Friday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #131):

CH (Children's Literature) - What does Admiral Drake send to Mr. Popper from Antarctica, in a classic Richard and Florence Atwater tale?
CL (Classic Literature) - What saga by William Makepeace Thackeray features the clever social climber Becky Sharp?
NF (Non-fiction) - What former managing editor of Time magazine was the first Henry Kissinger biographer to gain access to the diplomat's private papers?
BC (Book Club) - What 1996 Mario Puzo opus features a powerful Mafia leader who wants to go legit?
AU (Author) - What 19-year-old harmonica whiz played Bob Dylan tunes across India, before publishing his first novel, Such a Long Journey?
BB (BookBag) - What bestseller has park ranger Anna Pigeon investigate a possible Klan murder in Mississippi?

How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Friday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #278):

CH (Children's Literature) - What chatacter's Guide to Life was subtitled: How to Eat, Dress, Travel, Behave and Stay Six forever?
CL (Classic Literature) - Who satirized London literary society in Cakes and Ale, the tale of two writers researching a biography of the fictitious Edward Driffield?
NF (Non-Fiction) - What host of The View holds court in You Have to Stand for Something, or You'll Fall for Anything?
BC (Book Club) - Who landed his second book, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, on bestseller lists despite publishing it himself and keeping it off chain store shelves?
AU (Author) - Whose tattling Tinseltown tales led Vanity Fair to dub her "Hollywood's own Marcel Proust"?
BB (BookBag) - What Scottish author features Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld in Portuguese Irregular Verbs and The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs?

How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Tuesday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #155):

CH (Children's Literature) - What Winnie-the-Pooh character doesn't show up until the sequel, The House at Pooh Corner- Eeyore, Owl or Tigger?
CL (Classic Literature) - What novel introduced Kingsley Amis' popular antihero Jim Dixon?NF (Non-fiction) - What continent, remade by a meteor strike 65 million years ago, did Tim Flammery dub The Eternal Frontier?
BC (Book Club) - What epic novella treats readers to the elemental life of 19th-century frontiersman Tristan Ludlow?
AU (Author) - What midwestern university counts novelist Saul Bellow as a permanent member of its Committee on Social Thought?
BB (BookBag) - What mystery scribe created septuagenarian sleuth Henrie O to change folks' views of older women?

How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Friday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #129):

CH (Children's Literature) - Who teaches Charms at Hogwarts?
CL (Classic Literature) - What taboo B-word in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion sparked a scandal on the London stage?
NF (Non-fiction) - What nation's military coup did author Thomas Hauser explore, in The Execution of Charles Horman, later published as Missing?
BC (Book Club) - What Gloria Naylor novel focuses on sea island matriarch Miranda day?
AU (Author) - What author of Sally Hemings sculped Africa Rising, a monument ot slave trade victims that graces the lobby of a Manhattan federal building?
BB (BookBag) - What science-fiction author invited others into his Known Space universe, to write stories documenting the Man-Kzin Wars?

How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Friday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #347):

CH (Children's Literature) - What type of bird showed Mary Lennox where the rusty key to The Secret Garden was buried?
CL (Classic Literature) - What novel sees ambulance driver Lt. Frederick Henry escaping execution by jumping into the Tagliamento River?
NF (Non-fiction) - What 20th-century trustbuster got the royal treament in Edmund Morris' Theodore Rex?
BC (Book Club) - What Texas town did Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae meet up in, before starting a cattle drive to Montana?
AU (Author) - Who had already penned Player Piano by the time he became one of Saab's first U.S. dealers?
BB (BookBag) - What comic included the classic stand-up routine "A Place for My Stuff" in his collection of cerebral scat called Braindroppings?

How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Friday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #34):

CH (Children's Literature) - What was the best-selling hardcover children's book ever, by 2001- Green Eggs and Ham, Pat the Bunny or the Poky Little Puppy?
CL (Classic Literature) - What novel spins the tale of the four March sisters?
NF (Non-fiction) - What rocker's famous excesses did Sandy Troy detail in his 1994 autobiography Captain Trips?
BC (Book Club) - What Margaret Drabble novel centers on a feminist author who turns up missing from her British seaside town?
AU (Author) - What Nobel Prize-winner no doubt pleased typesetters by abbreviating his first two names, Vidiadhar Surajprasad?
BB (BookBag) - What hard-boiled private investigator dates a feminist therapist named Susan Silverman?

Wow, a relatively easy card this week. I got 5 of the 6 right! How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Friday Book Lover's Trivia

Questions (card #93):

CH (Children's Literature) - What kind of creature is the grouchy Templeton, in Charlotte's Web?
CL (Classic Literature) - What was Jane Austen's novel Susan retitled when it was first printed, decades after she'd written it?
NF (Non-fiction) - What corporation's 2001 downfall does Fortune reporter Bethany McLean expose, in The Smartest Guys in the Room?
BC (Book Club) - What author of The Transit of Venus forced fans to wait 23 years for her next novel, The Great Fire?
AU (Author) - What Nobel-winning U.S. novelist wrote in the 1950s about raising a mentally handicapped daughter, in The Child Who Never Grew?
BB (BookBag) - What mystery author's stable of sleuths includes museum curator Elena Oliverez and art investigator Joanna Stark?

How did you do? See Comments for answers.

Friday, erm... Wednesday Book Lover's Trivia!

My sincerest apologies to readers who missed the promised trivia last Friday. Hope this helps to ease the pain a little!

Questions (card #142):

CH (Children's Literature) - What book by Robert K. Smith finds Henry Green chomping so much chocolate that his skin breaks out in sweet-smelling bumps?

CL (Classic Literature) - What James Baldwin novel describes the spiritual awakening of 14-year-old John Grimes?

NF (Non-fiction) - What Bruce Porter book bore the subtitle How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All?

BC (Book Club) - What best-selling western finds Lt. John Dunbar ordered to command a deserted army outpost?

AU (Author) - What Londoner, born Richard Patrick Russ, ditched his first wife and kids to reinvent himself as an "Irish" nautical novelist?

BB (BookBag) - What John Jakes trilogy concludes in Reconstruction times with Heaven and Hell?

How did you do? I got three this time (yay me)! See Comments for answers.

Local Woman Tells her Story and Wins!

Janette Mann of Keswick entered TVO's Telling our Stories competition, and won $250 for Georgina Public Libraries!






Pictured here is Janette [right] and Head Librarian Mary Baxter, holding a copy of Janette's winning story.

To read Janette's heart-warming story, click here.

Book Lovers Trivia

Every Friday I will post questions taken from Trivial Pursuit's Book Lover's Edition.



This isn't a game for the literary faint of heart- it's really hard! On this first card, I only got 2 questions right. How did you do? Click on Comments for the answers.

Questions (card #21):

CH (Children's Literature) - What fictional character did author Barbara Park finally allow to graduate from kindergarten, after nine years and 17 books?

CL (Classic Literature) - Who wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas?

NF (Non-fiction) - What 19th-century inventory did Kenneth Silverman profile in his biography Lightning Man?

BC (Book Club) - What Robert Stone novel, set during the last days of the Vietnam War, features a journalist whose drug deal goes horribly awry?

AU (Author) - Who retaliated for being dumped by Eddie Cantor by basing a pathetic character on him in her novel The Love Machine?

BB (BookBag) - Whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was adapted into the film Blade Runner?

What We're Reading In Sutton this March

And the Winner Is...

Lullabies for Little Criminals

by Heather O’Neill

Published in 2006 by HarperCollins

The narrator of Heather O'Neill's evocative novel is a 12-year-old named Baby, who is hovering between childhood and the temptations of the adult world. Her father, Jules, takes better care of his heroin habit than he does of her, and Baby learns not to depend on him. Though they live in poverty, she collects and covets the small crumbs of happiness she finds as she navigates the streets of Montreal's red-light district.
On the outside, Baby is whipsmart, wickedly funny and has a genius for survival; on the inside, she's as needy and as fragile as any girl entering puberty. She experiences highs and lows during stints in foster care and in a juvenile detention centre, all the while craving an injection of love and stability in her life.
Baby grows to depend on the charismatic predator Alphonse, a local pimp who is riveted by her blossoming beauty. At the same time, she nurtures a tender and naively passionate friendship with Xavier, a classmate who is clueless about his girlfriend's double life.
Lullabies for Little Criminals is a powerful debut novel, the coming-of-age story of a young woman who learns to adapt to heartbreaking circumstances, and about the young man who became her parent too early.

Defended by John K. Samson

To learn more, check out the Readers Guide (1332kb)

Canada Reads

Canada Reads is at it again. The "All-Star" edition features panelists whose books have won previous Canada Reads contests.

Here are the books. Which one are you rooting for?

What we're reading in Sutton

Amir and Hassan are childhood friends in the alleys and orchards of Kabul in the sunny days before the invasion of the Soviet army and Afghanistan’s decent into fanaticism. Both motherless, they grow up as close as brothers, but their fates, they know, are to be different. Amir’s father is a wealthy merchant; Hassan’s father is his manservant. Amir belongs to the ruling caste of Pashtuns, Hassan to the despised Hazaras.This fragile idyll is broken by the mounting ethnic, religious, and political tensions that begin to tear Afghanistan apart. An unspeakable assault on Hassan by a gang of local boys tears the friends apart; Amir has witnessed his friend’s torment, but is too afraid to intercede. Plunged into self-loathing, Amir conspires to have Hassan and his father turned out of the household.When the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father flee to San Francisco, leaving Hassan and his father to a pitiless fate. Only years later will Amir have an opportunity to redeem himself by returning to Afghanistan to begin to repay the debt long owed to the man who should have been his brother.Compelling, heartrending, and etched with details of a history never before told in fiction, The Kite Runner is a story of the ways in which we’re damned by our moral failures, and of the extravagant cost of redemption.

If you Liked The Greek for Love...

The Greek for Love is a passionate memoir about the Greek island of Corfu. Reading this book will make your feet itchy to travel. If, like me, you're stuck in chilly Canada for the forseeable future, these books may help to satisfy your wanderlust.

Ask for them next time you visit the Library.

What We're Reading this January

In our Book Club discussions this month:

What we're reading in Sutton

Many people can only dream about leaving everything to run off and live on a Greek island but for four years in the early 1980's James Chatto and his wife Wendy Martin did just that. This beautiful and touching memoir recounts not only the idyllic nature of Greece which initially seduced them to stay but also how they came to be accepted as locals following the birth of their first son and the tragic illness of their second.

The Sutton Book Club meets Tuesday, January 30th, 7:30pm at the Peter Gzowski Branch.

What we're reading in Keswick

Set in the first half of the twentieth century, but reaching back to Bavaria in the late nineteenth century, The Stone Carvers weaves together the story of ordinary lives marked by obsession and transformed by art. At the centre of a large cast of characters is Klara Becker, the granddaughter of a master carver, a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut short by the First World War, and by the frequent disappearances of her brother Tilman, afflicted since childhood with wanderlust. From Ontario, they are swept into a colossal venture in Europe years later, as Toronto sculptor Walter Allward’s ambitious plans begin to take shape for a war memorial at Vimy, France. Spanning three decades, and moving from a German-settled village in Ontario to Europe after the Great War, The Stone Carvers follows the paths of immigrants, labourers, and dreamers. Vivid, dark, redemptive, this is novel of great beauty and power.

The Keswick Book Club meets Tuesday, January 30, 7pm, at the Keswick Branch

What we're reading in Pefferlaw

Before his return to the U.S. after a 20-year residence in England, journalist Bryson (Made in America) embarked on a farewell tour of his adopted homeland. His trenchant, witty and detailed observations of life in a variety of towns and villages will delight Anglophiles. Traveling only on public transportation and hiking whenever possible, Bryson wandered along the coast through Bournemouth and neighboring villages that reinforced his image of Britons as a people who rarely complain and are delighted by such small pleasures as a good tea. In Liverpool, the author's favorite English city, he visited the Merseyside Maritime Museum to experience its past as a great port. Interweaving descriptions of landscapes and everyday encounters with shopkeepers, pub customers and fellow travelers, Bryson shares what he loves best about the idiosyncrasies of everyday English life in this immensely entertaining travel memoir. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Pefferlaw Book Club meets, Thursday, February 1st, 1:30pm, at the Pefferlaw Branch.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our valued library patrons. I hope it's a peaceful season for you all.

When you are full of turkey and tired of re-runs on TV, come in to your local library branch. We'll find something good for you to read.

Georgina Public Libraries is closed Dec 24-26 and Dec 31-Jan 1. All other days we are open regular hours.

Your Evergreen Winner Is...

December 1, 2006

Again, the readers speak with their vote. Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden is the winner of the 2006 Evergreen Award. Adults across Ontario chose the book through their votes cast at local public libraries during Ontario Public Library Week. Boyden will receive his Award at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference in February.

Joseph Boyden is a Canadian with Irish, Scottish, and Métis roots. Three Day Road has received the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award and has also been shortlisted for the Governor General Award for Fiction. He is the author of Born with a Tooth, a collection of stories that was shortlisted for the Upper Canada Writer’s Craft Award. His work has appeared in publications such as Potpourri, Cimarron Review, Blue Penny Quarterly, BlackWarrior, and The Panhandler. He divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.

Thank you to all our 2006 Georgina Evergreen readers. Hope to see you again in 2007!

The Giller 2006 Winner Is...

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

From the Giller Website (www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca):

Toronto, ON (November 7, 2006) – Vincent Lam has been named the 2006 winner of The Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s premier literary prize for fiction, for his novel Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, published by Doubleday Canada. The announcement was made at a gala dinner and award ceremony that drew more than 450 members of the publishing, media and arts communities. Hosted by Justin Trudeau, The Scotiabank Giller Prize was broadcast across Canada in primetime at 10 p.m. ET on CTV. The telecast will air again tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 8 at 10 a.m. ET and Saturday, Nov. 11 at 4 p.m. ET on CTV

The largest annual prize for fiction in the country, The Scotiabank Giller Prize awards $40,000 each year to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English and $2,500 to each of the finalists.Selected by an esteemed jury panel comprised of The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson and distinguished Canadian authors Alice Munro and Michael Winter, the five finalists were chosen from 101 books submitted for consideration by 36 publishing houses from every region of the country.

Of the winning book, the jury remarked: “This series of inter-linked stories is a profound and meaningful glimpse into a world which seems on the surface to be purely medical, but leads us into the metaphorical. The characters and the situations are unexpectedly bound together and make us, as readers, not just witnesses to, but participants in, the world that has been created for us.”

Vincent Lam was born in London, Ontario and grew up in Ottawa. His family is from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam. Vincent Lam is a doctor who did his medical training in Toronto and is an emergency physician who also does international evacuation work. His non-fiction writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, the National Post and the University of Toronto Medical Journal. Lam’s first novel will be published by Doubleday in 2007. He and his wife live in Toronto.

Copies of Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures are on order. Watch our website www.georgina.canlib.ca to place holds.

What We're Reading this Month

November is the perfect month to settle in on a comfy couch with a good book. Why not read what others in Georgina are reading this month? Our Book Clubs are in full swing, and new members are always welcome!

What we're reading in Sutton

An Audience Of Chairs by Joan Clark

Set primarily in rural Cape Breton, An Audience of Chairs recounts the life of Moranna MacKenzie, an unforgettable character. Moranna, suffers from an unnamed mental illness, possibly bi-polar disease, which led to the removal of her two daughters more than thirty years ago. She is a free-spirited recluse who spends her days singing and playing the piano, baking bread and carving figures out of wood. Upon learning of the upcoming wedding of one of her daughters, Moranna is determined to attend. She realizes that she must retain her sanity and composure or lose this chance to reconcile with her daughters. This is book full of gentleness, compassion, humour and beauty.

The Sutton Book Club meets Tuesday, November 28th at 7:30pm at the Peter Gzowski Branch.

What we're reading in Keswick

The Five People you Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years -- from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge -- so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret. Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his -- and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom gives us an astoundingly original story that will change everything you've ever thought about the afterlife -- and the meaning of our lives here on earth. With a timeless tale, appealing to all, this is a book that readers of fine fiction, and those who loved Tuesdays with Morrie, will treasure.

The Keswick Book Club meets Tuesday, November 28 at 7pm, at the Keswick Branch

What we're reading in Pefferlaw

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic.

The Pefferlaw Book Club meets Thursday, Dec 7 at 1:30pm, at the Pefferlaw Branch.