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Fiery First Fiction and the Second Canadian Book Challenge

Last month I entered a contest at Open Book Toronto; they were giving away, as part of the Literary Press Group's Fiery First Fiction campaign, seven books a week (from a pool of fourteen) . I entered and won the first week's draw, and today my seven books arrived. Hooray! I received the following books:

  • A Week of This, by Nathan Whitlock
  • Shape of Things to Come, by Richard Lemm
  • Stunt, by Claudia Dey
  • Cricket in a Fist, by Naomi K. Lewis
  • Fly on the Wall, by Jason Brink with illustrations by Jim Westergard
  • Squishy, by Arjun Basu
  • The Jealousy Bone, by Julia Paul

Nathan Whitlock's novel was the only book I'd heard of before the contest (I follow his blog), and I've been looking forward to reading it for some time, but now that I've had a chance to look over the others I can say that I definitely now have more than just A Week of This to look forward to.

And speaking of things to look forward to! Now that we are in the final month of The Canadian Book Challenge, John Mutford has announced a second challenge. I haven't won any of the prizes from this challenge (there's still the big prize coming up, but prizes aren't really the point; the challenge got me scouring the local book stores for authors and titles I hadn't heard of), but I'm looking forward to this second one all the same. The books I plan on reading will be as scattershot as before, but in addition to those I received today, I will be drawing from the following for my selections:

  • Our Lady of the Lost and Found, by Diane Schoemperlen
  • Exotic Dancers, by Gerald Lynch
  • Naked, by Lisa Moore
  • The Tracey Fragments, by Maureen Medved
  • Red Plaid Skirt, by Diane Shoemperlen
  • Losing It, by Alan Cumyn
  • In a Glass House, by Nino Ricci
  • On Equilibrium, by John Ralston Saul
  • Reflections of a Siamese Twin, by John Ralston Saul

Here's hoping I have as much fun with this challenge as I did with the last one!

Posted by August on 06.07.08 at 3:13 AM | Comments (1)

Comments

Hey, congratulations on your LPG win. There's some good work in there.
Best,

David Worsley/Words Worth Books

Posted by: David Worsley on June 25, 2008 8:15 PM

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