Scotiabank Giller Prize Long List Announced

Earlier this month, the Scotiabank Giller Prize long list was announced…twelve Canadian books in the running for the prestigious Canadian literary prize valued at $25,000. All of the books were presented in a field of 161 entries, and were deemed to be the best fiction published in Canada covering a variety of topics and writing styles.

The nominees are:

• Mona Awad for her novel 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, published by Penguin Canada
• Gary Barwin for his novel Yiddish for Pirates, published by Random House Canada
• Andrew Battershill for his novel Pillow, published by Coach House Books
• David Bergen for his novel Stranger, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Emma Donoghue for her novel The Wonder, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Catherine Leroux for her novel The Party Wall, published by Biblioasis International Translation Series, translated by Lazer Lederhendler
• Kathy Page for her story collection The Two of Us, published by A John Metcalf Book, an imprint of Biblioasis
• Susan Perly for her novel Death Valley, published by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak and Wynn Publishers
• Kerry Lee Powell for her story collection Willem De Kooning’s Paintbrush, published by HarperAvenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Steven Price for his novel By Gaslight, published by McClelland & Stewart
• Madeleine Thien for her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada
• Zoe Whittall for her novel The Best Kind of People, published by House of Anansi Press Inc.

The winners will be announced on Monday, November 7/16 at 9pm, but you might like to attend one of the special readings taking place in various Canadian venues. Please see the website for more details on locations and times, and to get tickets.

This is always such an exciting award, and the books and authors up for nomination this year are going to make the decision very difficult. Have you read any of these, and do you have a favourite? Let us know!

Natasha Peterson Book Launch

One of our lovely patrons, Natasha Peterson, is launching her first picture book at the Carleton Place Public Library on Saturday, September 24 at 11am. This is a delightful tale called GAYLE THE GOOSE GOES GLOBAL and includes wonderful illustrations by Witls Games and Animation. Natasha will be reading from her book, selling and signing copies, and may even have a few surprises for young attendees!

About the book:

The rhyming text, beautiful illustrations, and strong characters will bring readers into Gayle’s story. Gayle is a regular Canada Goose except for one thing. She is directionally challenged. When her flock flies away, leaving Gayle behind at migration time, she is forced to either sit back and wait for their return, or take matters into her own wings by migrating on her own. Brave Gayle takes on the challenge of a lifetime and learns that she can both survive and thrive on her own.  When Gayle returns to share her adventures with the rest of her flock, the geese begin to wonder if her quirkiness may be just what the flock was missing. Perhaps a change from the ordinary routine would do them all a little good.

We asked Natasha a few things about her debut, published by Polar Bear Press.

CPPL: How long did it take you to write this book?

NP: The story took close to a year from start to finish. That included: writing it, finding an illustrator, publishing etc.  However, after I wrote the story, I didn’t decide to make a book right away. There was a gap of a few months.

CPPL:Where did you get the idea?

NP: I have always loved writing children’s poems. This is just a longer one. I often write about animals with human problems so the characters connect with kids.

CPPL: Where did you find your illustrator? The illustrations are gorgeous!

NP: I found my illustrator on a site called GURU.com.  A publisher told me about the website when I mentioned I had no idea how to find an illustrator (when self-publishing). Remember, I did this totally blindly, and didn’t know who I could ask questions to. GURU is a website where one can hire freelance anything. You simply post the job you’re looking to hire someone for (in this case, I was hoping to find an illustrator for a children’s book) and an amount I was willing to pay. Then people applied for the job. I had 13 people apply for the job so I asked to see samples of a Canada Goose image. In the end, I ended up liking a company called Witls Games and Animation best. We kinda just clicked. The company understood what I was looking for. I guess the funniest thing about this is that they had never done a book before (however, they had created video games), and to this day, I still don’t know their names! I have asked, but they prefer to promote their company, so we go by the company name.

CPPL: Any more plans for future books?

NP: Yes! A second book is currently in the works. It’s another animal book about a chipmunk and a squirrel called NUTTY NEIGHBOURS. It will hopefully be ready by Christmas!

Natasha has published a variety of poems and GAYLE THE GOOSE GOES GLOBAL was the recipient of a Canada Book Award. You can find out more about Natasha and her book at Polar Bear Press.

Bookshelves and Other Fake Things

I must admit, I envy people who have endless shelves of books in their homes. As someone who loves books, it also shames me to admit I don’t have any. Nope. Not one shelf. I have boxes with books in them, random baskets where I’ve tucked away a book or two, but in general….I am book-free.

BookRiot just did a really fun piece on “Shelf Shame“. Now, this typically is about those people who have perfect shelves lined with books that are color-coded, or placed by size, or genre, with just the right number of quirky knick-knacks placed among the spines.

Alice Burton’s Bookselves.

There are whole Pinterest boards devoted to beautiful bookshelves, and people who regularly post Instagram photos of special books on their shelves. Am I envious? A little bit, but mostly, I’m just glad I don’t have to dust/sort/put away books as a collection grows. I can only imagine that some of these people have to move once their book collection gets too big. Is that too many books? You decide.

It’s Book Buck Spending Week!

This is it…our final Book Buck Spending week of the year!  We’ve given away over $60 in prizes so far,  but we expect to triple or quadruple that this week. Our teen readers have been busy all summer working on the squares in the Book Buck Bingo card, and we’ve been delighted by their progress.

• We had teens bring in baked goods they’d made out of new cookbooks
• We LOVED hearing teens introduce themselves to us to earn a Book Buck. Great job, everyone!
• We enjoyed the seeing teens wandering around the library, noses deep into their cards as they looked for books that matched the squares.
• We especially had fun giving away treats, prizes, books, crafts, and more to everyone who spent their book bucks early.

Don’t forget….there is ONE special $16 Book Buck Secret Prize available this week. While you won’t know what’s inside, it’ll be worth it if you take a chance…we promise!

Happy Long Weekend!

Yes, it’s the last long weekend of summer, and a lot of kids are getting ready to go back to school (or have already been back for a week and need a holiday)! We hope that your summer has been as active and fun as ours was, and that you’re ready to face fall with gusto!

Just a reminder, the library will be CLOSED on Monday, Sept. 5th, but you can still return items in our blue box whenever you like. We’ll be revamping the library by taking down summer decorations, putting up posters for our exciting roster of fall programming, and doing a general clean up.  What will you be doing with this long weekend?

For all of our young readers, Sept. 6 – 10 will be the last week of reading programs, so make sure to drop by this week to get your stickers, penguins, and ballots.  We’ll draw for some exciting summer prizes at the end of the week, and will notify winners by phone early next week.

Teens….this will also be your last Book Buck Spending week!  Our window display will be filled with TONS of items to purchase with your book bucks, so make sure to come out and spend, spend, spend! Your book bucks won’t be any good after this, so don’t keep them. We’ll have something from $1 – $16, and our window will evolve as the week goes on. Come once, or come every day. It’s going to be a great week!

Have a safe and happy long weekend, everyone! See you on Tuesday, Sept. 6th!

All The Time in the World

This fall, our Nerd Herd Book Club will be lucky to have local teen author S.J. Ryan visit us at a meeting to talk about her first self-published book, ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. While she’s been busy this summer volunteering at our local Carleton Place and Heritage Museum, we hope she’s had a bit of time to work on the next in this time-travel series.

From Goodreads:

The world has changed. In the last hundred years, things have changed a great deal. Technology has slowly begun its reign over mankind, and the world will never be what it once was. One band of misfits seeks to change the way they live, through the manipulation of time itself. They travel back in time to the year 1900 to attempt to carve out a simpler, more meaningful life for themselves. However, when an unexpected stowaway with a dark past threatens to ruin all they have worked so hard for, they find themselves questioning their plans. Will they be forced to return to their miserable lives in the future? Or worse?

We’re looking forward to hearing about her writing process, the struggle and satisfaction of self-publishing, and maybe a few tips for other young authors in our book club. It should be a fascinating book club!

We have a copy available in our library if you’d like to read it, or you can pick up your own copy at Amazon.

Best Books?

Amazon recently came up with their list of the Top 20 Best Books of 2016 so far. Seeing as we’re heading into the last quarter of the year, the list will probably not change much unless there are a few breakout titles.

Here are their choices. Have you read any?

You can find the full list on the Amazon website right here.