B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction finalists announced

The B.C. Achievement Foundation has announced the shortlist for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction.

Chosen from a longlist of 10 titles, the finalists are:

• Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism by Joel Yanofsky (Viking Canada)

• The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery by Andrew Westoll (HarperCollins Canada)

• Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill (Greystone Books)

• Human Happiness by Brian Fawcett (Thomas Allen Publishers)

Gill’s Eating Dirt was nominated earlier this year for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction. Last month, Bad Animals won the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction.

The winner, who will receive $40,000, will be announced Feb. 6 in Vancouver.

Mavis wasn’t crazy about Mordecai

Here’s an excerpt from the interview Jhumpa Lahiri did with Mavis Gallant in the new issue of Granta. (We just thought it was funny…)

MG: I remember one of the people around in that winter of 1950-51, and who I moved to the Right Bank to get away from, was Mordecai Richler. He was a bit of a brat. He was much younger. I’d met him in Montreal.

[...]

That winter everyone in the world was around Paris that I knew, practically. And I realized he didn’t like it at all. For one thing, he couldn’t speak any French. Though he came from Montreal, he couldn’t say, “Pass the salt.” He couldn’t say anything.

[...]

One day Mordecai came drifting over and he sat down and he grabbed the book out of my hand that I was reading. It was The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen’s great novel.

[...]

And he read some in a mocking voice. A mocking English voice that he didn’t do very well. And he said, “You know, if you go on reading this crap you’re never going to get anywhere.” So I just took the book back.

Bookmarks: Lahiri vs. Gallant, Calvin and Hobbes, Elizabeth Gilbert, and more

Some bookish links:

• The National Post reports on Jhumpa Lahiri’s 53-page interview with Mavis Gallant in the summer 2009 issue of Granta, a back-and-forth battle in which Lahiri constantly works to make her presence felt, making readers wonder who is actually interviewing whom.
• Author Nevin Martell offers comic book fans a free sample chapter from his upcoming book Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip.
• In a video at Salon, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talks about her creative process and the changing roles of women writers.
• David Barnett from the Guardian‘s book blog hilariously rejects the idea of Borders’ new online dating service.
• “Thirty years ago, ‘Ivy League romance writer’ was like ‘jumbo shrimp’ — an oxymoron.” USA Today profiles smart women who write trashy books.

Canada Reads kicks off

This year’s edition of Canada Reads kicks off today with new host Jian Ghomeshi. By the end of the day, one of the five books in contention will be voted off the list – will Tiff Findley not be wanted on the voyage? Will the panellists be leary of Paul Quarrington? Will Thomas Wharton’s frozen mythmaking be consigned to the icefields? (Will puns on book titles be punishable by beheading?)

Either way, it all begins today.

If you are looking for discussion-of-the-discussion, Q&Q contributors Alex Good and Steven Beattie are blogging Canada Reads over at Beattie’s That Shakespeherian Rag.

(Furthermore, will Nalo Hopkinson be the only one left in the ring? Will Mavis Gallant, uh, something something fifteenth district?)