League of Canadian Poets Award Winners

This is a couple days overdue, but I'm sure you'll all forgive me that, right?

The League of Canadian Poets had their Poetry Fest and Conference this weekend in St. John's Newfoundland. On Saturday, they announced the winners of both the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Alex Boyd took home the Lampert Award for his book Making Bones Walk (Luna Publications), and Anne Simpson won the Lowther Award for Quick (McClelland & Stewart).

The shortlists for both awards, along with judges comments on all the titles, can be found here.

Late Nights and Infinite Playlists

I've been in reading mode lately. I finally got to The Kite Runner, and then picked up Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed. Finished that and re-read Monkey Business by Sarah Mlynowski (one of my favorite authors, and most definitely my favorite Canadian writer). Now I'm on to Elizabeth Hay's Giller-winning Late Nights on Air, a book based in Yellowknife - where I lived for two years as a teenager. Exciting!

I've been buying books, too. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer last weekend, and then yesterday I went and picked up Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Oh, and today I almost impulse bought this book. It looks amazing, and I just did some research and found out that the guy's father wrote a memoir also, about raising an addict. I'll likely read both, hopefully sometime soon.

So many books! I love it!

Keep an eye out for award news - The League of Canadian Poets is presenting the Pat Lowther and Gerald Lampert Awards in Newfoundland tonight.

ReLit Longlist and BEC

The longlist for the ReLit Awards was unveiled late last week, and long it was! The novel category alone includes 41 titles. But don't take my word for it. Go check it out for yourself!

Also, Book Expo Canada was held this past weekend in Toronto. Many big names came out for the event, including Robert Munsch, Paul Gross (the director/producer/star of the new film Passchendaele, which was just named the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival), and the man of the month himself, Rawi Hage.

But really, the biggest story that came out of BEC 2008 is the rumor that it may be held in the fall next year. This drastic change may be accompanied by limited public access to Book Expo 2009, in an effort to create more buzz around the event. Thoughts?

Rawi Hage Takes It All

June 12, 2008: Rawi Hage is the second Canadian to win the prestigious IMPAC award for his novel De Niro's Game. The award is run by the Dublin Public Library System and funded by Improved Management Productivity and Control, a management consultancy based in Connecticut. The award included a monetary prize of 100, 000 pounds (about $150 000 CAD). This marks the first time a debut novel has ever won the award.

De Niro's Game was published by House of Anansi Press in 2006. The book is about two childhood friends who are both trying to survive in war-torn Beirut, but in different ways. It was shortlisted for both the Governor General's Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Rawi Hage is a writer and ex-cabbie from Montreal, Quebec. He had this to say upon winning the IMPAC award: "To all those women and men of letters, and all artists who have gone beyond the aesthetics of the singular to represent the multiple and diverse, to all those men and women who have chosen the painful and costly portrayal of truth over tribal self-righteousness, I am grateful. We should all be grateful."


The other shortlisted titles for the award were "The Attack," by Yasmina Khadra; "Let It Be Morning," by Sayed Kashua; "The Woman Who Waited," by Andrei Makine; "The Sweet & Simple Kind," by Yasmine Gooneratne; "Dreams of Speaking," by Gail Jones; "The Speed of Light," by Javier Cercas, and "Winterwood," by Patrick McCabe.

Book Review: Candy Girl

Have you ever been sitting at work and thought to yourself, “I’d rather be naked”?

Yeah, me neither. But in a 2006 interview with David Letterman, Diablo Cody claimed that that thought is what spurred her to start stripping in sleazy nightclubs in downtown Minneapolis. Her experiences throughout the following year were well-documented, first on her popular city pages blog and eventually, in a book called Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.

Candy Girl is far from your run-of-the-mill memoir. For starters, Cody was in her mid-twenties when she wrote it. And despite popular belief (in Hollywood, at least), two decades seldom provide enough material to fill an entire book. In Diablo Cody’s case, however, she generated all the substance she needed in less than two years.

The book follows her through her entire stint in the sex trade. From her somewhat Cleaver-like childhood in Chicago, to listening to that first nub of a thought while she was typing copy at an ad agency, to taking off her clothes in front of strangers, giving lap dances, displaying her goods for peep shows, and finally a short stint in phone sex, it’s all there. And it’s all very, very graphic.

But don’t let that frighten you. Cody’s candidness plays a large role in the appeal of this book, because she holds nothing back. When I saw that she described a pair of high heels as being “clit-pink”, I was completely hooked. Reading the next dozen or so pages, I think I laughed out loud as many times. Once or twice I thought I was going to pee myself. But it’s not all humor. There is some emotion sprinkled in this book, mostly having to do with Diablo’s relationship with her boyfriend Jonny (who, by the way, was almost frighteningly supportive of her adventures) and his three year old daughter, who is called Peanut for the purposes of this book.

All in all, this was an entertaining, though sometimes discomforting, read. Highly recommended, but make sure you have a hot shower on hand. Believe me, you’ll feel like you need one at times.

Details:

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody
ISBN: 978-1592402731
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.

Book Review: The Kite Runner

I loved this book. Plain and simple.

It took me a few days to actually become immersed in the story, but as soon as the pace picked up a little bit, I became an unstoppable reading machine. I stayed up past my bedtime on more than one occasion. I put off meals so I could read Just One More Paragraph. And I spent about 30 minutes sitting at my desk at work reading frantically so as to finish the book before my boss showed up and told me to get back to work.

Khaled Hosseini wrote an amazing novel about love, family, trust, and above all, betrayal and how to move forward from the wreckage that it creates. The book is relatable in a way that I would never have expected it to be. Amir, the main character, is Afghani and Muslim, and was born in the 1960s. I am Canadian, not religious at all, and was born in the 1980s. He is raised by his emotionally distant father, having lost his mother the same day he was born. I was raised by two parents who were anything but distant, and I have never lost a loved one.

All things considered, I should feel no connection to Amir. But Hosseini looks past these fairly shallow differences and gets to the root of what is really important: human nature, the connections we make with one another, and the fear of truly loving another person. Like Hosseini’s characters, I was forced to look beyond the initial disparity between myself and Amir, and see that religious and class differences do not make one person more equipped to handle this fear. It’s there, inside all of us, waiting to be acknowledged. And once we acknowledge that it is there, we can confront it, keep it from prohibiting us to care for one another.

I can’t believe it took me this long to finally read this book. Especially since I’m a sucker for books that have been made into movies. I like to read the book and then rent the movie as soon as possible to compare. (For the record, I watched the film version of The Kite Runner over the weekend. And it didn’t even compare to the book.)

Details:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
ISBN: 978-1594480003
Publisher: Riverhead Trade