Booksellers’ picks of the year: sports

Although it was released just last month, Cornered: Hijinks, Highlights, Late Nights and Insights (HarperCollins Canada) by Ron MacLean with Kirstie McLellan Day has quickly become one of Canada’s top sports titles of 2011.

Booksellers from coast to coast have seen the Hockey Night in Canada co-host’s memoir sell to a broad audience.

“That’s done really, really well,” says Ian Donker, manager of Book City in Toronto. “And I think it’s going to continue to do well.”

Another autobiography, Georges Laraque: The Story of the NHL’s Unlikeliest Tough Guy (Penguin Canada), written with Pierre Thibeault, is poised to join Cornered as another hit of the holiday season, says Michael Hamm, manager of Bookmark in Halifax.

“[Georges Laraque] is one of those sports books where the readership will expand into people who don’t normally follow hockey,” says Hamm. “It touches on wider subjects.” The book addresses topics including racism, animal rights, Haitian relief efforts, and drug use among athletes.

At Bookmark, local appeal has made Chris Cochrane’s Inside the Game: The Stories Behind Nova Scotia’s Sports Headlines (Nimbus Publishing) a top pick of 2011, Hamm adds.

Out West, Celebrating the 2010–2011 Season of the Vancouver Canucks (Fenn-M&S) by Andrew Podnieks has been a best bet this year, says Colin Holt, manager of Victoria’s Bolen Books – perhaps because 2011 was the Canucks’ first shot at the Stanley Cup since 1994, or because no list of Canadian sports lit would be complete without a heavy dose of hockey.

$10,000 Alberta prize now open to books published out of province

Organizers of the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, now in its third year, have taken steps to quiet a muted strain of controversy that has attached itself to the prize since its inception.

The $10,000 award, organized by the Edmonton Public Library and voted on by Alberta readers, had until now been open to all books published in Alberta, regardless of the author’s origin or city of residence. But Alberta authors who happened to be published outside the province – someone like, say, Scotiabank Giller Prize nominee Lynn Coady, who lives in Edmonton but is published by Toronto-based House of Anansi Press – would be ineligible for the award.

That is all going to change this year, judging by new criteria posted to the EPL website:

This year, works of fiction and narrative non-fiction (i.e., first edition full-length novels, short story collections or books of poetry) will be accepted by any author who has been a resident of Alberta for a minimum of 12 consecutive months immediately prior to the publication of the submitted work, and who currently resides in Alberta, no matter where the book was published. The change makes this truly an Alberta award and recognizes the exceptional writing talent in our province while encouraging readers to support Alberta authors.

As it turns out, both of the prize’s prior winners – Helen Waldstein Wilkes’ memoir Letters from the Lost (AU Press) and Michael Davie’s novel Fishing for Bacon (NeWest Press) – are by authors currently residing in B.C.

Fall preview 2011: Canadian fiction

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the fall season’s biggest books.

NOVELS

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall season is surely the new novel from internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, his first since 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award winner Divisadero. Set in the early 1950s, The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl., Sept.) tells the story of an 11-year-old boy crossing the Indian Ocean on a liner bound for England, and the mysterious prisoner shackled on board. • Also from M&S is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first novel in eight years. Set in the late 19th-century Canadian and American West, A Good Man ($32.99 cl., Sept.) is the third book in a loose trilogy that also includes The Last Crossing (2003) and The Englishman’s Boy, which won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. • A third GG winner has a new novel out this season: David Gilmour, who won in 2005 for his previous novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. Gilmour returns with The Perfect Order of Things (Thomas Allen Publishers, $26.95 cl., Sept.), the story of a man who revisits traumatic and life-changing incidents from his past.

Marina Endicott follows up her Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted 2008 novel Good to a Fault with The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), about three sisters who become vaudeville singers following the death of their father. • Acclaimed novelist Helen Humphreys returns with an historical novel set in France during the Napoleonic period. The Reinvention of Love (HarperCollins Canada, $29.99 cl., Sept.) is about a French journalist whose affair with Victor Hugo’s wife causes a scandal (as it might be expected to do).

Brian Francis’s debut novel, Fruit, was a runner-up in the 2009 edition of CBC’s battle of the books, Canada Reads. His second novel, Natural Order (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., Aug.), tells the story of a mother who is forced to confront the secrets she has kept about her son when her carefully constructed life is overturned by a startling revelation. • Kevin Chong returns to fiction with his first novel in a decade. Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95 pa., Sept.) follows an Asian-Canadian slacker in Vancouver whose incipient modelling career is derailed by the death of his father and the sudden departure of his fiancée.

Requiem (HarperCollins Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), the third novel from Frances Itani, is about a Japanese-Canadian who embarks upon a cross-country journey of discovery following the death of his wife. • Anita Rau Badami follows her best-selling novels Tamarind Mem and The Hero’s Walk with Tell It to the Trees (Knopf Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), about the Dharma family – the authoritarian Vikram, the gourmand Suman, and the old storyteller Akka. When the Dharmas’ tenant, Anu, turns up dead on their doorstep, the family’s long-buried secrets begin to boil over. • Gayla Reid returns with her first novel since 2002’s Closer Apart. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Come from Afar (Cormorant Books, $32 cl., Aug.) tells the story of an Australian nurse who falls into a relationship with a Canadian soldier from the International Brigade.

Haitian expat Dany Laferrière is back with his third novel in translation in three years. The Return (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 pa., Aug.) tells the story of a 23-year-old Haitian named Dany who flees Baby Doc Duvalier’s repressive regime and relocates to Montreal. Thirty-three years later, Dany learns of his father’s death in New York City, and plots a return to his native country. David Homel translates. • Another Montreal resident, poet Sina Queyras, has a novel out this fall, the author’s first. Autobiography of Childhood (Coach House Books, $20.95 pa., Oct.) is about one day in the lives of five siblings haunted by the death of a brother years before. • Infrared (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl., Sept.), the new novel by Nancy Huston, is about a photographer who travels to Tuscany with her father and stepmother. Employing internal dialogues with the photographer’s mental doppelgänger, Huston opens up her hero for exposure and provides an intimate picture of her interior life.

CanLit mainstay David Helwig returns with a novella, his first since 2007’s Smuggling Donkeys. Killing McGee (Oberon, $38.95 cl., $18.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a professor’s dual obsessions with the assassination of D’Arcy McGee and the disappearance of one of his students. • Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma (Invisible Publishing, $19.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning. • Shari Lapeña also has a novel about a perennial CanLit concern: raising money to allow one time to write poetry. Happiness Economics (Brindle & Glass, $19.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of a stalled poet who takes a job writing advertising copy to start a poetry foundation.

Jamaican-born novelist, poet, and non-fiction author Olive Senior returns to long-form fiction with Dancing Lessons (Cormorant, $22 pa., Aug.), about a woman looking back on her life after a hurricane destroys her home. • Memoirist Frances Greenslade (A Pilgrim in Ireland, By the Secret Ladder) has a debut novel out this August. Shelter (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl.) is a coming of age story about two sisters searching for their mother, who abandoned them after their father was killed in a logging accident.

Not one, but two novels this season extend the burgeoning CanLit focus on towns that have been/are about to be flooded (after Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Michael V. Smith’s Progress). Tristan Hughes’s Eye Lake (Coach House, $19.95 pa., Oct.) is about the town of Crooked River, Ontario. Named for a river that was diverted to make way for a mine, the town harbours secrets that surface when the river reclaims its original course. • And in September, Goose Lane Editions will publish Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned ($19.95 pa.), about the suspicions, secrets, and emotions that flare up when the township of Haverton is scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of a massive dam.

Edward Riche follows up his Thomas Head Raddall Award winner The Nine Planets with Easy to Like (House of Anansi Press, $29.95 cl., Sept.), a satire about a screenwriter and oenophile who dreams of travelling to Paris, but is trapped in Canada by an expired passport and a growing Hollywood scandal. Relocating to Toronto, he bluffs his way into the upper echelons of the CBC. • Former president and CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar was forced out of his position under a cloud of scandal after accusations of sexual harassment. Davidar’s new novel, Ithaca (M&S, $29.99 cl., Oct.), is, perhaps not coincidentally, about the rise and fall of a publishing star.

Canadian literary icon Michel Tremblay returns with a new novel, the first in a trilogy. Set in 1913, Crossing the Continent (Talonbooks, $18.95 pa., Oct.) takes the author’s characters out of Quebec for the first time, to tell the backstory of the people who populate his Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal series. Long-time Tremblay collaborator Sheila Fischman translates.

A resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, lately one of the most fertile spots for Canadian writing, Michelle Butler Hallett crafts genre-busting stories and novels that frequently experiment with gender and perspective. Her new novel, Deluded Your Sailors (Creative Book Publishing, $21.95 pa., Sept.), focuses on the culture industry from the perspective of Nichole Wright, who makes a discovery that puts a government-funded tourism project in jeopardy, and a shape-shifting minister named Elias Winslow. • Another Newfoundland native, Kate Story, has a novel out with Creative this season. The follow-up to 2008’s Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore ($21.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of Pearl Lewis, an emotionally damaged, charismatic woman who is seen at different stages in her life.

In 1972, Christina Parr returns to her hometown of Parr’s Landing, a place she fled years earlier. The dirty secret of Parr’s Landing? A 300-year-old vampire resides in the caves of the remote mining town. Christina learns why she should have stayed away in Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications, $17.95 pa., Oct.). • English literature professor Janey Erlickson struggles to make headway in her academic career while caring for a tyrannical toddler in Sue Sorensen’s comic novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books, $21 pa., Sept.). • Paul Brenner, a Vancouver lawyer, dines with his son, Daniel, one Friday evening. The next day, Brenner receives word that his son has been murdered. Hold Me Now (Freehand Books, $21.95 pa., Oct.), the first novel from Stephen Gauer, examines a father’s grief and a lawyer’s faith in the legal system.

SHORT FICTION

Anyone who has ever wondered what might transpire if the author of Bigfoot’s autobiography were to illustrate a story collection by Canada’s reigning postmodern ironist can stop wondering. October sees the publication of Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Random House Canada, $24 cl.), the first collaboration between author Douglas Coupland and well-known illustrator Graham Roumieu.

D.W. Wilson currently lives in London, England, but is a native of B.C.’s Kootenay Valley. The winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize Scholarship from the University of East Anglia, Wilson’s debut collection, Once You Break a Knuckle (Hamish Hamilton Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), is a suite of stories about good people doing bad things.

Novelist Anne DeGrace has her first collection of short stories on tap for September. Flying with Amelia (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl.) spans the 20th century and crosses vast swathes of territory. Wireless telegraphy, German POWs in Manitoba, the Great Depression, and the FLQ crisis all crop up in her stories. • David Whitton’s story “Twilight of the Gods” was included in the 2010 sci-fi anthology Darwin’s Bastards. The story also appears in Whitton’s first solo collection, The Reverse Cowgirl (Freehand, $21.95 pa., Oct.), which sports the most sexually suggestive title for a collection of CanLit stories since Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method.

Toronto writer Rebecca Rosenblum follows up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning debut collection Once (a Q&Q book of the year for 2009) with The Big Dream (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., Sept.), a collection of linked stories about the lives of workers at Dream, Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher. • The Maladjusted (Thistledown Press, $18.95 pa., Sept.), Toronto writer Derek Hayes’ debut collection, focuses on people who run afoul of the dictates of polite society. • Also from Thistledown, Britt Holmström’s Leaving Berlin ($18.95 pa., Sept.) examines contemporary women in both Canadian and European settings.

The fine print: Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have appeared in previous previews do not appear here.

Book links round-up: the Nabokovia butterfly, literary bandits, and more

• Patti Smith to collaborate with playwright John Logan on screenplay of her memoir Just Kids
• Odd things named after writers
• After five decades, a book of lost Dr. Seuss stories to hit shelves this September
• Rare book collector sparks debate over manuscript he says was written by famous outlaw Butch Cassidy
• A preview of fall books marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11

Book links round-up: Bloomsday celebrations, Asterix headaches, and more

• Celebrate Bloomsday in eight different ways
• Asterix books contain over 700 traumatic brain injury victims
• T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land beats out Marvel comics and the Bible as the week’s top-grossing iPad app
• Worldwide launch of Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table scheduled for the Edinburgh International Book Festival
• Veteran news anchor Lloyd Robertson to pen memoir for HarperCollins Canada

Writers’ Trust turns spotlight on political books

Spurred by the recent federal election, The Writers’ Trust of Canada has partnered with Samara, a non-profit organization that seeks to strengthen citizen engagement in Canada’s democratic system, to launch a project called The Best Canadian Political Books of the Last 25 Years.

In a press release, the WTOC describes the project as an opportunity to “highlight books that have captured the Canadian political imagination and contributed in a compelling and unique way to how Canadians understand a political issue, event, or personality” — and they want everyone to join in.

The public is encouraged to nominate their top three titles in Canadian politics via Samara’s online nomination form before June 23. A longlist will be announced July 1 (Canada’s most patriotic of day of the year, of course).  Throughout the month of July, Canadians will again be encouraged to vote and comment on the list, with the winning books announced Aug. 1.

WTOC and Samara have asked a few notable Canadian political writers and activists to nominate their favourite books. Here are a some of the titles already in the ring:

Anna Porter’s Nominees:
• The Player: The Life & Times of Dalton Camp by Geoffrey Stevens
• Harperland: The Politics of Control by Lawrence Martin
• Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism by Paul Wells

Terry Fallis’s Nominees:
• King John of Canada by Scott Gardiner
• Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography by Chester Brown
• Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume II: 1968–2000 by John English

Tim Cook’s Nominees:
• The Worldly Years: Life of Lester Pearson, Volume II: 1949–1972 by John English
• Memoirs: 1939–1993 by Brian Mulroney
• Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World into the 1990s by J. L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer

Canadian literary event round-up: June 3-9

Here are just a few of the literary events happening across the country in the coming week:

• Canadian Women in Afghanistan presents Fawzia Koofi reading from her memoir Letter to My Daughters, John Dutton Theatre, Calgary (June 3, 7 p.m., registration required)
• Children’s rights activist Craig Kielburger reads from his new book Lessons From a Street Kid, Me to We, Toronto (June 4, 10 a.m., free, RSVP)
• Dialogic Series on the writings of poet and editor Dr. John Asfour with Professor Norman Cornett, Lallouz, Montreal (June 6, 6 p.m., $25, $15 f0r students and seniors)
• Joel Thomas Hynes will launch his new chapbook God Help Thee: A Manifesto, The Ship Pub, St. John’s (June 7, 7:30 p.m., free)
• Elisabeth Mann Borgese, Paul Kennedy, and ocean-inspired writers Kathy Mac and Donna Morrissey celebrate Oceans Day, Scotiabank Auditorium, Dalhousie University, Halifax (June 8, 7 p.m., free)
• Andre Gerard read from Fathers: A Literary Anthology, McNally Robinson Booksellers, Saskatoon (June 9, 7:30 p.m., free)

Behind the scenes with D&M Publishers’ award-winning design team

In April, the design team for D&M Publishers swept the annual Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, receiving 13 prizes in total. In the June issue of Q&Q, the team discusses the process behind their award-winning book designs.

I Am a Japanese Writer, by Dany Laferrière
I wanted to play ironically with the melding of cultures and cultural stereotypes, as Dany does in the text. I thought of making a Japanese voodoo doll. It took a while to source a head for the doll. I ordered this one from Japan, and then I had to hand-stitch the body. It’s made of burlap, stuffed with fabric scraps, and it’s about a foot high. I don’t really know how to sew, and burlap isn’t the easiest thing to stitch, so the back of the doll is kind of a mess. The photo is by John Sherlock. – Peter Cocking, art director

The Divinity Gene, by Matthew J. Trafford
I was obsessing over illustrators who specialize in hand-lettering and was waiting for an opportunity to use that aesthetic on a cover. This seemed like the perfect fit: a book of quirky, fun short stories. My first design was a type-only illustration layered atop of a string of linked paper dolls I cut out and scanned. The author and publisher felt it was too stark. I reworked the concept and began to draw characters and bits and pieces from each story, including my original string of paper dolls, which I was loath to see die. I even illustrated the author photo. – Jessica Sullivan, senior designer

Cigar Box Banjo, by Paul Quarrington
It was daunting being asked to tackle the cover of Paul Quarrington’s memoir, especially because I hadn’t designed that many books before. I decided to focus on the aesthetics of Cuban cigar boxes because they have the lively exuberance I felt celebrated Quarrington’s achievements. The decorative ribbons provided a perfect opportunity to express the melodic nature of his career by doubling them up as music bars.
– Heather Pringle, junior designer

Vij’s at Home, by Meeru Dhalwala and Vikram Vij
There was talk of doing something textural to tie in with the first Vij’s cookbook. The warm, inviting wood table – central to the authors’ family meals – seemed like the perfect backdrop, especially because most of the interior food images were shot against it. The authors, Peter Cocking, photographer John Sherlock, and I worked together to stage the shot. The modern type treatment was chosen to balance the photo’s delicate elegance and to match the interior design.
– Naomi MacDougall, designer

Book links round-up: Sarah Palin is not one of the Common people, Random House U.K. signs to agency model, and more

• Sarah Palin creates “outrage” over the White House inviting rapper Common to its Evening of Poetry
• Random House U.K. signs to agency model, with over 6,000 titles to appear in the iBookstore
• E-bookseller iFlow shuts down, blames Apple for its “eviction notice”
• Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan to write a spiritual memoir
• Veteran N.Y.C. book editor Robert Loomis retires at the age of 84

Book links round-up: publishers become sellers, John Cleese pays for divorce with memoir, and more

• Is Amazon forcing publishers to become booksellers?
• John Cleese is writing a memoir to pay for his divorce
• The Men Who Stare at Goats author Jon Ronson delves into the world of the psychopath
• Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson faces class-action lawsuit
• Will Farrell stars in Everything Must Go, adapted from a Raymond Carver short story