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 5, 2009
Rumours Afoot
Now reading Come, Thou Tortoise. Now full of banana scones. Rona Maynard (who never misses anything) has referred me to Persimmon Tree (an online literary magazine by women over sixty) and a review by Laura Miller of Elaine Showalter’s new book A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. Dovegreyreader celebrates her blog’s birthday with an interview with Justine Picardie. Stephany Aulenback contemplates names for her baby (and in case you’re wondering, we’ve got names for our’s already, both boy and girl options lifted from children’s novels that have the hero’s name in the title). Canada Reads is now without Mercy. Zoe Heller profiled (and her new book The Believers is out now). I found the G&M’s discussion of the smutty novel Wetlands far more entertaining than I’m sure the book would be. And over at the Biblioasis blog, read Terry Griggs’ foreward to the reprint of her GG-nominated collection Quickening. The reprint is out this spring from Biblioasis, along with a new work by Griggs, both of which I’m thrilled to read– I encountered her first with the Salon des Refuses, and I’m entranced now. Rumours also afoot that she might stop by for an interview here.
January 21, 2009
On the new Globe & Mail Books
Last August I was one of many hysterical book lovers contacting The Globe & Mail about its books section’s two week “summer vacation” from the Saturday paper. My email received a rapid reply assuring, “This is only a two-week pause before the fall season. There is no plan or intention whatsoever to discontinue the Books section.” Which was totally a lie! Kind of nervy, but at least then I wasn’t surprised in December to learn that the paper’s freestanding Books section would be no more in 2009. The section emerged reborn two weeks ago combined with the Focus section, partnered with expanded online coverage.
Now that I’ve finally figured out how to view the RSS feeds, I find that I’m enjoying the new Globe & Mail Books online section more than I thought I would. Though the now-shrunken print edition disappoints– I really love getting newsprint ink all over my fingers on Saturday mornings, and no amount of online coverage could replace curling up on the couch with the paper and a cup of tea. I also don’t love the thematic reviews– books on film the first week, Obama-esque books last week in honour of the inauguration. The theme is to hook, I realize, but I really do prefer books in general. Fabulous, however, that last week’s section included a poem, and I also adored the new feature on underrated books we should know about.
Online, I am enjoying the daily reviews (though I’m never very interested unless it’s fiction and there isn’t enough fiction!). As well as pieces such as Lisa Gabriele’s (whose The Almost Archer Sisters I’m a fan of) on writing fiction autobiographically, and Julie Wilson on well-worn books. In Other Words is interesting, frequently updated, and various– I liked Ben McNally’s response to Jane Urquhart’s underrated text and the fact that his bookshop sold both copies of The Blue Flower the following Monday. And Martin Levin’s Shelf Life is delightful.
So I’m happy, even though I hate change. I just hope the Globe Books follows on with its momentum. And that I never open my paper on a Saturday morning to find a print books section that’s just a page or two long.
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.”
December 30, 2008
To be outraged and confused
And do you want to read about my December knitting projects? Because you can check them out here. Heather Mallick’s wonderful New Years Resolutions. I thought Tabatha Southey’s column was funny (‘I couldn’t help but wonder if I should take a page from her book. But then I thought, “Heavens no, it’s a Maeve Binchy novel and it’s absolutely drenched in mint cocoa”‘), but the commenters were outraged and confused. (Why are these people never embarrassed when they fail to get a joke? I would be, and I don’t even post my ignorance on national forums). Sandra Martin’s “Confessions of an Obituarist” was splendid. Vital context was acquired from LRB pieces “A Chance to Join the World: A Future for Abkhazia”, and “Lessons in Zimbabwe”.
December 23, 2008
Crumbs
On “slummy mummy” writing: “[these] writers know these idiosyncrasies aren’t really faults but bargaining chips… The domestic preoccupation seems so much worse because the women are complaining about domesticity without moving beyond it.” Via Maud Newton, Laura Miller on rereading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.” Could Curtis Sittenfeld’s fictional reassessment of Laura Bush have been all too misleading? Macleans covers Rebecca Rosenblum’s marriage to Robert Downey Jr. The Edible Woman is Seen Reading (aside: last time I read this book, I thought it was dated and politically irrelevant, however brilliant. An essential literary artifact. And then it was sometime last year when I was restless, and everybody told me I should have a baby, and I started feeling a bit like a cake. And now I am having a baby, and of course I’m thrilled about it, but I’ve realized I was wrong about The Edible Woman).
December 4, 2008
Notable
What are the odds? That for the second year in a row Pickle Me This has read six (6) books out of the New York Times 100 Notable. And that also for the second year, I’ve read the first and second books listed (which raises one’s expectations a bit, no? But then they’re in alphabetical order). Books featured that we love including American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, Home by Marilynne Robinson, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson, and Yesterday’s Weather by Anne Enright. The list also includes Richard Price’s Lush Life, which I just might be receiving for Christmas.
From the Globe and Mail 100, we’ve read a far more respectable 12, having noted here The Girl in Saskatoon by Sharon Butala, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio, The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters by Charlotte Mosley, The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews, Stunt by Claudia Dey, Coventry by Helen Humphries, The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan, Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith, Home by Marilynne Robinson and Goldengrove by Francine Prose.
Stay tuned for the Pickle Me This Picks of ’08, still to come.
November 28, 2008
The Children's Book Bank
This morning on the radio I heard about The Children’s Book Bank, an amazing initiative offering free books and literacy support in downtown Toronto. The Book Bank operates much like a bookshop, or a library, except that the books are free.
From their website: “A visit to The Children’s Book Bank is much like a visit to a familiar and well loved children’s book store. The space is safe, warm and inviting and is intended to create a wonderful oasis for the children; a place where they can relax and experience the magic of books and enjoy reading.”
Those of us who love books very much can certainly imagine the pride these children must take in owning their own libraries. For information on how to donate money or “gently used, high quality children’s books” to the Children’s Book Bank, click here.
November 18, 2008
Satisfied
Now reading and being absolutely blown away by Anne Enright’s collection Yesterday’s Weather. I just finished reading Justine Picardie’s Daphne, which was a wonderful literary mystery ala Possession except the sources all were real– remarkable, and I loved it. I also just finished The New Quarterly 108, and Kristen Den Hartog‘s “Draw Crying” was so awful, beautiful and perfect that it had me crying, and not just because I’m pregnant.
Also my dinner was really delicious.
Further, there are good things to read everywhere. Fabulously, on Iceland’s economic meltdown, and its ancient sagas, and its literature today. Who’s reading what at TNQ. Globe reviews this week: When Will There Be Good News, and Lucy Maud Montgomery: Gift of Wings. Good heavens: a book by a woman put forth as one of the 50 greatest. On snow books, and what to read in the darkness of winter. Miriam Toews (of the remarkable Flying Troutmans) wins the Writer’s Trust Award for Ficion. Listen to Esta Spalding reading Night Cars by Teddy Jam (who was Matt Cohen— I didn’t know!).
November 6, 2008
We love the whole world
We’ve always loved America here at Pickle Me This, for such love was the religion upon which we were raised. But all the same, we have never been so proud to be your upstairs neighbour, never more inclined to break out in a round of I Love the World. We have never been more inspired to believe in change, to look with hope towards the future, and believe that anything is possible. That the whole wide world can be so much better than this, and your country is the reason why it will be. You’re the kind of city I’d like up on my hill, and I am so envious of the opportunity you all had to elect a person so deserving of victory. Congratulations. The road is still long, but because of yesterday, everything is different already.
Bookish Election links from The Guardian: PrezLit Quiz; do good writers make good leaders?; a new short story by Lorrie Moore; and a review of Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife.
