After three-months, the 2010 Canada Reads has come down to this as the five celebrity panelists debate the merits of their five Canadian novels on live radio. Running all week long, from Monday March 8th to Friday March 12th, each panelist will have a chance to debate their novels on CBC Radio One at 11:30 a.m. and repeated 7:30 p.m. See the official CBC Canada Reads page for more details.
Who do you think Canada should read?:
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
The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy, defended by Samantha Nutt
Nikolski by Nicholas Dickner, defended by Michel Vezina
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
Enjoy these featured download audiobooks from OverDrive.
A Christmas Grace by Anne Perry
A Free Life by Ha Jin.
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
Four Souls by Louise Erdrich.
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. Search 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.
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.
New iPod books available this week from the iHelp Desk:
Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
Dexter by design by Jeffry P. Lindsay.
Lost symbol by Dan Brown
Alex Cross's trial by James Patterson
Last song by Nicholas Sparks
iPod compatible audiobooks are available from the iHelp Desk at Central Library during iHelp open hours (Mondays to Fridays 1pm-9pm, Saturdays and Sundays 1pm - 5pm.) For more information about our growning iPod collections please see Would you like an iPod with your audiobook.
Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips is a comedic adventure involving London, Greek Gods, the underworld, and an unlikely hero.
Having lost the vast majority of their powers, the Greek gods are now forced to spend their lives in a run-down house in London, taking small odd jobs to make ends meet (Artemis walks dogs, Aphrodite is a phone-sex operator, Dionysus runs a rave club etc). Into this mix is dropped Alice a unassuming house cleaner, and Neil, an engineer who is in love with Alice.
The book is really good. Funny without being slapstick, Good characterization of both Down-on-their-luck gods and the mortals involved with them. They story arc is interesting, but this is at its heart a character piece, the plot more a way to show amusing vignettes of how the different gods act and how the mortals react to the situations.
I recomend this book to anyone who wants a fun, romantic-ish comedy/adventure, with a touch of classical greek mythology.
Unclean and Undead by Richard Lee Byars are books one and two of the Haunted Lands trilogy. Both deal with a Civil war in the wizard dominated country of Thay, set in the world of the Forgotten Realms.
Well, read these two books and now I have to wait until March 2009 for the third one, so you might want to wait to read these until the trilogy is completed.
The stories of these books are decent, but they are not going to go down in history as genre-defining or great works of our civilization. But if you like wizards, vampires, the occasional wizard-vampire and combat give these books a try.
The writing is, again, decent. Byers creates characters that escape being two-dimensional, but not by much. The villains ( a relative term in this book, as even the "good guys" are pretty bad) are more interesting than the heroes, with deeper motivations. The fight scenes are evocative, and avoid being repetitive. The overall arc of the books is also intriguing, with more secrets to be revealed in the final book.
In my opinion, the best part of these books is Byers willingness to kill characters, both minor and major. It lends to the gritty feel of a war that involves demons and undead on both sides.
I recommend these books for those looking for something to read on the bus, that doesn't require a lot of thought.
Well, I have recently finished reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, book one of The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch and I really enjoyed it.
The plot of the books is fairly straightforward: Lies, swindles and betrayal in a fantasy version of Venice called Camorr. The thief and priest of the 13th,the crooked warden, unnamed god of thieves and scoundrels, Locke Lamora (aka, the Thorn of Camorr) is in the middle of a caper to trick a Nobleman out of his fortune when he is drawn into the plot of the Gray King to unseat the crime lord of of Camorr. There is magic and mayhem and crooked dealings all around.
The book shines not in its plot, but in its characterization, setting, and use of language. Lynch successfully gives each of his characters a distinct voice and mannerisms that make them unique from one another. His descriptions of Camorr flesh out the city and make it feel like a real place, with a long history and all the baggage that comes with that history. These descriptions are even more effective as they do not cause the story to drag under masses of descriptive text, being inserted naturally into the flow of the plot.
If you enjoy reading about the exploits of a charming rogue and anti-hero, then try this book.
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