Book News Vol. 8 No. 29

BOOK NEWS

2013 Festival Tickets
The 2013 Vancouver Writers Fest ticket sales start Sept 9 (Sept 3 to members). Festival program guides are now available at bookstores, cafes and library branches around Vancouver. Complete Festival details including a downloadable PDF of the guide are available online at writersfest.bc.ca. You'll find an outstanding lineup of great writers from Canada and around the world in events for readers of all ages, including several non-fiction events on Granville Island and at UBC's Frederic Wood Theatre. We are especially thrilled to present two titans of Canadian theatre—Cree playwright and novelist Tomson Highway on stage with Québécois legend Michel Tremblay, in conversation with Bill Richardson. The Festival finale event at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage features the brilliant improv comedian Colin Mochrie in his first appearance at our festival.

Tickets will be on sale September 3 for members, September 9 for the general public. If you'd like to become a member ($35 for one year, two years for $60) and receive great benefits, please visit our website:
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/get-involved/joinus

VWF Writing Contests for Adults and Youth
Submit your finest prose and poetry to the 15th annual Vancouver Writers Fest Poetry & Short Story Contest. The top entries in poetry and fiction will be published in subTerrain magazine and receive cash prizes. New this year is our writing contest for BC students in grades 8-12 which also awards cash prizes.

Volunteer Registration for our 2013 festival is now open!
Information about volunteer jobs and benefits and how to register is posted on our website, http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/volunteers/volunteers_needed.htm. We welcome new volunteers on a first-come first-served basis, after our returning volunteers are assigned and scheduled. We have about a 2/3 return rate, so the more availability and flexibility new volunteers have, the more likely they are to be assigned and scheduled. Please join us, it's a great way to have a insider's Festival experience!

Brenda Berck passes baton
After many years of tirelessly beating the bushes for book-related news every week, Brenda Berck is handing over Book News to Ellen Johnston. Thank you Brenda!

SPECIAL EVENTS

J.B. MacKinnon
The independent journalist and award-winning author of The 100-Mile Diet talks about his new book, The Once and Future World, providing an eye-opening account of nature as it was, as it is and as it could be. Event details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/jbmackinnon.

SPECIAL FOR BOOK CLUBS! $16 per person, minimum of 5 people, book by phone only at 604-629-8849.

Thursday, October 3 at 7:30pm
Frederic Wood Theatre
6354 Crescent Road, UBC

David Sedaris
The renowned NPR humorist comes to Vancouver's Chan Centre for an evening of cutting wit, social satire, riveting conversation and post-event book signing with his recent New York Times' bestseller release Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. Event details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/davidsedaris.

SPECIAL WRITERS FEST OFFER! Use the code "VWF" to get $5 off your ticket.

Tuesday, November 12 at 7:30pm
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
6265 Crescent Road, UBC

AWARDS & LISTS

Here's the longlist for the Not the Booker prize. Vote for the shortlist from now until Wednesday, September 4.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/aug/05/not-the-booker-prize-longlist-shortlist

YOUNG READERS

Dahlia Sherman never wanted to go to Camp Arara, but longed to go to magic camp so she could learn new tricks. Ari Goelman's The Path of Names has vivid characters, plenty of suspense, some deeply creepy moments, and you don't have to be Jewish to follow the story, says Bernie Goedhart. For ages 10 and up.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Books+kids+Path+Names+Goelman/8773527/story.html

Michael Morpurgo's Shadow is a very touching story of a child, Aman, and his mother, who live in Afghanistan and suffered to get to England with their brave companion, an English Springer spaniel.
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2013/aug/26/review-shadow-michael-morpurgo

This year, publisher Tundra Books has added five more titles to the series: It's Not About the Ball!, It's Not About the Tiny Girl!, It's Not About the Diamonds!, It's Not About the Straw! and It's Not About the Beanstalk! Each of these paperbacks offer three versions of the tale. Ages 5 to 8.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/kids+from+Dick+Jane/8683693/story.html

NEWS & FEATURES

Elmore Leonard's son Peter plans to finish his late father's final book, Blue Dreams.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2013/08/catcher-in-the-rye-sequel-posthumous-jd-salinger-works-to-be-published-ap.html

Elmore Leonard's influence as a great American stylist extended beyond the boundaries of crime writing, writes Laura Miller. Even people who don't read crime fiction have felt Leonard's legacy, from the films of Quentin Tarantino to the novels of David Foster Wallace.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/20/why_elmore_leonard_matters/

The British group Reprieve has accused authorities at Guantánamo Bay of blocking the delivery of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago to Aamer, a 44-year-old from Saudi Arabia, still left at the camp since 2002, even though cleared for release in 2007.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/08/21/shaker_aamer_lawyers_for_the_guantanamo_detainee_he_s_not_allowed_to_read.html

The authors of a new J.D. Salinger biography claim they have cracked one of publishing's greatest mysteries: what The Catcher in the Rye novelist was working on during the last half century of his life.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/10945152

A Quebec National Assembly committee is studying a proposal to prevent bookstores from selling new books at a discount. Writers, publishers and arts personalities are pushing for the measure as the only way to save independent bookstores, but critics say the proposal is both futile and would kill book sales.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Quebec+considers+fixing+prices+books+protect+small/8813061/story.html

Archeologists have unearthed charred remains of books from Canada's pre-Confederation parliament in Montreal.
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Archeologists+unearth+charred+remains+books+from+Canada+Confederation+parliament+Montreal/8835552/story.html

Margaret Atwood talks to Emma Brockes about zombies, bees–and why she had to finish her latest novel, MaddAddam, on a train.
http://www.theguardian.com/books

When downtown Lac-Megantic was destroyed in the deadly July 6 oil train derailment, the town also lost its library. An entire collection, estimated at 60,000 items, was lost, the only books that were saved were those that had been signed out by patrons. As Lac-Megantic's sister city since 1991, Farmington, Maine responded with firefighters and set up a fund to help the town rebuild.
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/franklin/2013/08/26/libraries-raise-funds-help-build-lac-megantic-libr/1412315

Designs for the replacement of the Iraq National Library will be put out to tender in September, ten years after the original was looted. An estimated 60% of archival materials–including records of the Ba'athist regime–and 25% of books, newspapers, rare books, historical photographs and maps were destroyed.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/22/baghdad-library-architects-design-tender

Chinese subway riders using Shanghai's Metro Line 2 will soon have their very own unofficial library. Pick up a book at one station, drop it off at any other. "Now you can read a real book, rather than staring at the cellphone through the metro ride," said Zou Shuxian, an Aizhi bookstore spokesperson.
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-shanghai-metro-library-20130826,0,2592726.story

Plans are afoot to release a series of posthumous books by J.D. Salinger after 2015. One of the books would revolve around Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. Other unreleased writing is believed to feature new stories about such famous Salinger characters as Franny and Zooey Glass.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2013/08/catcher-in-the-rye-sequel-posthumous-jd-salinger-works-to-be-published-ap.html

The 3rd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest has been extended to September 30! Information re: entries can be found here:
http://www.geist.com/contests/erasure/erasure/

There are only two days left to enter the Aesthetica Creative Writing Competition, which offers both existing and aspiring writers the chance to showcase their work to a wider, international audience. For more information, visit www.aestheticamagazine.com/creativewriting.

BOOKS & WRITERS

Joe Wiebe reviews, and recommends, four spy stories: Philip Kerr's A Man Without Breath, Donald Downing's Masaryk Station, Joseph Kanon's Istanbul Passage, and John Le Carré's A Delicate Truth.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Edge+your+seat+reading/8829119/story.html

Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, first published in 1967, is a novel set in a bygone era of Colombian history without much technology to speak of. Now the book itself will enter the digital age and will soon be available as an e-book, from Blackstone Audio.
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-four-gabriel-garcia-marquez-novels-become-audiobooks-20130826,0,1060176.story

It's a rare book or movie that doesn't glorify war and its combatants. How unlike the men journalist Charles Glass writes about in The Deserters, says Georgie Binks.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2013/08/23/the_deserters_by_charles_glass_review.html

In MaddAddam, the final novel in Atwood's trilogy that included Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, Atwood spins the plot as elegantly as a tapestry, writes Jennifer Hunter. MaddAddam is, consequently, the most complex of her three novels about the devastation of life on Earth and the surprising rebirth that follows.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2013/08/27/maddaddam_by_margaret_atwood_review.html#

Ten authors you have to read if you are a Canadian student: Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Thomas King, Robert Kroetsch, Margaret Laurence, Stephen Leacock, Mordecai Richler, Eden Robinson, and Sinclair Ross.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/08/23/ten-authors-you-have-to-read-if-youre-a-canadian-student/

COMMUNITY EVENTS

CARMEN RODRIGUEZ AND CARMEN AGUIRRE
In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the mother and daughter read from their books and discuss past and current events in Chile. Wednesday, September 11 at 6:30pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, Central Branch, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at vpl.ca.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Stephen Collis and David King with open mic. Wednesday, September 11 at 7:00pm. Suggested donation at the door: $5. The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street, Vancouver. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

THE WOMEN OF OPENING DOORS IN VANCOUVER
Poet Daphne Marlatt and artist Carole Itter recall experiences and memories of the diverse women interviewed in the 1970s for their book. They will be joined by historian James Johnstone. Thursday, September 12 at 7:00pm, free. City of Vancouver Archives, 1150 Chestnut.

EMERGE 2013 FUNDRAISER
A night of incredible talent all in support of this year's emerge anthology that features work by all 36 writers of the Writer's Studio at SFU. Readings by Betsy Warland, Wayde Compton, Jen Currin and a special reading by the emerge publisher, Andrew Chesham, with musical guests Leanne Dunic and Ryan Ogg of Luck Commander. Thursday, September 12. Entrance by donation (suggested $15) so arrive early to ensure entry. Max 75 people. Calabash Bistro, 428 Carrall Street.

TO TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT
President and CEO of Tourism Vancouver Rick Antonson will regale you with tales of his epic journey by train, boat, four-wheel drive, camel and on foot. Monday, September 16 at 7:00pm. West Vancouver Memorial Library, 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver. More information at 604-925-7403.

RAWI HAGE
Inaugural reading by VPLs 2013 Writer in Residence, award-winning Canadian author. Tuesday, September 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at vpl.ca.

SPOKEN INK READING SERIES
Features guest reader Daniela Elza with open mic. Tuesday, September 17 at 8:00pm. La Fontana Caffe, 101-3701 East Hastings Street (at Boundary Rd). More information at burnabywritersnews.blogspot.ca.

Upcoming

SMALLPOX AND THE TSILHQOT'IN WAR
Author Tom Swanky shows who, where, when, why and how smallpox featured in the Tsilhqot'in War, a pivotal event in B.C.'s history. Wednesday, September 18 at 7:00pm. West Vancouver Memorial Library, 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver. More information at 604-925-7403.

HAPA-PALOOZA
In a talk on hybridity, identity, and creativity, Canadian poet laureate Fred Wah, author Yasuko Thanh, author David Chariandy, and UBC English prof Glenn Deer explore mixed cultural upbringing and its influence on creative work. Wednesday, September 18 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, Central Branch, VPL, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at 604-331-3603.

BOOK LAUNCH
Poet Bonnie Nish will launch her collection Love and Bones. Friday, September 20 at 7:00pm. St. Mark's Church, 1805 Larch S. Vancouver. For more information, contact blnish_pandoras@yahoo.ca.

ALLY CARTER
Author celebrates the release of the final book in the Gallagher Girls' series, United We Spy. Saturday, September 21 at 2:00pm. Chapters Granville, 2505 Granville Street.

THE MAYAN MYSTERIES
Sharon MacGougan will talk about her novel, The Mayan Mysteries. The real-life ancient mystery of the disappearance of the Mayan people converges with the inner transformation of a fifteen-year-old girl in this adventure story. Wednesday, September 25 at 7:30pm. West Vancouver Memorial Library, 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver. More information at 604-925-7403.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features poets Celeste Snowber and Carl Leggo with open mic in collaboration with Word Vancouver. Thursday, September 26 at 7:00pm. Suggested donation at the door: $5. The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street, Vancouver. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

VANCOUVER BOOK FAIR
The Vancouver Book Fair is the only antiquarian, collectible and rare book fair in Western Canada. A wide selection of exciting & unusual books, ephemera, maps, photographs & much more will be on offer at the fair. September 28-29, 2013. UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver. Complete information at www.vancouverbookfair.com.