I got pencils.

I got paper.

I got fiction.

Who could ask for anything more?

Not Alice Munro. Beaming, with yet another story to tell, she accepted her second Giller Prize– this time for her short story collection, Runaway.

Pregnant with floating rose petals and Mary Walsh’s crimson, cinched-nine-ways-to-Christmas-bustier, this year’s gala was more glitzy and glammed-up then ever. Aside from the Shelagh Rogers underpants incident, it looked to be a classy affair. The short-listed authors, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Wayson Choy, Pauline Holdstock, Alice Munro, Paul Quarrington, and Miriam Toews never looked so good.

As Shelagh noted the morning after on CBC’s Sounds Like Canada, “I love living in a country that gives national television coverage to an award that honours the best in literature.”

Amen.

And the results are in…

Thanks to all who voted in last month’s poll and a special thanks to The Elegant Variation for mentioning it!

Results of “What motivates you to buy a new book?”

Reading a terrific book review 18%

Hearing an interesting radio spot 2%

Word of mouth from friends and family 22%

Best-seller lists 2%

Fancy display or prominent placement in bookstore 0%

Amazon’s web site told you you’d love it 0%

Your local bookseller told you you’d love it. 2%

Packaging (cover art, jacket synopsis, author photo, blurbs, etc) 20%

Book club pick 0%

You liked other books by the same author 35%

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Last but not least…

The Birth House has found a home. Publication date: Spring 2006.

Here’s the announcement from Publisher’s Marketplace.

November 5, 2004

Ami McKay’s THE BIRTH HOUSE, literary fiction about a young midwife who lives and works in a Nova Scotia fishing village during the first half of the twentieth century, to Diane Martin at Knopf Canada, by Helen Heller at the Helen Heller Agency (Canada).

Follow your bliss.