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Tuesday, June 30, 2009 07:29 PM
And the winner of the Name-Cheney's-Memoir contest is....
"Ready. Fire. Aim" submitted by sjones on the comments attached to the original post announcing the contest. As the poster said, the title touches both Cheney's "political career and his hunting prowess."
Get in touch with us via email, Mr. Jones, and we'll arrange a worthy prize from a large and varied selection of books. (Although it may take a while because I'll be holiday; I will get back to you).
Thanks to all who entered. It was fun. You're smart people.
Link to this postTuesday, June 30, 2009 10:50 AM
Cheney contest: The entries
There has been a fantastic response to our contest asking readers to provide a title for Dick Cheney's yet-to-be-named memoir. We also had quite a few voters weigh in on our poll asking you to choose a favourite among six early-bird entries. The winner in that case was "Ready. Fire. Aim."
We'll pick an overall winner later today. In the meantime, below are the best of the numerous entries emailed to us and posted as comments on the original blog post: We apologize for not getting to all of them; there are just too many.
Ready. Fire. Aim.
Don't treat me any differently than you would the President
Unwritten Unwrittens
Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay my ass; I'm the REAL General Jack D. Ripper. A Memoir
I Shot the Sheriff, the Economy, the First Amendment, the Geneva Conventions, Fair Play…oh, and a Lawyer Pal
I Shot the Shareef
The Cheney Everybody Knows Already
No, Mr. Obama. I expect you to die
He’s Just Not That Into Truth
My Years with VP Dubya
Surf's Up: Waterboarding Made Easy
Waterboardin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
Observations from an Undisclosed Location
The Enemy Combatant Within
My Life: Based on Distorted Facts
WMD: Words of a Massive Dick
I Thought He Would Duck
Render This Book
My Life. Or, What I Did Between Irregular Beats of a Vital Organ Other People Call "The Heart"
So Right, I'm Wrong
War and War
Advanced Interrogation Techniques: These And Other Crimes / Poems
If I Did It
Give a man a gun and he can hunt for a day...give him the Vice Presidency and he can torture for years
How To Be A Ventriloquist
Monday, June 29, 2009 04:29 PM
New web applications to help authors avoid embarrassing public meltdowns
Brian Joseph Davis
It will come a little too late to help novelist and Twitter aficionado Alice Hoffman but by next month Google will be releasing a new add-on to Google Alerts called Review-Guard.
While many authors and publicists utilize Google Alerts to automatically notify them of reviews and press notices, ReviewGuard will delete the alert if the link in question contains flagged words and phrases like, “Fails to,” or “pretentious.” With several settings -- left on “moderate” the guard will let past links that contain “But” paragraphs – ReviewGuard can be tailored to every temperament.
If you really don’t trust yourself in today’s world of instant communication, a Mac-only application named iChill trawls the net looking for negative content regarding the user. Once armed it will, for up to 48 hours, turn off your Internet connection and (for iPhone users) freeze your data transfer, as well as alert family or friends so they can steer you away from any hastily-thought-out retorts.
Those interested in both applications should stop reading now as both are completely made up.
Editor's update: Hoffman apologizes.
Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:15 AM
Darth times indeed: The Give Dick Cheney's Memoir A Title contest
Dick Cheney is writing a memoir, and he's getting a reported $2 million for it. But the book still has no title, which gives us the opportunity to name it for him.
Here in the office, we've come up with a few quick ones:
And You Thought Nixon Was A Dick
Water for Enemy Combatants
New Orleans is Sinking. So?
But it's a known known that Globe Books readers can do way better than that. Email your suggested titles to webbooks@globeandmail.com or post them here as a comment, and we'll send some nice books to the creator(s) of the one(s) we like the best.
Remember, people: There are no rules -- just opportunities.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:35 AM
Live and in action: Editors!
Brian Joseph Davis
Editing. A chipper word that’s pleasant sounding enough, isn’t it? An activity that most laypeople believe could be scheduled in between ice cream and foot rubs on a nice Sunday afternoon. But I’ve seen grown novelists cry over it, working relationships go into the toilet and editors turn dead-eyed after dealing with yet one more unhinged author a little too sure of his own genius. There is also a downside to it.
Editing works and there’s no such thing as a piece of writing that can’t benefit from it. There’s a downside because editing, and what constitutes a good edit, is woefully subjective.
That these discrepancies could also be entertaining is the reason Toronto’s Scream Literary Festival is turning the act of editing into a game show. On Saturday, July 4, those in Toronto can watch several editors, including Stuart Ross and Alana Wilcox, edit the same piece of prose by an anonymous and, as we are told, well regarded author in front of an live audience. Edits will be compared. An identity will be revealed and hopefully feelings will be hurt just enough for it to be funny, but not so much for the scars to be permanent.
For those outside of Toronto who would like to cheer on the entombment of the last vestiges of stage-shy “publishing 1.0” you will have to wait several months for my own 15 minutes of ignominy. That’s when I, and the publisher of my Spring 2010 short fiction collection, turn the process of editing and preparing my book for publication into a web realty show tentatively titled Difficult Author Island. Details are still being sussed out but we are looking for three candidates willing to compete for an editorial internship and of course, the honour of editing myself in front of the camera this October. Yes, you keeners raising your hands wildly can contact me now for details.
Outside of the cheeky title, am I truly a difficult author? Well, I don’t think so. But then again, my publisher didn’t argue otherwise when I pitched the concept.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 02:05 PM
Oppel book rockets to top (of atmosphere)
Kenneth Oppel, the prolific penner of children's and young adult's books like Sunwing, Firewing and many others, is now the proud author of a book that is at this very moment orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station.
Oppel's book Airborn was included in the "official flight kit" of Bob Thirsk, the Canadian astronaut pictured above who was rocketed to the station in May for a six-month tour. He is the first Canadian to take part in a long-duration mission.
Thirsk, like other astronauts, is carrying various donated items in his official flight kit that he will return to the donors when he is once again on terra firma.
In the case of Airborn, it was one of two Governor-General's Award-winning books donated by the Canada Council for the Arts in recognition of the fact that Thirsk is a descendant of the governor-general (Lord Tweedsmuir) who founded the awards. The other book is a French title, Deux pas vers les étoiles, by Jean-Rock Gaudreault.
"Flying these nationally distinguished books into space serves as an important symbol of the value of literacy, education, and exploration through knowledge and imagination," the Canadian space Agency says on a web page about Thirsk's flight kit.
Thirsk has also taken some pretty cool music into space; you can see his playlist here.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 01:48 PM
'Sites 4 soar eyes / breaths of fresh ear . . .
Judith Fitzgerald
A visually beautiful 'site serving both form and function? Literature Map: The Tourist Map of Literature. My pleasure :). (GNOD also features Music, Film and Flork. Don't ask.)
The BBC's coming up roses in the po-department: Let Poetry Into Your Life. I don't quite understand the throwback to "poetess"; but, I voted. Yep. For us there is only the trying. The beauty booty provides visitors with a lovely set of audio-visual treats. I like Jarvis Cocker. Always thought of him as much poet as singer-songwriter. Even pay homage to his poetry linking to an especially cogent rack of lines. (Some day, the BBC will upload the talks David Jones delivered in the sixties and I will actually respect it in the morning.)
While visiting the UK, park at The Guardian to discover all kinds of weird places poets do it (and, admit it, too).
By far superior in most every way for those who appreciate such a surfeit of delights? PennSound, a project from the Centre for Programmes in Contemporary Writing. Begin at the beginning. Or else (prepare to fall through a space-time continuum on your way to finding out about Olson via Bowering). Great stuff.
And, a few lines from Geoffrey Hill's "September Song" which speak to his talent, that pic and these times:
. . . (I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
Okay. That's all she wrote.
Monday, June 22, 2009 01:33 PM
Athill v. Munro, one night only!!!
Two of the world's most fascinating female writers -- Diana Athill, 91, and Alice Munro, 78 -- top the bill on the opening night of the 30th annual International Festival of Authors, organizers announced today.
Athill and Munro will be "in conversation" on Oct. 21 in an event entitled "Too Much Happiness", a tip to Munro's forthcoming new collection of short stories of the same name and, one hopes for Athill's sake, to Athill's recent accumulated-wisdom-packed memoir called Somewhere Towards the End. The event will be hosted by CBC personality Bill Richardson.
Munro will be launching her collection at the Toronto festival; organizers stress (in bold type, no less) that this will be her only onstage appearance this fall. Athill, meanwhile, is making her first Canadian appearance, organizers say.
The $100 event is a benefit for PEN Canada; the price of a ticket includes cocktails and hors d'oeuvres beforehand. The tickets are now on sale.
Other marquee names confirmed for IFOA XXX are Margaret Atwood, Jane Urquhart, Anne Michaels, Paul Theroux, Sarah Waters and John Irving. The singer Anne Murray will be launching her new autobiography, as well.
More names: Barry Callaghan • Lisa Moore • Miriam Toews • Daniel Poliquin • Leon Rooke • Nicholson Baker • Debra Adelaide • Denise Mina • Tash Aw • Audrey Niffenegger • Kyle Buckley • Paul Durcan • Jacob McArthur Mooney • Linwood Barclay • John Brady • Hal Niedzviecki • Tim Cook • Eoin Colfer • Sherman Alexie • John Bemrose • Diana Fitzgerald Bryden • Bonnie Burnard • Dani Couture • Michael Crummey • Anne DeGrace • Margaret Elphinstone • Robert Girardi • Jason Guriel • Jennica Harper • Jim Lynch • Linden MacIntyre • Jean McNeil • James W. Nichol • Kate Pullinger • Boualem Sansal • Ingo Schulze • Olive Senior • Meaghan Strimas • Adam Thorpe • Michael Turner • Alexis Wright
For more information, visit www.readings.org.
Monday, June 22, 2009 11:44 AM
What's wrong with dramatic ironing, anyway?
Judith Fitzgerald
Although the world's leading Classicist (in my books), Dr. Mary Beard, Goddess,* rarely blogs on contemporary poetry, poetics or practitioners of the art in A Don's Life (in The Times), when she does, she bravely lays it on the line, a fact which may explain her blogbio: "Mary Beard is a wickedly subversive commentator on both the modern and the ancient world. She is a professor in classics at Cambridge and classics editor of the TLS."
She is also a terrific blogger, guileless and, from all accounts and angles, a good gentle soul. You learn that reading her blog. She doesn't mind admitting she fucked up, like that. Unlike many in the Universal Bloggadramarama, she participates in the discussions her posts generate. I'm not her only admirer and a sort of friend, not at all. Her blog posts will appear in book form . . . soon. Her blog may well be the best in the literary world because her commentarians number among the wittiest, brightest and most eccentrically polymathic coming and going. Every blog needs its St. Francis, no matter how bearish, bullish or tony it grows. In short, from what I know, she's long on tolerance, utterly charming and quintessentially Britishistic. You either understand that or I apologise for the elitist allusion. (Yes, I possess a poetic licence; but, if you need proof, you can't ogle it. Sorry.)
See, just before the down 'n' dirty hits and hisses surrounding the Oxford Poetry Professorship (OPP) echoed around Cyberia, the Goddess said her "so-long sayonaras" to the soon-to-be-knighted Andrew Motion in a post that saluted his contribution to poetry's proliferation in his social-butterfly role as the UK's Poet Laureate (PL). The post circumspectually refrained from assessing the work of poetry's premier ambassador on the grounds that, as a Classicist, it was "too soon to call." No matter. She loved what he'd accomplished; natch, Mary being Mary, she closed her post with a tiny plea, a poignant little request: "Come back Andrew Motion."
Friday, June 19, 2009 01:17 PM
Next stop: Literature!
The independent Toronto press House of Anansi is running a nice little contest right now.
On Monday, June 29, four Anansi writers -- Lisa Moore (February), Karen Solie (Pigeon), Shani Mootoo ((Valmiki’s Daughter) and Emily Schultz (Heaven is Small) -- will be reading at the brand-spanking new McNally Robinson bookstore located in the northern reaches of the city.
To encourage hipster downtowners to make the trek to the dreaded suburbs, Anansi has put on a bus that will transport eight lucky readers and their guests from the press's offices at Spadina and Adelaide to the store at Don Mills. And on board will be all four writers, eager to chat and discuss their latest works.
It's a literary commute. You can get more details and enter the contest here.
While up there, the commuters might also want to stop here.
In Other Words Contributors
Peter Scowen
Peter Scowen is a communities editor with the Globe and Mail and is responsible for the Globe Books website. He is a veteran reporter and editor who has worked for a number of dailies and alternative weeklies in Toronto and Montreal. He is the author of Rogue Nation: The America the Rest of the World Knows.
James Adams
James Adams is a reporter and columnist with The Globe and Mail's Review section. He writes on many culture-related topics including book publishing. Before being named national arts correspondent for The Globe and Mail in fall 2001, he served as its arts editor. He was an editor at McClelland & Stewart/The Canadian Publishers in Toronto for more than five years and previously served as literary arts editor for The Edmonton Journal.
Judith Fitzgerald
Judith Fitzgerald -- poet, editor and cultural critic with 30 works (including poetry, biography, anthologies and children's books) to her credit -- writes about poetry for In Other Words. She is a Poetry Fellow of the Chalmers Arts Foundation. Short-listed for (or recipient of) several major honours including the Fiona Mee, Trillium, Governor-General's Poetry and Writers’ Choice Awards (among others), she recently completed The Adagios Quartet. The ex-Torontonian now calls The Almaguin Highlands home.
Linda Leith
Linda Leith is the founder and artistic director of the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival. The annual festival was the world's first multilingual (including English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Italian, Urdu...) books festival when it was launched in 1999. Linda's most recent book is Marrying Hungary (2008).
Brian Joseph Davis
Brian Joseph Davis is an artist and writer based in Toronto. He's the co-founder of Joyland.ca and has written for Arthur Magazine, The Utne Reader, and Eye Weekly. He's the author of the books Portable Altamont (Coach House, 2005) and I,Tania (ECW, 2008), which Slate.com called "the book of your fever dreams."
Ben McNally
Ben McNally has been a bookseller in Toronto for more than 30 years and has been operating his own store, Ben McNally Books, in the heart of Toronto's financial district on Bay Street since September 2007. In partnership with the Globe and Mail, he co-ordinates the popular Sunday Authors Brunch Series at the King Edward Hotel, and has, for the past two years, been the bookseller at the International Festival of Authors.