| CBC Radio hosts Canada Reads: Alberta on Thursday, February 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the W.R. Castell Central Library’s John Dutton Theatre. It includes dramatized scenes from books set in Alberta, as chosen by local celebrities Tim Tamashiro, Diane Jones Konihowski, George Melnyk, Hayley Wickenheiser and CBC’s David Gray. According to CBC Radio arts and entertainment producer Allan Boss, there will be actors acting (Brian Smith and Patricia Benedict), a cellist playing (Beth Sandvoss) and a foley artist providing sound effects (Ute Schaffland). The event is free. For more information, call 260-2785.
George Elliott Clarke has written a verse novel (Whylah Falls), an opera libretto (Beatrice Chancy: A Libretto in Four Acts), plus two verse plays and a handful of poetry collections, including the 2001 Governor General's Award-winning Execution Poems. Now he's written a novel. George & Rue takes place in a small New Brunswick town and draws on some of Clarke's own family history. He reads at Pages on Kensington on Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Ever since Judy Fong Bates published her short-story collection China Dog and Tales From a Chinese Laundry, readers have anticipated her next book. It's here now – a novel entitled Midnight at the Dragon Café. The time is the 1960s, the place is a small Ontario town, and the style is that of a first-person memoir. The Globe and Mail compared the book to Who Has Seen the Wind and Angela's Ashes. Fong Bates reads on Wednesday, February 16, from 7 to 8 p.m. at the W.R. Castell Central Library in Meeting Room #1. Call 260-2785 to register.
This week Calgary poet Stuart Ian McKay will launch his book Stele of Several Ladies, a long poem about women and early Calgary history. McKay reads at McNally Robinson on Wednesday, February 16 at 7 p.m. A stele is an upright stone slab or pillar with markings on it. But you knew that already.
If you've travelled north to Jasper on the Icefields Parkway, you've passed Peyto Lake. This week the legendary Bill Peyto's great-nephew David Peyto will not only be signing copies of Bill Peyto’s Guide to the Canadian Rockies, but also of Banff Town Warden, two volumes of his grandfather Walter H. Peyto's journals of his days as a Banff Park warden between 1914 and the 1940s. That’s at McNally Robinson on Wednesday, February 16 at noon.
Best-sellers
Best-selling books for January 30 to February 5 at Pages on Kensington
Fiction and Poetry
1. Saturday
by Ian McEwan
2. Casanova in Bolzano
by Sandor Marai
3. Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
4. George and Rue
by George Elliott Clarke
5. Silt
by Jordan Scott
6. Strange Affair
by Peter Robinson
7. A Complicated Kindness
by Miriam Toews
8. Cherry Bites
by Alison Preston
9. The Purest of Human Pleasures
by Kenneth Radu
10. The Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst
Non-fiction
1. Collapse
by Jared Diamond
2. A Short History of Progress
by Ronald Wright
3. On Literature
by Umberto Eco
4. Alberta-Images
by Daryl Benson
5. Grazing
by Julie van Rosendaal
6. Blink
by Malcolm Gladwell
7. French Women Don't Get Fat
by Mireille Guiliand
8. Eats, Shoots and Leaves
by Lynne Truss
9. Chronicles, Vol. 1
by Bob Dylan
10. The End of Faith
by Sam Harris |
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