Daily book biz round-up: Canadians love Shilpi Somaya Gowda; Rumsfeld memoir due in January; and more

Today’s book news:

• How U.S.-based Shilpi Somaya Gowda came to dominate the Canadian bestsellers list
• NY Times takes a closer look at the high-stakes Barnes & Noble squabble
• Donald Rumsfeld memoir to be released in January
• A look inside an Iraqi bookstore
• The CBC chats with Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis
• Neat piece about the personal libraries of deceased authors

Tony Blair to donate proceeds from memoir to charity

This may be as close as we ever come to getting an admission that joining the war in Iraq was a mistake from one of its prime instigators. The Globe and Mail is reporting that Tony Blair, the British prime minister responsible for signing on to George W. Bush’s war on terror and committing thousands of British troops to a misguided (and possibly even illegal) war in Iraq, has agreed to donate the proceeds from his forthcoming memoir to a new charity that will support British soldiers who have been injured in battle.

From the Globe:

The Royal British Legion said Monday that the former prime minister has agreed to give all proceeds from A Journey to its Battle Back Challenge Center. The center opens in 2012 and will provide state of the art sports facilities and rehabilitation services for seriously wounded personnel.

Publisher Random House paid an estimated $7.5 million (U.S.) for Blair’s personal account of his time in power, due to be published next month.

Blair spokesman Matthew Doyle said Monday that Blair’s donation includes the advance and all royalties.

Bookmarks: Encyclopedia Brown, Jonathan Ames, and Michael Turner

• Kate Sutherland, author of Kate’s Book Blog, writes about Encyclopedia Brown – specifically how the series taught her to think like a lawyer, and how the tough character of Brown’s sidekick, Sally Kimball, broke down stereotypes for girls in 1963
• Galleycat highlights a new book by Iraqi blogger: Iraqi Girl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq
• The Guardian on a new/old poetic form, the Englynion
• For our American friends, here’s a Thanksgiving journal by Jonathan Ames
• Stacey-May Fowles interviews Michael Turner about his latest book, 8 X 10, on The Walrus

Bookmarks: new e-reader from Sony, Ignatieff’s a union man, censorship in Iraq, reading in Venezuela, and more

Some book-related links:

• Sony to release two new e-readers
• Michael Ignatieff re-joins the Writers’ Union
• Iraqi publishers worry about new censorship laws
• Venezuela’s Revolutionary Reading Plan
• Arsenal Pulp re-designs and re-releases Hard Core Logo
• Even short book inscriptions say a lot
• Could Raymond Carver have written manga?
• The author – and daughter – behind Little House on the Prairie

Bookmarks: Shakespeare, Waugh, Sedaris, Seinfeld, Bush

Some book-related links:

• Stolen Shakespeare folio recovered in U.S. (Dallas Morning News)
• The battle over Brideshead Revisited (Times Online)
• David Sedaris in Ottawa (The Ottawa Citizen)
• Latest round in the Seinfeld cookbook fight (The New York Times)
• Corruption alleged over donations to Bush presidential library (Think Progress)
• Baghdad bookseller holds out hope for Iraq (Financial Times)
• Who needs bookstores when you’ve got libraries? (Scrimisms)

Bookmarks (Middle East edition)

• In the face of all-too-obvious problems, small publishing houses and modern printing facilities are popping up throughout the Arab world (Bookseller.com)
• Dubai adds a literary festival to its cultural boom (Kipp Report)
• Iraq’s National Library soldiers on after being looted by vandals and neglected by the occupying powers (The Nation)
• An interview with Bahaa Taher, winner of this year’s inaugural International Prize for Arabic fiction (The Guardian)
• Two independent U.K. publishers join forces to create a list devoted to translations of new Arabic fiction (Bookseller.com)
• And finally, an overview of the progress made by all this progress (The Independent)
• Bonus gossip! Tabloid star Salman Rushdie has a new girlfriend, got writer’s block after divorcing Padma Lakshmi, is appearing as a gynecologist in a film, and was lying when he said he loved Islam.

Flickr photo roundup: Book Camp, Paul Watson, and Other Goose

Here’s a quick roundup of some recent event photos posted in the Q&Q Flickr pool:

Photographer Fleur-Ange Lamothe posted a couple of images from Brantford Book Camp 2007. It was a three-day event in mid-August that brought together young would-be authors and top children’s writers and illustrators. Here, author Sylvia McNicoll reads to the assembled group.

Above, war photographer and journalist Paul Watson signs books at an event at the Library and Archives in Ottawa on August 22, 2007. Watson also spoke at length about his experiences in South Africa, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Ottawa International Writers Festival has kindly posted over an hour’s worth of audio files of the whole evening here.

Pages Books & Magazines and Groundwood Books hosted “Calypso Night!” in honour of Barbara Wyn Klunder’s new book Other Goose: Recycled Rhymes for Our Fragile Times. The event took place at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel on August 30 and included a calypso reggae band and a DJ.

Have you recently attended a book reading, library event, or author appearance? Have some interesting book-related pictures you want to share? If you’ve got photos of the Canadian book scene, we’d love to see them. Send them to us or sign up through Flickr and submit your images.

Bookmarks – Quick links

Some book-related links:

• Norma Gabler, the Texas textbook nitpicker who spent most of her life seeking out factual errors and “left-wing bias” in schoolbooks, is dead at 84. (Los Angeles Times)
• Kerouac’s On the Road – uncut and republished. (The Independent)
• Russia goes big on book advertising. (Moscow Times)
• Norman Mailer: Mr. Television. (Slate)
• The book every soldier in Iraq should read. (Harper’s)

Canuck books in Beirut

National Book Critics Circle member Rayyan Al-Shawaf, a Beirut-based writer and freelance reviewer, has posted an extensive survey of the Lebanese book scene on the NBCC blog. Al-Shawaf discusses the lengthy traditions of tolerance and diversity in the country and its capital, which he says are known as “the Arab world’s publishing hub for quality books of all kinds,” and the names of a few Canadian writers crop up.

Books by Lebanon-born novelist Rawi Hage (De Niro’s Game) and Iraqi-raised man of letters Naim Kattan (Farewell, Babylon), both of whom are now based in Montreal, are cited as examples of, respectively, thriving contemporary Lebanese writing and Jewish literature that is widely published and available in Beirut.

The often-controversial Irshad Manji also earns a mention:

A lively debate on the role and relevance of Islam in modern societies has long been underway in the Arab literary world; the same can be said of more detailed issues concerning Islamic law. Fascinatingly, however, Beirut is a place where one can also find works by Western writers of Muslim origin who have decided to plunge into the debate. These include a number of polemical books familiar to Western readers.

Occasionally, these books are translated into Arabic, as with Irshad Manji’s The Trouble with Islam Today, which appeared under the more circumspect title Muslimoun wa Ahrar (loosely translated as “Muslims and Freethinkers”), courtesy of Cologne-based publishing house Al-Kamel Verlag; as an added cautionary measure, no translator is credited. More common is for the work to be sold in English – thereby lessening the potential for controversy.

IBBY Canada’s fundraiser goes global

IBBY Canada is holding its biennial Hot, Hot Cuba! fundraiser this Wednesday at a Toronto club. In the past, the evening of live music and salsa dancing has raised money to help children in Cuba, because IBBY Canada was twinned with IBBY in Cuba. This year, however, the organization is extending its reach a little further to include IBBY’s Children in Crisis Fund.

The fund is a new initiative intended to help children in areas affected by war, civil disruption, or natural disaster. Money raised will be used for bibliotherapy (the therapeutic use of books and storytelling) and to collect or replace collections of books. The first project to receive is about to begin in Lebanon with future projects planned for places such as Afghanistan, Darfur, Gaza, Iraq, and northern Uganda.

Click here for details.