The novel tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest who is tasked with keeping his colleagues in line and stamping out sex abuse scandals before they go public.
MacIntyre, who is best known for his work with the CBC's "The Fifth Estate," beat out Kim Echlin, Annabel Lyon, Colin McAdam and Anne Michaels to take home the $50,000 prize.
Read more...http://scotiabankgillerprize.ca
We wear poppies on our coats every November. We observe a moment of silence at 11 a.m. each November 11. But why do we do it? What is Remembrance Day all about? The way we mark the day has certainly evolved over the years, but it still holds special meaning to countless Canadians. CBC Digital Archives looks at the significance and the symbols of Remembrance Day.
Broadcast Date: Nov. 11, 1962
By November 1918, trench warfare has finally given way to a headlong pursuit of the retreating Germans. Canadian troops under Sir Arthur Currie are tasked with liberating Belgian villages such as Mons, where house-to-house fighting is fierce. Then a rumour spreads: the war is over! As we hear in this clip, the news seems too good to be true. Even when armistice is confirmed, the exhausted soldiers can barely comprehend the new reality: death one day, peace the next....
Broadcast Date: Nov. 11, 1944
“Some must die so that others may live.” Winston Churchill.
By 2002, about 116,780 Canadians have died in war and peacekeeping missions around the world. Remembrance Day honours the men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
In this 1944 CBC Radio clip, war correspondent Matthew Halton evokes the “dead and the damned battalions,” reflects that “there'll be mad dogs again in the future,” and urges listeners “this time, let's not break faith.”
much more...
Thursday October 22 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld
Watch clip: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Nature_of_Things_Promos/ID=1290146965
Canada's former top soldier says in his new memoir that he argued for Canadian troops deployed to Afghanistan to be kept in the relative safety of Kabul, and he rebuffs claims he was responsible for getting the country mired in the bloody battlefields of Kandahar.
The decision to send Canadian soldiers to southern Afghanistan was largely made before Rick Hillier became the country's military commander, the former chief of defence staff says in a provocative new memoir, A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War, which is now available.
Blunt, hard-hitting and often cheeky, Hillier lays out his side of the story through the tumultuous early years of the war, including his strained relationship with former defence minister Gordon O'Connor and an attempt by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office to limit his public profile.
Book Description
In the
summer of 2008, General Rick Hillier retired as Chief of the Defence
staff of the Canadian Forces. You could almost hear the sigh of relief
in Ottawa as Canada’s most popular, and most controversial, military
leader since the second World War left a role in which he’d been as
frank, unpredictable and resolutely apolitical as any of his
predecessors.
Born and raised in Newfoundland, Hillier joined the military as a young man and quickly climbed the ranks. He played a significant role in such domestic challenges as the ice storm that paralyzed much of eastern Ontario and Quebec in 1998, and quickly became a player on the international scene, commanding an American corps in Texas and a multinational NATO task force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But it was his role as General Rick Hillier, Canada’s Chief of the Defence staff, that defined him as a Canadian icon.
In Afghanistan, Canada faced its first combat losses since the Korean War, with every casualty becoming front page news. A country formerly ambivalent, or even angry, about its role in the conflict suddenly became gripped by the drama unfolding not only in a war zone halfway around the world but in unfriendly conference rooms in Ottawa. There, as everywhere, Hillier pulled no punches, demanding more funding, more troops and more appreciation for the women and men fighting a war on foreign soil. This hard-hitting, honest account of Hillier’s role—told in his own words—will be one of the most important books published in Canada this decade.( Mosaicbooks)
John Wilson Author Visit KSS Library Oct 20 with students
http://johnwilson-author.blogspot.com/ John will be touring in the Okanagan in October and travelling out to
Ottawa towards the end of November. If you are in either of those areas
and would like to book John for a reading or workshop, check out
details of presentations. John's primary target audiences are grades 6 to 9, although he has
recently begun developing purely historical presentations on the First
and Second World Wars to tie in with the Social Sciences/History
curricula in the upper grades of High School. Mr. Wilson will be sharing his time with Graeme Stacey's SS11H students.
Watch for posts and photos here.
Follow his visit: twitter/kssreads
Our Current Reader is....
Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons
Mr. Parker Just read...
Ms. Terhljan Just read...
Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Club Dumas,
International Bestseller
Lucas Corso
is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy
and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged,
leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's The Three
Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn
into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and
swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious
resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named
after a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris in
pursuit of a sinister and seemingly omniscient killer.
Part
mystery, part puzzle, part witty intertextual game, The Club Dumas is a wholly
original intellectual thriller by the author of The Flanders Panel and The
Seville Communion.
The Girl Of
His Dreams, by Donna Leon
Leon's
Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries have won legions of fans for their evocative portraits of Venetian life. "The
Girl of His Dreams" offers a spectacular, heart-wrenching addition to the
series.
Mr. Melle Just read...
The Glass
Castle by Jeanette Walls. is a memoir.
The Glass
Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory
look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When
sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's
imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life
fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was
a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the
responsibility of raising a family.The Walls children learned to take care of
themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found
their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless
even as their children prospered.The Glass Castle is truly astonishing -- a
memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar, but loyal, family.
Jeannette Walls has a story to tell, and tells it brilliantly, without an ounce
of self-pity.
A Long Way
Gone memoir of a boy soldier by Ismael Beah.
It is
estimated that in the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide,
there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of
them.
In A Long
Way Gone, Beah, now in his mid-twenties, tells how, at the age of twelve, he
fled attacking rebels in his homeland of Sierra Leone and wandered a land
rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the
government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of
truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real
literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
Mr. Smith Just read...
Merle's
Door : by Ted Kerasote: is a wonderful read that is centered around the
new relationship of a man and a stray dog who
befriends him. The man's life is changed! Patrick Lawlor delivers an
animated performance, both literally and figuratively. His portrayal of Merle's
enthusiasm and loyalty is so endearing. The book has a genuine anthropomorphism
while the author tries to illuminate Merle's expressions and behaviors a true
dog lover cannot help but indentify. I have not been able to grant the
freedom that Kerasote lent Merle, but nevertheless, he made me think hard about
my love for the dog in my life- a pup chocolate lab.
Also read: The Philosopher's dog / Raimond
Gaita and The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein: Watch review...
Mrs. A. Holmwood is reading,
The
Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
A New York
Times bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating,
this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly
simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table
each of the food chains that sustain us—whether industrial or organic,
alternative or processed—he develops a portrait of the American way of eating.
The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have
shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have
for the health of our species and the future of our planet.
"...What
should we have for dinner?" asks Pollan in the opening of this unique
history of four meals--from McDonald's fare to personally hunted wild pig.
Award-winning narrator Scott Brick--truly one of the best in the
business--takes the listener on a mesmerizing adventure to find some answers.
The investigation could have bogged down in Pollan's exhaustive details, but
Brick captures each experience with a tempo and emotional coloring all its own.
From the comedy of gobbling Chicken McNuggets while speeding down a highway to
the deliberately paced tension of stalking and killing a wild pig, Brick gives
each story a distinctive voice--and taste."
Lance
Armstrong's Autobiography
The
Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Grapes of
Wrath by John Steinbach
Scotia Giller Prize 2009 continues the Canadian tradition of awarding prestige and exposure to some of our best writers and their literary achievements. Read any of the titles or authors work? Post your feedback below.
The 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists are:
• Kim Echlin for her novel THE DISAPPEARED, published by Hamish Hamilton Canada
• Annabel Lyon for her novel THE GOLDEN MEAN, published by Random House Canada
• Linden MacIntyre for his novel THE BISHOP’S MAN, published by Random House Canada
• Colin McAdam for his novel FALL, published by Hamish Hamilton Canada
• Anne Michaels for her novel THE WINTER VAULT, published by McClelland & Stewart
Other 2008 TitlesLike every year, the shortlist for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize – unveiled in Toronto on Tuesday – contained a few surprises. Perhaps the biggest shock was the omission of Margaret Atwood’s widely praised The Year of the Flood, which seemed a likely contender for the $50,000 prize. With Atwood absent from the shortlist and Alice Munro having already removed herself from consideration, the field is now open to works by several writers in mid-career, including Colin McAdam’s Fall, Kim Echlin’s The Disappeared, and Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean (Random House Canada). Also nominated are Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man (Random House) and The Winter VaultAnne Michaels’ long-awaited follow-up to Fugitive Pieces.( QuillQuire)
