Baxter and MacLeod

This Tuesday evening, May 5, artist Iain Baxter and writer Alastair MacLeod (author of the wonderful novel No Great Mischief) will be appearing at the U of T Art Centre, in a discussion facilitated by Nino Ricci (whose novel The Origin of Species won this year’s Governor General’s award).

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.

Anosh Irani

There was an interesting interview on “Q” yesterday with Anosh Irani, who lives in Vancouver and writes about Mumbai. He’s the author of the play Bombay Black and wrote a very personal article for the New York Times about last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

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.

“My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors”

Perhaps, like me, you were mesmerized last week by the video of Jian Ghomeshi’s painful interview with an incredibly rude and uncooperative Billy Bob Thornton on CBC radio– which certainly raised Ghomeshi in my estimation!

If so, you might find it refreshing to watch this much less painful video featuring Jian Ghomeshi back when he was with the band Moxy Fruvous, doing a delightful song called “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors,” which should make all book lovers smile.

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.

The Uses and Abuses of Reviewing

Linda Hutcheon will be giving this year’s Alexander Lectures, beginning March 23. Her intriguing title is “The Uses and Abuses of Reviewing.” Professor Hutcheon is the author of A Theory of Adaptation (among many other books).

Canada Reads victory for Lawrence Hill

Yesterday Lawrence Hill’s novel The Book of Negroes won CBC’s Canada Reads competition. I’m glad since I’m in the middle of reading it (it’s riveting).  The only other of this year’s contenders that I’ve read is The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, which I loved. (The other books, which were knocked out of contention over the course of the week, were Fruit, Mercy Among the Children, and The Outlander.)