Justine Lewkowicz

A kids book about poisonous substances and another about earthquakes are this year’s winners of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association book awards. 

The general audience book winner is Cascadia’s Fault by Jerry Thompson. Thompson talks about a crack in the earth’s crust that runs from Vancouver Island to California and generates an earthquake every 500 years. The next quake could come any day. Thompson has been following the story for 25 years and he talks about the possible aftermath of this coming tremor.

The youth book winner is 50 Poisonous Questions by Tanya Lloyd Kyi. Kyi talks about poisonous snakes, toxic herbicides and noxious fumes. She answers questions like should you pee on a jellyfish sting (apparently you shouldn’t).

The awards will be presented in Windsor on June 2nd.

How strange that this could happen – there will be no winner of this year’s Pulitzer fiction award.

Publishers Lunch reports that the judges weren’t able to come to a decision in the majority.

This has happened before, ten time now since 1918.

The shortlist for the award included David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!, and Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams.

Other book-related Pulitzers were awarded:

History
MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable

Biography
GEORGE F. KENNAN: An American Life
John Lewis Gaddis

Nonfiction
THE SWERVE: How The World Became Modern
Stephen Greenblatt

Poetry
LIFE ON MARS
Tracy Smith

Drama
WATER BY THE SPOONFUL
Quiara Alegría Hudes

Check out the latest episode of BookendsTV on Crime Fiction.

I interview Toronto author Jeffrey Round on his most recent book Lake on the Mountain.

(For more BookendsTV, go to our site!)

There’s a great article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail by Ian Brown that talks about what the printed book gives us that the e-book simply cannot: history.

Check out the article, it’s fascinating and so very true!

Inside old school books, every scribble tells a story

It’s sad to see that another bookstore has been forced to close down a couple of locations because of a rent increase.

Independent bookseller Nicholas Hoare has announced that he’s shutting down the shops in Ottawa and Montreal.

Hoare says rent on his Ottawa shop just went up 72 per cent.

CBC reports that the landlord, the National Capital Commission, increased rent to match the market value of the property.

Understandably, Hoare is upset there was no room for compromise.

Thankfully, Hoare’s Toronto location is safe and will stay open. But there are other Toronto bookshops that have recently closed – The Book Mark, which was a super cute shop near Bloor West Village with a fantastic mystery section; and Business For Books, which stays open virtually but closed its brick and mortar shop.

Just the other day I drove past another shop on Bloor St, Book City, which is closing down one of its five Toronto locations. I’ve been told that the owner doesn’t want to renew the lease on its Bloor West Village location. At least there will still be four others to choose from.

It’s sad to see any bookshop disappear from our streets and I hope the trend doesn’t continue.

Exciting news – I have just launched a weekly book review with Astral Radio.

If you live in the GTA or really anywhere in Southern Ontario, tune in to Newstalk 1010 on AM1010 or newstalk1010.com every Sunday morning at 8:25 a.m. to hear my weekly review.

If you live in the Niagara region, tune in to Larry Fedoruk’s show every Friday on 610 CKTB.

Or you can check out my blogs at:

Newstalk 1010

610 CKTB

The winner of the 2012 Kobzar Literary Award was announced at a dinner event in Toronto on Thursday evening.

The hall at Palais Royale was packed with literary folks and supporters, and all of them tuned in as five shortlisted authors read excerpts from their recognized works.

After several courses, including a delicious dessert, the winner was announced… Shandi Mitchell for Under This Unbroken Sky.

Mitchell’s novel is about the hardship of prairie life and betrayal during the depression era. It’s a great achievement for the Nova Scotian considering this is her debut novel. The book also won the 2010 Commonwealth Book Prize for Best First Book, the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Mitchell got emotional when accepting her award, saying she was inspired by the work done by the other shortlisted authors.

For those who haven’t heard of the Kobzar Literary Award: it is a biennial award that recognizes writers who best present Ukrainian themes and issues. Organizers pointed out on Thursday that it’s not an award given out to ethnic authors but to authors who take on ethnic themes.

The award was launched by the Shevchenko Foundation in 2003. The foundation’s literary arts director Christine Turkewych said at the event that she was once told the award wouldn’t be taken seriously until it’s fourth installment. Being the fourth biennial award, Turkewych said, “Now we’re serious.”

Mitchell receives $20,000 while the book’s publisher, Penguin Group Canada, receives $5,000 for promotion of the winning work. Turkewych mentioned that the reason they launched the award eight years ago was to help authors writing about Ukrainian issues get published. She says handing out the sponsored award helps send a message to Canadian publishers – there is a readership in Canada for books covering these topics, so publish these books!

The other four finalists also get a monetary prize and, more importantly, recognition for their work:

Myroslav Shkandrij for Jews in Ukrainian Literature: Representation and Identity

Larissa Andrusyshyn for Mammoth

Myrna Kostash for Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium

Rhea Tregebov for The Knife Sharpener’s Bell

This book is a magical voyage from beginning to end and a wonderful mystery until the very last pages.

Erin Morgenstern has found a great balance between keeping a story mysterious and giving away just enough details to keep the reader around. When a fortune teller is reading a characters’ future and one tarot card causes her to gasp, Morgenstern won’t explain what the card means. Sure you could Google what the “Le Bateleur” card means… but what would be the fun in that?

One of the easiest ways authors can lose you is by giving too much away. The Night Circus will keep you wanting more. You do have to be a bit patient, though, as each piece is revealed over time.

The Night Circus is about a circus that “arrives without warning,” in the middle of the night. And it’s open only from nightfall to dawn. What patrons don’t realize is that the magic within is no trick.

Two illusionists, Celia and Marco have been bound since childhood to compete in a game that was designed to end with only one of them left standing. The circus is their stage. Their love for each other becomes either their biggest obstacle or their salvation.

Morgenstern takes readers away into a magical land of black and white tents, mazes of clouds, wishing trees, contortionists, illusionists, and mysterious characters.

It’s not a book full of drama, just a long dream that can take you far, far away from your everyday routine. The entire package is about an experience, from the cover and the stars and swirls, to the words within.

Jane Austen fans – here’s one for you.

Sequels are never easy. There are expectations. The readers have already fallen in love with the original characters, the form of storytelling and the writing style.

Austen is a classic and I find it surprising how many authors have tried to continue her stories. At the same time, I understand why they would want to keep Austen’s stories alive. Her stories are the kind that fans wish could go on forever. What happens to Elizabeth and Darcy after they marry? If they have kids, what happens to them?

Some authors who attempt Pride and Prejudice sequels get it right. Others get it wrong.

P. D. James gets it right. And her sequel works because she makes it her own. James brings mystery to Pemberley. I was skeptical at first because you’re taking a classic story and changing the category. Well, it’s more like James is adding the mystery category without taking the romance away.

In Death Comes to Pemberley, Elizabeth and Darcy are happily married. Elizabeth is settling into her new social position. Then, on the eve of a ball, there’s a murder on the grounds of Pemberley. And thus the Austen murder mystery begins.

James uses more modern language, but not in a way that will distract Austen fans from the story. She also builds on the beloved characters Austen created years ago. Darcy becomes more human. Colonel Fitzwilliam becomes more mysterious. Elizabeth becomes complex.

James isn’t afraid to make Austen’s characters her own to develop the story into a tale of murder.

At one point in Alone in the Classroom, the narrator visits a hillside where five deer are wandering under the sun and next to a slow-moving stream. Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?

But what if you knew that 70 years earlier, a girl was raped and murdered along that same hillside. It changes the setting entirely.

“A murder opens up the landscape. It becomes known in every one of its intimate parts…”

Elizabeth Hay’s beautiful and compelling writing brings the past and the present together in Alone in the Classroom.

The narrator, Anne, revisits her family’s past and the unrelated deaths of two little girls. She doesn’t rest until she unravels the past she was never told about.

The story is about love and about hate. It’s about how emotions affect your choices and your future.

Hay also writes about childhood and learning and how teachers influence each of their students, whether in a positive or devastatingly negative way.

You can try to get away from your past or your family’s past, but you can’t. The best way to move forward is to accept and begin to understand the things that can’t be undone.

My favourite quote from the book: “You touch a place and thousands of miles away another place quivers. You touch a person and down the line the ghosts of relatives move in the wind.”

I definitely recommend this book. And if you haven’t yet read Hay’s Late Nights on Air, what are you waiting for?