The Buzz...About Books

Toronto Book Awards Shortlist Announced

The Toronto Book Awards Shortlist was revealed earlier today. Five books were selected from 75 submissions.

The award was established by city council in 1974 to honour authors and books evocative of Toronto. Fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry are eligible for this award.

2012 Finalists:

Copernicus Avenue by Andrew Borkowski
The Polish citizens living in the fictional Copernicus Avenue neighbourhood adjust to the challenges of mid-20th century Toronto while struggling to balance tradition and modern life in this collection of short stories.

Paramita, Little Black by Suzanne Robertson
Robertson's poetry explores themes of personal transformation and enlightenment along with the conflicting desires for love and autonomy in modern society. The collection was a finalist for the 2012 Gerald Lampert Award.

Six Metres of Pavement by Farzana Doctor
Ismail Boxwala spends his days working, his nights drinking, always trying to deal with the guilt he feels over the death of his daughter. Unexpectedly he finds himself befriending two women and discovers an opportunity for redemption and even love. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for General Lesbian Fiction.

Writing Gordon Lightfoot: the Man, the Music, and the World in 1972 by Dave Bidini
Although Bidini envisioned writing a biography of Gordon Lightfoot, the singer was not willing to cooperate. Instead Bidini examines Lightfoot in the context of Canada in 1972, an era of great change and a closer look at the 1972 Mariposa Folk Festival where Lightfoot performed alongside Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

Writing the Revolution by Michele Landsberg
Groundbreaking columnist Landsberg wrote about women's issues at a time when they were rarely featured in major newspapers. This collection of columns written between 1978 and 2003 act as a history of this critical era, with new commentary from the author about events and personalities of the time.

The winner will be announced on October 11, 2012.

Tired of the Tudors?? Try some other novels about historical royal women.

While I enjoy all different kinds of fiction, historical fiction is my favourite genre.  I love learning about different times and places while enjoying a good story.

The women of England's Tudor period seem to have been dominating the historical fiction genre for the last few years.  Philippa Gregory's novels  The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance, about the wives of Henry VIII, have been very, very popular.   The Other Boleyn Girl was even made into a movie.  Even Margaret George has returned to this time period with her new novel, Elizabeth I.  Of course, the television series The Tudors has played a large part in this resurgence of interest in this time period.

 

If you've watched television series and read some of the books, you may feel the need for a change from 16th century England.  If that is the case, try one of these books about other historical royal women from different places and/or times who are not as well as known as Henry VIII's six wives.

 

Equal of the Sun by Anita Amirrezvani.  Still the 16th century, but this book takes place in Iran.   It is the story of Princess Pari, the daughter of the Shah.  Smart and independent, she is very aware of her own skills and capabilities.  She takes over running the court when her father dies as she waits for her brother to arrive to be crowned.  Unfortunately he interprets this as a threat.   The story is told by her closest advisor, Javaher, who became a eunuch so that he could serve the court and find out the truth about his father's death. 

 

The Last Queen by C. W. Gortner is the story of Juana of Castile, who is known to history as Juana la Loca.  Juana was an elder sister of Katherine of Aragon and daughter or Ferninand and Isabella of Spain.   She was married to Philip, Archduke of Flanders, heir to the Holy Roman Empire.   While her marriage began well, it all turned terribly wrong when she inherited the throne of Spain and ended up fighting with her husband for control of her country.   This well-told and well-research novel gives some insight into this misunderstood (and unfortunately nicknamed) Queen.  The Last Queen is also available in Large Print.  Gortner's lastest book is The Queen's Vow: a novel of Isabella of Castile.

 

Empress Orchid by Anchee Min.  Set in China in the dying days of the Empire, this is the story of Tzu Hsi, who was called Orchid as a girl.  Starting out as a minor concubine in the Forbidden City, she takes matters into her own hands and seduces the Emperor.  A love affair is begun and Orchid soon bears a son and is elevated to Empress.  However, all she has worked for is at risk when the Emperor dies.  It is also available in Large Print, Audiobook, and eAudiobook.  Orchid's story continues in Last Empress, which is also available in eAudiobook and Talking Book (for Print Disabled patrons only).

 

The Scarlet Contessa : A Novel of the Italian Renaissance  by Jeanne Kalogridis is the story of Caterina Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan and wife of the conniving Count Girolamo Riario. Caterina was an impressive woman.  She ruled her own lands, fought her own battles, and openly took lovers whenever she pleased.  Her remarkable tale is told by her lady-in-waiting, Dea, a woman knowledgeable in reading the “triumph cards,” the predecessor of modern-day tarot cards.

 

The Forever Queen : Sometimes, A Desperate Kingdom is in Need of One Great Woman by Helen Hollick.  This has the most intriguing subtitle I've seen in a while.  While this book takes us back to England, it is to pre-Conquest Saxon England.  It is the story of Emma of Normandy, the Queen of King Aethelred of England, who must take control of the kingdom when it threatened by Danish Viking invaders.

 

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran is the story of Nefertari of Egypt, Consort to Ramses II.  A  devastating palace fire has killed the royal family,  except for Nefertari.   With her deceased family branded as heretical, Nefertari is left to run wild in the palace. Her life changes when she is taken under the wing of the Pharaoh’s aunt and catches the eye of the Crown Prince.  They fall in love and wish to marry, but all of Egypt opposes this union between the new dynasty and the old, heretical one. Moran has several books on Egyptian royal women, including Nefertiti and Cleopatra's Daughter (also available in eBook). 

 

 

 

Gutsy Women of the Future

Have you read all of the Hunger Games books and are looking for something new to read? Try Moira Young's debut novel, Blood Red Road. 

Saba is an 18 year old girl, living a secluded life with her father, twin brother Lugh and younger sister Emmi. Life is hard for this family, as the lake that they depend on for survival is drying up and their father refuses to move. Saba's mother died giving birth to Emmi and Saba continues to hold a grudge against her sister. Lugh is the only thing that Saba adores; although they are twins, he is everything that she is not, light haired, blue-eyed, kind and loving.

One day armed men on horseback arrive at the family shack, killing their father and kidnapping Lugh. As the men tie Lugh to a horse, Saba promises: "Wherever they take you, I swear I'll find you." This event will lead Saba and Emmi on an epic quest to find Lugh.

Without Lugh, Saba believes she is lost; she had always just been his shadow. Suddenly thrown into a vicious new world Saba realizes she is a fighter and most importantly a survivor. What began as a journey to free her brother may in fact change the world.

Ridley Scott already has plans to make this into a movie. The sequel, Rebel Heart will be published in October and is on order with the library. Place you holds now!

Also available: eBook

Celebrating Julia Child

August 15, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Julia Child's birth.  She was born in Pasadena, California and excelled in athletics, playing basketball, golf and tennis while attending Smith College.

At over 6 feet tall, Child did not meet the Army or Navy height requirements during World War II, so instead she joined the Office of Stategic Services which was responsible for intelligence operations. After two years in Washington, she was sent overseas to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and China where she worked with coded messages. It was while she was stationed in China that she first became interested in cuisine, having discovered a passion for Chinese food.  While in Asia, she met her future husband Paul Child.

The couple moved to Paris in 1948, where Child attended Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. She offered cooking classes to American women at her home and wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. In 1963, she began hosting a television show, becoming one of the first celebrity chefs. She also produced a number of other books including a biography titled My Life in France.

Julia Child died of kidney failure in 2004, shortly before her 92nd birthday.

Some of her other books include:

• The French Chef Cookbook
• In Julia's Kitchen With Master Chefs
• Julia's Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking
• The Way to Cook

If you would like to learn more about Julia Child:

• Appetite for Life: the Biography of Julia Child by Noel Fitch
• A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS by Jennet Conant
• Dearie: the Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz

The Beautiful Game

Whether you call it soccer or football, it is the world's most popular sport played in more than 200 countries and by more than 250 million people.  If the historic bronze medal performance by the Canadian women's soccer team has inspired you to learn more about the sport, these books will get you started.

Personal Narratives

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
Novelist Hornby describes the ups and downs of his life as an Arsenal Football Club supporter.
        eBook

Finding the Game: Three Years, Twenty-Five Countries and the Search for Pick-Up Soccer by Gwendolyn Oxenham
Her plans to play soccer professionally ended when the women's league disbanded but Oxenham followed her love of the game around the world, playing pickup soccer while making a documentary about the sport.

Full-Time: a Soccer Story by Alan Twigg
Twigg and his teammates-a group of men over 50-prepare for a series of exhibition matches in Spain.
        Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Home and Away: In Search of Dreams at the Homeless World Cup of Soccer by Dave Bidini
In 2008, Bidini travelled to Australia with the Homeless Team Canada as it competed in the Homeless World Cup, a tournament designed to draw attention to the international problem of homelessness.

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss
McGinniss is drawn into the drama that occurs when he visits a small Italian village whose soccer team has recently won a "miracle" promotion to the country's second-highest professional league.

Broader Contexts

Africa United: Soccer, Passion, Politics and the First World Cup in Africa by Steve Bloomfield
Bloomfield examines the ways that the African Continent has been defined by the game of soccer.

How Soccer Explains the World: an Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Frank Foer
Foer examines the relationship between soccer and the global economy.

Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win and Why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Even Iraq are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
Described as the soccer equivalent of Moneyball, the authors apply economic theory to the sport in an effort to explain why international soccer doesn't work out the way we expect.

The World is a Ball: the Joy, Madness and Meaning of Soccer by John Doyle
Globe and Mail columnist Doyle provides a social history and evolution of soccer.
        eBook

This is just a small sample of the books available. Toronto Public Library also has biographies of players, training manuals and soccer-related fiction.

Remembering David Rakoff, 1964-2012

Humourist David Rakoff was born in Montreal and moved to Toronto in 1967.  After graduating from Forest Hill Collegiate, he majored in East Asian Studies at Columbia University in New York, a city he called "the great love of my life".  He worked as a translator in Japan for a time, but returned to Canada after being diagnosed at 22 with Hodgkin's Disease.  He later said that he had "dabbled" in cancer.  Following treatment for the disease he returned to New York, where he worked in publishing before becoming a writer.  He eventually became an American citizen--a process he documented in Don't Get Too Comfortable.

Three collections of his essays were published.

	Audiobook	Audiobook

Fraud: Essays with Illustrations from the Author captured the Lambda Award for Humor in 2001. The award was also given to his second collection, Don't Get Too Comfortable.  In 2010 while he was completing Half Empty, he was diagnosed with cancer again and began treatment which he discusses in the book.  Half Empty was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2011.

Doubleday will publish his final book titled Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish in 2013.

Rakoff died of cancer on August 9, 2012 at the age of 47.

When in doubt, laugh it up.

When I was a kid, I picked up a copy of Skinnybones by Barbara Park. I couldn’t tell you too much about the storyline now years later, but what I do remember is that I laughed my way through the whole thing.

As an adult, it’s just as satisfying to bite into a hilarious book; one that hits all the right spots on the humour spectrum. A fellow Book Buzz blogger raved about Jenny Lawson’s  ‘mostly true memoir’ Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, so I made a mental note to check it out. Lawson, who started as a blogger (an increasingly common occurrence nowadays!), writes with that kind of sharp wit and cheeky humour that makes her hard to ignore.

I’m also looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Mindy Kaling’s book because, well…I kind of adore everything about the girl. Even if you're not a huge fan of the TV show, The Office, which made her a household name, her irreverent outlook on everyday life will make you giggle.

Continuing with the trend of women with wit, if you haven’t checked out Bossypants by Tina Fey, it’s also worth a look. It’s filled with all those comedic pearls that Fey is known for.

 

If you’re looking for a quick, fun read, check out the Oatmeal’s 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth. If the title itself didn’t get you, then the quirky artwork definitely will. The Oatmeal is great at producing short and hilarious ‘guides’ (my personal favourite? How to Tell if your cat is plotting to kill you...because, hey, you never know.)

Have some other hilarious reads? Share in the comments!

Life on Mars? Five Novels about the Red Planet

This week take a look at the photographs taken by Curiosity the Mars rover and then read a novel about the planet.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This collection of short stories describes human efforts to colonize Mars.

Mars by Ben Bova
The first manned mission to Mars encounters various obstacles, some deadly.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter, a Civil War veteran, is mysteriously transported to Mars where he spends nearly a decade. This is the first in Burroughs' Barsoom series.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Valentine Michael Smith is born on Mars and raised by Martians after his parents die. He returns to Earth as a young man but has difficulty making sense of this alien environment.

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Earth is invaded by martians in this classic novel.

Tasty Reads: Food Writing Awards Shortlist

Sink your teeth into these books about food.  The Taste Canada Food Writing Awards celebrate excellence in culinary writing.  Awards are presented in the following categories:

Culinary Narratives

The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverley Gray
Leslie Beck's Longevity Diet: the Power of Food to Slow Aging and Maintain Optimal Health and Energy by Leslie Beck
Unquenchable: a Tipsy Quest for the World's Best Bargain Wines by Natalie MacLean

General Cookbooks

Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen by Michael Smith
Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal by Jennifer McLagan
Whitewater Cooks with Friends by Shelley Adams

Regional/Cultural Cookbooks

Made in Italy by David Rocco
Market Chronicles: Stories and Recipes from Montreal's Marché Jean-Talon by Susan Semenak
The Ontario Table: Food from Across the Province by Lynn Ogryzlo

Single-Subject Cookbooks

Preserving: a Resource Cookbook for Home Canning and Freezing by Pat Crocker
Spilling the Beans by Julie Van Rosendaal and Sue Duncan
We Sure Can! How Jams and Pickles are Reviving the Lure of and Lore of Local Food by Sarah B. Hood

A list of this year's French language nominees can be found here. 

The winners will be announced on November 5.

Cool Things to Read if You’re Paying Absolutely No Attention at All to the Olympics

So maybe I’m the only one, but this whole Olympic hoopla has started to wear a bit thin for me. I did watch bits of the opening ceremony (and was aghast to find that I had tears in my eyes -– tears!! –- at one point) but now that they’re jumping and running and swimming and wrestling, my attention has wandered to other random pursuits. Here’s what I’m reading instead.

On top of my full-time job, my family and my animals, I’ve been trying to learn Spanish to assist with my lifelong obsession with travel in Latin America. The Everything Learning Spanish Book: Speak, Write and Understand Basic Spanish in No Time by Frank Zambrano (2002) isn’t the best system I’ve ever seen (think of the wide range Oxford learning CDs or the Library’s Mango language app here) but this book does tidily pull all the basics together in one place, so it gets points for that (watch this space for a more comprehensive review of the Library’s language learning products down the road).

You don’t have to volunteer for High Park to know what a gem Toronto has in its black oak savannah (and you don’t have to know what black oak savannah is to appreciate this book). Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Black Oak Savannah: A Volunteer Stewardship Program Handbook (High Park Initiatives, 2000) is a short field guide of the main endangered plant species in High Park. The booklet also offers charming line drawings and historical information about what makes these plants unique. You’ll never look at a weed the same way again.

Travel junkie alert –- be careful not to drool on the lovely colour photographs in this awe-inspiring book of ideas from the people who first showed us that there was a whole world out there that wasn’t  Florida or Europe. 100 Countries, 5000 Ideas: Where to Go, When to Go, What to See, What to Do
(National Geographic Society, 2011)  offers you themed destinations (cruising, spas, culture); alphabetical country overviews; and tables organized by lifestyle, interests, cost etc. making this title totally drool-worthy for planning your next vacay or just fantasizing about it.

Sometimes I want to travel to far-away places to escape Canadian winters and other times I want to experience dramatically different cultures and spaces. But on most long summer weekends, all I want to do is grab my man, my dog and my tent, and head north until we reach a canoe and a deserted lake. It is for this third type of adventure that Another Fork in the Trail: Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for the Backcountry by Laurie Ann March (2011) was created, after the original Fork in the Road, but this one features only animal-friendly foods. Just because one is backcountry camping (and is sans cooler, electricity and other urban foolishness) does not mean one has to live on dry crackers and granola. Make sure you pack this book along with your vegetarian marshmallows.

So let’s see if I’ve addressed all my fav Olympic diversions – words and language (check); plants (check); travel (check); food (check); next up has gotta be cats (obvi). Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat by Gwen Cooper (2009) has to be the Book That Made Me Cry More than Any Other. I loved this book. I foster kittens for Toronto Cat Rescue and I know how hard it is to find good homes for black cats... but a blind, black cat?? Bring your own Kleenex and be prepared to head to your local animal shelter to add to your family immediately following completion of this book. 

I hear the Olympic closing ceremonies might also be worth a tear or two (depending, of course, on how Canada does throughout) but until then, I’ll be reading, hiking, canoeing, practising my Spanish and playing with kittens natch.