AbeBooks' Reading Copy

President Barack Obama loaded up on books at an independent bookstore last weekend in support of Small Business Saturday.  The White House reports that the President picked up 21 titles, ranging from children’s books and YA Literature to brand new best-sellers.  Looks like the Obama’s will be have a very bookish Christmas.

Here’s the list:

Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

Jinx by Sage Blackwood

Lulu and the Brontosaurus by Judith Viorst and Lane Smith

Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell

Moonday by Adam Rex

Journey by Aaron Becker

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein

Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff

Ballad of the Sad Cafe: And Other Stories by Carson McCullers

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

All That Is by James Salter

Wild: From Lost to Found On the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

As predicted by almost everyone, this small book of psalms from 1640, known as the Bay Psalm Book, has become the world’s most expensive printed book after being auctioned by Sotheby’s last night in New York for $14.2 million.

The Bay Psalm Book is the first known book to be printed in what became the United States. Sotheby’s reported the buyer was US financier and philanthropist David Rubenstein, who planned to loan it to libraries. That’s a special gesture from a very rich man but we have seen it before. In 2007, Rubenstein purchased a copy of the Magna Carta at auction for $21.3 million, and then loaned it to the National Archives in Washington DC.

A remarkable piece of Puritan and American history, the book is an English translation of the original Hebrew psalms, and was owned by a church in Boston. The book sold is one of 11 copies known to exist from about 1,700 copies originally printed.

Leonardo da Vinci’s handwritten notebook is the most expensive book ever sold at $30.8 million.

So who is David Rubenstein?

He is the co-founder of The Carlyle Group, a private equity investment firm and, according to Forbes, he is apparently worth $3 billion although I’m never sure how those figures are calculated. He also has an amazing track record of donating to good causes – $4.5 million to the US National Zoo for its panda reproduction program (goodness, those pandas need a lot of financial encouragement to get it on), $7.5 million to repair the Washington Monument, $13.5 million to the National Archives, and $50 million to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

With the goal of encouraging more young people to read, AbeBooks.com is sponsoring the 2013-2014 Red Cedar Book Awards – a unique book prize where the winners are selected by British Columbia’s young avid readers.

Every year, thousands of children between grades 4 and 7 from across the province are invited to read books from nominated lists of non-fiction and fiction, and vote for their favourites.

The program, administered by the Young Readers’ Choice Awards Society of BC, broadens the reading experience for students, promotes literacy through quality Canadian literature and encourages students to consider the books they have read.

The Red Cedar process begins in November, and students, who participate in the program through reading groups at their school or library, have until April to read the nominees in preparation for voting in April.  Two winners are announced in May – one fiction title, and one information book.

The winners of the 2012/2013 Red Cedar Book awards were Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (information book award) and Count Me In by Sara Leach (fiction).

“The awards are run completely by volunteers – librarians and teachers – who are dedicated to putting books into the hands of young people,” said Richard Davies from AbeBooks.com. “We’re thrilled to lend a hand and help encourage reading among young people.”

Kate Adams from Red Cedar said: “We are thrilled that AbeBooks.com is one of our sponsors this year.  This generous donation will help tremendously, and will plan to put it towards a year-end party, where we will celebrate Canadian children’s literature, and children’s reading.”

The nominees for the 2013/2014 Red Cedar Fiction Award are:

My Name is Paravana  by Deborah Ellis

Mr & Mrs Bunny, Detectives Extraordinaire! by Polly Horvath

Summer in the City by Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel

Torn Apart: The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi (Dear Canada) by Susan M. Aihoshi

Ungifted by Gordon Korman

Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers

Grave Robber’s Apprentice by Allan Stratton

Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis

Cat’s Cradle Book 1: The Golden Twine by Jo Rioux

Redwing by Holly Bennett

Gargoyle at the Gates by Philippa Dowding

Mimi Power and the I-Don’t-Know-What by Victoria Miles

The nominees for the 2013/2014 Red Cedar Information Book Award are:

Bodyguards!  From Gladiators to the Secret Service written by Ed Butts, illustrated by Scott Plumbe

The World in Your Lunchbox: The Wacky History and Weird Science Of Everyday Foods by Claire Eamer.  Illustrated by Sa Boothroyd

Earth-friendly Buildings, Bridges and More:  The Eco-Journal Of Corry Lapont by Etta Kaner, illustrated by Stephen MacEachern

The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea by Helaine Becker, illustrated by Willow Dawson

Mimi’s Village and How Basic Health Care Transformed It by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes

Cryptic Canada: Unsolved Mysteries From Coast To Coast by Natalie Hyde, illustrated by Matt Hammill

Secret Life Of Money: A Kid’s Guide To Cash by Kira Vermond, illustrated by Clayton Hanmer

City Critters: Wildlife In The Urban Jungle by Nicholas Read

Rescuing The Children: The Story of the Kindertransport by Deborah Hodge

Willie O’Ree: The Story of the First Black Player in the NHL by Nicole Mortillaro

Last week, we were in Seattle and stopped by Twice Sold Tales, a used bookstore and AbeBooks bookseller. Twice Sold Tales is located just a short walk from the Elliott Bay Bookstore, which still gets the majority of Seattle’s press when it comes to independent booksellers.

Twice Sold Tales is a classic used bookstore serving the community of Capitol Hill. It was a  dreary Tuesday afternoon, and people were popping in and out while we were there. The sign alone indicated there would be bookstore cats and we soon met Smoo (so named because he smoozes the customers) and Eleanor, who was settled in a cardboard box atop a pile of books. The owner Jamie Lutton has been a bookseller since 1987 and began her bookish business life selling from a cart. Twice Sold Tales eventually found its way to this former doctor’s surgery in 2008 and today it is packed with thousands of used books, most general used copies but a few rare books too. Jamie’s blog illustrates her passion for books and writing. She also writes a regular column for the Capitol Hill Times.

While my colleague filmed and photographed the stacks, I browsed the shelves and found a 1960 edition of Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell – a book, first published in 1957, I had discovered through writing book lists for AbeBooks and been thinking about buying for some years. I just love that yellow cover art.

While we talked to Jamie, a broke musician came in, hoping to sell some books to find the cash for his next meal. Jamie bought a few of them and then, quite seriously, advised that selling plasma to the blood bank was a good way of raising funds when things are really tight. A minute or two later, Jamie found a customer, or least a visitor, sitting in the middle one of the aisles with this shoes off. She briskly told him that his feet smelled and that his shoes should go back onto his feet. When I went to pay for the book, the ginger cat, Smoo, took a close interest in the transaction. As I pulled out my credit card, the cat leaped onto the counter and then onto my shoulders, and then stepped up and stood on my head. I have bought a lot of books in my life but never with a cat on head.

“Does the cat always do this when someone pays?” I asked, trying to stand still while the cat circled my scalp.

“Quite often,” replied Jamie’s assistant in all seriousness.

Just another afternoon in a community used bookstore.

Writer, broadcaster, bibliophile, and globetrotting literary journalist Nigel Beale recently paid a visit to Wales in search of all things literary, including the elusive works of Greynog Press.   Read about this bookish exploration and many more on his aptly named and entertaining blog, Literary Tourist.  It certainly has us packing our bags.

Winners of the prestigious National Book Award were announced Wednesday evening, with James McBride taking the fiction prize for The Good Lord Bird. Many are calling the win a surprise, considering the underdog was up against favorites Thomas Pynchon and Jhumpa Lahiri. But the winning novel is said to be wildly entertaining, darkly funny, and well deserving. The historical tale tells the story of a young slave’s adventures with abolitionist John Brown. McBride is best known for his 1996 memoir, The Color of Water but we have a feeling that’s about to change. A few signed copies of the winning novel can be found on our site.  

Other 2013 National Book Award winners include George Packer for The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (nonfiction), Mary Szybist for Incarnadine: Poems (poetry), and Cynthia Kadohata for The Thing About Luck (young people’s literature).

She’s on a roll. Eleanor Catton, winner of the Booker Prize last month, has now claimed Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for The Luminaries – a mystery set in the 19th century gold rush in New Zealand. Once again, I have to write SHE’S JUST 28. The Canadian-born, New Zealand author was the youngest-ever winner of the Booker for which she took home about $80,000. The Governor General’s prize was worth another $25,000.

Full report from the CBC.

Winners of Governor-General’s Literary Awards (English, French)

Fiction

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries (McClelland & Stewart)

Stéphanie Pelletier, Quand les guêpes se taisent (Leméac Éditeur)

Poetry

Katherena Vermette, North End Love Songs (The Muses’ Company)

René Lapierre, Pour les désespérés seulement (Éditions Les Herbes rouges)

Drama

Nicolas Billon, Fault Lines: Greenland – Iceland – Faroe Islands (Coach House Books)

Fanny Britt, Bienveillance (Leméac Éditeur)

Non fiction

Sandra Djwa, Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

Yvon Rivard, Aimer, enseigner (Les Éditions du Boréal)

Children’s Literature – Text

Teresa Toten, The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (Doubleday Canada)

Geneviève Mativat, À l’ombre de la grande maison (Éditions Pierre Tisseyre)

Children’s Literature – Illustration

Matt James, Northwest Passage, text by Stan Rogers (Groundwood Books)

Isabelle Arsenault, Jane, le renard & moi, text by Fanny Britt (Les Éditions de la Pastèque)

Translation

Donald Winkler, The Major Verbs (Signal Editions); English translation of Les verbes majeurs by Pierre Nepveu

Sophie Voillot, L’enfant du jeudi (Les Éditions du Boréal); French translation of Far to Go by Alison Pick

Lots of articles paying tribute to Doris Lessing, who died at the age of 94 yesterday, have appeared this morning. The Guardian lists her five best books (see below) but the author wrote more than 50 books, including novels, poetry, drama and short stories, so you have a huge selection to choose from. Lessing’s obituary is worth a read as here was a person who lived a full life.

The Grass is Singing (1950)

Lessing arrived in London in the spring of 1949 with £20 and the manuscript of a novel drawing heavily on her life in Africa, exploring the power and fear at the heart of the colonial experience. When Mary Turner’s husband becomes sick she takes over the running of their failing Rhodesian farm. Gradually she begins to develop a relationship with one of their black servants, Moses.

The Golden Notebook (1962)

This account of the fractured lives of British women after the war has been hailed as a feminist masterpiece. Framed by a third-person story of a writer, Anna Wulf, and her friend Molly, the novel weaves together four of Anna’s notebooks which mirror the different strands of her life – Africa, the Communist Party, a doomed love affair and her journal – to arrive at a fifth , The Golden Notebook, which binds them all together. The Swedish Academy called it one of a “handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship”.

Shikasta (1979)

The first in her five-volume series of SF novels, Canopus in Argus, Shikasta is the story of a fallen paradise, a planet cut adrift from the influence of the advanced civilisation that has brought peace, prosperity and accelerated development. Johor travels to Rohonda and finds it with too little “Spirit of We Feeling”, a world which has turned to greed, war and destruction.

The Good Terrorist (1985)

After two short novels under the pseudonym Jane Somers, Lessing returned to publishing under her own name with this story of a well-intentioned revolutionary, Alice, who lives in a north London squat with a motley bunch of fellow militants.

Alfred and Emily (2008)

Combining fiction and non-fiction, this exploration of her parents’ lives begins with a 137-page novella, a golden-hued re-imagining of what might have happened if her parents had never married. The second half returns to reality: Alfred loses a leg in the trenches, meets Emily in the Royal Free Hospital and then leaves for Persia and Rhodesia. Would Emily have been happier if she could have become a matron, if she could have re-connected with her love of literature?

Stephen Reid, Canada’s most notorious bank robber, is the winner of the 2013 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing from Prison. The book is a collection of unflinching, harrowing essays that detail Reid’s experiences as an addict, criminal, writer, and prison inmate.

Reid’s first book, the acclaimed novel Jackrabbit Parole, was written while he was serving 21 years for bank robbery at Kent Institution in Agassiz, B.C. The book was published in 1986. The same year, while still at Kent, he married fellow writer Susan Musgrave, who we interviewed in 2011. Reid was granted parole in 1987.

Reid is currently serving an 18 year sentence at William Head correctional instititution for a 1999 bank robbery in Victoria, B.C. The robbery was followed by a police chase through Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park, during which shots were fired.

The Victoria Butler Book Prize, worth $5000 CAN, was awarded at a gala event on October 16, in Victoria. Reid was unable to attend.

Lynn Coady was named winner of Canada’s 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize earlier this month for her collection of short stories, Hellgoing.  Now in its 20th year, the Giller Prize recognizes excellence in Canadian fiction.  Previous winners include literary hard-hitters Alice Munro, Rohinton Mistry, Joseph Boyden, and Michael Ondaatje.

Writers Margaret Atwood, Esi Edugyan, and Jonathan Lethem made up this year’s jury, saying of Hellgoing:

“The eight stories in Lynn Coady’s Hellgoing offer a stupendous range of attitudes, narrative strategies, and human situations, each complete and intricate, creating a world the reader enters as totally as that of a novel, or a dream. Yet the book as a whole is also magically united by Coady’s vivid and iconoclastic language, which brims with keen and sympathetic wit. Whether from the perspective of a writer flailing in the social atmosphere of a professional conference, or a woman trying to extend forgiveness to a lover’s abusive father, Coady offers a worldview full of mournful humour, ready indignation, and vertiginous possibility; the reader feels in the presence of life itself.”

With a review like that, this book is definitely going on our wish list.