Take Advantage of Our Canadian Magazine Tote Bag Giveaway!

Check out our display for Magazines Canada, the Canadian magazine distributor, who are giving out FREE black tote bags with a purchase of any 1 magazine from their catalogue! There are a few titles on the display, but we carry a ton more on our general magazine shelves. Just look for the Canadian flag placards!

The tote is a good one, too. You can roll it up and pin it into a small bundle to throw in a purse or just carry in your hand. While supplies last!

An Evening With *John English* !

As promised, here are some pictures taken from the John English event from last Wednesday evening! A video of John's Q & A is still to come.

John signed like 100+ copies of his book Just Watch Me and went through 3 pens!

John signs a copy of his book for a lucky signee! The line-up was very long, but John got to everyone.

Noble staff on hand greeting people and taking tickets.

A fuzzy picture, but you get the idea; a terrific reading--John was funny and charming and gave a few juicy details of Trudeau's life and loves.

All in all it was a very fun and successful night. Thanks, John!

An Evening With Jamie Bastedo, Author of *Sila's Revenge*!

On Monday night (23rd) we welcomed Jamie Bastedo, author of Sila's Revenge, to come and have a chat about his newest book.

In behind the books there is a laptop and Jamie took us through a slideshow of images and text to re-create the feeling of writing Sila's Revenge. Jamie uses images and photographs to get a sense of setting and character and he shared those with us and how they fit into the book. His anecdotes were really interesting and I think we were sitting there for about an hour and half!

If you haven't read Sila's Revenge, pick up a signed copy at the store (and signed bookmarks too! Limited quantity). It is a great gift idea for an older teen in your life, or for anyone who loves a good adventure across the world, with a bit of love, and a strong voice!

Here's Jamie signing a copy of his earlier book, On Thin Ice (I love the cover of this one. He even brought in a Korean version of the book to show us the cover--beautiful).

Do you like my book display skills? I matched the table cloth to the book colours.

Just a few of my favourite readers :)

*Mandy

Where booksellers go to die

It's hard out there for a blimp

Oh, come on

I have to believe Rex Murphy is having some fun with this.

"The other great speech of the U.S. campaign season was Sarah Palin's on receiving the vice-presidential slot on the McCain ticket. This was a speech delivered under even greater pressures than that of Mr. Obama. John McCain's choice of Ms. Palin had been early and widely criticized, and in some quarters ferociously reviled. She had never really been under the national spotlight before. The entire media were focused on her with an intensity almost unseen in the annals of vice-presidential politics. If she'd been just “okay,” or messed up, John McCain's campaign was over. It was the highest of high-stakes gambles.

Did she deliver? She soared. She was the very acme of self-confidence and ease. She mixed a natural charm with a mischievous edge of sarcasm toward her opponents – even daring the unthinkable by pinging The One himself. It was her “first serve” on the national stage and she delivered an ace. The backwoods hick knocked it out of the hall that night – not only did she not sink the McCain campaign, she gave it the only real vitality and spark that gloomy, tight, fussy little campaign had from start to finish."

The difference is that Obama wrote his speech. Palin didn't write hers.

The Kindle makes Ian Brown um...

I'm trying not to go for the obvious pun, but he's not a fan.

"But in every other way, reading on a Kindle is to reading a book as having sex while wearing (two) condoms is to having sex: It's still technically intercourse, but doesn't feel the same. A book feels like a thing that can be passed from hand to hand. Kindle feels convenient. Vague as that sounds, it's a profound difference."

If I ever had to use a Kindle I'd probably wear rubber gloves and the cond...ah, I'll pass on the whole thing.

Knew it all along

It's not news, but reading makes you a better man

Kindleocracy

The Kindle has it's moments, but so far meh.

Thus leaving Guido Brunetti with the rest of the month off

It looks like Venice hasn't done too well of late.

"A dozen gondolas snaked down the Grand Canal on Saturday in a mock funeral procession bemoaning Venice's descent to the dreaded status of living museum, with a population now below 60,000.

While the largely symbolic threshold is considered by some to signal the end of the city's viability, Venetian officials say reports of Venice's demise are premature, and even Saturday's sombre funeral ended with a surprise, bright hope for rebirth"

new homes and renovations

A couple favourites have either tarted up their place or have built a new nest entirely.

Lauren wrote one of my all time favourites and Chris Banks knows from poetry and poetics.

An Evening with *John English* Author of *Just Watch Me*

Meet John English on Wednesday November 25th, 7 pm, at Knox Church in Waterloo. Tickets are $10 or 1 free ticket with a purchase of the author's featured book before the event

We remember when John English introduced the first book in his Pierre Elliot Trudeau biography, Citizen of the World, in 2006. I didn't know this myself but it was at the request of the Trudeau family that John was asked to write the biography that spans two volumes, concluding with Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau 1968-2000. Just watch Me was just published in October of this year.

Trudeau’s life is one of Canada’s most engrossing stories. John English reveals how for Trudeau, style was as important as substance. The title Just Watch Me, is not only Trudeau's notorious phrase from the October Crisis but a motto for his full performance in life. English examines how the controversial public figure intertwined with the charismatic private man and committed father. He traces Trudeau’s deep friendships (with women especially, many of them talented artists, like Barbra Streisand) and bitter enmities; his marriage and family tragedy.

Citizen of the World was a multi-award winner: it won the Dafoe Book Prize; the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography; was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction, the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing, the Donald Smiley Prize and the Charles Taylor Prize; and was a Globe and Mail Best Book. English has had exclusive access to Trudeau's private and family papers, and the cooperation of the whole family (without any liens).

He has also researched the entire published record of the period, the archival records, and has interviewed hundreds of people associated with Trudeau both publicly and privately. As such, these two volumes are the definitive story.

Here is an excerpt from an interview with John English in The Record:

The second volume of his exhaustive biography by Waterloo’s John English certainly wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it weren’t true. Trudeau saved everything, from childhood report cards, sketches and receipts to girlfriends’ letters, post cards and cabinet notes.

That handed English a “staggering” stash of records, personal papers and documents to wade through for his new book, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000. At once fascinating and elusive, they gave the biographer the impression that Trudeau always intended the material for future public consumption.

“He had a sense of destiny about him,” English said yesterday from his office at the Centre for International Governance Innovation on Erb Street. “He really wanted to be in public life, to make an imprint on the world. He pretty much structured his life around those ambitions.”

Read the entire article HERE.

See you there!

things rank and gross in nature possess it merely

Sarah Palin's book arrives tomorrow.

One Christmas Book For Your Shelf

I think we'll have to order a few of these into the store!

You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs

You’ve eaten too much candy at Christmas… but have you ever eaten the face off a sixfoot stuffed Santa? You’ve woken up with a hangover… but have you ever woken up next to Kris Kringle himself? Augusten Burroughs has, and in this caustically funny, nostalgic, poignant, and moving collection he recounts Christmases past and present—as only he
could.

You Better Not Cry recently received a B+ from Entertainment Weekly. Read the review HERE.


I think it's the picture that does it for me.


Mandy

Such is the life

I don't know much about Declan Burke, but I kind of want to adopt him.

A long blog post about the sheer unlikeliness of making it as a writers writer in the crime genre, some of which is below.

' I’d love to finish up with some kind of gloriously noble declaration about how writing isn’t just a business, it’s a vocation, a passion, an obsession, and come hell or high water, I’ll write the next novel and let the chips fall where they may, etc. But I can’t. Not only would such a decision be immoral, it would be foolhardy verging on insanity. Because the publishing business is a business, and I don’t have the time or the chops to make it work for me. Yes, I understand that making it in any business means making sacrifices, but in this particular business, what ‘making sacrifices’ actually means is asking others to make sacrifices on your behalf. Maybe if I was a genius I’d feel comfortable with that, or I simply wouldn’t care. But I’m not. The books I write are (at best) an enjoyable diversion, a pleasant waste of time. They’re not important enough, vital enough or relevant enough to be worth anyone else’s sacrifice, and while there was once a time when I was selfish and ruthless enough to not care about the sacrifices I was asking others to make on my behalf, that time is long gone, and good riddance."

For now, maybe Burke's North American publisher will bring this out in paper.

Linden MacIntyre wins Giller

And the streak of the bad Giller guess continues.

it was Waterstone's, upstiars, with a pallet of celebrity biographies

How a huge chain store wrecked British bookselling.

""There seems to be a frantic scramble in the book retail world to rush downmarket in order to compete with the challenges of Amazon, the supermarkets and next the ebook. Publishers have to fight their corner, year after year, against ever more aggressive demands for higher discounts from the chains, but seem at a loss to know how to cope with the underlying problems they face. They fear speaking out about how their books are being sold."

That's true here too.

Just saying

Watching Bravo's Arts and Minds and Colin McAdam is a funny guy.

Prognostications a la Giller

The Globe literary types place their bets on who gets the nod on Tuesday and pretty much come up with Anne Michaels as the winner.

It says here that Annabel Lyon will win, but it should be Kim Echlin.

I'm seldom right at these things, and really what's the difference.

Everyone knows the really good stuff is written by dudes, apparently.

For the record, nobody should argue with Dan Chaon being on any best of list this year, but hey Kate Christensen wrote a book this year.

Bad dog, PW.

reading from right to left

He may be a jackass, but in tough times he moves numbers. Shudder.

'“He’s our Oprah,” said Brad Thor, a writer of political thrillers who has appeared on Mr. Beck’s radio and television programs several times. “God love him, we’re very fortunate.”

At a time when the book industry is struggling to maintain, much less increase, sales, publishers and authors say an appearance on Mr. Beck’s television or radio programs helps attract new readers. After James Rollins, the author of “The Doomsday Key,” a thriller about a group of Defense Department scientists trying to solve an ancient mystery, appeared this past summer on Mr. Beck’s radio program and then his television show — on which Mr. Beck promised viewers “it will keep you on the edge of your seat — Mr. Rollins met several people at a book signing who told him they had bought the book based on that recommendation, he said.'

Good for Beck. Anything to keep the little weirdo from crying

You Won't Want to Miss *Buzz Hargrove* in Waterloo!

Saturday November 21st, 3:00 pm, In Store, Absolutely FREE!

As head of the CAW from 1992 until his retirement in 2008, Buzz Hargrove was a force to be reckoned with. And love him or hate him – agree ardently, or disagree passionately – no one knows the behind-the-scenes dealings of the Big Three, unions, manufacturing and the political machine better than Hargrove. In his book Laying it on the Line: Driving a Hard Bargain in Challenging Times, Hargrove delivers a blistering verdict on the roots of the current economic crisis and the state of Canadian government, the economy, manufacturing, and unions.

From his start in the maintenance department of Chrysler, Hargrove was eventually elected head of the CAW, a position he held for 16 years, until his earlier-than-expected 2008 retirement. And then, in late 2008, the world’s economies crumbled with alacrity, and at the forefront of the collapse were the Big Three: Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.

In Laying it on the Line, Hargrove details the decades of terrible decision making – from the federal government to corporate CEOs – that set the stage for this crisis, including personal betrayals and behind-the-door dealings. Laying it on the Line explains the crisis form Hargrove’s perspective, outlining the failings and offering a prescriptive to correct course and help position manufacturing as Canada’s foremost economic driver for the future.


Come and meet Buzz Hargrove, hear him read from his new book Laying It On The Line, and listen to or participate in the question and answer period. This event will spark much talk and debate! Don't miss it!

See you there!

If he's scared of the future....

John Grisham is worried for the future of books.

"Paying full price for the books is essential to keep publishers, booksellers and writers in business

Grisham said.

“That enables me to make a royalty, the publisher to make a profit and the bookstore to make a profit,” he said. “If a new book is worth $9, we have seriously devalued that book.”

He acknowledges that this doesn't affect him much, but new writers "are going to have a very hard time getting published."

Prices are going to have to come down insofar as there's a lot of books out there that don't necessarily need to be hard cover. But that's going to mean smaller advances for those who do make it in a traditional sense, ie: through a publisher large enough to spend even a little money on marketing, advertising, author appearances, etc., but with so much print on demand, and so little media review (indeed the humble newspaper is in deep trouble) I'm at a loss as to who is going to find out about all of these books.

For what it's worth, no one in the book supply chain is making huge money on their respective slice of that $24. Chain stores are losing money, publishers are laying people off, and authors...please.

The deeply discounted hard cover is all about creating a psychological price point so that in a few years every piece of junk in whatever form by any schlub who wants to tell their tale can do so in a form convenient to whomever survives the price wars.

Quality, merit, the betterment of humankind, or the slightest whiff of enduring appeal barely enters into it, and Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart and so forth couldn't be less interested in finding the next Barbara Kingsolver (whose book is one of the $9 wonders being discounted at the above retailers.

Quality is hard to quantify. The usual slurry is easier to judge.

First Lady of Memoir or What's That Smell?

I've never read Mary Karr's books and am not commenting on their quality in any way, but when Liar's Club arrived in the mid 90's, it gave license to everyone who ever had an alcoholic parent, grew up poor or stubbed a toe to tell all about their miserable lives.

The train keeps running, and it doesn't help when Karr tells of her take for the new book.

"After "Cherry" came out in 2000, two separate publishers approached Ms. Karr with "a big fat honking advance" of nearly $1 million for a third memoir, she said. She turned them down because she felt she couldn't face her recent history. But two years later, she found herself writing the first chapter of "Lit," a prologue addressed to her son. Ms. Karr and her publisher, HarperCollins, wouldn't reveal what her advance was, but Ms. Karr described it as "a s—load."

Perfect.

Apple for teacher

Jesus, is there nothing Mark Sarvas can't do?

IMPAC award (very) long list

This sort of thing reminds me of some dreaded sporting event where rather than cause esteem issues in a wee 'un, they just give a trophy to everybody.

Nonetheless, here's the Dublin Impac long list.

love it

The Guardian eviscerates Superfreakonomics.

'As you can see, the reason it's taken us four years to come up with a second volume is that we haven't really got any interesting material. But as Chicago-based economist Kevin J Dickhead has proved, most readers don't get beyond page 10 of books like this, so we're not too bothered."