What The Word On The Street is Reading

I’m a little behind the times. I just started reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I know what you are thinking, that was so 9 months ago. But I just watched the movie on the weekend, and I loved it so much I just had to read the book, and it happened to be sitting on my shelf.

What the publisher has to say about it:

“Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.”

I am really enjoying this novel. I do find it difficult to read a novel after I’ve seen the movie first — it basically destroys one of my favourite aspects of reading, which is to interpret the world of the novel with my own imagination — but I loved the story and characters so much I wanted more.  I love novels that are character-driven, and Kathryn Stockett has created amazing characters with a great depth to them — they seem to exist outside the novel. I definitely would recommend it to the few people who didn’t read it when the movie was EVERYWHERE. It is, however, written in the Southern drawl and that took me awhile to get used to.

Happy Friday!

- Kristen.

What The Word On The Street is Reading

Taking a mini-break from CanLit this Friday to indulge my love of books about characters who love books, a weakness of mine.

This week, I’m reading The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. How the publisher describes it:

“There is no problem that a library card can’t solve.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they’ve been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected.”

When characters share the same love of books that I have, I know I will read their story.

The novel mainly explores the dynamics between the three sisters, the three “weird sisters” as they call themselves, in relation to the Macbeth characters. What I particularly enjoy in this book is how they often communicate to each other using Shakespearean quotes. I like to try to guess which play the quotes are from.

Only just 100 pages in to the novel, I’m quite enjoying it so far! The only drawback is that I’m confused who is narrating the novel. It reads like it is one of the sisters but then all of them are mentioned in third person, so I am often confused. Can anyone clear that up for me?

- Kristen

Internship Opportunity!

Guess what! The Word On The Street has a brand new internship opportunity available in 2012. We are looking to hire a Programming Assistant (Intern) this year to assist the Festival Director in coordinating the artistic program of the Festival.

Interested? I hope you are Here’s the job posting:

 

Programming Assistant (Internship)

The Word On The Street Toronto

Location: Toronto, ON
Web site: www.thewordonthestreet.ca
Deadline for applicants: March 30^th, 2012
Date posted: March 5^th, 2012

About The Word On The Street
The Word On The Street (WOTS) Toronto, is Canada’s largest annual book and magazine festival; taking place in September each year, it now attracts over 215,000 booklovers to Queen’s Park Circle in downtown Toronto.  One of our city’s best and most popular events—featuring a lively exhibitor marketplace, top-notch author readings and quality family programming—The Word On The Street Toronto is a non-profit organization that celebrates Canadian reading and writing, and advocates literacy.

The Role
As The Word On The Street Toronto moves toward its 23^rd festival, The Word On The Street is looking for a Programming Assistant to support the Festival Director with coordinating the artistic program of the event.

This is a full-time internship position, running from May to end of September.  Remuneration for this internship is $1,000 per month ($5,000 in total).

Duties include but are not limited to:

• Liaise with publicists, presenters, performers and hosts
• Maintain a database with up-to-date and accurate programming information; ensure author/book submissions are processed accurately and in a timely manner
• Facilitate the creation and mailing of all artist invitations and scheduling confirmations/festival day information letters
• Gather content for Festival Program (artwork, headshots, bios, book descriptions)
• Coordinate travel and accommodation arrangements for all pertinent authors
• Prepare comprehensive event tent binders
• Create detailed sales lists to ensure all required book titles are stocked by the Official Booksellers
• Draft and proofread programming content for Festival Programs, Toronto Star Festival Guide and website
• Create programming-related press releases, and media kits
• Write content for a bi-monthly e-newsletter, festival blog and Twitter page
• Support the Festival Director with management of festival-day programming

 Personal Qualifications:

• College or university education in the arts with a demonstrated interest in Canadian writing and publishing
• Highest level of attention to detail
• Exemplary interpersonal skills
• Excellent writing, copy editing, proofreading skills
• Excellent organizational, time management, and problem-solving skills
• Ability to meet tight deadlines and prioritize tasks according to urgency
• Demonstrated ability to work well under pressure
• Positive attitude and willingness to learn
• You must also be a mature-minded, confident, team player, who is able to maintain a sense of humour in a fast paced environment
• **Must be available the entire festival weekend (September 22^nd and 23^rd, 2012)**

If interested, please forward your cover letter and resume, in confidence, by March 30, 2012, to nicola@thewordonthestreet.ca.  The Word on The Street Toronto is an equal opportunity Employer. We thank all applicants for their interest, but only successful candidates will be contacted. Please no phone calls.

 

And the countdown begins…

It’s official! The new year has brought to us The Word On The Street countdown — only 250 days until this year’s festival!

While you’re waiting, here are some key dates to keep in mind:

• Jan., 17: Exhibitor Registration opens! Now is your time to become a part of Canada’s largest outdoor bookstore. For more information, pre-register online. Or, if your a visitor, keep an eye on the Marketplace section of our website. It will constantly be updated throughout the year with 2012′s exhibitors! Get a head start and pre-plan your day of shopping and browsing.

• Jan. 17: Advertising opens! Advertising space is available in our Official Festival Program and KidStreet Festival Guide. Our programs are the number one tool used by festival visitors to learn about and get around the festival! Here’s your chance to put your name in their hands. For more information email me (Kristen)!

• Jan. 24: Kristen’s birthday! Hehe.

• March: Author submission process begins! The Word On The Street welcomes publishers and authors to submit their books (published between Oct. 2011 – Oct. 2012) to be considered for one of our programming venues.

• June 1: Volunteer intake begins! Interested? Pre-register to be a volunteer here!

• June 2: Nicola’s birthday!

• July: The programming line-up is finalized! Check our website for an updated list of authors appearing at this year’s The Word On The Street

• August 31: Exhibitor Registration closes.

• Sept. 23:Festival Day! 11am-6pm. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Want to receive more exciting tidbits about this year’s festival? Why don’t you sign up for our monthly e-newsletter?

And the 2012 Canada Reads finalists are…

This year, Canada Reads has gone non-fiction to find the top non-fiction, Canadian book! Today Jian Ghomeshi announced the Canada Reads: True Stories Top 10, and here they are:

• The Boy in the Moon, Ian Brown, Random House of Canada
• Cockeyed, Ryan Knighton, Penguin Canada
• The Game, Ken Dryden, John Wiley & Sons
• Louis Riel, Chester Brown, Drawn & Quarterly
• On a Cold Road, Dave Bidini, McClelland & Stewart
• Paris 1919, Margaret MacMillan, Random House of Canada
• Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nehmat, Penguin Canada
• Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire, Random House of Canada
• Something Fierce, Carmen Aguirre, D&M Publishers, Inc.
• The Tiger, John Vaillant, Random House of Canada

 

Do you agree, disagree, have any to add? I was hoping for Iain Reid to make that list. He was a programmed author at the 2010 festival, and his book, One Bird’s Choice, is a favourite of mine. But congrats to all finalists! I definitely spy some past The Word On The Street authors

 

 

 

Toronto Book Awards – Featuring What Disturbs Our Blood

The 2011 Toronto Book Awards is being covered by our guest blogger Christine Sweeton. To read more about her, click here.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Journalist and author, James FitzGerald is not one to shy away from controversy. His first book, Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College, featured revelations of sexual abuse of boys at the school, never before published. This then led to the charging and conviction of three former teachers and the launching of a class action lawsuit against the college.

FitzGerald’s memoire, What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son’s Quest to Redeem His Past, dives head first into the last one hundred years of Canadian mental health policies and procedures. He tracks this through an extended time researching the history of mental illness in his own family and studying the distinguished Canadian public health career of his grandfather. Behind the many amazing medical successes found in FitzGerald’s family history, lies many stories of great men crippled and destroyed by depression, anxiety, and the many failed attempts at various types of treatment.

My favourite magazine makes a stunning showing in connection with this book; FitzGerald’s article, “Sins of the Fathers,” that sparked his desire to write a full length memoire, was published by Toronto Life in 2002. In fact, the article won a National Magazine Award.

The outpouring of praise for What Disturbs Our Blog comes from a wide range of sources – from reader responses stating that it was “an absolutely masterful and powerfully moving piece of work” to renowned Canadian film director, David Cronenberg, stating the he “thought it was magnificent…potent resonances on every page.”

“A memoire of extraordinary power and candour…as riveting as a crime thriller.”

— The Globe and Mail

Both The Globe and Mail and The National Post gave What Disturbs Our Blood glowing reviews. The book won the 2010 Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize and was a finalist for both the 2010 Trillium Book Award and the 2011 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

The judges at The Toronto Book Awards describe FitzGerald’s novel as follows:

“Author James FitzGerald hails from two generations of doctors whose medical achievements left a great impact on the Canadian health system. But these great men also suffered great falls that the FitzGerald family kept secret. Not only is this memoir a gripping, deeply personal story about family relationships and family secrets, it is also a fascinating, well-researched history of Toronto, Canadian medicine and public health, and the treatment of mental illness.”

This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage: Author chat with Catherine Austen

This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage is new to The Word On the Street in 2011! This new stage features hourly, genre-based, interactive programming sessions showcasing great Canadian young-adult books, authors, and artists plus the all-new Open Mic Hour. To celebrate, we have asked teens to interview some of the authors appearing on the stage! This questionnaire was created for Catherine Austen, author of All Good Children, by teen blogger Saambavi Mano.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

What got you into writing novels?

I always liked to make up stories in my head, and sometimes I wrote them down to figure out what they were about. When I was in university in the late 1980s, I wrote a short story for an English course. My professor suggested that I send it to a magazine. I did, and it was published (in Quarry Magazine, which no longer exists). “That was easy,” I thought. Little did I know…  I wrote and published about a dozen more short stories way back then, but it was twenty years before my first novel, Walking Backward, was released by Orca Book Publishers in 2009.
How did you come up with the idea for your new book, All Good Children?

Several things prompted me to write this book. First, I read about a legal case in the USA where a school board took a family to court to try to force the parents to medicate their unruly child. (The judge ruled against the school in that case but the whole thing was quite creepy to me.)

Not long after, I took a night class on child development. When one of the students admitted that she sometimes spanked her children to correct their behaviour, the other students were outraged. But no one expressed any kind of outrage when the topic came round to correcting children’s behaviour with medication. Everyone found that to be clearly for a child’s own good, and not an issue of control. (A sign of modern times and, again, quite creepy.)

Finally, my oldest son reached the teen years. I’ve wrestled with my own feelings of wanting him to be “good,” and I’ve dealt with several authority figures who want him to be “good,” and I’ve found that the “solution” of medication rises almost immediately in a lot of minds. Creepy indeed.

Is your main character, Maxwell Connors, based off of someone you know in real life?

No. He started out as a 12-year-old white kid who loved to skateboard and goof around, and at first he was loosely based on my next-door-neighbour. But as I wrote the story, he changed completely and became a 16-year-old black artist who is deeply serious as well as playful. As Max aged, the focus of his story changed from being about family to being about friendship. I have no idea how a character comes to life like that; it’s not like inventing someone, it’s like meeting them. Weird. But wonderful.

What or who is your inspiration when it comes to writing?

This is a very difficult question. Anything in the world can inspire my writing. For me, stories start with a feeling, than an image of the character experiencing that feeling, then the things that happened to cause the character to experience that feeling. That is probably a backwards way of writing, but that’s how it is for me. Almost anything can inspire a story – something from nature, family, friends, books, memories, desires. My kids inspire me a lot.

Why do you choose to write novels for children and young adults?

I used to write stories for adults. But once I had kids, I read so many great books for children and young adults, and I saw how stories come alive for the child listening or reading them, and I wanted to write for young people. My youngest son once exclaimed, when I closed the book we were reading for the night, “But I can’t survive if I don’t know what happens next!” I’d like to make someone feel like that.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Catherine Austen is appearing on the This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage in the “Reading and Writing Dystopian Fiction” segment at 4:45 p.m.

Toronto Book Awards – Reviewing The Parabolist

The 2011 Toronto Book Awards is being covered by our guest blogger Christine Sweeton. To read more about her, click here.

Upon telling her mother about her plans to write for The Word On The Street blog and review the five books shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards this year, her mother promptly asked for the titles to read them as well. An avid reader herself, in some instances she provides her assistance, observations, and opinions to our guest blogger. To read more about our guest blogger’s mother, click here.

Join Christine and her mother as they work their way through the 5 shortlisted titles, then visit The Toronto Book Awards Tent to see the finalists on read on stage. The winner will be announced by the City of Toronto on October 13^th.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Nicholas Ruddock’s novel, The Parabolist, has been promoted as a satirical crime thriller. It is true that the story is at times comic and at times horrific but behind the mystery and murder lies a complex story about love, both physical and emotional. Ruddock’s captivating novel features a vast spectrum of the many manifestations of love and sex: casual, passionate, unrequited, extramarital, violent, and perverse.

“It was at one of the poetry classes that John Glass first heard of Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal, a passing reference by Roberto Moreno. Because of that, from the next day on, he carried a tattered edition of Baudelaire wherever he went. It might have been the fatal blow for him, for his academic career, this Baudelaire. He’d already stropping going to all his classes except embryology, a curious psychological quirk because embryology was difficult and tedious. It was perverse, the attraction he had to that minor course. It was self-destructive, the attention he paid to it.”

– From The Parabolist by Nicholas Ruddock

John Glass and a loose knit group of medical students form the central characters for Ruddock’s novel. However, ‘the parabolist’ of the title is a young Mexican poet named Roberto Moreno. Glass and his fellow students become enthralled in not only the poetry of Moreno’s class but but also the charismatic young instructor himself. All the characters are well developed and will catch your interest.

The novel is framed by a gruesome rape and attempted murder; the story follows the investigation into the crime and the intriguing mystery of two drunk strangers who save the victim by killing the assailant. The police figure out the details of the indecent only to avoid arrest in a debate about vigilante justice. As the students live in 1975 Toronto, the novel shows a realistically gritty version of our city, set in student apartments and dingy bars.

The criminal investigation, and the descriptions of Toronto student life, are surrounded by dueling narratives of literature and medicine. As the students spend the year dissecting a cadaver and investigating poetry they discover more about themselves and each other. The story studies the profound impact these two courses have on each of the different characters. The descriptions of their work with the cadaver are detailed in a clinically factual style. The technical dissection is mirrored in the students frequent attempts to understand the poetry present in Moreno’s class.

Ruddock has created a novel where it is easy to care about each and every character and the story flows well between their narratives. You will be mesmerized all the way to The Parabolist’s mesmerizing conclusion. A great read!!!

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

All of the shortlisted novels will be featured in the Toronto Book Awards Tent at The Word On The Street! The Parabolist by Nicholas Ruddock will be presented by at both 1:00pm and 4:30pm.

This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage: Something Wicked by Lesley Anne Cowan

This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage is new to The Word On the Street in 2011! This new stage features hourly, genre-based, interactive programming sessions showcasing great Canadian young-adult books, authors, and artists plus the all-new Open Mic Hour. To celebrate, we have asked teens to read and review the books appearing on the stage! This is Sherry Lay’s first review. She reviewed Something Wicked by Lesley Anne Cowan, who is appearing on the stage at 3:30 PM in the session titled “That’s What She Said.”

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Title: Something Wicked

Author: Lesley Anne Cowan

Publisher: Puffin Canada

Published Date: June 2010

Source: Courtesy of the LOVELY Kristen from The Word On The Street Toronto

You can only be strong for so long. 16 year old Melissa seems to be on a path of no return when her and her 28-year-old boyfriend Michael split up. First comes the anger than comes the fall. Melissa spirals into a depression and all she does to cope with the loss is let herself into the world of drugs, alcohol and meaningless hook-ups that earn her a bad, BAD reputation. There is help for her and people to listen to what she really has to say but Melissa can’t bring herself to take the offer. Her single mother seems like she could care less about what Melissa is smoking and who she is doing, sometimes all Melissa really needs is for her mom to get her act straight. Emotions run extremely high between Melissa and the people in her life, which makes her believe that there really is no hope for a better life. Melissa’s future looks blurry, at times a future seems impossible for her. One night, something happens to Melissa that makes her open her eyes for the first time. She’s stuck and in too deep of a depression. It’s up to her if she wants to give her life another go or if she wants to give up entirely.

Our mistakes do not define us, and I think that’s one thing Something Wicked teaches you. Regardless of how you were brought up, you have the ability to do something right for yourself because you deserve it. You must first be willing to let change in. What was really unique about Something Wicked was how daring it was. There were no limits to how far Melissa’s character was willing to go and that allowed for such a bigger storyline.

Such a bold and vulnerable main character, the story that is told of Melissa is one that points out the darkness of everything that we love, lust, and long for! Both a painful and eye opening read! Something Wicked was something beautiful.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

About Sherry Lay:

Sherry Lay grew up never knowing the power of reading till now. She’s a full-time student and lover of YA fiction. When she’s not reading she’s watching some sort of movie or TV drama with very cute boys. She hates tomatoes but loves Ketchup. There’s not a moment in her day where she doesn’t stop to think what song would play right that second. She loves all things photography and has a weird obsession with Michael Buble. “Reading is not an escape from reality, but rather the entrance to it.” 10 years from now, she wants to be doing exactly what she’s doing right now: sharing her experiences with others – hopefully with a wiser mind.

Check out her blog, BloggityBLOG for more reviews and other book-ish things.

Toronto Book Awards – Featuring The Parabolist

The 2011 Toronto Book Awards is being covered by our guest blogger Christine Sweeton. To read more about her, click here.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Even though first-time novelist Nicholas Ruddock currently lives in Guelph and has lived across Canada, from Newfoundland to the Yukon Territory, Toronto remains the city of his youth. He grew up in the Eglinton-Avenue Road area of Toronto and attended University of Toronto and the University of Toronto Medical School. It is this setting that he chose for his riveting novel, The Parabolist.

The Parabolist is set in 1975 and focuses on a group of medical students taking a poetry class together at the University of Toronto. The story is told through interlacing narratives and the plot is framed around a chilling unsolved crime. On a rainy summer night, a woman is raped and very nearly murdered, however, the act is interrupted by two drunken strangers who kill her attacker before fleeing the scene. Part comedy, part poetry, The Parabolist is a novel about murder, sex, the medical establishment, poetry, and vigilante justice in Toronto.

Besides being nominated for The Toronto Book Awards this year, Ruddock’s first novel has not been short on accolades. NOW Magazine called it, “Extremely well written.” The book was a finalist for The Arthur Ellis Prize: Best First Crime Novel. Amazon.com named The Parabolist one of the Best Books of the Month in February, 2010. The novel also received a glowing review by Claire Cameron in The Globe and Mail, during which she states, “Ruddock is a smart and literary writer.”

“The Parabolist has a strong pulse that will keep your heart beating until the end.”

– The Globe and Mail

The Toronto Book Awards judges describe Ruddock’s novel as follows:

“Cadavers, med students, Mexican poetry and a smattering of Crisco are but a few of the ingredients in this literary page-turner. With a vivid cast of characters and evocative prose, first-time novelist Nicholas Ruddock takes us on a delirious ride through the streets of 1970s Toronto as an intricate mystery unfolds. Darkly humourous, sensual and erudite, The Parabolist is at once an auspicious debut and a sumptuous, adrenaline-fueled read.”

Stay tuned for my upcoming review of Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist (Anchor Canada).