Mid-June = time for my annual list of beach reads for Day 6 on CBC Radio One.
Listen to the audio here.
This year’s selection includes three debut novels, and has history, mystery, spies, spooks, and … well also quite aa lot of sadness. Sorry about that.
The five novels (pictured above) are:
For the last-minute Christmas shoppers among you, here’s my annual Holiday Gift Guide for CBC Day 6.
Here’s the audio >> listen.
For foodies:
For fiction lovers:
For non-fiction nuts:
Stocking stuffer:
A writer publishes his debut novel. The writer has a toe hold in the literary establishment on both sides of the Canada/US border. The novel has a toe hold on both sides of the noir/sci-fi genre border. The setting of the novel is almost borderless; near-future New York functioning as everyplace and no place, a Gotham or Metropolis, a metaphor for where society has gone wrong. The protagonist is an assassin with a code: one foot on either side of the moral fence.
The review is not like the novel. The review has to pick a single side.
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh. Should you read it?
Listen to the segment on CBC Day 6.
On Tuesday night, Canadian-born Kiwi Eleanor Catton became the youngest author ever to win the Man Booker Prize. She won for The Luminaries, which, at 830-odd pages, is also the longest book ever to have won, and will forever be the last book to have won before the prize changed its entry rules to include writers beyond the Commonwealth and Ireland.
But should you read it?
I did – more quickly than I’d suggest you do. Here’s my conversation with Brent Bambury on CBC Day 6.
The NYT Magazine said it’s the best book you’ll read in 2013. High praise for a book that was published on January 10, a pub. date that I’m guessing will have amused the author considering the book’s title.
I discussed George Sunders’ heatbreaking and hilarious new story collection on Day 6 with Brent Bambury
Should you read it? Here’s the audio.
My 2012 Holiday Reads for Day 6 (also Far from the Tree, which I seem to have forgotten about when taking the picture...)
Three more shopping days till Christmas!
Here are my tips for the buzziest books underneath the tree this year, as shared with Brent Bambury on this morning’s CBC Day 6.
Shoppers in Toronto: you can get all of these and more at the fabulous Type Books, where I’m often to be found selling books of a weekend. All except Building Stories, that is, which is sold out everywhere in the city (gasp!) except for The Beguiling, which was clever enough to get a Santa’s warehouse full! Go indies!
Happy holiday reading folks.
It’s been 12 years since Zadie Smith published her break-out debut, White Teeth, and 7 years since her most recent novel, the brilliant On Beauty.
So … was NW worth the wait?
On Day 6 with Brent Bambury I say … YES. With a word of caution that the novel is “crazy good” in parts, but “chaotic and cluttered” in others.
Here’s the audio.
1Q84: Haruki Murakami’s mammoth new tome.
Some say it’s his masterpiece. Some say it just goes on too long.
I was on CBC Radio One’s Day 6 with Brent Bambury to weigh in and help you decide: Should I Read It?