Book News Vol. 6 No. 5

BOOK NEWS

Incite @ VPL

Please join us for round two of Incite on February 9. A discussion of Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature with editor Trevor Carolan and contributing writers Colin James Sanders, Russell Thornton and Hilary Turner.

7:30 pm on Wednesday, February 9
Admission is free
Alice MacKay room, Central Library

Preregister for Incite here, http://incitevpl.eventbrite.com. Please note that registration is so that we know how many people to expect. Admission on the night is always on a first-come-first-served basis.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Jodi Picoult - March 13, 2011
The bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper will read from her new novel, Sing You Home, accompanied by guitarist Ellen Wilber. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/picoult.

Howard Jacobson - April 13, 2011
Jacobson's Man Booker award-winning book, The Finkler Question, deals with love, loss and male friendship, and explores what it means to be Jewish today. Presented in partnership with the Jewish Book Festival. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/jacobson.

Elizabeth Hay & Miriam Toews - May 5, 2011
Two of Canada's most acclaimed and beloved writers will discuss their new books, Alone in the Classroom and Irma Voth. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/haytoews.

AWARDS & LISTS

Vancouver's John Vaillant has won British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for his book The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+author+wins+fiction+book+award/4198897/story.html

An essay by John Vaillant on the threats to tigers and how to save them is here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/john-valliant-on-the-threats-to-tigers-and-how-to-save-them/article1694479/

Michelle Berry’s This Book Will Not Save Your Life won the inaugural Colophon Prize for fiction from its publisher, Enfield & Wizenty.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/this-book-will-not-save-your-life-by-michelle-berry/article1890440/

NEWS & FEATURES

B.C Teen Services librarians whose funding for the Teen Reading Club was cut, have secured support from The TELUS Vancouver Community Board (which believes "literacy is at the forefront") to keep the online component of the program alive in 2011.
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2011/01/31/TeenRescue/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=310111

The mystery of the authorship of O appears to be over. The author has been identified by Time magazine as Mark Salter, a former aide to John McCain.
http://thepage.time.com/2011/01/27/o-mark-salter/

Salter has neither confirmed nor denied his authorship.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/01/is-mark-salter-author-of-o.html

Douglas Bell suggests the author might wish to remain anonymous since, in Bell’s view, the best part of O is its cover.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/o-a-presidential-novel-by-anonymous/article1886246/

Following the successful uprising in Tunisia and the biggest demonstrations in Egypt for decades, protests have spread across the Arab world. Will other regimes fall? Ten leading Arab writers from the region respond.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2011/jan/28/tunisia-protests-writers-reflect

Vladimir Nabokov was the author of Lolita and other books. He also had a parallel existence as a self-taught expert on butterflies. Few professional lepidopterists took seriously his hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied. This week, his theory was vindicated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/01butterfly.html?src=me&ref=general

Yann Martel has ended his ‘one-sided book club’—his practice of sending books to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/01/yann-martel-book-canadian-pm

Jackie Kay writes: "It's a wonderful time for poetry. This week, for the second year running, a poet won the Costa book award and thousands are crowding into readings." What’s going on?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/jan/29/poets-poetry-stage-roar-renaissance

New York Times columnist Stanley Fish offers readers a guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the English language in How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. His top five sentences are here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/01/24/stanley-fish-s-top-five-sentences.aspx

The Nobel prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk laments the near-invisibility of writers in languages other than English, and the persistent shortage of translations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/26/orhan-pamuk-attacks-marginalisation-non-english

Dorothy Livesay’s Day and Night and Truman Green’s A Credit to Your Race are among the ten Vancouver books to be republished for the city’s 125th anniversary.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/vancouvers-lost-gems-to-be-republished-for-citys-125th-anniversary/article1885695/

What books we say we like may (or may not) provide insights into our character. Geoff Nicholson examines books in Hitler’s and Oscar Wilde’s libraries, among others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/books/review/Nicholson-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateemb3&pagewanted=all

Quai d'Orsay. a satirical graphic novel based on the former French prime minister and foreign policy supremo, Dominique de Villepin, is a surprise French literary hit, tipped for the top prizes at the Angoulême International Comics festival.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/quai-d-orsay-comic-book

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that three times as many books are self-published as are produced by traditional publishers.
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/114869199.html

BOOKS & WRITERS

The Poets Laureate Anthology provides a comprehensive overview via generous biographical introductions to, and selections of poetry from, the 43 holders of the post from 1937 to the present.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/29/poets-laureate-anthology-norton-review

Annie Murphy Paul writes that Peggy Orenstein’s debating with herself about ‘the princess phase’ in Cinderella Ate My Daughter has done parents a great favor, and reminds readers that kids grow out of it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Paul-t.html

An excerpt is here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061711527

Who knows what really lurks in the hearts and minds of teens? Deidre Baker reviews four books for teens, in an attempt to find out.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/930191--those-mystifying-teen-years-in-fiction

Margaret Atwood is to publish her seventh children's book, Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop's Wunderground Washery, The book will be out this summer.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Atwood+publish+children+book/4128062/story.html

British author Glynis Ridley’s The Discovery of Jeanne Baret is a whopper of a story, says Emily Donaldson, which brings to our attention the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, despite the strict law that barred women from naval vessels.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/930148--the-discovery-of-jeanne-baret-by-glynis-ridley

Award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding have been at the centre of the Wikileaks publishing drama. Their book Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy will be out this week. Here is an excerpt:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/30/julian-assange-wikileaks-profile

Vit Wagner says that poet Lorna Goodison routinely seeks inspiration in the works of her favourite writer, the 19th-century English Romantic poet John Keats. Her new collection By Love Possessed includes previous work and some entirely new work.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/929853--lorna-goodison-passion-for-keats-weaves-through-writer-s-work

The problem with memoirs began with our period of over-sharing, writes Neil Genzlinger in his review of four memoirs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/books/review/Genzlinger-t.html?ref=books

David Vann tells the heartbreaking story of the two youngest Britons to climb Everest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/30/young-everest-adventurers-into-void

"Rarely has loss and grieving been handled with such deft tenderness, sly humour and almost inexplicable beauty,” writes Robert Wiersema in his review of Steven Hayward’s Don’t Be Afraid.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dont-be-afraid-by-steven-hayward/article1886175/

Tracy Sherlock writes that Alice Hoffman’s trademark magical realism informs the interwoven enchanting fairy tales in The Red Garden.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Alice+Hoffman+Garden+merges+mystical+tales+with+tragedy+history/4173444/story.html

Former soldier and war correspondent Scott Taylor describes James Brabazon’s My Friend the Mercenary as "a fast-paced page-turner”.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/my-friend-the-mercenary-a-memoir-by-james-brabazon/article1889003/

Jane Johnson’s The Salt Road, informed by her own life in the Tuareg area of Morocco, gives readers a portrait of an area and history few of us know. Linda Holeman describes this historical novel as an "exhilarating ride”.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-salt-road-by-jane-johnson/article1886377/

Henry’s Demons, jointly written by Patrick Cockburn and his son Henry, who suffers from schizophrenia, is "a living, breathing book because nearly everyone in this shaggy, expressive family is worth getting to know” says Dwight Garner.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/books/02book.html?ref=books

Time in Sweden, coupled with an introduction to Stieg Larsson’s books, have resulted in Paul Wilson’s memoir The Archivist: How I found Stieg Larsson’s inner sanctum.
http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.03-memoir-the-archivist/

COMMUNITY EVENTS

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. Tickets and more information here, http://www.writerstrust.com/News/Events-%281%29/Writers--Trust-Presents-Margaret-Atwood.aspx.

PRISM INTERNATIONAL
Readings by Rachel Knudsen, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Dina Del Bucchia, Jill Mandrake, Gillian Jerome, Shannon Rayne, Charles Demers and George Bowering. Thursday, February 3 at 7:00pm. Tickets $10 and comes with complimentary copies of magazines. The Beaumont Studios, 316 5th Ave. W. More information at 604-822-2514.

MICHAEL CHRISTIE
Launch of the author's debut collection The Beggar's Garden. Friday, February 4 at 7:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at http://ardeabooksandart.com/event/?event_id=29.

WRITERS COLLECTIVE
Readings and excerpts by Canada's top aboriginal writers and songwriters in one of the Drives' newest tapas bars. Featuring Joanne Arnott, Janet Rogers, Lee Maracle, Garry Gottfriedson, Wil George, Michelle Sylliboy and Wanda John. With musical performances by Russell Wallace as well as Greg Coyes. Monday, February 7 at 7:00pm. Pay-what-you-can. The Pond, 1441 Commercial Drive. More information at www.fullcircleperformance.ca.

STEVE WEINER AND HANNAH CALDER
Authors read from their respective novels, Sweet England and More House. Monday, February 7 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information here: http://www.newstarbooks.com/news.php?news_id=40108.

PLAY CHTHONICS READING SERIES
Reading and dialogue by poets Chris Hutchinson and Jay MillAr. Wednesday, February 9 at 7:30pm, free. Graham House, Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Rd. More information at playchthonics.blogspot.com.

TIM WARD
Author and journalist reads from the 20th anniversary edition of his bestselling classic, What the Buddha Never Taught. Thursday, February 10 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by André Alexis (Beauty & Sadness) and Harry Karlinsky (The Evolution of Inanimate Objects). Thursday, February 10 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library Bookstore, Robson Square, plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

ON EDGE READING SERIES
Reading by Governor General's Award nominated poet Erin Moure. Thursday, February 10 at 7:00pm, free. ECU Library, Emily Carr University, 1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island.

MICHAEL MCCLURE
San Francisco poet will be reading from his works. Friday, February 11 at 8:00pm, free but please RSVP to library@sfu.ca. Room 1700 (Labatt's Hall), SFU Vancouver - Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street. For more information, email power@sfu.ca.

JOHN FURLONG
VANOC CEO signs his behind-the-scenes book about the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Patriot Hearts. Saturday, February 12 at 3:00pm. Chapters, Broadway and Granville, 2505 Granville Street. More information at 604-731-7822.

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.

Upcoming

KATHERINE GOVIER
Author reads from her new novel, The Ghost Brush, the story of Oie, daughter of 19th century Japanese printmaker Hokusai. Tuesday, February 15 at 7:00pm, free Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level Central Library 350 West Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

ON EDGE READING SERIES
Reading by Aaron Peck, author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis. Thursday, February 17 at 7:00pm, free. SB406, Emily Carr University, 1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island.

EVELYN LAU AND RAY HSU
Readings by the authors of Living Under Plastic (Lau) and Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon (Hsu). Thursday, February 24 at 1:00pm. Dodson Room (level 3), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, UBC. More information at http://ow.ly/3C8k7.

CHARLOTTE GILL
Author discusses Ladykiller, her debut collection of short stories.Thursday, February 24 at 7:00pm. Call 604-733-1356 or email lyceum@christiannehayward.com to register. Christianne's Lyceum, 3696 8th Ave. W.

SERENDIPITY 2011: A GRAPHIC NOVEL EVENT
With Gene Yang (American Born Chinese), Raina Telgemeier (Smile), Matt Holm, co-creator of Babymouse, Aaron Renier (The Unsinkable Walker Bean and Spiralbound) and JASON SHIGA (Meanwhile). February 26, 2011 @ SCARFE 100 (the Education Building), UBC 8:00-3:30 pm. Early Bird (before Feb 1): Student $50.00 Members $125.00 Non-members $140.00. Lunch included. Registration: http://vancouverchildrenslitroundtable.wordpress.com.

RUBIN CARTER
Discussion with Dr. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, author of Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness, hosted by Neil Boyd. Monday, February 28 at 7:30pm. Tickets $28/$22. Capilano University Performing Arts Theatre, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver. Details here: http://ow.ly/3G5oO.

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.