February 6, 2011
My Canada Reads Pre-Game
Here we go, another year of Canada Reads, usually one of my favourite annual literary events. As of now, Saturday February 5th, I have read 4 of the 5 Canada Reads 2011 books. I haven’t managed to crack Carol Shields’ Unless yet. I probably will have before the debates are over, but this post requires me to think a little harder than I’m accustomed to, and I felt I’d better get a head start. In any case, I don’t think missing Unless will matter – but more on that below.
I’m on the record already voicing my excitement about this year’s books and I was, I really was. I had a little hiccup in my reading schedule that put things off a while, but by the time I could look at a book without gagging, I had Terry Fallis’s Best Laid Plans tucked snugly in my purse. Of all the books, I was most excited about this one. Like so many other readers, I was craving a funny book, a lighter book, and heir to Quarrington and Richler and Leacock. I love politics to boot -how could this miss?
Well, it missed. And it missed so badly that it cast a pall over the rest of my Canada Reads reading too. I realized something as I set aside Best Laid Plans with disappointment and reached with dread for The Birth House. I was reading out of a sense of obligation, and moreover, I was feeling obligated to produce a particular kind of review. This post has been and will be hard for me to lay down because there’s a serious cult of the author getting in the way of honest assessments of the book. I have a lot of things I’d like to say about Best Laid Plans but I’m getting tongue-tied because I don’t want to offend its author, who is assuredly on the ball with this Canada Reads stuff. He is all over Twitter, and has even posted to my blog before. Do I really want to go tits-out and say what I really thought of his book? Surely I should soften it down, concoct a few nice things to say? That seems to be what everyone else is doing. (The nicest praise I can give it is that Best Laid Plans is the intellectual heir of Stuart McLean, not Mordecai Richler. Similarly, I suspect it played out better as a podcast than a book.) Or – a real alternative – I’m actually the only reader who found deep, serious flaws with this book. Certainly Twitter is flowing with gushing praise for it. Really? Really guys? Knowing my own hesitation to speak out too loudly against it – and I am traditionally ten times more willing than the average Canadian to shove my foot in my mouth – it seems likely we’re seeing at least a little brown-nosing out there. Without harping for too long, I found the whole book painfully conservative, like something written to make one’s 75-year-old grandfather laugh. The humour was either crude (never miss the chance for a fart joke if it arises!) or relied on the audience’s little-mindedness. If you find teen-aged punks, S&M and hippies shocking, Fallis’s humour works. If, like most people, punks, alternative lifestyles and the NDP are part of your every-day life, you’re more likely to find Fallis’s humour offensive. Fair warning.
While I wasn’t as disappointed with Ami McKay’s The Birth House or Angie Abdou’s The Bone Cage, I definitely feel there’s a similar element of glad-handing going on here. Both of these books – both debut novels – are solid, and show some promising sparks for writers who will no doubt improve over subsequent novels. And maybe we should thank Canada Reads for this – it will give both women the sales figures they need to work on and publish later, hopefully better, books. But neither book really shone for me. The Birth House in particular echoed Anne-Marie MacDonald’s superior writing, without much of the daring and bite. Think of it as Fall on Your Knees written by Lucy Maud Montgomery – pre-Blythes. The Bone Cage certainly tread more original territory, mostly by virtue of its subject matter, but it felt thin on the insight, and absent any really interesting prose stylings. Yet to hear Twitter and the blogs go on about them, these are luminaries of Canadian literature. Some day, maybe. Not today.
I do intend to read Unless, but I think it is a non-entity in this year’s Canada Reads debates for the simple reason that it doesn’t have a present, hands-on author available. Unless the other panelists feel the way I do – that they’ve been railroaded into defending mediocre books – and want to reward one with actual literary credentials, I think Unless will be an easy book to vote off because there isn’t anyone to disappoint. The panelists and the three above-mentioned authors (Adbou, Fallis & McKay) seem to have become thick as thieves throughout the Canada Reads process, and that’s an alliance that I think counts for a lot come the “debates”. This won’t be about the books. This will be about the personalities.
Glaringly, I haven’t said a thing about Jeff Lemire’s Essex County. Well, read on – I have no complaint here. If there’s any justice in this competition, Essex County will take the prize. The only complaint made against the book is that it’s a graphic novel. If you want to pretend this is real criticism, I suppose you could recast the statement and say it isn’t a very long read; as most of the story is visual and not written, you will be through the volume in a couple of hours at best. Jeff Lemire has been brief and, generally, absent from a lot of the online build-up to the show, as I think he should be. He is working on other projects, dedicating himself to something other than self-promotion. The book should stand for itself. After reading the other three, I don’t feel any of them could have stood without the promotion and enthusiasm of their authors.
This year’s Canada Reads will be a test, I think. Is it about the book, or the personalities? If it’s about the book, we’ll see Unless or Essex County carry the day. If we consider personalities, this could land anywhere but on Shields’ doorstep. I hope desperately that come the debates the literature will shine through the hype and the competition.
January 20, 2011
What kind of Bookie are you?
I waver back and forth every six months or so between my two great loves: books and books.
On the one hand we have books, the kind I sell and read, the kind I review, the kind we can all engage in because of their uniformity, ubiquity, and accessibility. These books are current and relevant to most people; they are supported by communities who are in turn supported by a vast network of publishers, creators, reporters and fans. Life with these books is exciting and relevant as well as personally fulfilling. There’s industry gossip, bookselling drama, public spats over criticism and clubs and challenges to engage in. These books are professionally relevant to me: I need to know them inside and out as a bookseller, and any future profession I might be made to take up will also likely hinge on my involvement in them. Which is alright, because I love these books.
But sometimes these books wear me down. Most of them are good but not great. They pass, like fads and fashions. Nevertheless there are a lot of them, and keeping current means slogging your way through a lot. For a slow reader like myself, there’s a sense that much of it isn’t worth my time. There’s continued pressure from authors and publicists to laud a book I was indifferent to. There’s pressure from communities to read books or blocks of books in order to participate in the public conversation, regardless of if they hold any individual interest. You need to know everything this year, but if you’ve forgotten it all by next year that’s alright. These books feel transient.
The other hand holds books, the timeless guardians of knowledge. These are the books I study, read, and collect. Nobody living is in any hurry to claim these as their product. They can be found in attics and libraries, garage sales and boxes on the street corner. It’s not always immediately evident what they are, where they came from, and what secrets they might hold. Decoding them and identifying them sometimes takes a lot of knowledge and research. But they are unique and surprising, often beautifully crafted. You might be the only person you ever meet who has the pleasure of enjoying any one of them. Reading them and knowing them puts you in the company of the giants of Western civilization. They are also professionally useful, bookselling to academics as I do. I’m rarely as happy as I am browsing the hushed booths of an antiquarian bookfair. These are the books of my dreams, and I adore them.
But then, these books are often remote and inaccessible. Those that aren’t held close to the chest in libraries can be prohibitively expensive. Even where easily acquired, these books need specialized knowledge, research and hard work, sometimes, to identify and even read. Communities of like-minded readers and collectors are hard to find, competitive, and sometimes hostile. People who do not share your mania will find discussions of books like these inaccessible and most likely boring. Professions specializing in books like these are scarce, hard to break into, and quickly becoming obsolete. Engaging with these books is lonely business.
Anyone who thinks these two loves have anything at all in common is kidding themselves. People who love books and people who love books rarely overlap or have anything to say to each other. Yet, look. The Private Library featured this week a short introduction to Fanfare bindings. How could any warm body deny how beautiful these are? Or, meanwhile, even the driest academic or bibliographer gets excited once or twice a year when the latest Parker novel by Richard Stark is released, or in a year some massively deserving body like Hilary Mantel wins the Booker. I really wish there was much more overlap between these two worlds. I would love to see contemporary publishing publish less and take more care with the books they produce, drawing more from history and less from fashion when picking and producing their goods. Academic and antiquarian readers, meanwhile, have got to get with the program and make better use of social media and communities to spread and share knowledge about and enthusiasm for their object of interest.
I shouldn’t feel quite so two-headed when enthusing about one book or another. They are all books, right? Haven’t we got some more common ground?
January 17, 2011
Reading, 2011
Once again, I have chosen not to participate in any reading challenges for this year. But if such things tickle your fancy, check out Nathalie Foy’s round-up of a huge number of 2011 reading challenges (all of which she is participating in)!
Novels:
Truth & Bright Water by Thomas King
The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
The Birth House by Ami McKay
The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
Unless by Carol Shields
Dune by Frank Herbert
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
The Two Dianas by “Alexandre Dumas” (Paul Meurice)
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Pigeon English by Steven Kelman
Chapterhouse Dune by Frank Herbert
A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
On Monsters by Stephen Asma
Whale Music by Paul Quarrington
Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
Travelling Heroes by Robin Lane Fox (abandoned)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me ed. Kate Berntheimer
Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
A Feast For Crows by George R. R. Martin
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh
Blackout by Connie Willis
All Clear by Connie Willis
The Tiger by John Vaillant
January 17, 2011
The State of My Reading 2010/2011
Ah, 2011. A blank slate once again if you happen to be keeping track of things by calendar year. I don’t keep track of much by calendar year, but my reading log is one of the few things.
It’s a bit late, I know, to start rhapsodizing about the new year – almost three weeks too late. But, if you haven’t heard, I’ve been down sick with the first trimester of a brand-new pregnancy for the last two months and it’s only recently that I’ve been able to pick up a book or sit in front of a word processor without feeling immediately nauseous. So my new year of reading begins now, a bit late, just as my old year of reading had to be aborted a little early.
2010 wasn’t a bad year for me. I read exactly 40 books, and on top of that 32 graphic novels. This is very nearly double what I read in 2008 and 2009 (22 & 21 books respectively) though not so amazing as the 46 I read in 2006 (including such bricks as War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged and Richard Fortey’s The Earth). That was back before I had kids, or had taken up knitting – reading disruptors both. For a complete list you can always look here, but I always prefer to end my year with a tallying of meaningless statistics, in order to make my reading resemble a scientific undertaking.
Books Read in 2010: 40
Non-Fiction: 12.5% (5/40)
“Children’s” or “Young Adult” Lit: 10% (4/40)
Read but Not Owned: 0.5% (2/40)
Bought in 2010: 60% (24/40)
Bought in Previous Years: 35% (14/40)
Bought in 2010 but Not Read: Don’t ask.
At This Rate, I’ll Be Crushed Under a Bookshelf By: 2025
Favourite 5 Books of 2010:
Margaret de Valois by Alexandre Dumas
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
KENK: A Graphic Portrait by Richard Poplak, Alex Jansen, Jason Gilmore & Nick Marinkovich
Biggest Accomplishment of 2010: 42.5% of the books I read were Canadian! 28% of the graphic novels too. Behold the science:
Looking ahead to 2011, I wanted to say I don’t have any goals. But in reality I have two whoppers: I want to finish all ten of the as-of-yet untouched Canada Reads and Canada Reads Independently 2011 books by March. And I would love, despite Beta’s arrival in July, to manage to read at least 20 books this year. That means I’d better choose my remaining 10 books carefully – and those chosen for me had better be great!
Wish me luck!
December 13, 2010
We Edit While We Read
More than anything these days, I have been reading children’s books. I’ve been having trouble focusing on reading lately, but my 2-year-old has no mercy for me: for her, there’s still a 20-book-a-day requirement that needs to be met. We’ve both become pickier picture-book consumers lately, though our criteria don’t always match up. She gravitates towards the familiar – animals she knows, scenarios she recognizes – and me, I’m searching for the impossible.
I’m turned off by a lot in picture books. Some books are too saccharine, some are too preachy. Others have art that’s hard to make out, while others are too simple. When all else fails I reach for titles or stories I read as a child, relying on my child-self’s recommendation. But my child-self wasn’t very culturally aware, I guess, because now I’m just appalled by some of what I read.
I have been struggling with Rumpelstiltskin. We read a lot of fairy tales and yes, some versions are better than others, but I can’t make this one work. Everything about it offends me. A girl is given away as a gift by her braggart father to a greedy and cruel king. She’s put to work on pain of death. Rather than try to escape or solve her situation, she sits down and cries. Tears attract pity, and she’s helped by a hard-bargaining fairy. Eventually she marries her abuser and has a child by him. When her own stupidity comes back to bite her in the ass she, once again, cries her way out of it. Ultimately she comes up on the winning end of a riddle because her servant solves it for her.
The first thing Maggie asked me when we started reading Rumpelstiltskin was “What’s the girl’s name?” Typically, she doesn’t have one in either edition we read (Marie-Louise Gay’s then, later, Paul Zelinsky’s.) She is known by her position: either the “miller’s daughter” or “the Queen”. I couldn’t stomach a heroine defined by her relationship to the abusive men in her life, so I immediately made one up for her – she is now Rebecca. Not a page later I was choking on the words again. The king – depicted in Zelinsky’s version as a handsome young man – is locking her in rooms and threatening her with little, if any, rebuke from the narrator. I couldn’t take this either. Every time the king comes up now I find myself adding “-who was a jerk-” to his name. I quickly flip past her wedding, where she is depicted looking bafflingly happy to be there.
I grudgingly report the pathetic way in which she gives herself up for dead every other page but I had had quite enough by the end of the story. In my version, Rebecca doesn’t send her servant out to find Rumpelstiltskin’s name, she does it herself. Because she’s the heroine, right? She has to do SOMETHING in the book other than look pretty and pathetic. But in the end I feel I’ve cobbled together a still-sad tale that says some very dubious things about life to my very small daughter. I cringe when she requests the book.
Luckily, SurLaLune tells me that I am not the only one who finds this a troubling piece. Modern interpretations abound. I simply adored Susanna Clarke’s “On Lickerish Hill”, a telling of Tit Tat Tot, from her collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu, but it’s a bit beyond a 2-year-old, especially with the archaic language. But surely Maggie needs a grounding in the original story before she can appreciate, some day, these liberated versions? I just hope she doesn’t get any ideas from them. In the meantime I’m editing, shamefully, to keep hold of my sanity.
December 1, 2010
Hm.
“”Romance” is most often used in literary studies to allude to forms conveying literary pleasure the critic thinks readers would be better off without.” – Margaret Doody, The True Story of a Novel
December 1, 2010
Prelude to Some Reviews
I’ve been terribly, terribly lax about reviewing lately. I’ve been reading, taking notes and thinking, but I’m torn at the moment on the notion of publishing those thoughts. I enjoy it – it’s the natural output of an opinionated reader. But at the same time, my reviews this year have tended towards the testy and the cranky, and I’m feeling poorly about that. I know that every book speaks to each reader in a different way and so, as a reviewer, you have a certain responsibility to highlight the book’s strong points even if you didn’t really take much pleasure in them. But by the same token, I have read very few books this year that I would rate, on a scale of five stars, higher than a three; and I don’t think I’m doing anyone a service by blowing sunshine about something which is essentially mediocre. It doesn’t help that in the very exciting flurry of early review copies I received at the beginning of the year I got some real duds and reviewed them as such, which probably put publicists off sending me anything ever again. It feels a bit like betraying their good will – but at the same time, it isn’t my job as a reviewer to white-wash a book just so I might continue to receive future free books. You wouldn’t buy it anyway. It doesn’t sound true coming from my (metaphorical) lips.
I thought I might, then, avoid reviewing books unless they were really noteworthy. In a way, this has just served to emphasize, to me anyway, exactly how mediocre most books are. With the exception of Essex County and Doctor Zhivago (review forthcoming), most of the books I’ve read in the last four months have been disappointments. They weren’t terrible, of course. They had their moments. But I’m hardly prepared to rave about them in public, or even lend them off to other people. (Don’t read too much into this, by the way – just because I haven’t linked a review to a book on my reading list doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I am also sometimes just lazy.)
So do I publish cranky reviews or make nicey-nicey? Leave off reviewing altogether and tell you about the latest frustrations of running an independent bookstore? To be honest I haven’t quite finalized a long-term plan yet, but I have decided to do a review dump. Over the next few days I’ll give a cluster of paragraph-sized reviews of some of the more interesting things I’ve read. After that, who knows. I’m inclined to give my blog a new subtitle: “Thoughts from a very ornery individual” or something, which will serve as a warning to anyone who prefers rainbows and lollipops. After all, we can’t all review with the same voice, just as we don’t all read with the same eyes. Diversity is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Consider me the resident badger!
November 24, 2010
4 Thoughts About Canada Reads 2011
I made it down to the Canada Reads launch after all, though I took off pretty quickly after the ceremony was over. Sorry I couldn’t stay to schmooze – I’m a working girl! Pop over to the Canada Reads site to see the books and panelists. Meanwhile, my initial thoughts:
Good Old Canada Reads
The CBC’s continued (and slightly ridiculous) hyperbole aside, this is not a list of the five “most essential” books of the decade. That list would see McKay, Fallis, Abdou & Lemire replaced with Hill, Boyden, Martel and Gibson. But thank goodness for that. This list, much more a product of grassroots advocacy and adventurous panelists, is more interesting than a list of “essentials” ever could have been. I get to read four books I’ve never read (I read – and loved – Essex County just recently) and three newbie novelists (and one very hard-working graphic novelist) get a kick at the Professional, Full-Time Novelist can. This list looks like any Canada Reads list from the last 10 years.
Laraque & Abdou – Yikes!
I’ll tell you straight, at the launch these two looked unbeatable. Both excellent speakers, making excellent points in Bone Cage‘s favour. What could beat them? Well, the book might not actually be any good. But then, I realized, to whom would that matter? For the first time, I don’t see any seriously “intellectual” faces on this Canada Reads panel. I suspect every last one of the five panelists is going to play a tactical or emotional game. Too bad for serious criticism, but I’m sure we’ll see some entertaining debate instead.
Anne Giardini – Oh Dear.
Any enthusiasm I might have had about reading Unless – which was mixed to begin with, as I loved Republic of Love but hated Stone Diaries – was nearly killed by Anne Giardini’s limp and bland “endorsement”. I spent her five minutes rolling my eyes at her “quintessentially Canadian” this and “emotional tour de force” that. Carol Sheilds wouldn’t have been so obsequious. Yuck.
Live Finale!
Probably the biggest news of all is that the final episode of Canada Reads will be taped live this year in front of an audience. This is, I’m sure, a wise reaction to some concerns raised last year at Book Camp T.O. and elsewhere that in the world of social media, taping the debates ahead of time and announcing the results on the radio long after cartons of the Canada Reads winner have been shipped to big box bookstores was bound to result, ultimately, in leaks. I love the idea that this year, we’ll all know the winner at the same time.
***
On to the reading! I’ve put my orders through for my copies of the four books I lack. All that remains is to get them and to read them! Oh, and to continue to wait anxiously for Kerry Clare’s equally-anticipated (by me, anyway) announcement about her Canada Reads Independently 2011 panelists and books! Having heard a mere spoiler of what Kerry has in store for us, I feel I have reason to believe there will be several VERY interesting books chosen for this list too! As with last year, I’ll be reading both sets this year – that’s the kind of masochist I can be. Hope you’ll join me!
November 23, 2010
Rare Public Appearance!
I’ve decided to emerge from my den and make a rare trek out into the public for the Canada Reads 2011 launch tomorrow! Anybody else? I’d love to see some friendly or familiar faces. I’m hideously shy, so it’s not very likely I’d have the nerve to approach anyone under my own power – but please, if you see me lurking around the periphery (possibly snapping photos), do come up and say hi!
Crossing my fingers for all 10 (well, 6 or 7 of them, anyway) of the top-10 authors!
November 19, 2010
It isn’t just *books* I hoard…
Aren’t those adorable? They’re Book Darts from Lee Valley Tools. I’ve been feeling under the weather for the last week or so; nausea, mostly, which has been making novel-reading a bit of a challenge. But like so many I’m a compulsive reader anyway, and this week I’ve been reading all the silly Christmas catalogues that have been coming to the house.
My dad does all his shopping at Lee Valley so I have every reason to suspect there are Book Darts on my horizon, which would be amazing because I am an obsessive acquirer and user of book marks. I always leave a bookmark in a book I’ve finished reading, as a means of marking it “read” – as well as a way of dating when I read it. This creates a need for infinite “disposable” bookmarks in the house (most often our Bob Miller Book Room beauties). Every time there’s a Small Press Book Fair or a Word on the Street I come away with a bag almost entirely filled with bookmarks. And they get used.
This doesn’t stop me from also acquiring quite a lot of good, reusable bookmarks. One of my favourites is from the Osborne Collection, a reproduction of the beautiful gilt-on-blue spine of The Book of Romance (image somewhat shamefully stolen from elsewhere on the internet). My boss once gifted me a bookmark featuring a monogrammed “C”, from Italy. As silly as it sounds I replace these bookmarks with a disposable one once I’ve finished a book. They also only get used for particular, appropriate books. I should get a prize for attention to detail – or maybe I should be institutionalized; whichever. My Italian “C” last saw use in the new translation of Orlando Furioso; the Book of Romance accompanied me through all three of Dumas’s Valois Romances.
For Canadian books I use promo book marks for… Canadian books. I just used The Workhorsery‘s (lovely) promotional bookmark for Wilson’s Julian Comstock, and you know what? Having Workhorsery’s mission statement staring at me during all my reading for a week and a half actually did the promotional trick. I’m now so intrigued by them (and encouraged by their recent signing with LitDist for distribution) that I have every intention of buying both their books at the next Small Press Book Fair. It’s at the top of my shopping list.
I once wanted to do a study of early bookmarks, a topic which falls under “ephemera” in book history. It never came to be, which is unfortunate because I’d turned up some unusually marked-books in my rummagings. There seems to be something more personal, sometimes, in how readers choose to mark, tag, annotate and adorn their books. I’d love to hear your own bookmark habits! Have a favourite? Avoid them entirely? Any – dare I ask – dog-earers out there?
Happy friday!