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.
October 29, 2008
Links for Today
Sandra Martin’s full-length obituary of Constance Rooke was beautiful, and told the story of an extraordinary person who was an extraordinary reader. GG Nominee Rivka Galchen profiled in The Globe. I loved Lisa Moore’s review of Anne Enright’s Yesterday’s Weather. An interview with John Updike in The Guardian. Where are the woman with big ideas? Claire Cameron thinks they moved to Canada. And “Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill” –on Sarah Palin in the London Review of Books— is terrifying.
October 23, 2008
Linky Places
The best thing lately is FontPark, in which you can create pictures out of kanji. With sound effects! So fun. And then Rebecca Rosenblum reading Weetzie Bat to the world. Sarah Liss on Sarah McLachlan, and how she got her heart broke. (People who read this article also read “Man accidentally shoots himself in head with crossbow”, incidentally.) Ivor Tossell’s bits on the internet that just won’t die. Ringing so true: “An Invective against birthday dinners”. Pickle Me This faves Atmospheric Disturbances, Skim and Nikolski are up for Governor General’s Literary Awards (for fiction, children’s literature, and translation, respectively). And finally, I am about a begin reading a paranormal suspense novel. So stayed tuned for details of that…
October 1, 2008
Boydens
Currently reading the like-nothing-I’ve-ever-read-before Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden. Boyden and her husband Joseph Boyden are profiled at the CBC.
September 25, 2008
Astrobiology
From our Rap Songs Commissioned to Drum Up Interest for Unfashionable Topics file (see Hip Hop Wordsworth Squirrel), we bring you “Astrobiology”, NASA’s rap about the search for life in outer space.
September 17, 2008
How fortunate
Oooh, Giller Longlist. And I’ve read not a one. How fortunate, however, that only three of them are by women, and I can only ever be bothered to read books by women, so my bedside stack won’t stack too intimidatingly (and topple in the night and kill me in my sleep, etc.). Indeed, I did somehow find myself in a bookshop today, standing at the cash clutching The Boys in the Trees and Good to a Fault. I’ve been meaning to read the first one for ages, as it’s been recommended by esteemed readers Maud Newton, Stephany Aulenback and Rona Maynard. Of the second book, I know nothing, but the blubs were all by authors I liked, and so I thought, Why not?
