Kate's Book Blog

Shelf Discovery Challenge

2009-10-27T13:35:00.001-04:00

I've been successfully resisting participation in reading challenges all year, feeling that I needed a bit of respite after getting carried away with them in previous years and thereby transforming my pleasure reading into a source of stress. But Booking Mama's Shelf Discovery Challenge dovetails so nicely with my current project of revisiting the books that mattered most to me in childhood that there's no way I'm going to pass this one up! The challenge simply involves choosing six of the books featured in Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, and reading and posting about them between November 1, 2009 and April 30, 2010. Here are my choices:

Judy Blume, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret;
Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy;
E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler;
Beverly Cleary, Fifteen;
Bette Greene, Summer of My German Solider; and,
Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

I'm looking forward to revisiting each of these books, and to comparing notes on the experience with other participants in the challenge.

Book Sale Finds

2009-10-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

I didn't get carried away at today's book sale, but I did come away with some good finds, each just a dollar or two apiece:

C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism;
Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel: essays on fiction;
Jeffrey Meyers (ed.), The Craft of Literary Biography;
Eve Garnett, Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street;
E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; and,
Carolyn Keene, The Clue in the Diary.

An odd mix of weighty litcrit tomes and kidlit classics that nicely reflects my current preoccupations.

Why I Still Love Encyclopedia Brown

2009-10-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

I've just reread the first of Donald J. Sobol's Encylopedia Brown books, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, and it is readily apparent to me why I loved these books as a kid, and why kids today continue to embrace them. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Ten-year-old Encyclopedia Brown is an irresistible character. Sobol introduces him thus: "Leroy Brown's head was like an encyclopedia. It was filled with facts he had learned from books. He was like a complete library walking around in sneakers." People are always asking him questions. For example, old ladies stop him in the street to ask his assistance with crossword clues. He always knows the answer, but he pauses a moment before offering it up because he's afraid people won't like him if he comes off as too smart. When Encyclopedia uses logic to help his Police Chief father to solve a case for the first time, his mother suggests that he could be a detective when he grows up. But Encyclopedia figures there's no time like the present and he puts out his shingle immediately. He sets up the Brown Detective Agency in his family’s garage, offering his services for 25 cents a day "plus expenses." Just like that, he transforms what could be a social liability⎯his intelligence and his bookishness⎯into a source of power, not just for himself, but also in service of other kids who are the targets of local bullies Bugs Meaney and his gang.

2. I don't like Bug Meaney⎯he's a nasty piece of work⎯but I do like his name, and I like that Encyclopedia has an archenemy with whom he does battle.

3. When you make a habit of besting the biggest bully in town, you need protection, so Encyclopedia acquires as a bodyguard the strongest person in Idaville below the age of twelve. That person? Sally Kimball. But brawny though she is, she's no bully. She too uses her powers for good, protecting younger, smaller kids from Bugs Meaney, and also, together with a team of fifth-grade girls, devastating Bugs and his gang in a girls-against-the-boys game of softball. And besides her physical toughness and athletic prowess, Sally is also pretty and smart (almost, but not quite smart enough to stump Encyclopedia with a logical puzzle of her own devising). So she becomes not just Encyclopedia's bodyguard, but also his partner in the detective agency. That's a lot of stereotypes about girls and their capabilities sent tumbling via the character of Sally Kimball, particularly in 1963 when the book was first published.

4. But the greatest pleasure of the book is, just as I recalled in my previous post, the opportunity to follow the clues and solve the cases (10 contained in each book) alongside Encyclopedia. When his mother asks him, after his first success, how he went about it, he explains: "I got it from a book I read about a great detective and his methods of observation." This is a nod to Sherlock Holmes, I think. In any event, a combination of close observation and deductive reasoning is certainly the secret of Encyclopedia's success, and the key to the same for the reader who aspires to solve the cases him or herself before flipping to the back of the book where the solutions are revealed. Some of you know that I'm a lawyer and a law professor. Much is made of the mystical process by which students learn in first year law school how to "think like a lawyer." On reflection it occurs to me, with apologies to my first year law professors, that I may in fact have received my earliest lessons in how to think like a lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown. At the time I couldn't have connected Encyclopedia's brand of logic with the work that lawyers do (I think I may have to credit Nancy Drew with making that connection explicit for me⎯another current reread). But in all likelihood it would have been in the solving of those puzzles that I first developed the taste and talent for logical reasoning that ultimately led me to pursue a legal career.

I'll stop there, but stay tuned for a follow up post on Nancy Drew, and possibly a forthcoming law review article: "Learning to Think Like a Lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew". . .

Childhood Reading: Mysteries

2009-10-17T22:00:00.001-04:00

A number of recent experiences/events have conspired to propel me into a new writing project: a series of essays on my childhood reading. The last thing I need is a new writing project, what with so many others (at last count, two novels-in-progress and two substantially researched and partially written legal monographs) already underway. But this excavation of my childhood reading is enormous fun and, as I have as yet attached no particular expectations to it, rather liberating. So I'm running with it.

My current preoccupation is with the mysteries I read as a child. I think that my first mysteries were Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown books. My recollection of these is rather hazy. I know that I read many of them but I doubt that I reread them the way I did other favourite series. In retrospect, I realize that Sobol must have been having fun playing off the conventions of adult P.I. novels, with Encyclopedia Brown, "boy detective," setting up a detective agency in his family's garage. If I recall correctly, each book contained a number of mini-mysteries for readers to solve, so the chief pleasure of them was not a sustained narrative, but the puzzle-solving exercise⎯an aspect of adult mysteries that still appeals to me.

I think that from there it was on to Nancy Drew. Again, my recollection of these is hazy, although I know I read many of them and, indeed, even owned several. Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels followed shortly thereafter. I remember my brother and I purchasing stacks of these and sharing them back and forth on our summer trips to Scotland to visit my grandparents.

Of course, there was also Lousie Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, one of my childhood favourites. But I'm inclined to think of Harriet more as an aspiring writer than an aspiring sleuth, the whole spy thing notwithstanding. Still, I'm going to reread it together with some Encyclopedia Browns, and Nancy Drews, and Famous Fives, to see if it fits somehow. For that's what I'm doing now in service of my essay on this topic⎯rereading several of each. You can see why I'm having such fun with this! There are eight Encyclopedia Brown books, and two Nancy Drews already making their way to me via my public library's hold system. And I have several of those battered paperback Famous Five novels still on my shelves, handy for revisiting.

When did I make the leap to adult mysteries, and where did I begin with those? I'm going to have to think a bit longer to pinpoint the when, but I'm quite sure it was straight from the foregoing children's mysteries to Agatha Christie. I remember that a friend from camp loaned me some Ellery Queen books at one point, but I don't think they hooked me the way that the Christies did.

Did you read mysteries in childhood? Which ones and why those? If you moved on from there to adult mysteries, which ones did you sample first?

Betsy-Tacy Giveaway Results!

2009-10-16T13:30:00.001-04:00

My apologies for being so slow to draw names for this giveaway. I was waiting for the copies of the books that I'd ordered to arrive so that I would be able to mail them off immediately to the lucky winners. As you can see from the above photo, they have indeed arrived. They make an impressive looking stack, do they not?

I'm pleased that so many people are interested in reading these books, and I wish that I had a copy to give to everyone who entered. Alas, I had to narrow it down to four. I did so using an online fruit machine thingy to randomly pick names from the list of entrants. And without further ado, the four winners are:

Suko
A Bookshelf Monstrosity
Chicklit
Dorothy W.

Please email your mailing address to me at katesbookblog@yahoo.ca and I will pop your book in the mail pronto. Enjoy!

A New Discworld Novel

2009-10-13T12:45:00.005-04:00

Today is the Canadian release date for Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals, and I confess to being positively giddy at the prospect of getting my hands on a copy. (It came out in the US last week and in the UK the week before that, so wherever you are, there's a good chance that you too can obtain a copy.) In it, apparently, the wizards of Ankh Morpork's Unseen University are compelled by Lord Vetinari to revive their ancient football tradition and, what's more, they must win the big game without the aid of magic. An irresistible premise, no? My very favourite Discworld novels are the ones that centre on the City Watch. And the novels featuring the witches are a close second. But as an academic and a football fan, I'm confident that I'll find this latest Discworld installment highly entertaining as well.

That's the UK/Canadian cover on the left, and the US one on the right. I think I prefer the former. And you?

The Charms of Anne of Windy Poplars

2009-10-09T09:36:00.002-04:00

I've heard many people over the years name Anne of Windy Poplars as their least favourite book in L.M. Montgomery's Anne series. I run hot and cold on Anne; there are a number of installments in the series that I love, and others that I skip over now on every reread. But I believe I go against the grain in counting Windy Poplars among the loves.

Windy Poplars covers the three years that elapse between Anne and Gilbert's engagement at the end of Anne of the Island and their wedding at the beginning of Anne's House of Dreams. They're apart for these years, with Gilbert at medical school in Kingsport, and Anne serving as Principal of Summerside High School, and the novel is comprised entirely of letters from Anne to Gilbert. They're not love letters⎯whenever Anne is feeling romantic, we get only suggestive ellipses⎯but chatty, thoughtful, and humorous descriptions of this new place and the new people she encounters there.

For those for whom the Anne/Gilbert romance is a central attraction of the series, this is just wasted time. I'm not one of those people. I confess that I've always found Gilbert rather dull⎯truth to tell, the only one of Montgomery's romantic leads that I've got any time for is Barney Snaith in The Blue Castle. But, major caveat here, the tenor of the correspondence in Windy Poplars, even though we get only one side of it, makes me like Gilbert more, because it so clearly conveys the depth of their friendship. It convinces me that Gilbert truly is the one for her.

Because it's a novel in letters, Anne is the narrator of the tale, and this is Anne's voice as we've not heard it before. Anne's over-exuberance in the earlier books can make her a bit exhausting at times. But here, although she's still that spirited Anne, we get her in contemplative moments, and we see her having a sense of humour about herself and those around her. And, we get to witness Anne's facility with her pen first hand. If she had employed these storytelling skills in her public writing rather than ultimately selling herself short, on the eve of her wedding, as one who "can write pretty, fanciful little sketches that children love" but "nothing big," then she might well have had a successful writing career echoing that of her creator.

Finally it's the humour in this book that is the major draw for me. In previous books Montgomery has depicted the adult shenanigans of small communities with the same sharp-eyed insight and wit, but mostly as a backdrop to the doings of precocious children. Here, it's front and centre in a book which therefore strikes me as a very adult one. I relish the depiction of the inner working of Summerside society, in particular the role within it of the ruling family, the Pringles, who initially do their best shut Anne out. And although the cast of characters is large, all are fully realized and altogether loveable or pleasurably hateable or an intriguing in between.

I'm particularly fond of the widows (Aunt Chatty and Aunt Kate) and the inimitable Rebecca Dew with whom Anne boards at Windy Poplars. And so, I leave you with a description of them from near the beginning of the book as Anne is just settling in to her new digs:

"The widows are going to wear well. Every day I like them better. Aunt Kate doesn't believe in reading novels, but informs me that she does not propose to censor my reading-matter. Aunt Chatty loves novels. She has a 'hidy-hole' where she keeps them ... she smuggles them in from the town library ... together with a pack of cards for solitaire and anything else she doesn't want Aunt Kate to see. It is in a chair seat which nobody but Aunt Chatty knows is more than a chair seat. She has shared the secret with me, because, I strongly suspect, she wants me to aid and abet her in the aforesaid smuggling. There shouldn't really be any need for hidy-holes at Windy Poplars, for I never saw a house with so many mysterious cupboards. Though to be sure, Rebecca Dew won't let them be mysterious. She is always cleaning them out ferociously. 'A house can't keep itself clean,' she says sorrowfully when either of the widows protests. I am sure she would make short work of a novel or a pack of cards if she found them. They are both a horror to her orthodox soul. Rebecca Dew says cards are the devil's books and novels even worse. The only things Rebecca ever reads, apart from her Bible, are the society columns of the Montreal Guardian. She loves to pore over the houses and furniture and doings of millionaires.

Are there any other Windy Poplars fans among you?

Betsy-Tacy Fans and the Great World

2009-10-07T06:00:00.009-04:00

Betsy and the Great World is the ninth book in Maud Hart Lovelace's ten volume Betsy-Tacy series. It begins in January 1914 with 21-year-old Betsy Ray starting up the gangplank to the S.S. Columbic, then docked in Boston harbor but shortly bound for Europe. Two and a half years have passed since the end of the preceding book, Betsy and Joe, and much has changed. Most startling on first reading for fans of the series is finding Betsy embarking on this adventure alone. Best friend Tacy is conspicuously absent, as are Tib and Carney and the rest of Betsy's Deep Valley Crowd. And the devoted Ray family⎯parents Bob and Jule, and sisters Julia and Margaret⎯is nowhere in evidence.

But we soon learn that these characters are as supportive of Betsy as ever, albeit now from a distance. Indeed, the trip to Europe was her father's idea. He could see that Betsy had gotten off on the wrong foot at college, that she hadn't been happy there, and concluded that perhaps a different sort of education would serve her better. Initially he suggested the sort of guided tour that her older sister had taken a few years previously, but Betsy persuaded him otherwise:

"No, Papa!" Betsy knelt beside him, her hands on his knee. "Guided tours are all right for some people, but not for a writer. I ought to stay in just two or three places. Really live in them, learn them. Then if I want to mention London, for example, in a story, I would know the names of the streets and how they run and the buildings and the atmosphere of the city. I could move a character around in London just as though it were Minneapolis. I don't want to hurry from place to place with a party the way Julia did."

And this is just what Betsy does, settling in for a time in Munich, then Venice, then Paris, and finally London (where the start of WWI ultimately cuts her travels short), meeting new people, making the most of every experience, and collecting story material all the while.

Fans of the earlier books can't help but miss Tacy and the Crowd and the Ray family. After all, the fun and the warmth of these friendships and this family is a major part of the appeal of the Betsy-Tacy series as a whole. But at the same time, it's exhilarating to witness Betsy becoming increasingly independent and ever more confident in her abilities as a writer. Betsy's journey in this book, both literal and emotional, was a great source of inspiration to me as a young reader and remains so still. As a world traveler, an independent woman, and a writer dedicated to her craft, Betsy was and is a heroine to emulate. This is why Betsy and the Great World is my favourite installment in the Betsy-Tacy series. And it doesn't hurt that it has one of the most satisfying endings that I've encountered in any book. I cry every time.

I'm not alone in taking inspiration from Betsy's travels. I canvassed the membership of Maud-L on this point and learned that a number of my friends and fellow Betsy-Tacy fans had been emboldened by Betsy to embark on similar adventures, some following directly in Betsy's footsteps, others traveling to destinations of their own but feeling a kinship with Betsy while doing so, and even adopting Betsyish turns of phrase in describing their adventures to loved ones back home. Here are some of the travel tales they generously shared with me:

Sallie K.: "My first trip to Europe in 1967 was greatly influenced by Betsy's trip in 1914. I wanted to go by ship, and there were still passenger ships plying the Atlantic Ocean in 1967, so I booked passage on the Queen Mary (yep, the same one that now resides in Long Beach CA). Before I left for New York City, my sister who had introduced me to the Betsy Tacy book series, gave me a package that included different presents to be opened each day of my voyage to Southampton England. The first was a small, leather-bound journal entitled "My Trip" - almost like Betsy's from Julia and Paige - and in which I wrote all during my stay in Great Britain. I didn't do as much traveling that first trip as Betsy did, but spent my whole 6 months in Great Britain exploring it from the tip of Cornwall to the top of John O'Groats in Scotland. On a later trip, also by ship, I visited Munich and Oberammergau in memory of Maud Hart Lovelace and her fictional character, Betsy Ray."

Wendy reports having visited all of the Betsy and the Great World sites in Munich, most of them in Venice, and some in London, and she singles out as highlights "seeing Marco's choir stalls at San Giorgio Maggiore and going to Sonneberg." Of the latter she writes: "Even in 1999, I was delighted to find that solo lady tourists in Sonneberg were so rare that people would pop their heads out of their houses to stare at me as I walked by."

Margaret: "Somehow, in reading all the Betsy-Tacy books, I had missed out on Betsy and The Great World. When I finally read it, it immediately became one of my favorites in the series, and I have probably reread it the most. I like to travel, and I have been to Paris more than once. One of my favorite memories of the city is the time a friend of mine and I were just wandering around the streets, shopping and looking at things. We turned a corner and unexpectedly there it was-- onze rue Scribe, the AMEX office. 'That's where Betsy went!' I said excitedly to my friend, who had no idea what I was talking about."

Jen: "I sent the following e-mail to my beloved husband after my day in Athens, pretending to be Betsy in the Great World: 'Our deck is full of drying underpants. Don't ask. Mom got us kicked out of our room this morning. Don't ask. At an outdoor cafe, a handsome Greek man put his hand in my hair and stroked my head. Ask all you want, I won't tell.' :) Travel is SO broadening!"

Ruth: "I took my very first cruise this summer (I'm almost 58) to Alaska. It was wonderful because I was partially raised there and was going back more or less. Also got to see my uncle. But my Betsy experience was sitting out on the deck chair on my balcony on the ship in the cold air, with a woolen deck blanket over me! (It took me a day to figure out that the nice 'afghans' on the couch were actually deck blankets!) And they were much appreciated! So I sat there and felt like Betsy on the Columbic and thought how wonderful it was to be there!"

Susann: "What I most love about Betsy and the Great World is that we get to see Betsy traveling ALONE. She makes friends and has companions for part of her journey but, really, Betsy is on her own, literally and metaphorically navigating her own course. Much as I enjoy traveling with friends and family, I also love to set out by myself. You see things differently when you're on your own. Betsy's solo trip to Sonneberg reminds me of my trip to Salzburg, when I was a 19-year-old student spending a semester in London. Just as Betsy indulged her inner child to visit the 'doll center of the world,' I knew that I couldn't leave Europe without paying homage to The Sound of Music. Folks thought I was a little nuts to head all the way to Austria, just for a Julie Andrews movie. But I was so excited to set off on my 'crazy expedition,' follow my heart's desire, and see one more corner of the Great World."

It's irresistible, is it not, a book that makes you want to travel the world?

(Thanks to TLC Book Tours for inviting me to participate in the Betsy-Tacy blog tour.)

Betsy-Tacy High School Books Giveaway!

2009-10-06T13:30:00.001-04:00

With the release last week of new double-volume editions of the final six books in the series, all of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy Tacy books are back in print.

The series begins with Betsy's fifth birthday in Minnesota circa 1897 and, in ten volumes, documents her childhood and high school years, her early struggles to establish herself as a writer, her solo trip into the Great World (Germany, Italy, France, and England), and finally her wedding and the beginning of her married life. The books become steadily more sophisticated in style and content as Betsy matures, thereby continuing to appeal to young readers as they grow up alongside Betsy and her friends.

If you're a regular visitor to this blog, you'll know that these books were childhood favourites of mine, and that I continue to love them beyond reason. The early books, which are utterly charming reads for children, have been more or less continually in print in recent years. But, until now, not so the high school books and beyond. And, while I'm fond of the early books, the later ones have a special place in my head and my heart. They are the ones that I revisit again and again as an adult. So, it makes me extraordinarily happy to see them back in print and available in stores for other readers to discover and, hopefully, embrace as I and countless others have done.

The new editions consist of three double volumes, each containing two installments in the series. This doubling up is a good thing given the addictive quality of the series--very hard to stop after just one! And it gives each volume a satisfying heft which, I like to think, will be appealing to young readers who have grown up on Harry Potter and the Twilight series and expect a lot of book in their books. The covers feature the same charming Vera Neville drawings that graced the originals. And, as added bonuses, each volume also features a foreword by a famous fan (Laura Lippman, Meg Cabot, and Anna Quindlen respectively) and an afterword that provides some background information on the real people and places that the fictional characters and settings are based on.

There is much to celebrate here, and I'm celebrating with a giveaway! I've purchased a few extra copies of the first volume, Heaven to Betsy/Betsy in Spite of Herself which takes Betsy through her freshman and sophomore years of high school, to give to readers of this blog. Are you interested in receiving a copy? Are you a neophyte, ready to embark on your first ever read of a Betsy-Tacy book? Or perhaps you'd like a copy not for yourself but for a daughter, granddaughter, niece, or young friend who you think would enjoy these books? Don't worry about starting in the middle of the series if you've not read the early books. The high school books can stand on their own and I actually think they're a better introduction to the series for older readers. But perhaps you have read the early books, and you're now keen to encounter the high school Betsy? Or maybe you loved the series as a child and would like to take this opportunity revisit your old friends in Deep Valley? Whatever the source of your interest, let me know in the comments section below if you'd like a copy of this book. If more people express an interest than I've got copies, I'll draw names on Friday night.

Good luck! And stay tuned for another Betsy-Tacy post tomorrow, this one focused on my favourite book in the series, Betsy and the Great World, as part of a Betsy-Tacy blog tour which is currently underway.

UPDATE: You can find the list of winners here.

Latest Library Loot

2009-10-03T22:50:00.001-04:00

I found this marvellous lot of books awaiting me on the library hold shelf today (I'm too lazy to think of clever ways to describe books I haven't yet read, so I'll just paste a few paragraphs from the publishers' catalogue copy below to give you an idea of what delights I'm in for):

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt: "The Children's Book is the absorbing story of the close of what has been called the Edwardian summer: the deceptively languid, blissful period that ended with the cataclysmic destruction of World War I. In this compelling novel, A.S. Byatt summons up a whole era, revealing that beneath its golden surface lay tensions that would explode into war, revolution and unbelievable change — for the generation that came of age before 1914 and, most of all, for their children. The novel centres around Olive Wellwood, a fairy tale writer, and her circle, which includes the brilliant, erratic craftsman Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Phillip Warren, a runaway from the poverty of the Potteries; Prosper Cain, the soldier who directs what will become the Victoria and Albert Museum; Olive's brother-in-law Basil Wellwood, an officer of the Bank of England; and many others from every layer of society. A.S. Byatt traces their lives in intimate detail and moves between generations, following the children who must choose whether to follow the roles expected of them or stand up to their parents' 'porcelain socialism.'"

Brooklyn by Colm Toíbín: "It is Enniscorthy in the southeast of Ireland in the early 1950s. Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady’s intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, however, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life — until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. As she falls in love, news comes from home that forces her back to Enniscorthy, not to the constrictions of her old life, but to new possibilities which conflict deeply with the life she has left behind in Brooklyn."

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall: "Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong."

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker: "The Anthologist is narrated by Paul Chowder -- a once-in-a-while-published kind of poet who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poetry. He's having a hard time getting started because his career is floundering, his girlfriend Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about the great poets throughout history who have suffered far worse and deserve to feel sorry for themselves. He has also promised to reveal many wonderful secrets and tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the introduction will be a little longer than he'd thought. What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry: from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the staff of The New Yorker, what Paul reveals is astonishing and makes one realize how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul barely manages to realize all of this himself, and the result is a tenderly romantic, hilarious, and inspired novel."

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore: "Set just after the events of September 2001, it is a story about Tassie Keltjin, a twenty-year-old making her way in a new world and coming of age. Tassie is a “smile-less” girl from the plains of the mid-west. She has come to a university town, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, and Simone de Beauvoir. In between semesters, she takes a part-time job as a nanny for a family that seems mysterious and glamorous to her. Though her liking for children tends to dwindle into boredom, Tassie begins to care for, and protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own. As the year unfolds, she is drawn even deeper into the world of the child and her hovering parents, and her own life back home becomes alien to her. As life reveals itself dramatically and shockingly, Tassie finds herself forever changed — less the person she once was, and more and more the stranger she feels herself to be."

The Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling: "1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history - and the future: Sybil Gerard - fallen woman, politicians tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward "Leviathan" Mallory - explorer and paleontologist. Laurence Oliphant - diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for..."

Add to these a couple of DVDs of Inspector Lewis episodes, and you can see that I'm in for some excellent Fall entertainment courtesy of my local library.

Paul Auster on Samuel Beckett

2009-09-06T13:14:00.003-04:00

Paul Auster on Samuel Beckett & literary mentorship:

"We weren't friends at all," he says. "I mean, you can't call it friendship, it was hardly even an acquaintanceship, but there was some feeling of solidarity, I felt, from him towards me, and I appreciated it very much. And I think now that I'm an old fellow and I see young writers, you know, there is always this feeling of tenderness and fear that you have for them.

For the rest of the Auster profile in the Irish Times from whence this snippet comes, click here.

Symposium on Book Blogging

2009-09-06T11:17:00.005-04:00

There's a very thought-provoking symposium under way on "The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time," conceived and hosted by D.G. Myers of A Commonplace Blog and Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence. Myers & Kurp have put a series of questions designed to provoke reflection on "the past, present, and future of this youngest of literary genres" to a number of book bloggers. Six responses have now been posted, and I understand that there are more to come.

You can find Myers' introduction to the symposium here, and the first six responses from participating bloggers at the links below:

Miriam Burstein (The Little Professor);
Frank Wilson (Books, Inq.);
Benjamin Stein (Turmsegler);
Michael Gilleland (Laudator Temporis Acti);
Mark Athitakis (American Fiction Notes); and,
Walter Aske (Elberry’s Ghost).

The symposium has me mulling afresh over some of the big questions of book blogging and has also exposed me to some bloggers of whom I hadn't previously been aware and whose blogs I'm now keen to read. If you haven't already, I encourage you to stop by A Commonplace Blog and Anecdotal Evidence to read the contributions of the participants and to chime in with your own views in the comments sections.

The Art of Selective Subtraction

2009-09-05T18:57:00.003-04:00

Will Ferguson on the distinction between fiction and travel writing:

I've always said that fiction and travel writing are comparable to two types of sculpturing. Fiction is like working with clay; you build something up from a single character, an image, a scent. It's the art of addition. Nonfiction, and travel writing in particular, is like working in stone, cutting away everything that doesn't fit. You start big and pare down, reducing the mass of possibilities, trying to decide what matters, what doesn't. Any destination might conjure up a number of vastly different books, even from the same author. Focus on one through-line instead of another and the book – like the journey – will suddenly veer off, leading you in startlingly new directions. Or over the edge of a cliff. Travel writing is the art of selective subtraction.

Click here to read the rest.

Neil Gaiman's Library

2009-09-04T10:52:00.003-04:00

Click here to check out Neil Gaiman's bookshelves at shelfari. I am overwhelmed with envy and admiration. I wouldn't dare put my books in the basement for fear of the damp, but I want just such a library somewhere in my house!

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

2009-09-01T11:10:00.004-04:00

The first book listed by Nancy Pearl in her recent NPR feature on Mysteries You Might Have Missed Along the Way is Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection. I didn't miss that one⎯it was one of my favourite reads of the year so far. But I did miss telling you about it, so I'm going to piggyback on Pearl's recommendation to do so belatedly now. Pearl beautifully sums up this very difficult to sum up book as follows:

Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection is the sort of novel that is impossible to characterize with any accuracy. An amalgamation of literary fiction, fantasy and mystery, it echoes with tributes to the writing of Borges, Calvino, Auster and Kafka. But for all that it may resemble, The Manual of Detection is entirely original. Set in a building known only as The Agency in an unknown, somewhat eerie city, the novel features Charles Unwin, a finicky, routine-driven clerk who works for a famous detective named Sivart.

One day, everything in Unwin's ordered life is thrown into disarray when Sivart's boss is murdered, Sivart disappears and Unwin is unwillingly promoted to detective from his lowly position as a clerk (a job he looks forward to every day). The only way Unwin can get his beloved clerkship back is to find Sivart, but while trying to do so, he uncovers the existence of a dastardly plot to take over the world by an organization bent on infiltrating people's dreams.

It sounds promising, does it not? And that promise is fully realized in the novel. Here's a list of overlapping reasons why I loved The Manual of Detection:

1. The plot is crazily inventive. There were moments when it was all so surreal that I just let myself drift (dreamlike) and didn't even try to follow the thread of the plot. But then some connection would spark for me and I'd be fiercely puzzling it all out again. The latter mode of reading was a cerebral pleasure, and the former, just a pleasure.

2. The novel is marvelously atmospheric. The universe that Berry has created here is one that I relished inhabiting. I didn't want to leave it at the end. (For a taste of it, click over to the book's website which somehow conjures up the same mood.)

3. The novel both is The Manual of Detection and is about The Manual Detection. I'm a sucker for books within books, and this one is framed very cleverly and with a deeply satisfying attention to detail. For example, early on one of the characters makes reference to page 96 of the Manual. I immediately turned to page 96 of the novel and was pleased by what I found there.

4. It is full of arresting images that have stuck with me weeks afterward, chief among them, our reluctant hero Charles Unwin bicycling in the rain under an umbrella ingeniously hooked to his handlebars.

I can't wait to see what fabulous book next emerges from the fertile brain of Jedediah Berry. In the meantime, I'll likely reread this one a time or two.

Library Loot 9: Borrowing from Afar

2009-08-30T12:15:00.002-04:00

Last Wednesday, I blogged from Sweden about historical figures in whom my interest had been piqued by museum visits. I kept an eye out for further information on them as I browsed Stockholm's bookstores, but, being unable to read Swedish, my options were limited. So I also flipped open my trusty netbook and browsed the Toronto Public Library catalogue from afar. Sure enough, there were some tomes listed there that seemed likely to satisfy my curiosity, and I placed a few holds. Less than a week later, I arrived back home to find three of those books already awaiting me on the hold shelf. Is it any wonder that I love the library? Here are the titles and authors, along with a descriptive paragraph from each book jacket:

Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World by David King: "What do Zeus, Apollo, and the gods of Mount Olympus have in common with Odin, Thor, and the gods of Valhalla? What do these, in turn, have to do with the shades of Hades, the pharaohs of Egypt, and the glories of fabled Atlantis? In 1679, Olof Rudbeck stunned the world with the answer: They could all be traced to an ancient lost civilization that once thrived in the far north of Rudbeck’s native Sweden. He would spend the last thirty years of his life hunting for the evidence that would prove this extraordinary theory." (I'm already a third of the way into this one, and finding Rudbeck's life and his theories every bit as fascinating as I anticipated.)

Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric by Veronica Buckley: "She was born on a bitterly cold December night in 1626 and, in the candlelight, mistakenly declared a boy. On her father's death six years later, she inherited the Swedish throne. She was tutored by Descartes, yet could swear like the roughest soldier. She was painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist; in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label. She was learned but restless, progressive yet self-indulgent; her leadership was erratic, her character unpredictable. Sweden was too narrow for her ambition. No sooner had she enjoyed the lavish celebrations of her official coronation at twenty-three than she abdicated, converting to Catholicism (an act of almost foolhardy independence and political challenge) and leaving her cold homeland behind for an extravagant new life in Rome. Christina, Queen of Sweden, longed fatally for adventure."

Strindberg: A Biography by Michael Meyer: "Called 'that greatest genius of all modern dramatists' by Eugene O'Neill, Strindberg was one of the founders of the modern theater--a prolific author whose works prefigured those of Pinter, Beckett, and Ionesco. Yet, despite their admiration by such contemporaries as Ibsen, Chekhov, and George Bernard Shaw, Strindberg's works were misunderstood and rejected by his fellow Swedes, who throughout his life considered him a crank and a failure. In this definitive biography, Michael Meyer, the foremost translator of Strindberg's plays into English, presents a full and honest portrait of Strindberg as man and artist."

So, I'm back home in Toronto, but my education on Swedish history and literature continues.

Life According to Literature Meme

2009-08-29T12:05:00.000-04:00

I couldn't resist borrowing this one from Dorothy. Like her, I didn't find it so difficult. My reading list so far this year provided multiple possible responses to most of the questions. Being a mystery aficionado, I had an especially broad range of choices for the types of death one! You can see that I took the easy way out there...

Here are the instructions: "Using only books you have read this year (2009), answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title. It's a lot harder than you think!"

Describe yourself: Lonely Werewolf Girl (Martin Millar).

How do you feel: The First Person & Other Stories (Ali Smith).

Describe where you currently live: Toronto Places (Mark Baraness).

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Betsy and The Great World (Maud Hart Lovelace).

Your favorite form of transportation: Why We Run (Bernd Heinrich).

Your best friend is: Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren).

You and your friends are: Human Voices (Penelope Fitzgerald).

What's the weather like: Arctic Chill (Arnaldur Indridason).

You fear: The Abominable Man (Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo).

What is the best advice you have to give: What to Eat: An Aisle-By-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating (Marion Nestle).

Thought for the day: Heaven is Small (Emily Schultz).

How you would like to die: Sweet Death, Kind Death (Amanda Cross).

My soul's present condition: A Hat Full of Sky (Terry Pratchett).

If you fancy having a go at this one, consider yourself tagged!

"...one good fragment for every 500 nails..."

2009-08-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

Andrew Brown on becoming an English writer while living in Sweden:

In the busy banging solitude of the factory I taught myself to write English. I hardly spoke it to anybody then. I worked in Swedish, I was married in Swedish; I thought and dreamed in Swedish too: it's still the language in which I think of fishing technicalities. But I still read mostly English books, and I wanted to become an English writer. The first thing I bought when we got married was an ancient office typewriter, with its base machined from solid brass, which went on an old desk borrowed from Anita's younger sister. I knew nothing about myself and very little about the world so it was hard to find a subject. But as I worked with the planks, hauling and banging and building the boxes, phrases would appear to me. If they were good, I grabbed the thick pencil used for marking wood and scribbled them on the cardboard dividers from the cases of nails. This allowed me one good fragment for every 500 nails I fired in. When I came home, the breast pocket of my overalls might have half a dozen of these bits inside it: sawdust would fall from the seams as I pulled out the cardboard strips and placed them beside the typewriter.

From Andrew Brown, Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared (2008).

Travels in Sweden (Actual and Literary)

2009-08-26T03:57:00.004-04:00

My jaunt to Sweden began with five days in Uppsala and continues with five days in Stockholm. As far as reading in Sweden goes, in Uppsala, my mind turned primarily to biography thanks to some extraordinary tales I heard from a museum guide. Queen Kristina (1626-1689), for example, sounds like quite a character, a queen who consorted with philosophers and scientists, was very supportive of the university, and ultimately abdicated the throne to follow her religious convictions. I'd like to learn more about her. And then there was a pair of Uppsala professors who were highly accomplished and also extremely eccentric. First to capture my imagination was Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702), simultaneously professor of something like nine different subjects as disparate as medicine, music, mathematics, and history. He was the builder of the extraordinary Anatomical Theatre where public autopsies were conducted for the edification of medical students and the entertainment of tourists. I'd like to read a biography of him and also some of his own writing. I wonder if his final work in which he posited Sweden as the cradle of civilization has been translated into English? And also Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), father of modern botany, travel writer, and self-marketer extraordinaire. I'd like to learn something of his life, and also to read his account of his travels in Lapland. However, possibly the coolest thing that I saw in an Uppsala museum put me in mind of an English rather than a Swedish writer. I couldn't help wondering if the amazing Augsburg Art Cabinet served as the inspiration for Terry Pratchett's Cabinet of Curiosities. Click over to a virtual tour of it, and see for yourself.

In Stockholm, my literary preoccupation is fiction. I'm dashing about looking for English translations of Swedish crime writers whose books are difficult to come by in North America. And I'm also stocking up on translations of such Swedish classics as August Strindberg's The Red Room, Kerstin Ekman's Witches' Rings, and Hjalmar Soderberg's Martin Birck's Youth. Incidentally, the picture that heads this post is a portrait of August Strindberg painted by Edvard Munch which I had the pleasure of viewing in the Moderna Museet yesterday. And in keeping with the theme, today I'm planning a trip to Strindberg's house.

I'll post a fuller account of my travels when I get back home to Toronto. But in the meantime, I may post the odd quotation here from my new Swedish books.

L.M. Montgomery on the Short Story

2009-08-13T20:26:00.002-04:00

From a journal entry by L.M. Montgomery dated January 17, 1911:

...I tried to do a little at revising a short story this evening. Mr. Page wants to bring out a volume of short stories sometime and I am re-writing such of them as are worth including in such a volume. I think very few of them are. Most of my short stories were written as "pot-boilers." I should like to write some good short stories. I consider it a very high form of art. It is easier to write a good novel than a good short story...

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921 (edited by Mary Rubio & Elizabeth Waterston).

Learning's Best Justification

2009-08-11T15:03:00.004-04:00

From Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels:

I knew I was going to like Prof. the Rev. Darcourt. He seemed to think learning could be amusing, and that heavy people needed stirring up. Like Rabelais, of whom even educated people like Parlabane had such a stupid opinion. Rabelais was gloriously learned because learning amused him, and so far as I am concerned that is learning's best justification. Not the only one, but the best.

As you might gather, I've begun a reread of The Rebel Angels and am thoroughly enjoying it...

15 Toronto Books in 15 Minutes

2009-08-09T23:00:00.003-04:00

I did a general version of this meme a while back, but Amy Lavender Harris, valiant champion of Toronto literature, tagged me with this Toronto-centric version on Facebook, and of course I can't resist.

Here are her instructions:

"NB: I've altered this meme to focus on Toronto literature and tagged 15 people.

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag some friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose."

And here is my selectively annotated response:

1. L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill.

This novel probably provided my first encounter with Toronto. It is often described as if the portrait of Toronto in it is unremittingly negative, simply a foil to the delights of Prince Edward Island. But even at its most negative, Grandmother's crumbling gothic Toronto, it is rather compelling. And let's not forget that Jane does find a Toronto neighbourhood, and house, to love at the end (apparently one modeled on LMM's own house in Swansea).

2. Morley Callaghan, Such is My Beloved.
3. Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels.

I don't think Toronto is explicitly named as the setting in either of these novels, and reading them before having been here, I didn't recognize the city. But both are old favourites and I'm keen to reread them now that I know Toronto well.

4. William Burrill, Hemingway: The Toronto Years.

I also read this one before setting foot in Toronto, and read it to learn about Hemingway not about Toronto, being totally caught up in the lost generation at the time. Again though, I'd like to reread it for the insights it has to offer into Toronto in that period.

5. Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride.
6. Dennis Lee, Civil Elegies.
7. Katherine Govier, Fables of Brunswick Avenue.
8. Russell Smith, How Insensitive.

I like to get acquainted with a new city through its literature and for that reason I sought out a lot of Toronto books shortly after I moved here. These four (two novels, a story collection, and a book of poetry) were standouts.

9. Rosemary Sullivan, Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen.
10. Rosemary Sullivan, The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out.
11. Douglas Fetherling, Way Down in the Belly of the Beast: A Memoir of the Seventies.

I read these two biographies and this memoir when doing a bit of research into literary Toronto in the sixties and seventies. Each brought different aspects of that time, place, and subculture vividly to life.

12. Maureen Jennings, Except the Dying.
13. Pat Capponi, Last Stop Sunnyside.

Good crime fiction is often lauded for the sense of place it evokes. These two, each the first in a series, illuminate very different Torontos: Victorian Toronto in Jennings' Inspector Murdoch mysteries, and contemporary Toronto (particularly Parkdale) from the perspective of those disenfranchised by poverty and mental illness in Capponi's Dana Leoni series.

14. David Gilmour, A Perfect Night to Go to China.
15. Howard Akler, The City Man.

And finally two recent Toronto novels that I particularly liked and admired. I wrote about the former here, and the latter here.

I won't tag anyone, but I do invite my Toronto friends to join in and list their favourites. And for those of you from elsewhere who are perhaps not so familiar with Toronto literature, how about adapting the meme to showcase the literature of your city or region for the benefit of those of us who like to travel through books?

Joyce Maynard on Betsy-Tacy

2009-08-03T14:06:00.002-04:00

Joyce Maynard on her love of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books:

One other element of the Betsy-Tacy story I loved had to do with Betsy's aspiration to be a writer. She carried a little notebook around with her, and wrote stories all the time, which she read out loud to Tacy and their other friend, Tib. Back in those days, children in children's books usually did things like play baseball or ride horses. I loved it that finally I had found a character who did something I did.

To read the rest of Maynard's essay, click here.

(via Book Club Girl)

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Little House Books

2009-08-03T09:35:00.003-04:00

For a very interesting article in The New Yorker by Judith Thurman on Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Little House Books, click here.

Alex Good on Negative Reviews

2009-08-01T11:29:00.001-04:00

Alex Good on negative reviews:

The spectre of criticism becoming nothing but advertising and propaganda raises another question. What is it about books that makes us think they should be held immune from negative reviews? Do people complain about negative film reviewing? Should every movie, even that one with all the robots, get a thumbs-up, or at least be rated four stars out of five? Expanding the list of cultural products, should car columnists be warned against writing negative car reviews? After all, we might have saved a lot of good manufacturing jobs in our auto industry if we had only raved about the latest offerings from GM.

To read the whole of Good's article, click here.