Barnes & Noble e-books are coming to town

B&N announced yesterday that beginning around Dec. 1, Canadian customers will have access to the U.S. retailer’s e-book store and will be able to download titles to their iPhones, BlackBerrys, etc. However, B&N’s own e-reader, the Nook, will remain unavailable in Canada.

From B&N’s website:

We are not selling Nook in Canada (or anywhere outside of the United States) at this time. If you’re using a Nook in Canada, you will be able to sync your B&N eBooks library and access our eBook store via Wi-Fi.

We know there’s an incredible interest from readers who want to buy them from our eBook store outside the United States, and we are looking at our options for international sales. 

When life imitates art

Alice Munro’s short story, “Dimensions,” which appears in her recent collection Too Much Happiness, is one that the author herself cannot reread.  In the story, a blue-collar B.C. father suffocates his three young children with a pillow while his wife is away. 

What makes this story even more unsettling is its resemblance to the 2008 criminal murder trial of B.C. father Allan Schoenborn, who was charged with first-degree murder for killing his three children after the story was published in The New Yorker in 2006.

Maclean’s writer Bill Richardson points out the striking similarities between the murder trial and Munro’s short story:

There are other examples of life imitating art. The 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic was foretold in the novella Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, in which a luxury ocean liner called Titan smashes into an iceberg and capsizes in the North Atlantic. A 2004 Hubble space telescope image of dust and gas swirling around stars in the dark has the distinct look of Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night. As for Munro’s short story, it ran in The New Yorker in 2006.

At the centre of “Dimensions” and the B.C. murders is the father. Both are blue-collar (the fictional father, Lloyd, works at an ice cream factory, Schoenborn was a roofer), and seemingly threatened by the possibility of their wives leaving them. Insanity figures prominently. Schoenborn has testified about hearing voices, and that he’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia and paranoia.

 

Bookmarks: Suing the Nook, profitable poetry, and more

Bookish links from around the Web:

• According to Amazon, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin is the best book of 2009. Also on its list of the top 10 books of 2009: Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder; Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall; Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín; Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl; Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollstead; The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson; The City & The City by China Miéville; Stitches by David Small; and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
• More trouble for Nook, Barnes & Noble’s new digital reader: GalleyCat reports that Spring Design is suing B&N over the Nook’s design, stating that the bookseller broke non-disclosure agreements and “misappropriated trade secrets” about Spring Design’s own Google-Android based e-book reader, Alex Reader
• British author/actor/comedian/Oscar Wilde fan/blogger/Tweeter Stephen Fry has something to say about the benefits of social media in this two-part online interview
• If you think the mania for classic literature and zombie mash-ups is going to die anytime soon, think again. The LA Times Jacket Copy reports that Quirk Books, the publishing company responsible for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has announced their latest project, titled Dawn of the Dreadfuls
• Can poetry be profitable? Publisher Dominique Raccah thinks so. The Wall Street Journal‘s Speakeasy announces Raccah’s trial website, an online poetry community that allows Web browsers to upload, hear, and buy poetry
• The ever-controversial Globe and Mail columnist and author Margaret Wente responds to her many haters. Turns out she likes to make Canadians angry, especially Newfoundlanders

Yann Martel’s “shocking” new novel

Yann Martel’s follow-up to Life of Pi, titled Beatrice and Virgil and due in June 2010, is already generating controversy in the U.K., where Martel’s publisher, Canongate, has described the novel, an allegory about the Holocaust, as “shocking.”

From CBC News:

According to Jamie Byng, managing director and publisher of Canongate, “it will take us somewhere truly unexpected and shocking” and asks “profound moral and philosophical questions about the nature of love and evil.”

Despite the nine-year gap between Life of Pi and its successor, Martel has been keeping busy. In addition to the new novel, Martel wrote a 14-stanza original poem about water for Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté’s “poetic space mission,” broadcast from the International Space Station on Oct.9.

Martel has also been wondering what Stephen Harper is reading, and has published a book based on his attempts to get the Prime Minister to read literary works that encourage “stillness” — including Martel’s own.  

Michael Turner massages the medium

In an interview this morning with Brian Joseph Davis at The Globe and Mail‘s In Other Words blog, innovative author Michael Turner offers a fresh, if not slightly perplexing, perspective on a writer’s relationship with technology. Turner says that “the problem with seeing ‘digital tools’ as ‘problems’ lies in the writer’s inability to see the computer and the internet less as tools than as a medium.”

He goes on to address the need for authors to have an online presence and embrace cutting-edge technology:

With respect to writers who see this new medium as an “annoyance,” I would add that they are in fact employing the new medium to advertise what they do – the advertisement, in this instance, coming in the form of difference. Thus, when an author identifies him or herself as a “good old-fashioned storyteller,” someone of bad manners and singular genius, a romantic, a lovable eccentric whose hat is always a little bit too big for their head, then the best way to convey that fantasy – and the book it squirted from – is to complain about “digital tools.”

Publishers are somewhat complicit in this, because for too long they cosseted and indulged their authors, until suddenly, with publicity campaigns going online, authors were told that the success of their book lay in their having an online presence. Obviously some authors have taken to this better than others, making their “platforms” more than where they are reading and how their book is “doing,” thereby expanding their practices, using their books as a device by which to cast shade, create depth, movement, hopefully leading them to new places, new ways of making meaning.

Turner’s online presence is definitely notable: his blog is updated frequently and the randomized version of his novel, 8×10, has been released via an online book remixer, BookRiff, a print-on-demand content broker.

Bookmarks: Generic Wizard Nights, a feline Humbert Humbert, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• The Ontario Library Association has announced the nominees for the 2010 Forest of Reading Program. Votes can be cast for your favourite authors at the OLA’s website. Participants have between now and April 23 to read a minimum of 5 of the 10 titles in their chosen category
• Classic literature meets lolcats with LOLerature. Who knew what we were missing?
• A U.K. fan who was forbidden to throw a Harry Potter-themed dinner party throws a “Generic Wizard Night” instead
• Stephen King taps into vampire mania by writing his first comic book, American Vampire. The most terrifying fact, as pointed out by AbeBooks, is that the vampire bears an uncanny resemblance to Kid Rock
• For people who have too much time on their hands like dressing up their pets as literary characters, The New Yorker has been holding an online Critterati Contest. The contest has closed and the winners will be announced later today, but the gallery is still available for your browsing pleasure. (While there are a plethora of adorable Moby Dicks and Hestor Prynnes, this Quillblogger has money on the feline version of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, caught in flagrante delicto with an unwitting Barbie Lolita)
• The woman who gave us Lestat de Lioncourt is swapping vampires for angels, the National Post reports

IFOA news: Geoffrey Taylor to receive honorary degree, Urquhart to read Munro

Geoffrey Taylor, director of Harbourfront’s Reading Series, is to receive an honorary degree from the School of Creative & Performing Arts at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Taylor, who has been with Harboufront Centre for 20 years, is being honoured for his contribution to the promotion of Canadian books and authors.

Over the last five years, Taylor has been responsible for the International Festival of Authors, has served as a jury member for both the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Awards, and has been an adviser to the Humber School for Writers. In 2008, Q&Q included him in a list of the most influential people in Canadian publishing.

Taylor will be presented with the degree at a ceremony on Nov. 7.

…

The IFOA has also confirmed the lineup for its second annual presentation of the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize shortlist. For the reading on Oct. 28, the following authors will be reading:

• Douglas Coupland will read from Generation A
• Annabel Lyon will read from The Golden Mean
• Andrew Steinmetz will read from Eva’s Threepenny Theatre
• Jacqueline Larson will read from Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood’s English-language translations of Nicole Brossard’s Fences in Breathing
• Jane Urquhart will read from Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness on behalf of Munro, who is unable to attend the event

The winner of the $25,000 award will be announced on Nov. 24 in Toronto.

“High in antioxidants, low on caffeine”: Leah McLaren weighs in on CanLit

Globe and Mail columnist Leah McLaren is the latest public figure to opine on the state of Can Lit. Prompted by this year’s awards season, McLaren takes the discussion one step further (or, perhaps backward) by flat-out refusing to read any nominated titles.

Beyond wondering who does Annabel Lyon’s hair and if Margaret Atwood is “pissed” by her exclusion from several major shortlists, McLaren simply cannot deign to read jury-selected books, voracious reader though she claims to be. Which, of course, more than qualifies her to weigh in on the subject.

In Saturday’s column, she cautions against the dangers of reading what “the man” tells you to:

[...] despite all the good that literary prizes provide — and I say this as a member of the Authors’ Committee of the Writers’ Trust of Canada — there is also an inherent danger in their increasing cultural primacy.

As one Canadian writer who did not want his name used recently said to me in an e-mail, the problem with prize lists is that they take something intimate and eclectic and turn it into a socially sanctioned Cultural Event.

“Reading — unlike multiplex movie-going, say — is inherently idiosyncratic,” he wrote. “Its idiosyncrasy is in its strength, the breadth of library and bookstore choices offering a feast of discoveries for the curious and story-hungry. Prizes, on the other hand, ultimately work to shape a vast plurality of tastes into a single, institutionally endorsed selection. The Giller is a successful venture, no question about it. But successful at what? Bringing new readers to exciting, boundary-pushing, pleasure-filled books? Or calcifying CanLit into a predictable brand?”

She also likens prize lists to high-school English curricula and the content of prison libraries. Given this year’s sombre selections, it could be argued that McLaren has a point. Besides, who better to judge the state of CanLit than the author of the “giggly, airy” Continuity Girl?

Toronto Public Library Workers Union given legal strike deadline

After nearly two weeks of silence surrounding negotiations between the Toronto Public Library and the Toronto Public Library Workers Union (TPLWU), it was announced today that the Ontario Ministry of Labour has granted the TPLWU a legal strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. Monday, Nov. 9.

As reported by Q&Q Omni last March, the city’s 2,400 library workers split from the Toronto Civic Employees Union (TCEU) Local 416 to create their own union. However, the new TPLWU soon found itself facing the same concession demands confronted by the TCEU in a summer that saw an extended strike by city workers. 

Eighty-six per cent of TPLWU voted in favour of a strike as of Oct. 10, but negotiations are ongoing.

The union is asking the TPL for more full-time jobs and “fairer treatment of part-time workers.”

According to a TPL inter-office memo, should a legal strike/lock-out occur, the following disruptions are to be expected:

• All library branches and facilities, including Bookmobile and Home Library Services, would be closed
• All computer services, including Web-based and dial-in service, would be suspended, including renewals
• All telephone-based service would be suspended, including renewals
• All scheduled meetings and events would be cancelled. Room rental charges would be refunded, as appropriate
• All book drops would be closed. Borrowers would be asked to keep library materials and not return them until a strike/lock-out is over

Bookmarks: The Tao of Wu, zombie hunter S. Thompson, and St. Anne of Green Gables

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Following in the footsteps of Kanye West and 50 Cent, NPR reports that The Wu-Tang Clan’s Robert F. Diggs (aka The RZA) is the latest rap artist to pen an inspirational book. The title: The Tao of Wu
• Halloween is just around the corner. Need a costume idea? Check out these literary-themed costumes. Zombie Hunter S. Thompson, anyone?
• Speaking of zombies, the Oxford University Press blog discusses our culture’s obsession with the dark and monstrous
• Think the new Where the Wild Things Are movie is too scary for children? “Go to hell … or wet your pants,” author Maurice Sendak tells parents
• Portuguese writer and Nobel laureate Jose Saramago says the Bible is a “manual of bad morals”
• St. Anne? The CBC reports on an Ottawa exhibition, the Canadian Martyrdom Series, that portrays Anne of Green Gables as a martyr