A new twist on the Canada Reads spin-off trend

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the CBC must be feeling pretty good right now. Just in case you can’t get enough of the various spin-offs of the CBC’s Canada Reads competition – including the National Post’s Canada Also Reads and literary blog Pickle Me This’ Canada Reads Independently – the Keepin’ It Real Book Club has just announced their very own adaptation, called Civilians Read.

However, instead of offering yet another new booklist for readers to take on, Civilians Read uses the original CBC Canada Reads list, with lesser-known book lovers defending each title. The “civilian” panelists include:

• Erin Balser, senior editor for Books@Torontoist, defending Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony
• Nic Boshart, digital projects co-ordinator for the Association of Canadian Publishers, defending Nicholas Dickner’s Nikolski
• Sarah Labrie, project co-ordinator for the Association of Canadian Publishers, defending Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault
• Ashleigh Gardner, manager of digital development for Dundurn Press, defending Douglas Coupland’s Generation X
• Natalie St. Pierre, freelance editor and assistant to a literary agent, defending Ann-Marie Macdonald’s Fall On Your Knees

From the Keepin’ It Real Book Club:

We don’t have any training on the radio. We don’t have professional equipment. It’s going to be a little rough and tumble — it’ll likely lack finesse, basic courtesy, and a catchy theme song. But hopefully we’ll also say some smart things, spark some interesting discussion, and determine how weighty the panelist-X factor is.

All discussions will be hosted by Jen Knoch, associate editor at ECW Press and the main blogger at the KIRBC website. The Civilians Read panelists will release one podcast per day starting March 1, leading up to the official Canada Reads debate itself, which runs March 8-12.

National Post reveals finalists for Canada Also Reads competition

The eight books and panelists for the National Post’s Canada Also Reads book competition – created to put a spotlight on lesser-known books ignored by CBC’s Canada Reads – were announced today. Two Q&Q staffers, Zoe Whittall and Steven W. Beattie, will be defending their choices on the panel, alongside six other authors, poets, and even one singer/songwriter.

The Post’s Mark Medley created anticipation for the event by live-tweeting in the moments leading up to the reveal, offering hints such as “one of the books is set near some famous falls” and “one of the finalists had two of her novels long-listed.” After announcing that the final post was being spell-checked, and admitting that they were milking this build-up for all it was worth, the results were finally posted on the Post’s Afterword book blog. Here’s the full list:

• Steven W. Beattie defends My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Author Tish Cohen (Inside Out Girl, Town House) defends The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan (HarperCollins Canada)
• Singer/songwriter Andy Maize (Skydiggers) defends Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis (McClelland & Stewart)
• Poet Jacob McArthur Mooney (The New Layman’s Almanac) defends The Last Shot by Leon Rooke (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Blogger John Mutford defends Yellowknife by Steve Zipp (Res Telluris)
• Author Lisa Pasold (Rats of Las Vegas) defends You and The Pirates by Jocelyne Allens (The Workhorsery)
• Author Neil Smith (Bang Crunch) defends Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant (Knopf Canada)
• Zoe Whittall (Holding Still for as Long as Possible) defends Fear of Fighting by Stacey May Fowles (Invisible Publishing)

According to the Afterword, while the blog is “a fan of what Canada Reads has done to promote CanLit, we figured this would be a great opportunity to help shine a light on some of the books sitting in the shadows.” Starting March 1, the Afterword will post two panelists’ defences of their chosen novels each day. On March 8, it will host a live chat with all the panelists and authors. The winner will be chosen via a public poll.

Readers salivate over Salinger’s unpublished manuscripts

J.D. Salinger has been dead a scant five days, but already people are clamouring for his unpublished work to be made available. In a 1974 interview (one of the few the famously reclusive author ever gave), Salinger said, “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” And the prospect that the author was writing – and not publishing – has fans all a-twitter at the notion that there may be new work forthcoming once the vaults are thrown open.

Writing on the National Post‘s Afterword blog, novelist Andrew Kaufman suggests (with tongue firmly in cheek) that he and a group of “co-conspirators” are going to descend on New Hampshire for the purpose of “stealing J.D. Salinger’s filing cabinet.”

We just can’t wait any longer. Mr. Salinger may have only [just] passed on … but it’s been 16,296 days since he’s published anything. We’ve received no new family dramas from the Glasses, nothing about Holden dropping out of college or backpacking through India, not even a chuckle from the Laughing Man. But Salinger, so the legend goes, turned his back not on writing but publishing. Joyce Maynard who lived with Salinger after his self-imposed literary exile claims he’s completed at least two full novels. Margaret Salinger, his sister, stated that Salinger kept a detailed filing system, one that’s even colour coded to let future editors know what to publish and how to publish it.

In a more serious vein, entertainment lawyer Michael Levine tells the Toronto Star that Salinger’s unpublished work represents a potential “gold mine”:

“The interest and enthusiasm in the academic community and in the trade community remains profound. Sixty-five million copies of The Catcher in the Rye have sold. Whatever the quality of the subsequent manuscripts, there would be interest,” Levine said.

All of which may be true, but Quillblog would like to caution Salinger’s many fans about the dangers of being overly enthusiastic. Posthumously published work by renowned authors is not always everything it’s cracked up to be.

Daniel O’Thunder to kick off National Post’s online book club

Earlier today, the folks at the National Post‘s books blog unveiled the inaugural selection for their newly launched virtual book club, known as The Afterword Reading Society. The chosen work is first-time B.C. novelist Ian Weir’s Daniel O’Thunder (Douglas & McIntyre), an off-kilter historical novel set in Victorian London about an evangelical boxer who challenges the devil to a round of bare-knuckle boxing (see Q&Q‘s review of Daniel O’Thunder).

Beginning on Feb. 2, a panel comprising Post staffers, as well as novelist Craig Davidson (author of the boxing novel The Fighter) and books blogger Erin Balser, will host weekly online discussions and live chats with the author. These virtual discussions will culminate on March 9 with a Q&A session with Weir at Ben McNally books in Toronto.

Eye Weekly launches new book club

When Oprah announced last November that she is calling it quits in 2011, publishers blessed by the mojo of the daytime television doyenne’s eponymous book club started biting their collective nails, wondering where they would get such valuable free publicity in the future.

While it likely won’t boast Oprahesque numbers, the Toronto-based alternative newspaper eye Weekly announced today that it is inaugurating a monthly book club, called Pop Fiction.

Each month, on Mondays, the club will debate a single title, with the book’s author taking part in the final week to respond to our praises, or our criticisms. Over the first few months of the year, expect visits from Canadian greats like Yann Martel and Andrew Kaufman as well as new voices on the international scene, like Eleanor Catton and Kathleen Winter.

(Quillblog is puzzled about the “international” nature of Newfoundland-based writer Winter, but never mind.)

The book club is hosted by author and eye Weekly book columnist Brian Joseph Davis, and features poet and Toronto bookstore staffer Kyle Buckley, blogger and Penguin Canada publicity assistant Bronwyn Kienapple, eye Weekly staff writer Chandler Levack, and editor of the National Post‘s Afterword blog Mark Medley.

The first book on the club’s agenda is Gil Adamson’s Help Me, Jacques Cousteau. Discussion of this title kicks off one week from today.

The publishing industry – this week in quotes

“We are not going to be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is. We are not going to be deprived of what generations and generations have produced in the French language just because we weren’t capable of funding our own digitisation project.” – Nikolas Sarkozy, on France vs. Google, in The London Telegraph

“Poets always react to one another’s work. One generator of great poetry is the response of one poet to a provocative poem by another. That’s how the conversation with the past and tradition occurs, but it’s also how the conversation with the present occurs.” – poet A.F. Moritz, on editing The Best Canadian Poetry (Tightrope Books) in the National Post

“Numerous books, which aren’t available electronically, end up pirated. Attempting to prevent piracy by not making a book electronically available won’t stop the book from showing up as a pirated material, but it will show a lack of willingness to meet the demands of a hungry audience.” – P. Bradley Robb, responding to Sherman Alexie’s appearance on the Colbert Report, on Fiction Matters

“Doug may not recall this, but I remember him strolling into our art department at St. Martin’s Press in New York, looking (aside from the preppy sweater) like any of the other young, jeans-clad designers there. He was quiet spoken and it was the most casual of exchanges, but seeing him added a slight electrical charge to the project: he was our age. One of us. Books quite like this – about, conceived and designed by twentysomethings – hadn’t come around very often. Let’s face it, ever. There was a moment of glee as I realized the possibilities. I could go to town with the design or deliberately underplay, knowing that the team would’”get’ whatever cultural references I toyed with.” – Book designer Judith Stagnitto Abbate on designing Generation X, from the CBC Canada Reads blog

Forget Oprah, now it’s the Tiger Effect

A formerly obscure title, Get a Grip on Physics by U.K. professor John Gribbin, has experienced an increase in sales after a photo of Tiger Woods’ car accident revealed the book lying among the wreckage.

According to The Independent, the book has jumped to 2,268th on the Amazon bestsellers list from 396,224th the previous day.

From the article:

“This is one of my older and lesser known books – a guide to new physics for non-scientists. I can only guess that Tiger has been interested in the various stories about the Large Hadron Collider, and wanted to learn more. Several of my books have been doing better than usual this year,” Dr. Gribbin said yesterday.

The National Post has compiled reader comments from Gribbin’s Amazon page relating to Woods’ accident, such as:

“Just a warning, that although this book really does help you get a grip on physics, it should not be read while driving, especially at 2:30 am” 

The 2003 book is now out of print, and although Dr. Gribbin is delighted that people are reading his books, he wishes they were reading one that is in print.

Bookmarks: The Advent Book Blog helps you shop, The National Post picks a shadow Canada Reads list, and more

• Richard Lea at the Guardian blog: If you can’t get Roth, Palin, or Rowling on the Kindle, what can you get?
• David Suzuki’s garbage gets combed through for incriminating Kraft Dinner boxes, and now archeologists are looking at what the Bard may have tossed away
• The L.A. Times picks their 25 favourite books of the year and actually selects some – gasp – poetry! That provoked a hearty booyah from this cubicle
• Web 2.0 marketing guru and Bookmadam Julie Wilson has teamed up with Books on the Radio‘s Sean Cranbury to offer the Advent Book Blog: Great Books Recommended by Great People
• Those funny book blog dudes at the National Post noted this year’s Canada Reads pics and wondered, what should Canada also read? Get your answers in by 5:00 p.m. this afternoon and maybe you’ll be able to participate in the alterna-reads version of the popular CBC book debate show

Bookmarks: Going Rogue mistakes, aliens and werewolves, Xbox Bibles, and more

A few bookish links from around the Web:

• Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir hits shelves today. Palin tells Oprah in an unused clip from yesterday’s interview that “logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a real difficult exercise to write the book” (via GalleyCat) 
• The Associated Press has compiled a list of the errors found in Going Rogue
• Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight empire series, also sat on Oprah’s couch in a rare public appearance last Friday. In an unused clip (via Entertainment Weekly), Meyer admits to being “a little burned out by vampires” and says that she “may go spend some time with … aliens.” 
• For those of you sick of everything vampire, Bookgasm offers a werewolf alternative in David Wellington’s Frostbite 
• The New Oxford American Dictionary‘s Word of the Year is “unfriend,” which is defined as: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”  Runners-up for the title included “hashtag,” “sexting,” “teabagger,” and “tramp stamp”
• The future is digital: the National Post reports that students at Toronto’s Blyth Academy will all receive a Sony Reader to replace those stuffy old textbooks of yore 
• How would you like your Bible?  Handwritten or on your Xbox? 

Douglas Coupland really does like the Canada Council

Douglas Coupland has called himself the world’s worst worrier, and apparently the thing he’s been fretting about lately is an inaccuracy that appeared in the National Post. In the article in question, crime novelist William Deverell draws on a recent op-ed penned by Coupland to bolster his argument that Canadian readers suffer from what he describes as a “national snobbery disorder.” From Deverell’s article:

The New York Times recently ran Douglas Coupland’s scathing critique of Canadian literary pretentiousness: “There is a grimness about CanLit,” he wrote, in which typically authors are supported by the government “to write about small towns and/or the immigrant experience.” Coupland refuses to accept Canada Council money.

Coupland wants to set the record straight: whatever his feelings about the state of CanLit, he happily supports the Canada Council. Earlier today, he sent out a mass e-mail correcting the misperception. The complete missive is below:

Hi everyone. Sorry for the mass email but it’s important to me. Here’s a letter I wrote to the National Post an hour ago.

Hi Post,

A puzzled friend forwarded to me your September 14 piece on publishing in Canada that I hadn’t read. Glitch! Fact is, I really do support the Canada Council – and have done well by them throughout the years. The Council helps creative people at all phases of their careers and is also critical in helping artists and writers and performers abroad as well as domestically. Could you publish this for me? I’d been wondering why certain people were being weird to me in some situations and now I know the reason. Otherwise all is well, and thank you for your support over the years. And please keep writing about publishing. It’s an interesting moment in its history.

Keep well,

Yours,

Douglas Coupland

That should do it. In case you’re wondering, here is what Coupland actually said about the Canada Council in The New York Times:

I’m a big fan of subsidization of the arts. Without subsidization, CanLit couldn’t exist for 10 minutes. Canada is an extravagantly huge and underpopulated country with no economy of scale. Maintaining an identity is expensive, period — thus the need for money in the arts. And I think the Canadian government ought to be hurling 10 times as much cash at literary arts in general, CanLit as much as anything else.