Some Member Book Selections
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LATEST Feature Articles
Book Pricing: When Canadian and US Currencies Are At Par
by - Sunday, October 05, 2008
I know I am not the first person to wonder why the sticker prices quoted on the back of books are still significantly higher for Canadians than Americans when it has been a full year since the US and CND dollar achieved parity. "So why don't books cost the same in Canada as the US?" Consider the list price on Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence is $35 U.S. and $42 Canadian. Suggested retail prices for James Patterson's You've Been Warned are $27.99 and $32.50. I took a look at the history of the two currencies and what the Association for Canadian Publishers (ACP) and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) had to say. Read this and weigh-in with your thoughts. If you are a publisher, share your experience.
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LATEST Author Interviews
Author Interview: Joshua Henkin
by - Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Edith Wharton satirized New York carriage society's attitudes to love, marriage and fidelity at the turn of the century in her novel, The Age of Innocence (Oxford World's Classics). Richard Yates captured married life in the bedroom communities struggling outside of New York in the '50s in his novel, Revolutionary Road. In this week's BookBuffet podcast interview we speak with best-selling author Joshua Henkin who tells us about his second award winning novel, Matrimony: A Novel recently published in paperback by Vintage, 2008. Matrimony captures contemporary couples dealing with the complexity of relationships in today's age. Julian, Mia, Carter and Pilar meet in an East coast liberal college and the book follows their lives for the next twenty years as they navigate adulthood and the most important aspects of life: love, friendship, careers and commitment. If you love Wharton and you know Yates, then you'll enjoy meeting Henkin.
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Feature Articles >>
Three Cups of Tea: The Story of One Man’s Promise
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Monday, September 29, 2008
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin is the prize-winning bestseller you have by now certainly heard of if not read. It has been the book of the month for many book clubs including both of mine, and before reading it I must say I was surprised at its popularity. A book about building schools in the Middle East is hardly the sort of terrorist expose we’ve seen hogging airport bookshelves since 9/11. It is a much simpler, yet far less reductionist story of a mountain climber cum philanthropist who made a sustainable impact in a part of the world known for its remote inaccessibility, both geographically and some would say ideologically. "Tea" succeeds in providing access to what is, of course, a universally human desire to improve the lives of our children.
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Book Reviews >>
The Common Bond by Donigan Merritt, Other Press, NY, 2008
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Donigan Merritt is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and the author of seven novels. He lives in Washington, DC. A world traveler who has lived a rich life, Merritt imbues his novels with the same variety and intensity. He writes of love and loss and adventure in many different settings. The Common Bond is set in Hawaii in the '80s. The protagonist, Morgan Cary is a s a commercial fishing boat captain, who trolls the Pacific for yellowfin tuna and blue marlin. After a decade of life spent in California, Morgan flies home to Hawaii arriving with a broken heart and an overwhelming sense of guilt surrounding the death of his wife, Victoria. He finds comfort in the wet green mountain slopes, the pearl-colored volcanic haze, and the tropical perfume of gardenia, plumeria, and eucalyptus, but he cannot escape painful and persistent memories. "Resonant with human emotion and insight, The Common Bond is an exquisite novel of precision and grace that captures the depths of the human capacity for guilt, and the traps of compassion and hope in redemption."—Other Press. Join BookBuffet reviewer, Dee Raffo who untangles the unconventional story line of this novel, and follows with her interview with the author over SKYPE.
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Publisher News >>
NYRB Is Having A Sale
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The New York Review of Books (NYRB) is moving offices from their current location to Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. Take advantage of the 40%-60% discounts on excellent titles not often available at these prices. Sale ends March 9th. Just browsing the list of fiction, translated fiction, essays and criticism along with other genres, I have pulled a few titles from my own shopping list. Aside from personal reading interests, it's always nice to have a few extra books on hand for gift occasions in the coming months; these are books suitable for most everyone. Learn more about this important literary and publishing force in America.
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Whistler Reads >>
Whistler Reads: November Nonfiction Pick
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
It's always a difficult process to choose the next book for our Whistler Reads - village book group. I read all the latest reviews of newly published books, sift through the advance reader copies that come to me from publishers, scour the bestseller lists and literary prize short lists, and dutifully return to the classics. I keep in mind current events, and try to balance genres, eras, nationalities, translations and subject matter. I think it's important to include a healthy dose of Canadianna.
Since we are in the throws of an election on both sides of the border, and are facing challenging economic times worldwide I think it's important to have something we can escape into. We've paid our dues reading a heavy book on economics, and another book dealing with politics. So I invite you to join me in reading a wonderful story based on the life of one of Canada's most famous personalities and artists, pianist Glenn Gould. A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano is written by Katie Hafner and published by Random House.
Not only was Gould a prodigy who achieved great fame, (his recording of the Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major was etched onto the golden record placed in the NASA Voyager) this book chronicles three interesting facets into a well-told story. We'll learn about the man, his obsession for music and his instrument. Purchase your discounted copy online here, or locals can stop into Armchair Books in the village, where we have reserve copies for WR members at 10% discount. Then join us for the discussion Thursday November 6th, 7:30pm at the Whistler Public Library. Get your ticket now.
Wine & Book Club >>
Wine & Book Group Pick for Sept-Oct 2008
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
Step into Interior BC, Canada for this month's Wine & Book Pick. Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane is available in bookstores Sept 30th, 2008 but available online here. McLeland Stewart publishers write, "[This is] an epic novel of unrequited dreams and forestalled lives. Set in the mid-1950s, in a small town in the interior of BC in the unnamed Okanagan Valley. The novel focuses on the Stark family, centering on brothers Eddy and Tom, who are bound together by family loyalty and inarticulate love." It's shortlisted for the 2008 Giller Prize for fiction. We've matched local wines from the same region where this virtuoso debut novel is set. Road 13 Winery is owned by Mick Luckhurst and located near the town of Oliver, just across the way from the renowned Tinhorn Creek Winery which shares the same terroir. Enjoy these surprisingly true and tasty, "earthy" wines—a brilliant match for your October book group and tasting.
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Author Interviews >>
Author Interview: Kem Nunn
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Thursday, July 24, 2008
Summer is here and all the folks at BookBuffet who have surfing on the brain decided to re-post an earlier interview [Nov 13 2004] with Kem Nunn, the legendary surf noir novelist. In addition to his own novel adaptations, Kem has a successful streak of screenplays to his name, Wild Things and his newest collaborations are with HBO Producer David Milch on the show "Deadwood" and he co-produced the HBO series "John from Cincinnati", a surfing series set in Imperial Beach, California which premiered on June 10, 2007. Kem spoke to BookBuffet about the third book in his surf-trilogy, Tijuana Straits, Random House (2004)
Technology Corner >>
$100 Laptops: Yves Behar Designs Innovative Solutions
by
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Yves Behar demonstrates the new XO Laptop in this convincing video. It's the result of a 2005 competition challenging designers and manufacturers to come up with an affordable, resiliant product for the One Lap Top Per Child program headed by Nicolas Negroponte (the founder of MIT lab) and consists of leading mathematicians, programmers, psychologists, engineers, musician/activists, businessmen and humanitarians. Design forward construction and materials that make even the happiest Mac user envious: a screen that you can see in full sunlight, light, compact, strong, requiring very little energy and having the ability to be powered by solar panels or cranks or foot pedals. Bono of U2 was involved in the project from the beginning and gives his unbridled support.
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Events >>
Two Great Events on Both Coasts: The NewYorker Festival & VIWF
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
On the West coast we have 100 international writers speaking at the 2008 Vancouver International Writers Festival, held October 21-26th. From André Alexis to Ting-xing Ye check out the entire list on the festival website. Then on the East coast, it's the annual NewYorker Magazine Festival.
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Some Member Book Selections
 
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