March 8, 2009
(Almost) Definitive
Oh, this is good. Melanie from Roughing It In the Books gets a bit more definitive than I did about what she’d recommend for the nation to read. Her choice is Thomas Trofimuk’s Doubting Yourself to the Bone, which I’ve never heard of, and have requested at the library. And I’ve managed to narrow it down to two, which is the best I can do. Pickle Me This’s recommendations for Canadian books the whole nation should read is The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Lawrence, and Russell Smith’s Muriella Pent. The first because I bet you have strong opinions of Lawrence based upon having read The Stone Angel in grade twelve, and this might challenge some of them. The second, because it demonstrates that contemporary Canadian fiction can be fabulous to read, and different than anything else you’ve read before.
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 6, 2009
Who Does She Think She is?
Because Rachel Power’s book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood hasn’t been far from my thoughts since I finished it a few weeks ago, I was very intrigued to discover the new documentary film Who Does She Think She Is? Addressing the same divided heart that Power does, the film is directed by Academy Award winner Pamela T. Boll, and explores the lives of women artists who’ve managed to combine motherhood and artisthood, as well as the question of why they stand out as such anomalies in this experience.
Showing at the Revue Cinema in Toronto tonight, tomorrow and Sunday.
March 6, 2009
What would you bring?
All week I’ve been contemplating the inevitable– whatever will I decide to bring to the table the day CBC calls me up and asks me to be a panelist on Canada Reads? I’ve thought about this even more than I’ve thought about my Academy Awards acceptance speech, which is saying something. In addition to the fact that I’m delusional.
I’m really convinced that there is merit in celebrating underread “classics”, and that new books indeed could do with a boost, but we just don’t know enough about how they’d stand up yet. My longish shortlist would probably include The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Lawrence, The Watch that Ends the Night by Hugh MacLennan, Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle. Of more recent books, perhaps Muriella Pent by Russell Smith, Alligator by Lisa Moore, Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner, The Way the Crow Flies by Anne-Marie MacDonald, or The Republic of Love by Carol Shields.
No doubt you strongly disagree with my picks. But wouldn’t it be boring if you didn’t?
March 6, 2009
I'm glad at least
So maybe now everyone in Canada won’t be reading The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant, but I’m glad at least that I got to.
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.
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.
March 4, 2009
Like acid-washed jeans
I really enjoyed Meghan Daum‘s collection of essays, My Misspent Youth. She comes by her Joan Didion comparisons honestly, except I laughed out loud at Daum’s work, and however much I revere Joan Didion, she’s never made me do that. For a sample, could I please refer you to “Music Is My Bag”? “I grew up surrounded by phrases like “rattle off that solo,” “nail that lick,” and “build up your chops.” Like acid-washed jeans, “chops” is a word that should only be invoked by rock and roll guitarists but is more often uttered with the flailing, badly timed anti-authority of the high school clarinet player.” Oh my, yes.
March 3, 2009
Addendum
This occurred to me yesterday as I was making my lunch, as an addendum to the Life-Changing Books list. That I must note Beverly Clearly’s Ramona Quimby, Age 8. Because ever since reading it many years ago, I have been unable to crack a hardboiled egg any other way except slap against my forehead.
