Prize watch: Yesterday, the eight finalists for the Folio Prize were announced. HUGE congrats to Canadian Miriam Toews, as All My Puny Sorrows made it to the short list and very deservedly so. It’s an impressive list of finalists; I recommend 10:04 and will definitely be reading a few others!
Tag: All My Puny Sorrows
Top Reads of 2014
Happy New Year gang! With not much time left in 2014, we’ve come full circle – back to where we started, with a roundup of my favourite books I read throughout the year. It was another mixed bag of reading – genres and topics and locales and time periods galore. I guess if there’s a recurring theme to be spotted in my book choices, it’s war, or the aftermath of war. Continue reading
Writers’ Trust 2014
Prize watch: (November 10 update) I’m a little slow on reporting this one… congrats to Miriam Toews, winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for All My Puny Sorrows. It’s excellent – give it a read! Continue reading
Prize Jury Wannabe: Giller 2014
What are you doing with your extra hour today? I’m using mine to start this blog post!
I took a break from Reading Bingo this month to catch up on some CanLit. I finished 14 books in October – including all six Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists, with eight days to spare before the big event and one day to spare before the Between the Pages event featuring all the authors. (I was lucky to have some actual vacation time – as opposed to the more frequent notional type, where I intend to take time off and then give in to my always-expanding inbox and just end up working anyway.)
Tough call on the Giller this year! Usually there’s one book that I feel is far and away the best. (Usually it doesn’t win.) This year I was really impressed by three of them, and am still waffling between giving them 4 and 5 stars. Continue reading
Giller Prize 2014 short list
Prize watch: Big day today… the Scotiabank Giller Prize short list was just announced. Congrats to all the finalists! The award ceremony is on November 10, so that gives me 35 days to read:
- The Betrayers, by David Bezmozgis
- Tell, by Frances Itani
- Us Conductors, by Sean Michaels
- The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, by Heather O’Neill
- All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews
- The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, by Padma Viswanathan
Think I’ll be able to do it? Better yet, who’s with me?!
Giller Prize 2014 long list
Prize watch: I’m so giddy with excitement, it’s Giller Day! Well, the first of several Giller Days. The 2014 Giller Prize long list was announced this morning. I’m definitely behind in my CanLit this year (thanks to Reading Bingo, I suspect). I’ve only read ONE of these (Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, by Shani Mootoo, which was very good). Continue reading