Book links round-up: scathing reviews, foggy plot lines, and more

• An excerpt from Eva Gabrilsson’s book about her life with Stieg Larsson
• How much do we actually retain from reading?
• Slate explains h0w not to write a book review
• Stephen King’s The Dark Tower will not be adapted for film
• The book is always better, but better than the app?
• A Literary Press Group/Turner-Riggs survey for poetry readers

Breaking Canadian poetry news

Sure, the headline is a tad tongue-in-cheek, but it’s fairly accurate to say poets are quite industrious. They get so much done in a day with very little recognition from outside the poetry world. So in addition to the Friday industry quotes round-up, here is Breaking Canadian Poetry News, volume 1.

• The International Festival of Authors has teamed up with Now magazine for the second annual Open Poetry Stage on March 31.
• Poet Randall Maggs won the 3rd Kobzar Literary Award at a gala in Toronto last night. The $25,000 prize is given to a writer who best presents a Canadian Ukrainian theme with literary merit.
• The New Quarterly has announced two new contests, including The Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse contest. The winning poet receives $1,000.
• Geist teaches us how to write a Jackpine sonnet, a form invented by Milton Acorn.
• National Poetry Month 2010 is called Climate Changes.

Let Quill know about your breaking poetry news: zwhittall@quillandquire.com.

Photos: GG winners at Rideau Hall

On Nov. 26 at Rideau Hall, Governor General of Canada Michaëlle Jean presented the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Awards. Below are some of the highlights:

Kate Pullinger, winner in the fiction category for The Mistress of Nothing (McArthur & Company).

M.G. Vassanji, winner in the non-fiction category for A Place Within (Doubleday Canada).

Caroline Pignat, winner in the children’s literature text category for Greener Grass: The Famine Years (Red Deer Press).

Jirina Marton, winner in the children’s literature illustration category for Bella’s Tree (Groundwood).

All of the winners, English-language and French-language, with Michaëlle Jean.

All of the publishers, English-language and French-language.

[Photos courtesy of Jean-François Néron.]

Pullinger, Vassanji win GG

The Canada Council for the Arts announced the winners of the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Awards in Montreal this morning. Here are the winners:

Fiction

• Kate Pullinger, Mistress of Nothing (McArthur & Company)

Non-Fiction

• M.G. Vassanji, A Place Within: Rediscovering India (Doubleday Canada)

Poetry

• David Zieroth, The Fly in Autumn (Harbour Publishing)

Translation – French to English

• Susan Ouriou (trans.), Pieces of Me (Kids Can Press)

Drama

• Kevin Loring, Where the Blood Mixes (Talonbooks)
  

Children’s Literature – Text

• Caroline Pignat, Greener Grass: The Famine Years (Red Deer Press)

Children’s Literature – Illustration

• Jirina Marton, Bella’s Tree, text by Janet Russell (Groundwood)

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

Richard Poplak and more in the May Q&Q

Jet-setting author Richard Poplak travelled to 17 different countries to research his latest book, which looks at the influence of American pop culture in the Muslim world, and he’s Q&Q’s cover subject in the May 2009 issue. Also in the issue, we look at the surprising success of Harlequin Enterprises at 60 and at how print-on-demand is changing the bookstore of the future. Our Library Special Report examines the tricky task of putting Canada’s archival history online. Plus reviews of new books by Colin McAdam, Emily Schultz, Giles Blunt, Lynn Johnston, Barry Callaghan, and more.

Pop goes the world
Richard Poplak bets that tawdry TV and banal bubblegum can bring cultures together

Print-on-demand: The dream and the reality
The bookstore of the future, and why POD machines are waiting for books in the present

Love wins out
While other major publishers are bleeding money, Harlequin Enterprises is raking it in. How the firm has managed to beat the odds

History, bit by bit
What’s the best way to put our national heritage online?
AND MORE IN THE LIBRARY SPECIAL REPORT: Coping with rising patron demand, and learning to LOL at the reference desk

FRONTMATTER

• Ninety minutes with Stuart Ross
• Comedy is easy, kidlit is hard
• The adventures of Pierre Turgeon: a timeline
• Cover to Cover: Lauren Kirshner’s Where We Have to Go
• Snapshot: Alexandra Moore of Word on the Street
• Breakwater unbroken
• David Bezmozgis moves from control to collaboration

REVIEWS

• Heaven Is Small by Emily Schultz
• Though You Were Dead by Terry Griggs
• The English Stories by Cynthia Flood
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

• Dance Baby Dance by Andrea Spalding
• Dracula Madness by Mary Labatt and Jo Rioux
• Soccer Sabotage by Liam O’Donnell and Mike Deas
• Swim the Fly by Don Calame
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE Q&Q/BOOKNET CANADA BESTSELLERS

THE LAST WORD
Lesley Choyce does the math on three decades in writing

Books in stereo

We’re not sure if this is 100% accurate, but the Fox Business website is claiming that a new book – The Book of ‘Bert’: High-Class Stars with Some High-Class ‘Stache – is the first book to boast its very own theme song.

The [book], published April 1 by Triad Publishing Group, has named Toronto-based rockers The Guys’ “Man with a Moustache” as its official theme song. The song was selected by author Jon Chattman, who heard the ditty and thought it meshed nicely with the book’s concept.

[...]

‘Bert’ is a romp through mustache history featuring 25 well-known personalities profiled and ranked on their mustache integrity. It includes lists in various categories boasting everything from best TV dads with mustaches to best mustachioed wrestlers, and a foreward by music legend John Oates.

“I’m pretty sure ‘Bert’ is the first book to come with a theme song, and that’s quite a groundbreaking achievement,” Chattman said. “I recall yearning for books I read in school to have a rocking theme song like ‘Eye of the Tiger’ or an obscurely enjoyable tune like Frasier‘s ‘Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs’. The Guys’ tune is a song men can get behind, and women can dance to.”

If ‘Bert’ is indeed the first book to have its own theme song, it’s certainly not the first book to have musical accompaniment. Just last fall, Penguin Canada co-produced a full-length soundtrack to Will Ferguson’s Spanish Fly, composed by Calgary artist Tom Phillips and with lyrics by Ferguson himself. We’re guessing it wasn’t a chart topper…

Horton: the movie

Dr. Seuss is sacred. Who doesn’t remember the unmistakable illustrations and wonderfully offbeat plots of childhood classics such as The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and so many more?

In recent years, Hollywood has been seizing on the enduring popularity of the books and reinterpreting Seuss for film. First came How the Grinch Stole Christmas — in live action with Jim Carrey in the title role and lots of prosthetic make-up. Then, a live-action Cat in the Hat starring Mike Myers.

So what title from the Seuss canon will Hollywood disfigure next? Why, Horton Hears a Who, of course. As the Book Standard reports, Horton will star Jim Carrey and Steve Carell as the voices of the CGI-animated Horton and the mayor of Whoville, respectively.

Quillblog does not deny that Steve Carell has his moments of comedic brilliance, but still.

The problem is determining how to reconcile an adult appreciation for the fine talents of Steve Carell with nostalgia for the faded Seuss-illustrated pages of childhood. Any suggestions?

Related links:
More details on Horton at the Book Standard