Jolly Olde BookBlog

We all know the US bestseller list – that infomation is everywhere.

But what about Canada?

Top Fiction Hardcover

1. Through Black Spruce (Joseph Boyden); $CDN 34.00; Pengu; 9780670063635
2. The Host (Stephenie Meyer); $CDN 28.99; Littl; 9780316068048
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (Mary Ann Shaffer); $CDN 25.00; Dell; 9780385340991
4. The Flying Troutmans (Miriam Toews); $CDN 32.00; Knopf; 9780307397492
5. The Private Patient (P.D. James); $CDN 32.00; Knopf; 9780307397782
6. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski); $CDN 32.95; Doubl; 9780385664783
7. A Most Wanted Man (John le Carre); $CDN 32.00; Pengu; 9780670069125
8. The Origin of Species (Nino Ricci); $CDN 34.95; Doubl; 9780385663601
9. Cockroach (Rawi Hage); $CDN 29.95; House; 9780887842092
10. Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King (Stephen King); $CDN 32.00; Simon; 9781416595281
11. The Hour I First Believed (Wally Lamb); $CDN 31.95; Harpe; 9780060393496
12. Swallowing Darkness (Laurell K. Hamilton); $CDN 30.00; Rando; 9780345495938
13. Salvation in Death (J.D. Robb); $CDN 28.50; Putna; 9780399155222
14. Cross Country (James Patterson); $CDN 30.99; Littl; 9780316018722
15. The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway); $CDN 29.95; Knopf; 9780307397034

Top Fiction Paperback

1. The Shack (William P. Young); $CDN 15.99; Windb; 9780964729230
2. The Appeal (John Grisham); $CDN 11.99; Dell; 9780440244974
3. World Without End (Ken Follett); $CDN 24.00; NewAm; 9780451224996
4. The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga); $CDN 16.00; Simon; 9781416562603
5. Heart and Soul (Maeve Binchy); $CDN 24.95; McArt; 9781552787281
6. The Book of Negroes (Lawrence Hill); $CDN 24.95; Harpe; 9781554681563
7. Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen ); $CDN 16.50; Harpe; 9780006391555
8. Three Day Road (Joseph Boyden); $CDN 20.00; Pengu; 9780143056959
9. Good to a Fault (Maria Endicott); $CDN 25.95; Freeh; 9781551119298
10. The Boys in the Trees (Mary Swan); $CDN 15.50; Henry; 9780805086706
11. Late Nights on Air (Elizabeth Hay); $CDN 22.00; M&S; 9780771040191
12. Gods Behaving Badly (Marie Phillips); $CDN 19.95; Rando; 9780307355935
13. The Chase (Clive Cussler); $CDN 10.99; Berkl; 9780425224427
14. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd); $CDN 15.50; Pengu; 9780142001745
15. Duma Key (Stephen King); $CDN 12.99; Simon; 9781416599319

Top Canadiana

1. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (Margaret Atwood); $CDN 18.95; Harpe; 9780887848100
2. Don Cherry’s Hockey Stories and Stuff (Don Cherry); $CDN 29.95; Doubl; 9780385666749
3. A Fair Country (John Ralston Saul); $CDN 34.00; Pengu; 9780670068043
4. Fifteen Days (Christie Blatchford); $CDN 22.00; Doubl; 9780385664677
5. Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Andrew Nikiforuk); $CDN 20.00; Greys; 9781553654070
6. Hell or High Water (Paul Martin); $CDN 37.99; M&S; 9780670068043
7. The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas (Jay Ingram); $CDN 28.00; Pengu; 9780143169352
8. Getting to the Bubble: Finding Magic Amid the Urban Road (Mike McCardell); $CDN 32.95; Harbo; 9781550174434
9. Otherwise (Farley Mowat); $CDN 32.99; M&S; 9780771064890
10. Rick Mercer Report (Rick Mercer); $CDN 19.95; Doubl; 9780385665193
11. Izzy (Peter C. Newman); $CDN 34.95; Harpe; 9781554680894
12. Passchendaele (Norman Leach); $CDN 19.95; Cotea; 9781550503999
13. The As It Happens Files: Radio That May Contain Nuts (Mary Lou Finlay); $CDN 32.00; Knopf; 9780307396624
14. Rowboat in a Hurricane (Julie Angus); $CDN 22.00; Greys; 9781553653370
15. Climate Wars (Gwynne Dyer); $CDN 34.95; Rando; 9780307355826

Top Kids Canadian

1. Just One Goal (Robert Munsch); $CDN 6.99; Schol; 9780545990356
2. Love You Forever (Robert Munsch); $CDN 5.95; Firef; 9780920668375
3. Scaredy Squirrel (Melanie Watt); $CDN 8.95; Kids; 9781554530236
4. Starclimber (Kenneth Oppel); $CDN 8.99; Harpe; 9780002007450
5. Paper Bag Princess (Robert Munsch); $CDN 5.95; Annic; 9780920236161
6. Darkwing (Kenneth Oppel); $CDN 21.99; Harpe; 9781554680153
7. Darkest Powers: Summoning (Kelley Armstrong); $CDN 14.95; Doubl; 9780385665346
8. Imagine a Place (Sarah L. Thomson); $CDN 19.99; Simon; 9781416971634
9. Alexandria of Africa (Eric Walters); $CDN 14.95; Doubl; 9780385666398
10. Something from Nothing (Phoebe Gilman); $CDN 6.99; Schol; 9780590745574
11. Chester (Melanie Watt); $CDN 18.95; Kids; 9781554532254
12. Schooled (Gordon Korman); $CDN 8.99; Schol; 9780545993210
13. Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach (Melanie Watt); $CDN 16.95; Kids; 9781554532254
14. The Hockey Sweater (Roch Carrier); $CDN 10.99; Tundr; 9780887761744
15. Beware, Pirates! (Frieda Wishinsky); $CDN 6.95; Maple; 9781897066805

Top Canadian Fiction

1. Through Black Spruce (Joseph Boyden); $CDN 34.00; Pengu; 9780670063635
2. The Book of Negroes (Lawrence Hill); $CDN 24.95; Harpe; 9781554681563
3. Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen); $CDN 16.50; Harpe; 9780006391555
4. Three Day Road (Joseph Boyden); $CDN 20.00; Pengu; 9780143056959
5. Good to a Fault (Marina Endicott); $CDN 25.95; Freeh; 9781551119298
6. The Boys in the Trees (Mary Swan); $CDN 15.50; Henry; 9780805086706
7. Late Nights on Air (Elizabeth Hay); $CDN 22.00; M&S; 9780771040191
8. The Flying Troutmans (Miriam Toews); $CDN 32.00; Knopf; 9780307397492
9. The Origin of Species (Nino Ricci); $CDN 34.95; Doubl; 9780385663601
10. Cockroach (Rawi Hage); $CDN 29.95; House; 9780887842092
11. Barnacle Love (Anthony De Sa); $CDN 18.95; Doubl; 9780385664370
12. When We Were Young (Stuart McLean); $CDN 18.00; Pengu; 9780143169062
13. Passchendaele (Paul Gross); $CDN 9.99; Harpe; 9781554682904
14. De Niro’s Game (Rawi Hage); $CDN 14.95; Anans; 9780887848131
15. The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway); $CDN 29.95; Knopf; 9780307397034

And the source of all this info?

http://www.cbabook.org/bestsellers/

PHOENIX—- Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes — Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.

Hillerman’s daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father’s health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque when he died at about 3 p.m.

Hillerman lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as his hearing faded, as rheumatoid arthritis turned his hands into claws.

”I’m getting old,” he declared in 2002, ”but I still like to write.”

Anne Hillerman said Sunday that her father was a born storyteller.

”He had such a wonderful, wonderful curiosity about the world,” she said. ”He could take little details and bring them to life, not just in his books, but in conversation, too.”

Lt. Joe Leaphorn, introduced in ”The Blessing Way” in 1970, was an experienced police officer who understood, but did not share, his people’s traditional belief in a rich spirit world. Officer Jim Chee, introduced in ”People of Darkness” in 1978, was a younger officer studying to become a ”hathaali” — Navajo for ‘’shaman.”

Together, they struggled daily to bridge the cultural divide between the dominant Anglo society and the impoverished people who call themselves the Dineh.

Hillerman’s commercial breakthrough was ”Skinwalkers,” published in 1987 — the first time he put both characters and their divergent world views in the same book. It sold 430,000 hardcover copies, paving the way for ”A Thief of Time,” which made several best seller lists. In all, he wrote 18 books in the Navajo series, the most recent titled ”The Shape Shifter.”

Each is characterized by an unadorned writing style, intricate plotting, memorable characterization and vivid descriptions of Indian rituals and of the vast plateau of the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

The most acclaimed of them, including ”Talking God” and ”The Coyote Waits,” are subtle explorations of human nature and the conflict between cultural assimilation and the pull of the old ways.

”I want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated,” Hillerman once said.

Occasionally, he was accused of exploiting his knowledge of Navajo culture for personal gain, but in 1987, the Navajo Tribal Council honored him with its Special Friend of the Dineh award. He took greater pride in that, he often said, than in the many awards bestowed by his peers, including the Golden Spur Award from Western Writers of America and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, which elected him its president.

Hollywood was less kind to Hillerman. Its adaptation of his 1981 novel, ”Dark Wind,” with Lou Diamond Phillips and Fred Ward regrettably cast as Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, was a bomb.

Although Hillerman was best-known for the Navajo series, he wrote more than 30 books, including a novel for young people; the memoir, ”Seldom Disappointed”; and books on the history and natural beauty of his beloved Southwest.

”Those places that stir me are empty and lonely,” he wrote in ”The Spell of New Mexico,” a collection of his essays. ”They invoke a sense of both space and strangeness, and all have about them a sort of fierce inhospitality.”

He also edited or contributed to more than a dozen other books including crime and history anthologies and books on the craft of writing.

Born May 27, 1925, in Sacred Heart, Okla., population 50, Tony Hillerman was the son of August and Lucy Grove Hillerman. They were farmers who also ran a small store. It was there that young Tony listened spellbound to locals who gathered to tell their stories.

The teacher at Sacred Heart’s one-room school house was rumored to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so Tony’s parents sent him and his brother, Barney, to St. Mary’s Academy, a school for Potawatomie Indian girls near Asher, Okla. It was at St. Mary’s that he developed a lifelong respect for Indian culture — and an appreciation of what it means to be an outsider in your own land.

In 1943, he interrupted his education at the University of Oklahoma to join the Army. He lugged his mortar ashore at D-Day with the 103rd Infantry Division and was severely wounded in battle at Alsace, France. He returned from Europe a genuine war hero with a Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, temporary blindness and two shattered legs that never stopped causing him pain.

He returned to the university for his degree and, in 1948, married Marie Unzer. Together, they raised six children, five of them adopted.

As a young man, he farmed, drove a truck, toiled as an oil field roughneck and worked as a reporter and editor for the Borger News-Herald in Borger, Texas; the Morning Press-Constitution in Lawton, Okla.; United Press International in Oklahoma City; and the Santa Fe New Mexican, where he rose to executive editor. He quit in 1962 to earn a master’s degree from the University of New Mexico, where he later taught journalism and eventually became chairman of the journalism department. In 1993, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame.

Hillerman was still teaching when he wrote his first novel, ”Blessing Way.” A story that always made him chuckle: His first agent advised him that if he wanted to get published, he would have to ”get rid of that Indian stuff.”

Hillerman is survived by his wife, Marie, and their six children. Services are pending.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/1243960,xhillerman102708.article

In Memoriam
Michael Crichton
1942 – 2008

Best-selling author Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, November 4, 2008 after a courageous and private battle against cancer.

While the world knew him as a great story teller that challenged our preconceived notions about the world around us — and entertained us all while doing so — his wife Sherri, daughter Taylor, family and friends knew Michael Crichton as a devoted husband, loving father and generous friend who inspired each of us to strive to see the wonders of our world through new eyes. He did this with a wry sense of humor that those who were privileged to know him personally will never forget.

Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand.

He will be profoundly missed by those whose lives he touched, but he leaves behind the greatest gifts of a thirst for knowledge, the desire to understand, and the wisdom to use our minds to better our world.

Michael’s family respectfully asks for privacy during this difficult time.

A private memorial service is expected, but no further details will be released to the public.