Book News Vol. 6 No. 8

BOOK NEWS

Incite @ VPL

The next installment of Incite (http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/readingseries) will feature John Burns interviewing Dianne Warren, as well as readings by Evelyn Lau and Aurian Haller.

7:30 pm on Wednesday, March 9
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/incitemarch9
Admission is free
Alice MacKay room, Central Library

Let us know you're coming by registering 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
The Finkler Question is a scorching story of friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and of the wisdom and humanity of maturity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best. Presented in partnership with the Jewish Book Festival. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/jacobson.

Simon Winchester - April 18, 2011
The bestselling author of Krakatoa, returns to the natural world with his epic new book, a "biography" of the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories. http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/winchester.

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

Earlier this week, the Writers' Union of Canada awarded the Union's Freedom to Read Award for 2011 to John Ralston Saul.
http://www.writersunion.ca/pdfs/FTR_Ralston_Saul_2011.pdf

A Mills & Boon bonkbuster, an examination of the ongoing debate surrounding organ procurement, and a guide to managing a dental practice in a Mongol warlord kind of way, are among the titles vying for the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of 2010.
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/diagram-prize-shortlist-announced.html

NEWS & FEATURES

Nathan Heller’s commentary, as a stutterer, about The King’s Speech, identifies many writers who stutter—among others, Updike, Drabble, Borges, Hitchens, Larkin, and Henry James, raising the question: Is there a correlation between the impediment and the creation of literary voice?
http://www.slate.com/id/2285533/pagenum/all/

Matthew Bell interviews Aminatta Forna about Memory of Love, one of six books shortlisted for the Warwick prize.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/even-the-middle-classes-are-hit-by-war-2219818.html

The Warwick prize will be awarded in late March. Details about all the shortlisted books can be found here:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/prizeforwriting/thisyear/shortlist/

For decades, Gene Sharp's practical writings on nonviolent revolution—most notably From Dictatorship to Democracy in 2003—have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Serbia, Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt. Sheryl Gay Stolberg connects the dots.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17sharp.html?src=me&ref=general

Robert McCrum argues that great novelists tend to avoid the barricades, whatever our fantasies of dissent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/novelists-protest-egypt-aswany-lafayette

Boyd Tonkin explores the causes, and effects, of a cultural rebirth in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/revolution-in-the-head-and-on-the-page-writers-are-waking-up-to-a-new-dawn-across-the-arab-world-2218074.html

On its 400th anniversary, Jeanette Winterson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Alexander McCall Smith, Michèle Roberts, David Crystal and Diarmaid McCulloch write about the importance of the King James Bible to our use of language.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/18/king-james-bible-language

Cornish bookseller and Du Maurier enthusiast, Ann Willmore has tracked down lost stories by Daphne du Maurier. The Doll, a new anthology of 13 stories—described as 'gothic, suspenseful and macabre',—will be published in May.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/fan-tracks-down-lost-stories-of-daphne-du-maurier-2220130.html

Mr Tumpy's Caravan, a previously unknown manuscript by Enid Blyton was discovered last year among works and manuscripts belonging to the late author's eldest daughter. Blyton died in 1968, but continues to sell eight million books a year.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/delight-as-lost-enid-blyton-book-is-discovered-2222818.html

The death last year of actor and director Dennis Hopper sparked renewed interest in his 'other' career—photography—suggested by James Dean. The photography chronicling Sixties America will be published by Taschen this week.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/rebel-with-a-camera-dennis-hoppers-stunning-photographic-archive-is-revealed-2216480.html

Bookseller Borders, which helped pioneer superstores, applied for bankruptcy protection last week.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/16/borders_books_chapter_11_bankruptcy/index.html

Edward McClelland analyzes how Borders went from a true alternative to a big-box bore.
http://www.salon.com/books/bookstores/index.html?story=/books/feature/2011/02/19/borders_disappears

The Washington Post has invited readers to submit three-sentence novels on Borders' demise.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/community/groups/index.html?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3aa70e3396-6663-4a8d-ba19-e44939d3c44fForum%3a24dd3e45-d5af-46c4-ab36-fd93fbed59dbDiscussion%3a4fc32e7c-e64d-4344-8a1d-88126007b7b2?hpid=talkbox1

Seventy-five years after the publication of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, David Sharrock retraces the Orwell journey that laid bare Britain's north-south divide.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/orwell-wigan-pier-75-years

Two excellent and similar novels came out in the US in the summer of 2010: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, and The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman. Only one got the Capital Letter treatment. Gabriel Brownstein asks why.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/feb/17/great-american-novel

BOOKS & WRITERS

A recent comment by Bernard Madoff caused Margaret Heffernan, who recently wrote on the subject, to recognize "willful blindness".
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/why-we-see-no-evil/article1913885/

An excerpt from Heffernan's Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril can be found here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/leading-the-blind/article1913889/

Carolyn Kellogg writes of Jonathan Evison's West of Here, that although the plotting is uneven, it offers a vision of the Pacific Northwest told through the people who find themselves at the edge of America's idea of itself.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-ca-jonathan-evison-20110220,0,2025992.story

For a long time, loyalists were left out of patriotic American histories of the revolution. Linda Colley writes that Liberty's Exiles, Maya Jasanoff's superbly researched and highly intelligent book, supplements a mass of recent revisionist research on these men and women.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/19/libertys-exiles-maya-jasanoff-review

In his review of Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin, Dwight Garner writes "One of the pleasures of a good book of letters is watching a voice develop and ripen over time, and Chatwin's does."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/books/18book.html?ref=books

An excerpt is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bdVzZ59FoO4C&printsec=frontcover

Michel Basilières writes that the stories in Michael Christie's The Beggar's Garden, set in his native Vancouver and peopled with the down-and-out, the disenfranchised and disaffected, are by turns funny, melancholy, bizarre and very, very real.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/941895--the-beggar-s-garden-by-michael-christie

Tracy Sherlock adds: Christie reminds us of one vital fact: every person who finds themselves on the streets or down and out has a story. They all have, or had, families and childhoods and attachments.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Beggar+Garden+Striking+portraits+vulnerable/4312499/story.html

Jamie Portman reports that David Nicholls' One Day continues to be an international hit, two years after its publication.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Move+over+Stieg+Larson+Stephenie+Meyer/4295023/story.html

Two recent books may encourage readers to pick up James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses and try again, writes Jim Ruland in his review of The House of Ulysses and Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-james-joyce-20110220,0,2235151.story

Wesley Stace's new book, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer, "is both a murder mystery and a novel about classical music, with a character who sometimes assumes another identity". Stace is also the singer-songwriter, John Wesley Harding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/books/20stace.html?ref=books&pagewanted=all

An excerpt is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=DDfpkO3K0mEC&printsec=frontcover

Dan Cryer finds that, by tracing the lives of three ‘white' families and their black forebears, Daniel J. Sharfstein's The Invisible Line is a spellbinding chronicle of racial passing in America, with often deadly consequences.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2011/02/20/tracing_lives_of_three_white_families_and_their_black_forebears/

Barack Obama became President of the United States barely 40 years after legally mandated segregation was abolished. Patricia Sullivan reviews two new books on blacks and the White House.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/18/AR2011021807073.html

Jim Bartley finds Darcie Friesen Hossack's Mennonites Don't Dance (short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for first fiction, Canada and the Caribbean), "arresting, mesmerizing, authentic, and stunning".
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/mennonites-dont-dance-by-darcie-friesen-hossack/article1912787/

Michiko Kakutani notes that in Alone Together, Sherry Turkle is primarily concerned with the psychological side effects of the Internet—the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy and communication without emotional risk, leaving people feeling lonelier and more overwhelmed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/books/22book.html?ref=books

Prompted by reflections from John Brockman and his colleagues' statements in Edge, Jonathan Freedland pursues the question of how the Internet changes how we think.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/22/internet-learn-to-turn-off

Here are six responses—in Edge—to that question:
http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html

Dwight Garner describes Townie by Andre Dubus III—who recounts the story of his childhood on the edge of the middle class, looking in—as "a sleek muscle car of a memoir".
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/books/23book.html?ref=books

COMMUNITY EVENTS

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.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Eve Joseph, Lydia Kwa and Kenneth Radu. Thursday, February 24 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson St. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca/#Kwa.

GEORGIA NICOLS
Author introduces her first book, You and Your Future. Thursday, February 24 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

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.

GALIANO LITERARY FESTIVAL
Readings, interviews, writing workshops, panel discussions, and small press production. Featuring Gurjinder Basran, Don Calame, Ivan E. Coyote, Des Kennedy, Meg Tilly and many more. February 25-28, 2011. Complete information at galianoliteraryfestival.wordpress.com.

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.

GETTING STARTED IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Join seven professional children's authors and illustrators to find out how they broke into this exciting and competitive field and how they built their careers. Monday, February 28 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

RUBIN CARTER
Dr. Rubin Hurricane Carter - Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom, with host Neil Boyd. With a brand new release, Rubin Carter tells of the metaphoric and physical prisons he has survived: his poverty-stricken childhood, his troubled adolescence and early adulthood, his 19-year imprisonment with 10 years in solitary confinement and the knowledge that his life was forever altered by injustice. 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.

YOUTH POETRY SLAM
Vancouver Poetry House presents special guest Tanya Evanson. Monday, Febrary 28 at 8:00pm. Tickets: $3/$5. Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive. Details at http://vancouverpoetryhouse.com.

RUSSELL SMITH
Author reads from his novel, Girl Crazy, a fast paced cinematic ride through one man's obsession with a younger woman. Wednesday, March 2 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kay rooms, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

DAVID J. SMITH
Launch of the author's new book This Child Every Child: A Picture Book for Children About the Rights of Children. Friday, March 4 at 6:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at http://ardeabooksandart.com/event/?event_id=34.

YARN BOMBING
Yarn Bombing (the art of crochet and knit graffiti) at Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver. Help stitch knitted blossoms in place on the Kogawa cherry tree (whose story is told in Joy Kogawa's book Naomi's Tree) on Sunday, March 6, 2 to 3:30pm. More details: http://www.kogawahouse.com/node/251.

Upcoming

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by John Gould and Terence Young. Thursday, March 10 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson St. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

RACHEL WYATT
Reading and discussion of the author's new novel, Letters to Omar. Thursday, March 10 at 7:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at http://ardeabooksandart.com/event/?event_id=31.

CABIN FEVER
Anna Swanson, Bren Simmers and Maleea Acker - three former fire lookouts - read from their debut collections of poetry. Monday, March 14 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

JORDAN SCOTT
Reading by the author of Silt and Blert. Friday, March 18 at 8:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive. More information at http://www.newstarbooks.com/news.php?news_id=40111.

BECKETT SOUNDINGS
Launch party for Inge Israel's new poetry collection. Also readings with Barbara Pelman and Pamela Porter. Sunday, March 20 at 5:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at ronsdalepress.com.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Suzanne Buffam and Derek Lundy. Thursday, March 24 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson St. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.