Beware of the new APA Publication Manual

This summer the American Psychological Association published the sixth edition of its popular Publication Manual, and it turns out to full of errors –  pretty shocking for a book which tells you how to get all the details and punctuation right when you’re compiling a bibliography.

After receiving a lot of criticism, the APA is doing a revised Second Printing and has apparently now agreed to give buyers of the error-ridden First Printing a replacement copy, starting Nov. 2.  (I will get a replacement for Laidlaw Library’s copy.)

In case you’re curious, the APA has posted a list of the the errors identified in the first printing.

What I read this summer

Here are my favourites among the books I read this summer.  They would be good in any season, and all are available at Laidlaw Library.

Run, by Ann Patchett
A riveting family story set in Boston in the winter.  Except for a prologue and epilogue, it all takes place in one 24-hour period.

The Prairie Bridesmaid, by Daria Salamon
It feels like “chick lit” (first-person narrator with a group of women friends, self-deprecating humour, a focus on relationships).  But whereas a lot of chick lit seems to be about how a woman finds the man of her dreams, this book is about how a woman extricates herself from an emotionally abusive relationship with the man of her dreams.

Olive Kittredge, by Elizabeth Strout
Sad, memorable stories about different characters who all live in the same small town in Maine (I read it while I was in Maine). Olive Kitteridge is a difficult woman who appears in all the stories, sometimes as a central character, sometimes not. The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction.

Interview with Aravind Adiga

I really enjoyed Eleanor Wachtel’s June 21st interview with Aravind Adiga on Writers & Company.  Well, I always enjoy Writers & Company (not a big surprise, coming from a librarian), but this one was especially interesting.  Adiga is the author of The White Tiger, which won the 2008 Booker Prize.

Women in Canadian politics

Sylvia Bashevkin (Principal of University College) has not one but two new books out! — one which she wrote, and one which she edited (and wrote parts of):

• Women, Power, Politics: The Hidden Story of Canada’s Unfinished Democracy
• Opening Doors Wider: Women’s Political Engagement in Canada

In Women, Power, Politics she talks, among other things, about the fact that when the media write about women politicians, they tend to focus not on their policies but on things like appearance, dress, and style of speaking (which is usually judged to be either too aggressive or too passive).  She writes about lots of Canadian politicians including Sheila Copps, Belinda Stronach, Audrey McLaughlin, and of course Kim Campbell (who was interviewed on TV Ontario tonight — I’m sure she’d find the book fascinating!).

True Patriot Love

Michael Ignatieff’s new book, True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada (from which he’ll be reading at Convocation Hall on May 8), is about his mother’s side of the family, including his great-grandfather George Monro Grant (author of Ocean to Ocean) and his uncle George Grant (author of Lament for a Nation, which Ignatieff criticizes in his new book).  We have all these books at Laidlaw Library — not to mention Ignatieff’s earlier book about his father’s side of the family, The Russian Album.

The Hemingses of Monticello

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family won the Pulitzer Prize for history yesterday.  This is the second big American award this book has won (earlier, it won the National Book Award for non-fiction).   It sounds really interesting — here’s a review from the New York Times.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

If you’re looking for some entertaining reading, I recommend The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. It’s about an eleven-year-old girl who sets out to solve a murder that’s taken place in the garden of her family’s estate, in 1950s rural England. This brilliant, spunky girl is always a few steps ahead of the police.

I love hearing about people accomplishing new things when they’re “no spring chicken,” and that’s the case with 70-year-old Canadian author Alan Bradley — this is his first novel! What’s more, he set it in England, a place he had never visited until he won the Debut Dagger award for an early draft of this book, and the Crime Writers’ Association invited him over to receive his award.

Our “bestsellers” (“bestlenders”?)

I was curious to see which recent books have been borrowed the most often from Laidlaw Library, so I generated a report. In case you’re curious too, here are the results:

Top 5 books published in 2008:

It’s early days yet, since some 2008 books have only been in our collection for a few months — but so far, these are our most popular titles of 2008:

• The uses and abuses of history / Margaret MacMillan.
• The donut : a Canadian history / Steve Penfold.
• Bonk : the curious coupling of science and sex / Mary Roach.
• The white tiger : a novel / Aravind Adiga.
• Through black spruce / Joseph Boyden.

Top 5 books published in 2007:

• A thousand splendid suns / Khaled Hosseini.
• Better : a surgeon’s notes on performance / Atul Gawande.
• My years as Prime Minister / Jean Chrétien.
• The brain that changes itself : stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science / Norman Doidge.
• Whose war is it? : how Canada can survive in the post-9/11 world / J.L. Granatstein.

Top 5 books published in 2006:

• Suite française / Irène Némirovsky
• I still love you : five plays / Daniel MacIvor.
• The upside of down : catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilization / Thomas Homer-Dixon.
• The audacity of hope : thoughts on reclaiming the American dream / Barack Obama.
• Just medicare : what’s in, what’s out, how we decide / edited by Colleen M. Flood.

Attempts on Her Life

The University College drama program is currently putting on Attempts on Her Life, by British playwright Martin Crimp, at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse:

• info about the production
• the published play (in a book of four Crimp plays, recently purchased by Laidlaw Library)

Unlikely Soldiers

There’s a new book out about two University College alumni, Ken Macalister and Frank Pickersgill. It’s called Unlikely Soldiers: How Two Canadians Fought the Secret War against Nazi Occupation, and it’s available at Laidlaw Library.

In the 1930s, Macalister was a UC undergrad, and Pickersgill did his M.A at UC. Macalister’s experiences at UC and U of T are described on pages 39-45. To find out more about the book, see the Harper Collins description.