Charles Taylor Prize 2011

The five finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize were announced January 11, 2011.
The prize is "awarded to the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception," according to the Taylor Prize website.

http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/

Previous winners:

2000--Wayne Johnston for Baltimore’s Mansion, published by Knopf Canada;
2002--Carol Shields for Jane Austen, published by Penguin Books Canada;
2004--Isabel Huggan for Belonging: Home Away From Home;
2005--Charles Montgomery for The Last Heathen: Encounters With Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia, published by Douglas & McIntyre;
2006--J. B. MacKinnon for Dead Man in Paradise, published by Douglas & McIntyre;
2007--Rudy Wiebe for Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, published by Knopf Canada;
2008--Richard Gwyn for John A.: The Man Who Made Us, The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, Volume One: 1815 – 1816, published by Random House Canada;
2009--Tim Cook for Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917 – 1918, Volume Two, published by Viking Canada Canada.

Finalist for 2010:
1] Stevie Cameron for On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women, published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada;
2] Charles Foran for Mordecai: The Life & Times, published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada;
3] Ross King for Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, published by Douglas & McIntyre/ McMichael Canadian Art Collection;
4] George Sipos for The Geography of Arrival: A Memoir, published by Gaspereau Press;
5] Merrily Weisbord for The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Charles B. P. Taylor (1935-1997) was a Canadian-born journalist with the Globe & Mail. His books include:
Reporter in Red China (1966)
Snow Job : Canada, the United States and Vietnam 1954 to 1973 (1974)
China Hands : The Globe and Mail Peking (editor) (1984)
Six Journeys: A Canadian Pattern (1977) [Biographical portraits of Scott Symons, James Houston, Emily Carr, Herbert Norman, Bishop William White, and Brigadier James Sutherland Brown.]

Here is a partial list of books that I have read this year:

Alex Caine. The Fat Mexican: The Bloody Rise of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club (2009)
J.M. Coetzee. Summertime (2009)
Hari Kunzru. My Revolution (2007)
Owen Davies. Grimires: A History of Magic Books (2009)
John Gribbon. In Search of the Multiverse (2009)
George Barker, Martin Bell, Charles Causley. Penguin Modern Poets 3 (1962)

A full list of books can be found here on the North Door Books website.

The Giller Prize was awarded last night. The Giller provides a list of the top Canadian fiction writers for the year. The winner may not always be the most interesting, but the list of writers posted may have some that I might enjoy reading.

This year's 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner is Johanna Skibsrud's The Sentimentalist.

It gets a great deal of publicity. There are 246 news articles listed on Google News. At my local library, but there are already 8 holds on the book before it even arrives.

Johanna Skibsrud, aged 30, of Montreal, is the youngest-ever Giller recipient and picked up the $50,000 book prize. Skibsrud grew up in Pictou County, N.S.

There appears to be a shortage of the winner's book. Gaspereau Press can only print about 1,000 books a week. Gaspereau's headquarters are in Kentville, N.S. The publisher noted that readers can download the book onto an ereader if they are desperate to get it right away. It is not available at my local Coles Book Store.

online price: $18.44
eBook: $9.89

Other finalists on short list:
This Cake is for the Party by Toronto's Sarah Selecky
Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod of Dartmouth, N.S.
(Son of author Alistair MacLeod.)
The Matter With Morris by Winnipeg's David Bergen
(I've read one of his previous novels.)
Annabel by Montreal-based Kathleen Winter.

The long list of Giller finalists:
David Bergen The Matter With Morris
Douglas Coupland Player One
Michael Helm Cities of Refuge
Alexandar MacLeod Light Lifting
Avner Mandelman The Debba
Tom Rachman The Imperfectionists
Sarah Selecky This Cake is for the Party
Johanna Skibsrud The Sentimentalists
Cordelia Strube Lemon
Joan Thomas Curiosity
Jane Urquhart Sanctuary Line
Dianne Warren Cool Water
Kathleen Winter Annabel

Ethelwyn Wetherald - NIAGARA WRITERS

Ethelwyn Wetherald - Canadian Poet and Journalist

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Goodreads

Shakespeare, Virgil and Homer

It's always interesting to see what pop culture and commercial interests do with literary works and writers. I don't know what comment to make on the pig in Shakespeare, Ontario, other than to say there is also a Shakespeare Auto Repair Shop. But this Shakespeare is the name of a town, near Stratford, Ontario, where Shakespeare is indeed performed on the stage. Also, in the Niagara area, there are towns called Virgil and Homer. Virgil, appropriately, is in wine country. Long in decline, Homer now has the Garden City Skyway above it, carrying the Queen Elizabeth Way over the Welland Canal. On the ground in Homer is a cemetery, chocolate store, auto parts factory, and a gentlemen's club. There are also other cities and towns: Milton, Ontario (after the great poet?); Vaughan, Ontario (after the poet Henry Vaughan?); and Atwood, Ontario, named after the poet/fiction writer Margaret....

Comic book writer Liu Hsin-Chin

I have now been in Taiwan for the last three weeks, accompanying my wife Li-Huei, who is visiting her father. (He is having eye surgery.) We visited Hsinchu, famous for its high tech industries. A theme park along an old Japanese narrow-gage rail line includes a museum/restaurant dedicated to comic book writer 劉興欽, Liu Hsin-Chin. In the photo my wife is with one of his cartoon characters. The rail line gave access to the trees in the mountains for lumber during the Japanese colonial period, 1895-1945.
Late May and early June in Taiwan--hot, hot, hot. Love it.