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Alice Munro wins the Nobel Prize!

Thursday, Oct 10, 2013 at 9:32am

This morning we wake to the amazing news that Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is the first Canadian to ever win and only the 13th woman to win the award. The Swedish Academy announced the decision Thursday, calling the 82-year-old author from Wingham, Ont., a "master of the contemporary short story." A hearty congratulations, Ms. Munro, from McNally Robinson Booksellers.

To read more from Canada and around the world, here's the story at The Globe and Mail, at CBC.ca, the New York Times, and The Guardian.


Categories: Awards, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Literature

House on Sugarbush Road wins MRB Book of the Year

Monday, Apr 29, 2013 at 10:01am

Congratulations to Meira Cook whose novel, The House on Sugarbush Road, won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year last night at the Manitoba Book Awards gala at the West End Cultural Centre. The House on Sugarbush Road was published by Manitoba publisher Great Plains Publications.

And congratulations to all the other winners last night as well:

*Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and The Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction: The Age of Hope by David Bergen (Harper Collins)
*Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction: Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art, by Darlene Coward Wight (Douglas and MacIntyre/ Winnipeg Art Gallery).
*Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher: Thunder Road by Chadwick Ginther, cover design by Jamis Paulson, interior design by Sharon Caseburg (Ravenstone/Turnstone).
*Lifetime Achievement Award: Dennis Cooley
*McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award, older category: Green-Eyed Queen of Suicide City by Kevin Marc Fournier (Great Plains).
*John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer: Kristian Enright.
*Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry: The Politics of Knives, by Jonathan Ball (Coach House Books).
*Best Illustrated Book of the Year: Imagining Winnipeg: History through the Photographs of L.B. Foote, by Esyllt Jones, design by Doowah Design (University of Manitoba Press).
*Manuela Dias Book Design of the Year: Warehouse Journal Vol. 21, edited and designed by Nicole Hunt and Brandon Bergem (U of M Faculty of Architecture).
*Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book: Sonar, by Kristian Enright (Turnstone Press).
*Prix Littéraire rue-Deschambault: La Révolution Tranquille, by Raymond Hebert (Les Éditions du Blé).

Categories: Awards, Winnipeg

James Salter, the writer's writer.

Sunday, Apr 21, 2013 at 11:41am

James Salter is truly a writer's writer. People don't talk about his stories as much as they talk about how he writes them. But it would be a shame if only writers read Salter because the depths he reaches with a misleadingly simple style should be experienced more widely. I can recommend you start with any of his novels that sounds appealing to you whether that be A Sport and A Pastime, about a love affair in 1960's France, or Light Years, a portrait of a marriage of privilege in which Salter first exposes the fine cracks in it that later turn into flaws that are beyond repair.

Or you could start with Salter's latest novel, All That Is. In this work, Philip Bowman returns to America from his experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa and finds a position as a book editor. It is a time when publishing is still largely a private affair--a scattered family of small houses here and in Europe--a time of gatherings in fabled apartments and conversations that continue long into the night. In this world of dinners, deals, and literary careers, Bowman finds that he fits in perfectly. But despite his success, what eludes him is love. His first marriage goes bad, another fails to happen, and finally he meets a woman who enthralls him--before setting him on a course he could never have imagined for himself.

Romantic and haunting, All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. It is a dazzling, sometimes devastating labyrinth of love and ambition, a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, here's a couple of glowing recent reviews from the Globe & Mail and the National Post.

Categories: Saskatoon, Winnipeg, New Releases, Literature, Book of the Day

Take a big Gulp with Mary Roach

Sunday, Apr 21, 2013 at 11:40am

$28.50 Add to Cart

Mary Roach has been a McNally Robinson Bookseller favourite since she arrived on the scene with Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Questions of what she would do for an encore were silenced by her subsequent books, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.

Now Roach is back with a brand new release and the alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of -- or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists -- who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.

We urge you to try Gulp or any one of Mary Roach's books. She never fails to amuse while she educates.

Categories: Saskatoon, Winnipeg, New Releases, Book of the Day
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