March 5, 2012
So Many Autobiographical Graphic Novels (A Mini-Review)
When I last visited Little Island Comics, it was with the intention of buying one, small book for my daughter and getting out of there. That wasn’t what actually happened: what actually happened was I stacked up books until I reached my carrying capacity. I had avoided visiting a comic shop of any kind for months because I am so very far behind on my reading, but all that meant was that there were months worth of books which had come out that I desperately, desperately needed to own. And this was just at the kid’s comic book shop. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the grown-up stuff.
My current graphic novel to-read pile.
I resolved when I got home to start ploughing through the pile. After all, even the densest, most literary graphic novel is still mostly pictures and reading one is actually only a commitment of, at the most, a day or two.
My first-pick was Kean Soo & Tory Woollcott‘s self-published Toronto to Tuscany: An Italian Adventure. This isn’t a book, per se; just a little 32-page mini-comic. But I like to pick my reads in part by serendipity. We’d met Tory the day before at Little Island (where she apparently works) and my daughter is currently going through a Jellaby phase. Toronto to Tuscany had been on my shelf since last year’s TCAF so, really, its turn had come.
Toronto to Tuscany is a collection Tory & Kean’s anecdotes about their 2010 Tuscan vacation together. It’s funny and cute, which is about all I could ask of sixteen folded-and-stapled pages of printer paper. If anything, it is remarkable for being so little and yet so worth owning. Tory & Kean’s trip is pretty much just like any European vacation taken by two quirky Canadian 20-or-30-somethings. They have transportation problems, use badly diced local languages in restaurants, see attractions and bicker. I’ve had this trip myself to different places with different people.
Hilarious!
Autobiographies and anecdotes are a huge part of the graphic novel scene. There’s something about the medium that can turn a little story – “this one time I saw a naked dude in Manarola” – into comedy gold. Comic strips have been turning tiny observations into punchlines for years. A funny face, a fall in the water and a sideways glance convey laughs in a way text can’t. See Kate Beaton‘s Fat Pony for a perfect illustration. It’s just a pony. But oh my god that thing kills me. Nor do the pictures have to just play for laughs. Sadness, loneliness, anger, shock – in short, the wide spectrum of human emotions that we read daly in the faces of others can be illustrated by a good artist telling a story in pictures. Graphic novels solve the story teller’s “I guess you just had to be there” limitation, because they can bring you there.
There’s something more to it than just illustrating a good anecdote though, and I think it’s the added element of fandom. I bought Toronto to Tuscany because I like Kean Soo. We follow celebrities on Twitter or Facebook because somehow, what they ate for breakfast or what music they’re listening to brings us closer to them. If mainstream superhero comics and literary graphic novels have any crossover anymore (outside of sharing retail space) it’s in the obsession of their readers. Graphic novel devotees celebrate their creators almost cultishly. $5 for what you did last summer? Yes please!
In any case, Toronto to Tuscany succeeds in both ways. Funny scenarios are made funnier by Tory & Kean’s alternating illustrations of each others’ silliest moments. My fandom is satisfied by a little glimpse into the private lives of my comic-creating heroes. It’s the kind of little thing that makes comic collecting fun!
February 28, 2012
On Comics for Pre-Schoolers
I never really enjoyed reading comic books to my 3-year-old. I am a comic geek, so I thought I’d love it, but I hadn’t realized the particular challenges of reading word bubbles to the illiterate.
It began the first time I read one of Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books: there’s a lot of dialogue, but without the “…elephant said” and “…piggie said” cues of a picture book (or even a novel), Maggie couldn’t tell who was saying what. So we resort to pointing to the characters as we go through the panels. This is an acceptable beginner tactic, but as comics get more complex, it stops working. Characters sometimes speak from “off panel”. Sound effects come from – where? We muddle through with the aid of funny stage voices and elaborate sound effects, but the activity is exhausting. I didn’t like reading comics.
That didn’t deter my child. Though it was exhausting for me, graphic novels are almost an ideal middle-point for a kid who is interested in the more sophisticated content of a novel, but still wants the visual cues of a picture book. There’s just so much going on within a panel, let alone a page. She has discovered she can “read” the narrative through the progression of panels in a way that picture books don’t especially allow. Kids memorize picture books, but can invent a complex and involved story the very first time they encounter a comic.
We’re deep down the graphic novel rabbit hole now, let me tell you. Thankfully graphic novels for kids are a ballooning media, and Toronto has an exceptionally reliable source in the newly-established Little Island Comics at Bathurst & Bloor. Little Island is an extension of the (best comic book store ever) Beguiling, who have become a world leader in promoting both graphic novels as a literary form and graphic novels for kids. Supplying collections to school libraries is only one of their many above-and-beyond services. They know their stuff.
Maggie has a (probably genetic) fascination with dragons, and so most of her favourite comics feature them. Last TCAF we picked up a copy of Dragons! Comics and Activities for Kids and she was absolutely smitten with Nogard the Dragon. Not long after we learned that Nogard and his buddies were products of Alec Longstreth’s Isle of Elsi comics, published predominantly in zine format! For those of you who were born on the internet, that’s code for “not available anywhere”. After reading Nogard for the nth time, my husband threw up his arms and flatly refused to read it again, leading to a week-long sulk in which Maggie insisted she didn’t have enough books with “monsters and other beasties” in them. So we thought we’d give Bone a go.
Bone, for those of you familiar with it, might seem wildly inappropriate for a 3-year-old, but our findings were surprising. Jeff Smith’s story of a trio of marshmallow-fluff little dudes caught in the middle an epic fantasy show-down between dragons, rat men, elder gods and ordinary folk is, until the 6th or 7th book anyway, funny, exciting, and easy to understand. Okay, so Maggie didn’t grasp at all the ins and outs of rigging a cow race, or the tactics of divide and conquer battles, but she knew who was nice, who was mean, and who was funny. We’d read approximately half a trade per night with an increasingly long series recap at the beginning of each session. She’d make us re-read EVERY stupid rat creature scene. There’s a slap-stick element to Bone which is so kid friendly, and the narrow escapes of those early books are exciting without being traumatizing. Add to that a story in which the women are the heroes, the bad guys are kinda cuddly, and the smaller you are, the safer you are, we have the perfect storm of things my kid loves. We re-read the first 6 books of the series four or five times over two months almost to the exclusion of anything else.
But even a good book gets old when you’ve read it five times in a row, so we had to move on. We engaged Kean Soo’s Jellaby. In a way this is more appropriate for a little kid, but it really depends on what freaks your kid out. There are fewer monsters and less blood and violence than in Bone, but the underlying themes of bullying, lonely kids and, my daughter’s biggest bugaboo, parental separation are pretty intense for a little kid. Maggie just ADORES the first trade. I can’t emphasize this enough. Jellaby is funny, cute, and reassuring to even a tiny child. Who doesn’t want a giant purple secret dragon friend? The second graphic novel delves into darker territory, and Maggie was especially upset by a scene in which the lead character Portia meets her missing father in a dream. But a few weeks after we first read it Maggie tentatively pulled it back off the shelf and went over it herself for hours over several days, then declared she wanted to read it again. The second, third and nth readings were better for her as we explained and unpacked the content. Just as she’d been fascinated by the rat creatures in Bone, Maggie is taken with the “bad” monster in Jellaby: Monster in the City. There’s something fundamental about monsters in a child’s experience. I think it helps them grasp and objectify the bad and scary things in the world. Better seen than unseen and imagined.
Our latest craze is Magic Trixie. We assailed Little Island’s Tory Woollcott not long ago for “more dragon comics for pre-schoolers” and came away instead with several superior suggestions. Among them was Jill Thompson’s Magic Trixie comics, the adventures of a little witch girl and her monster-archetype friends. Think Monster High if the characters were eight years old and not a bunch of tramps. This was originally on the plate because the third trade features a dragon, but the success around here is because of the friendly, conflict-free space in the comic. The stories are simple ones about wacky friends doing friendly things and being harmless, something my little one is fond of despite her sympathy for monsters. I think I enjoy this one because it affords a bit of breathing space after the deep themes and heavy unpacking we need to do with other books – Trixie is just plain fluffy, but fun. It also helps that Trixie’s father looks like Maggie’s!
I have to add a honourable mention for one more book, Rabbit and Bear Paws. Someone left this issue on a table at the Palmerston library and Maggie insisted we take it home. I was in a hurry and groaned a yes even though it seemed to me to be totally beyond her both in terms of length and content. Wow, was I ever wrong! Yes, it’s long. Despite the trim size of the book, it takes a full 45 minutes to read out loud cover to cover. Yes, the content is slightly confusing – 3-year-olds barely grasp the existence of romantic love. But Rabbit and Bear Paws, the lead characters, are also just two kids watching a bigger world around them which they don’t fully understand. While the adults are resolving adult storylines, they are getting into trouble and glimpsing child-sized portions of the bigger whole. The comic emphasizes slapstick, another plus, and Maggie loves a setting there the kids have so much outdoor freedom. It’s a world of trees, water, animals and space to run and adventure. Also, Strawberry is totally badass.
We’re extra excited now for TCAF because this year, we have a kid who will unquestionably be up for some of TCAF’s extensive children’s content! And if we can’t wait until then, I’m told Little Island hosts Saturday afternoon “make your own comic” workshops, along with colouring for smaller bodies. Where was this stuff when I was a kid??? Brewing, I guess. It’s an exciting time to be a kid who’s into comics!
February 23, 2012
Today in literary mashups…
(Courtesy of my friend Steve Tassie, who I hope is hard at work writing this literary masterpiece! Steve is a comedian, game designer, pirate and sometimes even a teacher! He can be found in comedy clubs and board game cafes around Toronto, from time to time.))
February 22, 2012
Paper Love
This Christmas my sister, who works as a conservator at Kensington Palace, gave me the best gift a bibliophile could possibly hope for: preservation. Specifically, she mounted, matted and framed much of my growing collection of ephemera.
The Bookworm, a keepsake from the Alcuin Society and a warning to my houseguests.
I’ve blogged before about real value added in publishing and, well, here’s a prime example. There seems to be a growing trend of including ephemera in paper periodicals, ranging from the postcard-sized prints included in each issue of The Devil’s Artisan to the large-scale bookish curios that form the basis of The Thing. It’s an easy gimmick, really. If you want to sell a periodical as an object rather than the content, you need to capitalize on the physical. McSweeny’s has figured this out and with it reaped great success. Canadian periodicals haven’t become so ambitious as to print a Douglas Coupland bedspread (yet), but I love what I’ve received from Canadian Notes and Queries, Amphora, and DA nevertheless.
The first keepsake from CNQ.
Bit by bit my house looks less like an exploded college library and more like the private museum of a gin-muddled librarian. I must be growing up!
February 19, 2012
State of the Reading 2011
I used to do reading roundups every year on my Livejournal on January 1st of the new year, like clockwork. I did the first at the dawn of 2004, reporting that I had read in 2003 46 books (“not counting plays, graphic novels, magazines or school books”). In 2004 I read 39 books and described the total as “disappointing”. 2005 got worse with a total of 38 books, with the caveat that “in my defense I am in school and had to read an awful lot of journals, textbooks and notes which don’t appear on this list.” 2006 was a strong 46 again, but in 2007 I only eked out 19, a flop I attributed to learning to knit instead. 2008 I read 22 (“The excuse: Was knitting a blanket 4-8h a day solidly between March and June. Also, had a baby.”)
In 2009 I started blogging and read only 18 books officially because I didn’t want to own up in public that I read Twilight that year. I didn’t even bother to make an excuse then, because I suspect by this point I’d come to realize that I am actually a very slow reader who needs a dedicated 8h a day of uninterrupted reading time if I’m to even manage a book a week. In 2010 I moved my round-up to the blog rather than my LJ and added fancy graphics (because I am fancy). Surprisingly I managed to read 40 books and 32 graphic novels that year because, I think, I was back at work while strangers looked after my child – not sure how that works out in karma.
And all of that is a prelude to this year’s excuse. The Excuse has become as much of a yearly tradition, I now see, as the list itself. By the raw numbers 2011 looks okay:
Books read: 31
Books read before the baby was born: 23
Books read after the baby: 8
Not bad, right? We’re back to my pre-children numbers! But I have an excuse for excellence this time: I cheated. At least, what I did counts as cheating to me. I’m a bit of a subscriber to the Georgian philosophy of reading. It should hurt a little. It should be edifying. Reading “just novels” is fun, but perhaps not the very best use of one’s time. This is my way of avoiding hypocrisy. I like video games, but I wouldn’t advocate playing them all the time. I like television, but I don’t think you should watch it all the time. I like to read, but I don’t think you should just read novels all the time. It’s fun. It’s leisure. But leisure is what you get up to when your day of hard work is over, when you have a bit of time to yourself.
I like to challenge myself when I read, and this year I most assuredly did not. I re-read all of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. I re-read the entire Game of Thrones series. I read Patrick Rothfuss and Connie Willis. I indulged because, dammit, I spent half the year pregnant while caring for a toddler, gave birth in my basement without any kind of pain killers, then parented two pre-schoolers almost entirely by myself. That was my work this year. I was full up on work, thank you very much.
So maybe my numbers should look like this:
Challenging books read: 14
Indulgent books read: 17
Lives created: 1
Lives sustained: 4
As 2012 runs me down like a herd of panicked wildebeests I can only hope I am able to keep up a pace like the latter minus, knock on wood, the life created. A handful of books to make me a better reader, and a pile to keep me jolly while I continue with my new, harder job: sustaining lives!
January 29, 2012
Read: 2012
I won’t lie to you: this year I have a baby and a pre-schooler at home with me, both of whom take umbrage to my doing much reading. I catch a patch here or there during naps and while nursing, but I anticipate this will be a slow year. Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ll read a thing or two, and here’s what I’ve read (so far) in 2012. Links lead to reviews or discussions on my blog!
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
The Game by Ken Dryden
Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Laura by George Sand
Naked in the Marketplace by Benita Eisler
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James
The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
REAMDE by Neal Stephenson
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Kristen Lavransdotter (The Wreath) by Sigurd Ungen
Kitchen Party by Sheryl Kirby
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
(Check out, if you like, what I read in 2011, 2010 and 2009.)
November 29, 2011
Review: River of Smoke Is Why The Year Wasn’t As Bad As It Looks
You would think in a year that the Giller short list was described as “unusually strong” the Globe and Mail could have sounded less apologetic about the books which made their Globe 100 (The Very Best Books of 2011). 1Q84: “This colossus is expansive, enthralling, but also an over-long and occasionally exasperating foray into the lure of fanatical beliefs.” A Dance With Dragons: “The story has expanded far beyond the original characters to become a labyrinthine edifice”. Blue Nights: “This book … is somewhat jumbled.” By Love Possessed: “As a rule, this, broadly deployed, amusingly distances us.” The word “but” appears 24 times. The book suffers from these faults BUT in the end it was okay. I guess. If you really must read something.
I’m not being entirely fair, of course. I’m probably projecting my own feelings about much of what I read of 2011. By some miracle I have actually read two of the books which made the list – The Sisters Brothers and A Dance With Dragons – and my reaction to both titles was pretty similar given how completely different they are. That was fun, I guess. So that happened. The much-lauded Sisters Brothers was definitely the better of the two, being more stylistically adventurous and, you know, succinct. Unlike Dance it had an idea of where it was going and went there. Along the way I laughed. I appreciated deWitt’s human characters in circumstances which might have more easily fallen into melodrama. But (but) ultimately I found The Sisters Brothers too simple and too shallow. A clever edifice and some elegant language doesn’t make a great book for me. I might never have mentioned anything but for the bewildering heap of awards which continue to rain down on it. If anything I feel the need to mention that I find this bewildering. The book was good. It was not great.
I wonder if the Globe’s many reviewers felt similarly. A year of good books – maybe not great ones, but good. Of course, in a year, how many new releases do we actually manage to read? I’m a slow reader – I only managed 32-ish books this year. Of those a tiny fraction were newly published this year, a nice round five. I’ll name them for you: Pigeon English by Steven Kelman, Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin and River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh. But even in so small a sampling I think I can do the Globe’s reviewers one better, because I thought River of Smoke was absolutely fabulous.
For those of you just tuning in, River of Smoke is Amitav Ghosh’s “sequel” to his 2008 Booker-nominated Sea of Poppies. Calcutta-born Ghosh has said that these books (which Wikipedia describes as “the Ibis trilogy”, though I have heard Ghosh say there may well be more than three of them by the time he’s done with these characters) represent his attempt to show that there existed – and exists – a globalized world exclusive of Western influence. The theme of both books thus far can probably be broadly described as being “trade”, though for Ghosh no ology or ism is outside his purview. We have Free Trade and slavery, colonialism and multiculturalism, racism and camaraderie, modernism and magical realism. Ghosh’s project is to show that we have always been modern, been globalized, and furthermore “we” needn’t necessarily include a single European.
Half way through Sea of Poppies I was skeptical. I felt Ghosh’s politics were simply too heavy-handed. Characters were having the most appallingly contemporary conversations about neo-liberal political ideologies thickened by the worst kind of in-your-face racism. It wasn’t even satire, it was just a blunt stick. An example, from a British trader’s casual conversation in Sea:
‘The war, when it comes, will not be for opium. It will be for a principal: for freedom – for the freedom of trade and for the freedom of the Chinese people. Free Trade is a right conferred on Man by God, and its principals apply as much to opium as to any other article of trade. More so, perhaps, since in its absence many millions of natives would be denied the lasting advantages of British influence.’
So I thought, until I heard Ghosh interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel during the 2008 International Festival of Authors. Then I learned that Ghosh wasn’t just piping his politics through villainous caricatures, but was actually using conversations cribbed entirely from historical archives. This spun my understanding of the novel entirely on its head: this was real. We really were modern. Nothing has changed. This isn’t a new fight. There are valuable lessons to be learned and Ghosh was serving up history in the best possible way.
River of Smoke does not pick up where Sea of Poppies left off. Ghosh smartly avoids the “and then…” soap opera styling that genre fiction almost always falls into (*ahem* A Dance With Dragons) by literally scattering his characters all over the colonized world with one Deus ex hurricane. River follows the storylines of two of Sea‘s main characters, Paulette, the French-Indian botanist and Neel, the Bengali rajah-cum-escaped convict. Both characters find themselves in early 19th century Canton amid the politics and events that lead up to the First Opium War. The effect of the “scattering” is to arrive at an entirely new novel which does not in any way require the reader to have read Sea of Poppies, but continues exploring the events, politics, and connections which informed the far East.
Ghosh can do it all, as far as I’m concerned. His writing is stylish, poetic and beautiful. His story is exciting, funny, and human. The history is layered with human stories on top of quirky facts (like the incidental history of chai and samosas) couched in the big geopolitical picture. He uses a variety of pidgin dialects without providing (as he did in Sea) a glossary, but it takes no time at all for the reader to become fluent. Even at 500+ pages, the read never feels overwhelming or over-long. Every word has its place.
Maybe Ghosh doesn’t need my little recommendation, being as he already has had about every possible positive endorsement a writer can hope for in his career. But I loved this book so much and it pains me to see it passed over on this year’s Best Of lists (so far) in favour of other books which don’t even seem to come 100% recommended by their recommenders. I won’t qualify my praise at all: this book is excellent. Read it. And read Sea of Poppies while you’re at it. You are missing a real feast!
November 23, 2011
Canada Reads 2012: Literary Chop Round-Up
I managed, despite a sleepless night, a broken furnace, and two cranky small children, to make it out to CBC’s Canada Reads 2012 launch today! Ten minutes before I left my house, the Book Madam (Julie Wilson) tweeted the final five line-up and I was able to form all kinds of prejudices in the hour it took me to get downtown on the subway. Last year I had expressed my disappointment with the purely “entertainment” background of the panelists and this year’s list seemed to push even further in that direction, threatening even to make true yesterday’s sarcastic jibe about reality tv stars. The books were solid, but the panelists? I was skeptical. I will cautiously, optimistically say now that my fears seem largely unfounded. What sounded bad on paper (“supermodel”, “star of reality show”) turned out to be gross simplification of much more interesting and, thankfully, well-read personalities. I had the chance to ask a few quick questions about the reading habits of each panelist, summarized below. (Apologies to the CBC for cribbing their images – time is short this evening.)
Anne-France Goldwateris clearly a formidable woman. She earned some derision on Twitter for her comment (which I managed to miss – such is a hazard of tweeting something live) that she doesn’t read Canadian literature, but when I asked her what she reads instead she directed me to Danielle Trussart’s Le train pour Samarcande. This is not only a Canadian book (from Quebec, and as Goldwater claims to be a staunch Federalist, I assume Quebec still counts) but was a contender for this year’s Combat des livres. She also spoke highly of Dany Laferrière’s Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer (another Quebecois novel), describing Laferrière as “a french Anne Tyler”. Goldwater self-identifies as a heavy reader and, having heard her speak now, I believe her. I have no doubt she will be a very strong contender for the win.
Arlene Dickinson also claims to be a heavy reader. This I don’t doubt – not only was she eloquent, concise and poised at the launch, but she picked what is in my opinion one of the strongest books on the list. But I have to lament briefly the loss of the old Canada Reads format; you know, the one where panelists actually get to recommend for us a book of their own choosing, because Dickinson, when asked, spoke passionately about an entirely different work of Canadian non-fiction, Margaret Trudeau’s Changing My Mind. I overheard her later recommending this book again to someone else, so colour me intrigued! How many other panelists are fighting for their second (third, fifth, eighth…) choice? Regardless, Dickinson is standing behind a wonderful book, and she seems as able as anyone to give Anne-France Goldwater a run for our money.
I was totally skeptical about Shad, and now I feel like a total douche for doubting him just because he’s a rapper. His introduction to Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre sortof blew my mind; a perfect blend of eloquence, politics, rousing rhetoric and insight. Unsurprisingly, he is another self-described heavy reader, though admits he is “more of a non-fiction guy” (was this a pitch? I’ll never know). Still, when I asked him to recommend me something, he chose Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a short story collection, as well as Tolstoy – “his later non-fiction stuff”. *swoon* He is no intellectual lightweight. I’m secretly rooting for him & Aguirre to win – though I haven’t read the book and can only hope it lives up to my (now-heightened) expectations.
Okay, okay, the gushing ends here. Alan Thicke. When I asked him if he reads much, he almost laughed and said “no, not at all.” Just hockey books, I ventured? No, “mostly periodicals”. Okay, fine. Every panel needs a Nicholas Campbell, I guess. He’d sort of lost me during his introduction anyway, when he made some pretty bone-headed jokes about books for men versus books for women which fell pretty flat in a field where the lady-writers had produced heavy, serious books about war, human rights and revolution. The room chilled noticeably (more so than Anne-France’s revelation that she is a Stephen Harper supporter – a pretty ballsy move in the middle of the CBC, let me just say).
My friend suggested that Ken Dryden should have defended his own book, and I really could’t agree more. What a treasure HE turned out to be! Too bad that’s not how the game works.
Stacey McKenzie was another self-identified heavy reader of “non-fiction books”, “like memoirs”. Unfortunately I couldn’t wring any further evidence out of her because she insisted that her choice, Dave Bidini’s On a Cold Road, was the book she’d most recommend any day of the week, out of any field. Sounded a bit like a pitch to me. She admits she “has ADD” and needs a book to be snappy and grab her right away, or she can’t get into it – a quality which never struck me as being conducive to particularly extensive reading, but those could be my pesky prejudices again. What she lacks in eloquence she more than made up for in enthusiasm. I now fully expect On a Cold Road to completely blow my mind.
So learn from my mistake, O Reader. This might not look like much of a literary panel on its surface, but just below lurks the makings of some potentially great literary debate. Fingers crossed! Now for the reading – I’m cracking the spine on The Tiger tonight – and we’ll revisit the subject in February. I’m so excited to be… well, excited!
November 21, 2011
Back to Work!
Oonagh Elizabeth, her grandmother, and a carrot.
It has been five months since my last post. It has been an eventful five months for me. I am now mother to two beautiful girls, the younger of whom turned four months old yesterday. This might seem like a short “maternity leave” by Ontario standards, but Oonagh is a shockingly calm and self-satisfied baby and now, just over the newborn hump, I find I have no further excuse to avoid writing from time to time.
Not that I am looking for an excuse – I have been mentally composing blog posts for months now as exciting and interesting bookish things have cropped up, but have simply lacked the spare hands to type them up. I’ve re-read two epic speculative fiction series with mixed feelings, had heaps of much-anticipated new releases arrive for me at my bookstore, watched a really exciting awards season come and go, met new friends who also happen to be writers, discovered a true love of Canadian children’s storyteller Celia Barker Lottridge, had revelations about a three-year-old’s expectations of narrative, learned bizarre new things about digital textbooks… all of which I’m drooling to blog about, and will, over the next few months.
But probably most pressing, as my readers probably already know, is the imminent announcement of this year’s Canada Reads picks! I haven’t been following the bloggosphere at all these past months so I post this in innocence of everyone else’s three cents worth. But for my part, I am excited this year. While the CBC hasn’t abandoned their new crowd-sourcing mechanism for picking books (which I railed about last year) this year’s focus on non-fiction pretty much scuttles any potential that the final list will wind up as lackluster as last year’s. Canadian non-fiction is virgin territory for Canada Reads, and every one of the top 10 books (and, really, the top 40) is a big, relevant, important read. They can’t really go wrong, unless the five panelists are all 17-year-old reality television refugees without a literary credit among them. My reading this year – especially over the last six months – has been shamefully indulgent, so I’m thrilled to have an impending pile of books which will actually challenge my sleep-deprived and rusty intellect a little. My great hope is that the same will be true of the scores of people who read these books this year.
The big reveal is Wednesday, and I promise to do my homework between now and then. I’ll be back on twitter, the blogs, and, come Wednesday, the CBC building! Anyone else going to be there? I could use a little hand-holding through my return to the adult world. Not to mention that it will be the first time in months I’ll have two-or-more hours spent without a pre-schooler attached to me. I want to make the most of it!
No pressure, I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself either way! See you around…
June 16, 2011
Genre Snobbery
“As merely one example, the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards, states that “retellings of folk-tales, myths, and fairy-tales are not eligible” for their awards. Imagine guidelines that state, “Retellings of slavery, incest, and genocide are not eligible.” Fairy tales contain all those themes, and yet the implication is that something about fairy tales is simply… not literary. Perhaps the snobbery has something to do with their association with children and women. Or it could be that, lacking any single author, they discomfit a culture enchanted with the myth of the heroic artist. Or perhaps their tropes are so familiar that they are easily misunderstood as cliché. Possibly their collapsed world of real and unreal unsettles those who rely on that binary to give life some semblance of order.”
– Kate Bernheimer, in her introduction to My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me