Book News Vol. 6 No. 14

BOOK NEWS

Incite @ VPL

The next installment of Incite (http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/incite) will feature Joyce Carol Oates and Johanna Skibsrud.

7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 20
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/inciteapril20
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 2-for-1 tickets to see Another Home Invasion
Buy any ticket for any performance and get the second one for free! But don't dilly-dally, this offer expires April 10 (Not valid in combination with any other offer, promotion, discount, or on previously purchased tickets.). Use promotion code AHIWF when you order online: http://secure.vancouvertix.com/tickets/production.aspx?PID=3989

SPECIAL EVENTS

Howard Jacobson - April 13, 2011
(2010 Man Booker award winner)
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.

A Dram Come True - May 13, 2011
Presenting the ninth annual single malt scotch whisky sampling. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/dramcometrue

AWARDS & LISTS

Philip Roth, Philip Pullman, and Anne Tyler, along with Rohinton Mistry, are among the thirteen shortlisted nominees for the Man Booker Internatonal prize.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/30/man-booker-prize-nominees-announced

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Syrian poet Adonis, and Toronto Poet Laureate Dionne Brand are among those shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/05/seamus-heaney-dionne-brand-among-nominees-for-griffin-poetry-prize/#more-29572

Five writers—include Red Green and Terry Fallis—have been shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/books/story/2011/04/01/leacock-medal.html

Toronto's Dionne Brand, Manitoba's Di Brandt and Vancouver's Evelyn Lau are among the poets who have been shortlisted for this year's Pat Lowther prize.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/04/04/poetry-prizes.html

April is poetry month: to celebrate, the League of Canadian Poets has released the shortlists for the 2011 Pat Lowther and the Gerald Lampert Awards.
http://www.poets.ca/

Leonard Cohen has won the 2011 Glenn Gould Prize.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/968253--leonard-cohen-wins-50-000-gould-prize

Garth Martens, a construction worker from Victoria who writes poetry, was awarded the $5,000 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers on Tuesday.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/books/story/2011/04/05/bronwen-wallace-prize.html

NEWS & FEATURES

An electronic book titled 2:46 (the hour the earthquake struck) with contributions from volunteers, including sci-fi writer William Gibson, is expected to go on sale this Friday, with proceeds going to the Japanese Red Cross.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/sci-fi-writer-william-gibson-among-contributors-to-japan-fundraising-book/article1971468/

John Le Carré explains his refusal to be considered for the Man Booker International Prize.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/le-carr233-refuses-to-join-man-booker-race-2257664.html

Gillian Slovo asks when it's right to impose a cultural boycott, a particular challenge for her as she is a product of her South African heritage and the new president of English PEN.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/02/gillian-slovo-author-author

The P.E.I. government is being lobbied to reverse a decision to close down its program of support for Island publishers. "To withdraw this support for publishing PEI books means...the possible loss of a publishing company", said Acorn Press.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/books/story/2011/03/31/pei-publisher-subsidy-government-584.html

Deborah Orr writes that her own favourite diet guidance doesn't come from science fact, but science fiction: Oryx and Crake, the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/31/margaret-atwood-diet-guru

Rick Gekoski writes about "The damnable task of being a Man Booker International prize judge."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/mar/30/man-booker-prize-international

David Lodge speculates as to why so many writers have been attracted by the biographical novel: in his case, Henry James (2006) and now, H.G. Wells.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7173602.ece

The boundaries of romance have spread, and family life has evolved. Lisa Appignanesi writes about how love in literature has changed.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/mothers-sons-and-other-lovers-how-love-in-literature-has-changed-2258472.html

Single people claim the bookstore is good for finding romance; here's an eyewitness account.
http://www.slate.com/id/2289786/

Some book marketers have been developing video trailers to promote books. As the videos live on, they continue to market the books years after the video was posted.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11093/1136649-51.stm?cmpid=entertainment.xml#ixzz1ITxFxpab

On Thursday, the B.C. Library Association will launch The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia. Written by Dave Obee of the Times Colonist, the book describes Andrew Carnegie's influence, despite never having visited B.C.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Philanthropist+gave+birth+Victoria+libraries/4551399/story.html

BOOKS & WRITERS

The Finkler Question earned Howard Jacobson his first Man Booker Prize at the age of 68. The enthusiastic response to the novel has left Jacobson with no time to return to his unfinished manuscript—about literary failure.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/968031--howard-jacobson-the-vindication-of-a-booker-prize

Joyce Carol Oates' memoir A Widow's Story "describes her own transformation, not through art but through pain, from wife into widow" says Ruth Franklin.
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_05/7024

Two baseball hero books to begin the spring: one about Hank Greenberg curious, intelligent, the first Jewish baseball superstar, the other Joe DiMaggio who, in retirement, demanded to be introduced as the “greatest living ballplayer.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/hank-greenberg-the-hero-who-didnt-want-to-be-one-by-mark-kurlansky/article1963354/

How long do you hold on to the past? This is a major theme of Sarita Mandanna's debut novel Tiger Hills, a multi-generational family saga that spans late 19th and early 20th century India.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/965873--sarita-mandanna-debut-novelist

In his new book, The Good Book: A Secular Bible, A.C. Grayling sets out his manifesto for rational thought, believing, says Decca Aitkenhead, that all of us are capable of understanding philosophy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/03/grayling-good-book-atheism-philosophy

Kenneth Turan writes that Henning Mankell's Wallander books are more successful as literature than the books in which the detective does not appear. With The Troubled Man, Mankell ups his game and enters John le Carré territory.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-et-book-20110330,0,6029427.story

After David Foster Wallace died, his agent found several chapters of the novel The Pale King. Wallace's editor spent two years assembling and editing the papers; the resulting book will be published April 15.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2062341,00.html#ixzz1IBYz4gln

Joel Yanofsky writes that David Bezmozgis's The Free World feels undeniably Russian—imbued with the conflict between the human concerns of its characters and the cruel indifference of history.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Free+last+with+nowhere/4545433/story.html

Leah Hager Cohen says that “the novel reminds us again and again that life is essentially ridiculous.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-free-world-by-david-bezmozgis/article1967022/

Antonas Sileika's Underground is a very different story of émigrés, told through the medium of a political military/spy thriller, and based on real-life resistance in Lithuania.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Unearthing+little+known+piece+20th+century+history/4548867/story.html

At the age of 30, Rupinder Gill decided to experience things denied her in growing up in a traditional Indian home. Her memoir On the Outside Looking Indian is both amusing and challenging.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Adolescence+more+second+time+around/4548866/story.html

Emily Donaldson describes the book as a charming, witty chronicle of the trials and tribulations of one woman's belated attempt at a second childhood.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/967726--on-the-outside-looking-indian-by-rupinder-gill

Patrick Ness is deeply moved by Johanna Skibsrud's The Sentimentalists. A grown daughter's investigation into her father's Vietnam war memories shows what it must be like to be 40 years removed from memories that still haunt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/02/johanna-skibsrud-the-sentimentalists-review

Lesley McDowell says David Lodge's writing a biographical novel about H.G. Wells is an interesting technique, well suited to a subject who has quite a bit of explaining to do.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-man-of-parts-by-david-lodge-2260499.html

Jim Bartley writes that the deadlocked society of apartheid is strikingly rendered in Dawn Promislow's Jewels.
http://aol.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/aolstory/TGAM/20110402/BOBARTLEY0402ATL

In the final pages of A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate daughters, absent fathers, Michael Holroyd reveals this book to be his last, a release not only for himself but also for all his characters.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7173246.ece

Paula L. Woods writes that One of Our Thursdays is Missing, like other Jasper Fforde novels, is jampacked with spot-on parody, puns and wry observations.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-book-20110324,0,6005166.story

In Tim Wynne-Jones's latest young-adult thriller Blink & Caution, survival of the fittest is a major theme: Blink and Caution are the names of two key characters.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/blink-caution-by-tim-wynne-jones/article1967583/

Bryan Lynch reports that Opening Doors in Vancouver's East End: Strathcona, compiled by poet Daphne Marlatt and artist-author Carole Itter, is an invaluable record of the neighbourhood's early evolution.
http://www.straight.com/article-383922/vancouver/opening-doors-revives-strathconas-rich-past

In Use and Abuse of Literature, Marjorie Garber poses the central questions of a literate person's life: What do we mean by literature? Why study it? Is there a form of writing that is not literary?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/26/RV581IFQJ1.DTL#ixzz1I8itpSvL

That Michael Connelly is very good comes as no surprise, even given that he publishes two books a year. Reviewer Richard Raynor picked up The Fifth Witness and found he couldn't put it down until he'd finished it.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-et-book-20110405,0,6160502.story

COMMUNITY EVENTS

ANOTHER HOME INVASION
A one-woman performance of local playwright Joan MacLeod's story of confronting life's challenges with humour and dignity. Now until April 23. New Revue Stage, 1601 Johnston Street. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://ow.ly/4rwr4.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Ryan Knighton and Ed Macdonald. Thursday, April 7 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson St. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

THREE POETS READING
New books of poetry presented by Cathy Ford, bill bissett and Mona Fertig. Saturday, April 9 at 3:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye rooms, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. For more information please contact VPL - Literature and Social Science at 604-331-3738.

NORTH SHORE WRITERS FESTIVAL
The 12th annual festival features author presentations from John Furlong, Grant Lawrence, Ryan Knighton, Timothy Taylor, Caroline Adderson, Dianne Warren and Meeru Dhalwala. April 11 to 16. North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library. For complete information, visit http://www.northshorewritersfestival.ca.

FRIENDS OF THE VPL
The Friends of Vancouver Public Library board has appointed a Nominating Committee to seek new Directors for the coming year. Monday, April 11 at 5:30pm. VPL board room. level 7, Central Branch, 350 W. Georgia Street. Please visit friendsofthevpl.ca for more information and an invitation to attend a reception for those interested in becoming involved with Friends of VPL.

RAISE SHIT!
Come join Susan Boyd, Donald MacPherson and Bud Osborn discuss their book Raise Shit! Social Action Saving Lives, which explores the community activism in Vancouver's DTES that led to the opening of the first safe injection site. Wednesday, April 13 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. For more information please contact VPL - Literature and Social Science at 604-331-3738.

POETRY AROUND THE WORLD
Celebrate National Poetry Month with an evening of poetry and spoken-word readings featuring Bonnie Nish, Daniela Elza, Ashok Bhargava, Franci Louann and Warren Dean Fulton. Thursday, April 14 at 6:30pm, free. Renfrew Public Library, 2969 22nd Ave. E.. More information at 604-441-0169.

JUSTIN LUKYN
Reading by the author of Henry Pepper. Friday, April 15 at 8:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive. More information at http://www.newstarbooks.com/news.php?news_id=40111.

LIT FEST NEW WEST
Spoken word performances and slam poetry for all ages. Features C.R. Avery. Friday, April 15 at 8:30pm. The Back Room of the Heritage Grill, 447 Columbia Street, New Westminster.

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.

ANNE PERDUE
Author reads from her short story collection I'm a Registered Nurse Not a Whore. Saturday, April 16 at 6:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at ardeabooksandart.com.

VALERIE PARKS
Author launches her second book of poetry, Pathways. Sunday, April 17 at 2:30pm. Renaissance Books, 43 Sixth Street, New Westminster.

Upcoming

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL
The inaugural Vancouver International Poetry Festival will harness the diversity of spoken word in Canada and beyond to present a world-class spoken word festival that showcases the best that Canada has to offer, as well as exploring and expanding the boundaries of contemporary spoken word. April 18-23, 2011. For complete details, visit http://vancouverpoetryfestival.com.

PEN-IN-HAND
Poetry and prose reading featuring Walk Myself Home: An Anthology to End Violence Against Women, with Janet Marie Rogers, Arleen Paré, Rhonda Ganz and other contributors to the book. Monday, April 18 at 7:30pm. Cost: $3. Serious Coffee, 230 Cook Street, Victoria.

FREEHAND BOOKS LAUNCH
Launch of new titles from Kristen den Hartog, Michael Murphy, and Ian Williams. Thursday, April 21 at 7:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at ardeabooksandart.com.

125 POETRY READINGS IN ONE DAY
To combat the image of poets as sedentary word-hermits, Ray Hsu, Kim Fu, Kevin Spenst and Andrea Bennett are going to jog through 125 different readings venues in one day. Thursday, April 21 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room, level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

CELEBRATE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH
Readings by Jacob McArthur Mooney, Susan Musgrave and Matt Rader. Thursday, April 21 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson St. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

AN EVENING WITH LEE HENDERSON
Join the author for a discussion about his novel The Man Game. Thursday, April 21 at 7:00pm. Tickets are $20, call 604-733-1356 or email lyceum@christiannehayward.com to register. Christianne's Lyceum, 3696 8th Ave. W.

TISH COHEN
Bestselling author reads from her new novel The Truth About Delilah Blue. Tuesday, April 26 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen & Peter Kay rooms, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

AN EVENING WITH THE ARTHURS
Crime Writers of Canada announce the short lists for the Arthur Ellis Award for Canadian Crime Writing, including Best Novel and Best First Novel. Thursday, April 28 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. For more information please contact VPL - Popular Reading Library at 604-331-3691.

2011 DTES WRITERS' JAMBOREE
Writers' event features mini-manuscript consultations, roundtable discussions, professional skills workshops, and guest author readings by Brian Payton, Evelyn Lau, and Gregory Scofield. Friday, April 29. From 10am to 830pm. Free admission. Carnegie Community Centre, 401 Main Street. More information at www.thewritersstudio.ca.

PLAY CHTHONICS READING SERIES
Readings by Lee Maracle and Wayde Compton. Friday, April 29 at 7:00pm, free. Rhizome Cafe, 317 East Broadway. More information at playchtonics.blogspot.com.