Carmen Aguirre wins CBC Canada Reads

Carmen Aguirre came out victorious at this year’s CBC Canada Reads. The B.C.-based author and playwright’s memoir, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (Douglas & McIntyre), about growing up in the underground among South American revolutionaries during the 1970s, beat out Ken Dryden’s The Game (Wiley Canada), the former Habs goalie’s recollections of pro hockey and a very different version of the ’70s.

Something Fierce defender Shad had his work cut out for him, winning three votes to two against The Game’s champion, Alan Thicke, Thursday morning at the CBC studios in Toronto. The hip-hop artist was backed by Arlene Dickinson and Anne-France Goldwater (one of the rare instances when these two panelists agreed), while Thicke was seconded by Stacey McKenzie. The final showdown proved to be one of the tamest panels yet in a contest that included allegations of lying, bullying, terrorism, and lots of tears (we’re looking at you, Stacey).

Aguirre, who is currently touring her one-woman show, Blue Box, called into the studio from Ottawa after she heard the news. “It was a very interesting week for me because I’m alone in Ottawa right now,” she said. “I’d had to go every night to do my 80-minute monologue and then not sleep at night because I was waiting to see what will happen the next morning, but I’ve had a lot of virtual support.”

The Game and Something Fierce (a Q&Q Book of the Year for 2011), were the last titles standing after one by one panelists voted off Dave Bidini’s On a Cold Road (McClelland & Stewart), John Vaillant’s The Tiger (Vintage Canada), and Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran (Penguin Canada).

D&M is preparing for the expected increase in sales, often referred to as the “Canada Reads effect,” with a reprint of the book. As part of its participation in the contest, the publisher will make a financial donation to Frontier College’s Aboriginal Literacy Program.

Something Fierce will be released in the U.S. in August.

Toronto Public Library Board balks at 10 per cent budget cut

Last night, in its final meeting of the year, the Toronto Public Library Board approved a cut of 5.9 per cent to its 2012 operating budget. The 2012 budget now stands at just over $164 million, though more cuts may be on the way.

Going into budget negotiations, Mayor Rob Ford required all city services to slash their operating costs by 10 per cent. The TPL board has struggled to find savings. Recently, it shot down a recommendation by chief librarian Jane Pyper to reduce hours and collections at certain branches, and last night they passed on her last-ditch proposal to end bookmobile services, as well as literacy and student outreach programming. To increase revenues, the board voted for higher auditorium and room rental fees, a new fee for materials on hold that go unclaimed, and the phasing in of four new automated sorters.

The decision comes as a surprise, reports The Globe and Mail, in part because the mayor virtually appointed the library board to implement his financial vision:

“I simply can’t support a reduction in hours,” said [board member and City Councillor Jaye] Robinson. “I think in January you will find most of council backing this up and supporting keeping libraries open and accessible.”

While a board-room packed with library staff celebrated, [board chair Councillor Paul] Ainslie didn’t hold back his disappointment. “As far as I’m concerned, a majority of the board just abrogated their duties, shirked their responsibilities,” he said.

“I’m fully expecting the city manager to be furious, I think the mayor’s going to be furious, I think the budget committee will be furious, I’m furious.”

The budget now goes before the City of Toronto budget and executive committees before approval by City Council in January. The next TPL board meeting is scheduled for Jan. 30, 2012.

Toronto library board leaves room for more staff cuts

Earlier this week, the Toronto Public Library Board made clear its opposition to reducing hours and closing branches, but left itself open to additional staff, collection, and programming cuts.

At a meeting that stretched over five hours and saw more than 100 community members in overflow seating, the library board discussed its options for attaining a 4.3 per cent cut to its 2012 operating budget in order to reach the 10 per cent total reduction demanded by Mayor Rob Ford. The board had previously approved eliminating 100 full-time staff positions and implementing new technologies, amounting to a savings of $9.7 million, or 5.7 per cent of the budget. On Monday, chief librarian Jane Pyper proposed trimming hours at 59 of the system’s 98 branches and shaving from collections to bridge the remaining gap.

According to the Toronto Star, board members rejected any changes to service hours, claiming it would go against public interest. Pyper assured that cuts would otherwise come from adult literacy, home library, and homework programs. “If the board’s top priority is to preserve branch open hours [...] we have to look at programs we have tried to protect which generally speak to children and those who are less able to access our services,” Pyper says in The Globe and Mail.

The board did pass a motion to increase room rental fees for library auditoriums, theatres, and meeting rooms, and told Pyper to hit on more money-generating options, such as raising overdue fines, introducing new charges for failing to collect items on hold, paid parking spots, and sponsorship. (Pyper has already dismissed many of these as ineffective.)

TPL Workers Union president Maureen O’Reilly, who presented a deputation at the meeting, says the night took a surprising turn when a board member tabled a motion requesting Pyper to look into dropping 60 additional full-time jobs. O’Reilly says chair Paul Ainslie improperly permitted the motion to proceed considering another motion had already been put to the floor calling for no further cuts to the library budget (a recommendation that was unanimously approved by the board’s own budget committee on Nov. 1). O’Reilly says the chair’s action flouted procedure and compounded the sense of disconnect between the board’s decision-makers and the community.

The board will meet next on Dec. 12. In the meantime, it will continue its public survey and wrap up a month-long series of public consultations Friday evening at the Bloor/Gladstone branch. City councillors Mike Layton and Ana Bailao will be in attendance from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Endicott to launch Good Reads series on International Literacy Day

Good Reads, a partnership between Edmonton’s Grass Roots Press and ABC Life Literacy Canada, is set to release its second series of books for adult literacy learners. For 2011, the series of short titles written in an accessible language and easy to read format will feature titles by Marina Endicott, Joy Fielding, Robert Hough, Anthony Hyde, and Francis Itani.

Endicott will launch her book, New Year’s Eve, on Sept. 8, UNESCO’s International Literacy Day, in Edmonton.

The inaugural Good Reads list included Easy Money by financial adviser and TV personality Gail Vaz-Oxlade. The book was a surprise hit, spending a few weeks on Canadian bestseller lists.

Daily book biz round-up: Mankell still missing; Rick Warren goes AWOL; and more

All the news, none of the calories:

• Henning Mankell’s exact whereabouts still unknown
• Jeff Bezos to Princeton grads: be as awesome as I am
• Rick Warren’s highly anticipated follow-up to Purpose Driven Life to be postponed indefinitely
• A look inside the Pope’s dusty private library
• Dave Eggers takes his acclaimed literacy centres to London
• The Montreal Gazette looks at last weekend’s Anarchist Bookfair

The Big Read

Three years after its launch, New York City’s the Big Read (itself a spawn of “What If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,” launched 10 years ago) has spawned smaller, community-based undertakings, with thousands of readers enjoying everything from literary classics like The Grapes of Wrath to modern bestsellers like The Joy Luck Club to slightly less widely read (but still well-known) gems like Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl, which was “inspired by the real-life murder of a Jewish baby in a Nazi concentration camp,” according to its author in The New York Times.

Canada has similar programs, such as One Book, One Community, but anything, anywhere, that gets a dozen (or more) people reading – and to enjoy what they’re reading – is a good thing.

Literacy organization eyes Guinness World Record

Family Literacy Day isn’t officially until next Tuesday, but to help draw attention to the cause, the literacy organization ABC CANADA is boldly attempting to set a new Guinness World Record. Beginning at 2 p.m. today and running for the next 24 hours, people from across the country have been reading aloud from Robert Munsch’s Munschworks 2 (published by Annick Press) with the aim of toppling the current record for “Most Children Reading with an Adult, Multiple Locations.” From the release:

To date, over 900 events, with an estimated 158,000 participants at locations across the country, have been registered online in the attempt to break the current U.S. record of 78,791 adults and children reading together.

Canadian kids’ authors on long longlist for rich Swedish prize

Two Canadian storytellers and one Nova Scotia literacy group are in the running for the world’s richest children’s literary prize. Ottawa kids’ novelist Brian Doyle, Quebec author and illustrator Marie-Louise Gay, and Read to Me!, a family literacy program, have all been nominated for the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, worth about $800,000 (or 5-million Swedish crowns).

It’s still too early for the Canadian candidates to get their hopes up, however, as there are 150 other nominees on the list. The winner, whose work “upholds the highest artistic quality and evokes the deeply humanistic spirit that Astrid Lindgren treasured,” will be announced in March, with an awards gala in May. Past winners include Philip Pullman, Maurice Sendak, and Sonya Hartnett.

The international prize was founded in 2002 after the death of Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking.

Engel’s Benny Cooperman gets a new look

Author Howard Engel’s novels starring private investigator Benny Cooperman have been given an updated look and will be revisiting bookstore shelves, Robert Fulford reports in the National Post.

Penguin has re-launched the first 11 Cooperman books in paperback with a lively new design and a number emblazoned on the spine of each volume, so that obsessive Cooperman fans can shelve them in order of their creation, from No. 1, The Suicide Murders (1980), to No. 11, Memory Book (2005). This is an exceptional publishing event, something the French might do while promoting someone for a shot at the Nobel. Nobody has done it before, on this scale, for a Canadian.

Engel himself suffered great tragedy – a stroke left him unable to read and struggling with memory problems, as happens to his main character in Memory Book.

By now Engel’s own story has been well told. In 2001, he had a stroke in his sleep and awoke to discover he couldn’t read anything, even The Globe and Mail. He had a rare condition: Aside from the loss of literacy, his memory was damaged, but he could still write and talk. Ever since he’s been re-learning to read while maintaining his literary career. It seemed natural to give Benny his own disabilities, though Benny had to acquire them through violence because no PI, even Benny, has anything so boring as a stroke.

Bookmarks: learning to read at the Bush Library, borrowing people instead of books, and picking the right beer for the book

Some book-related links:

• Bush Library to be base for literacy and education, says Laura Bush* (The Dallas Morning News)
• A library where you can borrow people instead of books (InfoSpeak.org)
• We’ve picked the right wine for a book, but what about the right beer? (Omnivoracious)
• Are comic books good for you? (Popmatters)
• Bonus Tween Content: Miley Cyrus to write memoir (Stuff)

* she then said: “What? What’s so funny?”