Book News Vol. 7 No. 27

BOOK NEWS

UPCOMING EVENTS
Michael Chabon
September 26, 2012 at 8:00pm
St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church
Author of the New York Times bestselling novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, talks about his latest book, Telegraph Avenue. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/michaelchabon

Just announced!
Writing the Unthinkable: Public Workshop with Lynda Barry
September 30, 10am to 1pm
Studio 1989

Following the sell-out success of her 2010 Festival appearances, Lynda Barry is back with her extraordinary workshop for established and aspiring writers.

"Lynda Barry is inspirational, motivating and affirming"–R.L. 2010 Writers Fest Event Attendee

Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/lyndabarry

VIRTUAL FESTIVAL

Listen to the fourteenth installment in our series of audio archives from past Festival events. This week you'll hear an exerpt from 2010's The Afternoon Tea featuring the wonderful Ali Smith reading a short story she thought would be her "Last". Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/multimedia/audio-archives.

Special Offers

If being a member of the VIWF didn't already have enough benefits, we've added an extra incentive! Every two weeks new and renewing members will have a chance to win a book by a Festival or Incite author. At the end of August we'll have a grand prize draw for a deluxe pack of Festival tickets - two tickets to any event of your choice for each day of the Festival! Sign up now here, https://www.writersfest.bc.ca/secure/secure_membership.php.

AWARDS & LISTS

We would like to congratulate Clea Young, the Festival's Writer Services Co-ordinator, who has been shortlisted for the Litpop Award sponsored by Matrix magazine.
http://matrixmagazine.org/litpop/

Hilary Dean, a Toronto writer and filmmaker, has won the 2012 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize for her story Holy Bald-Headed, a tale infused with melancholy memories and a shocking assault that jurors dubbed "equal parts tender and brutal."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/books/story/2012/07/23/cbc-nonfiction-writing-prize-dean.html

Nichola Barker, André Brink, Tan Twan Eng, Michael Frayn, Hilary Mantel and Will Self, are among the twelve authors longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. The complete list is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jul/25/booker-prize-longlist-2012-open-thread

YOUNG READERS

David Shelton's A Boy and a Bear in a Boat is a book to be savoured, writes Bernie Goedhart. A boy climbs aboard a dinghy to be rowed "to the other side" by a bear who hires out his services as an experienced captain. Beautifully illustrated by the author. For ages 8 to 88.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Kids+book+savoured/6959207/story.html

Where My Wellies Take Me, by Clare and Michael Morpurgo, is a selection of poetry chosen by the former children's laureate Michael Morpurgo, with a new story woven into the poems and pictures. For ages 4 to 8. Illustrations can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/jul/20/where-my-wellies-morpurgo-gallery

An extract from Michael Morpurgo's new book, Little Manfred, is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2011/may/25/michael-morpurgo-little-manfred-extract

Rinsai Rosetti's The Girl With Borrowed Wings is an elegant, young-adult paranormal title. Frenenqer (the word means "restraint"), who is a perfectionist, rescues a cat that turns out to be a shape-shifter. Frenenger's domineering father is not happy about this turn of events. For ages 12 and up.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-rinsai-rossetti-20120722,0,4394502.story

"Glee" star Chris Colfer's The Land of Stories is a children's novel about twins Connor and Alex, who find themselves sucked into their favourite book of fairy tales, suddenly face-to-face with the characters they grew up reading about. For ages 4 to 9.
http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Glee-s-Chris-Colfer-writes-children-s-novel-3717994.php

NEWS & FEATURES

London's Mayor Boris Johnson has commissioned a poem in the style of Pindar to mark the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games, acknowledging Pindar‘s fame for his odes celebrating victories in fifth-century Greece's athletic competitions. Johnson will be reciting the poem in ancient Greek.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2012/jul/23/boris-johnson-ancient-greek-ode

On the occasion of Winnie the Witch's 25th birthday, after Winnie first tripped over her cat, Wilbur, take a look back at some of her wackiest spells and wildest adventures in a gallery of images.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/gallery/2012/jul/20/winnie-witch-25-birthday-years

Daniel David interviews and profiles Thomas King, still not the Indian you had in mind. King's latest book, The Inconvenient Indian, which King describes as "non-fiction", "sort of" and "narrative history", will be published in November.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/thomas-king-still-not-the-indian-you-had-in-mind/article4426067/

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is to be reworked by crime author Val McDermid as a suspense-filled teen thriller, writes Alison Flood.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/19/jane-austen-northanger-abbey-val-mcdermid

There is safety in books. There is communion. There is order. These comfort Susanna Hislop, as she struggles to rate the attributes (and how important each attribute is to her) of the British Library Reading Room.
http://thejunket.org/2012/07/issue-four/book-keeping/

The Guardian launched a Great American Novelist tournament with the original list of nominees debated, dissected and reassembled several times over. The final list of 32 competitors for the title of Great American Novelist can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jul/23/great-american-novelist-tournament-final-32

Producer Ron Moore intends to bring Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series to television. An epic show about a time-travelling nurse who meets and falls in love with a Scottish hottie from 200 years earlier doesn't seem as crazy as it used to, says Malene Arpe.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stargazing/article/1228088--ron-moore-wants-to-bring-diana-gabaldon-s-outlander-to-tv

A PhD student has discovered A Little Episode, a lost short story by Katherine Mansfield, in an archive. The story, along with three children's tales and a collection of aphorisms, give new insight into one of the most turbulent periods of Mansfield's short life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/23/katherine-mansfield-lost-story-unearthed

Margaret Mahy, one of New Zealand's most acclaimed literary figures, has died aged 76. She won many major children's prizes, including the Hans Christian Andersen medal and the UK's Carnegie medal for The Haunting and The Changeover, both supernatural coming-of-age tales.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/23/margaret-mahy-dies-76

Each summer, Rare Book School brings together librarians, conservators, scholars, dealers, collectors and book-mad civilians for weeklong intensive courses. Bringing an understanding of the materiality of the book back into literary studies is something that Michael Suarez speaks of with an almost missionary zeal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/books/rare-book-school-at-the-university-of-virginia.html?_r=1&ref=books

Canadian publishers say recently passed copyright reform is stripping away some of their financial incentive to provide books to the country's universities and colleges.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120712105214396

A Book You Can Eat is Better Than an eBook: this article on UK children's bookstores show that there's still a healthy market in children book sales. "While 73 independent bookstores closed in 2011, not a single children's bookstore did."
http://www.care2.com/causes/uk-childrens-bookstores.html?page=1

The UK's Society of Authors is considering action against the government over copyright infringement on loaned books. Authors are not entitled to royalties for books borrowed from libraries run by "big society"-inspired volunteers attempting to save local libraries from closing due to spending cuts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/22/authors-royalty-volunteer-libraries

Some predict the obsolescence of the library, while the library has become more popular than ever. Metropolis Magazine cites the work of architect Bing Thom, whose new public library in Surrey, British Columbia, was designed as a space of communal engagement.
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20120720/still-here

Pearson, the owner of Penguin Books, has taken a big step into the fast-growing world of self-publishing by buying Author Solutions from Bertram Capital for $116m.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/9412013/Penguin-books-owner-Pearson-buys-self-publishing-company-Author-Solutions-for-116m.html

Amazon has recently made significant changes to the free ebooks listings on its site. ASINs (identification numbers) for public domain classics have been reassigned. making it much harder to find public domain classics, since Shopper preferences, reviews, comments, etc., were lost. It also means many links are now dead.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/selfpublishing/?p=1977

Due to an overwhelming demand from readers, the DEADLINE for the Erasure Poetry Contest has been EXTENDED! The new deadline for submissions is September 1, 2012, 11:59 pm PST.
http://www.geist.com

Enter the Search for the Great BC Novel contest offered by Mother Tongue Publishing Limited.
http://www.allianceforarts.com/files/enet/pdf/12/06/literary_0.pdf

BOOKS & WRITERS

Rajiv Chandrasekaran ‘s Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan is an account of Obama's efforts to cope with the blunders made before he took power. "We dwelled on the limitations of the Afghans," Chandrasekaran concludes. "We should have focused on ours."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/20/little-america-rajiv-chandrasekaran-review

The uncomfortable divide between the life Kamal Al-Solaylee leads in Toronto and the one he left behind in Yemen is the turbulent undercurrent in his new book, Intolerable, A Memoir of Extremes. The book is dedicated to Toronto; that's a deliberate choice.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/escape-from-intolerance-one-mans-journey-to-canada-from-yemen/article4419910/

John Irving's In One Person is a defiant response to the increasingly regressive and reactionary currents that persist on the U.S. political scene, writes Steven Hayward. This novel reaffirms the centrality of Irving as the voice of social justice and compassion, says Hayward.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/in-one-person-by-john-irving/article4106416/

Love is brewing on London's Exhibition Road in the last short story written by cult author Russell Hoban, who died last year. Hoban's Message in a (Klein) Bottle is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/19/short-story-message-bottle-russell-hoban

Linwood Barclay's story Michael's New Toy is perfect for summertime reading.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/michaels-new-toy---a-story-from-linwood-barclay/article4430936/

When the first volume of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery was published, in 1985, readers world-wide were surprised by the narrative voice revealed in its pages—not the person they had imagined, writes Benjamin Lefebvre. This volume restores the full text of Montgomery's journals from 1889 to 1900.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/lucy-maud-of-macneill-farm/article4430873/

In August 1612, ten women were hanged in Lancashire for witchcraft. Now Jeanette Winterson, Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage, all inspired by the notorious Pendle trials, join a long line of writers in thrall to witches, writes Blake Morrison. Morrison's most recent poetry can be found in A Discoverie of Witches.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/20/blake-morrison-under-the-witches-spell

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll explores the financial and political muscle of America's biggest oil company in Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power. Self-serving conduct is hardly unorthodox, but ExxonMobil comes across as particularly cynical, writes Iain Morris.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/22/private-empire-exxon-mobil-review

In The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen L. Carter gives the president's assassination a different outcome and recasts the tragedy as a thriller, with the living Lincoln on trial for his political life. John Wilkes Booth's actions remain the same; the results are changed.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-stephen-carter-20120715,0,884262.story

Christopher Coake's You Came Back isn't so much about ghosts as about the uncanny and unbalancing power of language, recollection and repetition. It's about the search for comfort in the darkest of places, writes Anna Trench.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/22/you-came-back-coake-review

Stuart Jeffries describes Michael Foley as an author who finds magic in the everyday. With Embracing the Ordinary, Foley may well have devised a new bestseller format: a how-to book offering a way of escape without leaving prison.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/18/embracing-the-ordinary-michael-foley-review

COMMUNITY EVENTS

SHARON HANNA
The author of The Book of Kale: The Easy-to-Grow Superfood, 80 Recipes will be bringing her extensive knowledge about the nutritious and delicious aspects of kale to the library. Friday, July 27 at 3:00pm, free. Kitsilano branch, VPL, 2425 Macdonald St. More information at www.vpl.ca.

SURREY MUSE
This month's meeting features author Joanne Arnott, poet Franci Louanne, and filmmaker Hari Alluri. Also, Timothy Shay, Gomathy Puri and hosted by Randeep Purewall. Friday, July 27 at 5:30pm. Room 418, Surrey Public Library - City Centre, 10350 University Drive.

FORT LANGLEY CELEBRATION OF THE ARTS
An Afternoon of Poetry and Music with poet Susan McCaslin and jazz musician Amanda Tosoff collaborate from their recent works. Saturday, July 28 at 2:30pm. Centennial Museum, 9135 King Street, Fort Langley.

VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL 2012
VVF seeks videopoems that wed words and images, the voice seen as well as heard. Deadline for submissions is August 1, 2012. For more information, contact Artistic Director Heather Haley at hshaley@emspace.com.

QUEEROTICA
Readings by Ken Boesem, Kate Bornstein, Tony Correia, Amber Dawn, C.E. Gatchalian, Hiromi Goto, Elaine Miller, Micheal V Smith, and Charlie Spats. Tuesday, August 7 at 8:00pm. Admission by donation. Roundhouse Community Arts, 181 Roundhouse Mews. More information at queerartsfestival.com.

Upcoming

ANAKANA SCHOFIELD
The Vancouver Book Club will host Anakana Schofield in conversation about her novel Malarkey. Thursday, August 9 at 7:00pm, free. Prophouse Cafe, 1636 Venables Ave., Vancouver. More information at vancouverisawesome.com/bookclub.

SUNSHINE COAST FESTIVAL OF THE WRITTEN ARTS
Canada's longest running summer gathering of Canadian writers and readers. Features Wayson Choy, Charlotte Gill, Patrick Lane, Ami McKay, Richard Wagamese and many others. Tickets on sale now! August 16-19, 2012. Sechelt, BC. Complete details at www.writersfestival.ca.

SUMMER DREAMS LITERARY ARTS FESTIVAL
Annual family-friendly celebration of literary arts features two stages, a kids' area, a marketplace, and over 90 performers, including headliner Barbara Adler and Fang, a local spoken-word artist who combines poetry with music. Saturday, August 25, 2012, free. Trout Lake Park, 3350 Victoria. More information at www.summerdreamsfest.com.

A POETIC WALK THROUGH NATURE
Join Vancouver's 100,000 Poets for Change on an Earthwalk. Poets will read select poems calling for the preservation of our beautiful forests and shorelines. A guest speaker will also present a narrative tour of the cultural history and natural habit of Stanley Park. September 29 at 10:00am, free. For more information and to register, visit http://earthwalks11poets.eventbrite.com/.