Toronto writer and former Globe and Mail reporter Alanna Mitchell was named winner of the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment Tuesday, edging fellow Canadian Cleo Paskal, one of three other writers cited for an award of merit in the same competition. Mitchell won the honour, funded by the Grantham Foundation and administered by the Metcalfe Institute at the University of Rhode Island, for her second book, Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis. Paskal was cited for her book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.

Established in 2005, the Grantham Prize is one of the richest available to North American writers and reporters specializing in the environment. Mitchell is the first sole author to have won it, all earlier prizes having gone to such leading newspapers as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Veteran authors in running for top Ontario book award.

Prior to last fall’s book award season, anticipation was high for a potential showdown between two of Canada’s most-celebrated authors, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. As it turned out, none of the country’s three major prizes featured both writers as finalists.

The two, however, are in the running for this year’s $20,000 Trillium Book

Award. The shortlist, announced Tuesday, includes Munro’s Too Much Happiness and Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, along with Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon.
The winners will be announced June 24 in Toronto.
Text taken from Toronto Star.

"Towel Day is celebrated every 25 May as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. On this day, fans carry a towel with them to demonstrate their love for the books and the author, as referenced in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." So, whether you're a fan of the books, the BBC TV series, or the movie, carry a towel and show your support on May 25th.

On yesterday's broadcast, heard live on CBC Radio One at 11:30 a.m., and repeated at 7:30 p.m., the 2010 panelists voted for Nikolski by Nicholas Dickner.
Who do you think Canada should read?:
Nikolski by Nicholas Dickner, defended by Michel Vezina [Winner of the 2010 Canada Reads]
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald, defended by Perdita Felicien, Generation X by Douglas Coupland, defended by Ronald Pemberton (aka Cadence Weapon), Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott, defended by Simi Sara by Wayson Choy, defended by Samantha Nutt

The popular author of more than 40 bestselling books, Dick Francis died early Sunday, February 14th at his home in the Cayman Islands. His son Felix, who co-wrote Even Money with his father, released a statement on behalf of the family,
"My brother, Merrick, and I are, of course, devastated by the loss of our father, but we rejoice in having been the sons of such an extraordinary man.
"We share in the joy that he brought to so many over such a long life."
Read more at CBC News.

Globe and Mail columnist, Ian Brown, won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction Monday, February 8th, for The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son. As quoted in the Globe and Mail,
"To explain why they chose his book The Boy in the Moon as this year’s grand prize winner, the jury lauded The Globe and Mail writer for his sensitive exploration of “a netherworld where medicine and morality meet” and for telling the story of his disabled son “with artless candour, quirky humour and unsparing detail.”

Other books nominated this year included John English's Just watch me, the second volume of his biography of Pierre Trudeau. Past winners of the Charles Taylor Prize have included Carol Shields for Jane Austen, Rudy Wiebe for Of this Earth: A Menonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, Richard Gwyn for John A.: The Man Who Made Us and Tim Cook for Shock Troops, the second volume of his history of Canadian troops in the First World War.
To read similar titles, please check out the Entertaining Non-fiction collections.

Are you waiting to read Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol?
If you liked the Da Vinci code try one of these titles:

The Last Cato By Matilde Asensi
The Alexandria Link By Steve Berry
The Da Vinci Cod: A Fishy Parody By Don Brine
The Rule of Four By Ian Caldwell
The Geographer's Library By Jon Fasman
The Assassini By Thomas Gifford
Ex-Libris By Ross King
The Testament By Eric Van Lustbader
The Book of Fate By Brad Meltzer
Labyrinth By Kate Mosse

Download digital Audiobooks anytime and then transfer to your portable device! The OverDrive Media Console is a free application designed to use the OverDrive titles available for download at many public library websites. Serach through OverDrive's collection of downloadable media, download the Media Console, and start listening!
This is a project made possible by the Ontario Ministry of Culture’s $15 Million Investment in Public Libraries.

[Try it Now]