Donna Leon’s latest in the New York Times

About Face, by Donna Leon
9780802118967 | $33.50 hc | temporarily out of stock
Atlantic Monthly Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Donna Leon’s About Face was reviewed in the Crime column of the New York Times Book Review on April 26:

A soft snow falls lightly on Venice in ABOUT FACE, Donna Leon’s latest mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, a sight so precious that “Brunetti closed his eyes from the joy of it.” But it will take more than one snowfall to cleanse the ground-in corruption that’s revealed when this simpatico police detective investigates the local connections to the murder of a man who owned a trucking company in Lombardy. Leon sounds an angry alarm about the environmental damage done when mafias are allowed to take over toxic-waste disposal, and Brunetti despairs of being able to defend his city, poised on the “welcoming and oh-so-­unprotected waters” of its lovely laguna.

It would be easy to punch holes in a contrived subplot, thick with symbolism, about a beautiful young woman whose face was ruined by cosmetic surgery. But who would want to, when Leon is being so generous with the humanizing details that make this series special? There are long walks in Brunetti’s warm company and lively talks with his clever wife and even more engaging father-in-law, who can see the appetites of a modern consumer society reflected in a 17th-century portrait. As detective work goes, it’s a tiny masterpiece of analysis.

Skinny Bastard in the NY Times

Skinny Bastard, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin
9780762435401 | $17.50 pb | in stock
Running Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

The latest book in the Skinny Bitch franchise was reviewed in the New York Times on April 23:

‘Skinny’ Authors Have New Goal: Making Men Buff

By MOTOKO RICH
Published: April 22, 2009

Can the sassy, foul-mouthed, hectoring tone that prompted millions of women to buy “Skinny Bitch” work for men?

In an effort to capture the other gender with their best-selling diet book franchise, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, the authors of “Skinny Bitch,” a vegan manifesto clothed as a weight-loss primer, have retrofitted the original book for men under the title “Skinny Bastard.” The book, published by Running Press, goes on sale on Monday.

The authors and publisher believe that the tough-love message of the original book will translate to men who want to lose weight and “get ripped.” Running Press, a division of Perseus Books, has planned an initial print run of 100,000 copies.

“Skinny Bitch,” with maxims like “sugar is the Devil” and “soda is liquid Satan,” has spent a total of 92 weeks on The New York Times Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous Paperback Best-Seller list, and has sold 1.1 million copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of sales. The authors have also written a recipe book, “Skinny Bitch in the Kitch,” which sold a healthy 217,000 copies, and a book for pregnant mothers, “Skinny Bitch: Bun in the Oven,” which has sold only 26,000 copies.

“Skinny Bastard,” said David Steinberger, chief executive of Perseus, is “a testosterone repackaging of basically the same book, prepared in a way that will get the message out to men.”

Ms. Freedman said she and Ms. Barnouin had always planned to write a book for men. “All along, the plan was to target both men and women,” Ms. Freedman said. “It was just: Let’s get ‘Skinny Bitch’ out there and establish it because women are more prone to buying diet books and books in general.”

“Skinny Bastard” follows roughly the same outline as “Skinny Bitch,” with the language retooled to appeal to male psychology. Whereas the introduction to “Skinny Bitch” reads, “If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, you’re ready to get skinny,” the men’s version does not assume low self-esteem: “Chances are, you haven’t done so badly, despite the few extra lbs you’re carting around. … But don’t kid yourself, pal: A hot-bodied man is a head-turner.”

Dissection reviewed in the New York Times

Dissection, by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson
9780922233342 | $70.00 hc | available to order
Blast Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Dissection: Photographs Of a Rite Of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 was reviewed in the New York Times on April 27:

Snapshots From the Days of Bare-Hands Anatomy

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
Published: April 27, 2009

The array of familiar objects threatened by digital technology encompasses the old (books, paintings) and the new (CDs). And then there is the human body, which counts as both.

Not the bodies we use, of course, but rather the bodies we allow medical professionals to use while training, to familiarize themselves with the terrain. Dissecting a cadaver has been part of medical education for millenniums. But the cadaver that enters the gross anatomy suite with the blessing of both the prior owner and the state is actually quite a new phenomenon.

Barely a century ago American medical schools were helping themselves to alumni of the local poorhouse for some of their teaching material and paying grave robbers for the rest. Uniformity came to the process of organ donation beginning only in 1968, with the development of a model law that states could adopt.

Now the same technology that lets us scan living bodies in all dimensions may obviate our need for dead ones, as some anatomy courses move from real dissection to its virtual counterpart — clean and odor-free, in crystal-clear focus with infinite zoom.

Some say virtual anatomy can never replace the transcendent reality. Some say it is a huge improvement over smelly, greasy, inconvenient flesh. Both arguments will be fueled by “Dissection,” an extraordinary collection of photographs that makes even today’s flesh-and-blood anatomy laboratories look tame.

Photography soared in popularity after the Civil War, and in 1900 Eastman Kodak’s Brownie camera created armies of snapping amateurs. A vogue for photographing the gross anatomy class swept through American medical schools, as students were moved to recreate in black and white the iconic dissection scenes of Rembrandt and other great masters: scholarly doctors posing around the supine cadaver, scalpels in hand, gravitas on face.

Some student groups posed for professional photographers. Others took their own shots. The prints were mounted on living room walls, sent as postcards and even used as calling cards. By 1920 the craze had simmered down, and after World War II it was pretty much over.

But hundreds of these photographs endure. John Harley Warner, chairman of Yale’s History of Medicine program, and James M. Edmonson, curator of a museum of medical memorabilia at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, have culled more than 100 for what might under other circumstances be considered a coffee-table book. It is a striking, glossy, oversize volume, immensely decorative if shredded flesh and the odd bone are your idea of décor.

Groundwood board books reviewed in Globe, Toronto Star, & CM Magazine

It’s Useful to Have a Duck, by Isol
9780888999276 | $10.00 board | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

Mother Goose, by various
9780888999337 | $9.95 board | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

Mother Goose was reviewed in the Globe & Mail on Apr. 24, and Isol’s It’s Useful to Have a Duck was reviewed in both the Toronto Star (Apr. 25), and CM Magazine. From the Toronto Star:

For the even younger, try the accordion-folded board book It’s Useful to Have a Duck – also titled, on the other cover, It’s Useful to Have a Boy, by the Mexican artist Isol. Deceptively naïve, black pencil drawings on yellow pages take us through a boy’s ways of playing with a toy duck – from riding it like a rocking horse and wearing it as a hat to using it for a bath plug.

Read this book from the other side, with its identical pictures but this time, blue pages, and you’ll find it’s useful for a duck to have a boy. "I use his head to see the view," is the duck’s interpretation of the boy using him for a hat. The same pictures from two very different points of view give us two wildly different stories. A book that looks deliciously simple, but offers up complex ideas and some wit, too.

McArthur mysteries get 4 nominations for Arthur Ellis Awards & win the Agatha Award

The Cruellest Month, by Louise Penny
978-0755340750 | $10.99 mm | in stock
Headline / McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

The Murder Stone, by Louise Penny
9780755341016 | $24.95 pb | in stock
Headline / McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

Margarita Nights, by Phyllis Smallman
978-1552787632 | $10.99 mm | in stock
McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

Transgression, by James W. Nichol
978-1552787649 | $10.99 mm | in stock
McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

The Tsunami File, by Michael Rose
978-1552787625 | $10.99 mm | in stock
McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

Louise Penny has won the Agatha Award on May 2 for her novel The Cruellest Month, and she is also nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel for her latest book The Murder Stone.

Two other McArthur titles are nominated in the Best Novel category for the Arthur Ellis Awards this year: Transgression, by James W. Nichol; and The Tsunami File, by Michael Rose.

Phyllis Smallman, also a McArthur author, has been nominated for the Arthur Ellis for Best First Novel for her book Margarita Nights. The winners will be announced at the Arthur Ellis Awards dinner on Thursday, June 4.

Oonagh reviewed in the Globe & Mail

Oonagh, by Mary Tilberg
978-1897151181 | $21.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

The Globe & Mail reviewed Mary Tilberg’s novel Oonagh on April 24:

Risky and rewarding

REVIEWED BY JIM BARTLEY

April 24, 2009

We enter novels with hope. What we seek is seduction and immersion, whether it comes easily or is stealthily, even painfully coerced. We want equally to escape life and to have it infuse us with new force.

I entered the brief but brimming first chapter of Mary Tilberg’s debut with the usual slightly wary anticipation. In the Upper Canada of the 1830s, a woman alone in bed is remembering someone: "I felt the contours of his smile on my face, as if he were smiling out of my own features."

It becomes clear that she’s unable or unwilling to leave the bed in her sister’s house. She drifts into and out of sleep. "I swam in it, a fish breathing underwater." The smiling man swims with her. She reaches for his smooth stomach muscles and he playfully darts away like a seal. Each time the dreams fade, reality assails her: "a cave full of howling wind … a cold sea dragging me down."

It’s apparent we’re dealing with sorrow, but in Tilberg’s pictures from a mind reeling we see also the world’s gifts. Oonagh Corcoran is the mad sister in the guest room, bleeding hallucinatory joy and pain, a damaged vessel that her family can’t fix. It’s an uncommonly adept and affecting first chapter. The writing is chock full of quiet wonders.

Flash back several years to a seaside village in Ireland. Oonagh, with sister, Mairi, and her young husband, are given the means to break free of both poverty and the chronic political turmoil that led to an innocent brother’s public hanging. Relatives in Canada have sent a letter holding ship passage. The gift of freedom is cut with sadness; they must abandon a tight-knit family and beloved landscape.

In a scenario ripe for lilting melodrama, Tilberg’s compact prose instead delivers nuanced character work and dialogue with just the right pitch of rough affection. The scenes of family meals and neighbourly tensions, the whisky-fuelled rituals of a wedding reception, even the sea and sky hum with a sensory immediacy uncluttered by writerly ornament.

Boys Adrift author on Toronto CBC, CFRB

Boys Adrift, by Leonard Sax
9780465072101 | $17.00 pb | in stock
Basic Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Dr. Leonard Sax was in Toronto for a seminar last week. While in town he did live interviews on April 28 on two popular Toronto radio programs, CFRB’s “The Motts” and CBC Radio’s “Here & Now.”

Dread author interviewed about Swine Flu on The Current, in Maclean’s, Toronto Star

Dread, by Philip Alcabes
9781586486181 | $31.00 hc | in stock
PublicAffairs / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Prof. Philip Alcabes was interviewed live on CBC Radio’s “The Current” in the first half of the program on April 29.

His interview with Maclean’s appears in the current issue (May 11). The cover story is on the Swine Flu and Alcabes’ interview and four photos of him appear on a spread in the front section of the magazine.

His interview with the Toronto Star was published on May 3:

Should people fear swine flu?

Any epidemic is a story, says the author of the new book Dread . `We tell ourselves what’s going on in a way that’s loaded with our fears, hopes and expectations’

May 03, 2009
Kenneth Kidd
Feature Writer

From newscasts and talk shows to chats around the water cooler, the latest deadly flu has made a lot of people frightened. Should they be?

Philip Alcabes, an epidemiologist and associate professor of public health at Hunter College in New York, insists not. As Alcabes argues in Dread, his just published history of epidemics, such fears are often grossly exaggerated.

In an interview with the Star, Alcabes discussed the current situation, its antecedents, and the hidden agendas that are often at play. This is an edited version of that conversation.

Is there anything unexpected in how the current flu has spread or how the authorities have reacted?

This is very mild. If this were a mid-winter flu outbreak, we wouldn’t even notice it.

It came out of season, and much was made of two small facts. One was that the virus in question seemed to be a recombinant of swine and avian viruses as well as human flu viruses. I don’t find that very remarkable but some people did, and maybe scary, like something’s jumped on us from pigs.

The other fact was that so many of the deaths in Mexico were among young adults. The ingredients were all there for us to get extremely worried very fast.

The current swine flu, or I guess we have to call it H1N1 flu, is a public-health problem. It deserves the attention it’s getting from public-health authorities. But I also think the response has been greatly exaggerated, the response on the part of some people.

Trump on Letterman, the View

Think Like A Champion, by Donald J. Trump
9781593155308 | $29.00 hc | in stock
Vanguard Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Donald Trump will be on David Letterman reading the top 10 list on Monday, May 4th. He’s also scheduled to appear on The View, Tuesday May 5th.

M is for Moose shortlisted for Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards

M is for Moose, by Charles Pachter
978-1-897151-33-4 | $20.00 hc | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

Charlie Pachter’s M is for Moose has been shortlisted in the Children’s Picture Book category for the 2009 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards. The winners will be announced on May 20, 2009.