A Game of Thrones is the first of a series of a seven volume series called “A Song of Ice and Fire” (which you might or might not know has been adapted into an HBO series called Game of Thrones, the second season of which has just ended), and it’s about as far from “Tolkein-derivative drivel” as you can get. Loosely based on the real-life events of the War of the Roses, where 15th century England was divided by civil war), A Game of Thrones tells the story of the noble houses of the Seven Kingdoms, a fictional land where winter can last for years at a time and where power and politics go hand-in-hand with adultery, incest, assassination, and infanticide. This isn’t your parents’ Middle Earth: there are no elves, and while there is a dwarf, he’s a wisecracking nobleman with a taste for wine and whores. A Game of Thrones follows the struggles for power of a wonderful and diverse cast of men and women, including the noble Starks, who travel from their northern holdings to the decadent south to uncover a plot to corrupt and usurp the throne; the rich and manipulative Lannisters, whose beautiful faces hide terrible secrets, and whose lust for power knows no bounds; and the exiled Targaryens, the last survivors of the old dynasty wiped out by a civil war, striving to reclaim the stolen crown.

Magic and otherworldliness is significantly downplayed in Martin’s world, giving the novel a refreshingly human quality; characters who at first seem like nothing more than one-dimensional villains take up the story, and getting the chance to read from their perspectives shows that Martin has developed them as fully (and can make us identify with them) as much as the story’s “heroes.” Nothing is black and white in A Game of Thrones, and that lends it a depth and complexity (and realism) that is often sorely lacking in fantasy novels.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but don’t get too attached to any of Martin’s characters; if there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading the five published volumes of this series, it’s that they’re all fair game, and any could die when you least expect it!

At 8:45am I placed them in our RHC kitchen and at 9:25am, 25 truffles had disappeared. Our department sits close to the kitchen, so we overheard the squeals of delight as people bit into their delicious goodness. With mouths full, we listened to people say:

“OMG, this is good!”

“These are so good, I had to come back for a second”

“Why is there only one left?”

“Don’t drop it!”

I think it’s fair to say that Random House of Canada loves cookie dough! I also think it’s fair to say that we’ll all be making many, many more recipes from The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Vish Puri, P.I.

Personal Details

• Born: 1951
• Birthplace: Punjabi Bagh, Delhi
• Nickname: Chubby

 Family

• Wife: His wife, Rumpi, is the daughter of a retired Brigadier in the Indian army. They have three daughters.
• Mother: Puri’s mother, known to all as “Mummy-ji,” is a retired head teacher with a keen interest in the affairs of others. A capable detective in her own right, she often becomes embroiled in minor cases, despite Puri’s disapproval: “Women are not detectives and detectives are certainly not Mummies,” as Puri points out. But when the father of a star Pakistani cricketer is poisoned in The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, she realizes that she alone has unique insight into the case.
• Father: Puri is the son of a deceased Delhi police officer, framed for corruption.

Career

• Current title: Chief Operating Officer, Most Private Investigators Ltd.
• Profession: Private investigator (former Military Intelligence)
• Company: Most Private Investigators Ltd.
• Credo: “Danger is my ally.”
• Service Awards: Winner of six National Awards

Vish Puri’s company, founded in 1981, is India’s number one private investigation agency. From their HQ above Bahri Sons bookshop in Khan Market, South Delhi, Puri and his team of operatives handle all manner of problems plaguing modern Indian society – from exposing the secret affairs and devious lies of prospective brides and grooms to the alleged murder of a lowly maidservant. Puri has recently solved a most unusual dilemma: namely, who would want to steal the world’s longest moustache off the face of its owner while he was sleeping.

Known Associates

• Flush: So named because his was the first house in the village to have a “western-style” toilet, Flush is a young computer and electronics geek who can hack networks and build his own bugs, many of which look like real insects. His greatest claim to fame is having secreted a bug inside the Pakistani ambassador’s dentures. But what he’d like most in life is a girlfriend. Preferably one featured on the annual Kingfisher swimsuit calendar.
• Facecream: Puri’s most versatile and enigmatic operative is a steely and comely Nepali woman who ran away from home as a teenager to join the Maoist insurgency. What led to her disillusionment with the movement and her subsequent flight from her homeland remains something of a mystery, even to Puri. With an innate ability to blend into any situation – from servant girl to spoiled society siren – Facecream often plays a valuable role in Puri’s unique approach to investigative work.
• Tubelight: Puri’s chief operative was born into a clan of thieves, is blind in one eye and often disguised as an auto rickshaw driver. His nickname is derived from the fact that he takes a while to “flicker on in the morning.” However, Baldev Pawar, as he’s known outside professional circles, knows every brothel, illegal cricket-gambling den and cockerel-fighting venue in the city – not to mention most of its best forgers, fencers, smugglers, safe crackers and purveyors of everything from used Johnnie Walker bottles to wedding-night porn. He also maintains a team of snoops and informers – his “boys.”

Misc

• Weapon of choice: A .32 IOF revolver produced in India by the Ordnance Factories Organisation in Kolkata. It’s a six-shot, break action, self-extracting weapon based on a Webley design and uses the Smith & Wesson Long cartridge. India’s 1959 Arms Act gives Indian citizens the right to bear arms and Puri has been known to carry his piece when danger is near.
• Vehicle: Puri owns a white Ambassador. Manufactured since 1948 by Hindustan Motors and based on the Morris Oxford III, it was, until roughly a decade ago, the most popular car in India . . . not that there was much choice!

Bad Habits

• Puri is a capsicum junkie: he likes to eat raw chillies with a little salt, sometimes for breakfast. To ensure that he has a ready supply, the detective has several species growing on the roof of his house. Often he goes up there to think over a case and wipe the dust and pollution from the leaves. He has proven most successful at growing Naga Jolokias, generally regarded as the hottest in the world.

Of Note

• Puri has a collection of a dozen tweed Sandown flat caps, most of them supplied by Bates of Piccadilly in London, England. His other chosen attire is a Safari suit, a style once popular in India amongst bureaucrats and corporate employees, but now regarded as somewhat passé.

To learn more about Vish Puri, please visit VishPuri.com.

This is your chance to win a copy of the book everyone has been buzzing about. We are giving away 10 copies of Gone Girl! Enter below to win!

Gillian Flynn is the author of the New York Times bestseller Dark Places and the Dagger Award winner Sharp Objects. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.

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And don’t miss this chat with Gillian about Gone Girl, her previous novels and where she gets her inspiration.

I’m extremely honoured to be receiving this CBA Lifetime Achievement award. And thank you to all in the community who have been part of this lifetime in books—including my family—Graeme Gibson, my political advisor, who frequently says “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” and once kept me from running for Mayor of Toronto by commenting, “That would be a Norman Mailerish kind of thing to do;” and my daughter, Jess Gibson, an early and very astute reader of my work in draft.

And my fellow writers throughout the years—I first met Michael Ondaatje when he was 18, if you can imagine that; and the many booksellers; and the publishers; and the editors, two of whom are here tonight—Louise Dennys, and Ellen Seligman, without whose reading glasses I would be unable to make this speech. Thank you to all.

Though I’m finding the term “Lifetime Achievement” increasingly ominous these days. Possibly it means, “All right, that’s enough lifetime for you—now you’ve achieved it. Time to shut up.”

As the years speed by, and as one receives awards impossible to bestow upon anyone under, say, sixty, one begins to feel more and more like the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who ordered in his will that after his death he should be stuffed by a taxidermist and wheeled out every year to attend a dinner in his own honour—which request has been annually fulfilled, though bits are now beginning to fall off Jeremy.

Bits do begin to fall off—it’s inevitable—though I hasten to assure you that it was not my foot that was sent recently to the Conservative Party of Canada. I have not yet reached that stage.

We do however live in perilous times. Perilous in many ways; but, specifically, perilous for booksellers. I’ll get to the perilousness in a minute, but first, some nostalgia:

My own bookselling activities began in 1961, when, together with a friend, I hand–set my first poetry collection and printed it on a flatbed press. It had seven poems, and we didn’t have enough a’s, so we had to disassemble each poem before we could set the next one. The cover was printed from a lino–block, and the pages were rubber–cemented in—a mistake, as the rubber cement dried out shortly thereafter and the pages fell out. We made 200 copies of this book—wish I’d kept more of them, considering the increase in value—and went around to bookstores in Toronto, which were all indies then, except for Coles, which didn’t sell many Canadian books anyway. Some of the booksellers were kind enough to let us put these little books of mine on the magazine rack, where they sold for 50¢—we wrote the price on with a pencil. So that was my first bookselling adventure.

Then came the House of Anansi poetry years. By this time it was the later 60s, and the dreaded book tour was beginning to take shape. It was mostly poets—prose readings were in the future, and would arrive with the advent of the Literary Festivals that germinated right here in Toronto, with spores from the Bohemian Embassy and cross–fertilization from Adelaide eventually sprouting as Greg Gatenby’s Harbourfront International Writers’ Festival, and then spreading all over the world. But in the later sixties it was still only poets, travelling mostly on trains and buses from event to event, like the minisingers of old, and quite frequently sleeping on one another’s floors. And eating in greasy spoons. Horrifying fact: in those days there were no lattes.

The poets carted their own books around with them and sold them in person at their readings, which were sometimes in high school gyms and sometimes at universities—not yet at bookstores; bookstore readings came in the 70s. There were no credit cards yet: we collected the actual money in brown paper envelopes and took it back and handed it to the publishers. So that was my second bookselling adventure.

My third bookselling adventure came when I published my first novel, with McClelland and Stewart. It had been finished in 1965, but Jack McClelland had misplaced the manuscript, after the firm had already said they’d publish it. I knew nothing about big–company publishing then—but did it usually take that long? However, I then—surprisingly—won the Governor General’s Award for my first book of poems, The Circle Game, and Jack McClelland read an interview about it in the paper. (The interview was done by a returning Vietnam war correspondent. There was 27–year–old me in my orange mini–dress and black fishnet stockings, there was battle–hardened him, and neither of us knew what to say. Finally he blurted out, “Say something interesting. Say you write all your poetry on drugs.”)

The article in the paper revealed that I had an unpublished novel, and Jack wrote and asked to see it. I told him the company had been seeing it for several years, at which point Jack said we should have a drink. We had one—or I had one—and Jack blamed the disappearance of the manuscript on a woman who’d got pregnant; well, you know how that addles their brains. (In reality the manuscript was sitting on the floor of Jack’s office, under a lot of other paper. I was unsympathetic when I found this out—being young—but now that I lose things in my own office under a lot of other paper, I am more indulgent.)

So all was resolved, and the book came out in the fall of 1969. I was living in Edmonton at the time, and I did my first professional book signing in the men’s sock and underwear department of the Hudson’s Bay Company, thus frightening a lot of men who’d come in to have a peaceful experience with the jockey shorts and instead got ambushed by me, peddling a tome called The Edible Woman. A lot of galoshes went flapping off in the opposite direction, I can tell you. At last I was a published novelist, but was I now going to spend my life waylaying men in the socks department? I hoped not.

It was in Edmonton, too, that I discovered the bookstore as haven. Hurtig’s bookstore—run by Mel Hurtig—was a small oasis in a place and at a time that did not afford too many of them to artsy–fartsies from the distrusted Toronto. In the 70’s there were a lot of bookstore havens—in Toronto alone, for instance, the Longhouse Bookstore of glorious memory, Pages, Brittnell’s, The Book Celler. Books and Books. Many of them have gone to Bookseller Heaven, where they have been rewarded by a clientele that never asks for a book they don’t have, never pilfers, and never shouts at the booksellers or throws things at them. I burn a candle in their memory. Let us not forget that even now it is the indie bookstores who are most likely to discover and promote young, promising writers from smaller and more literary presses in Canada. They are the openers of doors.

Skip ahead ten years or so, to a time when Jack McClelland had made some kind of truce with the ornery Jack Coles, the upshot of which was that his authors were slotted into various Coles bookstores across the land to do signings. It was thus that I found myself in a Coles in a suburban mall in Winnipeg on a Tuesday afternoon. There was no one in the bookstore. There was no one in the mall. I sat at my little table piled hopefully with copies of Bodily Harm, wondering why I couldn’t give my books more appealing titles, such as How To Make Lots of Money, Have Great Sex, Be Universally Adored, and See God—playing with my rollerball or similar pen, and reciting to myself some bracing lines from Marlowe’s play, Doctor Faustus—“Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.” Finally the door opened and a lone man came in. Plonk, plonk, plonk, went his feet on the floor. He was walking right towards me! Brightly I smiled. He leaned over the table. “Where’s the Scotch Tape?” he inquired. “I think it’s at the back,” I said. And that was it. My forty–fourth bookselling adventure.

So much for the nostalgia—which is one thing the recipients of Lifetime Achievement Awards are supposed to deliver. They are also expected to say a few cheering and encouraging words about the future—a future at which they will most likely not be present except in a stuffed form, so they will never be held accountable for whatever predictions they make. Thus, always fun and safe for the predictor; though not always for the predictee.

Skip ahead to the present. Everything in Bookworld has changed; or enough has changed to make an always difficult business even more difficult. Gone are the days of the clay tablet, the papyrus, the scroll, and the first codex books on scraped calfskin. Gone are the days of first-blush Gutenberg, when the printer, publisher, and bookseller were the same entity, thus causing printers to be disemboweled for selling seditious pamphlets—hey, some things have improved for booksellers, at least temporarily! Gone too the advent of the first literary periodicals, once disruptive; and the rise and rise and rise of the big newspapers; and the invention of the glossy magazines; and the domination of the mass–market paperback book; and the novelty of quality trade paperbacks.

Yet more changes are predicted. Not a day passes without a new blog or online publication offering a gloomy scenario about real literature turning to confetti, or the death of the paper book, or the demise of bricks and mortar bookstores; or screeds about the all–conquering Amazon, which, having rolled the dice—Alea iacta est, as Caesar said as he crossed the Rubicon on his way to becoming a military dictator—is now bestriding “the narrow world like a colossus, and we petty authors, publishers and booksellers Walk under its huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves. (As Cassius says, more or less, in Julius Caesar; continuing: “The fault… is not in our stars, But in ourselves…”)

Things are in flux, to be sure. On the other hand, various shades of grey just sold five million hardbacks. On the other hand, those who buy more ebooks also seem to buy more paper books. On the third hand, large paper sales lead to large e–sales: the two seem joined at the hip. On the fourth hand, how do readers find books? How do people know what they want to read? From reviews, yes. From book clubs of various kinds, yes. From lateral recommendations via social media, yes. But the serendipity factor still comes largely from bookstore visits. It is there that you find the unknown unknowns—the books you didn’t even know you wanted. Now we are told that Amazon itself, having declared war on bookstores, may be about to open—a bookstore! What? Where? Why? My head is spinning.

And what about the much–disputed tug of war between e–forms and paper forms?

In my novel Oryx and Crake, the non–hero, Jimmy—a wordsmith who memorizes obsolete locutions—briefly has a job destroying paper books in a library. (He’s no good at it because he can’t throw anything out.) In the future, we are told, everything, but everything, will be online, and physical books will have gone the way of the dodo. But not so fast. First, who’s telling us that? Those who’d stand to profit, and have already profited. Second, the neurologists are now probing the difference between reading on the page and reading on a device or online. There is a difference for the brain, it seems, and that is one of depth and retention; and these are just the early findings. There has to be a reason why schools in Silicon Valley are not letting kids get their hands on computers before the age of eight. Third, anything in the world of e has a limited shelf life. The devices change—where are the music tape cassettes of yesteryear? In the same place the CDs of today may shortly be, once companies change the playing devices. And what did happen to all those floppy disks you once worked so hard with a hairpin to unstuck from your tiny–screened early PC? You can’t read them now. And all the rest of the seemingly–eternal devices will follow, because profits depend on planned obsolescence.

And, however it’s served up, electronic data is highly vulnerable, because it’s so easily degradable. Some are already predicting a black hole of information, wherein our entire history, having been digitized, will vanish. I ran a blog post two years ago called “Three Reasons to Keep Paper Books.” They were not the usual reasons—“I love the lush, sumptuous smell of new paper,” “I can give them as gifts,” “I hate e-reading,” “I can get paper books wet in the bath,” and all the rest. They were:

1. Solar flares—a good dose of them wipes electronic data.

2. Grid brownout and collapse—the electrical grid on this continent is fraying at the edges already, and the drain on it via computing devices is enormous; and all things e depend on massive supplies of cheap energy, reliably delivered.

3. Internet overload. As the net expands, its capacity must be increased and increased. Which in theory it can be, via more server farms, but they are still vulnerable to 1 and 2. And bandwidth itself is not unlimited. (A hazard just mentioned by David Pogue in The New York Times.).

When the power goes off, you won’t be able to read on your e–device once the battery runs out. But you can read a paper book without constant energy input. Not only that, they make great insulation, and—in a pinch—good kindling. The best choice for readers is both: e–forms, for rapidity of access, searchability, and portability; and paper forms, for in–depth reading, durability, and tangibility. Most readers want both. And the best choice for booksellers and publishers is to be able to provide both.

What both forms deliver is stories. It is not stories themselves that are in any way threatened. Storytelling—narration, whether fictional or non–fictional—will not disappear as long as there is human language. As Robert Bringhurst has said in his very suggestive book, The Tree of Meaning, “Stories are the reproductive organs of languages.” They are how language transmits itself. Narration is built into us; it’s most likely one of the evolved adaptations that were selected for in the Pleistocene because of the survival value they conferred, and it is thus very ancient, and resides at the core of our humanity. We understand our world through the stories we tell ourselves and one another about it.

One rationalization going around is that since people are natural story–tellers, they will tell stories anyway—everyone does, unless they’ve lost their short–term memory—and they will do it for nothing, so why pay? The online world swarms with websites and social networks devoted to this proposition, and very successful some of them are. In the equation A via B to R, in which A is the author and R is the reader, B stands for any mode of transmission, including the traditional publisher–distributor–bookseller chain, but also including the online site–device–connection provider chain. Two tin cans and a string, as in those walkie–talkies people of my age made as kids; and it’s the string that’s under dispute, because it’s the string that’s been making the money. Some would like the string to make more money by having the author make less, or none; others have recognized the value of “content providers”—don’t you love the idea of, say, Tolstoy, as a content provider?—and are luring authors to their own bit of string with promises of more pie. Or at least some pie. As an author, I’m not against that. But it is always R—the reader—who pays. Even if books are so–called “free,” R is paying for the device, the connection bill, and so forth. All string money comes from R. Without R there would be no string.

So what should booksellers do? Foster R, to be sure—help the spread of literacy and reading as much as they can—but also, improve their string. Show the value they add to readers and writers both, and then add more value. And we must recognize that we’re all in this together—writers, string providers, and readers. It’s a triangle, it’s always been a triangle, and without one corner—any one corner—the other two cannot stand. And the sooner we all recognize and honour that triangular situation, the better things will be for all.

I’d conclude with some words about the importance of reading, and of choice, and of the absence of censorship, and of the evils of monopolies, but I’m sure you know all that. So I will simply say: Thank you very much for this touching honour. It’s been a grand journey—the journey of the bookfolk—and it continues. Long may you all be traveling companions upon it. As for me—let me quote the great Russian content provider, Alexander Pushkin, from his Farewell to the Reader at the end of Eugene Onegin:

Whoever you are, my dearest reader,
Friend, enemy, n’importe qui,
Let me part with you equitably.
Farewell. Whatever you have sought from me…
I hope you will find a grain or two.
With that we part. And farewell to you!

Thank you, very much, again.

Here is one recipe that we are definitely going to try for the summer. Let me know if you try them too! (And stay tuned below for a cookie-dough-filled Q&A with the author.)

Invisible Cookie Dough Ice Pops

Funny thing about these popsicles: there’s not actually any cookie dough in them. Yet each lick, each bite, has just enough brown sugar and vanilla to make you think that you’re eating cookie dough, or at least its essence. Is invisible cookie dough better than the real thing? I’ll let you be the judge.

Makes: 4 pops
Active time: 5 minutes
Total time: 3 hours

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups milk (skim, 2 percent, or whole, your choice)
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons mini semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
In a microwave-safe container or glass measuring cup, microwave milk 30 seconds or until warm to the touch. Add brown sugar and salt and stir until dissolved. Add vanilla.

Place 1/2 tablespoon chocolate chips in the bottom of each of four 1/3–cup ice–pop molds or small paper cups. Top each with milk mixture. Insert sticks and place molds in freezer. Freeze until solid, at least 3 hours.

To release pops, run molds under warm water 20 to 30 seconds; they should slide right out. (If using paper cups, simply peel cups away and discard.)

Wonky Sticks?
If your ice–pop mold does not include built–in sticks or a lid to hold them in place, you may find yourself with sticks pointing every which way but up. To prevent this, simply stretch a layer of plastic wrap over the top of the mold and secure it with a rubber band. Cut a small slit in the plastic, centered over each pop, and insert a stick through each opening. Alternatively, you can adjust sticks as necessary after about 45 minutes of freezing, when the pops aren’t yet frozen solid.

In Conversation with this Cookie Dough Genius

You dedicated this book to “anyone who’s ever been caught with a finger in the mixing bowl.” When did you become a cookie dough lover?
I grew up baking chocolate chip cookies with my mom, and licking the beaters was always the best part. There’s no denying that my mom’s chocolate chip cookies were the greatest in the land, but I have to say I always preferred the cookie dough to the final product.

What is it about cookie dough that makes it better than the cookies themselves?
It’s a combination of things: the flavor, the texture (you can still feel the grit of the brown sugar before they’re baked), the nostalgia. There’s also the fact that it was—until now, of course! —forbidden; there was always that little bit of risk and adventure in eating it that made you want it even more.

How did you develop your eggless cookie dough?
Actually, the recipe is not much different than my mom’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe. To keep the dough doughy, I replaced the eggs with milk, which gives the dough a similar texture and richness without the risk of food-borne illness.

What inspired you to create a book based on your love of cookie dough?
It started with one recipe on the blog, the Cookie Dough Truffles, which are basically balls of eggless cookie dough dipped in chocolate. Two and a half years later, it’s still my most popular post. I took that as a hint that I wasn’t the only one hooked on the stuff, so I created a few more recipes using cookie dough, such as cupcakes, ice cream, and the Cookie Dough Cream Pie. One day, as I was pondering my next cookie dough creation, I thought, “Someone should really write a cookbook about nothing but cookie dough.” And so I did.

The book offers lots of tips on how to turn your cookie dough creations into edible gifts. What makes cookie dough such a great treat to share with others?
It’s something that is equally loved by all. I also have to admit that I’ve eaten more than my fair share of cookie dough treats; so if you don’t share them with others, you may just find yourself sitting in front of an empty plate.

What was the testing process like for the recipes? Did you encounter any surprises along the way?
Because this was my first cookbook, I really didn’t know what to expect. Some recipes were harder than others: the Cookie Dough Fudge, for example, took me five or six tries to finally get it right. I gave away a lot of failures, which were still delicious in their own right, just not quite perfect. Luckily, my neighbors were always more than happy to take them off my hands.

Which is your favorite recipe in the book?
I was just talking with my husband about this the other day, and it’s like choosing your favorite child (or furry child, in my case). But I’d have to say the recipe shown on the cover—the Cookie Dough Ice Cream Sandwiches. The cookies themselves are soft and chocolaty with a hint of salt; that combo paired with the cookie dough ice cream gets me every time.

For this project, in addition to the writing and the recipe development, you also did the photography. How important is it to make food look as delicious as it tastes?
Very. I’m a very visual person; I may overlook a truly incredible recipe just because it does not have a photo. This is why it was so important to me that each recipe in the book have a photo. Still, I tried to portray every recipe as true to life as possible; there’s no food-styling trickery to be found. In fact, I personally ate nearly every single “hero” that was photographed mere seconds after taking the final shot.

What are you working on now?
Well, I’m excited to say, another cookbook! I’m working on this one together with my husband, and it’s almost a complete 180 from the last.

In the tradition of his beloved previous novel, Little Bee, Chris Cleave again gives us an elegant, funny, passionate story about friendship, marriage, parenthood, tragedy, and redemption. This time, the setting is the upcoming London Olympics. Gold is the story of two women, Zoe and Kate, world-class cyclists who have been friends and rivals since their first day of elite training years ago. They have loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, lost, consoled, triumphed, and grown up together. Now, on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, the two must compete for the one remaining spot on their team. In doing so, the women will be tested to their physical, mental and emotional limits. They will confront each other and their own mortality, and be asked to decide: What will you sacrifice for the people you love?

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence?

Gold is a celebration of the human heart’s capacity to do more than just pump blood.

2. How long did it take you to write this book?

It took three years because, as ever, I place the greatest importance on the work of researching and even inhabiting my character’s lives. I try to live their lives for long enough so that by the time I begin writing I feel their reactions by instinct rather than by conscious deliberation. Gold concerns the zenith of athletic achievement and the nadir of grave illness, and I researched both. In order to understand athletes’ lives, for several months I trained on a bicycle with the same schedule that professional riders typically use – though not, I hasten to add, at the same speed. This taught me a little about the pain that top athletes go through and the extremity of the obsession that they need to have. And then, to research illness, I shadowed a pediatric hematologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. I was in the room while the doctor gave serious diagnoses to parents, and I was able to observe their reactions and to witness what happens to children during treatment for leukemia. The whole research process was an education for me, and a humbling process. I learned that the strongest, bravest, most admirable people in society are often the ones we have never seen or heard of.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

I work in a library in central London, hidden away at a little desk high in the stacks. I don’t do email, admin or anything else there – I just write. When I need a break I walk around town and watch people. The whole of life is on display in London. It’s frequently funny, occasionally shocking, and always inspiring.

4. How do you choose your characters’ names?

I have a lot of history with names. In my first novel, Incendiary, I didn’t give my heroine a name at all because I wanted the reader to relate to her and to find her voice within themselves. I wanted her to be more than Everywoman: I wanted her to be you. And that was easier to achieve if she was nameless. If I were to call her, for the sake of argument, Persephone, then it might be harder to feel her voice as your own. In my second novel, Little Bee, the protagonist has a given name and also a name that she adopts in order to disguise her identity. In a story which is all about identity, the name she chooses and the name she was given are both significant. And then in my third novel, Gold, I’ve deliberately given my characters everyday names – Jack, Kate, Zoe, Sophie, Tom – because it is their deeds, rather than their identities, which are important.

5. How many drafts do you go through?

Gold went through six drafts. I don’t stop until I think it’s right. I am lucky enough to have some very adventurous and committed readers, and my response is that I must show them the same level of commitment. I aim to push myself harder and take more risks each time, so that each novel is worth the wait for the reader. I am also very fortunate that my publishers share my view that the reader deserves something from the heart. They have never put pressure on me to release a story before it was ready. Kudos to them for that, because it takes guts and conviction to resist the commercial pressure to bang out half-baked books.

6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?

I don’t really think that way about books. There are novels I can lose myself in again and again – like Virginia Woolf’s – precisely because they are so unlike anything I could have written myself. I think that’s the astonishing thing about fiction: it shows us how startlingly different we are from one another in our ways of seeing the single life we share. This is why readers of novels tend to be such open-minded and interesting people – because they enjoy the experience of seeing the world from angles oblique to their own.

7. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?

Actors. That would definitely be best.

8. What’s your favourite city in the world?

London. It’s as big as life is, and often a little weirder.

9. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?

In a sense we can talk to any writer, living or dead. Writers reveal themselves completely – much more than the people we know in real life do, I sometimes think. You can ask a question of a great novel and get some kind of a response, even if that response is as cryptic as the Magic 8-Ball. That’s a somewhat eccentric reply, though, I’ll freely admit. Okay, I’d like to take John Steinbeck to the pub and ask him if he fancied a beer milkshake.

10. Do you listen to music while you write? If so,what kind?

I never listen to music while I write. That would be like playing computer games while you drove, or eating while you kissed.

11. Who is the first person who gets to read your manuscript?

My agents and editors are always the first to read my stuff. I have warm and enduring relationships with them and I trust their judgment absolutely. I don’t ever ask my family or my other friends for their opinion, because I don’t think it’s fair on them. If they were to like my stuff, then great, but if they didn’t then it would put them in an awkward position. I think it’s an abdication of personal responsibility when a writer asks his friends for their opinion. My doctor friends don’t give me their diagnoses to check, after all.

12. Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

I don’t think I’d ever feel guilty about enjoying reading. I like any piece of work where the artist has turned themselves inside out to produce something true and compelling. That’s as true of the Batman comics as it is of Finnegans Wake.

13. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, In The Shadow Of The Banyan by Vaddey Ratner, The Waves by Virginia Woolf, Plateforme by Michel Houellebecq, two issues of Cycling Weekly, a packet of a French cold-and-flu remedy called Humex, my Garmin cycling GPS, £3.47 and $82, a key to a friend’s flat, one of my kids’ drawings and a pink sticky note I wrote in the night that says: PROTAG MUST NOT REVEAL GENDER UNTIL AFTER (POSS YEARS AFTER) H HAS GONE. What’s mysterious about it is that I can’t work out who (or what) “H” could possibly be.

14. What is the first book you remember reading?

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I used to love the Narnia books and disappear for days at a time into their magical world, although when I recently bought the books for my children and began to re-read them, I realized that they were the most appalling pieces of crap. It was strange and upsetting.

15. Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, since I was eight. I used to write ‘novels’ that were six pages long, staple the pages together and draw the jackets with felt-tip pens. I feel that the six-page hand-stapled novel with jam and hot chocolate stains is a particularly neglected art-form.

16. What do you drink or eat while you write?

I drink a lot of coffee. You have to crank your brain up to a pretty high pitch. Indeed it’s a fine line for a novelist between being sufficiently caffeinated and being hospitalized with palpitations.

17. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?

MacBook Air. It’s the tool of choice because it’s soundless and small. You want to feel bigger and more vocal than the thing you’re writing on. I have a rather ascetic one with the logos blanked out, wifi disabled and everything stripped off it except Word. So many writers aren’t doing their best work because the tool they write with has more built-in distractions than Soho.

18. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time?

Cried.

19. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from?

I make carefully-argued logical plot summaries where I analyze which characters will be closest to the main arcs of the story, and which will be able to hide and reveal elements of history as appropriate. Then I ceremonially burn those summaries and just write from the point of view of the character I like best.

20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?

Well, you know the old adage: Give a novelist a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a novelist to fish and he writes Moby-Dick.

Excerpted from Gold by Chris Cleave. Copyright © 2012 by Chris Cleave. Excerpted by permission of Bond Street Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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It’s almost forty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: Jim Hawkins now runs an inn called the Hispaniola on the English coast with his son, Jim, and Long John Silver has returned to England to live in obscurity with his daughter, Natty. Their lives are quiet and unremarkable; their adventures have seemingly ended.

But for Jim and Natty, the adventure is just beginning.

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence?

An adventure story, a love story: serious fun.

2. How long did it take you to write this book?

All my life.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

The only place I write is at home at my desk.

4. How do you choose your characters’ names?

They chose themselves.

5. How many drafts do you go through?

Somewhere between 25 and 30.

6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?

Great Expectations.

7. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?

My son Lucas.

8. What’s your favourite city in the world?

London.

9. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?

Keats. What are you going to write next?

10. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind?

Absolutely not.

11. Who is the first person who gets to you read your manuscript?

My wife, swiftly followed by my friend Alan Hollinghurst.

12. Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

No.

13. What’s on your nightstand right now?

My what? We don’t have them in England.

14. What is the first book you remember reading?

The Wind in the Willows.

15. Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes.

16. What do you drink or eat while you write?

Peppermint tea.

17. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?

Pen and paper, then the beloved Apple.

18. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time?

Bought a picture.

19. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from?

Voices in my head tell me.

20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?

Time and quiet.

Excerpted from Silver by Andrew Motion. Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Motion. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Antigonick, a translation of Sophokles’ Antigone, is worth a trek to your local bookstore just to see in person. Bianca Stone’s illustrations are set on translucent vellum stock, creating intruiging effects when overlapped with the hand-lettered text below.

Carson’s work is entrenched with a sense of play and wonder that seems almost childlike at times, and the sarcastic tone of the chorus feels wonderfully adolescent and indulgent. “You’re late to learn what’s what aren’t you” they tell Theban king Kreon, in a moment of “I told you so” that had me laughing out loud. The playfulness of Carson’s work almost tricks you into having fun with Antigone the way she does, and in Antigonick Carson brings you into a world that feels current, even though the story dates back nearly three thousand years. Her playful energy is not limited to the comic, as she easily captures moments that seem to luxuriate in cynicism — “Look here comes hope/wandering in/to tickle your feet/then you notice the soles are on fire”. These tonal peaks and valleys are what gives Antigonick its unsettling resonance.

As Carson writes of Aphrodite “you play with us, you play deeply”, I’d suggest that, Anne Carson, so do you — you play deeply. And your readers thank you!

Magnified World

Toronto, late 1990s

The first time it happened, I didn’t open the store on time. I found myself standing on the sidewalk outside the locked door at noon, the Queen streetcar going by behind me in a baritone of metal complaints. It was two hours after I was supposed to have opened and I had no memory of anything after going to bed the night before. The brown canvas shoes I had on were pinching my toes. I’d never seen the shoes before in my life and it seemed obvious that I was dreaming. If I was dreaming, my mother would be there like she always had been. But when I let myself in, there was no one.

Then my father was running down the stairs from our apartment on the second floor and I knew I was awake.

“Where have you been?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“What? Where have you been?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

His mouth opened and I knew he was going to ask me again.

I was lying on the floor. I could see that the bottom shelf of the Fortune and Foretelling section was filthy with dust. It took me a moment to realize I had fainted. My mother was the one who fainted. Who used to faint. I’d never fainted before.

My father picked me up—he actually lifted me up onto my feet, which I didn’t realize he was capable of doing. When I wobbled he set me back down again and knelt beside me and all I could think was that it must hurt his knees to be like that. I could see into the collar of his shirt. His chest was that of an old man, an older man than him: a dull red unrelated to the colour of his face, a lattice of grey hair. I didn’t want to look.

“Where were you? Are you sick? Where were you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t remember.”

He seemed to bite down very hard; I could see a tendon in his neck jump. My head ached.

“You don’t remember.”

“I went to bed. After A Bit of Fry & Laurie.” My boyfriend Andrew had come over to the apartment where I lived with my father above the store. He had rented the show at Queen Video and we watched it together after dinner, curled up on the couch. My father walked by in his pyjamas at one point, holding a cup of tea, and said, “That’s a good one. That British humour. Funny stuff .” Near the end of the video, with my father in bed in his room, Andrew started to kiss the back of my neck. He slid his arms around me and ran his spidery hands over my breasts. His lips on my earlobe sent fizzing little darts of pleasure all over. Then the shush of water running came from my father’s washroom, over our shoulders, and we moved apart.

We sat in silence while the credits ran, and then I walked him down to the street. It was completely still, without the slightest trace of wind. Andrew unlocked his bicycle from the drainpipe beside the store.

“I’ve got a tutorial tomorrow at ten and they’re turning in their papers, so I’ll be a hermit for a while,” he said. “I’m sorry. If you really need me, you can call.” He looked down and away, fiddled with his light. He’d felt guilty about working since my mother died, about being away from me.

I tucked my hair behind my ear. “No problem,” I said.

He looked at me again for a moment, kissed me, then got on his bike and pedalled away. I locked up and went back upstairs, where I washed my face and got into bed.

The next thing I knew I was outside the store in blazing daylight. And now I was on the floor beside my father.

“You don’t remember anything after going to bed?” My father’s face had gone oddly flat and the redness had drained away, but all he said was, “I’ll stay in the store until you’re feeling better.”

I went upstairs to my room and closed the door. On the windowsill was a card, just sitting there without an envelope. When I picked it up, it was slightly warm.

I’m so sorry to hear of your loss, it said. With love, Gil.

I didn’t remember putting the card there. I didn’t even remember a Gil—was he a customer? A friend of my father’s? It sounded like an old man’s name. Dozens of cards had arrived after my mother’s funeral, mostly politely worded watery-toned notes from my father’s colleagues at the university. This card looked no different except for the pained and jerky handwriting.

The canvas shoes had straps that pinched at the top of my instep. They fit so badly it felt like they’d been worn in by someone else altogether. I sat down on the edge of my bed and slid my feet out, wincing when the skin pulled away from the fabric. I carried the shoes to the hallway mat. The foyer was open to the kitchen, and through the windows, the light was unbearably bright.

Excerpted from Magnified World by Grace O’Connell Copyright © 2012 by Grace O’Connell. Excerpted by permission of Random House Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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