Book News Vol. 7 No. 45

BOOK NEWS

Holiday Giving

The season is officially upon us! But don't panic-there's still time to order great gifts for the readers on your holiday list. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/content/perfect-gifts-book-lovers

AWARDS & LISTS

The Guardian first book award 2012 went to Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds, a novel based on the author's time as a gunner in Iraq, with the book's title based on a US army marching song. The judging panel commended the book for 'extraordinary promise'. The Guardian first book award is for new writing in any genre.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/29/guardian-first-book-award-2012-kevin-powers

Poet and playwright George Elliot Clarke has been named Toronto's Poet Laureate.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/11/29/toronto-poet-laureate.html

The 86-year-old Spanish poet, novelist and essayist Jose Manuel Caballero Bonald has won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, for helping to "enrich the Hispanic literary legacy."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/spanish-writer-wins-cervantes-prize/?pagewanted=all

The novelist Andrew Krivak, who wrote The Sojourn and Adam Hochschild, the author of To End All Wars, have won the 2012 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and nonfiction. The awards were created in 2006 to honour writers whose work advances peace and promotes understanding.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/winners-named-for-dayton-literary-peace-prize/

Nancy Huston's Infrared has won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/bad-sex-award-nancy-huston

An extract from the novel is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/04/bad-sex-award-2012-extract

Sarah Hall has won the Portico Prize for the second time running, this time with The Beautiful Indifference, short stories described in the Guardian as dark, fierce, and sensual.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/24/beautiful-indifference-sarah-hall-review

Two memoirs and two historical investigations will vie for one of Canada's top non-fiction literary honours. George Bowering and Robert Fowler are two of the authors on the short list of four titles vying for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/12/04/bc-non-fiction-prize-short-list.html

Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper, which recently won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, is one of 15 titles that made the long list for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non Fiction.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1297217--charles-taylor-prize-long-list-for-literary-non-fiction-announced

The regional battle of the books continues as CBC's Canada Reads: Turf Wars releases the names of its panellists and book choices for 2013. Each panelist chose a book from among the top five selected by Canada Reads fans in their region. Q host Jian Ghomeshi will once again host the book debate. The Canada Reads debates will take place before a live audience in Toronto and on CBC Radio One, February 11 to 14, 2013.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/

YOUNG READERS

Barbara Smucker's Underground to Canada has all the qualities that you could want: adventure, tragedy, excitement and suspense, writes Petrova Fossil. This heart-warming tale of a slave's journey to freedom includes the Underground Railway, slave catchers, dogs, excitement and suspense. This heart-warming tale of a slave's journey to freedom describes how hard life was then. For ages 7 to 14.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/nov/28/review-underground-to-canada-barbara-smucker

R.L. Stine's Goosebumps celebrated its 20th anniversary in July. Stine writes six Goosebumps books a year. When Stine first began the Goosebumps series, the books were for girls. Now there is a boy and a girl in every book. The most recent book is Goosebumps: Hall of Horrors. Don't Scream! For ages 7 to 12.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/goosebumps-writer-rl-stine-looks-to-his-childhood-for-book-ideas/2012/09/04/1e5db00c-dcb2-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_story.html

Bear Despair, by Gaëtan Dorémus, a wordless book first published in France and one of this year's New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books, opens with an endpaper map that showcases all the story's characters. I've gone through this wordless tale dozens of times and still can't frame an exact story line, writes Anita Silvey. I just run my hands over each page and say, "This is so beautiful."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/books/review/bear-despair-by-gaetan-doremus-and-more.html

NEWS & FEATURES

Robert Mankoff writes about Abraham Lincoln's sense of humor, suggesting "As far as I can tell, he's the first American President to have one". The term "sense of humor" wasn't in common usage until the eighteen-sixties and seventies. Earlier, it was "the sense of the ridiculous." And what was ridiculous was what invited ridicule. Funniness and cruelty went hand in hand.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2012/11/lincolns-smile.html#ixzz2Dk3vrLq2

Carol Anne Duffy has written a new poem to mark the close of this year's World Shakespeare Festival. The poem is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/30/shakespeare-carol-ann-duffy-poem

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, John Coleman argues that poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity and develop a more acute sense of empathy. To those open to it, reading and writing poetry can be a valuable component of leadership development, writes Coleman.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/the_benefits_of_poetry_for_pro.html

My Last Empress, the new novel by Nobel laureate Da Chen, is a Nabokovian romp that extends from the Connecticut coast to the lantern-lit passageways of the Forbidden City during the waning days of the Qing Dynasty. The story is recounted by Pickens, a New England aristocrat whose destiny is derailed when, at the age of 18, he falls for Annabelle, the 19-year-old, China-born daughter of a missionary.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1296108--my-last-empress-by-da-chen-review

Lorna Crozier, Susan McCaslin, Don Domanski, and David Zieroth, among others, have tied a poem to a tree with a piece of string or ribbon, in the hope of raising public awareness about what's known locally as the McLellan Park Forest. Last weekend, 140 poems were strung up; more are to be added this weekend. The hope is to pressure the local council to make the area a park, instead of selling it to developers.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/writers-hang-poems-in-trees-in-bid-to-save-langley-land-parcel/article5983994/

BOOKS & WRITERS

Many of the world's best novels have bad endings, writes Joan Acocella. It's not that they end sadly, but that the ending is actually inartistic—a betrayal of what came before. This is true not just of good novels but also of books on which the reputation of Western fiction rests. The first half of "David Copperfield" leaves you gasping. But in the last chapters of the novel, you die of boredom. Willa Cather's "Song of the Lark" is a similar case.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/on-great-novels-with-bad-endings.html

The story of Canada is the story of her relationship with native people, writes Richard Wagamese. Since 1492, the history of the continent has been interpreted through settler eyes, with the relationship between indigenous people and settlers focused on the struggle for land. Thomas King's Inconvenient Indian is a powerful, important book, writes Wagamese.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/the-true-story-of-native-north-americans-whites-want-land/article5841075/

George Bowering has received nearly every accolade possible in a distinguished career: Canada's first poet laureate, Order of Canada, Order of British Columbia, fiction, poetry, plays, history, criticism. Now he's written a memoir of an early 1950s Okanagan Valley youth. Steven Brown writes that there's a great deal of gentle humour in the book, and no overt sentimentality.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Pinboy+George+Bowering+Nostalgia+runs+wild+minus/7634212/story.html

Michael Connelly's Bosch is back with The Black Box harking to the '92 L.A. riots. Together with his partner Jerry Edgar, Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch becomes part of a roving homicide team following the beating of Rodney King and the murder of a freelance Danish journalist. As usual, Michael Connelly gives us a genuine feeling of the politics of policing in Los Angeles.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/michael-connellys-latest-keeps-crime-writers-streak-alive/article5839925/

Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote begins with thousands of people trying to think positive thoughts together at a "Get Motivated!" session in a Texas baseball stadium, where they hear President George W. Bush talk on the power of optimism. The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking takes every self-help book you've ever read and turns it inside out, writes Hector Tobar.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-oliver-burkeman-20121202,0,6389186.story

Hallucinations, writes Oliver Sacks, fall into a unique and special category of consciousness in which they see and hear things that are not there. Although hallucinations are, according to Sacks, "an essential part of the human condition," Western society links them to madness.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Review+Oliver+Sacks+Hallucinations+evil+hear+evil/7600303/story.html

Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary isn't your mother's Mother Mary, writes Ron Charles. Forget the Annunciation. The only Assumption here is that Mary is a troubled woman, haunted by Golgotha, hunted by assassins, waiting for death. It's not so much a testament of faith as a confession of guilt. Her insistence on the truth becomes the book's central concern, says Charles.
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/more_medea_than_madonna_20121127/

COMMUNITY EVENTS

GLEN CHILTON
Reading by internationally-recognized ornithologist and author of The Curse of the Labrador Duck. Will talk about his new book, Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons. Saturday, December 8 at 2:00pm, free. Semiahmoo Library, 1815 - 152 152nd Street, Surrey.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Nyla Matuk, Alix Ohlin and Matthew Tierney. Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Plaza level. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

TALK AND BOOK LAUNCH
Inspector Ken Burton will discuss his recreation of the historic voyages of the St. Roch and will discuss the challenges facing Canada and the "ice free" northern passage. Also features a launch of Kenneth John Haycock's new book The History of the RCMP Marine Services. Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm, free. Vancouver Maritime Museum - TK Gallery, 1905 Ogden Avenue. More information at vancouvermaritimemuseum.com.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Fiona Lam and Raoul Fernandes, Sunday, December 16, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street Vancouver. This will be a special evening. No open mic that night. Suggested donation at the door:
$5. All are welcome. In 2013 Twisted Poets will run the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of
every month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

Upcoming

LUNCH POEMS @ SFU
Reading by poet Garry Thomas Morse. Wednesday, December 19 at 12:00 noon. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre campus, 515 West Hastings Street. Vancouver.

MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Talk/reading, Q&A, and book signing by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Saturday, December 22 at 7:00pm, free. Our Town Cafe, 245 E. Broadway.

UNIQUE LIVES & EXPERIENCES
A lecture series featuring four outstanding women. First lecture will feature Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA spy and author of a bestselling autobiography, My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House, on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7:30pm. Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street. For complete season details and ticket information, visit www.uniquelives.com.