The Savvy Reader

Author Guest Blog - Alun Anderson

Alun Anderson's After the Ice takes an eye-opening look at the winners and losers in the high-stakes story of Arctic transformation, from nations and native peoples, to animals and the very landscape itself. Anderson explores the effects of global warming amid new geopolitical rivalries as he combines science, business, politics, and adventure to provide a fascinating narrative portrait of this rapidly changing land of unparalleled global significance. In this exclusive guest blog post, the author provides some of his own majestic images of the region coupled with some of his own powerful captions.

Hunters
I had watched beluga whales playing in the waters off Baffin Island before coming across this scene on a beach, after hunters had caught up with the whales. It was a shock for me, but a lesson in how important hunting still is for the Inuit people who have long lived in the high Arctic.

Meeting a polar bear unexpectedly
This female bear was full of curiosity and tried to climb aboard our 300-foot long ship. Don’t be fooled by her cute looks: she is both very dangerous and very vulnerable. On the ice she is a killer, but once the ice goes as the Arctic melts there will be no way for her to hunt seals and her reign as the Arctic’s top predator will be over.

Seeing the melt
Sunshine, dark water that soaks up the heat, and white ice are a lethal mix that wipes out the ice. The less ice there is, the faster the remaining ice melts away.

Peering into a Moulin
Temperatures are rising on top of the Greenland ice cap. Rivers of melt water are pouring down through slippery holes in the ice, lubricating the bottoms of glacier and helping them slide towards the sea. All that ice eventually pushes up sea levels.

Meeting children
A lucky visitor gets arms loads of cotton grass from these kids in Greenland. They all have dreams for the future and we should not be messing with their environment by what we do far to the south.

Browse Inside to start reading After the Ice now.
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J.J. Abrams To Adapt Let The Great World Spin

I know the fellows over at the Post reported this, like 11 days ago, so it's no longer "news," per se, but it's still extremely exciting and I wanted to make sure we had it down here at The Savvy Reader for posterity's sake. You know, in case the film never gets made. You know Hollywood. However, I will, from now until whenever I do go see the filmed adaptation, be including Colum McCann's exceptional Let the Great World Spin on every single "Read It Before You See It" top 10 list I create, because it's simply a book everyone should have the pleasure of knowing.

From The Afterword:

J.J. Abrams to produce Colum McCann's 'Let The Great World Spin'

The man who brought you Lost, Alias and the new Star Trek film is ready to get literary by producing a film adaptation of Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann's National Book Award winning novel.

More from Reuters:

Colum McCann's National Book Award-winning novel "Let the Great World Spin" is on its way to a movie deal.

J.J. Abrams is working out a rights deal to spin a feature from McCann's sprawling period piece. Abrams would produce -- with McCann adapting the screenplay -- at Paramount, where his Bad Robot production company resides.

"Spin," McCann's fifth novel, was published in June by [HarperCollins Canada]. Built around Philippe Petit's real-life "artistic crime of the century" -- when the Frenchman illegally walked a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center towers in August 1974 -- "Spin" follows an ensemble cast of characters struggling in New York.

Read the full post here.

Gretchen Rubin Answers Our Pop Culture Questions, And She Picks Sides

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, set out to make herself a happier person over the course a year. Tracking her results on her fantastic blog as she went along, Rubin's conclusions were sometimes surprising. And we like surprising, especially when it comes to the answers to our Pop Culture Questionnaire. See below!

1. What was the first concert you attended (without your parents) and do you still listen to the band/artist today?

Gosh, I think it was The Cars! No, don’t listen to them anymore.

2. Have you ever lied about reading a particular book to impress someone? What was the book?

Hmm... not that I can remember.

3. What was the most recent show you watched on television?

The American version of The Office.

4. Who would play you if your life was adapted for the big screen?

I have no idea! someone with red hair.

5. Have you ever walked out of a movie theatre?

No.

6. And speaking of movies, what's your favourite guilty pleasure film -- one you've seen multiple times?

I love watching movies over and over, and so do my children –- so The Sound of Music, Shrek, the Harry Potter movies, Star Wars…

7. Who's your favourite female protagonist in books or movies?

Tough one. Jo from Little Women? Katniss from The Hunger Games? Mrs. Dalloway? I could go on and on.

8. Team Jacob or Team Edward?

Team Edward, no question. Loooove The Twilight Saga books and movies.

Browse Inside to take a sneak peek at The Happiness Project
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Jess Walter Picked by Laura Lippman & Nick Hornby

Steve Osgoode, our Director of Business Development (among other things!) sent this around earlier this month:

Salon.com asked a number of writers to name their favourite book of the year and both Nick Hornby and Laura Lippman picked The Financial Life of Poets. It's the only book to appear more than once on the list.

Nick Hornby, the author of "Juliet, Naked" Jess Walter is one of your country's most interesting younger novelists, and one of my favourite contemporary writers. And his latest book, The Financial Lives of the Poets, seems to me to contain most things that one can reasonably expect from a good novel: It's wise, moving, very funny and timely, dealing as it does with economic calamity and how that whole mess impacts our lives and relationships and souls. Oh, and it's a joy to read, too -- a sine qua non, given the darkness of the times, both within the book's pages and out here in the world.

Laura Lippman, author of "Hardly Knew Her"

By this point in my reading life, I have two mantras: "Surprise me" and "Have a take and don't suck." Jim Rome coined the latter, but the former is the result of more than a decade as a crime novelist. I'm a hard reader to surprise. I'm not talking about traditional plot twists, but something almost indefinable, a resolution at once true and earned, yet not entirely expected. In Jess Walter's fifth novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets, he sets up a hilarious situation -- former reporter/would-be Internet entrepreneur decides to become a pot dealer to forestall his family's financial crisis -- and brings it to a ruefully understated ending. Bonus: A succinct and, yes, poetic description of what's happened to newsrooms over the past few years. It actually reminded me why I loved being a newspaper reporter, once upon a time.

Rebecca Gowers Takes on Our Pop Culture Questionnaire

Rebecca Gowers took a deep breath and admitted that's she firmly planted one foot away from the digital music revolution. Hey, I'm not even remotely ashamed to admit that we still listen to cassette tapes at the cottage. We have piles of them. How about you? Anyway, here are her amazing responses to our Pop Culture Questionnaire:

1. What's the most overplayed song on your iPod (be honest!)?

How to say this? Not only do I not own an iPod, but I still sometimes listen to music on cassette tapes.

2. Which game show would you like to be a contestant on?

Any, so long as I didn't ever get shouted at. But does such a show exist? I'm not sure that it does. [Editor's note: I'm pretty sure Alex Trebek has never shouted at anyone during Jeopardy. That might just be the show for you.]

3. What's your favourite TV show?

The news, not that I exactly like it.

4. Who is your favourite superhero?

Blink, the teleporting Marvel mutant.

5. Which book do you consistently recommend to friends and family?

The Restless Supermarket, by the South African author, Ivan Vladislavic. I think this is the best book I've ever read that no one I know has heard of. It took me a year to get hold of a copy, so I only lend it out to people I can absolutely depend upon to give it back.

6. Which actor would you cast to play you in a movie based on your life?

I guess that would have to be Bob Dylan.

7. What album would be the soundtrack?

My father wrote many soundtracks for film and television, so this is by no means an easy question for me. When I was small, he would check to be sure that various of his cues made the hairs stand up on my arms. Still, let's say Word of Mouth, from Punk Jazz: The Jaco Pastorius Anthology, on an endless loop, if the director didn't object.

8. If you could live the life of a fictional character, who would it be?

I'd happily try Charlie Bucket's, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; not so much for the chocolate, as for the golden ticket.

The Savvy Reader Interview - Anne Giardini

When Anne Giardini, author of Advice for Italian Boys, was in Toronto this past November, she came into the office to sign books and kindly agreed to sit down for an interview. I, of course, muddled the whole thing up:

1. I forgot the batteries to the digital recorder.

2. Then, I put them in upside down.

3. Then, I couldn't get them back out again and wrestled with the gadget for what felt like FOREVER

4. AND then, when I turned the gadget on, I forgot to press "record."

5. There were tears.

6. Oh, and we had to repeat the interview again FROM THE BEGINNING.

7. Luckily, Anne's lovely, gracious, kind, and didn't seem to mind.

So, at long last, here's my conversation with Anne Giardini, the one we actually recorded:

DEANNA MCFADDEN: How did the process of writing Advice for Italian Boys differ from your first novel (The Sad Truth About Happiness)? And was it hard or easier, how was it different?

ANNE GIARDINI: In some ways it was similar and in some ways it was different. I had the benefit with the second book of having the entire story given to me in an instant. It came to me as a whole; the theme, the characters, and the plot, all came to me in a nanosecond. So that made writing it considerably simpler because I just had to write the story that I’d already laid out before me; whereas, with the first book, I was coming up with the plot as I went along.

[But] the actual [writing] process is very similar. I try to find pieces of time where I can sketch out a theme or a chapter. When that’s done and I have the bones of it down, then I can go back and fill it in, flesh it out, nip and tuck and do all the things I have to do until it feels thickened to me.

I would, as I say, lay tracks, first of all, and then fill it in, then do some editing. So each day when I sit down, I revisit what I’ve written the day before, the time before. Do a little bit of that thickening and pruning, then lay tracks again forward. As long as you can keep that forward momentum, you don’t lose heart. Both times it has worked like that. And with this third book I am working on now, I am following that same process.

The Savvy Reader Interview - Francine Prose

Francine Prose was in Toronto a few weeks back for an event at the new Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Reference Library. I was lucky enough to have about fifteen minutes with her between interviews and publicity-type stuff. We spoke mainly about Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and just a little about her previous books.

DEANNA MCFADDEN: What inspired you to write about Anne Frank?

FRANCINE PROSE: I re-read the diary and I was amazed at how good it was. How it read like a novel, how it seemed like a real work of literature, and I just thought I would look at it that way -- as a piece of writing.

DM: What was it about reading Anne Frank as a child that resonated with you throughout the years?

FP: She wrote so beautifully about what it was like to be a teenager. I really had never seen anything like that before. I knew that my life was so much more comfortable and safe than hers, but in other ways I identified completely.

I was eight years old [when I read the book for the first time] and I can remember reading it on the floor of my bedroom. Just sitting on the floor, reading it from start to finish, and then going back to the beginning to read it over again.

"Book, Before You Leap"

Author Rebecca Gowers wrote a lovely Tuesday Essay for Globe Books online a few weeks ago. In case you missed it the first time around, and if you're among the few who haven't take this week off and are walking around the hallowed halls of your office hearing crickets and ghosts of business associates passed, here it is again for your reading pleasure:

The first book-length manuscript I ever wrote was a novel featuring a young film critic. While living an otherwise tedious life, this character was shown to spend day after day in theatres watching mainly terrible movies (gruesome, saccharine, preposterous). Result: the poor thing goes mad.

Was this plot the least bit autobiographical? Of course! I was living off welfare cheques at the time, ghostwriting film reviews on half pay for the Spectator.

When I had finished the novel manuscript, my agent zoomed through it, rang me up and said, “Listen, not only is this unpublishable as it stands, but I can think of nothing to recommend that would improve it.”

Head on over to Globe Books online to read the rest
Browse Inside to start reading The Twisted Heart now

Alice in Wonderland: The Book, The Film, The Anticipation

We're about to break for the holidays around here at HarperCanada. So, prepare for the flurry of posts as I finally get caught up after the whirlwind few months we've had. I'm sure everyone and their uncle has seen this new trailer for Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland film but it looks fantastic.

Collins Design's amazing, illustrated edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (pictured above) hits stores this February, just in time for people to read it before they go and see the film. Camille Rose Garcia's colourful, spirited images accompany Carroll's original text and bring another layer to the story. In a sense, it's almost as if they echo the amazing art direction in the film:

I haven't read any of the Alice books since I was a young girl, and I know it shouldn't take a major Hollywood adaptation to get them back into my hands again, but the moment our edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland lands on my desk, you'll see me with it on the subway. Anyone else out there about to revisit Alice before they see Burton's film? 

The Book of Negroes: The Commemorative Trailer

We are all so proud of Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes and now, this trailer. I hope you all like it and that it, in some small way, captures the brilliance of Hill's book.

--Cory