05/07/13
Saskatchewan Book Awards: Non-Fiction
Non-Fiction Award 2013:
Winner:
Candace Savage:
A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape
note: this book also won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction
Description: When Candace Savageand her partner buy a house in the romantic little town of Eastend, she has no idea what awaits her. At first she enjoys exploring the area around their new home, including the boyhood haunts of the celebrated American writer Wallace Stegner, the backroads of the Cypress Hills, the dinosaur skeletons at the T.Rex Discovery Centre, the fossils to be found in the dust-dry hills. She also revels in her encounters with the wild inhabitants of this mysterious land -- two coyotes in a ditch at night, their eyes glinting in the dark; a deer at the window; a cougar pussy-footing it through a gully a few minutes' walk from town.
But as Savage explores further, she uncovers a darker reality -- a story of cruelty and survival set in the still-recent past -- and finds that she must reassess the story she grew up with as the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of prairie homesteaders....Syndetics
Nominees:
Lynn Gidluck:
Visionaries, Crusaders, and Firebrands: The Idealistic Canadians Who Built the NDP
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Muriel A. Jarvis, (and Mary E. Vandergoot):
Thin Pink Lines: My Life as a Nurse & Beyond
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Alexandra Popoff:
The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants
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To see the list of all winners and nominees, go to the All Time Award Nominees List by Year posted by the Saskatchewan Book Awards.
01/09/13
12/19/12
New Non-Fiction includes "The queen of Katwe"
Check out the New Non-Fiction page
(click the Books, Movies, Music tab on the main Regina Public Library page. Then click on New Book Releases to see a selection of the newest books added to the collection.)
From this month's New Non-Fiction selections:
The queen of Katwe : a story of life, chess, and one extraordinary girl's rise from an African slum
by Tim Crothers.
Phiona Mutesi is a 15-year-old girl born and raised in a miserable slum called Katwe in Kampala, Uganda. She sleeps in a decrepit mud hut with her mother and four siblings and struggles to find a single meal each day. Phiona has been in and out of school her whole life because her mother cannot afford to send her, so she is only now learning to read and write. Phiona Mutesi is also one of the top chess players in the world.
One day in 2005, while desperately searching for food, Phiona followed her brother to a mission church where she met Robert Katende, another child of the Ugandan slums, who works for an American organization that offers relief and religion through sports. Robert introduced Phiona to the game of chess and within months he discovered her immense talent. ........
To be African is to an underdog in the world. To be Ugandan is to be an underdog in Africa. To be from Katwe is to be an underdog in Uganda. And to be a girl is to be an underdog in Katwe.The Queen of Katweis the ultimate underdog story.
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Use the key words "girls" and "Uganda" for more books on girl's lives in that country.
Use the key words "chess players" and "biography" to find more biographies of chess players.
11/04/12
Double cross : the true story of the D-day spies
Double cross : the true story of the D-day spies by Ben Macintyre
 Here's what the Publisher's Weekly review had to say: "Any method of seeking the truth can also be used to plant a lie." Therein lies the root of the brilliantly dangerous Allied plan (which MI5 called Double Cross) - recounted by Macintyre with the same skill and suspense he displayed in Operation Mincemeat and Agent Zigzag - to throw off the Germans and launch an assault at Normandy on June 6, 1944. The key to the plan - convincing Germany that the impending attack would come either at Pas de Calais or in Norway - was the careful manipulation of five double agents, each feeding misinformation back to their German handlers.
Polish zealot Roman Czerniawski volunteered his services to his German captors, only to defect to Britain and become "Agent Brutus." Serbian playboy Dusan Popov ("Agent Tricycle") became one of MI5's most prized assets. Failed Catalan chicken farmer Juan Pujol ("Agent Garbo") badgered both German and British intelligence services into accepting him, eventually becoming the linchpin of the D-Day ploy. Lily Sergeyev ("Agent Treasure"), a high-strung Frenchwoman, had the opportunity to blow the whole operation with a single punctuation mark, while Elvira de la Fuente Chaudoir ("Agent Bronx") transformed from a gambling Peruvian society girl to solid double agent. Macintyre effortlessly weaves the agents' deliciously eccentric personalities with larger wartime events to shape a tale that reads like a top-notch spy thriller.
09/24/12
Check out the New Non-Fiction page
(click the Books, Movies, Music tab on the main Regina Public Library page. Then click on New Book Releases to see a selection of the newest books added to the collection.)
From the New Non-Fiction selections:
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
by Bob Spitz
Here's what the Publisher's Weekly review had to say:
On November 3, 1948, a lunch in a Paris restaurant of sole meunière, the sole so very fresh with its delicate texture and cooked like an omelet in nothing but a bath of clarified butter, changed Julia Child's life. In that moment, Child (1912-2004) recognized and embraced food as her calling, setting out initially to learn the finer points of cooking, and French cooking in particular.
In this affectionate and entertaining tribute to the witty, down-to-earth, bumptious, and passionate host of The French Chef, Spitz exhaustively chronicles Child's life and career from her childhood in California through her social butterfly flitting at Smith and her work for a Pasadena department store to her stint in government service, her marriage to Paul Child, and her rise to become America's food darling with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her many television shows. In spite of her miserable failures in her early attempts to prepare food for her husband, a determined Child enrolled in courses at the renowned French cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, where she mastered everything from sauces to souffles. Spitz reminds us that Child had always possessed a tremendous amount of excess energy with no outlet for expressing it. With the publication of her cookbook and the subsequent television shows, she discovered the place where she could use her cooking skills, her force of personality, and her abundant charm. Released to coincide with Child's centenary, Spitz's delightful biography succeeds in being as big as its subject.
Other books about Julia Child (using "Child, Julia" as a subject in the RPL catalogue).
07/31/12
Carly's voice : breaking through autism
Carly's voice : breaking through autism
by Arthur Fleischmann with Carly Fleischmann
Summary: The extraordinary and moving story of Carly Fleischmann, a teenager with severe autism who, through technology and today's social networks, has become a passionate advocate for kids everywhere.
Related link: Globe & Mail article The Swamp of Autism: a challenged marriage and a child without a voice
More books about children with autism (this list was generated by using key words autism children parents and sorting by date)
05/22/12
Wild : from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Wild : from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Summary: A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe-and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State-and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise". But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Read the New York Times review: The Tracks of an Author's, and a Reader's, Tears: ‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed, a Walkabout of Reinvention
Want more like this? Here's a list from the library catalogue using the key words "travel*" and "hiking".
04/29/12
Saskatchewan Book Awards winners 2012
Saskatchewan Book Awards winners were announced on April 28
Here are some of the Non-Fiction Awards. For the full list, go to the link above:
Book of the Year:
* Darren R. Préfontaine: Gabriel Dumont : li chef michif in images and in words
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Non-Fiction Award:
* Curtis R. McManus: Happyland: A History of the "Dirty Thirties" in Saskatchewan, 1914-1937
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* Mark Cronlund Anderson and Carmen L. Robertson won the Scholarly Writing Award, the First Peoples’ Writing Award and the Regina Book Award for their book Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers.
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04/23/12
Booklist's Top Gardening books
Click here for the full list online on the Booklist website:
Top Ten Craft and Gardening Books.
I've pulled just the gardening books for this blog post.
The brief descriptions/reviews are by the list's author Brad Hooper.
American Eden: From Monticello to Central Park to Our Backyards; What Our Gardens Tell Us about Who We Are. By Wade Graham.
Garden designer and historian Graham presents a fresh, critical, and brilliantly wide-ranging interpretation of the form, function, and meaning of American gardens.
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The Edible Front Yard. By Ivette Soler.
Soler inspires and guides readers in transforming their front yards into beautifully diverse gardens that provide delicious, healthy produce, both tried-and-true and exotic.
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Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. By Andrea Wulf.
In her uniquely discerning and zestfully anecdotal inquiry, Wulf astutely traces how profoundly the great horticultural passions of the Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison) shaped America’s founding principles.
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The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Own Food: Save Money, Live Better, and Enjoy Life with Food from Your Garden or Orchard. By Monte Burch.
Burch offers exceptionally lucid how-to gardening guidance to encourage readers to grow their own fruits and vegetables to save money, improve their health, protect the environment, and enjoy food like never before.
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The Vegetable Gardener’s Container Bible: How to Grow a Bounty of Food in Pots, Tubs, and Other Containers. By Edward C. Smith.
Best-selling garden guru Smith explains with enthusiasm precisely how to use containers to grow, harvest, and enjoy homegrown vegetables, yard or no yard.
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Look for more gardening books by using "gardening" as a key word and sorting the list by date.
Fine-tune your search by adding key words like vegetable gardening or container gardening or landscape gardening
posted by Sharon
04/04/12
The Cure for Everything! by Timothy Caulfield and other books about health, fitness and happiness
The Cure for Everything! Untangling the Twisted Messages About Health, Fitness, and Happiness
by Timothy Caulfield
Summary: The surprising truth about what it takes to be healthy In The Cure for Everything! health-law expert Timothy Caulfield exposes the special interests that twist good science about health and fitness in order to sell us services and products that mostly don't work. Want great abs? You won't get them by using the latest Ab-Flex-Spinner-Thingy. Are you trying to lose ten pounds? Diet books are a waste of trees. Do you rely on health-care practitioners-either mainstream or alternative-to provide the cure for what ails you? Then beware! Both Big Pharma and naturopathy are powerful forces that have products and services to sell. Caulfield doesn't just talk the talk. He signs up for circuit training with a Hollywood trainer who cultivates the abs of the stars. With his own Food Advisory Team (FAT) made up of specialists in nutrition and diet, Caulfield makes a lifestyle change that really works. (Mainly it involves eating less than he is used to. Much less.) And when he embarks on a holiday cruise, dreading motion sickness, he takes along both a homeopathic and pharmaceutical remedy-with surprising results. This is a lighthearted book with a serious theme. Caulfield demonstrates that the truth about being healthy is easy to find-but often hard to do.
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Here's some of what the National Post review had to say:
By the end of the book, Caulfield gets at the deep irony in the fact that we’ve never had so much scientific knowledge at our fingertips, yet “it is being subjected to an unprecedented number of perverting influences.” This geeky diet tome, then, becomes a compelling and timely argument for science and a reminder that science is an iterative process, breakthroughs are rare, and there are no magical cures for everything.
“Science, when done properly, is worth defending,” he writes. “And it’s worth defending because when it’s not twisted, it actually can make us healthier.”
Read the full National Post review of The Cure for Everything.
Check out what other books comes up with the key words (health happiness nutrition)
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