Book News Vol. 6 No. 18

BOOK NEWS

Incite @ VPL

Coming up in May, we are offering two installments of Incite in one week! A special Incite on May 9 features Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader, reading from his new novel The Weekend, and on Wednesday, May 11 Zsuzsi Gartner discusses her latest book, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, and singer-songwriter Sylvia Tyson reads from her debut novel, Joyner's Dream.

Reviews from the recent Incite event with Joyce Carol Oates and Johanna Skibsrud:
Remarkable, courageous and generous reading. Thank you!
A wonderful evening in every way.
A true thrill to hear Joyce Carol Oates-a rare treat. Thank you.

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

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
There are still tickets available for A Dram Come True but they are going fast! Join us for a scintillating evening of scotch whisky sampling and enjoy a variety of rare and distinguished single malts. "The light music of whiskey falling into a glass - an agreeable interlude." - James Joyce. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/dramcometrue

Mellissa Fung - May 28, 2011
CBC Journalist Mellissa Fung will discuss her soon to be released memoir, Under an Afghan Sky, with Kirk LaPointe. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/fung

AWARDS & LISTS

Globe and Mail European bureau chief Doug Saunders has won the $35,000 Donner Prize for Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World. The award jury declared it "a work that analyzes a global trend that we ignore at our peril.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-globes-doug-saunders-wins-donner-prize/article2001091/

85-year-old Ana Maria Matute received the 2010 Cervantes prize, the Spanish-speaking world's top literary honour, from King Juan Carlos last week, the third woman to receive the award in its 35-year history. Matute is acclaimed for her lyrical novels dealing with the lives of children and adolescents.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/books/story/2011/04/27/cervantes-matute-prize.html

South African author Lauren Beukes has won the Arthur C. Clarke award, the UK's top science fiction prize, for her novel Zoo City, set in an alternate Johannesburg.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/28/lauren-beukes-arthur-c-clarke-award

The Canada Reads Poetry 2011 champion is Forage by Rita Wong.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/28/forage-by-rita-wong-wins-canada-reads-poetry/#more-31980

Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies, has won the 2011 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/04/28/blue-met-grand-prix.html

Michael Van Rooy, the Winnipeg writer who died while on a book tour earlier this year, has earned an Arthur Ellis Award nomination for A Criminal to Remember. Other shortlisted authors include Louise Penny, Jeffrey Moore and Sheree Fitch. The awards are named for Arthur Ellis, the pseudonym used by Canada's official hangman.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/04/29/arthur-ellis-awards.html

Emerging writer Eleanor Catton has won the Amazon.ca First Novel award for The Rehearsal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/04/29/amazon-first-novel-catton-rehearsal.html

Trevor Cole's Practical Jean has won the 2011 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/04/29/leacock-cole-practical-jean.html

Quebec mystery writer Louise Penny has captured an Agatha Award for a fourth year in a row for best mystery novel, with Bury Your Dead, the sixth in the Insp. Gamache series.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/05/01/penny-agatha-award.html

The Walrus leads in the National Magazine Awards with 35 nominations. Writer J.B. MacKinnon and photographer Edward Burtynsky are also among the finalists for awards.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/05/02/national-magazine-award-nominees.html

NEWS & FEATURES

Maxine Hong Kingston talks with Susanna Rustin about changing times in China, turning to poetry 'to hasten the pace of creation' and getting arrested with Alice Walker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/26/maxine-hong-kingston-whitman

Canadian poet Katherine Leyton spent April in Miami, celebrating Poetry Month by approaching strangers and asking them to read poems by Erin Robson, Ken Babstock and Matt Rader, among others, on camera.
http://tinyurl.com/3ugbrw3

Argentina is considering granting a special pension to writers on the grounds that they generate "social richness" but often end up impoverished. Authors who have published five books or invested 20 years in 'literary creation' would get £565 a month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/27/argentina-considers-paying-writers-pension

Marja Mills' The Mockingbird Next Door, a biography of Harper Lee, will cover topics ranging from Lee's childhood in Alabama to why she never wrote a follow-up to her acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/04/27/harper-lee-bio.html

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, spent his childhood moving between California and his native Lahore, thus developing a fascination with maps and with imaginary islands he could populate with the best of both places.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/01/once-upon-a-life-mohsin-hamid

Hamid's first book, Moth Smoke (now reissued in paperback), provides the context for the clash of cultures in its portrait of a country violently divided against itself, writes Rachel Aspden.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/01/moth-smoke-mohsin-hamid-review

When Miles Franklin established Australia's most significant award for literary fiction, she wanted to encourage Australian writers and writing. And she knew the particular difficulties women writers faced. Since 1957, the prize has been awarded 39 times to male writers and 13 times to women.
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/a-closed-book-as-prize-list-leaves-women-on-outer-20110421-1dqgg.html

The Australian's Books blog reflects on the Miles Franklin short list, which has attracted a lot of comment for being all-male for the second time in three years.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/why-long-lists-can-be-so-unfair/story-e6frg8nf-1226045089010

Physician and author Rahul K. Parikh interviews Dr. Siddhartha Mukerjee (Emperor of All Maladies) because of Mukerjee's writing the "biography" of cancer, bringing to light its cultural, mythical, clinical, social and political history. Their focus: why cancer matters.
http://www.salon.com/books/our_picks/

Libraries have nothing at all to do with silence, says Bella Bathurst, as she reveals what communities are about to lose with the closure of libraries.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/01/the-secret-life-of-libraries

120 years after it was condemned as 'vulgar' and 'unclean', an uncensored version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray has been published by Harvard University Press.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/27/dorian-gray-oscar-wilde-uncensored

BOOKS & WRITERS

Zsuzsi Gartner has been touted as a satirical writer, and to the degree that her latest collection of short stories, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, heaps scorn on a wide range of targets, the definition fits, writes Emily Donaldson.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/978977--better-living-through-plastic-explosives-by-zsuzsi-gartner

The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk is a love letter to the literary novel, writes Cherilyn Parsons. It can expand your awareness and joy of reading. And for novelists, it's a treasure trove.
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/gazing_into_the_center_of_the_novel_20110428/

Philip Hensher is also engrossed in Pamuk's vision for the novel, not least because "Over the past 50 or so years, literary criticism has abandoned its general duty to say interesting things about books to an ordinary reader.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8387989/The-Naive-and-the-Sentimental-Novelist-by-Orhan-Pamuk-review.html

Renewed critical interest in novelist William Golding has Faber producing centenary editions of Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, and publishing daughter Judy's memoir Children of Lovers. The occasional King Lear quotes are apt, says Helen Taylor.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-children-of-lovers-by-judy-golding-2276056.html

Four characters in John Porcellino's graphic book The Next Day are real people, now adults, identified only by their first names. They attempted suicide, survived and lived to know another day, the next day of the book's title.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/983449--graphic-novella-the-next-day-tackles-suicide-and-survival

In Lucky Break, Esther Freud casts off the complex family ties that dominate her early books, and the middle European angst of more recent works, to embrace the funny yet brutal world of acting, says Susanna Rustin.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/30/lucky-break-esther-freud-review

Monsieur Linh and His Child by award-winning author Phillippe Claudel is a tale of two old men who befriend each other, neither speaking the other's language, communicating through kindly smiles, gestures and tones of voice.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/01/monsieur-linh-child-philippe-claudel-review

Miriam Toews' Sweet Badass Dude is included in Geist's 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition and can be found here:
http://www.geist.com/dispatch/sweet-badass-dude

Aritha Van Herk suggests that Elizabeth Hay's Alone in the Classroom be read slowly, or better, read twice, for its poetry, entanglements and richness.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/alone-in-the-classroom-by-elizabeth-hay/article2003976/

John Barber's interview with Hay adds insights into the author's approach.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/elizabeth-hay-a-celebrated-novelist-who-wears-a-cloak-of-self-deprecation/article2002875/

Gale Zoë Garnett describes Carsten Jensen's debut novel, We the Drowned, as "a huge achievement”. Nordic people live in relation to the water; this saga weaves myth, village life and sea, illuminating the lives of sailor and their loves.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/we-the-drowned-by-carsten-jensen/article2004011/

The terror of death and humankind's attempts to transcend it form the engrossing centre of John Gray's The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-immortalization-commission-by-john-gray/article2003851/

Lucy Popescu describes Camilla Gibbs' The Beauty of Humanity Movement as "a rich soup of memory and loss”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-beauty-of-humanity-movement-by-camilla-gibb-2278001.html

Brad MacKay writes that Chester Brown's Paying For It is about more than just its author's journey into john-dom. Paying For It is a defiant work of truth telling, writes MacKay.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/paying-for-it-by-chester-brown/article2003879/

Vit Wagner combines a review of Chester Brown's Paying for It: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John with information about Brown's election campaign for The Libertarian Party.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/982927--paying-for-it-a-comic-strip-memoir-about-being-a-john-by-chester-brown

American author Cara Black has situated her eleven novels, including her latest, Murder in Passey, in different Paris arrondissements. Paris makes even murder most foul somehow more pleasurable, says Jack Batten.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/983310--murder-in-passy-by-cara-black

COMMUNITY EVENTS

AN EVENING WITH COACH HOUSE BOOKS
Readings by poet Helen Guri, author of Match and Alan Reid, author of Isobel & Emile. Thursday, May 5 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson St. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

FRASER NIXON AND ANGIE ABDOU
John Burns hosts the Canadian writers reading from their new books The Man Who Killed and The Canterbury Trail. Thursday, May 5 at 7:00pm, free. Montmartre Cafe, 4362 Main Street.

CHAMPAGNE AND MEATBALLS
Historian Larry Hannant speaks about Bert Whyte's new memoir. Friday, May 6 at 7:00pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive. More information at www.peoplescoopbookstore.com.

MOTHER'S DAY TEA
Readings that celebrate women supporting women by Mette Bach, Shana Myara, Maddy Van Beek, Lorrie Miller, Cathleen With, and Fiona Tinwei Lam. Saturday, May 7 at 2:00pm. Tickets $10 and includes tea and goodies. Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 64th Ave. W. More information at kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.

SUSAN MCCASLIN
Poet launches her new volume Demeter Goes Skydiving. With host Liz Bachinsky and soprano Rachel Landrecht. Saturday, May 7 at 7:00pm. Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace, 1825 W. 16th Ave., Vancouver. More information: Vivian@canadianmemorial.org.

ALMOST-ANYTHING-GOES ANARCHY SLAM
The Anarchy/Chaos Poetry Slam is your chance to put on a costume, use your props or break out that ukelele collecting dust in your closet. Monday, May 9 at 8:00pm. Admission: $6. Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive. More information at vancouverpoetryhouse.com.

THIS INNOCENT CORNER
Peggy Herring reads from her debut novel set in Bangladesh and Salt Spring Island. The reading will be accompanied by a slide show by international development photographer Shehzad Noorani. Tuesday, May 10 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. More information at 604-331-3691.

EVERYDAY EDEN
Join food and lifestyle writer Christina Symons and horticulturalist and landscaper John Gillespie for a book signing, featuring refreshments and a demonstration from their new book Everyday Eden: 100+ Fun, Green Garden Projects for the Whole Family to Enjoy. Saturday, May 14 at 2:00pm, free. Barbara Jo's Books to Cooks, 1740 2nd Ave. W. Pre-register at 604-688-6755 or visit www.bookstocooks.com.

CROSS BORDER POLLINATION SERIES
Readings by Roberta Rich, Sheryda Warrener, Catherine Owen, Michael Dylan Welch, and Jericho Brown. Saturday, May 14 at 5:00pm, free. SFU Harbour Centre. room 7000 Earl and Jennie Lohn Policy Room.

ROB TAYLOR
Author launches his debut collection of poetry, The Other Side of Ourselves. Saturday, May 14 at 7:00pm, free. Rowan's Roof Restaurant and Lounge, 2340 4th Ave. W.

AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL NICOLL YAHGULANAAS
Join the author, illustrator and creator of Haida Manga for a discussion about his graphic novel Red: A Haida Manga. Saturday, May 14 at 7:00pm. Tickets are $20, call 604-733-1356 or email lyceum@christiannehayward.com to register. Christianne's Lyceum, 3696 8th Ave. W. www.christiannehayward.com.

ROBERT W. MACKAY AND BEN NUTTALL-SMITH
Two Vancouver authors will give dynamic presentations from historical novels set 1000 years apart. Monday, May 16 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. More information at 604-331-3691.

ROBERT WHITAKER
Award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker reads. Monday, May 16 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

Upcoming

BRUCE FRASER
The author will read from his book On Potato Mountain: a Chilcotin Mystery. Wednesday, May 18 at 6:30pm, free. Firehall Meeting Room, Firehall Branch, 1455 10th Ave. W. For more information please contact Firehall Branch at 604-665-3970.

THE CUCUMBER TREE
Author Bob Ross discusses his book The Cucumber Tree: Memories of a Vancouver Boyhood in celebration of the 14th Annual Dunbar Salmonberry Days festival. Wednesday, May 18 at 6:30pm, free. Dunbar Branch, 4515 Dunbar Street, Vancouver. More information at 604-665-3968.

CHESTER BROWN
Author reads from his new graphic novel, Paying For It, a contemporary defense of the world's oldest profession. Wednesday, May 18 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.

ORCA BOOK LAUNCH
Six Orca authors celebrate the release of their books for young readers. Wednesday, May 18 at 7:00pm, free. Ardea Books & Art, 2025 4th Ave. W. More information at 604-734-2025.

I FEEL GREAT ABOUT MY HANDS
Join Shari Graydon and other contributors to the new anthology, I Feel Great About My Hands, a collection of stories from remarkable women who revel in the joys of aging. Wednesday, May 18 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.

CBC STUDIO ONE BOOK CLUB
The CBC Studio One Book Club presents three of B.C.'s hottest garden bloggers with new books - Andrea Bellamy with Sugar Snaps and Strawberries and Christina Symons & John Gillespie with Everyday Eden. Thursday, May 19th, 6:30 pm, at the CBC Broadcast Centre. Free tickets www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.

MARC KAUFMAN
Reading and discussion by the author of First Contact. Thursday, May 19 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.