1. The Tiger’s Wife

Ben says: "The Tiger’s Wife is a magnificent book. Wisdom and compassion inform its every paragraph. Story upon story are interwoven with astonishing grace, characters jump out from the page, and it is impossible not to inhale the oppressive air of a culture in permanent conflict. It is impossible not to be carried along effortlessly by this exceptionally talented writer."

Read the whole review | Read the Excerpt

2. The Stranger’s Child

Ben says: "It is impossible to do The Stranger’s Child justice in this limited space, so much is contained in its economical but exhilarating narrative. It is a novel of grace and wisdom and of great heart, and it could serve as a model for anyone interested in the possibilities of the form. It is gently humorous, darkly ironic and sweeping in its scope. An encapsulation of almost a century of British life, The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst is a rich and almost astonishingly accomplished novel from a writer at the height of his considerable powers."

Read the whole review | Read the Excerpt

3. The Night Circus

Ben says: “The Night Circus is a major achievement and a memorable and extremely satisfying book. The characters are all strong and carefully developed and totally believable, and there is a moral dimension that allows the book to be read on several levels. It is a novel of many intricately fashioned moving parts, but in the end it is greater than the sum of these parts. In the smooth glide of the narrative it is easy to overlook the serious wisdom that underpins it, and the questions that arise from it."

Read the whole review | Read the Excerpt

4. 1Q84

Ben says: “I had no intention of reading Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. The pre-publication excitement here was unprecedented: the novel had been published as a trilogy in Japan to great acclaim and customers were constantly asking when it would arrive in Canada. There was no need for me to read it. My son, however, is a big fan, and when I received a copy of the book I thought I’d have a look inside to see what all the fuss was about. On page seven I found myself hooked, and there were more than 900 pages left to read."

Read the whole review | Read the Excerpt

5. The Fear Index

Ben says: "Robert Harris has fashioned a career writing engaging and literary novels of suspense. His novels set in the past have been consistently well-researched and finely crafted with an eye to contemporary events, but when he turns his talents to the present, as he did so successfully in The Ghost, and as he does so again in his new and wonderfully suspenseful The Fear Index, the books seem to spring straight from recent headlines. His research is impeccable, and his command is enviable. The Fear Index is a resounding success on every level."

Read the whole review

What were your Top 5 books of 2011?

Holiday preparations seem to be in full bloom as I write this. Visiting my local mall and even grocery stores on the weekend, it was hard not to get swept up in the anticipation with green and red and glitter adorning every display. One of my favourite places to visit at this time of year is, not surprisingly, a bookstore. I’ll admit to some frustration when I have to wait in long check-out lines at clothing stores, but somehow in bookstores, I take great delight in peeking at what books other shoppers have found, and loving that so many people are buying books as gifts for the holidays.

One book I’ll be putting under a few trees this holiday season is The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon, featuring her beloved Jamie Fraser character that fans of Gabaldon’s will know well. And if there is someone on your list that isn’t yet a fan of Diana Gabaldon (or if you haven’t yet had the pleasure), I highly recommend the deluxe edition of Outlander, the first in her series, for anyone that loves adventure, romance, unforgettable characters, and getting swept up in a great story.

Happy Reading!

Author Charles Foran’s acceptance speech after winning the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, November 15, 2011 for his book Mordecai: The Life & Times.

All published books are family affairs. They may start with the solitary writer, but end up implicating dozens more. The supportive spouse is a given. So is the visionary editor. Inspirational children are great adds, along with the parents who gave you life itself. Then there are the friends who kept pulling you up and the bemused copy editor, and stellar publicist, who got your prose into semi-shape and you to your appointments on time.

To name just a few.

But not many book families are as large and distinguished as the one that lies behind Mordecai: The Life & Times. So, I must thank [my wife] Mary Ladky once again, and Louise Dennys, once again, and Anna, Claire, Dave and Muriel Foran. Among those friends, Mark Abley and Yann Martel, James Lahey and Guy Lawson, need be singled out, along with Amanda Lewis and Sharon Klein at Knopf Canada.

To name just a few.

But a biography of this kind implicates a whole other family. That would be the indeed impressive Richler clan of Montreal, Toronto, London, and elsewhere. Thanking Florence Richler, who worked with me tirelessly and generously for four years, is something I can’t do enough. But thanking her late husband is awkward, especially given that, holding true to his principles, he might not have appreciated the book so much. Regardless. As I’ve said before, I’ll say today: I have been standing on the shoulders of a giant throughout. It is that simple, and evident, I suspect, to everyone. So humbly, shyly, almost under my breath: Thank you, Mordecai Richler.

I’ve interviewed a lot of celebrities over my TV career, and Bobby Flay is one of the few who is truly more charming, more generous – than he’s depicted on television. 12 restos, 11 books and the food network – after meeting the guy – I’d say he’s just beginning his imprint on American cuisine.

The tuna tartare, grilled mahi mahi – to die for! And his beef seasoning & grilling tips!… let’s just say I’ll never look at a burger the same again. As Bobby says – it’s the quintessential sandwich. Bar Americain, the book, will be a staple in my kitchen here on in.

Check out Minna’s interview with Bobby below!

And don’t forget to try one of these recipes from Bobby’s new book Bar Americain!
Blackberry-Bourbon Julep
Bobby Flay’s Goat Cheese Gratin

For more great lifestyle tips & recipes, sign up for our Joie de Vivre newsletter!

While there is no copyright on titles, most authors – and their publishers – are at great pains not to duplicate an active title. Obviously, mistakes are made from time to time. I was guilty of this myself several years ago when I titled a book of mine Still Life, not realizing that fellow-Canadian writer Louise Penny had released a book with that very same title several years earlier. I felt terrible, especially after I met Louise, and I apologized repeatedly and profusely. I never would have willingly used another author’s title unless the book had been out of print or the public eye for years. Fairly early in my career, I called a novel The Other Woman, and learned shortly thereafter that Rona Jaffe had published a book with the same title about a decade earlier. My publishers saw no conflict because of the time lapse. There have since been a number of Other Women, both on bookshelves and in movies. When my Other Woman was recently made into a TV movie – directed by Jason Priestly – the producers decided to distinguish it from all the other Other Women out there by calling it Joy Fielding’s The Other Woman. I thought that was pretty neat.

This sort of thing happens all the time. In 1981, I published Kiss Mommy Goodbye. Several months later, another book appeared titled Kiss Daddy Goodbye. Coincidence? Who knows? In 1997, I wrote Missing Pieces. Years later, this became the title of a TV movie starring James Coburn. In 2003, I wrote a book called Lost. Soon after, a very popular TV series appeared with that same exact title. I have no knowledge if the producers did this deliberately, or if they were even aware of my books, and in any event, there was nothing I could do except shake my head and hope that someone might be persuaded – or fooled – into thinking these projects were in some way connected to my books, and run out to buy a copy.

But it’s still upsetting, especially when one spends days, weeks, or even months trying to come up with the perfect title to describe one’s book. I do think there should be some sort of amendment to the copyright rule, perhaps a delay of two years before a published title can be used again. In this day and age, when computers can so easily ferret out this type of information, there’s really no excuse for this sort of duplication. Surely there are enough original titles to go around. It’s undeniably true that any number of writers can come up with the same idea, and also true that if you give a hundred authors the exact same idea, you will still get a hundred very different stories. They just shouldn’t all be called the same thing.

To: Proud Canadians and Music Lovers
An Appeal for a National Gordon Lightfoot Day

It was during the process of working on my new book, “ Writing Gordon Lightfoot: The Man, the Music, and the World in 1972,” that I realized scribbling text about Canada’s greatest songwriter wasn’t nearly enough of a gesture. I did what I could– it’s all I can do, as a writer (as a musician, I’ve covered his songs)– but still, an enormous gap remains in terms of our nation’s celebration of Lightfoot’s songs and his musical legacy. Lightfoot was the first Canadian musician to establish his reputation at home before lighting out for American success.

In 1967, he wrote a seven-minute epic– “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”– at a time when 3 minute pop songs were standard radio fare. The song was played every few minutes that summer, and with every broadcast, listenership stilled from coast to coast. No one had heard anything like it, and it stands as one of the first– and mightiest– musical addresses; an exclamation point behind the songwriter’s parade of other hit records. As quoted from my book, “Before, the only artists you heard on the radio were from Britain or the USA: Sinatra and the Beatles, that sort of thing. That this artist was from here was huge for us. It gave us a starting point. A cultural beginning.”

In recognition of his unparalleled contribution to our country, I propose that we celebrate National Gordon Lightfoot Day. Scotland has Robbie Burns Day and Ireland has Bloomsday. I offer that Lightfoot has had no less of an emancipating and defining effect on who we are and how we see ourselves, particularly– but not exclusively– as artists. His music ties together every corner of the nation, and his longevity is testament to the power and strength of being original, more so considering that, in the early days, no one else was singing about our people and our places. His art resonates through trends and changes in fashion and the twisting nature of popular culture. Hopefully, “Writing Gordon Lightfoot” will serve as a starting point in the movement towards a National Gordon Lightfoot Day.

I implore you to help in recognizing this towering figure in Canadian music, art and life.

Sincerely,
Dave Bidini

You can sign the petition here.

I just sorted a pile of M&Ms by color, which took about five seconds (sadly, I only had about two dozen M&Ms left, as I’m trying to improve my diet, which means that I’m no longer keeping a giant bag of chocolate in the drawer of my desk. Also, as a side note, I’m eating M&Ms because you can’t buy Smarties in the USA). I color coded my candy because I’ve already alphabetized the more than 1,000 books I’ve got in my office, and because the other alternatives for procrastination – folding laundry, cleaning my workbench in the garage – seem even less appealing than doing my work. The problem is that I have too much guilt to do something I’d enjoy, to just go read a novel or head out to see a matinee. Because I’m supposed to be working – finishing my next novel, polishing up a short story, and working on some new stuff – but don’t really want to actually do any work, I’m stuck in a sort of limbo, where I’m not actually getting anything done but I’m not really having fun either.

I’ve probably earned the right to take a day off when I feel like it: Touch is coming out in a whole bunch of countries and languages, I’m almost finished my next book, and I’ve got several short stories out with my agent. But I can’t do it. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned about being successful as a writer is that it always takes more work than I want it to. There’s a certain art to getting your ass in the chair and keeping it there for however long it takes. I can’t even begin to count the number of people I’ve met who wanted to be writers but who didn’t want to spend the necessary time at their desks.

All of the working writers I know do just that: they work. I’m not as rigid as some – I don’t have a word count or a number of pages I try to put out every day, or even a set number of hours that I try to get under my belt – but I’ve learned that when things are going well I lose track of time, I get up to grab the kids from school and realize I’ve forgotten to eat lunch (which is saying something, if I’ve forgotten about lunch). But that’s true for all of us: when things are going well it never feels like work. The problem is that to get to that point where I lose track of time, I need to get my ass in the chair and keep it there, I need to alphabetize my books, color coordinate M&Ms, do anything but walk away.

Writing is a lonely sport. During the day, when my daughters are in school and my wife is at work, I sometimes feel like I’ve simply been forgotten, that at any moment they will come bursting back through the door to take me with them. The house has its own rhythm when my family is home, but when it’s just me, it’s as if something is absent, the hum of the refrigerator not enough to compensate for what is missing. The thing is, there’s something about that odd sort of loneliness that I like. I’ve spent plenty of time writing in coffee shops with headphones on to block out the noise, but mostly, nowadays, writing full time, I work from home. I think it helps that I play music when I’m writing, that the keyboard for my computer clicks furiously as I type, that I hear the words in my head, but I know for sure that it helps that I’ve got a dog curled up at my feet.

As I was finishing Touch, we had to put our Golden Retriever, Hopper, to sleep. He was ten years old, and we’d had a rough winter: he had to have an eye removed, a surgery that left him with an almost comical appearance, the stitched shut, sunken eye-socket scarred into a shape that made Hopper look like he was perpetually winking. Then, just as he seemed fully recovered from that surgery, he blew out his knee. On our vet’s recommendation, we decided to do six weeks of rehab work before the surgery, so that he’d have an easier recovery, but the day before he was supposed to start, he came down the stairs and then collapsed into a heap, letting out a sound that can only be described as a scream. It turned out that he had broken his leg, a side effect from the bone cancer that had conquered his body. When we put him to sleep, one of the last things he did before he closed his eyes was to snatch a used tissue out of my wife’s hand, leaving us both laughing and crying at the same time.

I didn’t write much in the next couple of weeks. I’d gotten Hopper as a puppy a few months before I met my wife, and during the days when my wife and daughters were at work and school, I couldn’t get past the quietness of the house. For the first time there was no dog curled up under my desk or lying at the top of the stairs. There was no dog to sigh and rumble to his feet so he could follow me to the kitchen when I got a drink.

Now, nearly two years later, as I’m typing this, our new dog, Turtle, is almost fifteen months old. Full-grown but still a puppy. He’s lying on his side and dreaming, and as he lets out a whimper I reach down to pet him, to say, “good boy, good boy.”

Alexi Zentner’s Touch was selected for the New Face of Fiction program in 2011. Touch will be available wherever books and ebooks are sold on April 12, 2011.

In my parents’ house there were no English books. The library in my small town was the size of an elementary school classroom. The shelves went to the ceiling and were so close together that even a small child like me had to walk sideways between them. I visited as much as three times a week after supper, and if it had been open, I would have been there the other evenings as well. That dusty crowded room transported me to worlds unknown. The women volunteers introduced me to Lewis Carroll, Daphne du Maurier, L. M. Montgomery, the Brothers Grimm, and more. For an immigrant kid like me, the public library was one of the primary building blocks in my love of words and stories. I am deeply indebted to the library of my youth. So, when Tina Srebotnjak told me that Toronto Public Library had chosen Midnight at the Dragon Cafe for its Keep Toronto Reading 2011 One Book, I was speechless!

The events that have been planned for Midnight at the Dragon Cafe are extensive and interesting. And on a personal level, I am flattered to see so many other writers and artists involved. Who would ever have thought that an immigrant girl like me would one day not only write a book, but have its cover on the side of a Toronto streetcar!

But she went into the distinctive Border crouch, gave those sheep that long, predatory stare that collies have. The sheep did a double take, if any creature that dumb can manage a double take, and came to attention. I watched Tessa’s face. I can tell you exactly what she was thinking. I could almost hear the whirl, and spin as the tumblers fell into place. Tessa was telling herself: ‘This is what I was what bred for and what I will be good at. Chasing sheep is my purpose in life.’

Crazy as it sounds, I felt kind of like Tessa in her field of sheep in 2007 when my husband and I were in Venice, on a walking tour from the Rialto Bridge, which ended up in the Jewish Ghetto. As I stood in the campo, the wellhead in the middle, surrounded by a perimeter of tall, rickety buildings, something clicked for me and I thought, ‘Yes! Historical novels! This is my genre, my pasture. I can write about this.’

[Editor's Note: Roberta's novel, The Midwife of Venice, moved our publicity coordinator to tears! Read Iris' post about meeting the author for lunch in Regaling Roberta.]