Book News Vol. 6 No. 40

BOOK NEWS

Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist Announced
Four authors participating in this year’s Festival—David Bezmozgis, Lynn Coady, Esi Edugyan, and Zsuzsi Gartner, along with Patrick deWitt and Michael Ondaatje, both of whom were presented by the Writers Festival earlier in 2011, have advanced to the shortlist of Canada's Scotiabank Giller Prize.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/10/04/giller-shortlist-includes-three-b-c-authors/

HAL'S FESTIVAL PICKS
Artistic Director Hal Wake's suggestions for the 2011 Festival

The Dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/10-dish
Doug Gibson is one of the best storytellers I have ever met. Combine that with his close friendship and working relationships with Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, W.O. Mitchell and many more and you have the makings for an entertaining evening event. Grab a glass of wine before you go into the theatre, and you'll feel like you are at an exclusive literary party.

The Tie that Binds
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
Marriage is one of the fundamental institutions of western society. But behind the institutional façade are personal stories of joy, grief, humour and drama. In The Tie that Binds three excellent novelists, Peter Behrens, Tessa McWatt and Rosemary Nixon explore the dynamics of marital relations, for better or for worse.

Possibilities of Hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
Newcomers Nicole Lundrigan and D.W. Wilson (winner of the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award) join veterans David Adams Richards and Lynn Coady (shortlisted for the Giller) in one of the most provocative panels at the Festival. In their fiction each of these writers tackles some pretty gritty stuff, with characters who aren't exactly sailing through life. Yet as the event title, Possibilities of Hope suggests, there is an essential struggle toward the light that is part of the human condition. Great writers, smart conversation.

2011 FESTIVAL AUTHORS

In The Law of Dreams, which won the 2006 Governor-General's Award for fiction, Peter Behrens imagined the journey his great-great-grandfather made to Montreal. In The O'Briens, he continues telling a story that is based in part on the true story of his own family, writes William Kowalski. The book is impressive in its scope and ambitious in its goals. Behrens's writing is always tight, and some of his descriptions are flat-out jaw-dropping, says Kowalski. (events 42, 64)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/42-land-plenty
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-obriens-by-peter-behrens/article2116141/

Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—heckles superheroes, scientists, and sellouts, writes Scott Thill. The smart, sharp Beaton casts a much wider cultural dragnet in her otherwise unassuming art, one which snatches up literary, historical and scientific icons without mercy, says Thill. Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—with dignity for few and cookies for all. (event 40)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/kate-beaton-hark-vagrant/

Laura Miller interviews Beaton on making history, Jane Eyre and superheroes funny.
http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/09/22/kate_beaton/singleton/

Clark Blaise's The Meager Tarmac, a collection of short fiction, is a naked instance of appropriation of voice—a literary felony justified in this case by the results. If you're going to appropriate someone's voice, you better know how you want that voice to sound, writes Philip Marchand, and Blaise has spent his life and his career tuning his ear to foreign rhythms. (events 42, 54)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/42-land-plenty
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/54-clark-blaise-and-rudy-wiebe-conversation
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/27/open-book-the-meagre-tarmac-by-clark-blaise/

Kevin Chong's Beauty Plus Pity is a post-coming-of-age novel set during that time after university when a lot of twentysomethings have no idea who they are or what to do, and find themselves back in their hometowns, writes Zoe Whittall. This is not the typical son-of-immigrants tale; but the story itself is whipsmart, says Whittall. (events 8, 55)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/8-vancouver-seen
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/55-bamboo-lettering
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/beauty-plus-pity-by-kevin-chong/article2191000/

When it comes to toddler care, distractions happen. In most cases, tragedy is averted: parents pledge to keep a closer eye and then move on. But what happens when tragedy isn't averted and the guilt-ridden parent can't move on? This is the subject of Farzana Doctor's novel, Six Metres of Pavement. Resolution begins when a character has two chance encounters. (events 57, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/57-community-centred
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/six-metres-of-pavement-by-farzana-doctor/article1961849/

The narrative of Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues swings between the period around World War II and 1992, when the effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall are still being felt. The war period is particularly well-trod ground, but Edugyan makes fresh tracks in this richly imagined story, writes Barbara Carey. (events 21, 51)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/51-lovers-dangerous-time
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1051519

Martin Espada's The Trouble Ball counters the poetic trend to disconnect from what's happening in the world, writes Sunil Freeman. The first poem revisits a day in 1941, when Espada's 11 year-old father, the only brown boy at Ebbets Field, learned that Blacks were not allowed to play major league baseball. (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://thewriterscenter.blogspot.com/2011/04/book-review-martin-espadas-trouble-ball.html

Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is alternately a prequel and sequel to her first book Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, says Rachel Pulfer. Structured as a biography of her mother, Nicola Fuller “of Central Africa,” as she liked to introduce herself, Cocktail Hour is both Fuller's book-length salute to the woman who raised her, and a searing critique of the racist views her mother lived by. (events 43, 49)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/49-under-african-skies
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/cocktail-hour-under-the-tree-of-forgetfulness-by-alexandra-fuller/article2180547/

Ottawa's Ian Smillie describes Gary Geddes's book as: "Poignant, literature and sometimes just plan funny. Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa is a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub-Saharan Africa, the human experience and the psyche.” (events 43, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.villagebooks.com/village-books-gary-geddes-01/31/12

Charles Bainbridge says of John Glenday's Grain: “The sturdy, unabashed lyricism of this wonderful book offers a haunting music full of subtlety of thought and religious echoes. Glenday is fascinated by sudden changes and fallings away, but, most of all, by endings and beginnings.” (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/24/grain-john-glenday-kona-macphee

In Pauline Holdstock's Into the Heart of the Country, Molly Norton, native daughter of the Governor, recounts her travels north out of York with Samuel Hearne, her husband. Molly gives a voice to the Native women, who define much of the patchwork stories of Canada at the time, writes Brooke Ford. (events 36, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/36-wild-west
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/15/book-review-into-the-heart-of-the-country-by-pauline-holdstock/

Poet Fanny Howe, in a conversation with Leonard Schwarts about writing, says “I write in a sort of echo state where the sentence passes through me and around in a circle and hits something out there and then comes back in again. It's like the spiral that I keep talking about.” (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://jacketmagazine.com/28/schwartz-iv-howe.html

“Victor Hugo was a madman who believed he was Victor Hugo,” said Cocteau of his countryman. Seldom has a literary quip so accurately found its mark, writes Philip Marchand. No doubt the ghost of Hugo is upset with Ms. Humphreys for writing a novel about him that is not primarily about him, but about three other characters: his daughter, his wife, and her lover. An emotionally tumultuous drama follows fairly closely the known facts. Helen Humphreys' The Reinvention of Love is a triumph of lucid, vigorous, suspenseful narrative. (events 21, 59)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/59-when-then-was-now
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/09/open-book-the-reinvention-of-love-by-helen-humphreys/

The trouble with historical fiction, says Brett Alexander Savory, is that we know how the story ends. Savory notes that particular strengths of C.C. Humphreys' A Place Called Armageddon are its strong battle scenes and the portrayal of the fear of the ordinary people, and despite our assumption about the book's ending, there is the suggestion that the fall of Constantinople was actually a close call. (events 17, 32, 59)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/17-unknown
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/32-another%E2%80%99s-skin
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/59-when-then-was-now
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-place-called-armageddon-by-cc-humphreys/article2143261/

When Wayne Johnston's A World Elsewhere opens, it's the Gilded Age–Mark Twain's satirical coinage for the era of unrestrained greed and political corruption in late-19th-century America–in Manhattan and on Rhode Island. But on Dark Marsh Road in St. John's, Landish Druken lives in exile, writes T.F. Rigelhof. So he goes to live in Vanderland. Not surprisingly, Wharton and Henry James make cameo appearances at Vanderland, but the author most in evidence is Lewis Carroll. (events 52, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/52-coast-coast
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-world-elsewhere-by-wayne-johnston/article2128173/

In Glass Boys, Nicole Lundrigan presents a full cast of broken characters and the ways they shape—and misshape—one another, writes Chad Pelley. It's a dark story carrying a consistently weighty tone, with enough funny and tender moments between characters to spare it from being heavy or maudlin. (events 56, 63)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/63-sunday-brunch
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-glass-boys-by-nicole-lundrigan/

Vital Signs, by Tessa McWatt, is a story about a crisis in an ordinary family, and a mesmerizing read, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. Vital Signs is a work of literature, criticism and philosophy all at once: a formidable intellectual hat trick says Bailey Nurse. (events 64, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/07/29/book-review-vital-signs-by-tessa-mcwatt/

Sachiko Murakami's Rebuild questions the excesses of the real-estate market as it has morphed into the culture of Vancouver, writes Jacqueline Turner, and acknowledges a debt to the attention paid to the "Vancouver special" form of housing, Throughout the book, poetry itself is “rebuilt”, says Turner. (event 45)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.straight.com/article-472306/vancouver/rebuild

Andrew Nikiforuk's Empire of the Beetle is not just a primer on the bark beetles that have killed more than 30 billion trees in Canada and the American West, writes William Bryant Logan. It is "the pathology of resource management," the mistaken notion that any forest policy is better than learning from nature.” (events 24, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/24-forest-and-trees
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/empire-of-the-beetle-by-andrew-nikiforuk/article2186307/

Helen Oyeyemi's daring retelling of the Bluebeard story is a gripping tale writes Justine Jordan. Mr Fox is funny, deep, shocking, wry, heart-warming and spine-chilling. Oyeyemi breathes life into ideas like nobody else, says Jordan. (events 7, 40)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/7-grand-openings
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/11/mr-fox-helen-oyeyemi-review

Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral for a Dog, is about many good things—sex, love, a form of ménage-à-trois, children's books, dogs, New York. But more than anything else, it is about what happens when a thing is lost, writes Leland de la Durantaye. The Uwe-Johnson Prize-winning book centers on loss experienced as figurative and literal exile, and is bound to call to mind for readers of German fiction the haunting works of W.G. Sebald. (events 6, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/6-and-introducing
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/books/review/book-review-funeral-for-a-dog-by-thomas-pletzinger.html

Steven Price's Into That Darkness is many things, says Robert J. Wiersema: a novel of survival, a collection of post-apocalyptic quests, an account of loss in its myriad forms, and of hope at its most vital and true. It is, above all, compelling and real, a novel that will satisfy at every level. (event 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/22/book-review-into-that-darkness-by-steven-price/

In a stark, stunning and profound new novel, New Brunswick's David Adams Richards exposes Canada's rawest nerve, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul scrutinizes the lingering consequences of the country's brutal treatment of aboriginal peoples. For a white man, Richards has chosen the most controversial tack imaginable. With Richards, as with fictional journalist Max Doran, it matters who tells the story. (events 50, 56)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/50-intimate-evening-david-adams-richards
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/15/book-review-incidents-in-the-life-of-markus-paul-by-david-adams-richards/

For a reminder of why Peter Robinson is one of Canada's best storytellers, look no further than the opening of this brilliant stand-alone novel Before the Poison, writes Margaret Cannon. (events 35, 38)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/35-ian-rankin-and-peter-robinson-conversation
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/38-crime-time
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/new-in-crime-fiction-the-latest-thrillers-and-mysteries/article2186325/

Olive Senior is a prolific writer and respected poet. Dancing Lessons is her first novel. She will tango on and we will be warmly listening, says Anakana Schofield. (events 45, 48)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/48-literary-cabaret
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dancing-lessons-by-olive-senior/article2181726/

"How are we going to survive unless we turn our hearts to stone?" a comrade warns the hero of Antanas Sileika's Underground, an example of the elegant thinking that characterizes this rare and compelling chronicle of Lithuanian partisans and their violent struggle against Soviet occupation, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. (events 51, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/51-lovers-dangerous-time
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/underground-by-antanas-sileika/article1976566/

Michael V. Smith is a talented writer who works in highly nuanced and painterly detail. His scenes are alive with sensory images that reveal mood and subtext and allusion, writes Lynda Grace Philippsen. In Smith's novel Progress, the city-based Power Authority's plans for increased energy push forward, although the issue divides the locals. (events 61, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/progress-by-michael-v-smith/article2069339/

In The Blue Light Project, Timothy Taylor addresses contemporary culture's bombardment by media and fame, the implications of art, the dwindling margin between entertainment and violence, and the clandestine networks of war, writes David Chau. A complex novel with the veneer of a thriller, The Blue Light Project examines the sociopolitical climate of a volatile age and the individual lives within its furor. (events 41, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/41-culture-petri-dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.straight.com/article-378965/vancouver/book-review-blue-light-project-timothy-taylor

Sharon Thesen's Oyama Pink Shale is dedicated to the memory of deceased poet Robin Blaser, writes Zoe Whittall. It's a very slim volume, but packs quite a punch. Thesen's careful, delicate use of language and deft handle on metaphor can shine brilliantly and Thesen keeps the personal or poetic at a distance. Oyama Pink Shale is both skilled and moving says Whittall. (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/three-poets-canadian-women-all-for-the-ages/article2091287/

Madeleine Thien's Dogs at the Perimeter is a modest-sized fiction with outsized ambitions, writes Chares Foran. The appetite for unfolding complicated stories is impressive, with revelations virtually right up to the last page. Madeleine Thien's voice is distinguished for its insight, compassion and quiet determination, says Foran. (events 7, 21)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/7-grand-openings
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dogs-at-the-perimeter-by-madeleine-thien/article2012824/

In her review of two of Miriam Toews' books—Irma Voth and Swing Low—Maria Russo comments that Toews writes with an instinctive grasp of the adolescent point of view, in which concepts like personal freedom and self-determination have the highest emotional charge. Adults are powerful but slightly irrelevant beings. (events 48, 52)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/48-literary-cabaret
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/52-coast-coast
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/books/review/a-novel-and-a-memoir-of-the-mennonite-way.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3&pagewanted=all

Writer, humanist and primatologist Andrew Westoll describes the complicated nature of our closest relatives, through observation of chimps living at Fauna Sanctuary, where each chimpanzee is given a chance to form relationships of trust. Andrew Westoll tells a riveting story in The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, writes Linda Spalding. (events 3, 43)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/3-home-chimps
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-chimps-of-fauna-sanctuary-by-andrew-westoll/article2037211/

"Once you break a knuckle...you will break it again," RCMP officer John Crease tells his son Will in the opening story of D.W. Wilson's collection, writes Steven W. Beattie. (The assertion is repeated, mantra-like, in the closing story.) This is at once John's personal philosophy and a statement of principle for Wilson's book, says Beattie. As announced last week, D.W. Wilson has won the £15,000 BBC National Short Story award with The Dead. (events 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-once-you-break-a-knuckle-by-d-w-wilson/

COMMUNITY EVENTS

KRANKY READING SERIES
Readings by Rebecca Keillor, Kevin Spenst, and Jenn Farrell. Thursday, October 6 at 7:00pm. Kranky Cafe, 216-228 4th Ave. E., Vancouver. More information at http://talonbooks.com/events.

GAYLA REID
The Canadian author discusses her newest book Come From Afar. Thursday, October 6 at 7:00pm, free. McGill Branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert Street. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.

PACIFIC ARBOUR SPEAKER SERIES
Presenting Dr. Marc Lewis with his book Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. Thursday, October 6 at 7:30pm. Tickets $12/$10. North Shore Credit Union Centre for the Performing Arts, Capilano University. Box office: 604-990-7810. Information at www.capilanou.ca/nscucentre.

TEENS GONE WIRED BOOK LAUNCH
The launch of Lyndsay Green's new book Teens Gone Wired: Are You Ready? features an excerpt from Out in the Open, Green Thumb Theatre's new touring play for teens. Friday, October 7 at 7:00pm, free. Creekside Community Recreation Centre, 1 Athletes Way. More information at www.lyndsaygreen.com.

ALCUIN AWARDS FOR CANADIAN BOOK DESIGN
The ceremonies for this year's presentation of the 29th Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada will precede an informal talk by New York graphic designer and Vintage Books' Artistic Director, John Gall. Wednesday, October 12 at 6:30pm, free. Room SB301, Emily Carr University, 1399 Johnston Street. More information at blog.alcuinsociety.com.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Johanna Skibsrud (This Will Be Difficult to Explain & Other Stories) and Martha Schabas (Various Positions). Thursday, October 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

TWS READING SERIES
Featuring guest author Jude Neale, who has just published her second book of poetry, Only the Fallen Can see. Friday, October 14 at 7pm. Take 5 Cafe, 429 Granville Street (at West Hastings). For event details, please visit http://www.thewritersstudio.ca/readings/.

HOT SONNET
Calendar poets read the work of Maxine Gadd, Fred Wah, Steve Collis, Kate Braid, Miranda Pearson, Warren Dean Fulton, Diane Tucker, Catherine Owen, Judith Copithorne, Sonnet l'Abbe, Heidi Greco, and George Bowering. Includes music by Jess Hill. Saturday, October 15 at 6:00pm. Tickets: $20. W2 Media Cafe, 111 W. Hastings. More information at www.creativetechnology.org.

LITERATI GALA - BOLLYWOOD, BOOKS AND BILL!
Join the VIWF for the Literati Gala on October 17th at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel. CBC's Bill Richardson hosts the event that features Festival writers and dancers from the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration Society in a fundraising event for our Spreading the Word schools program. For more information and ticket purchase, http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/literatigala.

JOHN GILMORE AND KEITH HARRISON
Readings by authors John Gilmore and Keith Harrison. John Gilmore's first novel is Head of a Man. Keith Harrison's recent work is The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head Was Squeezed. Monday, October 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St.

Upcoming

VANCOUVER 125 POETRY CONFERENCE
Four-day literary event includes daytime seminars and discussions that explore the poetics of everything from the avant-garde to traditional poetic forms. October 19-22, 2011. SFU Woodward's, 149 W. Hastings. Complete information at www.v125pc.com.

CBC RADIO STUDIO ONE BOOK CLUB
On Sat Oct. 22, bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik will be the special guest in the CBC Radio Studio One Book Club. Adam is this year's Massey Lecturer (which is at the Chan Oct. 23) and his subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. The only way to get in, is to win! www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Susan McCaslin (Demeter Goes Skydiving) and Christopher Patton (Curious Memory). Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.