March 8, 2009
Small magazine. Big roar.
Over at the Descant blog, I’ve written about the importance of small literary magazines in Canada. This in the wake of federal budget cuts that would eliminate Heritage Canada funding to magazines with a subscription base under 5000. Which, in the words of Bookninja, “is essentially every lit mag out there.” Read my piece, and be sure to join The Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines. At the bottom of the link, find addresses to which you should address your carefully worded letters of protest and support.
Thanks to Stuart Lawler for the image.
March 4, 2009
On Canada Reads
Unless forgetting to do it counts as participation (however passively?), this is my first experience participating in Canada Reads as either listener or reader. And I’ve written already about how much I’ve enjoyed it, how much I’ve been challenged as a reader by others’ competing viewpoints. I’m also glad to have discovered The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant, which I’ve become a wee bit obsessed with, and can’t stop talking about (and I would like a bracelet that says, “What Would Marcel Do?”). And now the radio debates, which I’m enjoying thoroughly. Which is not to say that some of the panelists don’t irritate me, but they’re a well-rounded bunch with so many viewpoints represented, and they’re challenging one another in all the ways they should be doing. My experience of their five books is being enhanced by the panelists’ perspectives. I love that books are being fought for. I love that any one could win.
Some things: I’m bothered by a lack of bolstering for Fruit, which is far from an insubstantial novel. Part of its complexity is that it can read as such, certainly, but read it again, you’ll find a different book. The book has been slated by YA, but I don’t think it is, or because if you give Fruit to a twelve year old and a thirty year old, they’re going to be reading two completely different books. There is a real darkness to Fruit, in spite of its humour, that nobody has remarked on. Also, stop talking about the nipples already, for they’re the most unremarkable part of the whole novel. And how about we talk about Peter Paddington vs. Sydney Henderson? Doesn’t Peter accomplish much the same goals as Sydney, narratively speaking, but manage NOT to be entirely one-dimensional?
Also, it turns out everybody loves The Fat Woman Next Door… And I can’t help but wonder if its age is part of that. If the thirty years since its publication have established the book within a context, and so we feel more confident supporting it than we might a book like Fruit, for example. I think it’s strange how many recent novels are included in the lot, and so criticisms that we cast upon them could go anywhere, for you never can tell. I also wonder what time will make of The Book of Negroes.
This conversation of what literature should do kind of makes me want to roll my eyes. For literature is a mulitiudinous thing, and sure it should educate (so says Avi Lewis), and confront us with morality (according to Slean), and make us laugh and show us ourselves (says Jen Sookfong Lee), but what I think it amazing about The Fat Woman… is that it does all of these things, and more. Literature should do a thousand things, and astound you at every turn.
I’m impressed by the subtle balance of Canada Reads gender-wise, by the way. Four out of the five books are by men, but many of them take into account women’s lives and experiences. And the panel is three women to two men. I feel that with this kind of balance, gender really ceases to be an issue, and we can get on to more exciting things.
Online, I’m really enjoying debates coverage at That Shakespeherian Rag, Roughing It In the Books, and the Keeping It Real Book Club.
February 16, 2009
Reading in a Chorus
I’ve long been fond of the fact that I’m part of a chorus of readers, both on-line and in the actual world. The deceptively unsolitary nature of reading endlessly delights me, though I’ve never really been driven have us all start singing the same song. I am difficult that way. So my Canada Reads challenge is just as much an experiment, but already I’m finding positive outcomes.
On Friday night we attended the Canada Reads event at the Toronto Metro Reference Library, hosted by Matt Galloway, and featuring Gil Adamson (author of The Outlander), Patricia Hamilton (I KNOW!) speaking for The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, Brian Francis (author of Fruit), Donna Bailey-Nurse championing The Book of Negroes, and Sarah Slean speaking for Mercy Among the Children, along with its author David Adams Richards. We received the familiar joys of listening to authors read from their work, learning about their books’ origins, but also the rarer joy (in public forums, at least) of readers championing beloved books. I do believe there is nothing else like it, the infection of avid readership. I came away from the event with new perspectives on the books I’ve already read, and I am bursting to read the final two.
At home, Canada Reads has become a family affair, and I’m enjoying that experience too. Underlining the fact that my opinions are so not subjective– my husband has adored The Book of Negroes, for instance, and we’ve had so many spirited discussions about our different interpretations of the book. Our differing opinions informing each other, though never managing to change our minds, oh no. But still, that there are no wrong answers here, no clear winners or losers. Each of the books has its own reasons for emerging victorious, and those lucky among us will get a sense of every one.
(Above, Matt Galloway with the fabulous Brian Francis.)
February 6, 2009
Tomorrow on the radio
I heard on the radio this morning that Shelagh Rogers’s The Next Chapter tomorrow will be celebrating Carol Shields on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of The Stone Diaries. CBC Radio 1 at 3:00pm. I will be listening.
January 26, 2009
Pickle Me This pivots
I’m thrilled by the fine company I’ll be joining once I’ve read at Pivot at the Press Club this Wednesday. I’ll be reading a short story called “Squash Season”, and sharing the mic with Stuart Ross and James Sandham. Come early to get a good perch; the show starts at 8:00. The Press Club is located at 850 Dundas Street West here in Toronto.
January 16, 2009
Reading never goes out of style
I just ordered Rachel Power‘s book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, and I’m looking forward to receiving it whenever seamail sees fit to deliver. Last night we heard Jessica Westhead read two short stories, and now we’re dying to read an entire collection of them. Maud Newton informs me that a new novel by Kate Christensen is out in June. “Drink, Cry, Hate”: Jezebel.com engages gag reflex re. Eat Pray Love interview. Rona Maynard on appreciating our lifelong women’s friendships, which were hardly possible just two generations ago. Tricia Dower on why she’s grateful to have never had an aversion to “speculative fiction”. And Julie Wilson celebrates reading in her wonderful and most inspiring article: “While there are seasons in publishing, reading itself never goes out of style.”
January 14, 2009
A Daring Experiment
Tonight, in a daring experiment subtitled “Kerry ventures out on a week/weak night”, I’ll be attending Pivot Readings at the Press Club. Looking very forward to seeing Jessica Westhead, as well discovering the work of Kyle Buckley and Rocco de Giacomo. Also hoping the temperature goes up above -30 Celsius. And I wish I were exaggerating.
January 10, 2009
"Someone almost always dies in the end"
I am excited about Roughing It In The Books, a reading project by Melanie Owen and Alexis Kienlen, who are each attempting to read the entire New Canadian Library. It’s easy to take the NCL for granted now, but when the series started 50 years ago, it was unprecedented and it remains important. Certainly Owen and Kienlen will need to blow the dust off some of the texts, and it’s not going to be easy, but they’ll surely find some treasure and some books are guaranteed to be a joy. I’m looking forward to reading along (albeit vicariously), and no doubt they’ll inspire me to pick up a book or two.
January 10, 2009
New (Canada Reads) Books!!
I really believe that Ben McNally couldn’t have picked a better location for his bookshop than right next door to the building where my husband works. And I am very grateful for a husband kind enough to pick up the Canada Reads stack on his lunch break, just because I can’t wait another day for them. Four new books (because I owned Mercy Among the Children already)!! A couple of which I’d never have picked up otherwise, due to a variety of literary prejudices that I’m pleased to be challenging in the coming weeks. And unlike my usual reviews (where I only write about the books I like enough to do so) I’ll be reading with a critical eye, and ranking these five picks to find a winner. Then I’m looking forward to seeing how my opinion compares to the official panelists’, and to opinion at large.
January 9, 2009
Pickle Me This jumps on the Canada Reads bandwagon
I don’t usually jump on reading bandwagons, mostly because my tastes are so conventional, I’m more or less riding along already. But for some reason I feel the urge to read all the Canada Reads books this year, and the urge has come with enough time for me to actually get to it. So I’ll be buying the books this weekend, and am looking forward to new discoveries. Stay tuned for my reviews.
