100 Greatest Books
of All Time.
 
Votes for the Week of January 18, 2013 are in! 

The nominees are:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Geronimo Stilton: The Mystery in Venice by Geronimo Stilton

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction by One Direction

The Berinfell Prophesies: Curse of the Spider King by Thomas Wayne Batson

  

What is your favourite book of all time? Cast your vote by commenting here at the bottom of this post, posting a note on our facebook page or adding it to our in-house ballot box.

Each Friday we will tabulate the votes and post them on our
Facebook, Twitter and Blog accounts.

One vote per visit please.

The final Top 100 will be announced at the end of December.

100 Greatest Books of All Time

To celebrate Sylvan Lake’s Centennial
we are commemorating the
  100 Greatest Books
of All Time.

What is your favourite book of all time? Cast your vote by commenting here at the bottom of this post, posting a note on our facebook page or adding it to our in-house ballot box.

Each Friday we will tabulate the votes and post them on our
Facebook, Twitter and Blog accounts.

One vote per visit please.

The final Top 100 will be announced at the end of December.

Is this one on your list?

 It's on mine. :)

Christmas Cross-stitch Stocking Raffle Winner

Congratulations to Rod

who won the Sylvan Lake Municipal Library's Christmas
Cross-stitch Stocking Raffle.

Along with the beautiful handmade stocking, Rod took home many gifts graciously donated by local Sylvan Lake merchants.

Total value of the prize was $500.

This years raffle raised $424. Thank you for your support.
All proceeds from this fundraiser help support Library initiatives.

Special thanks to the following sponsors:

Rainy Daze Medi Spa, Fancy Fingers, Oasis by the Lake, Avon, Beyond Hair, Salon Chateau, Sylvan Lake Business Solutions, Quiznos, Cities Gastro Pub, Sugar and Spice Hair and Beauty Boutique, 52st Hair & Esthetics, Benjamin's Pizza and Subs, Pier 7 Restaurant and Lounge, Canadian Pizza Unlimited, Boston Pizza, Gentle Touch Dog Grooming, Woofs and Purrs, Chef Francisco on the Lake, Dragon House Chinese Buffet, Domino's Pizza, Lee Garden Restaurant and Lounge, Cobb's Clothing, Eclectica Fashions, YogaDive, Shopper's Drug Mart, Sylvan Lake Barber Shop, Janet & James Medspa & Hair Studio, The Paint Stop Inc.

Christmas Stocking Raffle

Sylvan Lake Municipal Library

Christmas 

Cross-stitch Stocking

Raffle

Beautiful handmade stocking
by local Artisan

Kay Johanson.

Stuffed with gifts from local businesses.

Winner will have the name of their choice
stitched on the stocking.

Tickets on sale now at the Library.

Tickets cost: $2 each OR 3 for $5

Draw Date: Friday, December 14

Stocking and contents valued at $500

Canadian Children's Literature Award Winners 2012

The Canadian Children's Literature Awards were presented on November 21st.  They exemplify the best work of Canadian authors and illustrators.  The winners were:

TD Canadian Children's Literature Award was won by Trilby Kent for Stones For My Father

Corlie Roux's farm life in South Africa is not easy: the Transvaal is beautiful, but it is also a harsh place where the heat can be so intense that the very raindrops sizzle. When her beloved father dies, she is left with a mother who is as devoted to her sons as she is cruel to her daughter. Despite this, Corlie finds solace in her friend, Sipho, and in Africa itself and in the stories she conjures for her brothers. But Corlie's world is about to vanish: the British are invading and driving Boer families like hers from their farms. Some escape into the bush to fight the enemy. The unlucky ones are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Will Corlie's resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kroonstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had….


Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award was won by Geniève Côté for Without You



In this delightful companion book to the acclaimed Me and You, two friends discover the joy of togetherness. Award-winning author-illustrator Genevi've C't? returns with another endearing story featuring two very different friends. After falling out over a spilled wagon of toys, a fussy bunny and an exuberant piggy explore all the things they can do without each other ? and gradually realize that life is much sweeter when it's shared with one another. This gently humorous, charmingly illustrated look at the ups and downs of friendship is a book you won't want to do without.




Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction was won by Susan Vande Griek for Loon

The haunting call of a loon is quintessential summertime for many people. These majestically beautiful birds breed on northern lakes during the spring and summer, and when fall arrives, they migrate to open coastal waters. Young loons stay on the ocean for three or four years until they mature and their gray feathers molt, turning to the beautiful black-and-white patterned feathers by which they are known. At this point they return to an inland lake to find a mate and have their young. This gorgeously illustrated prose poem follows two baby chicks through this cycle. We witness their birth, and how they learn to swim, find food and avoid predators such as snapping turtles and big bass, and the possible danger of boaters. In the fall they imitate their parents as they learn to fly and are eventually large and strong enough to make their own migration to the coast. An afterword supplies other interesting facts about the common loon, which some scientists believe has inhabited lakes and oceans for millions of years. It describes these birds' amazing diving ability, their four different calls, and the different factors that threaten them, such as loss of habitat due to human proximity and environmental problems (acid rain, deadly toxins in lakes, oil spills and global warming), suggesting different ways that we might help to protect them.

Geoffrey Bilson Award Historical Fiction for Young People was won by Kate Cayley for The Hangman in the Mirror

A strong-willed 16-year-old girl fights for survival in 18th-century North America. Françoise Laurent has never had an easy life. The only surviving child of a destitute washerwoman and wayward soldier, she must rely only on herself to get by. When her parents die suddenly from the smallpox ravishing New France, Françoise sees it as a chance to escape the life she thought she was trapped in. Seizing her newfound opportunity, Françoise takes a job as an aide to the wife of a wealthy fur trader. The poverty-ridden world she knew transforms into a strange new world full of privilege and fine things -- and of never having to beg for food. But Françoise's relationships with the other servants in Madame Pommereau's house are tenuous, and Madame Pommereau isn't an easy woman to work for. When Françoise is caught stealing a pair of her mistress's beautiful gloves, she faces a future even worse than she could have imagined: thrown in jail, she is sentenced to death by hanging. Once again, Françoise is left to her own devices to survive . . . Is she cunning enough to convince the prisoner in the cell beside her to become the hangman and marry her, which, by law, is the only thing that could save her life? Based on an actual story and filled with illuminating historical detail, The Hangman in the Mirror transports readers to the harsh landscape of a new land that is filled with even harsher class divisions and injustices.

John Spray Mystery Award was won by Rob Mills for Charlie's Key

"When Charlie Sykes wakes up in hospital in St. John's, he learns that he and his father have been in a car accident and that his father is dying. Charlie inherits little more than the brass key that his father pressed into his hand before he passed away. As far as Charlie knows, he has no family in Newfoundland. But then Uncle Nick shows up and is keen to meet his nephew--not because of who Charlie is, but rather because of what Charlie has: the key. That key will unlock a treasure Uncle Nick began searching for more than thirty years earlier. And he would have found it all those years ago if he hadn't been arrested and sent away for murder. But Charlie isn't convinced he should give up the key. He leads Uncle Nick on a wild chase through old St. John's, across Signal Hill and out to the coast. There, high above the rugged Atlantic, Charlie finally comes face-to-face with Uncle Nick, the treasure, and a family history that will leave him with a new understanding of where he comes from and where he's going."

Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy was won by P.J. Sarah Collins for What Happened to Serenity?

Katherine lives in a post-apocalyptic community completely cut off from the rest of the world. Her town is austere, run by utopians that have created a paternalistic order. Knowledge and the search for truth are not popular tenets. When her best friend's sister Serenity suddenly disappears, Katherine starts to question what she has been told...and nothing is as she was told. Will she have the courage to seek the truth no matter where it leads her? This haunting story about growing up and searching for the truth will challenge young readers' notions about knowledge, the search for truth, and the fight for freedom.





More information about the awards and the shortlist of nominees can be found at The Canadian Children's Book Centre

Brain On Fire

There was an interesting book on CBC Radio 1 yesterday, Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan.

From her website:

Description

One day, I woke up in a strange hospital room, strapped to my bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak. My medical records—from a month-long hospital stay of which I have no memory—showed psychosis, violence, and dangerous instability. Yet, only weeks earlier I had been a healthy twenty-four year old, six months into my first serious relationship and beginning a career as a cub reporter at the New York Post.

My memoir Brain on Fire chronicles the swift path of my illness and the lucky, last-minute intervention led by one of the few doctors capable of saving my life. As weeks ticked by and I moved inexplicably from violence to catatonia, $1 million worth of blood tests and brain scans revealed nothing. The exhausted doctors were ready to commit me to the psychiatric ward, in effect condemning me to a lifetime of institutions, or death, until Dr. Souhel Najjar—nicknamed Dr. House—joined my team. He asked me to draw one simple sketch, which became key to diagnosing me with a newly discovered autoimmune disease in which my body was attacking my brain, an illness now thought to be the cause of “demonic possessions” throughout history.

National Book Award Winners 2012

The National Book Awards, an American institution that awards American writers for exceptional books and promotes reading in general, has announced the 2012 winners.

Fiction- Louise Erdrich for The Round House

 One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning. Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together,The Round Houseis a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.


Nonfiction- Katherine Boo for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi's "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy." But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths,the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.


Poetry- David Ferry for Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations





Young People's Literature- William Alexander for Goblin Secrets


A boy joins a theatrical troupe of goblins to find his missing brother. In the town of Zombay, there is a witch named Graba who has clockwork chicken legs and moves her house around--much like the fairy tale figure of Baba Yaga. Graba takes in stray children, and Rownie is the youngest boy in her household. Rownie's only real relative is his older brother Rowan, who is an actor. But acting is outlawed in Zombay, and Rowan has disappeared. Desperate to find him, Rownie joins up with a troupe of goblins who skirt the law to put on plays. But their plays are not only for entertainment, and the masks they use are for more than make-believe. The goblins also want to find Rowan--because Rowan might be the only person who can save the town from being flooded by a mighty river. This accessible, atmospheric fantasy takes a gentle look at love, loss, and family while delivering a fast-paced adventure that is sure to satisfy