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In The Newspapers

If You’re Happy And Don’t Want To Be………

The Independent has a quirky feature by David Nicholls, a list of  The Top Ten Literary Tear Jerkers. This is actually quite amusing, not quite what you’d expect from a list of this sort.

Here’s a sample:

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST BY KEN KESEY
I’ve not read this for twenty-five years now, so am quite prepared to be told that it’s nothing special. As a seventeen year-old, however, I thought this was a masterpiece of world literature. I was working in a coffee percolator factory at the time, reading this in my lunch breaks, and returning to the assembly line red-eyed and shaken after the death of McMurphy. You can imagine how complex and interesting my workmates thought I was after that.

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In The Newspapers Uncategorized

50 Best British Bookshops

For those of you who like lists and/or are planning a book buying trip to the U.K., The Independent lists the 50 Best Bookshops in Britain. Interesting to see that #8 on the list is Abe Books, the online bookseller from Victoria, British Columbia.

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In The Newspapers

Top 10 Canadian Novels For Canada Day

Thirty years after the National Conference on the Canadian Novel in Calgary picked the 100 most important works of fiction in Canada, the Globe and Mail has five experts pick their top ten Canadian novels. The 1978 Calgary conference also picked their top ten. They were:

The Stone Angel (1964) Margaret Laurence.

Fifth Business (1970) Robertson Davies.

As for Me and My House (1941) Sinclair Ross.

The Mountain and the Valley (1952) Ernest Buckler.

The Tin Flute (1947) Gabrielle Roy.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) Mordecai Richler.

The Double Hook (1959) Sheila Watson.

The Watch that Ends the Night (1959) Hugh MacLennan.

Who Has Seen the Wind (1947) W.O. Mitchell.

The Diviners (1974) Margaret Laurence.