Reading Copy

The Edgar Awards are givin out by the Mystery Writers of America each year for the best Crime and Mystery works…

BEST NOVEL
Down River by John Hart

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
In the Woods by Tana French

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Queenpin by Megan Abbott

BEST FACT CRIME
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley

BEST JUVENILE
The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh

BEST YOUNG ADULT
Rat Life by Tedd Arnold

Popularity: 23% [?]

AbeBooks wants to know which of the past 41 Man Booker prize winners was the most deserving winner. Tell us which Booker is your favorite and why.

We will post the results on our website and on the blog.

Popularity: 17% [?]

For the past five years, AbeBooks.com has been a sponsor of the BC Book Prizes , for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize which has five nominees this year.

1. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating
2. Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden
3. The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
4. Phantom Limb
5. Everywhere Being is Dancing

You can even enter to win all five titles

Popularity: 26% [?]

AbeBooks is a sponsor of the BC Book Prizes. We are sponsoring the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize this year and they have just announced the shortlist.

• The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by J.B. MacKinnon, Alisa Smith
• Everywhere Being is Dancing by Robert Bringhurst
• Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden by Don Gayton
• Phantom Limb by Theresa Kishkan
• The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 by Patricia E. Roy

Other interesting books up for awards are Meg Tilly’s book Porcupine, our very own Richard Davies had a chance to interview Ms. Tilly last year. And A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah which is up for an award despite recent allegations that it is work of fiction.

Personally I am really interested in The 100-Mile Diet and think I might have to read that one. AbeBooks has arranged for a local organic market to set up shop in our building a couple times this year so we could pick up local produce on our lunch break.

Popularity: 43% [?]

Less news and more of a request really…

Today is world book day in the UK and Ireland and most other countries on April 23rd.

Either day is a good excuse to celebrate so I am going to celebrate both!

Popularity: 21% [?]

Were any of you in the Scouts when you were a child? AbeBooks is celebrating 100 years of scouting and we have taken a look at the books associated with the organisation.

Popularity: 22% [?]

If you were listening to NPR today then you would have learnt that Lassie is 70 years old this year. Eric Knight created Lassie when the Saturday Evening Post published his short story, Lassie Come Home, in 1938. Two years later, it was published as a novel and we have some of those first editions for sale.

In 1943, Lassie was turned into that famous movie with Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor, and the collie never looked back. In the novel, Lassie is living in England and her coat is mahogany and sable rather than the sandy colour of the movies.

How sad that Knight, who also published Song on Your Bugles in 1936 and raised collies on his farm in Pennsylvania, was killed in a 1943 air crash when he was operating a member of the US Army’s special services. He never experienced the worldwide phenomenon of Lassie.

Popularity: 24% [?]

More drinks inspired by literature from The Guardian

Popularity: 20% [?]

Borders in the UK are in hot water for including a “Come All Ye Faithless” card with copies of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Shouldn’t the Christians be more concerned about the contents of the book than the card? Dawkins attacks Christianity and religion in general on just about every level.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The Guardian has just posted word of a new Paddington Bear book to be published this June to commemorate a 50th anniversary. Much has changed in the past 50 years and now apparently Paddington’s citizenship is brought into question.

Personally I’m with Guardian blogger Anna Pickard, I always thought Paddington was a pretty stand up sort of bear and if he can’t get landed immigrant status what hope do the riff raff in other children’s stories have.

Popularity: 10% [?]

To celebrate Halloween, The Guardian’s Sam Jordison visits Whitby in Yorkshire - a quiet seaside market town….and, of course, the scene of Dracula’s evil work.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Heather, one of our Online Marketers at AbeBooks got to meet JK Rowling in Toronto on the final date of her North American Mini tour.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Today is National Poetry day in the UK so in honor of that here’s a round-up of poetry news.

Sean O’Brien wins 3rd straight Forward Prize

The Guardian’s Poem of the week is back

Ginsberg: 50 years later more obscene than ever

Profile on Canadian poet Peter Sanger

Popularity: 24% [?]

On Monday Oct. 8th Powells in Portland is holding a I Am America (And You Can Too!) launch party at Blitz, a bar across the street from Powell’s downtown store. The party kicks off at 11 p.m. with flat-screen TVs in the two-level bar tuned in to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, followed by the Colbert Report at 11:30. At the midnight conclusion of Colbert’s program, you can pick up a copy of the new book.

Popularity: 10% [?]

It’s that time again, help fight Big Brother and pick up something controversial

The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2006” reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles:

“And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;
“Gossip Girls series” by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language;
“Alice series” by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;
“The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
“Scary Stories series” by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity;
“Athletic Shorts” by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language;
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
“Beloved” by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group; and
“The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.

Off the list this year, but on for several years past, are the “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

Popularity: 22% [?]