Book News Vol. 7 No. 32

BOOK NEWS

2012 Festival
Ticket sales for the 2012 Festival are well underway to Festival Members; they go on sale to the general public on September 5th. There's still time to sign up as a member to get your discount and advance tickets. Click here (http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/get-involved/membership) for more information. Visit our website for full details on Festival programming and special events. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca.

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

VIRTUAL FESTIVAL

Listen to the nineteenth installment in our series of audio archives from past Festival events. This week you'll hear "The Life and Times of Mordecai Richler" featuring Charles Foran. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/multimedia/audio-archives.

AWARDS & LISTS

The Internet Society has inducted Brewster Kahle into the Internet Hall of Fame to honour his copying and preserving the Internet—to ensure that libraries continue to exist.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/brewster-kahle/all/1?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29

Peter Carey, Frank Moorhouse and Anna Funder are among five nominees for the fiction book prize in the revived Queensland Literary Awards. Sixty-two authors have been short listed for the Awards.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/books/carey-moorhouse-in-line-for-literary-gongs-20120820-24hrs.html#ixzz24K9RPadn

Ladbrokes gives Haruki Murakami odds of 10/1, ahead of Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom and Mo Yan of China, in the race for the Nobel prize for literature. Ladbrokes names Ian McEwan Britain's strongest contender for the Nobel this year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/23/haruki-murakami-nobel-prize-literature

Two Ottawa authors, Mony Dojeiji and Alberto Agraso, have received an international 2012 Dan Poynter Global Ebook Award at an Ebook awards ceremony in California for their book Walking For Peace, an Inner Journey.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1246067--ottawa-authors-win-international-ebook-award

British biographer Fiona MacCarthy and American novelist Padgett Powell have been named the winners of the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes 2012: MacCarthy for The Last Pre-Raphaelite, and Powell for his latest novel, You and I.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/25/maccarthy-powell-james-tait-black

There are twelve authors on the Man Booker Prize long list, The short list will be announced September 11, and the winner of the Man Booker Prize, on October 16. The detailed list of authors is here:
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2012/07/25/man-booker-prize-long-list-announced-today/

Cathy Bryant has won the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, acknowledging she had to reach deep inside herself to find 'the utter dregs within', including the eyelash mites. Winners in all categories are named here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/aug/22/bulwer-lytton-award-bad-fiction

YOUNG READERS

Ivan E. Coyote's One in Every Crowd is for anyone who has ever felt different or alone in their struggle to be true to themselves. Despite the overlap with previous work, it's impossible to mind when the writing is this masterful, writes Emily Donaldson. Age 11 and over.
http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=7667

Kenneth Oppel's This Dark Endeavour grips you right from the first page, writes Craig Foster, age 12. The prequel to Mary Shelley's gothic classic Frankenstein, this book delivers the thrills, no matter how old you are, says Foster. Age 12 and over.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/12/16/book-review-this-dark-endeavour-by-kenneth-oppel/

Kyo Maclear's latest children's book is Virginia Wolf. Loosely based on the relationship between author Virginia Woolf and her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, Virginia Wolf is an uplifting story for readers of all ages.
http://kyomaclearkids.com/virginia-wolf/

NEWS & FEATURES

The problem with libraries is they catch on fire easily. Centuries ago, if you wanted to kill a culture, you killed its library. "If this is what happens to libraries, make copies," says Brewster Kahle. Kahle took the library of libraries — the internet — and made and keeps making, copies of it.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/brewster-kahle/all/1?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29

Novelist Ian McEwan rejects the notion that he is a British writer, insisting instead that English and Scottish writers are culturally different and have distinctive roots and ways of writing. The Olympic opening ceremony was the first and only time McEwan had seen 'Britishness' celebrated, he tells Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/22/ian-mcewan-not-a-british-write

The decision by US fantasy magazine Weird Tales to publish an extract from Victoria Foyt's Revealing Eden: Save the Pearls, Part One, featuring a minority white race called the Pearls that is dominated by the black race of the Coals, has provoked widespread outrage, amid concerns about censorship.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/21/racism-row-novel-coals-pearls?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355

Imogen Russell Williams writes that the publisher hadn't read Foyt's piece before publishing it. She concludes with "The Pearls and Coals of Victoria Foyt's YA dystopia are not only deeply suspect, they're also delivered in awful prose with negligible plot."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/aug/23/racism-row-novel-revealing-eden

The head of a women's domestic violence refuge in Britain has slammed the bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy as "an instruction manual for an abusive individual to sexually torture a vulnerable young woman".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/24/fifty-shades-grey-domestic-violence-campaigners

A sexual submissive says the undertone of approval for sexual violence is stereotyped and indefensible.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/25/fifty-shades-submissive-sophie-morgan

The publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul has unveiled plans to offer literal as well as literary nourishment, through a line of seven soups to accompany its bestselling series of self-help books.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/24/chicken-soup-soul-literal-nourishment

Sam Sacks urges authors to stop the practice of acknowledgements. He says "The acknowledgments are now the last words a reader encounters. Is it really worth clouding a novel's actual finale for what is, in effect, an advertisement for a book the reader has already finished?"
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/against-acknowledgments.html#ixzz24la9EKbU

Mere days remain until the deadline for the 2nd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest! All entries must be submitted before September 1, 2012, 11:59 pm PST. There's $1000 in prizes and the Geist Erasure Trophy to be won! Winning entries will also be published in Geist and at geist.com. Visit geist.com/erasure for more details.

Organizers of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's largest fiction award, have postponed the announcement of this year's long list to accommodate a rush of last-minute submissions.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1242117--late-submissions-delay-giller-longlist-announcement

BOOKS & WRITERS

"Underwater welder," a job title with all the potential symbolism any writer could hope for, writes Ian McGillis. In Jeff Lemire's graphic novel, The Underwater Welder, Jack Joseph says: "The only time I ever really feel myself is down below. It's the only place I can be completely alone."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Jeff+Lemire+shows+master+telling+image/7140099/story.html#ixzz24WgbjDRD

C.S. Richardson's The Emperor of Paris is a story about love, writes Sandra Gulland. The novel unfolds in two streams: a present moment – and the long past, a world of charmingly eccentric characters. The Emperor of Paris is brilliant, says Gulland.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/emperor-of-paris-a-jewel-of-a-novel-about-books-and-love/article4497401/

Vancouver Noir 1930-1960, by Diane Purvey and John Belshaw, focuses on working-class Vancouver between1930 and 1959. What distinguishes Vancouver from other North American cities is that the white worthies of Vancouver blamed everything they disliked on Asians and native people but especially, on Americans, writes George Fetherling.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Vancouver+comes+fascinating+text/7140316/story.html

Chris Bohjalian's The Sandcastle Girls combines a love story with a grim look at the Ottoman Empire's deportation of Armenians during World War I. Some countries acknowledge the Armenian deaths as genocide, others do not. The love story adds a softer dimension, writes Tracy Sherlock.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Vancouver+comes+fascinating+text/7140316/story.html

André Brink's Philida has been long listed for this year's Man Booker prize. In an interview, Brink discusses the challenge of a 19th-century slave's living on a farm run by Brink's ancestors. South Africa is still at a difficult stage in coming to terms with its apartheid legacy. says Brink.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/26/andre-brink-interview-philida-slavery

Alison Moore's The Lighthouse has been long listed for this year's Man Booker prize. The Lighthouse is superb, writes Anthony Cummins – a peculiar exploration of boyhood trauma that does its quietly creepy work in fewer than 200 pages.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/26/the-lighthouse-alison-moore-booker-review

COMMUNITY EVENTS

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
(Please note New Location Starting September) Features Wayde Compton and Warren Dean Fulton + Open Mic. Thursday, September 6th at 7:00pm. Suggested donation at the door: $5. @Cafe Montmartre, 4362 Main Street, Vancouver. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

KUCKI LOW
The local author and inspirational speaker reads from her memoir This Is Kucki Your Pilot Speaking , which recounts the the challenges of being a 20th century aviation pioneer. Thursday, September 6 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, Central Library, 350 We. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.

GRANT MCKENZIE
M.C. Grant is Grant McKenzie, an award-winning screenwriter, novelist and editor-in-chief of Monday Magazine and is launching his latest mystery novel, Angel With a Bullet. Saturday, September 8 at 2:00pm. Chapters Victoria, 1212 Douglas Street, Victoria. More information at 250-380-9009.

MEREDITH QUARTERMAIN
The VPL's eighth writer-in-residence reads from some of her award-winning works and talks about her writing process. Tuesday, September 11 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, Central Branch, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.

PATRICK TAYLOR
Reading by the author of Irish Country. Wednesday, September 12 at 7:00pm. Welsh Hall, West Vancouver Memorial Library, 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver.

MIXED VOICES RAISED
VPL chief librarian Sandra Singh leads a literary Q&A panel with essayist and sound poet Wayde Compton, filmmaker and Zen priest Ruth Ozecki, and illustrator and writer Julie Flett. Wednesday, September 12 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, Central Branch, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.hapapalooza.com.

Upcoming

ANDREA LISTER
Writer and historian Andrea Lister follows the generations of determined women who fundraised, sewed, canned, and knitted to establish Chilliwack's first hospital. Tuesday, September 18 at 7:00pm. Chilliwack Library, 45860 First Avenue, Chilliwack.

JOHN VIGNA
Launch of the author's latest book, Bull Head. Wednesday, September 19 at 7:30pm. The Bourbon, 50 West Cordova Street, Vancouver. RSVP to bullheadlaunch@gmail.com.

KOOTENAY BOOK WEEKEND
9th annual event featuring Katherine Govier with her book The Ghost Brush. September 21-23, 2012. Nelson, BC. For complete details, visit www.kootenaybookweekend.ca.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
Three local mystery authors team up for an evening of readings and discussion. Featuring Don Hauka, David Russell and Cathy Ace. Thursday, September 27 at 7:00pm, free. McGill Library, 4595 Albert Street. For more information and registration, visit http://bpl.bc.ca/events/and-then-there-were-three-local-mystery-authors-at-mcgill-library.

WORD ON THE STREET
Features author readings, writing and publishing exhibits, musical entertainment, roving performers, children's activities, workshops, panels, books, and magazines. September 28-30, 2012. More information at wotsvan@thewordonthestreet.ca.

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 habitat of Stanley Park. September 29 at 10:00am, free. For more information and to register, visit http://earthwalks11poets.eventbrite.com/.