Canada Reads Wednesday Update
And with the third episode of Canada Reads, the first book is voted off the proverbial island. And what was the first noble title to fall? Well, if you had money on Douglas Coupland's Generation X, I'm very, very sorry...
Tune in to CBC Radio this week for Canada Reads (or pick up the video and podcasts at cbc.ca).
Canada Reads 2010 begins!
After months of preparation and anticipation (and a number of healthy on-line imitation and/or critical competitions), Canada Reads 2010 kicked off today for a week's worth of literary competitiveness which will leave only one book standing.
What book will it be?
Will it be Good to A Fault, Marina Endicott's Giller-nominated novel? It's the newest of the books listed, and deals with contemporary concerns, but will that be enough to take it over the top?
Then there's Fall On Your Knees, practically a Canadian classic from Ann-Marie MacDonald. It's been part of Oprah's book club, it's sold a kajillion copies... will its popularity work for it, or against it?
In comparison to FOYK, Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner is a bit of a dark-horse, a literary novel in translation. In true contrarian manner, though, Nikolski has been gaining a lot of adherents, and it's one of the most popular of the Canada Reads picks.
Always popular is Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony. For this competition, though, a beloved book like this might be at a disadvantage...
As might a book that changed not only the language, but how we look at ourselves. Douglas Coupland's debut novel Generation X is an icon in more ways than one: will the Canada Reads panelists be looking to knock it off its perch?
So many questions, so much potential for drama. Tune in to CBC all week for daily installments of Canada Reads.
More Canadian competition!
Hot on the heels of Canada's spectacular showing at the 2010 Winter Olympics, we've got news of a headline-making new competition.
Yes folks, you guessed it -- the nominees for the 2010 Prix Aurora were announced this weekend!
The Prix Aurora is the annual award of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. The full list of nominees is linked below, but here are a couple of major categories:
BEST NOVEL IN ENGLISH :
THE AMULET OF AMON-RA, by Leslie Carmichael, CBAY Books
DRUIDS, by Barbara Galler-Smith & Josh Langston, Edge
WAKE, Robert J. Sawyer, Penguin Canada
STEEL WHISPERS, Hayden Trenholm, Bundoran Press
TERRA INSEGURA, Edward Willett, DAW Books
BEST SHORT-FORM WORK IN ENGLISH:
"PAWNS DREAMING OF ROSES", Eileen Bell, Women of the Apocalypse. Absolute Xpress
"HERE THERE BE MONSTERS" Brad Carson, Ages of Wonder, (DAW)
"LITTLE DEATHS" Ivan Dorin, Tesseracts Thirteen
"RADIO NOWHERE" Douglas Smith, Campus Chills
"THE WORLD MORE FULL OF WEEPING" Robert J. Wiersema, ChiZine Publications
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you: that IS Bolen Books' own Rob Wiersema, nominated for his novella The World More Full of Weeping. I bet he's pretty pleased about that!
For all the nominees, and to find out how to vote for the winners (hint, hint), go to the Prix Aurora homepage.
"No Rhyme or Reason - What I'd Read If I Could Read Anything" by Mr. Stacy Kuiack
One Day by David Nicholls (June 2010)
One Day occurs over a span of 20 successive July 15ths, St Swithin’s Day*, as two close friends try to figure out how they fit into each other’s lives. Emma and Dexter struggle, frustratingly and hilariously, to deal with something we have all had to deal with at some point: What do I do about this great friend of mine . . . who I want to shag?
Emma is the hipper, non-conformist (boring) gal from Yorkshire. Dexter is the guy I always wished I was – charming, handsome and rich. Although I do share some of Dexter’s less “resume-able” traits like ego, narcissism and the boozy haze of my mid-twenties. They swap verbal barbs at a party and hook up on a one night stand in 1988 that turns into a tenuously platonic, and very endearing, friendship.
Nicholls account of this complicated and warm friendship reads a bit like Catch 22 and About a Boy had a love child. It is a book full of the bitter irony of circumstance coupled with a fair amount of cynical romanticism. Nicholls captures all the yearning, bitter barbs, and kind gestures that inhabit decades-long relationships like the one Emma and Dexter live out as their contradictory lives run in parallel, or crash into each other.
This book isn’t all sitcom and syrupy romantic comedy. Nicholls manages to expose the dirty corners of loneliness, and the relentless progression of sad fate, as the characters dance around the center of their relationship. There is no doubt that Emma and Dexter are better people when they’re together, and Nicholls makes sure the reader feels their heartbreak when they are apart.
One Day is a sad, brilliant, funny and inebriated look at missing out. Missing out on love, and missing out on life one day at a time.
*St Swithin may be the Saint of Obsessive High School Annual Readers and Facebook Stalkers. But I’m not sure.
One Day will be released in June 2010. Reserve your copy now!
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