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Canadian young adult novelist William Bell dead at 70
CANADIAN PRESS
THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Thursday, September 01, 2016 04:08 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, September 01, 2016 04:23 PM EDT
ORILLIA, Ont. — Canadian author William Bell, who garnered acclaim for his young adult novels, has died at the age of 70.
Bell was born in Toronto in 1945 and worked extensively as an educator, teaching at the University of British Columbia, and overseas in China at Harbin University of Science and Technology and the Foreign Affairs College.
The Orillia, Ont.,-based writer had more than a dozen young adult novels to his credit, with his works translated into nine languages.
Bell received a number of honours, including the Ruth Schwartz Award for Excellence and the Belgium Award for Excellence for “Forbidden City;” the Canadian Librarian’s Association Award for “Stones;” the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award (“Five Days of the Ghost”); and the Mr. Christie’s Award (“Zack.”)
He teamed with his wife, author Ting-Xing Xe, on “Throwaway Daughter,” about a teen adopted by a Canadian couple who seeks to learn more about her Chinese ancestry after witnessing the Tiananmen Square massacre on TV.
Bell died on July 30 and is survived by Ye, children Dylan, Megan and Brendan, his sister Carole Lashbrook, and three grandchildren.
Author William Bell is shown in this file photo. (Postmedia Network files)

Canadian young adult novelist William Bell dead at 70 | Books | Entertainment |
 
spaminator

spaminator

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Writer runs into burning New Orleans home to save laptop
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Thursday, September 15, 2016 06:24 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, September 15, 2016 11:39 PM EDT
NEW ORLEANS — Avoiding a nasty real-life plot twist, a writer dashed past firefighters into a burning New Orleans house Thursday to rescue two completed novels stored on his laptop.
“Anybody that’s ever created art, there’s no replacing that,” Gideon Hodge, 35, told The New Orleans Advocate after safely making it out of the burning building with the computer. “It’s got pretty much my life’s work.”
Hodge describes himself as a playwright, novelist and actor.
The fire in New Orleans’ Broadmoor neighbourhood had spread to the house where Hodge lived from an empty, single-family house next door, where firefighters believe it started. Dozens of firefighters battled the stubborn three-alarm blaze for hours. A huge column of black smoke was visible for miles.
No injuries were reported. Occupants of the second house escaped safely.
Edderin Williams, 38, had enough time to grab his wallet and keys before rushing out of his apartment, one of four in the building, but was not able to save anything more. He does not have renter’s insurance.
“I just don’t know how I feel right now,” Williams said. “I’m just gonna have to pick up the pieces and move on.”
Writer and actor Gideon Hodge runs towards his burning home in New Orleans, La., Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016. Hodge then rushed into the structure – past firefighters yelling at him to stop – to grab his laptop, which he said had two completed novels on it. (Matthew Hinton/The Advocate via AP)


Writer runs into burning New Orleans home to save laptop | World | News | Toront
 
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spaminator

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’Shoeless Joe’ author W.P. Kinsella has doctor-assisted death
Laura Kane and Linda Givetash, THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Friday, September 16, 2016 07:48 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, September 17, 2016 12:38 AM EDT
VANCOUVER — W.P. Kinsella, the B.C.-based author of “Shoeless Joe,” the award-winning novel that became the film “Field of Dreams,” has died at 81.
His literary agency confirmed the writer had a doctor-assisted death on Friday in Hope, B.C. The agency did not provide details but Willie Steele, who has been working on a biography of the writer, said Kinsella struggled with health complications due to diabetes for a number of years.
In the week leading up to his death, Steele said he had the opportunity to ask Kinsella what his legacy was an author.
Steele said Kinsella told him: “I’m a storyteller and my greatest satisfaction comes from making people laugh and also leaving them with a tear in the corner of their eye.”
Kinsella published almost 30 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and was a winner of the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.
His best-known was “Shoeless Joe,” a 1982 magic-realist novel about a farmer who hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field. It was adapted into the Oscar-nominated Kevin Costner movie with the immortal line: “If you build it, he will come.”
Baseball was one of Kinsella’s passions, and it provided the setting for many of his other works, including “The Iowa Baseball Confederacy,” “Box Socials” and “Ichiro Dreams: Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners,” a biography published only in Japan.
“His work has touched the lives of thousands of baseball fans across Canada and around the world,” said Scott Crawford, director of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
Steele said Kinsella often wished he had written “Shoeless Joe” later, “so that way people would have read some of his other works first.”
Steele added that he hopes more people pick up Kinsella’s many books, especially those containing his fictional short stories about aboriginal characters on a real-life central Alberta reserve which was then called Hobbema but is now called Maskwacis.
Kinsella suffered a head injury when he was in a car accident in 1997. Three years after the accident, he said he had no interest in writing fiction and was spending his days playing Scrabble on the Internet.
Steele said Kinsella lost his “creative impulse to write” as a result of the accident, contributing to a 13-year break between his published novels before “Butterfly Winter” was released in 2011.
Despite the hiatus, Steele said he was amazed while working on the biography to discover the sheer volume of writing Kinsella produced, at times writing more than a thousand of pages of manuscript in a single year.
“He would tell writing students that to become a writer, you don’t sit around and talk about writing, you don’t sit around and think about writing, you sit down and write,” Steele said.
His literary agency said in a statement that Kinsella’s final work of fiction, “Russian Dolls,” will be published next year.
Kinsella’s agent Carolyn Swayze issued a statement on Friday saying he was “a unique, creative and outrageously opinionated man.”
Swayze said Kinsella persuaded her to become a literary agent in 1994 to represent his work.
“He was a dedicated story teller, performer, curmudgeon and irascible and difficult man,” her statement said.
His fiction made people laugh and cry, she added.
“Not a week has passed in the last 22 years, without (me) receiving a note of appreciation for Bill’s stories. His contribution will endure.”
Kinsella was born in Edmonton in 1935.
He began writing very early in life, winning a YMCA contest at the age of 14.
He took writing courses at the University of Victoria and earned a bachelor of arts in creative writing in 1974 and went on to complete a master of fine arts in English through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Before becoming a professional author, Kinsella was a professor of English at the University of Calgary.
He is survived by his two daughters, who the agency said cared for him in his final years, and several grandchildren.
The agency said he asked not to have a memorial service.
-- with files from News1130
Canadian author W.P. Kinsella stands on the baseball field before game five of the World Series between Toronto Blue Jays and Atlanta Braves at the Skydome in Toronto, Ontario, Thursday, Oct. 23, 1992. W.P. Kinsella, the B.C.-based author of "Shoeless Joe," the award-winning novel that became the film "Field of Dreams," has died at 81. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Rusty Kennedy

’Shoeless Joe’ author W.P. Kinsella has doctor-assisted death | Books | Entertai
 
Ungern

Ungern

New Member
Aug 21, 2016
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Tournai
I'm reading (in french ...) a extraordinary book :

The shock doctrine The rise of disaster capitalism
author : Naomi Klein
Ed: knopf Canada Toronto 2007

A summary of what is passing to day in Irak and Greekland
and what is passed yesterday in Russia,Asia,South America ...

A lot of explanations.

A book to read !!!!
 
J

JaniceRocks

New Member
Sep 21, 2016
2
0
1
Blackleaf

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
49,356
1,800
113


British politics was turned upside down during 2016. This book by Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman is the first to tell the full story of how and why Britain voted to leave the European Union and how the vote shattered the political status quo.

Based on unrivalled access to all the key politicians and their advisors – including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of Vote Leave – Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller, and offers a gripping, day-by-day account of what really happened behind-the-scenes in Downing Street, both Leave campaigns, the Labour Party, Ukip and Britain Stronger in Europe.

Shipman gives his readers a ringside seat on how decisions were made, mistakes justified and betrayals perpetrated. Filled with stories, anecdotes and juicy leaks the book does not seek to address the rights and wrongs of Brexit but to explore how and why David Cameron chose to take the biggest political gamble of his life and explain why he lost.

This is a story of calculation, attempted coups, individuals torn between principles and loyalty. All the events are here – from David Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum, through to the campaign itself, his resignation as prime minister, the betrayals and rivalries that occurred during the race to find his successor to the arrival of Theresa May in Downing Street as Britain’s second female prime minister.

All Out War is a book about leaders and their closest aides, the decisions they make and how and why they make them, as well as how they feel when they turn out to be wrong. It is about men who make decisions that are intellectually consistent and – by their own measure – morally sound that are simultaneously disastrous for themselves and those closest to them. It is about how doing what you know has worked before doesn’t always work again. Most of all it is about asking the question: how far are you prepared to go to win?
 
spaminator

spaminator

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 26, 2009
37,667
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Book lover tortured to death for copy of 'Wind in the Willows'
Postmedia Network
First posted: Wednesday, October 05, 2016 07:51 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, October 05, 2016 08:04 PM EDT
A twisted book-loving barbarian allegedly tortured and stabbed to death a famed book collector for a rare tome about peace and love.
For collector Adrian Greenwood -- who was best known for his Harry Potter first editions -- the pride of his collection was a US$64,000 first edition of Wind in the Willows, The Washington Post reports.
First published in 1908, the novel by Kenneth Grahame is a book about friendship and greed.
But cops say that greed and blood lust drove Michael Danaher, 50, to kill the 42-year-old collector. When the unemployed father-of-two was finished, he took a selfie of his blood-soaked beard.
Danaher also allegedly had plans to rob and kidnap actress Kate Moss, Simon Cowell and author Jeffrey Archer, the Daily Mirror reports. A kill list featured Greenwood’s name. Next to it was the message: "Modus: Any!! Expected take: Rare books."
Prosecutor Oliver Saxby told an Oxford courtroom that Danaher -- who claims the murder was in self-defence -- Greenwood’s body was covered in puncture wounds and dark bruises, indicating an agonizing ordeal.
"It is almost as if these are people who, because of their wealth and his lack of it, deserve to be subjected to what he has planned," Saxby told the jury, according to the Guardian. "And there is a callousness, we suggest, about the list."
“Cool, calculated, controlled. Before, during and after. And underpinning it all? Greed. It was money he was after."
And hours after Greenwood’s murder, Danaher deleted him from his list.
The trial is ongoing.
Adrian Greenwood, of Oxford, owned a rare first-edition copy of the book, valued at $64,000. (Handout)

Book lover tortured to death for copy of 'Wind in the Willows' | World | News |
 
MHz

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
48
Red Deer AB
About which hospitals to avoid.

(in part)
A surgeon at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester was scheduled to remove a kidney with a tumor from one patient but instead removed a healthy kidney from a patient sharing the same name. Investigators found that the surgeon violated protocol by failing to confirm the patient’s identity using their birthdate.

When the story was initially made public in August, the hospital claimed that the misidentification “took place outside of our hospital and did not involve our employees’’ and that staff “followed proper protocols." Investigators determined this was untrue, however, and that the surgeon had attributed a CT scan showing a large tumor to the wrong patient. The patient who was subjected to the unnecessary surgery had not had a CT scan done at all.

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/us/201610141046348334-massachusetts-hospital-removes-kidney-wrong-patient/
 
spaminator

spaminator

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 26, 2009
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English killer took selfie after robbing man of rare 'Wind in the Willows' book
Postmedia Network
First posted: Monday, October 24, 2016 05:17 PM EDT | Updated: Monday, October 24, 2016 05:31 PM EDT
A man in England who took a selfie moments after he stabbed and robbed the owner of a historical novel worth about $81,000 was sentenced to life in jail for the crime.
According to the New York Post, Michael Danaher, 50, murdered Adrian Greenwood, 42, by stabbing him 33 times, and then made off with a rare copy of The Wind In the Willows by Kenneth Grahame published in 1908.
He put the book up for auction on eBay a day after the murder. He also stole Greenwood’s mobile phone, wallet, laptop, camcorder and Nikon camera, during the attack in April.
The jury only needed an hour before returning with the verdict.
Danaher claimed self-defence saying Greenwood attacked him with a knife first. He also told his son he was jumped by two men "half his age" to explain the cuts on his face and fingers but prosecutor Oliver Saxby was able to squash his tale as “utter fiction.”
Danaher’s reason for the crime? He took a buyout from his previous employer at an engine manufacturer but lost the money in an investment scam and began plotting to rob wealthy individuals, reported the Post.
Michael Danaher, who took a selfie after murdering Adrian Greenwood, received a life sentence for the crime. (Thames Valley Police photo)


English killer took selfie after robbing man of rare 'Wind in the Willows' book
 
Blackleaf

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
49,356
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The blurb:

Out of 193 countries that are currently UN member states, we’ve (the mighty British) invaded or fought conflicts in the territory of 171. That’s not far off a massive, jaw-dropping 90 per cent.

Not too many Britons know that we invaded Iran in the Second World War with the Soviets. You can be fairly sure a lot more Iranians do.

Or what about the time we arrived with elephants to invade Ethiopia?

Every summer, hordes of British tourists now occupy Corfu and the other Ionian islands. Find out how we first invaded them armed with cannon instead of camera and set up the United States of the Ionian Islands.

Think the Philippines have always been outside our zone of influence? Think again. Read the surprising story of our eighteenth-century occupation of Manila and how we demanded a ransom of millions of dollars for the city.

This book takes a look at some of the truly awe-inspiring ways our country has been a force, for good and for bad, right across the world. A lot of people are vaguely aware that a quarter of the globe was once pink, but that’s not even half the story. We’re a stroppy, dynamic, irrepressible nation and this is how we changed the world, often when it didn’t ask to be changed!
 
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