As if it wasn't enough to obsess about Reading and ReLi-ting, I'm also obsessing about the Toronto Book Award, whose shortlist was announced this week. THE 2011 TORONTO BOOK AWARD (More deets here.) What Disturbs Our Blood, James FitzGerald (Random House) Étienne's Alphabet, James King (Cormorant Books) The Amazing Absorbing
It's been a few years since I obsessed about reading the Giller titles (but that year I discovered Charlotte Gill's Ladykiller and that was terrific). Last year I brushed up against my troubled relationship with the list (Dear Giller Shortlist, Oh, how I used to wait for your five names...) but time
It's Canlit season. And of course everybody's talking about the Giller (I plan to go A-Gillering too). But my reading list is exploding thanks to other prize lists as well. Like the ReLit award. Have you seen their shortlists? (More deets here.) Novels: The Cube People, Christian McPherson (Nightwood) Book, Ken
Timothy Findley's Spadework (2001) This is an author who has been particularly important to me. In that peculiar way in which someone with whom you have had virtually no contact can affect you more than people with whom you have spent years of your life. So I delayed reading his
Thomas Wharton's Icefields (1995) Readers will recognize quickly whether there is a match to be made between them and Thomas Wharton's first novel. Ten pages should do it. First, there is the epigraph, from Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter: "As if everything in the world is the history of ice."
