-think-the-butler-did-it
Make books do things e-books can't—and vice versa. As digital publishing grows, there's reason to push each medium to be more than just a receptacle for words, writes David L. Ulin.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-slow-reading-20101230,0,7304318.story
The Guardian reports that romance fiction powers the e-book market.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/02/robert-mccrum-digital-books-downmarket-publishing
The King James Bible brings the faithful and non-believers together in appreciation of its dazzling use of language. Celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the KJB began last month and will last a whole year.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/faith/the-bible-that-even-atheists-worship-2166158.html
BOOKS & WRITERS
The RCMP was born in the wake of a drunken American slaughter of a harmless group of Assiniboine in Saskatchewan's Cypress Hills, writes reviewer Hans Werner. Werner recommends that copies of Charles Wilkins' The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873-1904 be placed in every high school library.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/909959--the-wild-ride-a-history-of-the-north-west-mounted
Tracy Sherlock writes that Gurjinder Basran's Everything Was Good-bye is an exploration of being torn between two cultures and between sub-sets of a culture.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Gurjinder+Basran+novel+Everything+Good+explores+being+torn+between/4042464/story.html
Jacob Rubin writes that Barry Hannah's high-wire prose has earned him a cult following and changed the American short story forever.
http://www.slate.com/id/2278455/
A new year means a new slate, right? Monique Polak reviews three self-improvement books: Piers Steels' The Procrastination Equation; Erin Katz's Where Did Noah Park the Ark?; and Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Never Too Late. Polak writes "May we get things done...may we save for the future...and may we have the sort of memory that can keep track of all this wise advice."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Self+improvement+year/4041958/story.html
The Guardian books team tells us there will be a new novel by Roddy Doyle in 2011, another tome from Noam Chomsky on US hegemony and Garrison Keillor's new book of sonnets - which he sings.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/10/books-2011-garrison-keillor-rpddy-doyle
After almost 20 years since its publication in French, Amélie Nothomb's Hygiene and the Assassin is finally available in English translation. Becky Toyne describes the book as a "cat-and-mouse tale with murderous intent" that skips the whodunit's traditional trail of clues. Still, with a protagonist whose name is Prétextat, one wonders.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/hygiene-and-the-assassin-by-amlie-nothomb/article1842005/
Andrei Codrecu's The Poetry Lesson is a novel of ends and beginnings, writes Alex Good, beginning with talking about epitaphs and famous last words, and ending with poets bursting out of the cemetery gates.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/912885--the-poetry-lesson-by-andrei-codrescu
In her review of Tarek Fatah's The Jew Is Not My Enemy and Martin Gilbert's In Ishmael's House, Paula Newberg writes "neither Fatah nor Gilbert restricts his analysis to the problematic Israel-Palestine dispute but rather, concern themselves with far broader questions".
http://aol.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/aolstory/TGAM/20110101/BOFATAH1224
The much-lauded Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat had nearly finished gathering the stories for Haiti Noir, an anthology of crime stories, when Haiti was hit by the massive earthquake of January 2010. Carolyn Kellogg says the stories possess both classic and uniquely Haitian elements. Danticat adds in her introduction that they are "a snapshot of places that in some cases have become irreparably altered."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-ca-haiti-noir-20110102,0,484120.story
In his review of Julian Barnes' collection Pulse, Tim Evans writes that Barnes is still the master explorer of the intricacies of human relationships.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/02/julian-barnes-pulse-review
Alison Flood anticipates the literary highlights of 2011 (including Julian Barnes' latest).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jan/03/best-books-2011
Even Silence Has an End, Ingrid Betancourt's memoir of her time as a hostage in the Colombian jungle, has been simultaneously published in nine languages and twelve countries. Sudhir Hazareesingh writes: "Like all great resistance memoirs, this is a tale of individual affirmation in the face of systematic attempts to destroy the human spirit."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7170099.ece
Kevin Canfield writes that Daniel Lanois' episodic autobiography Soul Mining is more music memoir than personal autobiography. Still, stories such as those about Lanois' early work with Peter Gabriel, offer insights into Lanois.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/02/RV681GV8SP.DTL
The miracles of medical technology have given us compressed recollection in Tony Judt's The Memory Chalet, writes Geoff Dyer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/books/review/Dyer-t.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema4&pagewanted=all
Google Books offers an excerpt here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UKdIMjjZDO0C&printsec=frontcover
COMMUNITY EVENTS
CBC BOOK CLUB
On Wednesday January 12, William Gibson will be in the CBC Studio One Book Club with his latest novel Zero History. It's the third installment that began with Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. Sheryl MacKay's co-host for this Book Club is Douglas Coupland. Seating is limited so don't delay - enter to win free tickets at www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.
WALK MYSELF HOME
Caitlin Press presents readings from Walk Myself Home, an anthology of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and oral interviews about violence against women, with contributions by Kate Braid, Yasuko Thahn, and Susan Musgrave. Thursday, January 13 at 7:00pm, free. Central Library, 350 W. Georgia.
SHEILA HETI
Author talks with Hal Wake about her latest book, How Should a Person Be?. Thursday, January 13 at 7:30pm. Tickets $12. Jewish Community Centre, 950 41st Ave. W. More information and tickets at 604-257-5111.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Sheila Heti (How Should A Person Be?) and Bren Simmers (Night Gears). Friday, January 14 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library Bookstore, Robson Square, plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
ANNE GIARDINI
Author reads from her warm and witty novel, Advice for Italian Boys. Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.
Upcoming
STEVE WEINER AND SAM WHARTON
Local authors explore post World War England in their books Sweet England and Ignorant Armies with dramatically different results. Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street.
GUNG HAGGIS FAT CHOY WORLD POETRY NIGHT
Seventh annual gala, celebrating Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New Year. A celebration of Chinese and Scottish traditions with a distinctly Canadian twist! Monday, January 24 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Reading by Gurjinder Basran, Jack Hodgins and Drew Hayden Taylor. Thursday, January 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library Bookstore, Robson Square, plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
STEVEN HEIGHTON
One of Canada's finest writers, Steven Heighton reads from Every Lost Country. Wednesday, February 2 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.
THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD
Writers' Trust co-founder Margaret Atwood will narrate a theatrical performance based on her best-selling novel, The Year of the Flood at a Writers' Trust of Canada fundraiser on February 3. The performance at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver will feature the singers and actors from the VIWF's sold out 2009 production. Tickets for the event, which features special guest and Writers' Trust co-founder Graeme Gibson, a cocktail reception, and an auction of original postcard stories from celebrated Canadian writers and other select items, are $175. Tickets and more information here, http://www.writerstrust.com/News/Events-%281%29/Writers--Trust-Presents-Margaret-Atwood.aspx.
POSTCARD STORY COMPETITION
Submissions are being accepted until February 14, 2011 for the Writers’ Union of Canada’s 12th annual Postcard Story Competition. The winning entry will receive $500 and will be published in Write, the magazine of The Writers’ Union of Canada. Submission details here: http://www.writersunion.ca/cn_postcard.asp.
NON-FICTION WRITING CONTEST
EVENT is both a literary journal showcasing fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction and a sponsor of an annual non-fiction contest. The deadline for submissions to the 2011 EVENT Non-Fiction Contest is April 15, 2011. Three winners will each receive $500 (plus publication payment). Publication in EVENT 40/3 (December 2011). Submission details here: http://event.douglas.bc.ca.
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