Kristin Cashore’s teen fantasy novel GRACELING --due out in October—is already generating buzz in the blogosphere.
GRACELING’s main character, Katsa, has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight years old. She is a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s henchman. She never expects to fall in love the beautiful Prince Po. She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away.
Vancouver blogger Kate Trgovac has already posted an early review of GRACELING:
“From a narrative point of view, GRACELING has a lot going for it: adventure, intrigue, romance, betrayal, an extra-creepy villain, cool psychic abilities, and lady pirates. Yes, lady pirates! OK, just lady sea captains - but I imagine Captain Faun would be an AWESOME pirate."
It’s really amazing that a first-time author has already inspired bloggers like Kate to take to their blogs! Stay tuned for more about GRACELING
See Kate’s entire Graceling Review!
Dan Vyleta, author of critically acclaimed cold-war thriller PAVEL & I, is the most recent Author Snapshot over at January Magazine:
Please tell us about Pavel & I.
It’s a broken sort of love story: a boy is looking for a father, a woman finds a man she thinks she can trust, and the narrator is convinced that he’s identified his soul mate, a man he can talk to, get to the bottom of things… Also, there is a monkey, and a frozen midget, and an English Colonel who likes to wear mink.
With the paperback edition of THE REPUBLIC OF PIRATES hitting the shelves this week, it seems only fair to tell those people who can’t get enough of eye-patches and peg-legs that author Colin Woodard is writing a blog to supplement his book on the Caribbean pirates.
Colin’s latest research solves one of the nagging mysteries of Blackbeard’s infamous career!
Although cutting is not a very festive subject, it perhaps good to remember that not everyone enjoys Christmas, holidays or time with their family, and that sometimes people find it difficult to deal with their anger and frustration.
COMES THE DARKNESS, COMES THE LIGHT is Vanessa Vega’s inspirational memoir of overcoming cutting, and Charlene Martel, herself a former cutter, has reviewed the book on her blog The Literary Word:
I find it hard to believe that anyone could read this memoir and not be incredibly moved by the content found within.
I am in awe of the strength and courage that it must have taken to share such a secret. Cutting is something that is becoming more widespread and is often seen as shameful or worse, the act of someone mentally ill. I am so relieved that it is finally being brought into the open more. Books of this kind make it easier for people to learn about the subject and hopefully understand it a little more. It certainly gave me some insight and I wish that such a book had been available during those dark periods of my life. At a time when I thought I was the only person in the world who had these urges, when I thought that I was going crazy and hated myself with a passion, I might have learned a lot sooner that I was simply trying to deal with things in the only way I knew how…
It is a ‘must read’ for anyone who cuts or self-injures in other ways, and the people who love them. It is a ‘should read’ for everyone.
Over at everyone’s favourite Canadian Litblog, BookNinja, Tom McCarthy, author of the excellent REMAINDER and MEN IN SPACE, has a characteristically literary conversation with Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Toronto-based author of the much lauded THE NETTLE SPINNER (Goose Lane Editions 2005):
I don’t think literature’s ever dead - or, rather, I think it’s eternally dead, dying, and that’s the precondition for its self-perpetuation.
Click here for Tom and Kathryn’s conversation at BookNinja.
Click here for my most recent chat with Tom on the Raincoast Blog.
I was just sent a wonderful review for King of the Lost and Found on a blog called Jenn’s Book Bag. It contained one of the best quotes I’ve ever read so I thought I had to share:
Every once in a while, a true gem of a book comes along. King of the Lost and Found is a diamond of a gem.
Read the full review here.
King of the Lost and Found can be found at fine bookstores everywhere. Pick up your copy today, you won’t regret it!
Jamie Trecker’s rip-roaring LOVE & BLOOD is reviewed today by Ben Knight on The Globe & Mail’s new soccer blog!
The World Cup is the biggest single-sport tournament in the world - and also the planet’s biggest party. In a brisk, entertaining new book, Fox Sports soccer columnist Jamie Trecker does a fine - if frazzled - job of chronicling both.
If you’re interested in soccer, Ben’s blog posts are shaping up to be an invaluable resource, especially if you’re following Toronto FC and the MLS. Jamie Trecker, who, as Ben mentions, just happens to be the senior soccer writer at Fox Sports, also blogs about the game here. He doesn’t pull his punches…
And, just in case you missed it, you can read my interview with Jamie here.
Janelle Martin has posted an extensive preview of the the adult titles coming from Raincoast in Fall 2007 on her blog Eclectic Closet.
Janelle has also previewed the new releases from Random House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and H. B. Fenn. I’m sure there are more to come. How does she find the time?
Now, one of the problems of attending the Raincoast Sales Conference last month in Vancouver was that pretty much all of April disappeared without a trace, so when the excellent Hesperus Press launched their new blog, I completely missed it. Fortunately, Mark at Ready Steady Blog pointed me in the right direction by posting about an splendid rant by Hesperus Press’ Katya Aplin last week:
I simply do not understand how a tiny company, as we and some notable others are, can say ‘what the hell: this is a damned sight more interesting, exciting, than Dan Brown, and if we love it others will’ and sell enough copies to keep itself in tea and biscuits, and other publishers cannot… I honestly don’t believe that our society has ‘dumbed down’. I think we as an industry need to provide the range to allow readers to make their own decisions, for god’s sake let someone choose the author with the funny name. And the media need to expand their attentions to more than the books with the largest marketing department behind them. That said, we do a nice line in badges, if anybody wants.
It makes me want to go out and buy some translated fiction by some guy with one vowel in his name!
AND if you are wondering why I chose the cover of FATAL EGGS by Mikhail Bulgakov, as opposed to one of Hesperus’ more recent titles, not only is the book awesome, but The Elegant Variation Blog decided to post about Bulgakov this morning so it seemed appropriate. AND I like the cover - frogs with red eyes ROCK.
Click here to read Katya Aplin’s full post
Click here to read The Elegant Variation on Mikhail Bulgakov
To mark Saturday’s protests against the four year war in Iraq, Toronto news blog BlogTO has reviewed Marisa Handler’s timely memoir of political activism Loyal to the Sky:
This book could be read and enjoyed for its interesting environs, its likeable writer, the political insight it offers or its striking and elegant prose.
I enjoyed it for the all of these but primarily for the questions Handler is brave enough to ask. While her answers to humanity’s problems are not entirely satisfactory, it is hard to blame her for falling short. In the full course of human history, far too many people have claimed to have solved these conundrums, while no one actually has.But Handler has the courage to look within and without, attempting to find a resolution and admitting what she does not know. The best passages are when she gropes for and is eluded by answers. For example, she writes of a New York protest:
“I watch my friends walking and chanting. They are good people, so good that they care about men and women and children they do not know and will never know. They are the conscience of this nation; they will not let these delegates forget what this administration is perpetrating. But this, what we are doing right now - is it helping? Or is it pushing us further apart? We didn’t come here to convince the delegates to change their minds, or to win their esteem. But I can see what they are thinking. Faced with hatred, they hate us right back. That’s what we’ve all learned to do. What would we risk if we tried something different?”
UPDATE!
If you would like to hear Marisa Handler talk about activism and her book Loyal to the Sky, two new podcast interviews with her are available from the Intrepid Liberal Journal and from Uprising Radio.
Tony Nourmand, co-owner of The Reel Poster Gallery in London and author of James Bond Movie Posters: The Official 007 Collection, has collected together some remarkable material for his gorgeous new book Audrey Hepburn: The Paramount Years, and Monique from the So Misguided blog has kindly reviewed the book on YouTube so you can see some of the beautiful pictures for yourself. Monique Trottier and Audrey Hepburn. Two cool people in one place. What more could you ask for?
Happy New Year Everyone!
Today is my last day at Raincoast. I’m joining James Sherrett as an owner and partner at Work Industries in Vancouver.
You will have noticed several new staff writers—Dan, Selina and Siobhan—who will continue posting about exciting things in the publishing industry and the great books that Raincoast publishes and distributes.
All the best for 2007.
In the online world where all things are bloggable, books are storming the scene (at least they are getting a lot of media attention this week).
I’d like to continue that trend and point out Waterloo’s favourite independent bookstore Words Worth Books, who started blogging in September.
How to Furnish a Room is proclaimed as “a pet blog for the employees of Words Worth Books, a perfectly appropriate use of company time wordsworthbooks.com”.
Book blogging is definitley an appropriate use of company time.
Any one else have a great book blog either personal or professional? Post a link in the comments.
Here are a few others we regularly read:
BookNinja.com
IFOA blog
The Tyee
Want the inside scoop on Iran?
Expat Iranian blogger Hoder, aka Hossein Derakhshan, appeared on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.
He talks about Iran, bloggers, the influence of blogs on politics, and why Iran should have nukes. Watch the video.
Want more?
See www.raincoast.com/weareiran:
We Are Iran provides a portrait of contemporary Iran using that nation’s blogs as its primary source. Author Nasrin Alavi has translated the Farsi blogs to English and has provided a cohesive commentary to help readers better understand the politics and culture of this virtual community.
Ron Nurwisah of Torontoist.com says, “A man is put into a coma by a falling object. He goes on to receive an 8 million pound settlement and with his newfound wealth obsessively tries to recreate a scene that he may have once witnessed. This is the premise for Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, possibly one of the most imaginative novels to come out of the UK in the last few years.” Read his full interview.
Chris at Spikemagazine.com says, “It’s not often I read an entire novel in one sitting, but I did with Tom McCarthy’s Remainder. Whether that’s a testament to the gravity of my insomnia last night or Tom McCarthy’s novel, I’m not sure, but Remainder certainly didn’t put me to sleep.” Read more.
Keir at KeirWilmut.com says,
“The nice people at Raincoast Books sent me a copy of Remainder, and asked if I’d review it. What remains of a person after a near-fatal trauma? What does it mean to be authentic? These are two of the questions posed by Tom McCarthy’s first novel, Remainder.” Read Keir’s review.
Janelle at Eclectic Closet says,
“Tom McCarthy’s artistic eye is apparent in Remainder, translating into vividly described settings. The setting is as much a character as our nameless narrator. Readers are immersed in the setting which is invoked at such a visceral level that one feels the sunbeam warming one’s skin as the narrator lays in a sunbeam and smell the liver wafting through the ventilation system.” Read Janelle’s review.
Raincoast publicist Dan also had a chance to talk to Tom McCarthy. Here’s his 3-part interview.
ADDITION:
Scotchneat.ca says,
“What I liked most: the little moments of description where the author captures precisely the kind of internal loops that we’ve all experienced, such as when he’s on the way to the airport to pick up a friend and realizes he forgot the flight information.” A quote from the book is included then, “It seems like a quotidien passage to pick, but I think McCarthy has an ear (eye?) for the jetsam of the human mind that reminds me a bit of Don DeLillo. That austere and somehow darkly funny insight of how the mind goes, that we can all recognize in ourselves. All the more alarming when it plays out the way it does. The passages where he describes what rehab is like become the internal workings of his pet projects: break everything down to its constituent parts and then execute them (well, maybe literally, even).” Read Scotchneat.ca’s review.
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Check out our NEWEST Podcast for Clancy with the Puck, a hilarious tale of hockey hubris.