BookNet bestsellers: Canadian fiction

Lawrence Hill takes three spots on this week’s list for Canadian fiction.

For the two weeks ending July 8, 2012:

1. The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
(Vintage Canada, $22 pa, 9780307401427)

2. Room, Emma Donoghue
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443413695)

3. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9780062203960)

4. The Virgin Cure, Ami McKay
(Vintage Canada, $22 pa, 9780676979572)

5. The Wild Zone, Joy Fielding
(Seal Books/Random House Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781400025794)

6. Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
(Thomas Allen Publishers, $24.95 pa, 9780887627415)

7. The Witch of Babylon, D.J. McIntosh
(Penguin Canada, $13.50 mm, 9780143175735)

8. A Good Man, Guy Vanderhaeghe
(M&S, $22 pa, 9780771086083)

9. The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
(House of Anansi Press, $22.95 pa, 9781770890329)

10. A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny
(St. Martin’s Press/Raincoast, $16.99 pa, 9781250007346)

11. The Headmaster’s Wager, Vincent Lam
(Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl, 9780385661454)

12. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443408981)

13. Spell Bound, Kelley Armstrong
(Vintage Canada, $17.95 pa, 9780307359032)

14. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9780061974304)

15. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
(Vintage Canada, $21 pa, 9780676973778)

16. The Winter Palace, Eva Stachniak
(Doubleday Canada, $24.95 pa, 9780385666565)

17. Ru, Kim Thúy; Sheila Fischman, trans.
(Random House Canada, $25 cl, 9780307359704)

18. Any Known Blood, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $17.99 pa, 9781443409100)

19. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $17.99 pa, 9781443409094)

20. Everybody Has Everything, Katrina Onstad
(M&S, $22.99 pa, 9780771068980)

BookNet bestsellers: Canadian fiction

Tanis Rideout makes her debut on this week’s list with her first novel, Above All Things.

For the two weeks ending June 24, 2012:

1. The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
(Vintage Canada, $22 pa, 9780307401427)

2. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9780062203960)

3. A Good Man, Guy Vanderhaeghe
(McClelland & Stewart, $22 pa, 9780771086083)

4. The Witch of Babylon, D.J. McIntosh
(Penguin Canada, $13.50 mm, 9780143175735)

5. The Headmaster’s Wager, Vincent Lam
(Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl, 9780385661454)

6. The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
(House of Anansi Press, $22.95 pa, 9781770890329)

7. Room, Emma Donoghue
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443413695)

8. Room, Emma Donoghue
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9781554688326)

9. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(William Morrow/Harper, $19.99 pa, 9780061974304)

10. Why Men Lie, Linden MacIntyre
(Random House Canada, $32 cl, 9780307360861)

11. Alone in the Classroom, Elizabeth Hay
(M&S, $22 pa, 9780771037979)

12. The Last Crossing, Guy Vanderhaeghe
(M&S, $22 pa, 9780771087844)

13. Never Knowing, Chevy Stevens
(St. Martin’s Press/Raincoast, $16.99 pa, 9781250009319)

14. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443408981)

15. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $17.99 pa, 9781443409094)

16. The Winter Palace, Eva Stachniak
(Doubleday Canada, $24.95 pa, 9780385666565)

17. Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
(Thomas Allen Publishers, $24.95 pa, 9780887627415)

18. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
(Seal Books/Doubleday Canada, $5.99 mm, 9780770422059)

19. Spell Bound, Kelley Armstrong
(Vintage Canada, $17.95 pa, 9780307359032)

20. Above All Things, Tanis Rideout
(M&S, $29.99 cl, 9780771076350)

BookNet bestsellers: Canadian fiction

Perennial favourites mix with new titles in this week’s bestsellers list, covering Canadian fiction. For the two weeks ending March 18, 2012:

1. Flash and Bones, Kathy Reichs
(Pocket/Simon & Schuster, $17 pa, 9781451675290)

2. The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
(House of Anansi Press, $22.95 pa, 9781770890329)

3. The Winter Palace, Eva Stachniak
(Doubleday Canada, $24.95 pa, 9780385666565)

4. Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
(Thomas Allen Publishers, $24.95 pa, 9780887627415)

5. Now You See Her, Joy Fielding
(Anchor Canada, $19.95 pa, 9780385676762)

6. Web of Angels, Lilian Nattel
(Knopf Canada, $22 pa, 9780307402097)

7. Still Life, Louise Penny
(Little, Brown and Company/Hachette, $10.99 mm, 9780351322303)

8. Room, Emma Donoghue
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9781554688326)

9. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9780061974304)

10. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443408981)

11. The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich
(Anchor Canada, $22.95 pa, 9780385668279)

12. Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny
(Little, Brown/Hachette, $10.99 mm, 9780751547504)

13. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
(HarperCollins Canada, $16.50 pa, 9780006391555)

14. Tiger Hills, Sarita Mandanna
(Penguin Canada, $18 pa, 9780143174714)

15. The Bishop’s Man, Linden MacIntyre
(Random House Canada, $22 pa, 9780307357076)

16. The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
(McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl, 9780771068645)

17. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
(Doubleday Canada, $5.99 mm, 9780770422059)

18. Ru, Kim Thúy; Sheila Fischman, trans.
(Random House Canada, $25 cl, 9780307359704)

19. The Virgin Cure, Ami McKay
(Knopf Canada, $32 cl, 9780676979565)

20. Bride of New France, Suzanne Desrochers
(Penguin Canada, $16 pa, 9780143173397)

Book links roundup: Transgender children’s books, famous gay writers, and more

• The rise of transgender children’s literature
• The National Post explores legendary gay writers who changed America
• Is reading on a Kindle sacrilege?
• Author Lawrence Hill and musical group Nathaniel Dett Chorale combine The Book of Negroes with Afrocentric music
• The Guardian predicts the marriage of books and the Internet

BookNet bestsellers: Canadian fiction

Esi Edugyan’s Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novel, Half-Blood Blues, remains on top of this week’s Canadian fiction bestsellers’ list. For the two weeks ending Jan. 22:

1. Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
(Thomas Allen Publishers, $24.95 pa, 9780887627415)

2. The Winter Palace, Eva Stachniak
(Doubleday Canada, $24.95 pa, 9780385666565)

3. The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
(House of Anansi Press, $22.95 pa, 9781770890329)

4. The Virgin Cure, Ami McKay
(Knopf Canada, $32 cl, 9780676979565)

5. The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
(McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl, 9780771068645)

6. Bride of New France, Suzanne Desrochers
(Penguin Canada, $16 pa, 9780143173397)

7. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9780061974304)

8. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443408981)

9. Room, Emma Donoghue
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9781554688326)

10. An Irish Country Village, Patrick Taylor
(Forge Books/Raincoast, $9.99 mm, 9780765368256)

11. The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich
(Doubleday Canada, $22.95 pa, 9780385668279)

12. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
(HarperCollins Canada, $16.50 pa, 9780006391555)

13. The Best Laid Plans, Terry Fallis
(McClelland & Stewart, $19.99 pa, 9780771047589)

14. Ru, Kim Thuy; Sheila Fischman, trans.
(Random House Canada, $25 cl, 9780307359704)

15. Bad Boy, Peter Robinson
(McClelland & Stewart, $9.99 mm, 9780771076336)

16. Annabel, Kathleen Winter
(Anansi, $19.95 pa, 9780887842900)

17. The Wild Beasts of Wuhan, Ian Hamilton
(Spiderline/Anansi, $19.95 pa, 9780887842535)

18. The Illustrated Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 cl, 9781443412193)

19. Hark! A Vagrant, Kate Beaton
(Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 cl, 9781770460607)

20. The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway
(Random House of Canada, $21 pa, 9780307397041)

BookNet bestsellers: Fiction

Stieg Larsson’s thrillers dominate this week’s list following the release of David Fincher’s U.S. remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Canadians Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt also appear with Half-Blood Blues (#5) and The Sisters Brothers (#7).

For the two weeks ending Jan. 8:

1. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
(Penguin, $18.50 pa, 9780425232200)

2. The Jefferson Key, Steve Berry
(Ballantine/Random House, $11.99 mm, 9780345505521)

3. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson
(Penguin, $18 pa, 9780143170112)

4. The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson
(Penguin, $18 pa, 9780143170136)

5. Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
(Thomas Allen Publishers, $24.95 pa, 9780887627415)

6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
(Penguin, $18 pa, 9780143170129)

7. The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
(House of Anansi Press, $22.95 pa, 9781770890329)

8. Toys, James Patterson and Neil McMahon
(Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, $10.99 mm, 9780446571746)

9. Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. Watson
(HarperCollins, $21.99 pa, 9781443404068)

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (movie tie-in edition), Stieg Larsson
(Penguin, $18 pa, 9780143186007)

11. Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay
(St. Martin’s Griffin/Raincoast, $15.50 pa, 9780312370848)

12. Death Comes to Pemberley, P.D. James
(Knopf Canada, $32 cl, 9780307362032)

13. A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness
(Penguin, $17 pa, 9780143119685)

14. Locked On, Tom Clancy
(Putnam/Penguin, $31 cl, 9780399157318)

15. The Book of Negroes: Illustrated Edition, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 cl, 9781443412193)

16. The Next Always, Nora Roberts
(Berkley/Penguin, $18.50 pa, 9780425243213)

17. One Summer, David Baldacci
(Grand Central/Hachette, $14.99 pa, 9780446583152)

18. Moonlight in the Morning, Jude Deveraux
(Pocket Star/Simon & Schuster, $9.99 mm, 9781416509745)

19. Private: #1 Suspect, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
(Little, Brown and Company/Hachette, $29.99 cl, 9780316097406)

20. Innocent, Scott Turow
(Grand Central/Hachette, $10.99 mm, 9780446562409)

CanLit grows hair, raises money for Movember

It’s halfway through Movember, and even some of Canada’s literary talent are sporting new upper-lip hair, raising money for prostate cancer research.

Q&Q discovered The Cat’s Mustache, a hirsute team of Canadian authors and poets, which includes Michael Redhill, Lawrence Hill, Adam Sol, Michael Winter, David Seymour, and Michael Healy, with support from honorary member Hadley Dyer, executive editor of children’s books at HarperCollins Canada.

The Cat’s Mustache has already raised almost $3,000, with Hill bringing in the most donations at over $1,800. But it’s team captain Redhill who appears to be winning in the hair-growth department. On his Movember profile Web page Redhill describes his current look as “pornshop owner.”

Clement Virgo’s film adaptation of Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes moves into production

Canadian film director Clément Virgo (Poor Boy’s Game, Lie With Me) is developing an adaptation of Lawrence Hill’s bestseller, The Book of Negroes, to begin shooting next year.

Hill’s publisher, HarperCollins Canada, sold the film rights to Virgo’s production company, Conquering Lion Pictures, in 2009.

In an interview with film website indieWire, Virgo says, “The main character, Aminata, is someone who I really connected to as a reader and a filmmaker. I thought that this would be a great character to build a film around, so we contacted Lawrence Hill. I told him I was really interested in his book and that I would love to work on the script with him. To my surprise, he agreed.”

Burning of Lawrence Hill’s Book of Negroes planned for today

Lawrence Hill learned last week that a Dutch activist – Roy Groenberg, leader of a group known as the Foundation Honor and Restore Victims of Slavery in Suriname – objected to the use of the word “negro” in the title of the Hamilton author’s most famous novel, The Book of Negroes (published in Dutch as Het Negerboek).

Groenberg informed Hill in a letter that he intends to burn several copies of the book today in an Amsterdam park that contains a monument commemorating Dutch slavery and the struggle for freedom. The chilling publicity stunt has provoked strong reactions, most notably from the author himself. In an even-handed yet forceful op-ed in Monday’s Toronto Star, Hill wrote:

Burning books is designed to intimidate people. It underestimates the intelligence of readers, stifles dialogue and insults those who cherish the freedom to read and write. The leaders of the Spanish Inquisition burned books. Nazis burned books.

Hill went on to discuss the fungibility of terms used to describe race, noting that “racial terminology will always fail, because it is absurd to try to define a person by race.” Describing the “kaleidoscopic evolution” of racial terminology over the past five decades, Hill concluded there are no easy answers:

I tell my own children that no single word is entirely out of bounds. One must simply know the heft of each word, and use it appropriately. If that means employing discretion around archaic or racist terms, so be it. I don’t use “Negro” in day-to-day language. To this day, I still cringe at the sound of “Nigger” or “Nigga” in hip hop lyrics. But there is sometimes room to use painful language to reclaim our own history.

New Yorker blogger Ian Crouch has picked up on the story, comparing the burning of The Book of Negroes to a similar stunt perpetrated by radical Florida pastor Terry Jones, who torched a copy of the Koran earlier this year. In both cases, Crouch argues, totalitarian tactics are being used to scandalize the public. From The New Yorker‘s Book Bench blog:

[I]n Amsterdam, another small, passionate political group is using book-burning as a way of getting attention. The political motivations and desired ends are much different, but the means are precisely the same: spectacle, provocation, brutish and simple acts in response to complex issues.

Despite these similarities, though, the protest in Amsterdam does stand out as a rare example of a group with progressive political demands – in this case, the recognition of the ways in which the Netherlands benefited from the slave trade and a call to end contemporary discrimination – resorting to such an odiously reactionary practice…. Hill’s story, looked at more evenly, reminds us that attempts to control language by those who are eager to move society forward can be just as insidious as similar attempts by those who want to hold it back.

Book of Negroes to become feature film

When you consider how astoundingly well Lawrence Hill’s 2007 novel The Book of Negroes has been selling, it was probably inevitable that somebody would want to turn the book into a film. According to a press release Q&Q received today from Hill’s publisher, HarperCollins Canada, film rights have just been sold to noted canadian director Clement Virgo’s Conquering Lion Pictures. Virgo (Rude, Lie With Me) intends to direct the film himself.