Book News Vol. 8 No. 16

BOOK NEWS

SPECIAL EVENT

Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls' latest novel, The Silver Star, is a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world–a triumph of imagination and storytelling.

Jeannette Walls finally got her glass castle, a 205-acre farm in Virginia, but she won't ever take it for granted. Read an interview with her in the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/how-jeannette-walls-spins-good-stories-out-of-bad-memories.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=books

Special $16 Book Club Price and Chance to Meet Jeannette Walls
Purchase a minimum of 5 tickets for your group and pay just $16 per ticket, plus be entered for a chance to attend a private reception with Jeannette Walls. Click here for more details, http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/jeannettewalls/contest.

Event details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/jeannettewalls.

AWARDS & LISTS

Dutch writer Gerbrand Bakker has won this year's £10,000 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize with his novel The Detour, published by Harvill Secker. Bakker will share the prize money with the title's translator, David Colmer.
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/bakkers-detour-wins-independent-foreign-fiction-prize.html

Montreal-based author Josip Novakovich has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International prize.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/15/man-booker-international-prize-shortlist-interviews

John Green's The Fault in our Stars is one of the eight children's books on the Guardian children's fiction prize 2013 longlist. The books deal with war, dystopian futures and terminal illness–but their tales of children overcoming adversity are both entertaining and inspiring.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books

Toronto-based writer Laura Clarke, 27, is this year's winner of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. The prize gives Clarke $5,000 for Mule Variations, a collection of poems. Two finalists received $1,000 each: Laura Matwichuk of Vancouver won for Here Comes the Future and Suzannah Showler of Toronto for The Reason and Other Poems.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2013/05/28/laura_clarke_wins_rbc_bronwen_wallace_award.html

YOUNG READERS

In Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, a cranky neighbour puts Lyle in the zoo but experiences a change of heart when the crocodile saves him from a fire. "Lyle is as lovable as ever and the story and colored pictures as nonsensical." For ages 4 to 8.
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/bernard-waber

The One and Only Ivan, about a silverback gorilla, is in the news now. Last month, the book was awarded the John Newbery Medal as the best children's book of the year. "Ivan" is based on the true story of a gorilla that is at a mall. But it's fiction because it's written from Ivan's point of view. For ages 4 to 5.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/newbery-winner-talks-for-the-animals/2013/02/11/74d3533a-7076-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html

John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, tells a Guardian children's books site member about how his bestselling teen novel was nearly a zombie adventure. Green reads aloud The Fault In Our Stars here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/audio/2013/feb/12/john-green-fault-in-our-stars-podcast

NEWS & FEATURES

The Canadian branch of New York based Simon and Schuster is now permitted to publish books in Canada by Canadian authors, according to a statement released by Heritage Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/simon-and-schuster-gets-green-light-to-publish-canadian-books-domestically/article12228841/

Bernard Waber, the author and illustrator of Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, died May 16, at 91.
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/20236038-423/author-of-lyle-lyle-crocodile-dies.html

James Salter, the veteran American novelist and short story writer, reads Break it Down, a story by Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International prize. The podcast is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2013/may/23/james-salter-lydia-davis-break-it-down

Being on the jury of the Man Booker Prize is no mean feat. With 150 books to read, Natalie Haynes barely has time to sleep. But, she says, the popularity of historical fiction means she now knows a lot more about world history. Judging the Man Booker Prize, to paraphrase Bette Davis, is not for sissies, says Haynes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/natalie-haynes-confessions-of-a-booker-judge-8626050.html

The red carpet was rolled out, the dignitaries arrived in a whirlwind of helicopters and armed guards, and the obituaries came pouring in as Nigeria buried the revered writer Chinua Achebe on Thursday. It was exactly the sort of pomp the literary titan hated, and often ripped apart with the witty, acerbic tip of his pen, writes Monica Mark.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/23/chinua-achebe-funeral-nigerian-author

Some miles north of London, John Richards, a retired newspaperman, is experiencing an unusually rotten spring. Richards is the founder and chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society. His world—related to the tiny mark that denotes possessives and the omission of letters from certain words—appears to be crashing down around him. Are apostrophes necessary? Not really, writes Matthew J.X. Malady.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/05/apostrophes_and_when_to_use_them_punctuation_necessary_at_all_not_really.single.html

Some still think of Jane Austen as a modest country mouse, wedded to the quiet sameness of village life. In fact, she loved going to London: to the theatre, the shops and fashionable gatherings. One of these latter events is replicated in virtual fashion by the website What Jane Saw, launched last weekend by conscientious American Janeites.
http://www.whatjanesaw.org/

Huffington Post has compared the original titles of classic books with their current titles. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury was originally Twilight; George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Last Man in Europe. Nabokov's Lolita was The Kingdom by the Sea and Tolstoy's War and Peace was originally titled All's Well That Ends Well. More titles of classic books are here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/classic-books-original-titles-_n_3311784.html

Frank magazine is to live again as a political satire website in October, says Michael Bate, editor and publisher of Frank magazine.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/frank-magazine-to-live-again-as-a-political-satire-website-in-october-publisher-says/article12138733/

ebook sales appear to be plateauing, suggests a report by BookNet Canada. BookNet Canada president and CEO Noah Genner says early sales data from this year shows ebook sales are steady and no longer growing. BookNet Canada suggests book sales are strongly tied to gift giving, with most consumers preferring to buy their books in stores rather than shopping online.
http://globalnews.ca/news/578084/ebook-sales-in-canada-plateauing-report/

BOOKS & WRITERS

Empress Dowager Cixi, which promises to overturn conventional understanding of the Chinese ruler, is Jung Chang's first book in eight years. The Wild Swans author has based her biography on "long and detailed" research in newly opened Chinese and western archives, said publisher Jonathan Cape. The "extraordinary" story of the Empress Dowager Cixi, will be released this autumn.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/23/jung-chang-groundbreaking-new-biography

Themes of fate, family life and renewal are brilliantly explored in Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, a story of a life lived in wartime Britain, writes Alex Clark, adding that Atkinson's new novel is a marvel, a great big confidence trick–but one that invites the reader to take part in the deception.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/06/life-after-life-kate-atkinson-review

A newly discovered manuscript by the American Nobel prize-winner Pearl S. Buck will be published this autumn, 40 years after her death. Open Road Media, which will publish The Eternal Wonder, said the novel was completed shortly before Buck died, and was found in storage in January. Her novels deal with the clash of East and West.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/24/lost-pearl-s-buck-novel

Romance, time travel, history, mystery: Susanna Kearsley's The Firebird has it all, writes Linda Diebl. It's an enchanting story told with wit and dexterity. The Firebird focuses on Nicola, a psychic born with a gift she slowly learns to trust, with the help of Scottish policeman Rob McMorran. This is a book to remember, says Diebl.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2013/05/24/the_firebird_by_susanna_kearsley_review.html

Midway through Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed, an Afghan poet in Paris gives an uncandid interview to a literary journal. True to her art, the writer is an identity thief. "The creative process is a necessarily thievish undertaking," Nila Wahdati, tells her interviewer. "Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing...and you will find all manner of dishonour."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Writer+identity+thief/8431397/story.html

Imagine that you are listening to a book club discuss a novel. British literary theorist Terry Eagleton's How to Read Literature begins by asking you to imagine a similar conversation. Both discuss everything about these novels except the qualities that make them novels, works of imaginative literature. Eagleton argues that, like literary analysis, literary evaluation must be learned through practice.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/a-major-critic-says-weve-forgotten-how-to-read-does-it-matter/article12128764/

George Stanley's new collection of poetry, After Desire, is a gift to the reader, writes Tom Sandborn. Poetry isn't a mass market winner, but occasionally, a reader who loves the form is given a miraculous new gift to reward an unfashionable, cranky devotion. George Stanley's After Desire is such a gift, says Sandborn, describing the collection as a small masterpiece.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/George+Stanley+collection+gift+reader/8431092/story.html

The Borgias' very name has become shorthand for scheming, scandal, audacious ambition and illicit sex. Their potential for drama has caught the imagination of Sarah Dunant and the breathtaking scale of their hunger for power still captivate us. Dunant's Blood & Beauty opens with Spanish-born Rodrigo Borgia bribing and charming his way on to the papal throne.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/25/sarah-dunant-blood-beauty-review

The Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes is the subject of a small, literary boom on the anniversary of his death with a North American release of more than a dozen works as e-books for the first time, including the groundbreaking 1962 novel The Death of Artemio Cruz, which tells a sweeping story at the heart of the birth of modern Mexico.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-a-carlos-fuentes-boom-on-the-anniversary-of-his-death-20130515,0,2793142.story

Between My Father and the King: New and Uncollected Stories, is the latest in a series of posthumous publications of NZ author Janet Frame's work. Frame, the subject of Jane Campion's 1990 film An Angel At My Table, was treated as outsider: institutionalized and mislabeled as schizophrenic and subjected to electroshock therapy-until she won a literary prize.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/books/review/between-my-father-and-the-king-by-janet-frame.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20130524

Carol Rumen's poem of the week is Fred D'Aquiat's The Rose of Toulouse. A jagged "Song of Experience", "Boy Soldier" has some of the simplicity and directness of Blake, but the moral indignation is implicit rather than explicit. The boy portrayed is an individual, but he is also the universal child-soldier, writes Carol Rumen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/may/27/poem-of-the-week-fred-d-aguiar

COMMUNITY EVENTS

BOOK LAUNCH
Vancouver launch of The Red Album by Stephen Collis and Tuft by Kim Minkus. Thursday, May 30 at 7:30pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive.

GEORGE STANLEY
Author launches his new book of poetry, After Desire. Friday, May 31 at 8:00pm, free. Commercial St. Cafe, 3599 Commercial Street, Vancouver.

CALL AND RESPONSE: THREE
Poets in Conversation. Join Anna Swanson, Bren Simmers and Ariel Gordon for a reading that celebrates a decade of friendship. Saturday, June 8th at 7:30 pm, free. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver.

CHRISTINA JOHNSON-DEAN
Author will give an illustrated talk about the artist Ina D.D. Uhthoff, who was a driving force in the Victoria art scene of the mid-20th century. Sunday, June 9 at 4:00pm. Royal BC Museum, 675 Belleville Street, Victoria. More information at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca.

Upcoming

KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Meet the author of the Women of the Otherworld series for young people. Tuesday, June 11. Author reading at City Centre Library at 1:30pm; writing workshop for ages 12+ at Guildford Library at 4:30pm. Complete details at surreylibraries.ca.

BC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY FAMILY HISTORY BOOK AWARDS
A Strawberry tea and the BCGS 2012 Family History Book Awards. Authors' talks. All interested in genealogy and family history are welcome to attend. Wednesday, June 11 at 7:30pm. Danish Lutheran Church, 6010 Kincaid Street, Burnaby. More information at www.bcgs.ca.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Daphne Marlatt and Michelle Barker plus open mic. Wednesday, June 12, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street, Vancouver. Suggested donation at the door: $5. All are welcome. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

NOMADOS LAUNCH
Readings by Jen Currin, Christine Leclerc and Colin Smith. Wednesday, June 12 at 8:00pm. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver.

THE WALKING READ
CWILL BC presents a costume gala to benefit the BC Children's Hospital Foundation. Friday, June 14 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $60. Richmond Open Road Lexus dealership, 5631 Parkwood Way, Richmond. More information at thewalkingread.com.

BC BOOK PRIZE POETRY FINALISTS
Join the winner and finalists for the 2012 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize as they read from their nominated works. Wednesday, June 19 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia. More information at www.vpl.ca.

EXTRAVAGANT SIGNALS
Shhhh! poetry slam featuring Lucia Misch, Zaccheus Jackson, Duncan Shields, Rupert Common and more. Wednesday, June 19 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $7-10. More information at extravagantsignals.eventbrite.com.

GEORGE WOODCOCK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Presentation of the 20th annual George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia to William New. Tuesday, June 25 at l7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia. More information at www.vpl.ca.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features poets Catherine Owen, Susan McCaslin, Jude Neale, Bernice Lever, Kevin Spenst plus open mic. Thursday, June 26, 7-9:30 pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street, Vancouver. Suggested donation at the door: $5.
All are welcome. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

DEAD POETS READING SERIES
Readings by Christopher Levenson, Cathy Stonehouse, Thoung Vuong-Riddick, Joanne Arnott, and Dvora Levin. Friday, July 14 at 3:00pm. Project Space, 222 East Georgia Street, Vancouver. More information at deadpoetslive.com.