The top 10 finalists for this year's International IMPAC Dublin literary award have been announced. The 10:

Graceland by Chris Abani

Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

Havoc, In Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett

The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe

An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl – translated from the Danish by Anne Born

The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra – translated from the French by John Cullen

Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh

Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini – translated from the Italian by John Cullen

The Master by Colm Tóibín

The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton

Anyone read any of these? I'm currently reading The Master, but I'm not far enough into it to be able to give my opinion about it just yet. And something kind of cool… Thomas Wharton is from my city. It's nice to see a local writer get some global attention. Kind of inspires hope :)

I picked up this book after my sister read it and passed it on to me.

Ellen Franck is in her mid-30s and is a successful marketing director for a major fashion designer in New York. She’s got money, she’s got fabulous clothes, she’s got good friends, but she’s reached the point where that’s no longer enough.

She’s been hit with baby fever. Badly. The problem is that she’s not married and the man she’s fallen in love with is what she calls “frozen”. Once a successful Pulitzer Prize winning author, he was happily married and had a child. The child died in an accident and as a result of the grief, his marriage hit the rocks and he hit the bottle. He finally managed to get sober and, with a presciption of Prozac, he’s at the point where he can function in the world again. He meets Ellen and they connect mentally. Ellen is so sensitive to his vulnerability (the only reason I can fathom for it is that taking care of him must appeal to the maternal instinct) and they have such comfortable routines and interesting conversations that she’s willing to accept a Prozac-induced sexless relationship with a man that doesn’t ever want to have children again.

(more…)

I came across the American Library Association’s series of Celebrity Read posters featuring celebrities from “Weird Al” to Yo-Yo Ma. I haven’t seen these in a long time, and I was happy to see there are some current ones. My favorite — Mr. Colin “Yum-Yum” Farrell. Though he should have waited until he’d finished filming his long hair movies (Miami Vice, The New World) to pose… hair that length is not his best look. Man… if Colin Farrell really was at my library, I’d never leave. It would make working there a hell of a lot more fun too. ;) Methinks I may just have to pick up The Dubliners now. Well, what do you know… these posters do work!!!

These ALA READ posters have been around for many years. I remember there being some up in my high school library, as well as the Canadian versions (Michael J. Fox, etc.) and local versions (with hockey players, eh?). It’s nice to see that they’re still producing new ones and keeping up with current stars like Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom and Aishwarya Rai. I wish more celebrities would pose for these posters.

I also like that they just say “READ” and “@ your library” on them now. They used to say something like “(Celebrity name) for American libraries,” and often looked very American (much like Britney Spears’ READ poster now). I can remember my high school librarian putting a piece of tape over “American” and putting “Canadian” over top of it or leaving it blank. She wasn’t being anti-American, she was just trying to make it apply to her Canadian students too.

It's my turn to choose a book for my book club's next meeting. I have a few in mind, but I thought I'd open it up to the blogosphere for suggestions first.

Here's the criteria our book club has for choosing books:

1. Can not be recently released or currently in very high demand. Should already be released in paperback and easily obtained at the local library without having to go on a long hold list.
2. Not too long, but not too short. It's got to be juuuuuuuust right.
3. Needs to be a story that would fuel a discussion.
4. A good read. Obviously.

I've got a few ideas in mind. All by authors I've never read before:

• Colm Toibin's The Master which I started reading last night and am not disliking. It helps that it's been nominated for the International IMPAC award and is a finalist for the Booker prize. A regular on top 10 in 2004 lists the world over.
• David Mitchel's Cloud Atlas which sounds interesting: multi-genre with multiple story lines all related in someway by the end of the book.
• Ian McEwan's Atonement. Good reviews with recommendations from people.
• Dave Eggar's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Also had good recommendations from a variety of people who don't share the same reading tastes.

What I'm noticing in these books is that they are all written by men. There is a reason for this: all of the books our club has read thus far have been written by women, and all of them have dealt with women's issues. I'd like to divert from this trend and shake things up a bit. Ideally, I'd like to find a book like Life of Pi: something that left me wanting (needing) someone to talk to about the story.

So… what do you think of these choices? I'm also open to other suggestions/genres. Suggest away! :)

This was my book club’s choice for March. You will either love this book, or you’ll hate it. Me? I hated it. I got a little over a quarter of the way through and I decided I wouldn’t finish it, not even for the book club.

And believe me, I had plenty of opportunity to read it in places where I had nothing else better to do. Sitting in a waiting room at the doctor’s office… I preferred to stare at the ceiling tiles. Sitting in a teensy 4′x3′ changing booth, wearing nothing but a hospital gown and waiting for what seemed like an eternity for the nurse to come get me for my neck ultrasound… I preferred to examine the caulking that ran along the baseboards.

I gave it a try, I really did. But… blech! The writing was dull. Actually, not so much dull and eyebrow-raising and “trying too hard.” Also, there was way too much repetition and straight-forward telling instead of showing. The first few chapters, all I could think was, “I can’t believe this story one bit.”

(more…)